Sarcastic tombstome epitaphs

Read this once in a while

2024.02.27 13:35 juanpablo0807 Read this once in a while

Have a firm handshake.
Look people in the eye.
Sing in the shower.
Own a great stereo system.
If in a fight, hit first and hit hard.
Keep secrets.
Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday.
Always accept an outstretched hand.
Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
Whistle.
Avoid sarcastic remarks.
Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90% of all your happiness and misery.
Make it a habit to do nice things for people who will never find out.
Lend only those books you never care to see again.
Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.
When playing games with children, let them win.
Give people a second chance, but not a third.
Be romantic.
Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.
Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life-and-death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems.
Don’t allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It’s there for our convenience, not the caller’s.
Be a good loser.
Be a good winner.
Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.
When someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go.
Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.
Keep it simple.
Beware of the person who has nothing to lose.
Don’t burn bridges. You’ll be surprised how many times you have to cross the same river.
Live your life so that your epitaph could read: No regrets.
Be bold and courageous. When you look back on life, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the ones you did.
Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.
Remember no one makes it alone. Have a grateful heart and be quick to acknowledge those who helped you.
Take charge of your attitude. Don’t let someone else choose it for you.
Visit friends and relatives when they are in the hospital; you only need to stay a few minutes.
Begin each day with some of your favourite music.
Once in a while, take the scenic route.
Send a lot of Valentine cards. Sign them, ‘Someone who thinks you’re terrific.’
Answer the phone with enthusiasm and energy in your voice.
Keep a notepad and pencil on your bedside table. Million-dollar ideas sometimes strike at 3 a.m.
Show respect for everyone who works for a living, regardless of how trivial their job.
Send your loved ones flowers. Think of a reason later.
Make someone’s day by paying the toll for the person in the car behind you.
Become someone’s hero.
Marry only for love.
Count your blessings.
Compliment the meal when you’re a guest in someone’s home.
Wave at the children on a school bus.
Remember that 80% of the success in any job is based on your ability to deal with people.
Don’t expect life to be fair.

submitted by juanpablo0807 to IndianTeenagers [link] [comments]

2023.10.23 15:03 HeadOfSpectre Castello di Sangue - Part 7: Out Of Lives

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Ansen stared at the key in his hand as if it wasn’t real, although his expression was still stony. His brown eyes studied the key, before he pocketed it.
“One more win…” He said softly, “And we’re not even at the halfway point yet.”

Four keys down. Three rooms to go.

Our odds really were looking better and better.
“Hell of a solve,” Thomas said, stepping into the room with us. He looked a bit calmer than he had before as he handed my crossbow back to me.
“Well, they basically handed us the goddamn answer,” Ansen said. “Smarmy bastards.”

Behind Thomas, I could see some of the others coming through the door to investigate the library. Gordon studied some of the books, before noticing one that seemed to have a place of honor on one of the shelves. I hadn’t noticed it when Ansen and I had come in. We’d been more focused on the puzzle, but now that he was looking at it, my attention was drawn to it too. On the cover was a black and white photograph of a run down castle built into the side of a mountain. I’d never seen the castle before… but I recognized it from the round tower at the top, marked with large crescent windows.

An astronomy tower.
The astronomy tower I’d been inside just a few short moments ago.

Above the picture on the cover read the title.

Castello di Sangue.

Gordon picked up the book, thumbing through it with a furrowed brow.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Looks like some sort of book on this place…” He replied, “Whole things in Italian… I don’t suppose anyone can read it?”

No one volunteered, although Thomas did have a thoughtful look on his face.
“Castello di Sangue…” He repeated.
“You know it?”
“I’ve heard of it,” He said. “Castello di Adria… Adria Castle. Can’t say I know much… supposedly it was built by a former member of the Aristocracy a long, long time ago.”
“I imagine there’s no points for guessing what he used it for?” Gordon asked. Thomas smiled wistfully.
“No,” He said. “Last I’d heard, the castle wasn’t actually owned by the Aristocracy anymore… guess they’ve turned that around.”

“Call it a new project,” Princesses voice said. The quality of the audio indicated that she was speaking through the channel that our audience couldn’t hear. “Thanks to some of you… our old operation wasn’t doing so hot. Some of our customers favorite haunts were recently shut down… good job, by the way Johnny…”

Ansen grimaced at the mention of his name.
“And others had to shut down for other reasons, which included a certain other detective trying to hunt them down… thank you, Matt. But I guess that’s the name of the game, when you’re a bunch of cannibalistic sociopaths with the money to back it up.”

There was a quiet contempt in her voice, that was quickly replaced with a hollow laugh.
“Anyways, our patrons needed a new way to get their kicks. And the higher ups needed a way to take out the trash. So here we are. But hey, what do I know? I’m just the sociopath who works here! Don’t ask me nothin’!”

The speakers went quiet again.
Ansen exhaled a breath he’d been holding.
“I swear that woman talks just to waste our time…” He said, before heading for the door. “Come on. Only a couple more rooms to go.”

The rest of us followed him, leaving the left hall and making out way into the second floors rear hall. I half expected there to be only one door here, just like with downstairs although there were two. Both looked like they had signs on them.

Ansen wasted no time in heading toward the first door, stopping in front of it to read the sign.

Out Of Lives.

He looked back at us.
“So… who’s door is this? Gordon?”
“Maybe?” He said, taking out his key to try it in the lock. No luck. He looked back at us, and shook his head.

Ansens attention turned to Steph next. She stared uneasily at the door, before exhaling a breath and removing Rick’s key from her pocket. She willed herself forward, walking past Gordon and sliding the key into the lock. She turned it and the door swung open with a creak.
“Well, well… deja vu…” Enrique said under his breath. I saw Ansen give him a look, and Enrique quickly backed down.

Steph stepped in through the door, and I was right behind her as she did. The room we found ourselves in looked to be some sort of games room. A pool table dominated the center of the room, and a few old arcade cabinets were lined up along the walls, although only one of them appeared to be on.

“This is Ricks room?” Ansen asked as he walked in behind us.
“Oh, I’m sure it would’ve made more sense if he was still alive.” Princess chimed through the speakers. “I don’t suppose his occupation ever came up in conversation, did it? No? He worked for some game studio. Nothing high end. You know those really fucking obnoxious ads you get for games, where the ad is all like: ‘Save the starving children from drowning by moving this pin!’ but the actual game is just Candy Crush? He made those… man… this little lore dump just seems so much more depressing when it’s his epitaph, doesn’t it? Oh well. I guess in a way, this room sorta does still work for our little Gamer Girl Steph! So I’ll give her the rundown!”

Steph slowly approached the active arcade cabinet. Some sort of side scroller was on the screen, waiting for her to begin. I didn’t recognize the game on the screen. It didn’t look too dissimilar from a classic Mario title, although the avatar on the screen looked more like Rick, with a red face and bald head. Steph stared at the avatar and her breathing grew heavier. She seemed to struggle to control it.

“Now, I’m sure you’ve played a side scroller before… and this one isn’t all that long, so it SHOULD be straightforward for you. And as a nice added little cushion, you get three whole lives! Win, and the key is yours. Lose… well… you know what happens at this point.”

Steph nodded. She stared at the screen, struggling to control her breathing. The rest of us just watched her. I stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Here… I was pretty good at Mario back in the day, let me take a crack a-”
“No,” She said, her voice small but decisive. “I should’ve been the one who died in that first room… not Rick… me…”
“Steph…”

She looked at me, her eyes filled with fear, but I could see determination in there too.
“Everyone else put their lives on the line. You, Thomas, Ansen, Jiro… even Enrique…”
She let out a slow exhale.
“I’m getting that key…”

She took another step toward the arcade cabinet. I watched her grip the joystick before hitting the button to start. She moved without thinking, throwing herself into it before she could regret it. I watched her, a low anxiety filling my chest, but I didn’t stop her.

She needed to do this. Honestly, I understood that.

The game started, and the others stayed a safe distance away from her. Steph kept her eyes on the screen, moving the character along the path, jumping over enemies (little black spiders) and onto ledges. The background of the game resembled the entrance hall of the castle. Her breathing was still heavy and nervous, but she kept her focus.

I watched her make a jump in the game only to get taken out by a spider dropping down from a string.

Rick's avatar froze, then jumped and fell off the screen.

Her breathing stopped for a moment.

Rick's avatar appeared on the screen.

x2

The game reset.
Steph’s attention didn’t leave the screen, even for a moment.

“Riveting stuff, folks…” Princess said sarcastically, as Steph began to play again. She moved slower this time, making note of where the enemies had been before. Every jump she made was deliberate. I could see beads of sweat on her forehead.

She timed a jump, only to get blindsided by one of the spider enemies. Rick's avatar froze again, before falling off the screen. She hadn’t even made it to the spider that had killed her last time. Steph’s breathing was getting heavier. She closed her eyes.

“Steph…” I said, but she shook her head.
“No… no… I can… I need to…”

Rick's avatar appeared on the screen.
x1
The game reset.
Steph began to play, teeth gritted as she kept her focus. Every move was deliberate. She timed every jump, carefully avoided every enemy. Her shaky breaths betrayed the deep panic beneath her focused surface though.

When she reached the spider on the string that had killed her the first time, she ducked down to avoid it. When the spider went back up, she kept moving. Her breathing changed a bit, growing a bit lighter, a bit more relieved.

She kept playing. Kept clearing the course.

She was doing it… she was really doing it.

She jumped up a stairway of blocks and reached the top before jumping across… only she didn’t make this jump.

The ledge she was trying to jump on was higher than the one she was on. Rick's avatar hit the side of it before falling straight down.

Steph stopped breathing, staring wide eyed at the screen as words flashed across the screen.

GAME OVER

She started to take a step back, but that was when the ground beneath her feet dropped, plummeting even lower than it had before.

I saw Steph panic and grab the arcade cabinet, holding onto it as the floor beneath her fell. Sharpened metal spikes poked through hidden holes in the floor and Steph dangled over them, legs kicking as she screamed.

“Steph!” Her name slipped out of my mouth as I stared down at the spike pit. The spikes didn’t look particularly long, but they were long enough to kill her if she fell on them. There was no edge for her to put her feet on. The arcade cabinet in front of her was perfectly flush with the edge of the pit, as were the cabinets beside her… and her grip didn’t look all that strong.

I got as close to the pit as I could, grabbing onto one of the other arcade cabinets for support as I reached out a hand to her.
“Take my hand… just take my hand…”
“I… I’ll fall…” She sobbed. “I… I’ll fall… I…”
“You are not going to fall, please… Steph…”
“I don’t wanna die… I don’t wanna die… I don’t wanna die…”

I reached out to her, and felt Thomas behind me, grabbing me from behind so I could lean in closer to her.
“Take my hand…” I said, “Please, just take my hand…”

Steph was hyperventilating. She kept her iron grip on the arcade cabinet, before closing her eyes and beginning to work herself up to letting go.
“I’m not going to let you fall,” I promised her. “Steph… Stephanie, please…”

She looked at me, and gripping the arcade cabinet for dear life with one hand, she reached for me.
Our fingers grew closer together… she was so close… I could feel her. Her hand was in mine.
“I’ve got you…” I said.

And then I saw the arcade cabinet begin to tilt against her added weight. Steph felt it beginning to fall, and her eyes went wide.
“No, no… MATT!”

Her final word cut off into a scream as the cabinet fell into the pit. Herhand slipped from mine and all I could do was watch in wide eyed horror as Steph plummeted down onto the spikes below.

The sound she made as they tore through her body… the wet, pained gasp… I knew that sound would haunt me for the rest of my life.

The arcade cabinet crashed down on top of her, crushing her down onto the spikes and the only mercy that it offered, was that it was impossible to see her face behind the cabinet. Only her legs and one outstretched hand were visible… limp and lifeless.

Steph was gone.

Thomas pulled me back away from the trap as I stared down at it in horror. From the corner of my eye, I saw Yuki covering her mouth to stifle a scream. Gordon had closed his eyes, refusing to look at the scene before him. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear Princess laughing.
“Well ladies and gentlemen, it seems our little steamer has suffered a truly crushing defeat!”

“I had her…” The words that left my mouth sounded so small, “I had her…”
I saw Ansen standing beside me, staring down at the arcade cabinet and Steph’s body with a stoic determination. There was horror in his eyes, but his rage seemed to overpower it. Enrique lurked nearby as well, looking down at Steph’s body with an indifference that made my blood boil. Her life had just been taken from her and he stared at her like a bug that had been squashed.

If he’d been brave enough to open his mouth around Ansen, I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t have personally killed him in that moment.
“Oh well… two rooms and two keys left… maybe our dwindling crew might catch a couple more breaks.” Princess said. The rest of us ignored her.

“Let’s just go…” Thomas said softly. He held my arms to lead me away, although Ansen stopped him.
“Hold on…” He said softly. “Look at the machine…”
Thomas and I both looked down at it. The machine was clearly broken. Part of its casing had broken. Steph’s blood had begun to pool beneath it.
“What about it?” Thomas asked.
“It’s broken.”
“And?”
“What if we can still get the key out?”

Thomas paused, looking at Ansen.
“What?”
“We only need two more… we couldn’t brute force the other puzzles we failed. But this one?”
He looked down at the cabinet again.
“You wanna go down there?” Gordon asked in disbelief. “Into the fucking spike pit?”
“I don’t want to go down there, but we need those keys!” Ansen said. “There’s only two puzzles left. If we want out of here, we need to nail both of them… how confident are you that we’re going to do that?”

Nobody answered.
“This key… we need it…”
Ansen looked back down into the pit. I saw his resolve falter for a moment before he steadied himself. He looked over at Thomas.
“Help me down,” He said.

I should have volunteered to go down in his place. Ansen was a heavyset man with a silver goatee and hair to match. He had no business crawling down there to do the heavy lifting. But I kept my mouth shut.

The idea of moving that machine… of seeing Steph’s body underneath there. I couldn’t stomach it.

I’d seen dead bodies before, but I knew I couldn’t handle this one.

I’d been so close to saving her… I’d had her hand… I’d…

I’d…

Thomas hesitated, before closing his eyes and sighing.
“We’ll give it a shot…” He said.

Ansen inched closer to the edge of the pit. He looked down at the spikes, studying them and forcing himself to do what needed to be done before beginning to slowly and methodically climb down. I watched him just long enough to make sure he got down safely. When he did, I watched him shimmy awkwardly along the sides of the pit.
“Ooh, getting creative, are we?” Princess asked, “I love it! Let’s see where this goes!”

Ansen reached the arcade cabinet, and positioned himself between a few of the spikes. I saw him pulling at the broken casing, trying to rip it open with brute strength alone. It budged, but didn’t break. After a moment, I saw Thomas move to go down with him. Gordon helped him down into the pit, while I took a step back.

Steph’s final screams still echoed in my mind.

Yuki stood beside me, putting a comforting hand on my arm. Her eyes were filled with a hollow sadness, and I let her pull me into a hug. Enrique glared at us with a mocking contempt, but the bastard was still wise enough to keep his mouth shut.I could hear Ansen and Thomas talking from inside the pit, while Gordon watched over them.

“Just pry it…”
“I am prying it!”
“Watch where you’re putting your feet, kid.”
“I got it…”
“Let’s pull, okay… pull…”

I heard the sound of the casing snapping, and a wooden sliding noise.

A door opened in the wall behind Enrique.

A door that hadn’t been there a few minutes prior.

My blood turned to ice in my veins as I saw a man step through it. A tall man with a cartoon bull mask, holding a crossbow. Enrique didn’t see him… but his eyes still widened all the same, as if he saw something behind me, although the likely meaning of that look didn’t register with me at the time. On instinct, I raised my crossbow toward Bull as he loomed behind Enrique, screaming his name as I did.
“ENRIQUE, DOWN!”

The next few seconds played out in slow motion, like something out of a nightmare.

Before I could fire the crossbow, there was a popping noise, like a balloon bursting. A bloody tip of a metal spear suddenly appeared in Gordon’s chest. His eyes went wide, but the only sound he made was a pained exhale. Suddenly his body was jerked backward, pulled along by a rope at the end of the spear. He was dragged along the ground, toward the door of the room we were in where Cowboy waited patiently for him, speargun in hand.

I could see a knowing twinkle in his eyes behind his mask as he looked at us, before grabbing Gordon by the hair, turning and dragging him out of the room. The movement was casual, almost nonchalant. It didn’t feel like he’d just ended a mans life, it felt like he’d just walked into a room to grab something.

My brain was firing at a thousand miles a minute. The moment I saw Cowboy reel Gordon in, my attention focused on him. I forgot about Bull, aiming my crossbow at Cowboy to put my one remaining bolt in his head. The only thing that stopped me from pulling the trigger was Yuki.
“Matt!”

I felt her pulling me to the ground with as much strength as she could muster, and heard the familiar sound of a crossbow being fired, only it wasn’t my crossbow. No. My crossbow slipped from my hands, landing a few feet away from me.

Looking behind me, I saw a door identical to the one that Bull had come through on Enrique’s side of the room had opened up behind me, and a man in a cartoon bear mask was drawing closer to me with every step. His all too human eyes betrayed the smile he wore underneath his mask.

This was a coordinated attack. They’d been watching us this whole time… waiting for a golden opportunity like this to catch us off guard… and now they had it.

Seeing the crossbow in my hand, Bear tossed his own spent crossbow aside and lunged for us, pulling a knife from his belt. I scrambled between him and Yuki, charging at him and slamming my weight into his midsection, tackling him to the ground.

On the far side of the room, I could see Enrique pulling down one of the arcade machines to put it between him and Bull as they advanced on him. Bull took a shot at Enrique, only just barely missing him, and Enrique stumbled back, the knife he’d taken off of Duck clutched in his hands as if it would save him.

Bear let out a roar that probably could’ve come from a real, actual bear and threw me off of him, punishing me with a meaty fist slammed into my face. I felt my nose break as the punch connected. My head slammed into the wooden floor. Bear pulled out a knife, before noticing Yuki grabbing his crossbow off the floor. I couldn’t see inside that mans head.. but judging by the look in his eye, I think he had a brief flashback to the moment that Ansen had shot him in the entrance hall.

As Yuki aimed the crossbow at him, Bear drew his knife arm back, ready to throw it. I didn’t know if he was good enough at throwing knives to kill her with it… but I wasn’t about to find out. Thinking fast, I pounded my fist against the spot where Ansen had shot him earlier. Bear let out a pained grunt. His arm shot forward, throwing the knife, although it was a sloppy throw that landed on the other side of the spike pit. I hit Bear’s wound again, before kneeing his groin and squirming out from under him. Snarling like an animal, Bear cracked me across the head with the back of his hand, making me see stars.

Yuki tried to steady the crossbow. Her hands were shaking, but she tried. Bear looked at her, then back at me before grunting in pain and trying to make a beeline for her.

She fired.

She missed.

The crossbow bolt embedded itself in the floor behind Bear as he seized Yuki by the throat.
“Stupid girl…” He rasped. His voice was deep and gravelly.

The crossbow bolt sat just a few inches away from me. I grabbed it and forced myself to my feet as Bear dragged Yuki over to the spike pit. With a cry of exertion, I jammed the bolt into the side of his mask.

Bear let out another pained cry. Yuki pulled herself out of his grasp, and together we gave Bear one final push. He stumbled toward the spike pit, before dropping over the edge and onto the spikes below.

“Jesus!” I heard Ansen cry.

On the other side of the room, Bull looked over at us. Enrique, who up until that point, seemed to have just barely been avoiding him, took full advantage of his distraction, lunging for Bull with his knife. Bull took a step back, narrowly avoiding the wild slash meant for his throat. He glared at Enrique as he slashed again, catching his arm and pulling him violently to the ground. He rolled against the wooden floor and the book he’d taken from his puzzle room spilled out of his pocket. The knife slipped out of his hand and before Enrique could grab it again, Bull kicked it into the spike pit.

He looked over at us again, silently questioning if Yuki and I were going to make a move.

We were.

I was already rounding the spike pit. Bears dropped knife lay on the ground nearby and I snatched it up, before charging at Bull like a madman.

He pulled his own knife and stepped back to avoid me as I lunged for him. When I came for him again, he sent me to the ground with a firm kick to the ribs, turning his back to Enrique to focus on me.

Behind Bull, I saw something come flying out of the pit and land a few feet away from Enrique. Duck’s knife. Thomas or Ansen must’ve thrown it to him. Enrique’s eyes settled on it, before he grabbed it.

I rose to my feet again, making sure Bull’s eyes stayed on me as Enrique threw himself at him, driving the knife into his back. Bull let out a cry of pain, tearing out of Enrique’s grasp. I saw rage in the eyes behind the mask. Our resident conspiracy theorist couldn’t stop Bull from beating him back down into the ground again. But to beat down Enrique, Bull needed to turn his back on me.

I drove my knife into his arm and twisted it, trying to wrestle the knife from his hand. Bull slammed his head against mine, hard enough to make my ears ring. But I still ripped the knife from his grasp.

Grunting in pain, I saw Bull starting to retreat. Eyes fixated on us, he backed through the door he’d come in through before it quietly closed behind him. The door on the other side did the same.

Enrique lay on the ground a few feet away from me, panting but alive. His glasses had been knocked askew and he took a moment to fix them. Yuki went to help him up, while I dragged over one of the arcade cabinets to block off the door Bull had gone through.

“The hell is going on up there?” Ansen called. “Are they still there?”
“Bull retreated. Cowboy took Gordon.” I called back, storming back across the room to block off the other door with the arcade cabinets. It wasn’t much of a blockade, but it was better than nothing.

Enrique was standing again and approached the pit.
“Did you get the key?” He asked.
“We got it,” Thomas replied.
“Hand it up here!”

I saw Thomas reaching up toward Enrique’s waiting hand. Steph’s… or rather, Rick’s… completed key gripped tight between his fingers. Enrique took the key, and gave a quiet, but resolute nod.
“That brings us to five… so this wasn’t a total waste then,” He said.
“Let’s get the last key and get the hell out of here,” Ansen said. “Let’s finish this fucking shitshow already…” His tone seemed bitterly exhausted.

I noticed a book on the floor and picked it up.

The Journal of Camille Arquette.

Enrique had taken this from his room. The book seemed to have come open during the skirmish and one page in particular was folded down. I didn’t really mean to look at it… but it was hard to ignore the bold letters printed over the text on the page.

‘YOUR KEY LIES WITH THE LIAR. HE ONLY WINS IF YOU’RE ALL DEAD.’

I stared down at the text on the page, before looking back up at Enrique. He was standing by the pit, staring down into it.
“Help me up,” Thomas said, reaching up for him.

Enrique just continued to stare.
“Convenient…” He said.
“What?”
“It’s convenient. You being down there when the Hunters showed up…” Enrique said.
“Oh don’t fucking start with him again,” Ansen huffed. “Help the goddamn man out, so you two can get me out!”
“Enrique…” Thomas said.

I set the book aside and approached the pit.
“I got you,” I said, but Enrique was already getting down, offering Thomas a hand.
“Here…”
His voice was placid… unusually so. Thomas took his hand, and Enrique started to pull him out of the pit.

“Thanks,” He panted, starting to pull himself out once Enrique had lifted him up far enough, although Enrique didn’t reply. He just stared down at Thomas… before in one swift motion, taking his knife and cutting his throat.

Thomas’s eyes went wide. A wet gasp escaped him.

Enrique just looked coldly into his eyes. He didn’t say a word. He just let Thomas fall.

Yuki just stood frozen, as if she couldn’t fully comprehend what had just happened. But me?

I saw red.
I lunged for Enrique, grabbing him and dragging him away from the pit.
“What did you do? WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?”
“He was going to fucking betray us!” Enrique snarled. “You had to know that! You knew what he was! He wore it on his fucking sleeve! And all these little conveniences… YOU HAD T-”

I grabbed him by the throat, squeezing it tight before he could get another word out. Enrique tried to bring his knife up to stab me but I caught him by the wrist.
“Not another word out of you…”

I’d never heard such hatred for another human being in my own voice. My hand around his throat squeezed tighter… tighter… tighter… Enrique’s eyes bulged in his head as he struggled to breathe. His legs kicked frantically beneath me. His panicked eyes locked with mine before he hastily slammed his skull against my head.

The impact made me loosen my grip, just long enough for him to slash at my throat. I put up an arm to protect myself and felt his knife bite into my flesh.
“You all rushed to his fucking defense… you all lauded him as some… some gentle shepherd when he was leading us all to the slaughter!”
Enrique lunged for me again, raking his knife against my face before tackling me to the ground.

"YOU DON’T GET IT! That woman TOLD US the MOMENT we got here: Be careful who you trust! But you trusted him. He knew just enough about our situation, just enough to help you win and you never once questioned his intentions? Questioned his goals?”

He tried to push his knife down toward my face. I grabbed his wrists, forcing him back, although he kept me pinned under him.
“Even when that woman on the speakers helped him solve his own impossible trap? Even after every sign he gave? Even after THIS? Hiding in that little pit so the Hunters wouldn’t kill him… no… no more of it, no more…”

I saw true madness in Enrique’s eyes.
“Every step of the way you stood up for him… you defended him… I used to think there was only one snake in our midst but now I’m not so sure!”

“STOP!”
Yuki grabbed Enrique from behind, trying to pull him off of me, “STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!” Tears streamed down her cheeks. The poor girl looked as if she was on the verge of complete madness herself. She dragged Enrique off of me, before he slapped her aside, scrambling to his feet again.

“NO! NO I’M ENDING THIS FUCKING GAME! THEY AREN’T TO BE TRUSTED! THEY DON’T WIN UNLESS WE DIE! DO YOU GET IT? IT’S THEM OR US! THEM OR U-”

Enrique’s final words died in his throat as Ansen fired his crossbow bolt.

It came in at an angle, out of the pit and through his cheek. The top of the bolt jutted out of the top of his skull. Enrique fell, collapsing onto his side. The knife fell from his hands and clattered, forgotten on the ground as he rolled onto his back, bulging eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling.

Finally, there was silence.

“Told that fucker I’d kill him…” Ansen growled from the pit, “Just needed to line up the shot.”

He tossed his useless crossbow aside. There was a deep exhaustion on his face that was impossible to mask, even with his dry tone. He looked up at Yuki and I, and I saw him closing his eyes and taking a moment to compose himself. After a while, he finally shook his head, forcing himself to get back to business.
“Help me out of this fucking pit…” He said.

Yuki and I obliged.

submitted by HeadOfSpectre to TheCrypticCompendium [link] [comments]

2023.10.22 11:28 HeadOfSpectre Castello di Sangue - Part 7: Out Of Lives

submitted by HeadOfSpectre to HeadOfSpectre [link] [comments]

2023.10.11 02:35 bababooeyforever Skalga is not yet lost - Prologue - Chapter 1

[Next]
Author’s Note:
I’ve never written before, but it’s never too late to start.
This novel will try its best to be EU-compliant.
If it sucks, sucks to suck for me, I’ll keep trying.
This article inspired me: https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2019-05-10/extinct-bird-re-evolved-itself-back-into-existence-on-island-in-seychelles. I am taking this a challenge to write a chapter and draw an illustration of said chapter, and keep going that path in order to improve writing AND drawing!
TL:DR: I am trying to justify a story with multiple branches, one being a Venlil’s struggle with his Skalgan genes manifesting through a recessive allele, and his future.
Thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for writing Nature of Predators and allowing fanfiction of his work to exist!
Some references to Foundations of Humanity by u/cruisingNW!
Some (minor) references to Recipe For Disaster by u/YakiTapioca!
BIG THANKS to everybody who proofread and critiqued my first chapter!
______________________________________________________________________
—
To our offspring, to whoever it may be,
Don’t cry, just breathe; we were here waiting.
You won’t be forgetting, as time set you free,
Devils stole thee; rapture left wanting.
Skalga all-enduring, Skalga you will be.
[An epitaph on an etched stone, found buried [SHT 3/12/2137], written by strangers lost to time.]
—
Memory transcription subject: Teeta, Venlil Adult, University T.A., headed east and sunwards.
Date recorded [standardized human time]: April 13, 2136 (3 months before first contact)
[Entering wakeful state, record of transcription beginning…]
Blink.
A few ribbons flew in my vision, carrying cooled air.
Sunlight - it’s bright!
Blink-blink-blink.
-thump-
Something hitting the window startled me for a moment before the pain in my tail alerted me to its cause. My fear response nonetheless still arrived, reminding me of where I was and what I was doing.
“Ah, speh. Did I miss my stop?” I mouthed silently.
I glanced at my pad, still within my right paw, and started scrolling through the notifications that had built up during the paw. I could only stay awake so long when it’s been nothing but riding The Ring for several claws, let alone this rumbling caravan of transportation rocking me to sleep. After getting through the riff-raff of content, the last few notifications stood out even in my drowsiness.
The first notification was an update about my paid time off - more of the same, left on read, as it’s of no concern to my weary and impatient mind.
Messages from various colleagues - So enheartening to see! I would have loved to read these, but I needed to exhale my dreariness away. I just couldn’t think clearly just yet…
I just took another breath. As I attempted to clear my mental fog, I went on to the next.
Next was a panel of the next two paws of weather conditions and the temperature of the general area, which said it was warmer than most people were comfortable with; as if it wasn’t an understatement. A squint towards the sun’s horizon only told you grass couldn’t grow, let alone be greener, on the other side if you went far enough.
I clicked the pad once more for the displayed time. Oh good, it wasn't too late; only a few nicks [minutes] away.
I parted my head’s wool-fluff as I was reminded of checking the last and most persistent notification, chiming to let me know it was almost time. The digital ticket on my pad marked the stop I'd waited to arrive.
Muller’s Bay, the most recent place he’d moved to.
As the fog of dreamful amnesia faded, I adjusted myself to my seat. I organized my thoughts again while my tail swayed in thought.
It’d been a while since I visited my baby brother, huh…
I just hoped his general studies went well so far, as it shouldn’t matter what he looked like! My tail jabbed the air in assertiveness, only to slump down.
Even if he lost his fur…
I pulled my bag up to mindfully check it for additional articles of clothes yet again and inhaled a stilling breath, an old habit. As much as my brother incessantly protested last time, my brother had previously needed these. My tail only waved the memory of his protests away in disagreement.
It wasn't like he would have regrown hair as long as he was on the combination of meds they had him on around over the past [roughly two standard human years]. Stars-crossed that it wasn’t just the latest in a long line of things that didn’t work. It was a mystery why the current treatment for his type of taint led to him losing his fur.
I clung to my tail closer at the thought of losing my fur. It would probably have made me bawl, at least a little.
An errant thought then emerged, having brought nothing but frowns.
Even then, he could stand to be more social as of late. He hasn’t been sending me messages since the end of last quarter.
“Sometimes I wonder if he just likes the feeling of moving or being alone,” I muttered as I opened the map application on my pad to push away the worries of him not texting back.
I scrolled the map around the area and saw a stream earlier along the transport’s route. Muller’s Bay funneled into this stream flowing westward, extending what little of the Green is left around here towards the sun’s direction.
Not a moment too soon, the transport let out a soft ring, stirring the few that remained, and the driver, an aged yet nonetheless dignified gentleman, clicked out a pad and spoke his piece.
“Heya, folks! This is the driver speaking. The next stop, Muller’s Bay, is coming up. This is the furthest connecting stop sunwards along this route. So, for those getting off, I hope you’re prepared to bear the -very sunny- weather outside since the next one after me isn’t for another claw if you plan on going either direction from here.”
With another glance outside the windows, it opened into a small semi-arid estuary being sand-swept by the hot winds from the Burning; the whitish grains of sand invoked sprinklings of ground Ipsom. Waves of water took up the more immediate view, alongside large, yet meager, patches of grass and shrubbery, with more land visible in the short distance.
Unknown to me, the driver seems to have noticed something up ahead and decided to announce, showing caution:
“There seems to be some kind of commotion going on by the water, so keep to the herds you’re familiar with and let them deal with the issue.”
I sighed, hoping it was nothing of notice, but I feared that it might just not be.
Clicking off the pad, I checked my belongings to secure them and rose to my feet alongside a couple out of the dozen still left on the transport. Inertia washed through me as the carrier began to decelerate, bringing the stop into view.
I tried to steady my gaze by putting my paw on the window, but it was already warming up rather quickly from the sun’s constant heating, so I couldn’t leave it there for long.
The stop for the transport was apparent, but alongside it was a more rickety sign further ahead, currently impossible to read due to the excessive clutter on it.
The last of the inertia drained out of my feet as I began to make my way towards the front of the transport, last in line to get off. The doors opened with a quiet ding, and I just raised my tail in acknowledgement of the driver, and he returned it with pride.
“Safe travels, everyone,” the driver said, and we all said our piece as we got off and the pair just split, heading different paths, leaving me alone under the stop’s canopy to deal with my tingly pawpads.
I just tail-waved the transport off as I waited it out.
Now feeling wobbly on solid ground, I walked with dwindling difficulty after a long-due stretch. My body’s begging for it after riding something that rumbly.
As I regained my footing, I saw the rickety sign up ahead, seeming covered in a smaller hanging sign in very loud lettering.
-QUARANTINED-
I lifted the smaller sign of the two for a peek at the more prominent board sign; it was somewhat legible, albeit a bit bleached by the sun. The more I looked at it, the less it felt official.
- UNINCORPORATED AREA OF MULLER’S BAY: POPULATION ~2XX -
The sun had worn out the last two digits so severely that it made them not worth looking into for longer than a glance. Should I even try? I let go with a new pace, the white sign clunking back into place.
“What a place,” I said, clearly disappointed at the general state of things.
The wind spat sand into my hair as the path I walked split off into several avenues. They all winded towards a different cluster of buildings, only one which seemed built for the area proper.
One went over the smaller stream of the two that surrounded the only island enclosing the bay, and the second went back where I arrived from, going past two pawfuls of residences before the path continued to the vast nothingness. The last… was filled with exterminators and their small fleet of locomotives.
A sinking pit feeling in my chest only served to make me choose. I had to check it out, knowing my brother.
I walked past some of the exterminators’ equipment as the bulk of Muller’s Bay cast their solar shadows, giving the effect of particles flying through the few rays of the sun hitting the ground between the buildings.
Another gust of wind battered the buildings once more with sand, bringing my attention to the cluster of poorly constructed buildings with tarnished exteriors strewed about.
A figure waved to me, and my ears swiveled into focus as I dusted myself off.
“I knew this area was windy, but there usually aren’t winds intense enough to blast sand in our faces…” An unusually calm exterminator exclaimed to a colleague, then began to come towards me. It seemed to be… a yellow-green female Harchen with arrowlike markings around the eyes? Oh!
“Cinamy!” I uttered out in recognition, and Cinamy's look turned jubilant.
“Hey Teeta! I was totally expecting you, but it seems as if the stars themselves were conspiring to keep you guys from meeting,” Cinamy exclaimed with an increasingly melancholy tone before continuing.
“I was looking forward to it after all,” Cinamy added with a mischievous smirk, giving off less-than-pure intentions. I touched my ears in nervous acceptance as impatience crept into my tail.
“Huh-uh… Where is he now?” I asked, hopefully illustrating the point that I didn’t want to linger around Muller’s Bay too long if this was happening.
Cinamy just coughed a bit, clearing her throat, becoming unsure what to say.
“He’s okay. It’s just that Galeto’s already taken your brother in for questioning. Jeerim still has the footage to show you if you want.”
Brahking speh! At least it’s Galeto; he’ll understand. “My brother did something, didn’t he?” I said, staring into Harchen.
“Y-y-yes, but it was thankfully clear it was self-defense. H-he did a number on several guys, though, but they did try to invade his mobile residency.” Cinamy clarified somewhat timidly, her hands clearing up a misunderstanding.
I again wondered why my brother had become a beacon for trouble since the incident. It was a small blessing that he hadn’t reoffended since then, even though the circumstances that landed them in this current setup and predicament weren’t predatory either, just irresponsible.
Cinamy motioned me to follow, and I began walking with her, walking past a few exterminators currently dealing with some detained locals, some who looked like they were just in need of good hygiene with how much sand was in their fluff from standing out in the open all day due to questioning. My ears couldn’t help but pick up conversations as we glanced by.
“Did you drink anything within the last paw?” An exterminator began with a question.
“I drank from the bar over there, but I never finished my drink because of the commotion outside. By the time I came back, it was gone,” a Venlil resident with black fur upon his chest but gray everywhere else made his statement, clearly showing buyer’s remorse for having his drink disappear on him.
“That’s because someone with more beer than money kept stealing sips from it while you were gone. Take it up with them,” a second Venlil, clearly older, with more fairly-colored fur and fluff all around, albeit with a bit more of a sun-worn complexion, decided to speak up.
“Ah, I can make a few guesses who…” the exterminator retorted.
I walked past a drunken, giggling mess of a Venlil tourist alongside a few dozen bystanders waiting for questioning. As we went from one group to another, I had to shield my eyes a few times from the sun and its rays going through the gaps between the buildings. I saw some exterminators having to be more forceful with their detainment of a second group of people up ahead—a closer glance as we walked by revealed why.
Some folks couldn’t stop shivering with clenched teeth as if someone had taken all the heat out of their body despite the sun beating down on them. They were too uncomfortable to idle in the sun, and some of them tried to roll around in the sand to feel anything but the cold, only to be forcefully picked up and steadied. I felt pity for them. They needed detoxifying help…
They seemed more likely to be interrogated based on the exterminators’ far less than pedestrian response. But for what? I had no clue. After walking through those groups with Cinamy, I saw more people who weren’t detained but held up in their buildings. Most of the people happened to be in the local convenience store, probably herded there to prevent overheating and stampeding, while the exterminators questioned people.
As we walked toward the actual bay, Cinamy cupped her right hand to her mouth.
“Jeerim! Where are you?~” Cinamy called out in a sing-song tone.
“Here! Ugh,” A voice responded, albeit with far more discontent, and we looked to the left.
A mobile transport that resembled a single-room apartment was attached to a rudimentary form of locomotion propelled and controlled using paws. It looked like a struggle by the front door, and a broken window only solidified that.
My brother’s “house” sat behind the vegetation line of the bay, sitting under the shadow of a sunsail leaf, large enough for a trio or quartet of Venlil to stand head-to-shoulder even to compare. It was only accompanied and conjoined by a single other leaf facing the other way, forming a natural canopy.
The current windy weather exposed some large roots, which were numerous in numbers, but another wind covered another part of the roots. Sunsails always looked so calming, although they lurk among some of the harsher hot climates of the Green. As I looked further out, the line gave way to a large white strip of sand with waves lapping on the shore, and a scanning glance showed more sunsails dotting the ocean’s edge.
“Over here! I need your help; this guy’s giving me massive tainted vibes with how much of a [censored] he is! I’ll need someone to get this sand off me. It was bad enough escorting a boulder with legs on a normal day around here.” A Krakotl exterminator of cobalt plumage and stone-gray beak exclaimed, dusting off his work uniform in exasperation.
That must've been Jeerim. He was a real piece of work, constantly toeing the line between work-induced burnout and a restless yearning for more work during his days off when we first met.
Cinamy gasped, covering her mouth in levity.
“Oh, come on, this guy deserved being called that after what he did!” Jeerim motioned with both open hands into the air.
“Jeerim, language! Not in front of our guest!” Cinamy said with some scolding.
Jeerim quickly clarified upon seeing me, almost flapping his wings before pointing.
“I mean this guy! You understand I said the latter as a joke, right?” Jeerim said, clearly teetering between giving up and being overly cautious, pointing at the male Venlil with a patched forehead. Orange stains were soaking through a rag Jeerim was holding. The wounded party was scowling, but his tail told a story of regret over misplaced confidence.
The last group of people, all of whom could be counted on both of my paws, were cuffed and packed into transport seats of a jailing unit next to Jeerim. Aside from the aforementioned guy, the rest of the group all looked far more dejected, as they appeared to more closely resemble children who got a good whack on their noggin for being too selfish in their indulgence and eating sweets meant for someone else, more than the hardened and anti-social group of belligerents they were, and the youngest of them looked my age, never mind my brother!
Nonetheless, I gave Jeerim a playful attempt of an upset tail-wag, which only made him poise himself to try and re-establish a sense of calmness.
“Jeerim, just start over from the top. Breathe, we’re just here to get her filled in.” Cinamy said, motioning to me.
“Okay! At least we got everything down, including the bodycam footage,” Jeerim said after taking another breath, invoking a reaction from the leader of the arrested party.
We all noticed the reaction. Jeerim, in a rare mood of pure spite, was eager to make a verbal example out of him.
“You know… the pads we were wearing around the established perimeter? “Jeerim began rather innocuously as if trying to remind them all of something using his pointer wing-finger.
“The pads that recorded the footage where you attempted to persuade, and later confront, four exterminators, including Cinamy and me, to leave the area for reasons you couldn’t disclose? “Jeerim paused for his response, and the leader could only stew in silence.
“You DID say it was “important business” somehow,” Jeerim continued, scoffing at his wording.
“Cinamy and I then explained that exterminators can’t abandon their posts without due reason, and we refused to back down on that point. Besides, we could have called in more, which you didn’t want for whatever reasons.” Jeerim rolled his wing-hand, dismissing the leader’s non-sequitur conduct.
“We already had our hands full with a resident currently NOT of age to be a legal adult.”
Oh stars, the eyes of the group looked like they were about to fly out of their heads!
Jeerim inhaled as if the following words out of his mouth couldn’t be more evident.
“The very resident you asked to leave. When he also refused to leave the area, you threatened violence and attempted to act on it with your gaggle of fools.”
Jeerim just let the words hang in the air, giving Cinamy time to nudge me on the shoulder.
“Keyword: attempted. The poor souls…” Cinamy said to me with another cupped hand, clearly being cheeky.
I could only have given so much sarcastic sympathy as my tail stiffened with animosity.
“And we all have proof, ladies and gentlemen,” Jeerim reaffirmed with his right hand going to his chest, more for himself than us.
Jeerim’s smugness only shined brighter as he finished his firsthand account of what happened. I almost forgot he had a smug streak underneath it all. He almost got a round of applause from me with how he used it in this case. Almost.
“Even if he’s tainted with predator disease,” Jeerim elaborated as I rolled my eyes.
“It is still not on legal grounds to pester, let alone antagonize, a resident nor his escorts, temporary or permanent, to leave because an unauthorized “shipment” was about to arrive at the location directly in his view of the ocean. Do I make myself clear?” Jeerim said in finality.
Grumbles erupted from the group before Jeerim closed the door on them.
“Should have thought about it more carefully, fellas. What can I say?” Jeerim shrugged.
The cobalt krakotl then looked over his shoulder, and he turned to look at something.
“Oh, some exterminators already got to the shipment, darn…” Jeerim was now the one slightly dejected.
His reaction only brought me to look, and it seemed more fully suited exterminators and a couple of cuffed stragglers were by the waves of the bay. They were checking down a dingy-looking type of sea vessel packed with unknown cargo boxes. They seemed to have finished as they moved away to burn it from a safe distance. The resulting inferno bellowed with pitch-black smoke.
“Illegal substances, [unintelligible code number], over.” the radios on both Jeerim and Cinamy chirped out
“I guess that’s enough reason for a deeper audit, then!” Cinamy spoke up.
The spirit of stubbornness finally left the belligerents, as the two of the few began to shiver while the leader settled down his tail to a state of pure regret.
“Well… would you like to see what happened under the sun’s unwavering gaze, Teeta?” Jeerim asked, his dramatic slant becoming overbearing. At the very least, he’d grown more comfortable since we first met, and he was trying to find a way to defuse his anxious energy—a silver lining, in my opinion, despite currently being annoyed.
“I want to know what happened to my brother,” I exclaimed, my tail pointing out the obvious.
“Of course you do,” Jeerim deflated in disappointment, having the wind knocked out of his metaphorical sail.
—

submitted by bababooeyforever to NatureofPredators [link] [comments]

2023.07.14 05:20 extra_jes Just an advice for myself

submitted by extra_jes to u/extra_jes [link] [comments]

2023.07.14 05:14 js_tan 50 Points Of Advice From An 80-Year-Old Man

Have a firm handshake
1. Look people in the eye
2. Sing in the shower
3. Own a great stereo system
4. If in a fight, hit first and hit hard
5. Keep secrets
6. Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day. (See no.17)
7. Always accept an outstretched hand
8. Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
9. Whistle
10. Avoid sarcastic remarks
11. Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 per cent of all your happiness or misery.
12. Make it a habit to do nice things for people who will never find out
13. Lend only those books you never care to see again
14. Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all that they have
15. When playing games with children, let them win
16. Give people a second chance, but not a third
17. Be romantic
18. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know
19. Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life-and-death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems.
20. Don’t allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It’s there for our convenience, not the caller’s.
21. Be a good loser
22. Be a good winner
23. Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret
24. When someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go
25. Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.
26. Keep it simple
27. Beware of the person who has nothing to lose
28. Don’t burn bridges. You’ll be surprised how many times you have to cross the same river.
29. Live your life so that your epitaph could read, “No Regrets”
30. Be bold and courageous. When you look back on life, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the ones you did.
31. Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them
32. Remember no one makes it alone. Have a grateful heart and be quick to acknowledge those who helped you.
33. Take charge of your attitude. Don’t let someone else choose it for you.
34. Visit friends and relatives when they are in hospital; you need only stay a few minutes
35. Begin each day with some of your favorite music
36. Once in a while, take the scenic route
37. Send a lot of Valentine cards. Sign them, ‘Someone who thinks you’re terrific.’
38. Answer the phone with enthusiasm and energy in your voice.
39. Keep a note pad and pencil on your bed-side table. Million-dollar ideas sometimes strike at 3 a.m.
40. Show respect for everyone who works for a living, regardless of how trivial their job
41. Send your loved ones flowers. Think of a reason later.
42. Make someone’s day by paying the toll for the person in the car behind you
43. Become someone’s hero
44. Marry only for love.
45. Count your blessings.
46. Compliment the meal when you’re a guest in someone’s home.
47. Wave at the children on a school bus.
48. Remember that 80 percent of the success in any job is based on your ability to deal with people.
49. Don’t expect life to be fair.

submitted by js_tan to u/js_tan [link] [comments]

2023.03.29 06:07 IPutMyHandInABlender A Funny Little Thing

They say life flashes before your eyes, but in reality, every second seems to last forever. It wasn’t like I was afraid to die; I knew I would have, given enough time, of course. Matter of fact, it was inevitable spending so much time in war, but it still left a sour taste in my mouth. Sure, there was pain, but regret stings far worse than a missing leg or tooth. Probably because of the adrenaline, but who cares about explanations anyway? And so, I sat there in that muddy ditch, the song of war screeching overhead as more and more of my brethren marched toward death, pondering my regrets and joys.
I thought about my wife. I thought about my kid. He was a little shit, but the kind you could only love, and my wife was a handful, but not too much of a handful. I wish I could scold that boy, and have pointless arguments with my wife, but that joy was stolen from me by war.
War always seemed like a distant thing, unrelated to my happy little farm life on a pretty little world. We grew grains and raised livestock, exported it to the military to feed troops, and kept the profits to ourselves. Despite the smaller size of the planet, it was certainly fruitful, a cornerstone to the military and to national stability. So, of course the Humans attacked it, it was the best option after all. I cannot hate them for attacking my homeworld, only for taking my joys with it. Hell, it was why I joined the military all those years ago anyway, to find a new purpose and maybe get revenge while I'm at it. I was never the kind to hold onto something and dread over it forever, it seemed like a waste of time to me, so instead I ambitiously climbed the ranks for decades, reaching Admiral and commanding a fleet of warships. It was my pride and joy, but that joy yet again was taken from me.
We got ambushed while heading to an allied system to provide orbital support, but just after arriving, a group of human stealth frigates pounced on us from the ring of asteroids that orbited the planet. In my hastiness to reinforce the front lines, I neglected to anticipate an ambush, and my fleet and I were punished for it. Our badly damaged ships were forced to begin an atmospheric descent into the planet to avoid enemy bombardment, and much of the ships made it into the atmosphere in good enough condition to support the ground troops. However, our battleship was targeted by the human frigates, and one managed to nail a gravitational slug through all of our upward thrusters. Our slow-and-steady descent quickly turned into a crash landing, and upon impact, much of the crew was lost.
Those that survived made use of the hangar bay to take several light corvettes out to engage in combat, me included. Unfortunately, corvettes do not take much of a beating, and I experienced my second crash landing in one day. And that is how this foolish fleet admiral ended up in ground warfare. Staring at the swirling clouds of smoke and hearing the booms of gunfire made me realize the irony of an admiral dying on a planet. This was not my job, and it was certainly obvious I was not cut out for it, having lost a leg mere minutes into ground combat.
What a funny way to die, I thought to myself. All these eventful years just for an ending like this. The universe has a sense of humor, and it's to other's dismay. Just when I thought things could not get worse, though, I saw a young human combatant clamber over the lip of the ditch I rested in and land next to me for cover. I looked at him, and he turned his head towards me awkwardly, making eye contact, and then looking at my missing leg. In any normal circumstance, I would have immediately shot him, but I was at death’s door with no strength and no cares, so instead, I laughed. That chuckle devolved into uncontrollable laughter until I once again settled down. Looking back at the human, he was still staring at me, rifle at my head, prompting once again laughter until I started coughing up blood.
The soldier looked at me with a surreal expression on his face. I could not tell whether it was amusement, pity, or simple shock, but either way, he lowered his rifle. His gaze continued to loom upon me, until finally he opened his mouth and spoke in my language, “What's so funny?” I was surprised by how well he spoke, but I didn’t have the wits to care anymore.
“Everything is funny right now, I mean, how could it not be?” I mumbled, stifling laughter and coughs between each word.
The human looked at me with still eyes, and then eventually away. He smiled briefly before matching my gaze once more, “Life is a funny thing, isn’t it?” Conversing with a human at the end of my life was not what I expected, but right now anyone would do to talk with.
“Has to be,” I elaborated, “I’m an admiral, and here I am dying on a battlefield.”
For a moment he was quiet, but eventually the human snickered lightly at the idea as well. “I’ll be dead by tomorrow at this rate, too. Have to find the little things to enjoy, I guess.”
I had never talked with a human besides on open-comms once or twice before, but this conversation was oddly calming. It was like a mellow fever dream, incomprehensible and irrational, but the boy seemed familiar somehow. I decided I should try and assure the soldier a little bit before I passed on, and maybe him too. Even if my words fell short, I wanted to say something, “Death..." My voice wheezed as I spoke, "Death isn’t anything to fear. It's as much a part of life as the day you were born.”
He thought about the prospect momentarily, “I suppose so, but I am not eager to experience it.”
“It’s not like I wanted my leg to be blown off by artillery and bleed to death either, but here I am, with a missing leg anyway.” From there, a somber and sincere mood silenced the chaos erupting about the battlefield. I tried desperately to remember who the boy reminded me of, but to no avail. I figured I would know at some point, but right now it didn’t really matter who it was, only the peace I felt did. The silence was killing me, so I decided to elaborate a little more on what I said, "What I am trying to say, soldier, is that you will not know death is coming. It will knock, and you will answer. Maybe in fear, regret, or even malice, but you should not answer in any of those ways." The soldier looked at me with a sincere expression and chortled quietly.
The young man started, “Y'know, Admiral, if you don’t mind me calling you that, but, you remind me of someone. I cannot quite place a name on them, and it feels sort of nostalgic, but I am sure I have met you.” He rubbed his head in what I assumed was a quizzical manner, and his eyes showed a deep sense of indecisiveness. I reciprocated his words quietly.
“I feel that too, soldier.” The blood loss from my lost leg was finally making me sleepy, and I knew it meant death. I muttered quietly. “I’m about to take a nap, kid, but I have an order for you. It's a little weird taking one from an enemy officer, and one you just met at that, but humor me, will you?”
He paused for a second before responding in affirmation, “What would that be?”
“Don’t take life too serious. You have too little of it to care about everything, so make time for just the good things.” I continued after taking one difficult breath, “After this war, find yourself something good for yourself.”
The soldier took some time staring at the ground beneath his feet before responding slightly sarcastically, “So, live my life to the fullest?”
“That’s about it.” I coughed up more blood, and something deep inside of me instinctively told me my time had come. The silence continued past that for a brief moment, but then I heard something I never thought I would hear from a human. He quoted a religious epitaph of my kind’s holy scripture, placing his hand over his heart, “The universe offers you its humility, and with its solace, I pray you find hospitality.”
I was stunned by the words, gaining one last stupid look on my face, but I dismissed it and added to the quote for him weakly, “And with those great tidings, may the cosmos embrace you once more.”
He stood up and met my eyes one last time, finishing the scripture, “Everlasting will the Universe’s embrace be, its warmth indisputable, and grace unsurpassable.” I smiled at the soldier, a human gesture, and gave a weak salute to him before he ran out of the crater. As the last bits of life drained from my body, weakness finally set into my limbs, and what I saw was a man fearless as a fool, and as strong as the stars themselves. In those few moments, I finally understood why I couldn’t bring myself to hate the humans.
The shadow of death covered my eyes and took my soul as I succumbed to a deep slumber, finally embracing the cosmos once more. And its warmth? Its warmth was burning a joyful sorrow, the melancholy tears of life shed upon the planet. Perhaps the universe was disappointed in us, unable to put aside our differences, but I could have sworn there was a smile on its face. Life is a funny thing, after all.

submitted by IPutMyHandInABlender to HFY [link] [comments]

2023.02.03 21:05 PopPunkRadio Do you receive or have you ever received hate for listening to "pop" punk?

I've been listening since the mid nineties and have always gotten the "pop punk is not punk" attitude from elitists because I listened to bands like Green Day. Over the years the term has become more openly acceptable but I still notice a good portion of the older generation of Epitaph bands like NOFX, Bad Religion, Vandals, etc... still seem to think of the term as a dirty word. Which is funny considering that most of them write pop punk music.
Will hatred against "pop punk" or animosity among musical genres become the new form of bigotry in 10-20 years? I do say that with a lot of tongue-in-cheek irony but it does open a serious discussion about the perspectives of people who openly bash other forms of music from what they listen to themselves. Or those who afraid to admit they like "pop" punk out of fear of being ridiculed by their metalhead or crust punk peers.
I've seen NOFX say in interviews "we hate being called a pop punk band, we're a melodic hardcore band" but I can't help but feel like "melodic hardcore" is essentially just a rephrasing of the same words by guys who think they sound tougher by saying it that way. No one's gonna listen to a song like "Oxymoronic" and say "fuck yeah, that was a hardcore melody!" 😆
Ps... I'm a sarcastic asshole who likes to play devil's advocate, so please don't read my words as being angry. lol. Just opening up a discussion. Cheers!

submitted by PopPunkRadio to poppunkers [link] [comments]

2022.10.19 05:45 slnk95 Horror story 134. Epitaph by Shanta Sultana

Credot goes to Shanta Sultana

https://preview.redd.it/9c9lznmudju91.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f51106ee086526db32483d963c216ed8c6d22c3
Part 1
“Hay it’s a garlic fest” it is clear Joseph was not happy with the overwhelming flavour of the extra garlic in his dinner. He tried a little bread, a little salad in trepidation, “Yummy! Even the salad is garlicy”, now the sarcasm is evident in his smile and in his intonation.
“Well like it or not, I’m doing the garlic thing”. Sarah said defensively.” I am not all superstitious but a little garlic and a few good spells wouldn’t harm. You remember what those people said? What if there is something called unrequited souls?” She sounded confident that she isn’t superstitious.
“Did you seriously believe those people; come on, you are scaring the children; and this food!” Joseph looked at the food in annoyance probably contemplating if he should drive to the chip shop.
“Mum says people believe in silly things” said the little boy concentrating on the plate, mostly moving his fork around the food.
“Now Alvin, your mum should meet our mother” Joseph looked at Daniel humorously, his droll eyes sparkled and he winked at Daniel. Daniel grinned at dad, sharing the humour and promptly retreated looking at mum’s face that said “So you are taking his side again?” Daniel looked at his friend beside him at the dining table to share the humour but he was still concentrating on the plate of food, moving his fork.
Dya, Daniel’s older sister pressed her lips, trying to hold a loud laughter and shared a discreet smirk with dad. She obviously didn’t believe in the garlic factor.
Well the cynicism at the dining table was not discreet; Sarah knew she was over reacting with what the people said about the house being haunted by the souls of the Hatt family. They said the house didn’t get sold because people believe the Hatts still live here. Reflecting on it she realised it really was silly of her to believe in such things. “Fine” she said, “Extra garlic is off the menu then!”
“And from the front door?” Dya asked sarcastically.
“Yes” off the front door.
“And from the hallway, from the living room, from my lunchbox.” Dya continued sarcastically.
“That’s enough”, Joseph interrupted Dya feeling that Sarah might be feeling a little bullied by them by now. He grabbed her hand “We are just saying, these are just tales, let’s relax right!”
“I know, they just got to me. I don’t know why people say things like that” Sarah is now annoyed at the people of the village for implanting these superstitions in her.
“Actually, I’m glad they keep saying things like these to the visitors. Think about it, how else would you have found a mansion like this in 1995?” Joseph tried to show the positive side of having neighbours with strange beliefs. “Isn’t this what you have always wanted? A gorgeous country house in Warwickshire with acres of land? Perhaps having weird neighbour was our destiny, right?” Joseph laughed at the conclusion he just came up with.
Sarah’s dreams resonated with her. “You are right, it was my fantasy, it is such a beautiful place; I can’t believe we got this in this price. I was just so overwhelmed! I’m just going to stop worrying about these silly stories. I mean the Hatt lived here in the 17th century.” Sarah mocked herself.
“Yeah, the Hatt are probably bored by now”, Daniels laughed. His friend rolled his eyes and joined the laughter “You think they would be!”
“Yeah, they must be by now” Sarah joined them with a slight embarrassment.
“I’ll spend the weekend with you mum and you can show me how to do the chutneys and jams you said you wanted to” Dya quickly glanced at her dad and found him winking at her with approval.
Sarah looked overwhelmed with happiness with such changes of plans the party girl just made.
Joseph cast his gaze of contentment on his wife and daughter “Perhaps this is what she needs, she has been feeling lonely lately” he contemplated. Now that all was sorted, Joseph could go through the garlic fest for tonight.
A spooky growling noise interrupted the short silence at the table. They all looked towards the living room door; pair of glossy scorching eyes was looking at them, like a couple of transparent marbles sitting in front of a set of head lights.
“I don’t know what’s with Socrates, he wouldn’t come in the dining room, and I’ve even put some meet on his bowl” Dya indicated at Socrates’s food bowl on the floor.
“He has been quite aggressive this evening” Sarah observed.
“Perhaps it is the garlic” trotted Alvin.
Everyone burst into laughter.
Socrates seemed highly offended. He fluffed up; piloerection made him look double the size. He was clearly not bemused.
Part 2
Dya joined her mum that Saturday morning; she knew this would make mum really happy.
Sarah asked Dya to get the glass jars she washed, dried and left in the pantry. She was looking forward to making chutneys and jams together. She may involve Daniel too.
Sarah heard a loud shattering noise from the pantry. She ran to check, it was obvious Dya dropped the jars. Joseph and Daniel who heard the noise from the yard ran to the pantry too. They were playing soldiers, Alvin just joined them.
“It’s alright my love” Said Sarah looking at Dya sitting on the floor in the midst of the broken glasses, she was glaring at them with vacuous glacial eyes, her body was void of any motion.
“It’s ok honey, it was just an accident” Joseph comforted as he planned to slowly lug her out of the situation. She was obviously in a shock.
Immotile, sat frozen, she slowly started to open her mouth, her stony eyes begun to widen.
Sarah and Daniel screeched in horror.
Dya’s mouth was filled with crushed sparkling glasses; Joseph was terrified in horror.
“Honey, don’t swallow anything, just stay there” Said Joseph and sat beside Dya. He asked Sarah to hold her mouth open as he carefully took the glasses out of her mouth, one by one, making sure they don’t cut her inside.
“It’s ok Dya, don’t swallow” a petrified but brave Daniel kept prompting Dya.
Alvin was at the door way, with a deadpan expression.
It was shocking for both children.
That evening Dya said she saw a lady pushing the jars on the floor and she held her mouth open and put the glasses in her mouth.
“You were hallucinating” Joseph explained hugging her in the hospital bed. “You were in shock and you were really scared. “
“But I didn’t want to drop the jars”
“I know my love” Sarah hugged her” feeling so relieved that she was ok.
Part 3
Joseph loved photography and it was a fine day for it. The house had opulent opportunity to take great photographs. Such unadulterated nature,” If only these old tress could talk” he wondered. Alvin and Daniel were playing; Socrates was looking at them with a thumping tale.
Joseph walked around and took lots of pictures. He walked far beyond the play area in the back of the manor house, to the graveyard. He thought it was just a
tale by the crazy villagers but he found three tomb stones almost buried in the ground, covered in leaves. “How extraordinary”, he thought. He coarsely moved some leaves and took a few photos. He walked back to check on the boys, he took photos of them playing together. Alvin was still struggling to make friends with Socrates. He kept trying to embrace the cat but the cat kept wiggling himself out hissing and huffing. “He will get used to you.” Daniel wanted to give some hope to the frustrated Alvin.
“Don’t go far boys” Joseph instructed the boys and went inside; Socrates followed him to the kitchen. Sarah was prepping the lunch, Dya plated some food for Socrates “We like eating alone these days” she mocked at the cat’s recent changes of behaviour.
They suddenly heard Daniel Yelping “Mummy”. They all ran outside the kitchen including Socrates. They saw Alvin knocking on a tree trunk, shrieking, trembling “Are you alright?” They could not see Daniel anywhere or hear him. Sarah and Dya started to shout out his name. They were howling, not knowing what’s happening, they feared their worst nightmare.
Joseph gently held Alvin’s shoulders and turned him towards him and calmly asked “Son, what happened, tell me, where is Dan?”
Alvin was shaking “I didn’t want it to happen, I didn’t wish it!” He was shaking with fear and penitence, “We were climbing trees, Dan climbed even higher and then…!” He looked up and pointed at the top of the tree.
“Then what happened?”
“Well he, I didn’t stop him.” Daniel looked at Joseph “He fell inside.” He pointed at the tree.
Joseph immediately worked out the tree was hollow. There was hope, no matter how tall the tree was, how far Daniel had fallen. He called the fire brigade who located Daniel at the bottom of the trunk. They had to cut the top of the tree and rescue a very injured little boy. Daniel broke his collar bones and his left arm. The doctor told them they were extremely lucky that Daniel was alive. It seemed Daniel would be spending the summer in bandages.
When Daniel gained consciousness he remembered a man asked him to climb up the old tree trunk and he pushed him to the hole. Joseph reassured him that it was a nightmare.
That evening Sarah told Joseph that she feels this place is unholy, “I was going to lose both of my children, can’t you see? And they are having nightmares.”
Joseph consoled Sarah; hugging her he said they were accidents; that they were getting used to with the new place.
Alvin came to visit Daniel when he returned home. “I didn’t mean for it to happen” said Alvin with remorse. Sarah hugged Alvin “It was an accident, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Daniel is my friend.”
“We know Alvin” Said Joseph kindly.
Part 4
Sarah wondered how to cheer Daniel up, he looked sad, stuck inside with this shoulder to shoulder bandage to fix his collar bones. She decided to fix him a treat and wondered what else to do. “You know how you two always read about old toys and things?” Sarah asked Joseph while mixing a cake batter for Daniel.
“What about that” Joseph was drawing a design for his next job on the kitchen table using his pencils and sketch paper.
“Why don’t you make one of those toys you two history buffs look at? It could be exciting for Dan to see it in real life.” Sarah sounded pleased with the new idea.
So was Joseph. “Hay, that’s a great idea actually. Well done!” Joseph said it with a mock disbelief. Joseph was an artisan craftsman; he has been designing and making boats for many years. He knew he could copy a toy from the history book easily.
Sarah put the cake in the oven. “Where did my icing bags go?” She wondered loudly and started opening the cabinets one after another.
A sudden cry of horror made Joseph turn around in utter shock. Sarah was howling in horror, there was blood dripping down her forehead, she was staring at her right hand, blood oozing out of the deep cut, a seax was on the floor covered in blood. Sarah was continuously screaming and shaking, Dya ran to the kitchen to check what had happened. “I have to take your mother to the hospital, watch your brother. “ Joseph didn’t have much time to explain or figure out what just happened. He wrapped Sara’s cut with the kitchen cloth and hauled her to the car. “We’ll be in the hospital soon, just hold on.” Joseph’s voice shook a little.
Part 5
Sarah had to have few stiches on her forehead and on her palm and arm. She was still shaking. “That knife, it is so old, how did it get there?” Sarah looked at Joseph with horror and whispered “I saw them, like Dan did. The woman was stabbing me. But I think, it was a child, pushed the knife out of her hand and it fell. I think, I think she wanted to kill me,” Sarah paused to breath, whimpering, shivering. “How did that knife get to my cupboard?”
The nurse standing by looked at Joseph with question marks. Joseph felt uncomfortable and a little alarmed for the first time. “It’s a very old house. The knife must have been there for ages. It took you by a surprise and you were just really terrified. We see things when we are scared.” Joseph said it as if he was trying to comfort himself.
Part 6
Joseph decided to clear the place up a little bit. “Just an old house. It was an accident. I should have thought about this ahead and look for all the little things, who knows what else is hiding in the house?” Joseph blamed himself.
He decided to surprise Daniel with a toy like Sarah advised. Mother and son both were resting in their beds, Joseph asked Dya to keep an eye on them.
Joseph worked hours and created the cutest spin top toy set following the 17th century designs. He could tell Daniel was really impressed. Alvin came to play with him like he did every afternoon; they both looked busy with the toys. “Somethings never go old” Joseph told Sarah in accomplishment. Sarah looked
happy and smiled for the first time after returning from the hospital. That’s that then, thought Joseph. “Let’s stay safe from now.”
Part 7
That weekend Joseph decided to spend the time in the work house. The outer house was converted into Joseph’s crafts area where he will be building his boats.
He started to concentrate on his work but interrupted by Dya running in, screaming frantically “Dad, Dan has gone crazy. She kept pointing at the house.
“Why? What happened?”
Dya couldn’t say anything; she started to run back in the house. Joseph followed him.
Joseph ran upstairs to Dan’s room. Sarah was trying to stop a historical Dan. Socrates was angry, his tale was up lashing. Daniel was frantically hitting himself with the spinning tops shouting “These are not your toys.”
Sarah was trying to stop him from hitting himself, Daniel’s face was red with marks and his lips were bleeding already. Joseph embraced Daniel, opened his fists with force and took the spinning toys out of his grips and threw them on the floor. Socrates hissed at the direction of the spinning tops rolling on the floor. “It’s ok, it’s ok,” Joseph kept rocking Daniel. Dya and Sarah were sobbing, not knowing what was happening.
“I felt someone told me to tell you to make those toys, like a man told me you should make them for his children”, Sarah was snivelling, later in the afternoon when Daniel calmed down. Alvin was keeping him busy and Dya was watching them.
Sarah was adamant. “I don’t care if we lose money. I want to leave this house. I feel something, like something is really wrong in this house. I want to go back to London”. Joseph knew it was the final decision.
Part 8
Daniel and Alvin had a sad goodbye; they were good friends.
Alvin: “I’ll see you again!”
Sarah: “Maybe sweetheart”.
Joseph: “Who knows?”
They regretted not meeting his parents.
Part 9
2020
32 years old Daniel decided to stay with his parents in the lockdown. Daniel felt like a little kid again, doing things with dad. They decided to tidy up the storage because Sarah told them to.
They started coming across things as they were opening all the big and little boxes. “Dad, look” Daniel showed an envelope labelled “Negatives from the manor house.”
“They must be the old photos I never developed. Your mum didn’t want anything to do with that house; I must have put them away.”
Joseph took digital photos these days so he took them to a developing studio. They did some research on the old house at the library and printed out an article on the manor house.
Daniel and Joseph started looking at the photos and the article when they returned back to the garage.
“Hay look, I am playing in the back yard with Socrates. I miss that cat, he was always so angry in that house.” Daniel remembered.
“Yeah, you used to play with that little boy, what was his name again?”
“Alvin” remembered Daniel. “He kept telling me I don’t want you to leave.” Daniel remembered.
“He was a humble boy” Joseph was concentrating on the article. “Well, Lord Calder and Luella Hatt died with their child in scarlet fever; they were quarantined in the manor house in their last days. How sad” said Joseph?
Joseph started concentrating on the photograph of the graves when suddenly his eyes followed Daniel’s icy gaze. They were both frozen, looking at a photo Daniel was holding. They then started flipping through the photographs frenziedly.
Socrates looked struggling in the photographs, as if he was trying to free himself. He managed to look straight at the camera in one photo when being held. It was as if he was trying to tell something to Joseph.
Accept that it looked like he was sitting in the air. Or he was struggling with an invisible force. He was held above from the ground, as if floating!
“Dad!” Daniel shrieked under his breath. “What does it say on the child’s grave?”
Joseph picked up the photograph with the third head stone and examined closely. He read out the epitaph
“Alvin James Hatt”
1693-1700
You are now as once was I
You will travel far as I say goodbye
Prepare to take a forever vow
Then you will be what I am now”
THE END

submitted by slnk95 to horrorstorytank [link] [comments]

2022.10.09 13:12 AirplaneReference [Round 118149] Please tell me how this man earned his top-left medal, the weight of the thing named for him in honor of that, how he died and write him a fitting, ideally non-sarcastic epitaph.

[Round 118149] Please tell me how this man earned his top-left medal, the weight of the thing named for him in honor of that, how he died and write him a fitting, ideally non-sarcastic epitaph.

submitted by AirplaneReference to PictureGame [link] [comments]

2022.10.09 11:39 AirplaneReference [Round 118145] This man, as evidenced by the multiple medals for service in Korea, fought in the Korean war. He, like many Korea veterans, has passed away (the war was in the 50s). Please tell me his name, how he died and write him a fitting, ideally non-sarcastic epitaph.

[Round 118145] This man, as evidenced by the multiple medals for service in Korea, fought in the Korean war. He, like many Korea veterans, has passed away (the war was in the 50s). Please tell me his name, how he died and write him a fitting, ideally non-sarcastic epitaph.

submitted by AirplaneReference to PictureGame [link] [comments]

2022.07.11 06:14 le_redditusername Living and Dying on East Hill

The Daughters of the Confederacy made much of this hill in 1915.
Here are planted 300 years of sons, daughters, captains, doctors, lawyers.
It encloses also dozens of children who did not reach the age of 10;
I counted them one day—more than 25—
They are kept always beneath rocks bearing various epitaphs,

For of such is the Kingdom of God,

To me they sound sarcastic.

And yet, surely against my will, my feet are planted in it.

Even though Irene couldn’t afford to be buried on the rich side of town,
I know it is the same sodden earth that laid beneath her on her wedding day
And held her harmless feet as she left chapel hall.

And left me the hill in a city I wasn’t born in.
Even as my concerns pale in light of the Atlantic Slave Trade
(There are no black men planted in East Hill’s dirt)
Yet are my feet are buried here.

What is a legacy when it is just dirt?
(What is it to have not even the earth to hold your name?)
Surely against my will, my feet are buried here,

In this earth that holds only bones,
In this earth where there is only geology.

I am to be shaking off this ancestry from my walking shoes
Until I am reunited with the Dogwood Tree.

https://www.reddit.com/OCPoetry/comments/vw8zf8/quiet_moments/ifoky7?context=3
https://www.reddit.com/OCPoetry/comments/vw7n0a/believe\_me/

submitted by le_redditusername to OCPoetry [link] [comments]

2022.04.26 03:26 HolaItsEd How to Play the Sims 4 and Not Get Bored; or, How My Unresolved Trauma Over Death Made Me Change How I Play the Sims 4

Note: This is more of a series of emotions and ideas I wanted to get out, so I made this as tongue in cheek. There is no right or wrong way to play Sims 4. This is long and fairly stream-of-conscious. If you would like to read it, you're welcome to. Maybe it will give you ideas or make you think a different way. Maybe you disagree with everything on here. Everything and every response is the right one. :)

How to Play the Sims 4 and Not Get Bored
We all encounter it, sometimes more often than others. We begin the Sims 4, play o b s e s s i v e l y for days or months at a time. But then it hits: the boredom. We just, suddenly, stop playing the game. We don't touch it again and weeks go by, then months, and sometimes even a year or two. But without warning, you think about it. You reinstall it. You update it. And you play obsessively with Sims 4 all over again.
So how can we prevent this? Moderation? Absolutely not. Loca!

The Sims 4 is a Storytelling Game (device)
Sims 4 is, above all, a storytelling game. It may seem kind of weird to think of - there is no Storyline progression! The best we have is Neighborhood Progression, if you turn it on, and it adds some form of progression, but it doesn't let NPC Sims go out, marry, or really do anything besides having babies it seems.
NPC Sims don't gain relationships (since social connections don't grow without being introduced to each other). They hardly gain skills. They don't, until recently maybe, do anything with their job. They don't get (or lose) money. There is no way this is a storytelling game.
But this is where you are playing wrong, and how many of us have been playing the game wrong. Yes, with a game with a ton of open-world opportunities, I am telling you we're playing it wrong. And it is because we begin playing the game wrong. We go into it in with the wrong mind frame. We know there is a story - there is certainly lore. But we think the lore is for the world. It isn't.
The Sims is a Storytelling Game... About One Family (at a time)
That is why we're playing it wrong. We play the Sims thinking that we're entering into this vibrant world that existed before us and see how we interact with it. But really, the Sims world exists around us. In Sims 4, our family - whether we play multiple or only one - is the literal focal point of the entire game. That family we are playing is the literal center of the universe. All the different worlds are a stage, to quote Wilsim Shakespeare, and any Sim that you're not playing is a background extra.
They're not designed to have a life outside of the one they gain while they interact with your family. Why is this?
You're not playing their story.
To illustrate this point, look at the description of the Landgraab family:

The Landgraabs seem like the perfect family; wealthy, well-mannered, brilliant. But Nancy and Geoffrey are each hiding something. Will their secrets tear them apart or will they continue to build a wealthy dynasty?

When we play and meet the Landgraabs, if we meet them, we don't get any of this. The family seems perfectly fine, like any family. We don't see Nancy and Geoff hiding anything. If we play with aging on, the family ends up dying of old age. If we play with Neighborhood Stories, they just have a ton of kids - who all live with them forever.
But when we play the Landgrabbs, we play out that scenario that was described. Geoffrey is a Lead Detective. Nancy is a Minor Crimelord. Malcolm is evil (so probably gonna follow in his Mom's footsteps, let's be fair). They're Mr. and Mrs. Smithing it on us! Will Geoffrey find out about Nancy, or does he already know but suppressing it? Is he actually a bad cop working with Nancy, or is he secretly diverting attention from her? Do they suspect anything?
We don't know unless we play the Laandgrabs. And if we don't play them, they're just background characters. We can insert ourselves into the story, but we would only do that by having them as by-products of our Sim's story. It isn't so much as their story advancing, but how our Sim advances their story.
Because the game makes us be the ultimate storyteller, this is why there isn't any real danger - and why we get bored
Because we are telling the story of our Sims the way we want, this is why there is a lack of any real danger; why the game allows us to (almost) always get out of a tricky situation; and why sometimes the game is too easy. The philosophy appears to be that if we want our sim to die, we will let them die. Either neglect them or intentional. Yes, bad things can happen to our Sim, but to really damage them - create drama - we have to manufacture it.
This is also why so much of the autonomy is lacking. Why spellcasters won't go messing everyone up, why vampires don't intentionally mind-bomb everyone when you're out, and why everything seems so positive. Even if we want the drama to happen for us, how many posts have we seen of an accidental death or situation and the player turns off the game because they didn't want that. The murphy bed was horrible for so many people because it was too dangerous. It took the agency of the story we were telling away from us and we weren't ready for it.
And this is why we get bored at times and stop playing. There is challenge - even if it is only a matter of time. But there isn't drama. There isn't drama unless we intentionally make it. And some people will absolutely make it. Sacrificial makes mods which do just that literally. But I am going to say, for the most part, most of us want the challenge of drama, but we don't want to cause drama. We feel bad when a fictional digital character is sad by us. We don't want people to hate us - I mean our Sim. We feel bad choosing the bad dialogue box. Mean and evil, I am willing to bet money, are two of the lowest traits given to playable Sims.
How to Play the Sims: Tell a story
So this is how to play the Sims 4. You need a story. Sometimes we like to see where the story takes us, sure. But if it doesn't, we need to make it. Whatever your Sim experienced has to guide it. You'll get bored when there is no story to tell.
How do you find a story to tell? I'll tell you a secret. But first...
We have been telling stories since the beginning - whatever and whenever that was. So we know a thing or two.

You need your hero. You need a focal Sim which you are guiding. The game treats the household as the focal point. This is the household story.
You need conflict. This is either internal or external.
- If internal, the conflict we are most familiar with is the "tense" moodlet. The geek Sim not playing video games. Essentially, the story needs or wants the Sim to do something, but their traits are antagonistic to it.
- If external, this is something preventing our Sim from getting what the story wants. This could usually be something as simple as wanting to be the head of your Sim's career. So you need to get your skills, keep your mood up, etc. This is probably the easiest we see all the time.
You need a goal. Above all else, you need something your Sim wants. In game, we can use the Aspirations as a guide. Or we can make our own.

How to Play the Sims: Make a Goal
I can't stress this enough. You need a goal. What is it your Sim is trying to do. This is what you're trying to achieve with this Sim. This is the desire of the Sim. This can change as you tell the story, but you need a goal. Simple as find a relationship. Visit every world. Get married. But there has to be something you're trying to do with your Sim.
How to Play the Sims: Accept that the story ends
This is the hardest. When you achieved your goal, you have to wonder if there is more to the story - or if it is over. If you're like me, you try to shoehorn something else in there because your Sim didn't die and you worked so hard on them already. But think of some of the best franchises and how they deteriorate over time: the story is over, but someone wants to keep it going. Just a little longer. They're not ready to give it up.
It is okay to end your story when it ends. You don't need to keep playing. It is okay to start a new story.

How I Learned to Play the Sims Differently: Unresolved Trauma
This is, perhaps, why I wanted to write this. Because I had to turn my game off last night even when I was happy playing. I got really sad and had to reflect why.
I own all the packs, but I decided to turn them all off and play as Base Game only for a generation. Limit myself and see what things are like. My goal was to have my Sim make an heir, turn on the next expansion (and any packs up to that point) and enjoy that expansion. Then I would have a new heir and do it again. And slowly open up the worlds. Bella would never meet Judith, sure, but I was okay with that. Each world would be a new adventure.
My Sim fell in love with Don Lothario, they had three kids, and eventually the two died. I chose the youngest kid (the other two I had marry and move out) and he begin his life towards being a Scientist (after a trip in Granite Falls). But I wasn't enjoying the story for this new Sim as much. My interests had changed from experience being a scientist (a self-imposed limitation I had) to wanting to garden. I tried to keep both going, but the Science story was the main plot line I devised, but I was more interested in the garden. I could have changed them - he would no longer be a scientist. Easy. Yet I haven't.
But in the mean time, I got a mod which will collect all the urns in the game. I then made a cemetery for all the Sims who died in the game. At the top of a little hill was my first Sim and Don Lothario. I made an epitaph for them - and got very sad. I had a lot of memories of these two raising their kids, teaching them, going to explore space (Don, through Neighborhood Stories, was a Space Smuggler - my Sim happened to already be in the astronaut career, so I made him a Space Ranger). I was way more invested with their story.
At first, I was confused. I've had many, many save files and Don was in every one. There are an infinite number of Don Lotharios, and I was actually mourning this one.
Several years ago, my eldest sister was quite suddenly diagnoses with cancer. In three months, she was dead. She was a half-sister, the same age as my mom, and really helped raise us. Before her diagnosis, we had a strained relationship due to another family member. And then she had her news, and then she was gone. It was devastating. I could have never imagined it would hit me as hard as it did. I've gotten better, but it still affects me. One is the extreme fear of death. I have four animals, for example, and I know they will die one day before me - and my heart breaks. I am in constant fear of something happening to my husband that he won't be there. I am not paranoid, and live life normally, but occasionally I will be filled with dread when I think of them not being there.
And I got the same emotions from the death of this Don Lothario (and my Sim he married). They weren't there anymore - their connection wasn't strong enough. But the thing is: their story didn't have to come to that conclusion. Their story had ended. I could have worked on them a little more if I wanted, but really, they had their story. They both reached the end of their career path - the Space Ranger and Interstellar Smuggler who found love in the stars. I should have ended their story long ago. But instead, I kept the story going. And now I was growing bored with this continuation and regretted it.
I didn't let the story end when it did.
How to Play the Sims: Accept that the story ends - And how I will play going forward
With this in mind, I think I will start a new save file. Back to scratch. And with everything available.
I am not going to play with aging on. If the character's story is that they get old, then I will have them get old. If their story is to die, they will die. I always thought it was boring to play a forever Sim, but I realize that I don't need to have stories end because of old age.
I will stop playing that family (or Sim) when the story is over. And I will play a new Sim in the same world. I can enjoy the story I know of for that family, but I have a new story. And If I come up with a sequel, I can always go back to that family. With Don and my original Sim above, I can't do that. They're gone forever. I don't want to make that mistake again.
I won't be bothered that Sims are left static. Their story isn't told. And if I don't want to tell their story, then I will put Neighborhood Stories on for them. I am playing a game that has Vampires, Aliens, Spellcasters, Mermaids, Death as an actual entity, etc. I can suspend my disbelief regarding the fact that Alexander Goth isn't growing up (unless I want him to).

Helpful Tip: This is why player challenges are made, and played, so often
Player challenges aren't about making the game difficult. The challenges are the story you're telling, and the rules are simply there to frame the story. They're the limitations - the struggles - that your Sim is using. These are made so much, and played even more, because they're setting you up for a story. And you have to tell it.
Helpful Tip: Use the Scenarios as a story - or even a jumping off point
The scenarios are actually great regarding story telling. They're "official" challenges and they may seem easy or simple, or even lacking. But when you can see them as the story prompts they are, then you can appreciate them more. If one interests you, start it off. Make a story out of it. And when the scenario ends, decide if there is more story you want to tell. If not, then it is okay to end that story.
Helpful Tip: Use the blank space for your household to setup your story - and keep it in check
I often leave the family description blank when making a new Sim. But really, you could (should?) use that space to remind yourself what the story is that you're telling with that Sim. As you advance the story, update it. When it is over, conclude it. Then you have a memory of what it is you did with that family, or if you decide to start new family, you know where you left off when you go back to it.
GOLDEN TIP: HOW TO COME UP WITH IDEAS FOR A STORY
If you made it this far and read this, I am going to give you the golden ticket to coming up with ideas for a story. I've heard people asking authors all the time, and authors always come up with one of two answers: (1) I don't know; (2) some series of purple prose that is fairly sarcastic, such as pulling an invisible thread out of the aether and following it, etc. etc. Essentially, they don't answer it. Maybe they don't know. Maybe they don't want to tell. But I will tell you now.
Fill in the blank: What if...?
Boom. That is it. All stories start from these two words.

What if... zombies broke out in a world that didn't know about zombies? (Walking Dead)
What if... superheroes were very terrible and not the righteous people we think? (The Boys)
What if... a retired pro-figure skater mentors a promising but failed figure skater? (Yuri on Ice)

You get the idea. Now lets make some with the Sims 4!

submitted by HolaItsEd to Sims4 [link] [comments]

2022.02.28 20:18 Rocknocker Mucking about in Moscow.

Y’know, that reminds me of a story…
I was sitting in the lounge of our new villa in Waythefucknorthistan, overlooking our balcony and the rest of the snow-clad university, of course, drinking icily-chilled Moscovskaya and Diet Dr. Electric Mountain and a lime wheel, with Redemption 18-Year-Old Barrel Proof Straight Rye Whiskey on the side, and Pabst Extra dark beer chasers; hiding from the brutish realities of this intensely foul year, two thousand and twenty-two, CE.
Esme was down in the kitchen, whipping up some sort or another of epicurean delight; probably with Asian flair since she’s been so intent on that ‘Yan Can Cook’ series I procured for her on DVD.
Megg is still at school, doing whatever one does in order to procure an RN degree. I’ve helped her out with comparative anatomy, as well as hematology, virology, and a host of other -olgies with which she needs to become fluent.
This is not the first time I had to go through all this. My eldest, now the State Veterinarian for a central, flattish piece of real estate out betwixt the fictional lands of Kansas and South Dakota; nestled cheek-by-jowl of the mythological places like Wyoming and Indiana; dragged me, kicking and screaming through all the various -ologies she needed for her Ph.D. so she can make her daily bread by keeping America’s bacon supply safe.
I am revising some of my course’s curricula; jotting notes here and inserting references there when I realize, that damn, my drink has gone all non-avian dinosaurian, i.e., extinct and empty.
I hate it when that happens.
Khan is sleeping on the floor of my office, next to me, of course. He’s very, very protective.
Not of me. Heaven’s no. But of the leather sofa in my office where I usually sit whilst I do my necessary tasks.
I stand up, brush off an errant crumb or flick of a micro-cigar ash and toddle over to the wet bar which I keep well-stocked in my office.
I’m not three feet from my couch when I head Khan snuffle loudly, the snuffle that he characteristically makes when he settles down for the evening and gets intractable and comfortable.
“Don’t get too comfy there, Khan”, I sort of say in a somewhat deflated , “That’s my spot, not yours. I’m the master of this household. I’m the…oh, fuck it. I’m out of ice.”
Down the hall to our mini second-floor auxiliary kitchen. I open the ice maker and find to my incredible relief, that it’s full. I did remember to purge the lines and recharge the gizmo the last time it ran down and out of ice.
I fill my ice bucket and pad back to my office.
Khan is snoring the snore of those without a single worldly care.
I make myself a stout eponymous drink: 150 mils of vodka, some Diet Dr. Electric Mountian (less activity around these parts when the mercury dips into the lower -40s F, so it’s sugar-free for me), lime juice, ice, a lime wheel and just a hint of Fee Brothers Blood Orange bitters.
“Lovely!”, I think out loud to no one in particular.
I take a couple of sips and adjust the potent potable’s primacy just so, turn to Khan, and inform him that I am the Master of the abode and he needs to move his 16 stone carcass off my couch, or failing that, at least to the other side so I can sit and still have access to my computers.
Khan ignores me soundly and snuffles at the rabbits he’s chasing in his somnolent state.
“Now see here, you big woolly beast”, I say, “I foot the bills around these parts keeping you in kibbles and bits, not to mention prime pig ears and the occasional spiral-cut honey ham. Now, pick up thyself and walk over here!” I say, patting the place on the couch to where I desire that he relocates his not inconsiderable bulk.
I get a half-opened eye blink and another round of snuffling snores.
I set my drink down, and say, in a loud steady voice, “OK, we’ve tried it the nice way. Now it’s time to go all Olivia Newton-John and get physical.” I announce to the sleeping hound, whom I swore heard me, understood me and snickered like a Canadian Lake full of loons.
“RIGHT!”, I say as I try to muscle the mutt around the chest and maneuver myself behind the big lummox. It’s like wrestling a 225-pound furry marshmallow.
I get the upper hand, as I used to be All-State in wrestling some 50 years ago (gad, that hurt to type out), and realize that the only way this tawpie moving is if I go all forklift on him and physically lift him off the couch and deposit him elsewhere.
Esme by this time had heard all the various and vacuous threats walked into my office with his lead and a bag of Horse Tonsil Delight Doggie Treats.
He evaded my grip almost instantly and was sitting at Esme’s feet, tongue lolling, lips slobbering, hoping for one or more of his so-dubbed Khan Cookies.
“I almost had him”, I said in faux-disgust, “Then you came in to ruin my victory.”
“So I heard.”, Esme chuckled, “Me or thee? Whose turn is it to take someone for their twice-daily walkies?”
“I’m waiting on an important call,” I said.
“Always with the important calls.”, Esme breezed, “Who is it this time?”
I point over to my desk where my satellite phone sits in its charging cradle.
“Oh”, realizes Esme, “The big phone. Where you headed this time and how long are you going to be gone?”
“No idea”, I replied, “I got a blip-TWIX from Rack and Ruin saying that I should be ready to roust quickly and they’d call sometime today after 1300.”
“Business or pleasure?”, Esme asked seemingly somewhat sardonically sarcastically.
What she meant was this an office job or a field piece?
“Unsure, so far”, I replied, “But I have both sets of GTFOOD (“Get The Fuck Out Of Dodge”) duds ready to go.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Your monthly Cigar-of-the-month-club order arrived as has your Vodka-of-the-week-club”; meaning my order from the local beer, pop and water stop had been delivered.
“Such timing!”, I replied, “Now all I need is to know where the hell I’m going, for how long, and for what purpose.”
“OK”, Esme snickers lightly, “You wait on the big phone, and I’ll take Khan down to the pond so he can bark at the geese and chase the ducks.”
“Thanks, dear”, I said, after a quick osculatory exercise. “I can always depend on you.”
Esme and Khan depart downstairs and I’m back to fiddling with my Sat Phone. I see it’s all in the green, locate my personal cell phone and see that’s at 100% and check various Emails.
“Fuckbuckets.” I growl, “I need information, gentlemen.”
After waiting the obligatory 5 minutes and there were no calls or Emails. I went back to what I was doing before all this transpired, back to teaching the little tyros how to blow shit up.
I was running the first Detonics course ever for the university and I was writing a “How to blow shit up” gazetteer of where and how to blow shit up for the US Armed Forces.
I light up another Fuentes Double Corona oscuro cigar, right after I refreshed my drink, and sat down to my bespoke 445 horsepower turbo-encabulated real, honest-to-Bill-Gates (by dint of the US Armed Forces) registered version of Word and worked on whacking out these little trifles before tiffen.
And, as I’ve told you all before, we take tiffen pretty durn early around these parts, Buckaroo.
Once I’m in the writing groove, with my noise-canceling headphones cranked up with a newly remastered version of Roger Water’s Live in Berlin, sipping an eponymous tipple and puffing a large, luxurious cigar, I somewhat resemble not so much an author as I do a text-producing Bessemer steel foundry with automatic enquenchment.
I’m beating the latest keyboard into submission when I hear the door downstairs slam.
Immediately thereafter, I hear Esme yelling for Khan to sit down.
I rush downstairs and Khan launches himself…his sodden, muddy self, at me.
“Thanks, dog.”
Down in the basement, I’m valiantly trying to get the doggie shampoo out of Khan’s multi-layered coat; swearing a blue streak.
He’s not too happy.
His friends, the geese, had evidently turned on him.
The ice on the pond disrespected him by shattering and dropping him into a pool of gelid mud, water, and duck feathers.
His mistress Esme is cheezed at him because he is mule-headed and tends not to listen.
His master is soaking wet, pissed, and irritated because this is the second time this week Khan has had run-ins with the local Canada goose population and required laundering.
Besides, right now, he looks like a king-sized drowned rat.
Not terribly regal considering his supposed royal lineage.
I finally get almost all the soap out of his shaggy mane and escort him into his bespoke doggie-dryer.
It’s a little gizmo I dreamed up when Esme replaced a couple of her so-called defective hair dryers.
It’s a rectangular enclosure that fits Khan like a glove. Only his head is exposed, while the rest of him gets the old hot-air routine. I’m working on his mush with an old beach towel while his doggie dryer works on the rest.
Fifteen minutes later, he looks like a puffball that’s recently had a run-in with a patch of ball lightning.
We trundle upstairs, I grab his stripping and fleecing brushes and bid him into my office to get him turned from a giant tribble back into something at least vaguely recognizable as a canine.
We’re in the kitchen when Megg arrives.
The instant she does, the big phone upstairs lights off.
“Hi, Megg”, I say quickly, “Here. Brush Khan out for me. Thanks. I’ve got to get to the phone.”
That whole sentence took approximately 0.41 seconds to relate.
Up the stairs, I grab my still smoldering cigar, seize the ululating sat phone and depress the talk switch.
“Damn!” I damned, “Fucker’s locked…what ‘s that goddamned code again…oh, right…dit…doot…doot…dit…dit…dit.”
“HELLO?”, I breathlessly bellow.
“Doctor?” the disembodied voice on the other side of the phone enquired, “Calm yourself. It’s only Agents Rack and Ruin. Please. Calm down.”
“Ohh, I’m calm,”, I replied, calmly, “It’s just that I had to de-pond Khan, give him another bath and get him dried off when you jokers called. Now that we’re all up to date, what’s the deal?”
“Your presence is requested in a more easterly clime”, Agent Rack explains. “It’s important, but the timing hasn’t yet been determined. You will fly commercial if you accept the job and conditions.”
“Well, so far”, I exasperate, “All you’ve told me is that I’m needed somewhere east of my current location. A little more specificity, please?”
“It’s a place you’ve been several times before”, Agent Ruin chimes in, “Almost like a second home.”
“OK”, I grin, “So, I’m off to Russia. Groovy. What’s the chore?”
“Can’t say”, Agent Rack butts in. “It’s not only highly hush-hush, it’s not been elucidated in full yet. Things are, how you say, in confusion and potential mayhem. We’ll need you to be able to be loose with timings and locations.”
“Well”, I ponder, “I can have my classes handled for the next couple of weeks”, I reply, “Hell, most are online anyways, I’ll get my TA (Teaching Assistant) to tend to such things. Esme knows I’m off on another whirlwind tour, so that’s already pre-OK’ed…”
“Excellent”, Agent Ruin replies, “Pack your GTFOOD bags. This could include both office and fieldwork. When will you be able to leave, as there is the small matter of your contact in Moscow…?”
“Oh, fuck”, I groan, “Not more dossier filler…”
“There will be an abundance of that”, Agent Rack replies, “That’s why you’re going. Your contacts in the oil industry will be of paramount importance. Their demeanor will help fill in some blanks as to what’s happening over there.”
I’ve been more or less head down, ass up for the last month or so and I’m already so apolitical that I don’t give a single fig as to what one country or another is up to, especially if it’s something untoward and outrageous.
“Why?”, I ask, “What’s up?”
“Herr Doctor”, Agent Rack sighs, “Sometimes I wonder if your innate naiveite is real or just a clever ruse.”
“Well”, I smiled through a blue cloud of smoke, “If you can’t tell, how are the bad guys supposed to tell*?”
“Good point”, Agent Ruin concedes.
“Yeah”, I reply, “And if you two wear hats, no one will notice…”
“Fine.”, Agent Rack replies, thoroughly plussed. “Be ready for extraction tomorrow 0330. An agency vehicle will pick you up and deposit you at the airport. Tickets, visas, travel monies and such will be handled then. You will be given your contact’s information and description. You will meet at the Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport Guinness Pub & Kitchen immediately after your arrival.”
“Groovy”, I reply. “What, no VIP Lounge?”
“As we said”, Agent Rack notes, “Low key entry.”
“Nifty”, I note back, “Whom am I meeting?”
“You’ll see when you arrive.” Agent Ruin intones, “Fly safe, lie low. Remember, this is the next best thing to a covert mission.”
“Well, there’s your problem”, I reply, “I’m too big, too loud, too American to be covert.”
“Exactly why no one there would ever expect you”, Agent Rack replies.
Puzzling over that last retort, I say Da Svidonya and go to begin to check if all my essentials have been packed.
“ESME!”, I bellow, “Where are my two spare emergency flasks?”
After a couple of hours of faffing about and trying to find the absolute necessities of international travel, I scratch Es behind the ears and give Khan a big, sloppy kiss…no, wait, reverse that…and I’m in the backseat of Plain Jane gunmetal gray Chevy speeding along into the inky blackness of the gathering night.
In other words, I was going to the airport.
The driver, as I found out, was an airman as I wondered aloud if he had his pilot’s license. We flew low, coming in under the enemy radar at Drambuie…since I had neglected to fill one of my emergency flasks with vodka.
Hey. I was in a hurry.
Little more than 45 minutes later, we’re wheels up in First Class within a KLM 747-400 headed to Amsterdam. Little did I realize that I hadn’t been given my contact’s information.
It’s an 8-hour haul to Amsterdam, so I order a few drinks and work out my new cipher as requested by Herrs Rack and Ruin. After a couple of hours, I pull out my flight manifest and notice, to my horror, that I have about 45 minutes to catch my connecting flight to Moscow.
If I miss that one, I’ll have to wait around for another 6 hours for the next flight.
I ask the head First Class steward if he could arrange transport for me from our arrival to my next departure gate. Time and tide, as well as explosions and avalanches, have gotten the best of me and there’s no way I could make that next flight under my own power in that time frame.
Although I didn’t know where the next gate would be, I did know that international flights always get the furthest gate from…anything.
The steward assures me he’ll have transport ready and waiting for me and that since I was the only one in First Class, my bags would most assuredly make the trip to the next flight as well.
The flight progresses normally and we land. I hoof it off the plane and there’s my electric cart, all amped up and ready to fly probably miles to my next gate.
“Doctor Rock?” the driver asked.
“That’s me”, I replied, as I plowed into the rear seats. “Let’s go. Time’s a-wastin’”
“Yes, sir.” He stomped the accelerator and we lurched about 100 feet.
“Here you are, Sir”, he smiled, barely able to conceal his snickering.
“You know”, I said, “You might have told me that my next gate was just down the road a piece…”
“Oh, yes sir, I could have”, he smiled, “But orders are orders.”
I look at the leader board.
“FLIGHT 0257 DELAYED. NEW DEPARTURE TIME 0530”
“You might have mentioned that the flight was also delayed.” I fumed.
“Yes, Sir; but you know…orders and such.” He was grinning a mile wide.
I replied “Klootzak” and smiled wide as well as I handed him a couple of fresh Jacksons and a fresh “Wijze ezel.”
“Oh, you speak Dutch?” He asked after making the bills disappear like a continental David Copperfield.
“That was the extent of it. I always make sure to know certain epitaphs in every language I may encounter”, I grinned.
He laughed, helped me move my stuff over to the bar across the aisle, and spun off into the dark recesses of the almost deserted airport.
The bartender rolled up and soon I had a refreshed emergency flask and a brace of new drinks. I asked if cigars were permitted, to which he responded in the positive, as long as I didn’t light the thing.
With that, he handed me a cut-glass ashtray and a box of Lucifers.
“But, since no one is here to complain, be my guest.” He added.
I offered him one of my best cigars and he accepted it gratefully. Tobacco is rather dear in the Netherlands.
I’m going over my new cipher key when over the airport intercom blares “Doctor Rocknocker. White courtesy phone. Doctor Rocknocker.”
I ask the bartender where the nearest white courtesy phone was and he pointed to a wall, not 10 meters distant.
He said he’d watch my gear, but since there was no one around, I figured nothing was going to happen to it. It’s not going anywhere.
“Doctor Rocknocker. White courtesy phone. Doctor Rocknocker.”
I walk over to the bank of phones on the wall, do a quick check back on my gear at the bar and inadvertently pick up the red phone.
“White courtesy phone.” The voice on the other end says.
“Sorry.” Sheesh.
I grab the white courtesy phone and listen for the operator.
Over the airport intercom, I hear: “Doctor Rocknocker. White courtesy phone…”
“I GOT IT!” I yell back.
“Thank you.” Came the reply.
“This is Dr. Rocknocker.” I say into the phone.
“Please hold for a Mr. Ruin”, the operator replies.
“Figures.” I smolder.
“Reverend Doctor Doctor?” Agent Ruins asks.
“Yes, Agent Ruin, it’s me,” I reply.
“Ah, good. I must let you know; it was a bitch to get your flight held.” He explained.
“So, that was you characters? Now what, new orders? You need Russian vodka? Beluga caviar? Cuban cigars?” I ask, peeved but only slightly.
“No. Well, now that you mention it…yes. But are you at the bar across from your gate in Terminal F?” He asks.
“Yeah…” I replied curiously.
“Good.” He notes back. “Stay there until a messenger appears. Sign for then package and don’t open it until you’re in the air.”
“Y’know, Agent Ruin, that the FAA really frowns upon boxes, bags, or baggage being brought on board that I myself hadn’t packed.” I reminded him.
“Oh, I think in this case”, he chuckles, “They would make an exception. In fact, if you look at the box itself, it will note exactly that.”
‘OK”, I reply, “I guess if I can’t trust you characters, I can’t trust anyone.”
“Exactly”, Agent Ruin replies, “Besides, you just passed the test. Remember, trust no one.”
With that cryptic note, he hangs up.
I hang up the phone, go back to the bar and order a triple. I hate game playing, especially when I don’t even know what game’s afoot.
Approximately 45 minutes later, a bonded courier shows up, asks for my ID, and hands over a small, heavily wrapped package, about the size of a couple of thick paperback books.
Temptation washed over me, but when I could hear no rattling when shaken nor typical explosive chemical smells, I tucked it into my day bag and returned to more pressing concerns…a double or another triple?
Finally, it’s the last call and I’m off to my next 4-hour flight into the deepest, darkest part of Russia: Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. This is always a major pain in the ass, but once you know what’s going on, it’s really just a boring game of standing around hoping your emergency flasks don’t run dry whilst you wait.
We land, and it’s a seeming 25km taxi to the terminal, and we deplane off the jetway. Next stop, passport control.
Yeah.
I dig out my rather tattered and coffee, cigar ash, and booze-of-all-nations stained Russian Diplomatic passport. I sidle up to the plexiglass booth and greet the unsmiling agent seated within.
“Priviet”, I say, “Мой паспорт [My passport].”
She unsmilingly grabs it, flips it open, looks at me, at my passport, me, my passport…then reaches under her desk and pushes a button.
“Проблема? [Problem?]”, I ask as the butter in my mouth freezes solid.
“Ждать. Оставайся здесь. Ждать. [Wait. Stand here. Wait.]”, she replies.
“OK”, I reply.
She is in conference with someone just off-screen to the left. It’s a rather animated dialogue; I had absolutely no chance to follow.
“Пойдемте со мной. [Come with me.]” the person just out of sight commands.
“Righty-o!”, I reply.
I’m not terribly concerned, probably just some bitching about why I have such a passport being all American and such.
We walk for what seems like forever. Down one dark tunnel, through a door, into another dark tunnel, when we break into an antiseptic room, in bedazzling white and starkly lit with non-environmentally friendly fluorescent floodlights.
Sort of like an operating room, I thought…then instantly banished that thought for something a bit less morbid.
I was motioned to sit down on the one chair that wasn’t behind a desk and did so; just being complacent, quiet and a bit curious.
I went to ask my tour leader what this was all about, but the minute I uttered a sound, I was shushed back to the Jurassic.
“OK. Shut up. Got it.” I smiled.
Now I’m a little bit more curious.
I sit and wait and wait for what seemed hours; in reality, it was maybe 5 minutes.
The door opens and in walks…
“Olga Galinka Vladimirovna!” I cried out loud as I jumped up to greet her.
This was “Olga, the KGB Lady” from my days back in Western Siberia. Somehow, back there and back then, she took a shine to me. Evidently, she hasn’t forgotten me as I haven’t her.
“Good lord”, I think, “She must be pushing 90.”
“Olga! You look wonderful!”, I proclaim. Luckily, her English is light-years better than my Russian.
“Doctor Rock”, she smiled, “Lucky for you, I never retired. They bring me a ‘suspicious’ passport and I read name. Wham! It’s Доктор Рок [Doctor Rock]! I know there cannot be two.”
“Olga, it is so good to see you after all these years. I must honestly say, you look radiant”, I gushed. I was truly glad to see her. Not because of the situation, but because I really like her as a person and a friend.
“What is this? DSc?” she asked.
“Oh, I just got another doctorate. I got tired of galloping all around the world, so Esme and I settled down for a little academia.”
“So, now you are ‘Academician Rock.’”, she smiled.
“Olga, It’s still just me: Rock. At your service.” I smiled broadly.
We hugged and she shooed the other KGB (or is it NKVD these days? I forget.) agent out.
“So, Rock, why are you here, especially now?” she asked.
“Just trying to drum up some business, as usual. I figure with all the rumors of turmoil around here; it might be a good time to visit. Sort of catching them with their pants down, so to speak.” I replied.
“So, your friends in Virginia now travel agents?” she slyly grinned.
“For this trip, more or less. I make some observations; they foot the bills. It works out great.” I said.
“However, you must be careful, keep your wits about you” she suddenly wasn’t smiling any longer.
She had just dropped in a coded phrase: ‘keep your wits about you’ means double-secret care, watch and cover your ass and trust no one you haven’t known for 30 years.
I nodded ‘message received’ and changed the subject.
“Olga, we must meet in less ahem, antiseptic surroundings. Can I take you to dinner? Of course, your family is invited as well.” I asked.
“No. You will visit me at 1700 Wednesday as 1350 Tverskaya Prospeckt, Apartment 20.” She replied.
Never mess with a babushka on a mission.
“I will be there, exactly on time” I smiled.
“You always were so punctual. Very American. Not Russian.” She wanly smiled.
Something’s afoot. Something’s not right. She’s dropping more hints than I could field.
“I look forward to our time together. Oh, how do I get my passport and luggage?” I asked. “I’ve got a friend to meet in the Guinness Pub & Kitchen upstairs.”
She pushed a button and a new, untattered, with extra pages passport arrived.
“You should be more careful, such a messy passport. I’ve had it cleaned (meaning copied) and added extra pages. Follow this person, she will take you to our parking area. Your luggage is already there. Your friend will be alerted to your change of plans and destination; he can meet you there. Still Marco Polo Palace?” She smiled again.
“As if you didn’t already know”, I thought.
“Spot on. Thank you so much, Olga. I cannot wait until we meet later this week.”
Olga sat, smiled and I came over to hug her. She protested at first, but as we lightly embraced, she whispered “Trust no one”.
I nodded imperceptibly and smiled widely.
“Until Wednesday, Olga Galinka Vladimirovna!”, I smartly saluted her, spun on my heel, and followed the gray-clad agent down the maze of hallways to the parking area, deep underground.
I had plenty to think about on the one-hour ride to the hotel. Luckily, the driver wasn’t the chatty type and didn’t object to my smoking a cigar, as long as he had one as well. Traffic for Moscow at this time of year seemed subdued. Little did I realize what was transpiring in the halls of power in the very building we were now passing.
“Kreml!” my driver said, pointing at the Kremlin.
“Groovy.” I vaguely remarked, “Maybe I’ll take a walk over later this week”, as the hotel was within the distance.
We wheel into the hotel, and the driver shoos me to the front desk as he’s barking orders to the concierge and bellboys regarding the proper disposition of my luggage.
I sign in, leave my American passport at the desk (a custom I have grown to hate), and looked around for my bags.
The deskman replies that they were already in my room and that Happy Hour was about to begin in 30 minutes' time.
“Splendid.”, I replied and slipped him a fifty. I’m going to be here a few days, may as well start greasing the skids.
Up to my room, which was typical Intourist palatial. Jacuzzi, California King bed, wet bar, and fully stocked not-so-mini-bar; the usual. Plus, my bags were all present and accounted for, sitting at rapt attention, each sporting a brand-new, barely hidden, wee red KGB star to indicate they’ve been properly rifled at the airport.
After securing a fresh drink and new cigar, I got my portable office set up and made the usual calls, Emails, and encrypted notes.
I told Esme of my encounters with Olga, whom she met when we lived in Moscow some 20 odd years ago and asked her to send a new picture so I could show Olga. Esme said she’d comply as soon as she dragged Khan inside away from the geese. She wanted to know if Rack and Ruin could pick up a package as Esme had some gift ideas for Olga and that’d be the only way to get them here in time.
I vowed I’d get them to act like the postmaster general for us.
After a quick ablution and change of duds, I realized it was Happy Hour +1, so I finished off whatever it was I was doing, made all secure, and headed down the hall to the lift.
Suddenly, Olga’s admonition crossed my mind.
“Trust no one.”
Even her?
Nahh. I was going all Jason Bourne on the situation. Sure, it’s goofy around here, what with Putin rattling his saber and massing troops near the Ukraine border, but that’s just your typical posturing. He wants some sort of concessions or something and he’s making all with big bluff and noise. The usual sort of bullshit what we call global politics.
The ding of the lift snapped me back to reality, so I stepped in, pushed the button for the mezzanine, and watched the doors slowly close.
Could have sworn I saw someone out in the hallway.
Oh, well. No worries. He/she/it/they can catch the next car.
Down we go and the car stops right on station. I wander out and Happy Hour is Deserted Hour. Sure, there’s a bar, bartender, and the usual assortment of goodtime girls, but there’s virtually no one else.
“Great”, I think aloud, “A quiet night to sit and ponder the wonder of it all”.
I’m working on my second (or seventh) drink when I went to fetch a new cigar from my portable travel humidor in my coat pocket. I dropped my lighter and when I sat back on the barstool after retrieving it, there was a shadow falling on the general area.
“Shit.”, the shadow said, “They let anyone drink in here.”
“Oh, fuck.” I thought.
I spin around and see Toivo’s bristly mug and cheesy grin.
“Not you”, I said with a resigned sigh.
“Oh, yes.” He smiled back. “Scootch over, get me a drink, lots to talk about”.
“Why me?” I sighed.
“Why you? Why anybody?” Toivo laughed.
“So, you’re my contact?” I sighed, “Must be some real, mission-critical data to send you. What is it, bagel shop’s closing down?”
“Funny”, Toivo replies between slurps of his drink, “No, Rock, for real. There’s some heavy shit floating around these parts. This is not the time for the making of jests, for Evil Ones are afoot in the lands, and danger is abroad. Strange things are stirring in the East . . ."
"Ah, we’re in the east-"
"Doom is walking the High Road . . ."
"We’re always on the Low Road--"
"There is a dog in the manger . . ."
"What?--"
". . . a fly in the ointment . . .
I looked horrified at Toivo but realized that’s my usual reaction to him.
I said: "You mean…you mean…there's a Balrog in the woodpile?"
“Oh, cut the crap, Rock”, Toivo said, “We’re sitting here in the middle of…”
“…a very nice bar. Why, yes. I do believe I’ll have another. Make it a double.” I replied.
“Are you trying to be a boor?” Toivo asked.
“No, it just comes naturally,” I replied.
“OK”, Toivo growled and threw up his hands, “It’s late, you’re deep in your cups. It’ll just have to wait until tomorrow.”
“Works for me”, I replied through a Mammatus of blue cigar smoke, “Nothing’s so fucking important that it can disrupt Happy Hour, or, since you’re here, Dismal Hour.”
“Fuck you”, Toivo grins, “You’re lucky I got a start at the Guinness Lounge. Holy fuck, imagine my surprise when an NKVD agent walks up to me and tells me that I have to meet you here. You lead a double life, Herr Doctor?”
“No, but double doctorate, so it’s Academician Rock to you, you proletariat vole,” I replied.
“So, you finished already? Good lord, what hath they wrought?” Toivo inaccurately quotes.
“You are embarrassing me with your sobriety. Come, come, let us toast today for tomorrow we may get COVID!” I said, eliciting a few snickers from around the bar.
“Oh, fuck. Don’t remind me of that.” Toivo groused. “I got it, even with the jabs. The worst week I’ve spent in some time.”
“Well, until they train the little buggers to swim upstream in a stream of booze, we ethanol-fueled organisms are safe”, I noted.
“Oh, fuck the world. Give me a cigar and a new drink. Then, it’s time. We’ve things to do come the dawn.” Toivo insisted.
“Fucking lightweight”, I lowly replied, even though Toivo tipped the Toledos at 135 kilos or so.
Toivo’s room was on the same floor as mine, so he leaned on me all the way to the elevator, all the way on the elevator, and all the way to his room.
“Toivo, once this door is opened, you’re on your own,” I said to his slobbery, somnolent form.
The lock clicked, I sidestepped gingerly and Toivo made a lurch for the open door. I gave him a gentle size 15 in the backside, slammed the door, and wandered back to my room.
After a new cigar, drink, updating of dossiers, and a few laps in the Jacuzzi, I decided it’s time to get some kip and flopped into bed.
I left a wake-up call for whenever the fuck I woke up. So, no wake-up call.
I’m sleeping the sleep of the very just and just as my dreams take a very interesting turn, I hear a thump…thump…thump on my door.
“What?” I yelled to annoy everyone on the floor as much as I was at this point.
“Thump…thump…thump…”
“GOD DAMN IT!” I beller, throwing the covers off.
I get to the door, look through the peephole and see it’s a very disheveled Toivo.
“TOIVO! This had better be good. WHAT?” I yelled.
“Putin’s gone and done it. He’s just invaded Ukraine.” Toivo said in low tones, turned slowly, and plodded back to his room.
“Oh. Holy. Fuck.” I thought aloud. “This is very much not good…”
…To Be Continued

submitted by Rocknocker to Rocknocker [link] [comments]

2021.08.04 18:39 TwoBuckHowie TwoBuckHowie: The Man: The Band: The Music: The Legend - Part Uno - By Electric Dave

“I love rock ‘n’ roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby!” --Alan Merrill
“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else while you're uncool.” --Lester Bangs
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” --Rumi
Hello, my fellow Travelers and Troglodytes! This is Electric Dave, and, yes, I’m a friend of Jim’s. [Hangs head, then slowly raises head, stares out into the audience defiantly, and says:] And I’m damn proud of it! Jim recently wrote a blog about receiving a DVD of a film his brother Al shot of our band back in the 80s, and Jim was kind enough to send me a copy. I foolishly wrote back to him to thank him for it and for asking me to join his band in the first place way back in the day and lavished some other praise in his general direction. Big mistake. Basically, he’s now blackmailing me by threatening to publish my letter in its entirety if I don’t come up with some copy for his blog. So, to give you a clue, this is how this guy operates . . . .
Be that as it may, this will be the first installment of the amazing saga of TWO BUCK HOWIE and his musical and pharmacological exploits during the years I played guitar in his bands (roughly 1984-1989). Let me preface my remarks by assuring you, dear reader, that no matter how hideous and reprehensible Jim’s comportment was back in those days, he has since become a contributing member of society, a loving and caring husband and father and grandfather, and, as you can tell from reading his blogs, a true advocate for equality, liberty, and world peace. So no matter how sick or twisted a tale I tell, no matter what depraved and subhuman shit he might have pulled, please keep this in mind. People grow and this is America, dammit, the land of second, third, and 73rd chances! Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s probably gonna edit out all the demonic stuff and rewrite himself into some kinda saint and sign my name under it. ‘Coz that’s how this guy operates. (Actually, “Saint Jimbo” has a nice ring to it.)
But seriously, I first met Jim back in the early 80s when he was the bass player in a fairly successful local Milwaukee punk rock band, Politixs. I met him through the felonious Brian K---- (now, alas, deceased), who became the drummer for that band until the Munson brothers, who formed the other half of the band, and whose ancestors were big winners during the Norman Invasion, decided to move in the direction of industrial synth post-punk techno. Go figure. Jim quickly formed another band, The Uncalled Four, with himself as front man on guitar, Boz B---- on bass, some lead guitarist whose name I can’t remember, and the aforementioned criminal, K----, on the drums. When the lead guitarist had the good sense to decide to leave the band, Jim asked me to audition for the band, and I was in. So that TUF lineup practiced together a few times and then played all of one set at Scandals in Cudahy and another gig before that band imploded into gritty little fragments of fear, loathing, and multidirectional acrimony. I wish I could say Boz and K---- went their separate ways because of irreconcilable creative differences, but the bad vibes owing to other things over which history shall charitably draw a curtain were freakin’ palpable. Boz hated Jim, Jim didn’t trust K----, K---- hated Boz, Boz hated K----, and I was sitting there wondering WTF I had wandered into. So that was that. The only good thing to come out of that was that Jim had written some originals that were pretty damn good that we played for the rest of the decade and actually recorded at Cornerstone Studio in MKE. (I’ll come back to those songs later.) That, and Jim made the hottest chili on the planet and served it up with Guinness. He claimed he made the chili with Rocky Mountain oysters, but I disbelieve it . . . .
Sometime later, I invited Jim to come jam with my buddies, Jack (guitar, vocals) and Todd (drums, TODD-A-TRON™) in the Mushroom Lounge (Jack’s basement) and but with no plans for forming a band or playing out, just to jam and hang out. However, I’m sure from the get-go the malevolent and evil mind of TWO BUCK HOWIE was hard at work wondering how he could bend these naive and malleable creatures to his musical will, BWAA-HA-HA! Now, Jack and Todd and I had gone through a few band names, but at that time a friend had dubbed us The Mudsharks, and so when Jim came onto the scene, we started calling ourselves The Uncalled Mudsharks or sometimes The Uncared Four as a sarcastic nod to TUF. Jack and Todd and I had mostly just covered Neil Young and some rock standards, and we did some weird originals (we wanted to be the next Couch Flambeau), and when Jim came aboard, we continued in that vein for about a year, playing house parties and mainly just goofing around in the Inner Mushroom Sanctum, as we called Jack’s basement. It got crazy down in there and I used to jump up and down while playing guitar to give a certain élan to my performance, and I used to get pretty high with my jumps (heh, heh, heh) and once Jim pointed up at the rafters while I was leaping à la Pete Townshend to punctuate a rock ‘n’ roll ending, and when I looked up, there were all these rusty, gnarly nails protruding nastily down from the floorboards, on which I could easily have impaled my head giving me tetanus and rabies and turning me into a zombie and they would have had to chop off my head or something. So, thanks, Jim, for the heads up, as it were!
The other good advice Jim gave me years later before one gig was to tape the lyrics of the one song I was gonna sing to the monitor, but I just sneered at him saying, “I wrote the song, Howie—I’m not gonna forget the lyrics.” He just shrugged and said, “OK.” Sure enough, that night up on stage, I got brain freeze, forgot the second and third verses, and had to sing the first verse three times. Embarrassing.
Jim and I started teaching Jim’s originals to Jack and Todd—remember, this was all part of his diabolical plan to infiltrate our minds--but we also interspersed them with our own stuff that the whole band composed (no, that’s the wrong term—Bach and Beethoven composed—we mainly just spewed). We wrote and performed ditties such as “Boll Weevils” (no, not that “Boll Weevils”; no, not that one, either), “How Many Eggs Do You Want, Ricky?” “Aladdin’s Hymn,” “Admarski Blues,” "Noise Suite #37," and the infamous “Lorsban 15-G,” an instrumental based on the popular insecticide. Eventually, however, Howie’s hoodoo took effect and we began playing more of his originals interspersed with some punk stuff and some 80s stuff like The Cure and The Church, but also still some Neil and other little shanties like “Steppin’ Stone” and “Sweet Jane” thrown in. We played our first gig with this lineup in the fall of 1985 at Camp Wowitan (a farm out in the sticks that had been converted into campgrounds), appearing as DEF-CON 4 because the guy who was making the posters for the event couldn’t remember what the name of our band was—he just knew it had a “4” in it--and those were the dark ages of rotary phones and only the filthy rich could afford answering machines and many peasants starved or were made into bricks by the fabulously well-to-do, who also exercised the lex primae noctis quite regularly. (Bricks, people! Historically accurate, look it up.) We played atop a haywagon—I shit you not—and I was almost electrocuted to death when my dangling guitar strings (I didn’t trim them at the headstock back in those days because it was hippy chic not to) grazed the mic I was about to sing into and a fireball exploded right in front of my face. That was back in the bad old days before three-prong plugs, and ya took yer life in yer hands just plugging in yer guitar. When the fireball exploded, the beer-sozzled groundlings thought it was part of the light show and cheered. They probably woulda cheered even harder had I actually been electrocuted, those crazy Milwaukee kids. So, with Howie fronting us, the gig went fairly well except for the near-electrocution and the weird harmonica warblings which had no place in the proceedings and we later had the guy making them excommunicated from the band even though he was a nice guy and was supposedly going to be our band manager. But bad harmonica playing cannot be forgiven, I’m sorry. I can’t remember much after that except we woke up the next morning hung over, provisionless and starving, so we went foraging up in the hills and ate some crabapples to tide us over until we packed all our gear into one wee car and skeedaddled back into the big city.
We started rehearsing more “seriously” (very scary scare quotes) and Jim whipped the band into shape with his wheedlings and cajolings and bon vivant encouragements whilst plying us with psychotropics, which we were nothing loath to accept. A few months later, a lean and mean rock machine, we played Club Garibaldi in Bay View, which is a neighborhood on Lake Michigan in MKE, and that was the gig that Jim’s brother Al memorialized forever in his video. Forever, people. Except for our final encore song (Alice Cooper’s “Under My Wheels,” during which Jim went into his zombie act), Jim was on point that night, which is to say he was mostly sober despite the fact that it was his 30th birthday party; which relative sobriety I consider as a miracle right up there with the lágrimas de sangre of our Lady of Guadalupe or Soupdujour whoever. His timing, his banter, the scream on “Don’t Take the Children” (Jim’s rock ‘n’ roll screams sounded like he was being strangled and having a hernia at the same time—crude, but effective), his bass playing, all aces. One thing though—and there always is at least one thing, ain’a?-- our sound was at times hideously marred by treacherous acts of sabotage by the putrid band that opened up for us, the little bastards. After the gig, Jim explained to me as I listened, horrified, that bands did that to each other back then to make themselves look better. WTAF?! They were messing with the PA and smirking about it, and during one set, the echoes and wild banshee feedback made it almost impossible to sing, but we plowed through anyway, quite heroically, if you ask me. Miraculously, Al did not record those songs and most of the ones he did record were at tolerable levels, but the PA system, even without the dirty work of those little creep saboteurs, sucked and we couldn’t hear the monitors, which we complained bitterly about from the second song on. And yet Jim graciously thanked the asleep-at-the-wheel PA guys at the end of the night for the sound. Yeah, thanks a lot, you hoodlums! The important thing, though, is that we had people up offa their asses and dancing and having a raucous good time, so all’s well, eh? And Howie's adoring fans were half heckling him and half wishing him a happy birthday, which was pretty funny. We would consider it an insult if our fans didn't care enough to heckle us. When we were first jamming at a house party at The Mushroom Lounge, one of our friends said after we finished a song, "Hey you guys should be a band or somethin'." It was the "or somethin'" that got me.
And even though we weren’t The Politixs, Jim had us do some political songs. Two original songs we played were “Don’t Take the Children,” which lamented the breakdown of the nuclear family owing to drug addiction (and even has a “rap” break in the middle—white boys rapping in the mid-80s? Bite it, Insane Clown Posse and Limp Bizkit!); and “El Salvador” was an attack on the Cold War proxy militarism of the US and Soviet Union, who jointly precipitated the Salvadoran Civil War of the 1980s. Very Clash-esque. Talk about yer progressive lyricism! Never mind that many of the other songs featured and even (ironically? who knows?) valorized such disparate anti-social activities as drug-taking, drug-smuggling, cannibalism, homicide, mindless cruising for chicks, demented states of mind, the “desesecration” of nuns, the heartbreak of psoriasis, and did I mention cannibalism? Nothin’ to see here, folks, just move along. But it was all for a good cause, as all the proceeds from that night went to feed poor little El Salvadoran refugees—leastways, whatever proceeds were left after the band paid our bar tab. Anyway, that’s our story and we’re stickin’ to it.
Thus endeth installment one of “TWO BUCK HOWIE: THE MAN, THE BAND, THE MUSIC, THE LEGEND.” If you liked what you read, click on some ads and stuff and earn Howie one one thousandth of a drachma or whatever they’re paying blog sites these days to get people all riled up and whatnot. Next time we’ll deal with the parabola and apex of the Howie rock 'n' roll years when we cut our studio album, White Cars! But you'll also hear along the way about the casualties of rock 'n' roll. And lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Oh, and turn off the lights when you leave, please.
The Author Is Using A Pen Name To Protect Innocent Bystanders
P.S. No one was ever hurt during one of our performances.
Unless of course, you consider destroying a few hundred-thousands of their brain cells because of the loud MUSIC and alcohol use.
And,
“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC” - Kurt Vonnegut -
That is my story and I am sticking to it!
Like what you are reading? Sign up as a Follower, or leave a Comment. If it's worthy enough, I'll answer you in a Post. Thanks for reading. Be Kind To Everyone. I'll Be Seeing You!
https://2buckhowie.blogspot.com/2021/08/twobuckhowie-man-band-music-legend-part.html

submitted by TwoBuckHowie to TwoBuckHowie [link] [comments]

2021.01.13 11:37 SamanthaR29 Maria is Missing (Part Fifteen)

(Part One here)
(Part Two here)
(Part Three here)
(Part Four here)
(Part Five here)
(Part Six here)
(Part Seven here)
(Part Eight here)
(Part Nine here)
(Part Ten here)
(Part Eleven here)
(Part Twelve here)
(Part Thirteen here)
(Part Fourteen here)
DeSade had finished her story. She looked from me to Candace and waited for one of us to say something. I don’t know what was going through Candace’s head in that moment but me? I was still putting what I’d just heard together. Still waiting for DeSade to yell “Gotcha” or reveal that all of that had just been her fucking with us. Because if what she’d just told us was true…I really didn’t even know where to begin.
I mean I’d known already that what we were dealing with went far beyond what people would call “Normal”. I knew that there were things tied into this case that were strange and impossible. But what she’d just told me wasn’t “Strange” it was completely fucking insane. And I felt very much like telling her that.
But in the interest of trying not to piss her off…especially after seeing her kill a man with a violin…I went for something a little less confrontational. At least in tone, if not in intent.
“So you’re telling me right now that these people…Kismet and the woman in the white mask “The Director” or Elizabeth Walker or whatever she wants to call herself…you’re telling me they’ve been around since the thirties?
That Better Films has been around even longer than that? That these people are what, immortal?”
DeSade shrugged as if the questions I were asking were both perfectly ordinary and also utterly inconsequential. As if I was an idiot to even be asking them at all.
“It depends on how you define immortal I suppose.
They’ve certainly existed for a long time. Calling them alive…well, it’s like I told you. Nothing is quite what it was once it’s been embraced by the Other Place. What goes in isn’t what comes out”
She said this in a tone so flippant that she could have been discussing the weather or a football score. Not casually informing me that some other-dimensional hell could make you live forever if you made some kind of Faustian pact with it. I had a thousand more questions but it was Candace who asked the one that was so obvious it was one I was a little ashamed I hadn’t thought of first.
“How do you know all of this?
How do you know what happened back then?”
DeSade smiled and stood, hopping down from the stage and strolling past us. She didn’t bother to turn to look at us as she answered and I wasn’t sure if it was meant as an insult, if she genuinely didn’t care or if she didn’t want us to see her expression as she answered.
“Maybe I was there.
Or maybe I know someone who was.
Or maybe I was lying.
What’s funny to me…is that you’re still asking the wrong questions. You did listen to what I said, yes?”
“And it didn’t tell us a damn thing that helps us! It didn’t tell us what these people want, why they took Maria, why….” I began and DeSade sighed dramatically in the most exaggerated way she possibly could at that moment.
“I told you exactly what they want.
And if you can’t see why they took Maria…well, you aren’t as bright as I thought you’d be”
Maybe it was just how goddamn insane things had been, between Sharp trying to kill us and then DeSade killing him. Or maybe it had been her little story distracting me. Or who knows, maybe I just wasn’t as quick on the uptake as I liked to think. But when she said that it jostled something to the front of the queue in my brain.
Something that I really should have noticed right away. And from the smirk on her face I got the feeling that DeSade knew what I was going to say before I said it.
“You knew. Earlier…you knew what happened the first time Sharp came after us” I said. Candace glanced from me to her looking even more puzzled.
“How could she? Unless Bennett told her…but why would he…” she began but DeSade cut her off.
“Victor Bennett didn’t tell me a thing because I didn’t need to ask him”
“Then how exactly do you know so much?
About us? About this…Other Place? About what’s going on?
Knowing we were coming…that’s one thing. There’s at least two people who could have tipped you off about that…but the other shit you know…”
DeSade rolled her eyes.
“Are you going to keep asking questions I’ve already answered?”
“I’ll stop asking them when the answers make some goddamn sense!” I snapped back. I was so close in that moment to just grabbing her by the neck and throttling the information out of her. I was tired. I was sore. I was scared shitless and confused as all hell. We’d nearly been murdered twice in the past forty eight hours and the second time it had happened it had been by the same bastard I’d already put a bullet in.
And now after all of this, after everything that Candace and I had gone through the sight of DeSade’s condescending smirk and the sound of that insufferably arrogant tone, it was all too much right now. I was not in the mood for any more games, not from her or any of the other people involved in whatever the hell this was.
“I’ll spell it out for you, I suppose. The Other Place is…limited. For all that it can do, there’s a lot else it can’t.
It exists side by side with here but there are only two ways anything from there can come here. One is with a König Key. They can manifest within a few miles of one of those but they won’t last more than an hour or so away from its sphere of influence.
And at very specific points they can manifest where it meshes with our world. Where they converge, in a way. For some reason it only seems to happen in abandoned places…places with little, if any habitation.
Not every place, but any place. A closed down pub, a boarded up house, a disused hospital…an old abandoned theatre”
With that last one she smirked right at me. She knew. Because of course she knew. She knew exactly what I’d seen that night at the Kingfisher back in the states and I couldn’t help but wonder how much else she was aware of that she wasn’t telling us. All because it didn’t suit whatever game she was playing here.
“And it wants more” Candace suggested. DeSade nodded and turned to smile at her.
“You see? She gets it. You should let her ask the questions”
Candace spoke before I got the chance which was probably for the best. I feel like I might have said something I’d regret.
“So the Other Place created Better Films to lure people in. Bait on the end of a fish hook”
“In a way. The Other Place can’t create anything that lasts in our world by itself.
But it can create…avatars, I suppose. Conduits. People from here that merge with there. People like Kismet. People like the Director.
It created what created Better Films for it. Created servants to do its bidding and achieve what it couldn’t”
I wasn’t sure I fully wrapped my head around all of this. Most of this stuff I wouldn’t have believed existed until recently. Hell I wasn’t entirely sure I believed all of it now. But I could figure all of that out later, if at all. It wasn’t what was important to me. Right now the only thing that was important to me was the question that still hadn’t been answered. The question that I’d been asking since this madness began.
And the question that I was pretty goddamn certain that DeSade had the answer to, even if she didn’t feel like sharing it with me.
“Maria.
Where the hell is Maria”
“You know. I think you’ve known for a while. You just can’t admit it to yourself” DeSade told me. I wasn’t in the mood to be told what I did or didn’t know. But Candace…Candace had worked it out. Worked out what I’d been deliberately blind to.
“The Other Place. Maria’s in the Other Place”
“Give the girl a gold sticker” DeSade said, smirking at Candace like she was a dog that had just done a particularly impressive trick. She then turned her attention back towards me. I couldn’t say that the expression on her face was an improvement.
“So you see detective it’s not a question of where Maria is.
It’s a question of how you get to her”
I already knew how she’d reply but I asked anyway. I asked if she knew how we could get there. And sure enough she nodded, beaming proudly about it, obviously happy that she knew something we needed and that we’d require her help to get where we were going. I’d been wondering what she got out of all of this but now I was starting to suspect she was just enjoying the feeling of knowing more than us and our needing to come begging for her to assist us.
“Getting to the Other Place is difficult. Especially getting there in time”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Hell I hadn’t liked the sound of most of this but that especially stood out to me. The ways she said it especially, like she just wanted the words to positively drip with unpleasant implication. I asked her what that was supposed to mean…what “in time” referred. She made a dismissive gesture before she answered as if the question was scarcely worth answering.
“I think you can imagine.
Events are in motion. Gathering pace. And soon everyone will take their places for the King”
Memories of that night at Gardener’s house. Memories of that thing ripping its way out of that man’s body. Something that looked like it was half horse and half rat and half something I didn’t even have a fucking name for. The cheering of the crowd and the stink of the blood and that thing that had stood there on stage, dressed like something out of Shakespeare by way of Clive Barker.
The thought of that being Maria up there on the stage. The knives finding her body, something monstrous and misshapen and hungry ripping its way out of her flesh.
“They’re going to kill her”
“There are certainly lives at stake.
MANY lives in fact. If the Other Place is able to fully intersect with here, the results will be unfortunate to put it delicately”
The honest truth was that I didn’t much give a good goddamn what happened to the rest of the world right now. I couldn’t think on that scale. The kind of stuff that DeSade and Gardener and all the other lunatics wrapped up in this thing were operating on was beyond anything I’d dealt with before.
But Maria was something I could understand. A kid desperate for approval and attention getting mixed up in something beyond what she could handle. Getting mixed up with maniacs and monsters like Gardener and these freaks from Better Films and whatever black magic horseshit they were doing in the name of their insane goal.
“So where do we go, how we get there and how the fuck do we get her away from these people” I asked.
“I can help with the first two.
As to the last…well, that’s really on you detective”
“Why Maria?”
Candace’s voice was small. Small and tired and frightened. She was desperate for the world to make sense, to follow some kind of order that she could understand. She’d handled all of this better than most. She’d handled it better than I had the first time I glimpsed this bizarre secret world that seemed to lurk just under the skin of our one. But it was clear that all of it…it was weighing on her.
I would’ve told her that sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to these things. That it doesn’t matter how hard you look for logic or pattern in the motives of people like this, you’ll just end up disappointed. But as it turns out? I’d have been wrong.
“Because of who she is.
And more specifically…who her family are” DeSade said.
And that’s when the other shoe dropped.
“Thomas Lane.
You said the guy working with Better Films all those years ago was named Thomas Lane”
“I did, didn’t I?”
My family’s name. Maria’s family name.
It hadn’t even clicked when she’d been telling her little story. After all, was “Lane” really that uncommon as a surname? It could have been anyone. But from the way DeSade was looking at me right now I knew it wasn’t just anyone. None of this could have happened to just anyone. All of it, every last thing that had happened since before I took this case had been planned.
I wondered how much had been them setting things up and how much had just been nudging a domino and letting the rest fall in neat succession from there. And how far back did it go? If our family had been involved in this that meant whatever was happening went beyond my scumbag brother being in business with Gardener. Had our parents been involved in it? Their parents?
How far back and how wide and what was the ultimate goal of all of this for the people involved?
Before I could ask for more a sound made all three of us turn our heads back toward the stage. The sound of a ringtone was issuing from Sharp’s body. Sounded like it was playing that fucking Robin Thicke song that was never off the radio a few years back. As if I needed another reason to be glad this prick was dead.
I walked over to the body and rifled through his pockets, Candace’s nose wrinkling in disgust. My hand closed around something and I withdrew a cell phone from his pocket. There was no name attached to the number but I wasn’t at all surprised by the voice that I head when I hit answer.
“Is it done?”
Maxwell Gardener.
Of course.
“Sorry to disappoint Maxwell.
Well, not that sorry”
There was silence for a few moments. Gardener’s breath came thick and heavy. He wasn’t happy. Which in turn made me a very happy woman indeed.
“You know Miss Lane you’re really becoming a problem for me”
“My heart breaks.
You think I’m a problem now, just wait. That theatre of yours you own over here…the one that burned down? It’ll be experiencing some déjà vu pretty soon”
Oh he was pissed now. And I was loving it. The thought of that petulant man child probably gripping that ridiculous cane of his hard enough to snap it in two? Almost made all of the shit that I’d been through worth it.
“Do you know who you’re speaking to? Do you know…do you understand you can’t speak to me that way?” he asked me. His voice was rising in pitch. I could picture him frothing at the mouth worse than Sharp had before DeSade had killed him.
“Do you know all that I’ve done? All that I’ve sacrificed?
I am a very powerful man Miss Lane do you understand that? You know all that I’ve accomplished? The people who owe me favours?
I’ve put three presidents in office Miss Lane. The cowboy, that coke fiend and that orange moron…I have senators, I have police, I have the FBI just begging for my favour, for what I can do for them”
“And yet you still can’t kill two women. Pretty embarrassing for you Maxwell” I replied flippantly.
“You’re not dead yet.
That doesn’t mean much”
“Well it won’t be Sharp that does it” I told him. He was silent for a little while after I said that. I’d thrown him. He was mentally recalibrating, trying to properly process what my words implied. He asked me what that was supposed to mean. I snorted with laughter before I answered him.
“It means I’m looking at your attack dog right now Maxwell. And most of his insides are on the outside”
“You’re lying”
“How do you think I got his phone?” I asked him. More silence. He didn’t want to believe it. Those little cog wheels were spinning in his head trying desperately to resist accepting the obvious truth that I was presenting him with.
“You stole it. You’re a liar and you…”
“Sharp’s dead Maxwell.
And guess what?
You’re next”
He tried to laugh the threat off. It was the most forced most unconvincing laugh I think I’ve ever heard.
“Do you know who I am? Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“I know that none of it will matter when your brains are decorating a wall.
Let me clear about something Maxwell. You and your little freakshow took one of my family from me. You’ve tried to kill me. You’ve tried to kill someone I love.
So…no amount of money is going to bribe me. No amount of threats are going to frighten me off. And no amount of thugs and monsters like this bald bastard you sent after us are going to stop me.
You can’t change what’s going to happen. You can’t run, you can’t hide and you sure as fuck can’t change my mind. The only thing that might alter is the exact way I kill you…which is gonna get more creative and brutal by the day.
See you soon”
I hung up before he could respond and stamped down on the phone hard. DeSade looked from it to me for a moment and then pantomimed fanning herself.
“Well that was HOT”
“Where do we need to go” I asked simply and bluntly.
“It’s not just the where that’s the issue” DeSade replied with a twinkle in her eye.
***
We had the where and we had the when of where we needed to go as we drove away from DeSade’s place. She’d refused to tell us any more about why she’d met with Maria that night or what she knew about how exactly she was involved or not involved with Better Films. All she’d given us were a few cryptic words about how Maria had “Wanted to know where she was going to stand” when the King arrived.
DeSade wouldn’t tell us why Maria wanted to know that or indeed why Better Films or whoever Maria was there on the behalf of were so interested in her. Maybe it was because she seemed to know so much about them and whatever the hell they were up to. If the story she had told us was true she knew more about Better Films than they’d probably be happy about anyone knowing. Though that was a pretty big “If” in my opinion.
Or maybe it was something else. She’d known how to kill Sharp for good. And more than that she’d known how to…paralyse him? Stun him? Whatever those lights and music had done to him before she went in for the kill. And Gardener had seemed like he was in shock when I told him that Sharp was dead which suggested to me that he didn’t think we’d be able to kill him.
Maybe the Other Place was afraid of her. Because somehow she knew how to hurt it. How to kill it.
A bigger question was how the hell my family fit in to all this. I’d assumed that Maria had been chosen almost completely at random. That Gardener had gone after her because she was young and vulnerable and too trusting for her own good. Now though? Now it seemed that there was more to it than that and that somehow my family and Gardener’s had been in business for a long time. Decades, who the hell knew maybe even longer than that.
I’d tried looking up Thomas Lane on my phone after we left DeSade’s place. There had been a director by that name, one who didn’t seem to have made more than a couple of movies and whose contributions to the genre abruptly cut off in the thirties. Nothing about why online…there was barely any information about him at all in fact… but if DeSade was to be believed well…that would certainly explain it.
Not that it proved he was related to me or Maria. The last name could be a coincidence.
But I wasn’t really a big believer on coincidences in this case anymore.
“You want me to drive for a while?” Candace asked. She’d been looking at me funny ever since that phone call with Gardener. Maybe she thought I was cracking up, that all of this was getting to me. She was probably right.
“I’m fine” I told her. She didn’t believe that. Who would?
“You’re not fine. No one would be fine after any of this. And you look exhausted”
“I’m just thinking things through”
“You’re thinking about what DeSade said. About all this being because of your family”
I didn’t say anything but then I guess I didn’t really need to. It must have been pretty damn obvious that was where my thoughts had taken me.
“It doesn’t mean this is your fault. And maybe…maybe it’s just your brother who’s in on this. It doesn’t mean your whole family is…”
“It means I was right all along.
Maria would be better off if she was related to literally anyone else” I replied.
Candace didn’t say anything to that. For a while all I had was the sounds of the car and the road and the bleak expanse around us to take my mind off the thoughts that kept clustering in it.
“Did you mean it?”
“Did I mean what?” I asked her.
“What you said back there. You said….
Never mind”
Candace lapsed back into silence. It took me a moment to realise what she meant. I’d just blurted it out when I’d been talking to Gardener. Had just felt natural to say at the time. I had no idea if that meant that I meant it or not. Would it have been more or less meaningful if I’d had to think about it first?
“I don’t know. That’s the honest answer”
Candace tried not to look upset. I tried not to show how shitty that made me feel.
“But…I’m glad you’re here.
I’m glad you’re with me on this. And maybe after all this is over…maybe I’d like to see if there’s more to this than just…this” I admitted. And I meant it too.
“More than running for our lives from undead murderers?” Candace suggested and I smirked a little at that.
“Dare to dream”
“Well you never WHAT THE FUCK!”
Candace screamed the last three words at the top of her lungs and I tore my eyes away from her just in time to see what had provoked this horrified reaction. My foot hit the brake. There was a high pitched squeal of resistance though whether it came from the car itself or the road it was driving on I couldn’t say. The car skidded to a stop in a way that was so utterly haphazard that I was very thankful that we seemed to be the only car driving up or down this stretch of road.
We’d braked only feet away from something that definitely had not been there before. Specifically it was about a six foot high fence running along the road. A six foot high fence that was “Decorated” for lack of a better word with remains. Human remains. Animal remains. And things that looked like they might be some combination of the two.
I gaped at what we were seeing.
Somehow the fact that the sun was beating down on the scene before our eyes made it worse, not better. The bodies were spaced out at perhaps two or three feet intervals from each other. Barbed wire was wrapped around the arms and legs of the figures, binding them tight to the fence. In some cases it was wrapped across the throat and the eyes and the scalp as well.
They were all naked and the figures that looked like they’d once been people…the genitals had been scoured away. There was a bloody ruin between their legs that looked more like an exit wound that anything else. There had to be about twenty of them at least, maybe more. The fence ran across the length of the road and beyond. On some of the bodies flies were swarming while others…others looked like they’d already been picked clean. Little more than bones and tattered scraps of skin.
And arranged off to the side of the road were cameras
Perhaps half a dozen cameras, ones of what looked to me to be an extremely outdated make and model. The kind you saw in movies about old Hollywood. All posed around this obscene blockade like this was a film set that we’d had the misfortune to just stumble into.
I told Candace to wait in the car. I already had my gun out. And as soon as I stepped out of the vehicle I could hear it.
Moans. Soft and weak moans. Anguished and pitiful and empty.
Moans that were coming from what was bound to this fence.
“Beautiful.
Aren’t they?”
I spun in place. Kismet was walking down the middle of the road toward me. An easy swagger, a confident stride. Her one good eye locked onto me with laser light precision. I kept the gun trained on her though I had doubts about what good it would do. Candace was looking between us with absolute dread in her eyes.
Probably thinking the same thing I was.
Was this it?
After everything, was this how it ended? The two of us dead in the middle of the road at the hands of this fucking lunatic?
“How the fuck are you doing this?” I asked her plainly. She made a soft clucking noise with her tongue as if she was reprimanding a stupid child.
“Surely that should be plain to you Detective Lane.
Surely it should be quite obvious where you are. You have been here before”
I looked around. But I quickly realised that she wasn’t talking about geography.
“The Other Place.
This is the Other Place”
“A boundary between here and there. Yes.
Just like the original Kingfisher Theatre. That’s the thing about this place. Once you find it, it makes it very easy for it to find you”
“How the fuck is that possible? We’re…”
“In an empty place.
An empty and desolate place” Kismet interrupted.
I could feel something watching me from behind. Physically feel its gaze upon me. When I turned I wasn’t shocked to see who was stood there in front of the fence. Dressed in that fancy tux and that blank white mask. The Director. Elizabeth Walker herself, in the flesh. Or whatever was going on beneath those clothes and that mask at this point.
The gaze didn’t feel malevolent so much as it felt curious. And somehow that was even worse. It wasn’t a pleasant kind of curiosity. It’s how I imagine the monkeys at the zoo must feel when people gather around to gawk at them.
“She knows who you’ve been speaking with.
She knows…” Kismet began but I cut her off before she could say more.
“Is it always the monkey that talks?
Or do I get to hear from the organ grinder?”
Kismet was silent. The Director likewise. But the mood had shifted ever so slightly.
“Yes, I’m talking to you Elizabeth”
There was a sharp intake of breath from Kismet at that. Oh she didn’t like that one little bit. Just like with Gardener on the phone it was obvious that it had thrown her off her stride. Whatever else these people…or whatever the fuck they were…could be said to be, they sure as hell weren’t able to handle being taken off guard very well.
“That’s your name right?
Elizabeth Walker?”
“She is the Director.
And you…” Kismet began but I turned, pointed the gun towards a space a short distance from her feet and fired a round into it. Kismet fell silent once again.
“So is this a trap?
Are you here to kill me? Threaten me? Warn me?
What are you after here?” I asked. The Director’s head tilted slightly to the side. With one gloved hand she motioned towards Kismet beckoning for her to approach. Then she made a sweeping motion towards the fence and Kismet began to speak but the arrogance was gone from her tone now. There was just the slightest hint of fear there.
“She wants you to see. To understand
This is what you face. The magnitude of what you threaten. These are but a small sampling of our Audience.
The King’s audience.
And there is room on the wall for more. Always room for more to star in our grand productions”
Kismet motioned towards the cameras that appeared to be operating themselves. Their lenses taking in every moment of the agony and fear etched into these poor bastards faces, the weak twitching of their limbs and the broken cries issuing from their throats. I took a few steps towards the Director. Kismet began to move towards us but she held out a hand commanding her to stay where she was.
The unspoken order was clear. Sit. Stay. Good dog.
I tried to make myself look as big as I could. Tried to hide the shaking of my hands. The quaver in my voice. Kept my eyes fixed on where I imagined the Director’s would be beneath that bizarre mask of hers.
“I’ve been threatened once today.
So I’ll tell you what I told him.
I’m not going to back down. Or give up. So kill me…or get the fuck out of my way”
For a moment I really thought she was going to choose the former. And all I could think of in that moment is…what happens then? What happens to Maria? What happens to Candace? What will Hannah think when I end up just another missing person or a body found in a ditch somewhere? Will anyone who’s left give a shit enough to show up for the funeral?
Here lies Heather Lane. Died the way she lived. Pissing someone off.
Guess there were worse epitaphs.
But the Director simply snapped her fingers. And Kismet spoke once more.
“This isn’t how you die Detective Lane. Not today.
But we’ll be seeing you again soon”
“Can’t wait” I replied sarcastically. The Director had turned and was walking towards the monstrous fence. I called out to her.
“Elizabeth.
I’m curious.
What would Katherine make of all this?
And you? This the way you wanted to change the world? You must be just…so happy with the kind of films you’re making now”
The Director was as silent as she had ever been. But her body language had changed ever so slightly. Even with those fancy clothes and that blank mask there was rage there. A white hot rage.
“You should be careful.
You’re not as smart as you think you are detective” Kismet said. And then for just a moment it was like the world went out of focus.
And when it returned the fence, the cameras and Kismet and the Director were gone. And it was once just me, Candace and our lone vehicle on this empty stretch of road. The only trace of what had been that remained was the sickly scent of those tortured and twisting bodies that lingered on the breeze.

submitted by SamanthaR29 to DrCreepensVault [link] [comments]

2020.09.08 20:21 eightysushis What two authors would you like to combine?

Perhaps the most obvious fantasy combination would be: Brandon Sanderson + Joe Abercrombie
Writing attributes would include:

Top-tier characterization and dialog (perhaps one of Brandon's few weaker points)
Top-tier world building (Abercrombie's First Law world is fleshed out due to the number of books, but Sanderson's skill here is on another level)
Series-wide (or universe-wide, even) plot planning (I'm very excited to see how Abercrombie's newest trilogy looks after being outlined before writing—Sanderson has been doing this for ages)
Gritty, visceral fight scenes (Abercrombie's specialty) that are also epic and cinematic (Sanderson's forte)
Creative writing structures (e.g. death baton POV chapter in the Heroes) with extra book content (e.g. maps, illustrations, epitaphs in Stormlight)
An interesting tug-of-war between hopeful, good vs. evil stories tempered with ironic grimdark and morally gray characters.
Steven Pacey + Kate Reading audio combo
The strangest social media presence: snarky, sarcastic tone that also is hyper fan-focused, with frequent progress updates and world-building answers.

submitted by eightysushis to Fantasy [link] [comments]

2020.07.02 21:54 Verastahl Don’t ever play the mirror game called “Billy the Bouncing Butcher”.

I heard about it through a guy at work. I worked as a college intern at a medium-sized brokerage firm at the time, and one of the junior executives—Tommy—had taken me under his wing as a gopher and goof-off buddy when he wanted to take a break and blow off steam. One day we were talking about stupid games we’d played as a kid.
I’d told him about playing Mercy and Rock Duel (which was basically Mercy with thrown rocks). He told me about a game his cousins had gotten him to try one time when he was staying with them. It was called Billy the Bouncing Butcher. He said it involved mirrors and saying some chant until something “scary” happened. When I pointed out that it sounded like a rip-off of Bloody Mary, he’d just shrugged and gave a weird laugh. He told me he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think it was like that. You weren’t supposed to see a ghost or anything. It was something worse.
When I asked him what was supposed to happen then, he looked embarrassed. That was weird. Tommy was a nice-enough guy, but he was a super Type-A, man’s man type, or at least that’s the image he wanted to present. This was the first time I’d seen him be anything other than serious or sarcastically goofy, and seeing his carefully-crafted mask slip for a minute to show uncertainty and shame…well, it got my attention.
After a moment of contemplative silence, he’d shrugged again. “To be honest, I really don’t know. I was with them when we set everything up, but as soon as they started saying the words, I got scared and ran out of the room. They were laughing at me, but I guess they were committed after all that work, because they stayed in and finished it. They weren’t laughing when they got done. I was pissed and embarrassed, but I was curious too. I asked them that night what had happened, but they wouldn’t say. Tried to joke that I didn’t get to know when I was too chicken to stay. But they seemed weird. Scared even.” He shook his head. “I went back home the next day, and I never found out if anything really happened or if it was just bullshit.”
I almost laughed and told him I had the answer—it was bullshit. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or piss him off, so instead I silently nodded as a new idea crept into my head. My girlfriend Carla simultaneously hated and loved creepy things. And I thought I remembered her saying once that’d she’d never played Bloody Mary as a kid because it spooked her so much. I knew it was a gamble, as she might just get pissed or refuse to play, but if I could get her to try out Tommy’s weird knock-off game, we might have fun or at least get a good laugh out of it.
So I pressed Tommy for details. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and for a second I thought he was going to refuse or say he didn’t remember, but then he shrugged again and told me what they had done.
It takes at least eight mirrors. That’s probably one reason you don’t hear more about it, right? Who the fuck has eight mirrors? Well, my aunt did. She had a big house, and almost every room was filled with all kinds of shit. It only took us like an hour to find eight good-sized mirrors and sneak them all into one of the back rooms that had been emptied for recarpeting or something the next week. We’d gotten the mirrors in the room and shut the door without anyone seeing, but that was the easy part. The hard part was getting the mirrors set up right.
You kind of make a circle with the mirrors, but they have to be angled so that each mirror reflects at least two other mirrors and at least part of the center of the circle, because that’s where we were supposed to be. The idea is, if you get it right, you can see your reflections in the mirrors and the reflections of those reflections and so on, stretching out farther than you can see. When we were satisfied with that, we went into the middle and stood back to back, facing out toward the mirrors. Then they said we had to say this rhyme together until something changed.
Trying to get every detail, I asked him did he remember the phrase. Frowning at me, he shook his head. “Shit, Cody. That was like thirty years ago. It was something spooky-sounding to a ten-year old I guess.” His gaze had shifted away from mine, and I suddenly felt sure he was lying about not remembering. I was going to let it go, but he went on. “I don’t know. It was something like…” His eyes snapped back to mine. “Come to me. Come to me. You are invited by word and deed. Come to me. Come to me. By this offering will you be freed. Come to me. Come to me. Wards are mist and chains are rust, for there is only one of us.”
I burst out laughing. “Dude, that’s fucking awesome! You really had me going. Very creepy. My girl is going to shit her p…” But Tommy was already standing up with a frown.
“Got to go, man. I…I have a phone conference in ten. Check you later.” And then he was hustling down the hall toward his office.
I should have thought it was stranger than I did. But I was young and dumb, and I assumed Tommy was just playing it up, being dramatic, because that’s the kind of shit he did. Anything for a laugh or to look cool. And it was cool. I hadn’t been lying. Carla was going to lose her shit.
I didn’t mention it to her that night or the next. By the weekend, I’d already bought four mirrors for fifty bucks from a pawn shop downtown and borrowed three more from my sister’s store. With the one I had hanging on my closet, I had just enough. Setting them up was a giant pain in the ass—it was hard to get the angles just right. But by the time Carla came over for what she thought was dinner and a movie, everything was ready.
To my surprise, she was gung ho from the beginning. I could tell she was a bit nervous about it, but I think she thought it was really sweet that I’d gone to so much trouble to set it up, and like I’ve said, she really liked creepy stuff, even when it freaked her out a bit. I told her Tommy’s story, including the phrase I’d written down as soon as he’d left the breakroom that day. I’d written it down on a slip of paper for both of us so we wouldn’t mess it up. I told myself my attention to detail was just because it was all cool and creepy as it was, and if I changed it, I would just fuck it up.
Because it was all made up. Kids’ game bullshit. The words were just spooky nonsense. I didn’t really think anything would happen, so I wasn’t seriously worried about making sure I got it right.
Right?
We stood back to back in the circle of mirrors. Initially I was going to just have candles burning for extra creep factor, but it was too dark. Candles don’t brighten up the dark like they do in movies, and I finally decided to turn on a corner lamp to give us enough light to read our papers and see into the shadowy mirrors.
Our reflected selves stretched on forever. Despite being pressed against her back, I could see Carla’s excited expression doubled and redoubled just like I could see my own. Focusing on one of my faces, I asked her if she was ready to start. Letting out a nervous laugh, she said she was. So we began.
“Come to me. Come to me. You are invited by word and deed. Come to me. Come to me. By this offering will you be freed. Come to me. Come to me. Wards are mist and chains are rust, for there is only one of us.” We stumbled over the words this first time, the phrases a discordant jumble as we both shifted speed trying to match the other.
“Come to me. Come to me. You are invited by word and deed. Come to me. Come to me. By this offering will you be freed. Come to me. Come to me. Wards are mist and chains are rust, for there is only one of us.” We were in unison now, and I focused on the paper to make sure I didn’t make a mistake to throw us off again.
“Come to me. Come to me. You are invited by word and deed. Come to me. Come to me. By this offering will you be freed. Come to me. Come to me. Wards are mist and chains are rust, for there is only one of us.” We were in the rhythm now, and while I didn’t have the words fully memorized, I felt comfortable enough that I lifted my eyes back to one of my reflections. The one I’d focused on before. The one where I could see my face and behind that, the back of Carla’s head.
Except there were two faces staring at me now.
In that reflection, Carla’s face was turned to face the same direction. I had a moment of unreality where I assumed she must have turned around even though I could still feel her back pressed against mine. But then my gaze wandered to the other reflections, and all of them were the same as they had been. I should have stepped away then, or at the very least stopped or stumbled over the words, but somehow I didn’t. The chant kept flowing from me as if pulled from my core on an invisible string, and as I looked back at the wrong reflection, I saw that the mirror Carla was smiling at me. Smiling at me as she started to shake and shudder, bounce and twist, despite the fact I could feel Carla’s stillness behind me as we continued to chant.
And then, as the thing in the mirror’s smile widened further and its up and down motions sped to a blur, it was suddenly gone.
It was as though a spell had been broken. The reflections looked normal again, and this time when I tried to stop speaking, it worked. I turned to Carla and found her looking at me with a combination of amusement and disappointment.
“Getting bored already?”
I smiled at her, almost blurting out what I saw, or what I thought I’d saw. But that was stupid, right? It had all happened fast, and if it had been real, wouldn’t she have seen something too? I knew she loved me, but we hadn’t been dating so long that I wanted to risk making her think I was a nutjob over something that couldn’t have possibly happened in the first place. Or that I was so spineless that I actually got scared by a kids’ game.
So I just nodded and returned her smile. “Yeah, sorry. It’s kind of lame. You cool with us giving up?”
She leaned forward and kissed me. “Sure. And it wasn’t lame. It was cool.” She laughed. “And a little spooky. For a second, I thought I saw something move and it freaked me out. Weird how the mind works.”
I grinned, feeling relief. “Yeah, me too. I guess we just spooked ourselves.”
Two weeks later, Carla was dead.
She lived in a nice condo on the north side of town—one of those places with two pools and security guards at the gate. The police claimed they talked to everyone, reviewed all the security footage. They said they had no idea how someone had gotten into her locked apartment, disabled her alarm, and butchered her in her own bed.
I’m not saying they didn’t do a good investigation. Maybe they did, I don’t know. What I do know is that they questioned me three times, and each time it felt more and more like I was a suspect rather than a grieving boyfriend. Then the interviews suddenly stopped. Two weeks went by without any word. Finally I called the main detective, a woman named Everly, and asked her if they’d made any progress.
I could hear her reluctance to talk to me over the phone, and at first I figured it was because they still suspected me. But then she was apologizing. Told me she knew they’d been hard on me, but it was because they didn’t have many leads, and the one lead they did have had pointed towards me. That they’d finally managed to get my phone’s GPS records and then confirmed through my office’s security that I’d been working late with Tommy on the night Carla was killed. That was why they hadn’t been in touch any more after that last interview, though she was sorry to say there were no new leads so far. Stomach clenching, I asked her what about the lead they already had? What had made them suspect me in the first place?
She said that the alarm in Carla’s condo had been disabled with the code, and that based on their investigation, aside from Carla, I was the only other person who knew the code, at least locally. Since there were no signs of a struggle and it appeared that Carla had been murdered in her sleep, it seemed unlikely that she had disabled the alarm herself to let the killer in. That meant that someone else that knew the code had gotten into her apartment, disabled the alarm, and then crept back to her bedroom where they murdered her.
I was confused by the logic. I pointed out that maybe she never set the alarm in the first place, or she’d let someone in earlier, gone to bed, and then they had killed her. I didn’t want to think that she’d cheat on me, but what if she’d been seeing someone else and they’d decided to kill her while she slept. Maybe she was breaking it off with them because she really loved…
Det. Everly broke in, explaining that while the killer might be some jilted lover, they knew when the alarm had been turned on and turned back off. The system was in every condo, and they were all linked to a secure server that was monitored and controlled by an alarm company in Arizona. They had logs of every key press, as well as every time Carla’s system had been armed or turned off. On that night, Everly said, the alarm had been set just after ten o’clock and had been turned back off less than half an hour later. Around the same time, she added, they could put me walking to my car from the office some twenty miles away.
“Again, I’m sorry. I know you probably think we were just being assholes. But so often its someone the victim knows, and you were the only one with access—not even the condo manager has the code. So unless someone from the security company decided to drive a thousand miles to murder a random stranger, which we actually looked into, by the way, we don’t know how the alarm got turned back off.”
I could feel my palm sweating against the back of the phone. It had been over a month since I got the call that Carla had been murdered, and talking or thinking about it still sent me spiraling toward either a panic attack or a teary breakdown. But I wanted to understand, to help them understand if it could help catch her killer. “But maybe you’re wrong about her being asleep. Maybe she let them in. It could be someone she knew.”
The detective was quiet a moment before letting out a small sigh. “Maybe, yeah. We can’t say for sure. But it still seems weird to me.”
“Weird that she wasn’t asleep? I mean how can…”
“No, not that. The code. The security company, the records they sent, they show that when the alarm was disabled, there was one invalid attempt before the right code was put in. That by itself isn’t that big a deal, but it was how the code was entered that stands out to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when someone knows a code and they misenter it, they usually either hit one wrong button, swap two numbers, or put in something entirely different—putting in your PIN number instead of the alarm code, something like that. I’ve looked through all the alarm code entries for Carla’s apartment going back six months, which is as far as they keep that kind of thing. There were a couple of times where the wrong code was entered, but it was just one digit that was wrong. The same digit every time. I figured out what that probably was. Her alarm code was 1681, and the last four digits of her social were 1651. But other than that, the right code was always entered every time until the night she was murdered.”
I felt myself twisting tighter and tighter with tension as she spoke, some unknown dread blooming in my belly like a dark and toxic flower that was nourished by her words. “Please, just tell me. What was special about the wrong code then?”
She gave a short bark of a laugh. “Sorry, I get lost in it sometimes. No, all I meant was that the code, the wrong code that was entered before the right one, was different than the others or what I’d expect to see. Because it was the right code. In reverse. Instead of 1681, someone put in 1861. Then ten seconds later, just before the alarm would have started going, they put it in right.” Everly let out a longer sigh. “I’m sorry I don’t have better news or more to tell you. But trust me, I’m going to keep working on it until we get whoever did this to her.”
They never did. And eight years later, I had largely moved on. There was still a hole in me from where I’d lost Carla—not only as I knew her, but as I imagined our lives might be if we’d stayed together long-term. But if time doesn’t heal, it at least gives you scars. Patches of unfeeling callous that make it easier to not dwell on the pieces you’ve lost along the way. I still miss Carla, and while I occasionally date, its always half-hearted. My sister says I sabotage any chance I have of finding anyone, of really being happy. That I have to stop blaming myself for something terrible that happened that wasn’t my fault. Maybe she’s right.
But I’m not so sure.
Because yesterday, I got into an elevator at my company’s brand-new building in London. The same company where I’d worked with Tommy some four thousand miles away and at least one lifetime ago. I haven’t heard from him in years, and when I tried to find him in the company directory yesterday afternoon, he’s no longer listed. But that was after the elevator, and even if I found him, I don’t know that it would make any difference.
Because as I stepped into the new elevator for the first time, I realized that I was in a box made of mirrors—highly polished chrome framed mirrors along each wall of the elevator car as well as the closing doors themselves. Immediately my mind flashed back to the night with Carla, back pressed up against her as I stared at my doubled and re-doubled reflection stretching away toward some unknown destination. Just like that night, I could see an infinite number of selves all connected to each other and to me. All of them terrible in their similarities and slight variations of appearance and angle.
All except one.
Among them all, I could see one reflection that moved when I did not. That was occupied by not only my own staring figure, but a second one as well. A dark shape that cradled the face that wasn’t my face and whispered in my ear that was not my own.
It was Carla. Or something with her shape. The sight of her made me gasp, and I would have turned to try and find her if I wasn’t frozen to the spot. She looked the same as I remembered her…at least mostly. Her face and chest were speckled with black and maroon flecks of dirt or blood, and the hand that stroked the cheek of my other had ragged, yellow nails that scraped at his skin. He didn’t seem to notice or mind. His focus was as intent on me as I was on him. I would have said it was just reflecting my gaze, except he was nodding his head at her silent words.
She broke off to look at me as they both began to smile. I glanced at the floor number above the doors—two more to go and then I could get out of there. Looking back at them, I saw they had begun twisting and jumping, their images bouncing more and more as they…
And then they were gone.
I had just a moment to stare into the empty place my reflection should have been and then the doors slid open. Gasping for air, I stumbled to my office and locked the door, hiding in there most of the day before taking the stairs back down to my car.
I’m getting on a plane in twenty minutes to fly back home, if I make it that far. The planning and the motion of running, of trying to hide or fight, it makes me feel a bit better, or at least distracts me. I’m staying in crowds, hoping that whatever is hunting me can’t or won’t attack me in public.
But I have no illusions of winning or really getting away. I don’t understand what this is or how to fight it, if it even can be fought. So I write this down more as a warning for others, and maybe an epitaph for myself. So I’ll end with this:
Don’t play this game or anything similar. You may think it sounds like a fun dare, but its not. You may think its all a joke, but its not. I can’t make you believe me, and I understand by telling about it, I risk making it worse, but this didn’t start with me, so I have no reason to think it would stop whether I write this or not. So take this for what it is. An earnest warning from a dead man.
And if you don’t listen to it?
Well, you only have yourself to blame.

submitted by Verastahl to nosleep [link] [comments]

2020.06.10 15:53 undulose Personal reviews of Parts 4-6

When people said JJBA gets better by every succeeding part, I didn't get it. But after reading/watching these 3 parts, I can say they spoke an understatement. Never had I read/watch a manga that's so refreshing in every arc but at the same time being brilliant in its own way.
4 - Diamond Is Unbreakable
I admit I'm not a fan of slice-of-life mangas except for Great Teacher Onizuka. Still, I recognized why some people say they like it better than other parts. I will admit that this was written better.
The 'slice-of-life' ambience has been neatly established in the first half of the episode; the neighborhood, the school, the villainous citizens who sometimes become allies, etc. But with subtletly, DiU becomes more plot-centric as we reach the central episode--the introduction of Kira and his stand. By this time, the previous slice-of-life episodes becomes more relevant, like Shigechi's, Cinderella's, etc. Araki was good in this subtle plot device; it was like writing a good plot twist wherein you lay out the bread crumbs to the audience before that brilliant reveal.
The characters are more diverse and were explored deeper than in previous parts. One of the factors that supported that is the fact that most villains have different motives, unlike in SDC wherein every villain was Dio's henchman. This also allows for better character development, as some of the villains become allies. I think Araki improved on character episodes.
And god, is there a better fleshed-out antagonists than Yoshikage Kira? That man's on the level of being one of my favorite villains, and that's even if DiU is not my favorite part. Anyway, the Morioh stand users learned to set aside their differences because everyone wanted to live peacefully in their town.
With a vision of doing something differently per story, Araki built up the ending in a unique way, and I think his writing really improved. Yes, there is again the time element, but it was done differently and even with Hayato's help.
Another thing that was done differently was the color palette of the environment. It was so refreshing and established a jolly ambience to the series. The soundtrack is still good (Morioh radio!) and it shows how Yugo Kanno can be flexible in doing tracks. Kira's theme was not outright bad-ass but it had hints of mystery, comedy and childishness.
I think the weirdness of character designs were toned down in this one. Of course, almost everyone has his/her uniform or a normal clothing. It's just Josuke's jacket and hairstyle that stands out; but I think Jotaro's SDC design (a hat blending into his hair) is still more original and better. Rohan might win the weirdest DiU character design, but I also like how Koichi's hair changes. Kira's design is understandable since he doesn't want to stand out.
5 - Vento Aureo
Vento Aureo is as golden as its title. It was good that some of the spoilers I stumbled upon only told that this is a Mafia story. By the end I realized there was more to it than being Mafia.
The Mafia ambience was delivered well--in the first-half missions, in the second-half 'go to Sardinia while being pursued by the boss and his allies'. The dangerous tones carried out even towards the fights.
As for the theme, I identified two themes. The first was determination DESPITE OF circumstance. Every one of Bucciarati's squad members had ugly backgrounds. But what united them was their loyalty to Bucciarati. They believed Bucciarati is good and therefore, worthy of rising up the ranks. This was in contrast to Diavolo who, despite having a lucky childhood, remained passive by having Epitaph lead him the way. It was active defiance versus passive reliance. (Also take note that even Trish is included in this theme).
The second theme was importance of team solidarity. The protagonist, Giorno, was set back to a supportive role; even his dream was only said a few times. But even so, it helped flesh out Bucciarati's comrades. He was a crucial guide to the gang; this is why Bucciarati listened to his observations and advices. I would also summarize this as a story about Bucciarati's gang rather than Giorno alone because it really is that; everyone, even Trish, contributed to the defeat of Diavolo. And lastly, even the villains had some team synergy written into them, like Prosciutto and Pesci.
The build up to the ending was so different, yet it remains to be my favorite so far. It was not about defeating the boss solely; it was about the themes. This is why Bucciarati died in the manliest, most cunning way possible. This is why Diavolo's death was more about Giorno being overpowered (actually, they had been trying to outwit him since they went to the Coliseum.) This is why the intermission of Sleeping Slaves was so fucking epic and goosebumps-material.
Art is still so different, especially the faces, which are drawn in a more over-the-top gross manner. It didn't dissuade me from watching though because I was actually looking for something different. Besides, the story more than makes up for it.
Character designs are weirder than ever. The donut shaped of Giorno's head and his pink longsleeves with holes in his chest are probably the weirdest among the JoJo's so far. You also have Mista's weird arrowhead hoodie and Trish's puffy hair and half-skirt. The list of weird VA character designs is really long but apart from the one's I've already mentioned, Risotto would probably be among my favorites.
Lastly, soundtrack is still phenomenal. JoJo!!! Golden Wind!!! The other tracks were also good like Narancia's theme.
6 - Stone Ocean
When I thought it couldn't get any better, the last chapter of Stone Ocean gave me more goosebumps than when I finished reading VA. I said VA's ending was my favorite, but I was writing this review while reading/watching through the series. Now SO definitely had the best ending for me.
Contrary to popular taste, I like the prison environment; I like psychology mangas like Kaiji and One Outs wherein a lot of deception is involved. It felt less cutthroat compared to VA but the danger is still there.
I think there are at least three major themes to be discussed. The first one is the idea of 'heaven' which is translated to happiness, which is for humans to have a resolve towards their action. As a Christian priest, Pucci's goal is towards the attainment of heaven. He glorified Dio because their first meeting felt like a miracle; his toes were healed. This felt like a Christian urban legend wherein a demon was performing apparitions of Mother Mary to people and performing miracles. Sarcastically, Pucci was also a character who had a Messiah complex.
The idea of heaven in SO was also absurd and something I have never encountered despite being a bookworm and an anime/movie enthusiast. I gave it high points for the sake of novelty. I couldn't help but think that Pucci's goal may have been something really fulfilling, or would we be still victims by different circumstances if we are to avoid doing the mistakes of our previous timeline?
The second theme is probably fate, but not in the way it was presented in VA. This was spread since the beginning (Jolyne having the Joestar bloodline, Pucci being Dio's confidant) and further intensifies during the ending. In SO, Pucci believed that fate was something that is uncontrollable, and that man has no control over it. Thus, people should not defy it. This belief strengthened his messiah complex, although the events really made him achieve his goal for a brief time.
The third theme is memories. It's probably presented with subtlety; Jolyne having memories of Jotaro's father during times of need, White Snake's ability to capture memories, Foo Fighter's memories of the gang which would have been replaced if its Stand ability is given to another plankton, and Emporio's memories that remembered the original gang. It was their memories that made him cry in the ending. And even Pucci's plan hinged on people retaining their memories towards the second universe.
Speaking of memories, Araki made us experience an ending that is bittersweet not because he killed the main characters, but because he altered their lives. Irene is no Jolyne, Anakiss is no Anasui, and so on. But our memories of the original characters are still intact.
Characters also have interesting stories like in VA. We even have a suicidal villain this time. That actually gripped me hard. Pucci's and Weather Report's stories also deserve mentioning, as the younger Pucci continued to deeply ask the 'why's' of everything that has happened, which is tied to one of the main themes. Then he acted on his own, the earliest manifestation of his messiah complex.
For the nth time, character designs are still weird; only VA can be weirder. I like Jolyne's hairstyle, having two different colors and braided in a Minnie-Mouse style. Her dark navy blue uniform and everything about her just screams badass. Weather Report's hair that resembles a wool hat, Pucci's interwoven eyebrows and facial hair and the Son of Dio in a cow-suit are among my favorites.
As far as Araki's nerdiness goes, it just goes better. The facts are still there and feels surprising; sometimes it feels like I'm reading a science fiction book. And because of a good background on facts, the Stand battles seems to be well thought off.
Of course, I can't wait for its animation, but I'll be reading 7 and 8; I hope they would still be better. :)

submitted by undulose to StardustCrusaders [link] [comments]

2019.11.04 19:56 ashhtreeee 50 life lessons from an 80 yr old man. (For some reasons #14 stuck with me)

1 Don’t expect life to be fair. It was biased and it will be.
2 Remember 80% of the success in any job is based on your ability to deal with people.
3 Wave at the children on school bus.
4 Compliment the meal when you’re a guest in someone’s home.
5 Count your blessings.
6 Marry only for love.
7 Become someone’s hero.
8 Make someone’s day by paying the toll for the person in the car behind you.
9 Send your loved ones flowers. Think of a reason later.
10 Show respect for everyone who works for their living, regardless how trivial their job.
11 Keep a notepad and pencil on your bed side table. Million dollar ideas sometimes strike at 3 A.M.
12 Answer the phone with energy and enthusiasm in your voice.
13 Send a lot of valentine cards. Sign them. ‘Someone who thinks you are terrific’.
14 Once in a while, take a scenic route.
15 Begin each day with some of your favorite music.
16 Visit friends and relatives when they are in hospital. You need only stay a few minutes.
17 Take charge for your attitude. Let no one choose it for you.
18 Remember no one makes it alone. Have a grateful heart and be quick to acknowledge those who helped you.
19 Never waste an opportunity to tell people you love them.
20 Be bold and courageous. When you look back on life, you will regret the things you didn’t do more than you did.
21 Live your life so that your epitaph could read. No regrets.
22 Don’t burn bridges. You will be surprised how many times you have to cross the same river again.
23 Beware of the person who has nothing to lose.
24 Keep it simple.
25 Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.
26 When someone hugs you, let them be the first person to leave you.
27 Have a firm handshake.
28 Look people in the eye.
29 Sing in the shower.
30 Own a great stereo system.
31 If in a fight, hit first and hit hard.
32 Keep secrets.
33 Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day.
34 Always accept an outstretched hand.
35 Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
36 Whistle.
37 Avoid sarcastic remarks.
38 Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90% of all your happiness and misery.
39 Make it a habit to do nice things for people who will never find out.
40 Lend only those books you never care to see again.
41 Never deprive someone of hope. It might be all that they have.
42 When playing games with children, let them win.
43 Give people a second chance, but not a third.
44 Be romantic.
45 Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.
46 Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life-death matters, nothing is as important as it seems.
47 Don’t allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It’s there for our convenience, not the caller’s.
48 Be a good loser.
49 Be a good winner.
50 Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.
EDIT 4 REALS THIS TIME: i am 27 my.name is Ashley my fav Pokemon is Blastoise and I am 6 ft. Tall. Not 80 years old. Guess i could have made that more clear earlier. i am very blessed to see that this has really made some people happy and thinkin all kinds of controversials. I mean, thats the point. Some old man in a book said these things probably because he made a few mistakes through trial and error and wants to help others. Furthermore, that being said, thats why I posted it. For those upset site the source. I found it on ifunny.com. it came with no url because the internet is a free for all. Its bound to happen that 1 out 4 people disagree for any reason for any topic. Its human nature. i do not know where it came before that. I love those who know exactly where it came from already who sharing! Thats good.

submitted by ashhtreeee to DecidingToBeBetter [link] [comments]

2019.10.19 16:13 DungeonessSpit The 50 best albums of the 80s

50: MINUTEMEN - WHAT MAKES A MAN START FIRES?
I wrote another one of these that had some problems, so I decided to correct it. Narrowing this down to just fifty albums was excruciating for me. There is so, so much great music from the 80s that I wanted to make a top hundred (or more) but alas, that is too many characters for one Reddit post. As a result, every album here is one I love dearly. So without further ado, I'll get into it. To me, the 80s were the last decade to feature massive amounts of innovation. Sure new genres appeared in the 90s, but nothing as significant as electronic music turning into pop or hip hop entering the mainstream. And while the Minutemen are absolutely popular among music fans, they're overlooked when it comes to their originality. Some fools would assume that longer songs tend to be more complex and better, but the Minutemen say fuck that and add complexity by coming up with phenomenal melodies, only using them for a minute and a half while still fully developing the song, and then storming into the next energetic burst of a song. Most are going to point you to the nearly as good Double Nickels on the Dime but What Makes a Man Start Fires? is where they do what they do best... the best.
49: PIXIES - COME ON PILGRIM
I guess I've always associated alternative rock with a certain type of blandness, and the Pixies are often considered to be among the pioneers of modern "alternative" rock (their quiet / loud dynamic would be quite popular among grunge bands). However, I've always felt that there's something that separates the Pixies from their countless imitators. Could be their occasional bursts into noise rock, or maybe Black's unique voice and outlandish lyrics involving sci-fi and lots of incest. Anyway, I like my Pixies raw, noisy, and energetic; and they never elucidate these qualities more than on their debut EP Come on Pilgrim, composed of demos recorded in 1987. But for demos, these are all crisp and fully developed songs, especially the instantly catchy "The Holiday Song," and the folkish "Nimrod's Son."
48: GLENN BRANCA - THE ASCENSION
The Ascension is a no wave album by modern classical composer Glenn Branca... and it sounds like what you'd expect: an intense symphony of angry distorted guitars. With it being a rock album that completely ignores traditional rock structures, it would certainly be an influence on future post-rock and it uniquely explored the possibilities that several guitars present in a way that hadn't been done.
47: JULEE CRUISE - FLOATING INTO THE NIGHT
Written by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti and sung perfectly by the ethereal voiced Julee Cruise; the jazzy dream pop of Floating into the Night is so cinematic that it almost feels like it'd be better fitted for a list of the best 80s movies. And of course that's intended, as most of these songs have been used in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. Above all else, it's an experience, and life becomes a nostalgic 80s movie during it.
46: KING SUNNY ADÉ - JUJU MUSIC
Juju Music is such a calm, beautiful and transcendent album. It's really quite simple and has lyrics that I obviously don't understand, but whenever I feel exhausted I can just put this on and feel at peace for a bit. The musicianship is phenomenal in every aspect, with soothing slide guitars, calming, rhythmic talking drums, and King Sunny Adé's gentle voice. It's hard to ever get tired of.
45: TALKING HEADS - REMAIN IN LIGHT
Other than making the second greatest song of the 80s on Speaking in Tongues (you know which one), Remain in Light would be the last spark of greatness from the Talking Heads, and it shows them with loads of confidence, going full force into the new wave / Afrobeat experiments that were hinted at on Fear of Music. It gets weirder as it goes on which, expectedly, means that it peaks directly in the middle with "Once in a Lifetime."
44: PAUL MCCARTNEY - MCCARTNEY II
McCartney II is an album that surprised me, simply because I didn't expect that Paul McCartney would be making good music into the 80s. But not only is this good, it's also very adventurous. It's a spiritual successor to Paul's offbeat debut McCartney, and it's filled with everything from hazy blues rock to ahead-of-their-time experimental electronic instrumentals that sound like Japanese video game music. And it's all upbeat, catchy, and occasionally even life affirming. Though it was dismissed by critics upon its release for being "novelty music" it's now clear the strong influence it's had upon the indie pop of today. Paul's the best Beatle by the way.
43: HÜSKER DÜ - NEW DAY RISING
After the noisy double LP concept album Zen Arcade (which was instrumental in the development of post-hardcore), Hüsker Dü turned towards more melodic power pop that would be a bigger influence on future alternative rock. But here there's just as much energy and better songwriting, and it's still raw as fuck. Is there any love song more perfect and nostalgic than "Books About UFOs"?
42: KATE BUSH - HOUNDS OF LOVE
After the less conventional and commerically unsuccessful The Dreaming Kate Bush came back with her best and most successful album. It opens with Bush's best song, the goosebump-evoking "Running Up That Hill" and it doesn't let up after that, with its cold, epic atmosphere carrying it through memorable experiments in prog pop, ambient pop, and Celtic folk.
41: NURSE WITH WOUND - SOLILOQUY FOR LILITH
Admittedly, I'm not a big drone fan, so for a drone piece to catch me it has to have a stellar atmosphere. And Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy for Lilith succeeds at that better than anything else. The album was intended to be a lot more monotonous than it wound up being; due to malfunctioning equipment, when Stephen Stapleton moved when near the peddles, subtle changes would occur, giving it a feeling of eeriness unlike anything else. Listening to Soliloquy for Lilith is like letting an ominous, futuristic wave of cold air wash over you as you plunge into darkness and let your mind wander. The dark ambient album against which all others should be judged. One note for seventeen minutes never sounded so good (side note: holy shit that album cover is cool).
40: THE BLUE NILE - HATS
Painstakingly perfected over the course of five years, the Blue Nile's Hats is a masterpiece of sophisto-pop. Nothing is wasted, every synth that washes over you and every horn you hear is perfect. Despite every song except one being in the five to seven minute range, there isn't a single song that feels too long; they're all drenched in a cinematic atmosphere that you almost wish would never end. The lyrics are simple yet strongly relatable and evocative and the singing is as passionate and sincere as it gets. Recalls Roxy Music's Avalon, which could never be a bad thing.
39: SWELL MAPS - JANE FROM OCCUPIED EUROPE
Distorted vocals, random bits of free jazz, hectic and claustrophobic guitar work, and rhythmic repetitive drums are the essence of Jane from Occupied Europe. Rather than soothing their post-punk with dub as many bands did, Swell Maps instead looked to musique concrète and krautrock for a chaotic, ear-splitting mess. It sounds like being awake for three days.
38: CELTIC FROST - MORBID TALES
Tom G. Warrior had already pioneered his blend of black metal and thrash metal with his previous band Hellhammer, but with his next band's debut EP he perfected it and created metal's masterpiece. With more thrash and less murkiness than Hellhammer, Morbid Tales packs a punch of insane energy and Tom's deep vocals fit amazingly; and it even reaches the avant-garde. Thankfully nobody can understand shit Tom says, saving it from the corny lyrics typically associated with metal.
37: JOHN ZORN - NAKED CITY
Ever wanted to hear a noise rock version of the Bond theme with random bursts into free jazz - and have it somehow be better than the original? Naked City has you covered. Ever wanted to hear a country song suddenly turn into a grindcore song? Naked City has you covered. Ever wanted to hear vocals from a demon? Naked City has you covered. Jazz still had room to evolve in the 80s, and Naked City had it covered. If you ever wanted your punks to be trained jazz musicians, your days of waiting are over.
36: PINK FLOYD - THE FINAL CUT
Due to the overwhelming control Roger Waters had exerted over this album, he was kicked from the band, but he still managed to send out one last defining statement before Pink Floyd would crumble without him. Originally intended as additional tracks for The Wall, The Final Cut soon became a fully fledged anti-war concept album. It's slow and minimalistic but the lyrics really shine here. For the first time, the entirety of the writing was handled by Waters and he's also the lead singer on every track. He ain't the world's best singer, but this is easily the most passionate Pink Floyd album. Gilmour worshippers aren't ever gonna get it.
35: TELEVISION PERSONALITIES - AND DON'T THE KIDS JUST LOVE IT
And Don't the Kids Just Love It almost sounds like the Television Personalities heard "David Watts" by the Kinks and decided they'd make an entire band based on it... and that's a good thing, because I happen to like that song. Normally, cutesy twee pop isn't my thing, but it's done masterfully here when mixed with energetic post-punk and witty, innocent, relatable, and often hilarious lyrics. An unabashedly British summery gem.
34: NICK CAVE - THE FIRSTBORN IS DEAD
The Firstborn Is Dead sounds like it's being performed by a few outlaws in a rural bar in the south during a thunderstorm. On Cave's second album he makes his first step into the dark, intense punk blues that he'd stick with for a long while. Its crime-heavy atmosphere would be corny if it wasn't so damn convincing - who else could turn simple Bob Dylan and John Lee Hooker songs into some of the most badass songs ever made?
33: THE SMITHS - HATFUL OF HOLLOW
Like many British bands then, the Smiths didn't include their singles on their albums. Their second album, Hatful of Hollow, compiles all of their singles up to that point, all of their B-sides, live versions of the six best songs from the debut (all of which are remarkable improvements over the versions on The Smiths), and five new songs. Great listen all the way through and contains many of their very best songs as well as some of Morrissey's wittiest lyrics.
32: MIDNIGHT OIL - DIESEL AND DUST
Sometimes I find it a bit odd that out of the few 80s Australian bands to achieve massive success in the U.S., Midnight Oil was one of them - an absurdly political band with the most nasally vocalist you're ever gonna hear. Then again, it's also not hard to understand why this was so successful, as every song is delivered with passion and has an A grade melody and thoughtful lyrics. Midnight Oil made many good albums, but Diesel and Dust was their best. It took what they were known for - their politics (both environmental and social) - and gave them some of the catchiest music they'd made. Unless there's someone I'm forgetting, this is the greatest Australian album of all time.
31: FELA KUTI - COFFIN FOR HEAD OF STATE
The title tells you what you're in for. Musically, it's as warm and inviting as Fela has ever been, but lyrically it's by far his most angry. Following his protest album Zombie (which accused the Nigerian military of being mindless zombies) the Nigerian military stormed his commune, destroyed it, murdered his mother, and tortured Fela. Yet Fela was still making protest music, now more in your face than ever. The album is only 22 minutes - two songs, one of which being an instrumental - but it manages to leave a strong impression. It settles into an infectious, funky, jazzy groove, and ends with Fela and his singers yelping a somewhat offensive sarcastic prayer, mocking religion.
30: BRIAN ENO & DAVID BYRNE - MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS
Less influential than it was innovative, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a sample based experimental record, taking a strong influence from Afrobeat and injecting the dancey polyrhythms with hyperactive drumming, Eno's lush soundscapes, and samples of unusual religious chants, political talk radio shows, and an exorcism. It's a warm but eerie experience.
29: DAVID BOWIE - SCARY MONSTERS
On Scary Monsters Bowie brings a new wave edge to the art rock sound of his Berlin trilogy, and with the addition of Robert Fripp on guitar, it turns out fantastic. It often sounds like a more conventional King Crimson album with David Bowie behind the mic, which is as perfect as possible. Fripp's guitar work here is so phenomenal that I wouldn't mind if this was two hours long. Unexpectedly, the best song here is "Up the Hill Backwards," in which Bowie's voice is just one of many in an upbeat sing-along.
28: THE MEKONS - FEAR AND WHISKEY
Funny that this album should wind up just above David Bowie, considering that this band made his favorite song of all time. Ya know, country rock reimagined by an unmistakably British 80s band sounds like an awful idea. But the Mekons made it the unforgettable album that birthed alternative country. A concept album about a community struggling to remain joyful during a war, it still brings plenty of bittersweet relatable lyrics and it's jam-packed with memorable melodies. The passionate "It will be all right!" shout on "Last Dance" may be my favorite moment in all of music. From Wilco to Lucinda Williams to Cowboy Junkies, many great artists owe a debt to Fear and Whiskey.
27: TALK TALK - THE COLOUR OF SPRING
Right before they'd reinvent themselves as a post-rock band, Talk Talk made one last crack at pop music, and they do a swell job. On The Colour of Spring they ditch the new wave sound of their first two albums in favor of an art pop sound, mixing sparse acoustic guitar arrangements with synthesizers, and it's pure beauty all the way through. It has easily the best ending of any album ever, as the eight minute closing track "Time It's Time" shakes free of all the melancholy that preceded it in its final two minutes and gives way to the most gorgeous, uplifting melody I've ever heard, as if winter suddenly turned into spring.
26: NEW ORDER - BROTHERHOOD
Brotherhood is split into two sides: side A is post-punk and side B is new wave. Both offer a lot, but if I had to pick a better side it'd be A, with its Cure-esque upbeat post-punk songs like "Paradise," and "Weirdo." But the best song here is on side B. Bernard Sumner was never a lyrical genius, and while "Bizarre Love Triangle" isn't the most complex song ever, it is a lyrical masterpiece. Most songs are lucky to have one great line, but in "Bizarre Love Triangle" every line makes you feel something. And that's not even mentioning the music, which has enough separate melodies to have made several phenomenal songs. There's nothing that gives me an eargasm like that lead in to the chorus or that bass solo at the end. "Bizarre Love Triangle" is the best song of the 80s.
25: BOB MARLEY - UPRISING
Bob Marley's final album was recorded when he had already accepted that he was about to die from cancer, and he gives it his all here. The songs here all show both a sense of poignancy and optimism, as he writes songs about mutually assured destruction, rebellion, and drug addicts turning to prostitution. But perhaps the best thing about Uprising is that Marley was able to close his career (and life) on the timeless, uplifting "Redemption Song." Lucky that he managed to finish things up with what may very well be his very best album and his very best song.
24: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - NEBRASKA
If there are three all time great storytellers in music, then Bruce Springsteen is one of them (I suppose Bob Dylan and Tom Waits are the other two). And his storytelling is never better than on Nebraska, an album that reaches a level of hauntedness that any (insert "dark" genre) band could only wish to achieve. On Nebraska Springsteen strips away all the stadium ready polish of his most well known work in favor of a simple, sparse sound: just him, an acoustic guitar, and a harmonica. All the songs are about working class people and most tell tales of crime in the most humanly manner possible. When Bruce sings "Well I'm tired of comin' out on the losin' end / So honey last night I met this guy and I'm gonna do a little favor for him" on "Atlantic City" you truly feel for this man unlike any other crime related song. Every song is delivered with a sense of empathy in a way that makes it so you can't help but feel for these people. There's the intense "State Trooper" that ends with the startling screams, there's the hopeless optimism of "Mansion on the Hill" and "Reason to Believe," there's the questionable morality of "Highway Patrolman," and then there's the title track, where Bruce even makes you empathize with a serial killer.
23: BLONDIE - AUTOAMERICAN
On Blondie's first album of the 80s they did things a little differently and simply threw everything at the wall to see what would stick, and it all does. They were no longer just a new wave band; here there's jazz pop, disco rap, pop reggae, and even modern classical. It's all a little dorky, but in a charming way. The goofy rapping on "Rapture" is oddly endearing (and man, that bassline), and the many dancey songs are insanely catchy. Dumb pop music doesn't get any better.
22: MEAT PUPPETS - UP ON THE SUN
It stuns me that Up on the Sun came out in 1985, as it sounds like half the popular indie bands of the 90s. For their third album the Meat Puppets totally ditched the punkishness of their early work and instead brought a peaceful, lethargic sound with surreal lyrics of pure fantasy and relatable summery tales of youth, some funky basslines, and the most perfectly fit vocalist in the world. It's gentle, but in a really fucking cool way. There is nothing like it.
21: ROXY MUSIC - AVALON
I can still vividly remember GTA: Vice City. Games have obviously since progressed far beyond what they were in 2002 but no game has yet managed to immerse me in the way Vice City did. And that statement isn't just nostalgia speaking, this game still sucks me in today. A massive part of what made this game so great was the music, because while not all of it was great (in fact, some of it was extraordinarily awful), it all felt so of the time and place that no matter how few pixels there were, you couldn't help but feel like you were there. Roxy Music had two songs on the Vice City airways, both of which are from this album. I can still remember the first time I got out of my pimpin' apartment at night and hopped in the Dodge Dart that was always parked by the stairs and flipped the radio to "EMOTION 98.3" as the song "More Than This" faded in. I had chills as I drove down the GTA equivalent of South Beach, past the pixelated prostitutes and palm trees and illuminated neon buildings. I was so awestruck by the game's and the song's beauty that I wasn't even tempted to run over the pedestrians that were just begging to be flattened. Never before had I felt like I was somewhere else so much. I didn't save the game so that every time I booted it up I could experience the same thing with the same song (don't worry, I eventually beat it). And every time I didn't feel like I was playing a game, but instead felt like I was there, in 1986 Miami. The melody is so perfectly subtle, the kind you could never get sick of, while also being infectious. The chorus is almost anticlimactic in the best way possible. As Bryan Ferry sings "There's nothing more than this" I can't help but agree. If he's talking about love, I'm with him. If he's talking about the fact that those are the only words in the chorus, then yeah, I suppose he's right about that too. The feeling "More Than This" holds is one that carries through the rest of the album. It may not be as arty as their 70s work, but for their last album Bryan Ferry finally dropped his trademark sarcasm and gave way to sincerity here, and it's beautiful. From beginning to end, Avalon is the feeling of romance.
20: THE FALL - HEX ENDUCTION HOUR
The Fall have a fucking massive discography, pumping out album after album, year after year, so it's a bit of a shock that they still managed a few front to back classics. Hex Enduction Hour is the Fall at their rawest, most experimental, and most furious. Initially intended to be their last album, they gave it their all, bringing in a second drummer for a thunderous rhythm section and giving us sixty minutes of music. It's here that Mark E. Smith gets the closest he ever did to his krautrock idols Can on songs like "Iceland;" and slow songs like "Hip Priest" and "Winter" that would've been boring from anybody else are made invigorating with Smith's shouts and cryptic lyrics and the band's sudden explosions into noise rock. Of course I'm glad they continued, but this would've been a hell of a closer.
19: THE POGUES - IF I SHOULD FALL FROM GRACE WITH GOD
"The Turkish Song of the Damned" has the funniest story I've ever heard behind a song, so I'll let Shane tell you it: "'The Turkish Song of the Damned' was a Kraut trying to tell me something and I misheard him. He said 'Have you heard 'The Turkish Song' by The Damned'." Rum Sodomy and the Lash may be the more famous album, but this is the (slightly) better one, even if it took me some time to realize that. The hedonism and energy are greatly lowered, but MacGowan's lyrics are somehow even better here, dealing with more mature themes. It's also more eclectic. Ever wanted to hear a Celtic rock version of big band or Spanish music? You get that here. It certainly wears its heart on its sleeves, but that just makes for some of the best songs ever written. How can the title track or "Fairytale of New York" or "The Broad Majestic Shannon" not make you feel something?
18: XTC - ENGLISH SETTLEMENT
XTC makes their first dip into their arty future on English Settlement, a pleasant mix of new wave and art rock, with a few Afrobeat and juju experiments and many time signatures that aren't common in the world of pop music. It's both their longest and most consistent album, and it provides a plethora of catchy songs that dive into a politics deeper than XTC ever have. "Knuckle Down" may be the most delightfully silly anti-racism song ever made, and it's equally catchy.
17: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - TUNNEL OF LOVE
While Nebraska has his best storytelling, Tunnel of Love has his best songwriting. Born in the U.S.A. often felt cheesy due to its overblown 80s production, and while that's still the case here, the synths are now more understated and better served by this album's softness and introspection. It may still be cheesy, but Bruce brings wonderful melodies and his best lyrics (mostly concerning his failing marriage). The A side is good, but this is likely the most back-loaded album of all time. The last six songs are the best, and they're all honest, resonant, and a bit depressing. The best song, "Brilliant Disguise" comes towards the end, beginning as an accusation towards his partner and - by only changing one word in the chorus - ending as a question of his own shortcomings.
16: THE DURUTTI COLUMN - VINI REILLY
Though undoubtedly influential on post-rock, the oft praised early work of the Durutti Column is a bit too passive for me. Though almost entirely instrumental, Vini Reilly still manages to evoke strong feelings of both melancholy and overwhelming joy. It's got everything from dream pop to new age to funk covered and it makes incredibly innovative use of sampling, obscuring the voices of soulful singers in a way that adds a deeper layer to the emotional atmosphere. The production is incredible; everything is aligned to perfectly bring out the most emotion. A one second sample can bring you to chills.
15: JOY DIVISION - SUBSTANCE
Substance is a compilation, but it's not a "best of" compilation. Joy Division were a band that didn't include their singles on their albums, and Substance compiles all of their singles along with a few B-sides and EP tracks to make for ten killer songs, ordered (mostly) chronologically that show how quickly this band evolved from 1978 to 1980, starting with punk rock and ending with synth-pop. As a depressed teenager, nothing got to me like this album. Curtis's vocals weren't perfect, but they oozed sincerity, and to me that made them imperfectly perfect. I think most everyone knows "Atmosphere" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" but the other eight songs here are nearly as good.
14: PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. - THE FLOWERS OF ROMANCE
It's been called the most inaccessible album to ever be released on a major label, and that's hard to disagree with. After the departure of bassist Jah Wobble, whose reggae rhythms were essential to the band's sound; and without a steady drummer, John Lydon and Keith Levene took PiL into their own hands. Rather than replace their bassist, they just said "no bass" (there's only bass on a couple songs). Even the guitar is used much, much differently here, disregarding melody even more than on Metal Box and instead used for atmosphere. Most of the focus instead went into boomy, repetitive drumbeats that entirely constitute the melodies, Lydon's vocals that sound like a senile British grandma, and his experimentation with middle eastern instruments and musique concrète soundscapes using tapes. And while the drumming may not be all that complex, every single beat sticks in your head. There still isn't anything like this.
13: GANG OF FOUR - SOLID GOLD
In spite of fully embracing the art punk undertones from Entertainment! on Solid Gold, Gang of Four still went from "underground post-punk" to charting in the top 30 on the U.S. club singles chart. But no matter how funky or rhythmic this music is, it's still a shock how popular it wound being - it's as menacing as music comes. This time around, Andy Gill's guitar work is less focused on melody and more off doing its own thing with an abrasive metallic sound that makes you feel like you're getting stabbed in the ears (in a good way). It's like a tighter, more structured, and dancier version of PiL's Metal Box. Their lyrics are also better here, exploring their Marxist themes in a more personal and effective fashion. Art punk's masterpiece.
12: THE CLASH - COMBAT ROCK
Following the triple LP worldly excess of Sandinista! Mick Jones wanted to do it again. Joe Strummer panned his vision, half the songs were removed, and we wound up with Combat Rock. The decision lead to their breaking up, but as far as a last hurrahs go, Combat Rock succeeds, even if it's a little bittersweet and weaker than their previous work. It may be their most popular album, but it's also secretly their artiest. The album's A-side is filled with hits - I think everyone's heard "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go," and you're sure to recognize "Straight to Hell" - but the B-side is where the best stuff is found, and is evidence of what Jones originally wanted to do; there's a few Exotica, funk, and hip hop experiments. Oddly calm for a Clash album but beautiful nevertheless.
11: TOM WAITS - SWORDFISHTROMBONES
Tom Waits' blues oriented music prior to Swordfishtrombones is... different to say the least. Apparently the story goes that once he met his wife, she introduced him to more avant-garde music such as Beefheart, and he loved it so much that he changed his sound overnight from conventional blues to whatever this is. Swordfishtrombones isn't his best album as that was still yet to come, but it his most important. Everything you could want is here, from hilarious dark jazz beat poetry like "Frank's Wild Years," to noir-ish experimental rockers with surreal storytelling like the title track, to sincere love songs like "Johnsburg, Illinois;" as well as many awesome jazz instrumentals.
10: THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS - LINCOLN
I'm not exaggerating when I say that no album has better writing than Lincoln. The melodies! How do they come up with so many of them?! The lyrics! There's so many that will make you laugh, and so many that'll rip your heart out (sometimes even in the same song). And there's all those experiments that manage to both seem unusual and fit in perfectly on a pop album. And those nasally vocals that perfectly convey everything they intend to? Lincoln is a goofy but earnest album, and there'll never be another like it, not even from the men who made it. But why should anyone expect there to be?
9: ANTENA - CAMINO DEL SOL
Joy Division / New Order and the Durutti Column may be the most well known bands from Factory Records, but the mostly female French band Antena was nearly as good. Their only album, Camino del sol, is an eighteen minute record that mixes lounge music and synth-pop with bossa nova to make for an entrancing dreamy atmosphere, and it's so irresistibly soft. Sometimes it blows my mind that this came out in 1982, it would fit in perfectly with modern indie pop. It simultaneously sounds like it's from the 60s, the 80s, 2013, and 2500. It sounds like the future, just not our future.
8: THE POLICE - GHOST IN THE MACHINE
The moment that cold, synth driven reggae beat comes in on the opener "Spirits in the Material World," it's clear that the Police have changed. The Police embracing 80s production could have ended poorly but they use it for a sleek, atmospheric sound that suits the album very well. Unlike the other Police albums, Ghost in the Machine is dark, cold, and far more political and affecting than the Police had ever been, even if it is more pop oriented than the band's first three albums. Stewart Copeland's drumming on this album is also some of the best I've ever heard, it isn't particularly flashy but he's always doing something interesting.
7: KING CRIMSON - DISCIPLINE
King Crimson were originally going to call it quits after Red. After all, it was their best album up to that point and would've made for the band's perfect ending (just listen to "Starless" and tell me those last thirty seconds aren't the perfect send-off). The only reason for them to come back would be if they could top Red - and that they did. Adrian Belew (Talking Heads) replaced John Wetton and became the group's frontman, singer, and main songwriter. On Discipline they adapted with the times, dropping the jazz and classical influences of their 70s work for new wave. Rather than being cold and distant like on their early work, they became warm and, at times, even inviting. Belew's lyrics are dorky but memorable and endearing - "Matte Kudasai" may be the prettiest song I've ever heard, and Belew's voice on it is incredible. The two closing instrumentals are also beautiful and quite groovy in spite of their insanely complicated time signatures (they would be a massive influence on all future math rock).
6: JOY DIVISION - CLOSER
It seems odd that Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris didn't know this would be their last album as Joy Division when they chose the name "Closer" and put a grave on the cover. Just before its release, on the day before their first U.S. tour, Ian Curtis would hang himself while listening to Iggy Pop's The Idiot. And throughout Closer, it's clear how depressed Curtis was - never has there been more emotionally intense music. By comparison, Unknown Pleasures seems cheery. And it makes sense too, seeing as his life had gone through massive changes in just the past year: he had had an affair, his epilepsy had worsened, and he was about to go on a world tour when he was already uncomfortable performing as often as he did. At times, it feels like Curtis is writing his own epitaph, especially on "Twenty Four Hours": "Gotta find my destiny before it gets too late."
5: NEW ORDER - POWER, CORRUPTION AND LIES
Following the suicide of Ian Curtis, Joy Division still had a lot of phenomenal music left in them; they were just going to have to make it without him. And that they did. Rather than looking outside of the band for a new singer, guitarist Bernard Sumner apprehensively took over as the band's new singer and main songwriter. And he can't sing for shit, but his voice is quite nice and he's probably written half the great melodies in existence. After being Joy Division 2.0 on Movement (and doing a good job of it) New Order very quickly found their own identity on Power, Corruption and Lies, and you can tell the instant that the bass line on "Age of Consent" begins: it's almost happy. And is there anything as beautiful as that synth drenched bridge? Sumner's lyrics throughout are simple yet poetic and charming, the music is atmospheric and absurdly catchy, and it has several of the band's greatest songs. There's the joyous "The Village," the cold and mechanical "5-8-6," the epic "Your Silent Face," the melancholic closer "Leave Me Alone," and the top selling twelve inch single of all time, "Blue Monday" (which actually lost an insane amount of money due to its expensive packaging). Overall, this album is the band's peak and the one I enjoy revisiting the most.
4: TALK TALK - SPIRIT OF EDEN
It's pretty common for bands to become more popular and mainstream as they go on, but the other way around? Not as much. After three pop albums (one of which, The Colour of Spring, went 2x platinum) and a top 40 single, Talk Talk took a direction that was barely hinted at on The Colour of Spring. Completely convinced (for some strange reason) that his new idea would sell four million copies (spoiler alert: it sold an eighth of that), Mark Hollis and co. improvised for hours upon hours a day in a dark room for over a year, and when they were done they did some very extensive editing and chopped it all down to just forty minutes. This meditative piece of jazzy chamber music was not what the label had expected would come out of that studio. It was a totally unmarketable direction, and as a result Talk Talk was dropped from their label. It sounds as if mother nature decided to make an album. It's everything; peaceful, melancholic, uplifting, even a little angry. The best song here is "I Believe in You," a song about Mark Hollis's brother dying of a heroin overdose. Even if the same thing hadn't happened to my brother, this song's beauty would still give me chills every time I hear it. When that small choir comes in on the chorus, it moves me like nothing else.
3: TOM WAITS - RAIN DOGS
Swordfishtrombones was a good first step, but Rain Dogs is Tom Waits' masterpiece. Here he combines everything he'd done up to this point and adds more; here we have experimental rock, jazz, country, folk, and blues rock. It may not be as weird as Swordfishtrombones but it benefits from its more conventional songs. It seems that plenty of experimental music only aims stimulate you intellectually and totally forgets emotion, but Tom doesn't do that. "Hang Down Your Head," "Time," and "Downtown Train" are the three best and most emotional songs Tom ever made. It's an unusual world Tom's built with this album; involving lots of crime, carnivals, Cuban jails, gun street girls, and women with tattooed tears ("One for each year he's away"); but it's also a world that's full of hope and love.
2: THE POLICE - SYNCHRONICITY
At the time, they were the biggest band in the world. Some said Ghost in the Machine was a sellout album, and while Synchronicity is calmer and nearly as pop oriented, it'd be a mistake to think it's any worse than their early work - there is more substance here than on anything else they've done, with some of their densest, artiest music and Sting's most poetic and political lyrics. No matter how overplayed it is, "Every Breath You Take" will always be one of the all time great songs. The fact that so many people think it's a love song proves how well it achieves what it set out to, by being incredibly creepy while being barely creepy at all. The lyrics are so perfectly simple, the melody is one of the best ever, and it has a hairraising bridge and outro. "King of Pain" is another highlight, a brilliant passionate ballad with an ending that always moves me. And then there's the experimental rock track "Mother," one of the most hated songs ever, but that's likely only the case because of how strange it seemed to the humorless pop consumers. 'Tis is a jolly good tune.
1: THE CLASH - SANDINISTA!
I think we all have trouble putting the emotions our favorite pieces of art make us feel into words, so I'll try my best. Sandinista! is an album I never expected to love this much. First of all, it's a triple album - sold for the price of one, which required that CBS take a massive cut from the band, and the Clash gladly accepted - and it's two hours and 24 minutes long. If you're going to put 36 songs on an album, it's gonna need to be incredibly consistent if it wants to hold one's attention. Fortunately, Sandinista! has more perfect, hairraising songs than any other album ever. I think what puts the Clash ahead of almost all (or all) of the punk bands to emerge in the mid to late 70s is their ability to evolve. They never did the same thing twice; they'd immediately perfect something and then move on to something else. To me, Sandinista! is their album that exemplifies this ability the best. This album is two and a half hours of worldly weirdness with everything from post-punk to reggae to rockabilly to jazz to boogie woogie to calypso to rapping to disco to funk rock to folk to experimental rock to Celtic punk to children's choirs, and even some of their punk rock roots remain; and it covers everything from the draft to the Cuban Revolution to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas to simple breakups. It helps that everything here is done well (well, maybe the children's choirs didn't need to be there). It is the most passionate album you will ever hear, but in a surprisingly different way than London Calling. For one thing, Joe Strummer has vastly improved as a lyricist here. Compare "Death or Glory" to "Washington Bullets." The former is Joe's idealistic fantasies, the latter is an informative critique of the first world's interference in the goings of the developing world. Sandinista! is the culmination of months of recording in New York, in which every song they made turned out so damn good they had to release it all. Their approach to its making was quite loose; Joe Strummer had a bed in the back of the studio and he'd lay there reading while listening to music from all around the world, and whenever he felt an inspiration he'd simply get up and lay out his ideas. While many multiple LP albums try to be over the top epics, Sandinista! simply sets out to be a fun time with a purpose. Joe once said "After a while when journalists would ask us, 'Are you musicians or are you politicians?' I thought I'd watch us for 24 hours to get the answer. And I watched us and we only talked about music." And it makes sense. Just listen to "Corner Soul," one of the album's best songs; it's about many things, one of them being how music can be the most valuable thing there is, regardless of where you are. A bit cheesy, but it sums up Joe's messages quite well. If there were only one album I could listen to for the rest of my life, I'd pick this one in a heartbeat. Excess and consistency will never again go hand in hand the way they do on Sandinista! What're your favorite 80s albums?

submitted by DungeonessSpit to 80smusic [link] [comments]

2019.09.13 14:43 DungeonessSpit The 50 best 80s albums

50: FELA KUTI - ORIGINAL SUFFERHEAD
Original Sufferhead has Fela Kuti going a little more 80s than he had before with (tastefully used) synthesizers dominating the opener "Power Show," but it still has that uplifting rage going on beneath the surface of the seemingly joyous music that makes Fela so great. And this time 'round we actually get a full length album, meaning there's only more to enjoy.
49: ABBA - THE VISITORS
ABBA's final album, The Visitors, is their best and most progressive work; it's very different from their kitschy 70s work. From front to back The Visitors is an endlessly catchy collection of arty europop. There's some weak lyrics but that's forgivable when every hook is this memorable.
48: CYNDI LAUPER - SHE'S SO UNUSUAL
It's filled with dated production and cheesy synths but I guess that's just part of the charm. All but two of these songs are covers (and the two originals may actually be the best here, as I always get a feeling of nostalgia for a time I never experienced when I hear "Time After Time" and "All Through the Night") but even the covers have their own spin as Cyndi changes the lyrics (often to provide a very different viewpoint from the opposite gender on songs like "Girls Just Want to Have Fun") and her charisma carries it.
47: JOE JACKSON - NIGHT AND DAY
Front to back, Night and Day is Joe Jackson's catchiest album. Composed of two dancey Latin influenced art pop suits (one for the night, one for the day), Night and Day sounds quite cheerful on the surface but in such a cheesy way that it sounds like this 80s cheeseball white guy is playing a joke on us as he sings noir-ish songs about gang violence and existential crisis and TV's taking over and struggling with the meaning of masculinity while being gay. It's an odd experience.
46: THE LOUNGE LIZARDS - THE LOUNGE LIZARDS
The Lounge Lizards is a bit of a parody of avant-garde jazz, but that doesn't make it any less fantastic. It's like noir-ish lounge music; it's mostly smooth and calm but it has occasional wild freakouts. Add in the aggressive guitar work and short two minute song lengths and it's like a punk version of jazz. Its influence can be heard in John Zorn's most wild music and some of Tom Waits' instrumental songs (he was a huge fan).
45: THE CURE - BOYS DON'T CRY
Boys Don't Cry is the Cure's American debut, and it takes the best songs from Three Imaginary Boys and adds all their singles up to that point to make for a short half hour experience. Though they'd quickly become a gothic rock group, on their debut the Cure were a straightforward post-punk band. All the songs here are catchy, energetic, and uh, not quite as... submissive? as the rest of their discography.
44: GLENN BRANCA - THE ASCENSION
The Ascension is a no wave album from modern classical composer Glenn Branca and it sounds like... what you'd expect: an intense symphony of angry distorted guitars. With it being a rock album that completely ignores traditional rock structures, it would certainly be an influence on early post-rock.
43: KING CRIMSON - ABSENT LOVERS
Absent Lovers is a live album, consisting entirely of just one concert, recorded on King Crimson's final tour for what would be over a decade. While Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair weren't on the same level as Discipline, the songs from them really shine here and are improved upon in almost every way with looser approaches. The energy coming from the band makes this hour and a half long album feel like half an hour. It's remarkable how incredible this band was live, and this stands as what is, in my opinion, the greatest live album of all time.
42: BRIAN ENO - AMBIENT 4
Ambient 4 is by far the most interesting of Eno's albums in his ambient series, as it adds a dark ambient edge. Of course ambient music - and especially dark ambient - had only just begun, so it's astonishing how modern Ambient 4 still sounds - it's likely my favorite ambient album. It's a bit haunting but it's quite calm and meditative as well, and I used to put it on before bed every night.
41: SLAYER - REIGN IN BLOOD
At a brief 28 minutes, Reign in Blood packs a punch of insane energy. The lyrics are, well, shit, but at least you can't understand ninety percent of them and it's not like they're the point. Most of the songs are one to two minutes and all bring incredible punkish riffs with fast vocals, and it's the perfect length to not give you a headache.
40: BEASTIE BOYS - PAUL'S BOUTIQUE
Paul's Boutique is the first hip hop album to truly use sampling as an art of its own. It's layered with hundreds of samples across only a few songs as they manically change. It's like prog rap (if that's a thing). Even if the Beastie Boys' lyrics aren't the strongest or most thoughtful in the game, the careless attitude and brilliant production make Paul's Boutique insanely fun.
39: MINUTEMEN - WHAT MAKES A MAN START FIRES?
Some would assume that music works like this: longer songs = more complex = better. But the Minutemen manage to add complexity by coming up with memorable melodies and only using them for a minute or two, quickly fleshing the song out, and then dropping them, only to move onto another great song. This 26 minute album feels like an adventurous journey, with tons of unexpected instrumental moments along the way.
38: BOB MARLEY - UPRISING
On Bob Marley's last album he returns to the rootsier sound of his early work (with the exception of the dancey "Could You Be Loved"). Bob packed side B with all the most memorable songs (as he also did with Exodus), with some of his very, very best songs like "Pimper's Paradise," "Could You Be Loved," and of course "Redemption Song;" but the A side has a calm atmosphere with meaningful lyrics as well. Lucky that Marley's last album would be a contender for his best.
37: FELA KUTI - COFFIN FOR HEAD OF STATE
The title tells you what you're in for. Musically, it's as warm and inviting as Fela has ever been, but lyrically it's by far his most angry. Following his protest album Zombie (which accused the Nigerian military of being mindless zombies) the Nigerian military stormed his commune, destroyed it, murdered his mother, and tortured Fela. Yet Fela was still making protest music, now more in your face than ever. The album is only 22 minutes - two songs, one of which being an instrumental - but it manages to leave a strong impression. It settles into an infectious, funky, jazzy groove, and ends with Fela and his singers yelping a sarcastic prayer, mocking religion.
36: PAUL MCCARTNEY - MCCARTNEY II
McCartney II is an album that surprised me, simply because I didn't expect that Paul McCartney would be making good music into the 80s. But not only is this good, it's also very adventurous. It's a spiritual successor to Paul's haphazard debut McCartney, and it's filled with everything from hazy blues rock to ahead of their time instrumentals that sound like Japanese video game music. And it's all upbeat, catchy, and occasionally even life affirming. Paul's the best Beatle by the way.
35: THE FALL - THE WONDERFUL AND FRIGHTENING WORLD
The Fall have a fucking massive discography, pumping out album after album, year after year, so it's a bit of a shock that they still managed several front to back classics. The Wonderful and Frightening World is one of those classics. Released just before This Nation's Saving Grace, it's a lot less bombastic but it's still got the energy and Mark E. Smith's always entertaining sarcastic and cryptic lyrics. It's also the best collection of melodies the band ever put out.
34: TALK TALK - THE COLOUR OF SPRING
Right before they'd reinvent themselves as a post-rock band, Talk Talk made one last crack at pop music, and they do a swell job. On The Colour of Spring they ditch the new wave sound of their first two albums in favor of an art pop sound, mixing sparse acoustic guitar arrangements with synthesizers, and it's pure beauty all the way through. It has easily the best ending of any album ever, as the eight minute closing track "Time It's Time" shakes free of all the melancholy that preceded it in its final two minutes and gives way to the most gorgeous, uplifting melody I've ever heard, as if winter suddenly turned into Spring.
33: HÜSKER DÜ - NEW DAY RISING
Zen Arcade may have more great songs but it was also grimier and way longer, meaning it had its fair share of filler. New Day Rising is more pop oriented without going full power pop like they would on Flip Your Wig. And it's straight fire all the way through. It's noisy, raw, passionate, and packed with memorable songs that ring with youth and nostalgia. The best songs are probably the first three, "Celebrated Summer," and "Books About U.F.O.s."
32: KING SUNNY ADÉ - JUJU MUSIC
Juju Music is such a calm, beautiful and transcendent album. It's really quite simple and has lyrics that I obviously don't understand, but whenever I feel exhausted I can just put this on and feel at peace for a bit. The musicianship is phenomenal in every aspect, with soothing slide guitars, calming, rhythmic talking drums, and King Sunny Adé's gentle voice.
31: MIDNIGHT OIL - DIESEL AND DUST
Midnight Oil made many good albums, but Diesel and Dust was their best. It took what they were known for - their politics (both environmental and social) - and gave them some of the catchiest music they'd made. The best part of this album is the passion coming from it - you can tell they truly care about everything they're writing about. And while it was off-putting in the beginning, I gotta say I love Peter Garrett's unusual voice. Unless there's someone I'm forgetting, this is the best album to ever come out of Australia.
30: CELTIC FROST - MORBID TALES
When thrash metal had just achieved popularity and was still in its infancy, Celtic Frost were a step ahead of the game. They slowed thrash down a bit but injected a darker atmosphere. This thrash metal / black metal hybrid still sounds incredibly dark today, and it still kicks an insane amount of ass. And at just 24 minutes, what would otherwise get exhausting doesn't overstay its welcome in the slightest. Oh, and the experimental track "Danse Macabre" is still the creepiest shit I've ever heard.
29: TALKING HEADS - REMAIN IN LIGHT
Other than a few good songs from Speaking in Tongues, Remain in Light is the last spark of greatness from the Talking Heads. It takes the Afrobeat influenced polyrhythms of Fear of Music and expands them into longer, groovier songs. It gets weirder as it goes on, which, naturally, means it peaks directly in the middle with "Once in a Lifetime."
28: THE FALL - THIS NATION'S SAVING GRACE
If the Fall has a defining album amongst their vast discography, this is it. There's the cheesy horror movie opener "Mansion" and the - uh, bombast of "Bombast." "I Am Damo Suzuki" is a rhythmic krautrock tribute, "Paint Work" has the prettiest melody the Fall ever wrote, and "What You Need" and "My New House" sound like the entirety of Pavement's blueprint. But the best song is "Barmy," with its unhinged chorus that sounds like it's from a shitty horror movie and its funky verses; and thankfully the song repeats the verse-chorus structure far more times than is traditional, because why should this song ever end?
27: NEW ORDER - MOVEMENT
Following the suicide of Ian Curtis, Joy Division still had a lot of phenomenal music left in them; they were just going to have to make it without him. And that they did. Rather than looking outside of the band for a new singer, guitarist Bernard Sumner took over as the band's new singer and main songwriter. And he can't sing for shit, but his voice is quite nice and he's probably written half the great melodies in existence. Movement isn't like the rest of New Order's albums in its sound; it's as cold and depressing as Closer. But still, "Dreams Never End," "Chosen Time," and "Doubts Even Here" are perfect post-punk tunes.
26: THE POGUES - RUM SODOMY AND THE LASH
Shane McGowan's drug and alcohol problems may have lead to the dissolution of the Celtic folk band the Pogues, but they never would've made it without his entertaining tales and drunken passion. It's endlessly listenable as every song is at least as fun as the one before it. Even the covers here have become the definitive versions as they're delivered with such passion and energy. The best track is the epic eight minute closer "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda," possibly the most affecting anti-war song ever.
25: PINK FLOYD - THE FINAL CUT
Due to the overwhelming control Roger Waters had exerted over this album, he was kicked from the band, but he still managed to send out one last defining statement before Pink Floyd would crumble without him. Originally intended as additional tracks for The Wall, The Final Cut soon became a fully fledged anti-war concept album. It's slow and minimalistic but the lyrics really shine here. For the first time, the entirety of the writing was handled by Waters and he's also the lead singer on every track. He ain't the world's best singer, but this is easily the most passionate Pink Floyd album. Gilmour worshippers aren't ever gonna get it.
24: GANG OF FOUR - SOLID GOLD
The follow up to Entertainment! Solid Gold is the artier (and better) album. It's slower, a little angrier, and a bit funkier. This time around, Andy Gill's guitar work is less focused on melody and more off doing its own thing with an abrasive metallic sound. It's like a tighter, more structured, and dancier version of PiL's Metal Box. And there isn't even an ounce of filler, every song has me feeling energized. They'd fall off pretty hard after this, chasing trends without any success, but when your only good albums are Entertainment! and Solid Gold, you've already left an incredible legacy behind.
23: BRIAN ENO & DAVID BYRNE - MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS
Less influential than it was innovative, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a sample based experimental rock record, taking a strong influence from Afrobeat and injecting the dancey polyrhythms with hyperactive drumming, Eno's lush soundscapes, and samples of unusual religious chants. It's a warm but eerie experience.
22: DAVID BOWIE - SCARY MONSTERS
On Scary Monsters Bowie brings a new wave edge to the art rock sound of his Berlin trilogy, and with the addition of Robert Fripp on guitar, it turns out fantastic. It often sounds like a more conventional King Crimson album with David Bowie behind the mic, which is as perfect as possible. Fripp's guitar work here is so phenomenal that I wouldn't mind if this was two hours long. Unexpectedly, the best song here is "Up the Hill Backwards," in which Bowie's voice is just one of many in an uplifting sing-along.
21: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - TUNNEL OF LOVE
Born in the U.S.A. often felt cheesy due to its overblown 80s production, and while that's still the case here, it's better served by this album's softness and introspection. It may still be cheesy, but it has some of Springsteen's best songwriting as he brings the gorgeous melodies and some of his best lyrics (mostly concerning his failing marriage). The A side is a tiny bit of a mess, but this is likely the most back-loaded album of all time. The last six songs are the best, and they're all honest, resonant, and a bit depressing.
20: THE POLICE - ZENYATTÀ MONDATTA
Zenyattà Mondatta is a bit of a transition between the Police's first two reggae influenced pop rock albums and their last two new wave albums, and as a result it isn't quite as good as the four albums it's surrounded by. But it's still incredibly enjoyable from start to finish with some of Andy Summers' best guitar work on songs like "Driven to Tears" and some of Sting's best basslines on songs like "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around." And who hasn't had "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" stuck in their head for a year?
19: NEW ORDER - BROTHERHOOD
Brotherhood is split into two sides: side A is post-punk and side B is new wave. Both offer a lot, but if I had to pick a better side it'd be A, with its Cure-esque upbeat post-punk songs like "Paradise," and "Weirdo." But the best song here is on side B. Bernard Sumner was never a lyrical genius, and while "Bizarre Love Triangle" isn't the most complex song ever, it is a lyrical masterpiece. Most songs are lucky to have one great line, but in "Bizarre Love Triangle" every line makes you feel something. And that's not even mentioning the music, which has enough separate melodies to have made several phenomenal songs. There's nothing that gives me an eargasm like that lead in to the chorus or that bass solo at the end. "Bizarre Love Triangle" is the best song of the 80s.
18: MEAT PUPPETS - UP ON THE SUN
It stuns me that Up on the Sun came out in 1985, as it sounds like half the popular bands of the 90s. For their third album the Meat Puppets totally ditched the punkishness of their early work and instead brought a peaceful, lethargic sound with surreal lyrics of pure fantasy and relatable summery tales of youth, some funky basslines, and the most perfectly fit vocalist in the world. It's gentle, but in a really fucking cool way. There is nothing like it.
17: ANTENA - CAMINO DEL SOL
Possibly the only great band to come from Factory Records that wasn't Joy Division / New Order was the mostly female French band Antena. Their only album, Camino del sol, is an eighteen minute record that mixes lounge music and space age pop with bossa nova to make for an entrancing dreamy atmosphere, and it's so irresistibly soft. It simultaneously sounds like it's from the 60s, the 80s, 2013, and 2500. It sounds like the future, just not our future. And you can tell that this was a massive influence on Stereolab.
16: ROXY MUSIC - AVALON
I can still vividly remember GTA: Vice City. Games have obviously since progressed far beyond what they were in 2002 but no game has yet managed to immerse me in the way Vice City did. And that statement isn't nostalgia speaking, as I was just one when the game came out - it still sucks me in today. A massive part of what made this game so great was the music, because while not all of it was great, it all felt so of the time and place that no matter how few pixels there were, you couldn't help but feel like you were there. Roxy Music had two songs on the Vice City airways, both of which are from this album. I can still remember the first time I got out of my pimpin' apartment on a clear night and hopped in the Dodge Dart that was always parked by the stairs and flipped the radio to "EMOTION 98.3" as the song "More Than This" faded in. I had chills as I drove down the GTA equivalent of South Beach, past the pixelated prostitutes and palm trees and illuminated neon buildings. I was so awestruck by the game's and the song's beauty that I wasn't even tempted to run over the pedestrians that were just begging to be flattened. Never before had I felt like I was somewhere else so much. I didn't save the game so that every time I booted it up I could experience the same thing with the same song (don't worry, I eventually beat it). And every time I didn't feel like I was playing a game, but instead felt like I was there, in 1986 Miami. The melody is so perfectly subtle, the kind you could never get sick of, while also being infectious. The chorus is almost anticlimactic in the best way possible. As Bryan Ferry sings "There's nothing more than this" I can't help but agree. If he's talking about love, I'm with him. If he's talking about the fact that those are the only words in the chorus, then yeah, I suppose he's right about that too. The feeling "More Than This" possesses is one that carries through the rest of the album. It may not be as arty as their 70s work, but for their last album Bryan Ferry finally dropped his trademark sarcasm and gave way to sincerity here, and goddamn is it beautiful. From beginning to end, it's the feeling of romance.
15: BLONDIE - AUTOAMERICAN
On Blondie's first album of the 80s they did things a little different and simply threw everything at the wall to see what would stick, and it all does. They were no longer just a new wave band; here there's jazz pop, disco rap, pop reggae, and even modern classical. It's all a little dorky, but in a charming way. The several jazz pop songs fill me with nostalgia for something I never experienced, the goofy rapping on "Rapture" is oddly endearing (and man, that bassline), and the many dancey songs are insanely catchy. Sadly, it'd be the last good Blondie album.
14: NEW ORDER - TECHNIQUE
Unlike their previous few albums, Technique doesn't have a standout 10/10 song, but it is their most consistent effort; a brilliant fusion of acid house and alternative rock. Every song here is warm, emotional, fun and enjoyable (it's a little shocking that this is the same band that made Closer and Movement). I just can't go a Summer without playing it. Side note: that album cover looks surprisingly modern.
13: THE CLASH - COMBAT ROCK
Following the triple LP worldly excess of Sandinista! Mick Jones wanted to do it again. Joe Strummer panned Mick's vision of Combat Rock (originally titled Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg) and half the songs were removed, causing inner turmoil within the band that lead to their breaking up. It has problems its predecessor didn't, like some commerical songs on side A. It starts out with the undeniably cheesy "Know Your Rights" but I could never help nodding my head in agreement while listening to it. After the phenomenal geopolitical "Car Jamming" comes the two megahits "Should I Stay or Should I Go" and "Rock the Casbah." To this day they're the most popular Clash songs and the only ones you're likely to hear on a classic rock station. And honestly, they're this album's low point; Should I Stay or Should I Go is a bit too buttrocky for me but "Rock the Casbah" is alright. Thankfully things get going on "Straight to Hell," a passionate decry of injustice towards children that were abandoned in Vietnam (this song is now well known for being sampled by M.I.A. on "Paper Planes"). After that, Combat Rock becomes the calmest, artiest album the Clash ever made, filled with funk, reggae, and Exotica experiments with passionate political themes. Side B is truly beautiful.
12: JOY DIVISION - SUBSTANCE
Substance is a compilation, but it's not a "best of" compilation. Joy Division were a band that didn't include their singles on their albums, and Substance compiles all of their singles along with a few B-sides and EP tracks to make for ten killer songs, ordered (mostly) chronologically that show how quickly this band evolved from 1978 to 1980, starting with punk rock and ending with synth-pop. As a depressed teenager, nothing got to me like this album. Curtis's vocals weren't perfect, but they just oozed pure emotion, and that made them imperfectly perfect. I think most everyone knows "Atmosphere" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" but the other eight songs here are nearly as good.
11: PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. - THE FLOWERS OF ROMANCE
It's been called the most inaccessible album to ever be released on a major label, and that's hard to disagree with. After the departure of bassist Jah Wobble, whose reggae rhythms were essential to the band's sound; and without a steady drummer, John Lydon and Keith Levene took PiL into their own hands. Rather than replace their bassist, they just said "no bass" (there's only bass on a couple songs). There's hardly even any guitar. Most of the focus instead went into boomy, repetitive drumbeats that entirely constitute the melodies, Lydon's vocals that sound like a senile British grandma, and his experimentation with middle eastern instruments and musique concrète soundscapes using tapes. And while the drumming may not be all that complex, every single beat sticks in your head.
10: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - NEBRASKA
If there are three all time great storytellers in music, then Bruce Springsteen is one of them (I suppose Bob Dylan and Tom Waits are the other two). And his storytelling is never better than on Nebraska, an album that reaches a level of hauntedness that any (insert "dark" genre) band could only wish to achieve. On Nebraska Springsteen strips away all the stadium ready polish of the rest of his discography in favor of a simple, sparse sound: just him, an acoustic guitar, and a harmonica. All the songs are about working class people and most tell tales of crime in the most humanly manner possible. When Bruce sings "Well I'm tired of comin' out on the losin' end / So honey last night I met this guy and I'm gonna do a little favor for him" on "Atlantic City" you truly feel for this man unlike any other crime related song. Every song is delivered with such passion and empathy that you can't help but feel for these people. There's the intense "State Trooper" that ends with the startling screams, there's the hopeless optimism of "Mansion on the Hill" and "Reason to Believe," there's the questionable morality of "Highway Patrolman," and then there's the title track, where Bruce even makes you empathize with a serial killer.
9: TOM WAITS - SWORDFISHTROMBONES
Tom Waits' journey as an artist is the most fascinating there is. But what's equally fascinating is how remarkably consistent he's remained: the man literally doesn't have an album that's less than good, and he's been making music since 1973. Swordfishtrombones isn't Tom's best album, as that was still yet to come, but it marked a serious departure from the piano blues of his previous album Heartattack and Vine. Here, he goes face first into experimental rock and for a first go, it turns out magnificently. Everything you could want is here, in surreal storytelling like on the title track, hilarious dark jazz beat poetry like on "Frank's Wild Years," sleazy blues rockers like "Gin Soaked Boy," beautiful earnest love songs like "Johnsburg, Illinois," tons of amazing instrumentals, and the heart of the album "In the Neighborhood."
8: TOM WAITS - RAIN DOGS
Swordfishtrombones was a good first step, but on just his second experimental album Tom Waits had already perfected his new found interest in experimental music and created a through and through masterpiece; with songs that one only wishes could be movies; about the passing of time, the importance of love, gun street girls, and ghost town girls with tattooed teardrops ("One for each year he's away"). Rather than front to back weirdness like on Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs adds a few heartland rockers and country tunes into the mix, and they're honestly the best songs as "Hang Down Your Head," "Time," and "Downtown Train" give me chills every time I hear them. The weirdness is still amazing here though, like the foreboding "Clap Hands," the blues rocker "Jockey Full of Burboun," the punk jazz "Midtown," etc.
7: THE POLICE - GHOST IN THE MACHINE
The moment that cold, synthy reggae beat comes in on the opener "Spirits in the Material World," it's clear that the Police have changed. The Police embracing 80s production could have ended poorly but they use it for a sleek, atmospheric sound that suits the album very well. Unlike the other Police albums, Ghost in the Machine is dark and cold. The second track, "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" is one of those very uncomfortable yet catchy "love" songs the Police are so well known for, while the third track "Invisible Sun" has quite easily the coolest intro I've ever heard; it sounds downright apocalyptic. After the first three songs it becomes a more energetic horn filled new wave album, but the synth drenched atmosphere comes back in the final three tracks. Stewart Copeland's drumming on this album is also some of the best I've ever heard, it isn't particularly flashy but he's always doing something interesting.
6: KING CRIMSON - DISCIPLINE
After 1974's Red, guitarist Robert Fripp was content with ending King Crimson. After all, Red did seem like a suitable finale; it was like the conclusion to everything they'd done, with their hard rock, jazz, and classical influences all coming together better than they ever had. And the last thirty seconds of the album - my God, would there have ever been a better conclusion to a band if they'd left it at that? The only reason for them to come back would be if they could top Red - and that they did. Adrian Belew (Talking Heads) replaced John Wetton and became the group's frontman, singer, and main songwriter. On Discipline they perfectly adapted with the times, dropping the jazz and classical influences of their 70s work for new wave. Rather than being cold and distant like on their early work, they became warm and, at times, even inviting. Belew's lyrics are dorky but memorable and endearing, with songs like "Elephant Talk" and the entertaining spoken word of "Thela Hun Gin Jeet." And "Matte Kudasai" is one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard, Belew's voice on it is incredible. The two closing instrumentals are also beautiful and quite danceable in spite of their insanely complicated time signatures (they would be a massive influence on all the 90s math rock).
5: JOY DIVISION - CLOSER
Closer is maybe the album I have the strongest emotional connection to even if its angst is a little overbearing to me now. I'd just broken up with a gorgeous girl and she happened to also have been my only friend in a new city. I felt I had nobody to talk to - I felt that my parents were useless drug addicts and I didn't feel comfortable bombarding my friends I'd moved away from with my problems - showing any emotion at all isn't something I'm good at. So instead I listened to Closer every night, as it seemed that Ian Curtis had felt what I was feeling and I had someone I could relate to. The emotional intensity of Closer makes Unknown Pleasures seem cheery by comparison; at least Unknown Pleasures had some upbeat rockers, there is nothing like that on Closer. It makes sense as Curtis's life had quickly changed: he had had an affair, his epilepsy had worsened, his wife had kicked him out and he'd gone to live with Sumner, and he was about to go on a world tour when he was already uncomfortable performing as often as he did. We now know that he'd hang himself before the album's release, and it isn't all too surprising with this album's content. "Isolation," "Passover," and "A Means to an End" are all incredibly depressing already but "Twenty Four Hours" sounds like Curtis writing his own epitaph: "Gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late." The band had already chosen the name and artwork before Curtis's death, so how appropriate that the album would have the word "CLOSER" and a grave on the cover. From one young, depressed, working class man to the next, this album spoke to me like no other.
4: NEW ORDER - POWER, CORRUPTION AND LIES
After being Joy Division 2.0 on Movement (and doing a good job of it) New Order very quickly found their own identity on Power, Corruption and Lies, and you can tell the instant that the bass line on "Age of Consent" begins: it's almost happy. And is there anything as beautiful as that synth drenched bridge? Sumner's lyrics throughout are simple yet poetic and charming, the music is atmospheric and absurdly catchy, and it has several of the band's greatest songs. There's the joyous "The Village," the cold and mechanical "5-8-6," the epic "Your Silent Face," the melancholic closer "Leave Me Alone," and the top selling twelve inch single of all time, "Blue Monday" (which actually lost an insane amount of money due to its expensive packaging). Overall, this album is the band's peak and the one I enjoy revisiting the most.
3: TALK TALK - SPIRIT OF EDEN
It's pretty common for bands to become more popular and mainstream as they go on, but the other way around? Not so much. After three pop albums (one of which, The Colour of Spring, went 2x platinum) and a U.S. top 40 single, Talk Talk took a direction that was barely hinted at on The Colour of Spring. Completely convinced (for some strange reason) that his new idea would sell four million copies (spoiler alert: it sold an eighth of that), Mark Hollis and co. improvised for hours upon hours a day in a dark room for over a year, and when they were done they did some very extensive editing and chopped it all down to just forty minutes. This meditative piece of jazzy chamber music was not what the label had expected would come out of that studio. It was a totally unmarketable direction, and even though the executives themselves found it beautiful, they dropped Talk Talk from their label. It sounds as if mother nature thought "Ya know what, I'm gonna make an album." It's everything; peaceful, melancholic, uplifting, even a little angry. The best song here is "I Believe in You," a song about Mark Hollis's brother dying of a heroin overdose. Even if the same thing hadn't happened to my brother, this song's beauty would still give me chills every time I hear it. When that small choir comes in on the chorus, it moves me like nothing else.
2: THE POLICE - SYNCHRONICITY
On Synchronicity the Police took an obvious move towards calmer pop music that would make them the biggest band in the world, but there is more substance here than on any of their previous work, with some of their densest, artiest music and Sting's most poetic and political lyrics. No matter how overplayed it is, "Every Breath You Take" will always be one of the all time great songs. The fact that so many people think it's a love song proves how well it achieves what it set out to, by being incredibly creepy while being barely creepy at all. The lyrics are so perfectly simple, the melody is one of the best ever, and it has a hairraising bridge and outro. "King of Pain" is another highlight, a brilliant passionate ballad, and its ending always moves me. There's also "Mother," one of the most hated songs ever, but I love its creepiness and Andy Summers' over the top theatrical vocals. "Synchronicity II" is also one of the best songs out there about being depressed with the ordinary.
1: THE CLASH - SANDINISTA!
Sandinista! is an album I never expected to love this much. First of all, it's a triple album (sold for the price of one, which required that CBS take a massive cut from the band) and it's two hours and 24 minutes long. If you're going to put 36 songs on an album, it's gonna need to be incredibly consistent if it wants to hold one's attention. Fortunately, Sandinista! has more perfect, hairraising songs than any other album ever. "The Magnificent Seven" really feels like the beginning of something truly epic, and it is. I think what puts the Clash ahead of almost all (or all) of the punk bands to emerge in the mid to late 70s is their ability to evolve. They never did the same thing twice; they'd immediately perfect something and then move on to something else. To me, Sandinista! is their album that exemplifies this ability the best. This album is two and a half hours of worldly weirdness with everything from post-punk to reggae to rockabilly to jazz to boogie woogie to calypso to rapping to disco to funk rock to folk to experimental rock to Celtic punk to children's choirs, and even some of their punk rock roots remain; and it covers everything from the draft to the Cuban Revolution to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas to simple breakups. It still remains cohesive due to the echoey, dense production that makes everything sound so lush; and everything here is done well (well, maybe the children's choirs didn't need to be there). It is the most passionate album you will ever hear, as each song is delivered with a sense of urgency and importance that speaks just as to much to the individual listening to the music as it does to the causes it's advocating. Sandinista! is the culmination of months of recording in New York, in which every song they made turned out so damn good they had to release it all. Their approach to its making was quite loose; Joe Strummer had a bed in the back of the studio and he'd lay there reading while listening to music from all around the world, and whenever he felt an inspiration he'd simply get up and lay out his ideas. Joe once said "After a while when journalists would ask us, 'Are you musicians or are you politicians?' I thought I'd watch us for 24 hours to get the answer. And I watched us and we only talked about music." And it makes sense. Just listen to "Corner Soul," one of the album's best songs; it's about many things, one of them being how music can be the most valuable thing there is, regardless of where you are. A bit cheesy, but it sums up Joe's messages quite well. If there were only one album I could listen to for the rest of my life, I'd pick this one in a heartbeat. What're your favorite 80s albums?

submitted by DungeonessSpit to Music [link] [comments]

http://swiebodzin.info