Fandom Island and Town

Having the first Thursday of the month land on the first day of the month was bumming Stewart out a little, wishing he had just a little more time to put something together for the next Open Mic Night. Again, there was that temptation to just say 'fuck it' and cancel the whole thing, but someone new actually had gotten on stage last time (along with his...pet? That Stewart would have thought had been a hallucination if people weren't interacting with it and he realized he had seen the giant capybara hamster gerbil thing around the island before), so it seemed like the show must go on.

Thankfully, the set-up, at this point, wasn't really that difficult, so he could just focus mixing some things and prepping his laptop with what he'd need and, hopefully, he'd get a stroke of inspiration to help him feel confident about whatever he put out.

There was a faint grunt when a customer wandered in at some point, though, because now watch, this week was the week they were busy and so by Open Mic Time, he wouldn't have had any time to actually work on the stuff he wanted to. Oh, the irony.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Everything had started put just fine. Stewart was actually doing administrative work regarding the store, with a good mix of some nu-metal and metal core driving his productivity, but then, out of nowhere, the music stopped abruptly and what started playing, although he didn't recognize it at the time, was the entire works of James Joyce, read in an incredibly dry Irish brogue.

He wasn't really sure, at first, if it was just the stereo or possibly the drugs.

He really hoped it was the former, otherwise he'd have just spend an entire half day after that recording dead air to mix and sample later.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Stewart was having a terrible week. It all started when he woke up on Sunday, and all he could think about was Gae sex. Gae sex filled him up inside. After Gae sex, there was practically no other sex. Gae sex was different than all other sex he'd had. Gae sex was the best of all sex, and he missed it. Gae sex had been a personal awakening, it made him feel something deep, deep inside him....It was like his whole life was meaningless before he started Gae sex. Gae sex made him feel pride. It made him feel like He-Man. It was life-changing. Earth-shattering Gae sex.

Why must he be tortured with these reflections? Of sex with his ex...girlfriend, who was named Gae.

(This joke worked so much better in a audio medium).

But there had been whispers of Gae asking about him over New Years, hadn't there? So he went back to Letterkenny to see if he could reconnect with that mind-altering Gae sex once more, only to find her elusive and avoidant and as unreachable as ever.

After abject failure, then, in successfully obtaining Gae sex, or even just a Gae kiss or chaste Gae handholding, Stewart returned to the island yesterday feeling defeated. He felt like all he wanted to do was drown his sorrows at the bar, but it was Summer's night, and he couldn't deal with that additional rejection (he didn't remember about there being another bar until far, far too late). And so he skulked down to the basement of Groovy Tunes to numb himself in his more traditional way, and didn't emerge until very late in the morning, wincing at the brightness coming through the window, and not feeling much better about any of it.

He thought maybe he'd poke at some work to try and feel better, but he was mostly just making a pile of terrible CDs to smash later. Until his phone buzzed, and he felt a surge of hope fluttering in his miserable chest. "Gae?" he asked hopefully to the universe as he all but lunged for his phone on the counter.

There was a wave of disappointment to see that it wasn't her, and then a tilt of his head as he processed what it was instead.

"Navaan," he said, with a faint smirk for the intrigue of possibilities. It wouldn't be be Gae sex. Nothing would ever be Gae sex. But...he certainly wasn't about to let that go unanswered.

Groovy Tunes is open!

(For now).

It was the first Thursday of the month, which meant it was time for another Open Mic Night at Groovy Tunes, so Stewart had spent the majority of his day in the store getting prepared for it, which, this time around, included setting up a light display in the window around the sign in it advertising the event to flash in time with the beat of whatever was playing on the stereo at any given time.

It took him a few tries, and he somehow managed to shock himself more that once, but after a while, he almost found himself trying to figure out how not to avoid it, but rather to do it intentionally to purposely get that little burst of electric shock running through him again.

You know. Totally normal response to unexpected electrocution.

Groovy Tunes is open!

When Stewart came into the shop that day, it was from the basement, blesry-eyed and hnbathed, because he'd discovered that there was apparently a whole ass apartment down there, and he'd been busy converting it into a little video gaming haven.

He was honestly considering relocating down there entirely. After all, he'd always been much more of a basement dweller, it was practically his natural habitat, and he still hadn't quite been able to get the constant smell of sake and sweat out of his current place.

Anyway, he was up in the store now, picking at a modicum of things to work on there, and it was entirely Argentum's fault that the stereo was pumping out Moby and his 90s electronica ilk today.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Stewart liked this job because, for the most part, he didn't really have to actually do much. It had really just been an easy excuse for listening to and playing around with music and equipment all day. But every so often, something would happen to remind him that it wasn't all just relaxing and remixes.

Like trying to figure out what they were going to do with a shipment of literally thousands of teeny tiny harmonicas.

He squinted at them suspiciously for a good long while before something hit him, and, after a quick jaunt over to the T&C for supplies (mostly super glue), he hunched over them spread over the counter and got to work on what could only be secreted as some sort of super-mini-harmonica harmonica monolith.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Stewart had been bracing himself for an onslaught of bullshit Christmas music when he went into the store that day...the usual repetition of the Song That Shall Not Be Named, of course, but other saccharine sweet and persistently poppy and overtly overplayed staples, as well.

So when he came in to find the stereo pumping out A Very Metal Christmas, he was...suspicious. Reluctant to trust it. But he also didn't want to look at gift powerhouse in the mouth, and so he was cautiously willing to embrace it.

"That's better," he asserted, lifting his chin importantly, and went to get started on some work.


Groovy Tunes is open!

The stereo was insisting on playing that Christmas song (you know the one), and refused to be changed, turned off, or even turned down. Stewart was pretty sure it had actually gotten louder any time he tried either of those things, and while he considered potentially taking a crowbar to it or something, he decided to go the peaceful route, pulling out his headphones and just hunching over his laptop to work while pumping out his own tunes.

He was mildly worried that the stereo could somehow infect his laptop in the pursuit of this wretched Mariah-genda, but so far, he could find solace in his remixes, metal, and Midwest emo, while complaining online about calling something a World Tour and only having European dates....

Groovy Tunes is open!

It was the first Thursday of the month, and, according to the grand schemes of previous months' Stewart, that meant it was time for another Open Mic Night at Groovy Tunes. He had almost thought about canceling, though; he'd been in sort of a funk this week and had only oh so handwavily somewhat unenthusiastically went around putting up flyers earlier this week to remind everyone, in case they forgot or just didn't care. Because he knew that if he did cancel this month, out of apathy or ennui or just general holiday blues, then it would be difficult to get himself to get it started again next month, and then the whole thing would fizzle before it even really got off the ground.

And people actually had shown up last month.

And if people didn't show up this month, he could just tell himself it was because everyone was busy with holiday bullshit.

So there really was no reason not to hold it this month, and so he was there at the shop getting it ready and dealing with customers in the day before setting things up on the stage for the performances that evening.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Stewart had no idea if this whole Open Mic night thing would get any traction. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of musicians in this small community, or, if there were, they probably weren't interested in a thing like this. But he felt compelled to try it anyway, and, if anything, he was itching for a place to perform his own remixes, and if that meant co-opting the space he'd already managed to co-op as a sort of manager while he was here, then so be it.

He was just going to desperately try not to think about his failed raves in the past, and that as long as he managed to be performing in front of more than just two people like--

No. No. He wasn't going to think about that. He was going to check the sound system and levels for about the fiftieth time, but he was absolutely not thinking about that right now, at all.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Was it a little ironic that Stewart, who went home earlier that week for Thanksgiving and just decided to not bother coming back until just that morning, would pretty much arrive back in Fandom, maybe do some work at the store and go to his class tomorrow, only to then turn around and just head right back up to a different part of Canada for school trip?

No. Of course not. That wasn't what ironic actually meant. It was just poor scheduling, and even then that was only if you cared about that sort of thing, which Stewart did not. It may be what some might consider an excessive amount of traveling and a waste of time, but he had, if anything, an abundance of that.

Besides, the equipment at the store was better than what he had at home, and so when he wasn't sulking in his chair about his past week and the general lack of direction in his life, he was working on some new remixes.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Stewart was, at last, experiencing his first day at work where the stereo system in the store decided to take on a mind of its own. It had started simply enough; he had been in a bit of a mood for some Mother Mother today. A little Hayloft. Some Nobody Escapes. Verbatim (of course)...

But right around the time he'd be expecting Arms Tonight to pop off, the music would....switch. To something else. At some point, some Danzig. Some Pink Floyd. Even some Tracy Bonham.

It was right around the time that his attempts to get back on track, only to have it go into Boys II Men, he started to realize what was going on and let out an exasperated groan and a roll of his eyes.

"Fine!" he said. To the stereo. Because that was his life now. "I'll call my mom, okay?"

He couldn't believe a piece of stereo equipment was judging him for not actually telling his actual parent about Parents Weekend.

Groovy Tunes is open!

It wasn't that Stewart needed an excuse to start flinging up dark and spooky decorations all over the place; it did track somewhat with his general aesthetic and no one would exactly be surprised if he were to declare that every day was like All Hallow's Eve for him, but he had to admit that it was still nice to be able to lean so heavily into it after what was a truly manic spree the other day through the Spirit Halloween that popped up in the woods recently. And so today was going to be all about decorating the place and maybe doing some rearranging for some things that had been on his mind lately that he was still sort of waffling over, but, slowly and surely, he was inching his way toward.

Well, he'd get about half-way through decorating the place, before something happened and a minor injury that he made way too big a deal out of and anyone watching would think he was dying based on the reaction, put him in a sour mood and he was going to spend the rest of the day sulking in his chair while tending his grievous wound*.

Groovy Tunes is open!

__________________________________________________
*A string of cardboard bats now half-hanging off the ceiling had given him a papercut on the pad of his thumb. Even using his phone was practically torture now! TRAGIC.

Not only did Stewart actually come into work that Thursday, but he also came in earlier than anyone would probably ever reasonably expect from him, and he almost immediately went to work, setting up his laptop at the counter and spending the morning bent over it intently. More often than not, he also had his headphones on, too, and so there was a good chance that, even if he was right there, a customer might need to wait a moment before he realized they were there, in which case they'd get a little bit of a sneer as he lowered his headphones and actually helped them with whatever they were there for.

A bit later, though, he'd abandoned the counter to head to the back and the turntables, to start putting some of the things he had been working on into practice, again with that laser-focus of a man with a plan and a determination to actually bring it to fruition.

It was nice, actually.

He really did need to make the most of it while it lasted.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Stewart hadn't exactly been the...best at keeping up with his pilfered job and managerial title here at Groovy Tunes, except for maybe a few entirely handwavey hours here and there to pop in with the intention of doing something and just sort of losing interest and going back to his video games and...pharmaceutical aids. And, really, that was how it always was with him, wasn't it? Productivity came and went, and that morning, apparently, he was on a good swing and wandered over the shop to make the most of it.

Everything seemed to be working around here just fine without his help, anyway. He didn't know how that worked, perhaps some mysterious benefactor, like whoever the person who ran this place before working behind the shadowy scenes or something, but he wasn't going to question it.

He did, however, manage to get in a good solid hour of what could be the sort of work that would look halfway decent on a resume before he drifted over to the turntables at the back of the store and just sort of fucked around with those for the better portion of the day, where he found himself just mostly vibing out the Ladytron he was feeling by playing around with remixing some of their songs to kill the rest of his day.

Groovy Tunes is open!

A certain lethargy had settled into Stewart that made it difficult for him to convince himself to bother with going into the store that day, but he had managed to do it. He wasn't expecting to get much work done, but, then again, when did he ever? He was mostly in a bit of a nostalgic mood, and planned to cycle through some old classics while just lounging in the old chair, his new skid throne, that he'd dragged into the performance space he'd cleared out. The early Marilyn Manson that left its mark. The Rammstein that then kicked it up further. The Slipknot that has always sustained...

Which might have been exactly what he'd have been doing if he'd just stayed at home, but at least now it at least had the guise of being a whisper of a productive member of actual society.

Groovy Tunes is Open!

Of course Stewart had seen the flyer for the concert tonight (and, he supposed, the subsequent wedding, but if he wasn't DJing himself, why would he care about weddings? He didn't even care about them when he was DJing, because that meant people like McMurray and Dickens constantly needling him about detestable chicken dances and deplorable boogies of a boot-scootin' variety), and of course that meant he had to look into this Envy Adams' music, and once he did that, play around with it a little, especially now that he did have his turn-tables set up toward the back of the store with the little performance space he'd been cultivating.

And he had to admit, this was...incredibly workable stuff, with a lot to play with and some good beats and riffs that felt pretty much designed to lend itself to remixing. And it wasn't a bad way to spend a day, really.

Sure, he should probably be doing things like working and running the store, but it's not like the place hadn't apparently been running itself just fine since the last person in charge here apparently left. And now it just also had better music.

Groovy Tunes is open!