#(when the answer could very well be ‘no it’s because even Marc straight up died and I don’t want to be unable to prevent

[age-of-moonknight]

What If…? Dark: Moon Knight (Vol. 1/2023), #1.

Writer: Erica Schultz; Penciler and Inker: Edgar Salazar; Colorist: Arif Prianto; Letterer: Cory Petit

[mysecretlittlelibrary]

Battle Of The Knights Alt Ending 1: And The Winner Is Steven

Pairing: Moonknight trio x Reader

Word Count: 1.1k

Warnings: nothing really

Genre: fluff

Summary: "So let me get this straight, you all like me, so you each want to take me on a date and let me decide what to do after?" You can't believe the words you're hearing even as you repeat them back.

What happens when the relationships you've built with Marc and his two alters are turned on their heads by a proposition that is anything but simple? How can they expect you to risk blowing up the carefully crafted dynamic you've worked so hard to create? And why do you agree to such an insane suggestion?

***

You only take a few days the think it over. You don't want to say you've known your answer since the date ended but- you won't pretend you haven't been thinking about it the most since then. You figure if you can't get your date with him out of your head then it doesn't make sense to choose someone else. It takes you most of the day to finally bite the bullet and reach out to them for the conversation you need to have.

Hey guys! I've made a decision. Can you come by tomorrow afternoon?

Their response comes relatively quickly.

Sure. We can come around 4 if that's okay. ~ Marc

You smile at the message before responding.

Sounds good! See you tomorrow! :)

The next 20 hours are both excruciating and relaxing. You know what's coming and you're sure of what you're going to say and there's something comforting in that, but you can't predict how they'll react to your choice and it's unnerving not being able to tell how this will change your relationship with all of them. You do what you can to keep busy until 4 o'clock rolls around and there's a knock at your apartment door. You managed to get more work done than you expected with all that's on your mind but now it's time to rip off the bandaid so you pull open the door to greet Marc. You assume it's him when you open your door because at the very least it's clear that he dressed them this morning.

"Hey." He says with a slight smile confirming your guess that it is indeed Marc that's come to see you.

"Hey, Marc, thanks for coming over." You smile.

"Of course." He nods.

"I was thinking maybe we could go for a walk while we talk things over." You tell him stepping into the hallway with him.

"A walk? Are we going somewhere specific?" He asks.

"I- didn't have a destination in mind, no. We can hit the park or something I guess. The weather's just nice I thought it'd be good to get out for a bit." You shrug. Marc regards you skeptically for a moment.

"Making sure you have an escape route?" He asks though it's obvious he's at least partially joking.

"Me?! Oh please! I'm making sure you have an escape route if anything." You nudge him playfully.

"Us? Uh oh. Be gentle, won't you?"

"Aren't I always?" You muse.

"No. You are routinely the harshest person we know." Marc scoffs.

"Well it's not like y'all have an expansive social circle so that title actually doesn't mean much." You say.

"Hey! We know people!" He says.

"Sure but like besides Steven's coworkers and the shop owners in your neighborhood?" You chuckle. Marc shoots you a glare and prepares to say something in his defense but seems to change his mind as his mouth opens and closes.

"You know what we didn't come here for you to roast our social life okay?" Marc huffs with the most attitude.

"Well you started it." You shrug. "But I will leave your social life or lack thereof alone."

"Even in conceding you're dissing us?"

"Okay okay, I'm done." You laugh throwing your hands up in surrender. Marc just shakes his head at you but can't stop himself from laughing with you.

"You know we weren't expecting to hear from you so soon." Marc says once the laughter has died down.

"Well, I did initially say soon when you asked when you'd see me again." You say.

"Yeah but then you said within three weeks. We thought you'd end up using most of that time." Marc says.

"I didn't need to." You shake your head.

"So then- how do you want to do this?" Marc asks.

"I- I'd like to start by talking to Steven if that's okay." You grimace.

"Steven? Yeah, okay." Marc's brows draw together and you're sure he's holding back several questions. A moment later his features relax and then his eyes widen nervously alerting you that they've switched and Steven is walking with you now.

"Hi Steven." You say.

"You- wanted to talk to me first?" Steven asks.

"I did." You nod.

"Alright, go on then." Steven says squeezing his eyes shut as if he's preparing for something painful. You can't help but giggle at the way he's physically bracing himself for words.

"Steven- why are you pinching your face up like that?" You ask him.

"I'm just- readying myself for you to rip off the bandage." He says.

"Wait- are you assuming I asked you out first because I had bad news for you?" You blink at him.

"Well- yes. You've always been the nicest to me I thought perhaps this was some sort of courtesy. That you thought it was a kindness to let me down first." He frowns in confusion.

"No Steven, quite the opposite actually I'm- I'm choosing you." You say.

"What? Me?" He blinks at you.

"Yes. Don't sound so surprised Steven." You chuckle.

"I can't help it!" He says.

"Why?"

"Well, you've known Marc the longest and Jake is- well he's Jake. Inarguably he's the most charming when he feels like it- the Spanish thing, it gives him an edge." Steven mutters.

"Okay- I know we live in England Steven but seeing as I'm not British I'll remind you that British accents are also considered 'an edge' one and two none of that matters. I love Jake and I love Marc don't get me wrong here but it's different with you. My date with you felt different and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it." You admit.

"They- they're listening, just so you know." Steven says.

"That's okay. Does either of them want to speak to me? Ask a question maybe?" You offer.

"Not right now." He says softly as he shakes his head.

"That's- totally okay." You say.

"Their egos are bruised, but they will be fine. They respect your decision and still care about you of course. Marc says this changes nothing between the two of you, but he'll need a couple of days." Steven tells you.

"I'd expect nothing less. He can take as much time as he wants."

"Jake isn't- really speaking." He grimaces.

"That's fine. It'll probably take him a bit longer to lick his wounds, and I get it. Don't push him." You say and Steven nods.

"So- if you're choosing me... now what?" He asks.

"That's a good question. I suppose we should go on another date. Soon." You say.

"Wait- are you my girlfriend now or are we starting the courting process and I ask you to be my girlfriend after a few more dates?" He asks. You smile as you consider his question.

"Will you be my boyfriend Steven?" You ask smugly.

"Y/n! I wanted to ask you!" Steven huffs.

"You still can." You giggle.

"Will you be my girlfriend y/n?" He asks.

"Of course I will." You nod.

"And I'll be your boyfriend." He says.

"Cool."

"Cool."

"I mean it about going on another date by the way." You tell him.

"Of course. I'll plan it." He smiles so sweetly at you that even if he didn't plan anything you wouldn't care. This didn't go nearly as badly as it could have. You're sure things with Jake and Marc will probably be a bit awkward for a little while but you're happy with your choice, you love them all but it's Steven who won you over.

***

Taglist: @queerponcho @avengersinitiative2012 @stressed-cherry

[miraculouslybroadway]

Tales of Multibug & Vipercat:

The Mandatory NathMarc Chapter (Centered Around Marc)

It’s odd at first, knowing that Chat won’t be joining them anymore. However, Chat was kind of rude and not very accepting to the new heroes so honestly, Marc wants to say “good riddance.”

It was obvious that Vipercat was a much better fit, and he and Ladybug, well Multibug now, worked much better as partners.

He rounded out the team really well. It was just, easier. If that makes more sense. It was easier for everyone to do their jobs because the new cat holder could properly do his. Well that does make sense actually.

There is one downside to being a hero, Marc supposes. That’s hiding it from Nathaniel. They write comics together, and have even written themselves (in a way) into their comics (Mightillustrator and Reverser). It wasn’t necessary a secret either that Nath had always wanted to be a superhero.

It wasn’t like Nath and Marc were together, they were just good friends. Really good friends. Was Nath even gay? Did Nath even know Marc was gay?

“Hey Nath…” Marc‘s voice trailed off as his partner looks up from his drawing.

“Yeah Marc?”

“…You know I’m gay right?”

Okay maybe that backfired a little bit. A LOT BIT ARE YOU KIDDING ME WHAT DID YOU JUST DO MARC!!!!

“…You know I’m bi right?”

Okay. Okay. OKAY. Maybe that backfired less then we thought.

“Oh.” WAIT NO CORRECT THAT DONT SAY THAT. “Cool.”

DID YOU JUST SAY COOL ARE YOU KIDDING ME MARC!

“I didn’t know that Nath.”

Yeah that’s better. That’s a normal person response. Good job Marc.

“Um yeah.” Nath let out a confused chuckle before turning back to his drawing.

What was it Marinette always told Marc? The best was to send someone into a gay panic was to go as sarcastically smooth as possible?

Okay, so maybe Marinette didn’t always say that. Or ever said that.

But she definitely said that you should tell the person. And she probably didn’t say the stuff about gay panicking. Come to think of it, maybe that was Chloé. Right Chloé. He’d have to get used to being around her more, now that she and Mari are trying to become friends (after she finally apologized for bullying Marinette for years).

“Hey Marc?”

“Yeah Nath?”

“So….so they’re doing this thing. Um, it’s at the bookstore/comic shop near the park. They’ve invited local authors to come and promote their books, and um they’ve invited us.”

“Oh really that’s cool.”

“Yeah I was just wondering if you wanted to do that.”

“Yeah sure, I think some more exposure would be good.”

“And you know, I think we can promote Rise of Vipercat at the thing too.”

“Hopefully the fans of the comic won’t mourn the loss of Chat Noir.”

I know I won’t.

“Well if Ladybug, I mean Multibug, doesn’t love him, then we have to respect that and figure out an actual reason why he’s suddenly gone and replaced.”

“…Maybe he died.”

“Marc!…Actually that’s a great idea.”

The two partners suddenly found themselves face to face, despite being on opposite sides of the room when the conversation begun.

“I-um-Nath I should probably tell you something.”

WHAT ARE YOU DOING MARC BACK IT UP BACK IT UP!

“I should probably tell you something as well.”

RETREAT RETREAT!!!!!

“You want to go first or should I?”

ABORT MISSION ABORT MISSION

“Um you can.”

SHUT UP MARC SHUT UP RIGHT NOW OR YOU’RE GONNA SAY IT.

“I-I like you Nath. A lot.”

MARC YOU IDIO-

“I like you too Marc.” Nath was crimson red, almost blending in with his hair.

Marc was pretty sure he looked the same.

“You wanna go take a walk?”

“I think that’d be nice.”

And for a little while, Marc’s very loud thoughts had stopped. It was nice. Peaceful even.

They came back later that night after Marc had gone home. (They had been at Nath’s.) He was laying down and the days events were all catching up to him.

Suddenly he sat straight.

NATHANIEL KURTZBURG IS MY BOYFRIEND

HSJFKFJWLCMSKCBEKS

The End

…

no it’s not

…

Private chat between Alix and Nath

alixisbetterthankim:

you and marc are dating now aren’t you

i sense a shift in the universe

…

nath answer me

i know you’re reading this

i have no evidence but i know you are

nathaniel

nathaniel kurtzburg

artistboynath:

alix i’m busy

alixisbetterthankim:

you’re with marc aren’t you

artistboynath:

shut up

alixisbetterthankim:

never tomato hair

[1littleshippergirl1]

Don't you dare get hurt

Summary: Oliver is a natural born daredevil and he just might cause all of Marcus' hair to go gray

@raviliuz here you go! I'll get to working on that other one you wanted soon

--

Oliver was a natural born daredevil. Apparently, according to Mrs. Wood, he'd been like that since he first learned to crawl. Because of his accidental magic, he'd land himself on the top of a bookcase or a countertop and just drop, his magic protecting him from slamming onto the floor.

It didn't get better as he aged, either. He saw no harm in performing dangerous stunts on his broom that would surely lead his mother to an early grave. Once, shortly after he and Marcus purchased a home of their own, he jumped right off the roof to test out if he would land on his broom or not.

Marcus nearly had heart failure watching it, as it caught him by surprise because Oliver had failed to mention what he meant by "afternoon activities" when he grabbed his broom and headed out that day.

Oooh, he wa simply infuriating! He'd marched right out there, demanding an explanation and all his boyfriend could do was shrug and say, "Oops."

Bloody oops.

Marcus partly blamed Oliver's Gryffindor-ish tendencies as a way to explain his rather stupid behavior. Than again, even as reckless as his boyfriend's friends could be, they'd also been exasperated with him and his antics on occasion.

No, Marcus believed that Oliver just really had a death wish and relished in the fact he often caused him unnecessary grief.

He never took his concerns seriously, which only aggravated Marcus further. His eyes would sparkle with amusement, a grin peeking out and lips pressed together to surely suppress the laughing that was bubbling up to the surface at how Marcus' inner mother hen was shining through.

Oliver believed that purely came from Marcus not being sorted into Gryffindor and he was sort of right. He simply wasn't as brave or reckless, didn't find pleasure in risking his life on the daily.

Honestly, with the way his boyfriend lived, Marcus had reasonable fear to believe that Oliver would get himself killed one day, much as his lover brushed him off as overreacting.

He couldn't help it. Oliver was the most precious thing he had (not that he'd ever admit to using the word precious) and he wasn't about to let him drop dead for a stupid reason.

(He already told Oliver that if he dies from one of his stunts, he wasn't going to the funeral).

And speaking of his idiot. Marcus was at the window above the kitchen sink, watching as Oliver jumped off the broom he'd been riding and onto another one that was suspended in mid-air. The roof incident earned him a hefty lecture from Marcus and Oliver's parents.

Mrs. Wood had not been pleased to learn what her son was up to now that he was out on his own. Although, her worry wasn't quite the same level that Marcus' was, beyond that of a concerned mother. After a while, when she became certain that her son would be alright, as she hadn't yet recieved an owl or floo call from Marcus to inform her that Oliver had wound up in St. Mungos, she relaxed.

That meant Marcus' anxiety was more apparent, now that he didn't have someone else to share it with.

Oliver made the jump- Marcus' heart leaped when Oliver momentarily swayed, nearly not making it.

He won't have to worry about dying from that because I'm going to bloody kill him

Marcus marched outside. "Oliver!" He barked, crossing his arms as Oliver came floating down, lazily.

"Yeah?"

"Don't be thick!" Marcus snapped at Oliver's feign of innocence, which did nothing to curb the former Slytherins wrath. "You know what I'm bloody talking about!"

Oliver sighed, knowing that they were about to go down a familiar road. "Marc, I'm alright. Calm down."

"You almost didn't make it," Marcus glared at him.

"But I did."

"But you almost didn't."

"Quit worryin'," Oliver mumbled. "I'm okay."

Marcus despised how nonchalant Oliver was regarding the subject. So careless, nothing seemed to really get through to him. Marcus even tried to use Weasley to get him to see sense and that was after Marcus had to get Weasley to see why it was a bad thing!

Weasley stared at him, puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't understand?"

Marcus wanted to throttle him but Oliver liked his best mate very much alive so he'd have to wait. "He's an idiot, that's what."

"Isn't that what we find endearing about him?" Weasley said, dryly.

"No," Marcus scowled. "He's gonna get himself killed one of these days."

"Well, then I won't have to listen to another one of your pointless arguments."

Marcus growled. "I'm being serious! You need to talk to him!"

Weasley rolled his eyes, apparently unimpressed. "I've known Oliver since we were eleven and I've learned that simply talking to him is not sufficient."

"Then do whatever. Just make him see sense."

There it was again, that peculiar look that Weasley had. "I see."

"What?" Marcus felt uneasy by the way he was being looked at.

"You're afraid," Weasley said, simply. "For Oliver. Has this got anything to do with-"

"No," Marcus said, quickly, scoffing.

Weasley clearly didn't believe him.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of. Shows you've got feelings and believe me, we all doubted such."

"Don't you think you're overreacting just a little?" Oliver had the bloody audacity to chuckle. He reached out to playfully nudge Marcus' shoulder, but the former Slytherin inched away before he could. The easy going smile slid off Oliver's face. "Marc-"

Marcus turned on his heel, storming back into the house and spamming the door. Oliver was left in the air, still on his broom, staring at the door blankly.

He wasn't going to waste his breath. There was no point in discussing it if Oliver wasn't going to take his warning seriously.

He stalked to the bedroom and slammed that door shut, too.

Marcus collapsed on the center of the bed, blowing out a puff of air harshly. This wasn't the first time that it'd happen, his anger getting the best of him. He tried not to let that happen, honest. But sometimes, Oliver's attitude got under his skin and he exploded.

He just wanted his boyfriend to be safe. That was all. He never thought much of Oliver's enthusiasm for danger much when they were attending Hogwarts; he probably would have celebrated with the rest of his dormmates if he heard that he'd fallen off his broom or some other mishap.

But that was before.

Before he knew what Oliver really meant to him and how quickly he'd become the center of Marcus' world.

And then it would be clear.

Marcus sighed, rubbing at his face tiredly. Despite his efforts at keeping his lover safe, ejucj usually were in vain, he never meat to smother Oliver. That was the last thing he wanted to do. He was also fairly independent and wouldn't take too kindly to Oliver doing it to him if the roles were reversed.

He just felt so powerless in those moments of uncertainty. It was a foreign feeling, one that he utterly despised. He didn't like fear washing over him like icy water, stomach flopping to the point that nausea set in. And over what? Oliver being fine.

There was a knock at the door, bringing him back to reality.

"Marc," Oliver called as he opened the door. Marcus craned his neck to see his boyfriend glancing at him with a look of caution. "Erm, figured you'd be in here."

Marcus laid his head back down, not saying anything.

"Look," Oliver came closer, toward the end of the bed, swallowing. "I....I didn't mean to upset you."

Marcus still didn't speak.

"I know it upsets you and all-"

"And yet you continue to do it anyway," Marcus interrupted, shortly.

Oliver shrunk a little. "Well," he started, lamely, "you do things that upset me."

Marcus sat straight up, eyes flashing.

"Nothing that could potentially break my neck!"

Oliver squirmed under the intensity he was receiving from Marcus. He took a seat on the bed after some internal deliberation. "I'm sorry," he said after a touch of hesitation.

"I know."

"But you're still mad...."

"You could have fallen, Oliver! And you don't even care," Marcus scowled.

"Why are you so worried?" Oliver finally asked, rolling his eyes, despite the seriousness of the situation. "Marc, for Merlin's sake, we play quidditch for a living and you're way more aggressive than I am."

"That's different!" Marcus snapped.

"How?"

"It just is," Marcus said, stubbornly.

"That's not an answer."

"That's the answer you're getting."

Oliver groaned, dipping his head downward. "What's the matter with you? Do I have to guess?"

Marcus ignored him.

Oliver sneaked his arms around his boyfriend, his chin resting on Marcus' shoulder. "Marcussss," he drew out the letters purposefully. "Come on, tell me, won't you? I can't fix it if you don't say anything."

A few seconds trickled by.

"I give up!" Oliver exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "I bet there's nothing wrong! You're just being a git like usual!"

Marcus did not appreciate the name calling. He for to his feet as well, shooting his boyfriend a dirty look. "There is!"

"Then tell me!"

"No!"

Oliver huffed, giving Marcus a great shove. "Tell me!"

"No!" Marcus shoved him back.

"Stop being ridiculous!"

"Stop being so bloody reckless!"

"Why can't you just tell me what's the matter?!" Oliver shouted.

"Marcus finally snapped.

"I'm scared, alright!"

Tension hung in the air.

"What?" Oliver said in disbelief. As if the mere notion was something entirely impossible. "You're joking, aren't you?"

Marcus glared.

"Okay," Oliver muttered, "maybe not."

Marcus sat back down with a plop.

Oliver sat down, too. Eyes downcast. Unsure of what to say. "You're really afraid?"

"Wasn't it obvious?" Marcus retorted without much malice. "You don't get it. I'm...I'm bloody terrified of something happening and you don't care. Do you know how it feels, watching you do that stuff?"

Oliver was rendered speechless.

"And I know I sound like a bloody 'puff but I can't help it, Oliver. You mean too much to me not to care. What if you-"

He had to push back the lump in his throat.

"That won't happen," Oliver said, quietly. "You know how careful I am."

"You don't know that."

"No," Oliver had to admit. "But you can't worry like that."

"I can't help it," Marcus grumbled, growing further embarrassed by his behavior. He was never like this before he'd gotten together with Oliver. He'd held a reputation for being a tough brute, but now he hardly felt brutish.

"If it's any consolation," Oliver ran his fingers through Marcus' hair, gently scratching at his lover's scalp. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright," Marcus muttered. "I know I'm being stupid."

"Stop it," Oliver hated it when Marcus got like that. "I didn't mean it like that and you know it. I just... you've got to calm down, Marc. I can't promise that nothing will happen, but you can't worry over me constantly." His voice dropped to a softer tone, his eyes staring at his boyfriend sympathetically.

"I know," Marcus buried his face in his hands. I know. Merlin's Beard, Oliver, I bloody love you."

"I love you, too," Oliver whispered. He leaned his head onto Marcus'. "I'm sorry. I really am. Suppose I've been a bit reckless."

"You suppose?"

"Okay, okay," Oliver said, good-naturedly. "I have been."

Marcus's earlier anger slowly ebbed away. He could never stay mad at Oliver for long. "I've never felt this before," he breathed. "It freaking scares me."

Oliver squeezed him comfortingly.

"I'm sorry, too," Marcus said, surprising Oliver after a minute or two of silence.

"You are?"

"Yes," Marcus admitted. "I suppose I can be a little.....smothering at times."

"You suppose?"

"Funny," Marcus rolled his eyes. "Really witty."

"Thought so," Oliver agreed.

Marcus snorted, then sobered up. "I really am sorry, you know."

"I know."

"I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you."

"For some reason," Oliver muttered.

"You ought to feel lucky. I don't like anyone this much."

"I do," Oliver smiled, nuzzling him. "Every day I feel lucky that I get to wake up to the most handsome bloke in all of England."

"That was so cheesy, Wood."

"Aye, but it's true."

Marcus closed his eyes, feeling his temple being kissed. "Forgive me?" He murmured.

"There's nothing to forgive," Oliver reassured him. "You were scared-"

"Concerned."

"Terrified."

"Apprehensive."

"Throughly anxiously about my safety," Oliver finished as though he hadn't heard him. "How could I ever be mad at you?"

"You were."

"Yeah," Oliver admitted. "A bit."

"I don't want to you to think I'm trying to control you."

"And I don't want you thinkin that I'm gonna ignore everything you say."

Oliver wrapped his arms around Marcus, pressing his face into his shoulder. "Percy said we'll have to make compromises."

Marcus vaguely recalled Weasley saying such.

"Marc, if it makes ya feel better, I'll ease up a bit," Oliver promised.

Marcus nodded. He didn't say anything else until Oliver nudged him.

"Marc."

"Fine," Marcus sighed. "And I'll stop complaining about it so much."

A minute passed.

"We're both lying aren't we?" Oliver chuckled, raising his head to meet Marcus' eyes.

"Probably," Marcus allowed a smirk to cross his face.

"I love you," Oliver placed his hand on the side of Marcus' face, kissing him.

"Love you, too." They embraced.

Contrary to what they both had said, they did try to keep up their part of the bargain. Oliver tried to practice his mord dangerous stunts when he knew Marcus wouldn't be home and if that wasn't an option, Marcus took to complaining to Adrian, who silently cursed Wood for making that happen.

[kissjane]

OH NO THEY WERE ROOMMATES / Very much unshort fic

#14 from this prompt list (I had to scroll waaaay down to get this link...)

Listen, for some reason these last few prompts from the list don’t wanna play nice. I have no idea whether this is any good, but at least it’s finished. I’ll settle for it at this point. Five to go!

We’re roommates but we’re falling for each other

It had started as a quick white lie, to get the boys off his back. They kept pushing him to go talk to any boy who looked at him a bit too long, or to give his number to basically any barista or waiter ever, or to go on a blind date with Basile’s cousin.

So Lucas had told them he had a thing going with his roommate.

Which was definitely not true.

But not because Lucas didn’t want to.

He’d had a crush on the handsome boy since he met him when he first came to look at the apartment with Manon. It wasn’t the biggest one he’d seen, nor the cheapest, but it had, well, other advantages, so to speak, so Lucas had been quick to co-sign the lease. If Manon suspected his reasons, she hadn’t said anything – but she had smiled when Lucas had come up with his fib.

Sadly, his fantasies of cooking together with his roommate, watching movies cuddled up on the couch, and slowly falling in love, had turned out to be a pipe dream. Eliott was mostly in his room. On occasions, he liked to blast dubstep. Lucas had soon figured out that the dubstep meant that Eliott was, uh, entertaining. The number of girls Lucas had walked in on early in the morning, before his first coffee, was staggering, and had quickly led to him putting up all his vague romantic ideas of his roommate.

But by the time Lucas was forced to come to the sad conclusion that the cutest boys were always straight, he’d already kinda committed to the story he’d told his friends, and so now he was stuck with it.

So every time he fantasized about another domestic moment of fluff with Eliott, he told himself it was for a good purpose. The girls were always bugging him for details about what he and his roommate were up to. They had declared them to be made for each other, and the discussions about their ship name were still in full vigor with no hint of them losing interest any time soon.

So Lucas provided.

He and Eliott had cooked pizza from scratch together, getting covered in flour, and accidentally setting off the smoke alarm because they were too busy making out to pay attention to the oven. Lucas ignored Emma’s eager question as to whether they had showered together to get rid of the flour dust.

Another time, he and Eliott had gone grocery shopping together, and Eliott had spun the cart on which Lucas had been standing so fast Lucas had fallen off, luckily into a pile of cardboard boxes. He’d still made Eliott kiss it better on each and every faint bruise as soon as they’d gotten home.

Or the time when they had held a Star Wars marathon, arguing about who was sexier, the young Han Solo or Dameron Poe, when Eliott had turned off the tv and complained Lucas was forcing him to compare a bunch of actors, when Eliott clearly had the sexiest boy of all in his arms.

The girls cooed at every concoction he fed them. In all honesty, it became hard for Lucas to remember none of this had actually happened – until the next scantily clad girl tiptoed through the hall on the way to the bathroom, bleary faced from the lack of sleep.

So after a few months of happy bliss, Lucas felt he had no choice but to break things off with Eliott. It became pretty painful to come up with lovey-dovey tales, and his fantasies were more and more often getting into… less family-friendly territory, which he wasn’t about to share with everybody.

His friends were a bit astonished at the news, and Lucas supposed it was weird, since he never even hinted at any trouble in paradise, but he shrugged it off, saying it was amicable, a joint decision, and he wasn’t even going to move out.

The downside was obviously that, after a few wonderful weeks of peace and quiet when everybody was coming around to the end of Lucas’ first relationship, Basile’s cousin came back into the picture.

Lucas tried to hold off, but he had no excuses left. And anyway, Eliott was playing dubstep almost every night, although Lucas hadn’t really encountered any pretty girls lately, and it grated Lucas’ nerves. It was time to admit he would never have Eliott, all his beautiful daydreams notwithstanding, so he might as well give somebody else a chance.

So he went out with Marc a few times. He was kind, and he had grey eyes, which Lucas recently discovered he had a thing for, so that was a plus. He was also a bit boring, and he tutted at Lucas disapprovingly when the latter tried to ride the bus without validating his ticket, but other than that, he was pretty okay.

And that’s how he found himself on the couch in his flat one evening. Marc and he had watched a movie – Lucas had nixed Marc’s suggestion of Star Wars vehemently – to the soft background music of dubstep coming out of Eliott’s room. It had been weird at first, but it had grounded Lucas somehow – Eliott was never going to be interested, and it was best if he remembered that and didn’t forget that Marc was here, and rather into him if the heated make-out session they were currently engaged in was to be believed.

Neither he nor Marc noticed the sudden appearance of Eliott in the living room, until the later coughed apologetically.

“Uh, sorry… I didn’t realize you had, uh, company, Lucas,” he stammered.

Lucas immediately let go of Marc, and blushed, then mentally berated himself. Eliott himself probably had a girl in his bed, so why would Lucas not be allowed to bring anybody over?

“Uh, y-yeah, no big deal,” he said, as soon as his vocal cords functioned again. “Uh, Marc, this is Eliott, my roommate. Eliott, this is Marc, my – uh…”

“Lucas’ boyfriend,” Marc cut in, a bit smugly. They’d never discussed their status, but Lucas supposed Marc had just made it clear where he was standing. He didn’t know how he felt about it.

Eliott stared at the two of them, his eyes wide. Lucas didn’t know what was going on.

“Uh, is this – is this a problem? We could go to my room, if you want…”

He hoped the problem wasn’t that he had brought home a boy. He realized he’d never talked with Eliott about his sexuality.

Eliott seemed to be slapped out of whatever daze he’d been in.

“Oh! Oh, no,” he quickly replied. “Please, it’s no problem at all. I’ll just… grab a drink and leave you guys, then… Bye, uh, Martin?”

“Marc,” Marc answered pleasantly, pulling Lucas close.

Lucas watched Eliott retreat into the kitchen – he whipped his eyes away as soon as he realized they were trained on the other boy’s ass in his tight jeans – and then returned his close-lipped smile when he passed them again on the way back to his room. The volume of the dubstep was turned on fractionally, and Marc wanted to continue the heavy petting, but somehow, Lucas wasn’t really into it, and though Marc clearly was angling for an invitation to spend the night, Lucas didn’t extend one.

He said goodnight to Marc, and went to his room. He sat still on his bed, his knees pulled up, his arms around himself, wondering how on earth he had gotten himself in this situation. Maybe he needed to move out anyway. It was clear his crush on Eliott, stupid and one-sided as it was, hadn’t died, and maybe it wouldn’t as long as he lived here.

A knock on the door brought him back into the here and now.

At his “Yes?”, the door opened, and Eliott stood right at the threshold, his hands wrung together.

“Uh, Lucas, I was wondering… Uhm, please don’t take this the wrong way, but, uh… I thought about earlier, and maybe, if it wouldn’t be too much of a hassle, I would indeed prefer it if you went to your room with your, uh, boyfriend in the future.”

The last words came out in a rush, and Lucas wondered if he heard them right.

“Excuse me?”, he uttered, painfully polite.

Eliott mumbled the same sentence as before, this time so low Lucas had to strain to hear it, but there was no doubt Eliott was actually saying what he thought he had been saying.

“Are you saying I can’t bring a guy over to my own flat, that I pay rent for, unless I go to my room with him? What the actual fuck?”

Eliott blushed.

“It’s just… You don’t have to, obviously, but maybe it would be easier for both of us…”

Lucas glared.

“Easier for both of us? How do you figure that, exactly?”

“I mean, you wouldn’t have to worry about me walking in on you…”

“I wouldn’t have to worry about that?” Lucas really was upset. Just because Eliott wasn’t interested in him, didn’t mean he had to be such a douchebag about other guys maybe being so. “Are you sure it’s not just about you? Your straight innocent eyes can’t handle two guys making out, is that it?”

A blush appeared on Eliott’s cheeks, and Lucas deflated. So Eliott was indeed uncomfortable with the idea. The moving out plan became more and more alluring by the minute.

It was silent for a long beat, and then Eliott spoke up, enunciating clearly.

“I’m not straight.”

“Huh? Don’t give me crap. I’ve seen most of your one-night stands. Very female, the lot of them.”

“Yeah, I know…” Eliott chuckled a bit self-deprecatingly. “I’m pan, though. I’ve been with guys too, just not…recently.”

In all honesty, the Lucas of a few months ago would have been elated to hear this. Right now, however, it was more a question of adding insult to injury. So Eliott was into other boys, just not into Lucas. It was this epiphany that drove him to bitterness.

“Yeah, well. At least girls have been doing it for you, then.”

“What? What do you mean?” Eliott sounded genuinely confused.

“All the dubstep. Have you even spent one night alone this month?”

When Eliott froze, Lucas almost wanted to take back his words. Eliott didn’t owe him any accountability.

“Uh, I’m sorry about the dubstep. I haven’t been seeing anybody for a while, but I… I kinda kept playing the music. I don’t know why.”

He was not looking at Lucas as he spoke, and he fiddled with the hem of his t-shirt.

“Oh. Well, it’s none of my business anyway, so, uh –”

“What if I wanted it to be?”

Silence.

“What?”

“What if I wanted it to be your business?”, Eliott repeated. He sounded unsure, but he stared straight at Lucas.

Lucas didn’t answer, sitting on his bed open-mouthed. What was Eliott trying to say? The other boy took a deep breath, and gingerly sat down next to Lucas, far enough not to touch him, but close enough to feel his warmth.

“I, uh, I brought over only girls recently because there was this one boy I was trying to get out of my head. And when that didn’t work, I didn’t want him to suspect anything so I kept playing music. It’s stupid, I know.”

Whoa. Lucas tried to unpack all of that in a logical manner, but he failed spectacularly.

“You played dubstep so I would think you had a girl over?”

Eliott nodded.

“And you brought only girls home because…”

“Because boys weren’t doing it for me, not when they weren’t you. Not that the girls were working out, either.”

There was honesty and vulnerability in his voice, and in his eyes.

“But why… why didn’t you just talk to me? You avoided me all the time… We hardly ever even spoke before now…”

“I know. I just, I crushed so hard on you, from the moment you came to see the flat. But I had no idea you were into guys… I thought the girl you were with was your girlfriend. You two seemed so affectionate.”

“Oh, uh, no, she’s one of my best friends, and an ex-roommate, actually. But I’m gay, so, uh…”

Eliott sighed.

“Yeah, I figured that out now. And it sucks, because maybe, if I had just made a move sooner… But it doesn’t matter. You have a boyfriend, and I’ll have to learn to live with that.”

Oh crap. Lucas had forgotten all about Marc.

“I wouldn’t call it that… We went out a couple of times… Mostly because it seems I was applying your tactic to try to get over a certain somebody I was crushing on… Somebody I too thought was straight, what with all the girls he was bringing home…”

He let his words die off, looking at Eliott.

It took him a few seconds, but then he turned towards Lucas, shifting slightly closer. Their legs touched, and it burned Lucas through Eliott’s jeans and his sweatpants.

“So, uh, if that guy promised not to bring over any girls anymore, could you be persuaded not to see Marc anymore?”

Lucas pretended to mull it over.

“Maybe if he also promised he won’t play dubstep if I ever end up in his bed, I think I could be, yes.”

Eliott laughed.

“I won’t have to play anything if we stay in your bed.”

And that sounded like a perfect compromise, so Lucas toppled Eliott and pressed their lips together.

[adamantiumdragonfly]

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

|| Ida L. Hale ~ Agent Themis || Character Study ||

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Legacy is what is left. Born, lived, and died. When the final breath is taken, the legacy is what is left behind. A scar across the world showing generations to come what you did, who you are. It marks your moment in time. 

The Hale’s home was one such legacy. Firmly affixed to the same street in the same family’s hands for seven generations, the grand house on Belgrave Square was a scar onto its own. White, magnificent, and home. 

Ida had spent her whole life there, with the exception of a few months out of the year where they would travel to Scotland for a holiday at the estate. She had learned to walk there, learned everything that a well to do daughter of reasonable wealth ought to know. And there she learned of her family’s legacy. 

It was displayed proudly on the gold wallpaper in the parlor, in the shape of seven portraits. Grandfather, great uncles, and uncles occupied that place of honor, championing for the Hale name: one that meant success and strength. Military careers and political achievements. Their legacy was deeply steeped in English history, like the tea they drank in this very room, strong and dark but still well loved. Like their family gatherings for small pastries and that hot beverage, Ida had been taught early on how to act and behave. Like a good daughter and a good girl should. 

She would offer the tea, as a good hostess would. Ida would sit neatly, primly, like a good girl should. Ida would always smile and nod along with her father’s not so gentle pressure of the recent eligibility of certain family friends. Because a good daughter would marry well. 

Even in the 1930s, with women’s vote a fresh memory and the progression of the world, some things hadn’t changed. Legacy was the currency in which the elite dealt and Ida didn’t have any of her own. She could borrow from the pocket of her father and of her brothers. Daniel and Everett had power to spare. Sons of Colonel Arthur Hale were enough to grant them anything they desired, opening doors that would turn away Ida, though they bore the same name. 

She knew that this was a fact of life. She also knew she had to further the legacy of another, by giving life to another family’s future while never seeing a mark of her own. The portraits were of men: fathers and sons. But the mothers were never shown. Nor the daughters. The key to their continued life and they were not shown in a single frame. 

What would it take for her to be in one of those frames on that wall? Perhaps on a wall of her own? Ida Louise Hale with a legacy like her father’s but one that wouldn’t be stamped out like a spark. One that would last forever and ever. Like her father’s. Like every other Hale in history. 

It wasn’t academics or career. Even the eccentric choice she had gone with. Everett and Daniel had been called up, pushing a pin into this chapter of the Hale timeline. Marked with their bravery in 1939. They joined the Army and the Navy before the war had started, when it was just starting to brew. Ida hadn’t done it to be like them. She had joined the SOE to become better than them. Some women would become nurses and some would keep the homefires burning but Ida had spent too long staring at her great-grandfather’s military uniform to not snatch up the first opportunity of service. 

A man at a party had found her in the corner, in a deep conversation with a friend in French. Ida could acclimate to climates and atmospheres in the social scene, a skill that her mother had passed on. It was survival for women. 

“You speak French well,” The man had said. 

“I should hope so,” Ida had laughed, in that bell-like tone that was trained into her. Lillian Hale had taught her how to be a good hostess and an even better flirt. Women didn’t have a legacy but they did have appearances and character. “My parents spent a fortune on a tutor.” 

The question had turned into an invitation with the blink of an eye. An office in Whitehall, then on a train to Scotland where her life of reasonable comfort and ease was replaced with grease and long runs in the fog. But being remembered for more than the life you brought had a heavy price. Sweat dripping down Ida’s back and fingers calloused from the sharp metal of the gun was the payment due. 

Gone were the smooth hands that had never worked for more than charity, replaced with hands deft with guns, radios, and paper bound secrets. Her mother had spoken of the holidays she had gone on in France as a child but the world described to Ida, wrapped up in blankets and tucked neatly in her bed, wasn’t the one she walked with caution. Paris was only three months occupied but the curfew wasn’t quite the glittering city Lillian had described. 

The gardens were still lovely, just as her mother had promised. Flowers still in bloom in mid-August though the heat was nearly unbearable. The gray uniforms must have been stifling for the Germans but Ida’s blue skirt and blouse would keep her cool. She sat on the bench beyond the lilac bushes, waiting for her contact who had promised to meet her in a cafe down the road. There was no point in arriving early, not when meeting anyone to pass information was dangerous enough. 

Pigeons flitted around her feet, an ever present pest in Paris, gobbling up what crumbs remained from some kinder pedestrian’s birdseed. Ida didn’t like to feed the creatures, who were sure to swarm if food was in sight. Ida had grown used to them, almost, in the nearly six months she had spent on the continent. Dropped in Belgium and traveling on foot to Paris, Ida had only the guise of a student and the orders to establish a network of contacts. 

The sea of feathers parted in wake of a man, around her age, walking confidently towards her. His posture gave a sense of youth and enthusiasm that was furthered by the look in his eye. He marched straight towards her, never a foot wavering. 

There was nothing menacing in his gate that would suggest a Nazi secret police or someone with an intent to harm. But he never wavered. The man sat beside her, ignoring the pocketbook and stack of books between them, the universal sign for occupancy. 

He smiled at her, bright and almost as unwavering as his march towards her. She raised her eyebrows. 

“I believe there is a less crowded bench over there,” Ida said, pointing to the other side of the park. 

“Two isn’t a crowd, is it?” He said, eyes twinkling. “And there are no pigeons over there.” 

Pigeons. Of course, he chose to sit directly beside her for the bird watching.

 Ida shifted. She had been used to overeager men at social gatherings and had learned how to read them in Scotland during training. This one offered no ill will that she could recognize, just a set of brown eyes that were melting in the August heat. He was handsome, in an endearing way. But Ida was still suspicious. 

“Are you a student?” He asked, not missing a beat despite the steady look Ida was leveling. She wasn’t a mean spirit by nature but she didn’t have time to engage in pleasantries with a Parisian, not when she would meet the key to establishing a network in France for lunch in a few minutes. 

“Are you?” She asked, speeding up the small talk script that was known to everyone and all too familiar to her. Ida had spent hours working on etiquette as a girl and had memorized every rule in the book. She also knew when to break them. 

“Yes, at the University of Paris,” He said. “I’m Marc, by the way. A pleasure to meet you?” 

“Is it?” Ida asked. Was it a pleasure when he had sat on her bench, encroaching upon her solitude and started to inquire about pigeons.

“Yes, it is. That’s why I said it.” 

“And your name is?” He pressed further, refusing to take silence as an answer. He didn’t seem to understand the subtle social cues. Ida would have to be more direct in her approach. 

“Louise,” She said, smiling just as brightly as the grin he had offered a few moments before. Marc blinked, as if shocked by her sudden switch. His mouth hung open as she tossed a lock of hair over her shoulder. “Tell me, what brings you to my bench?” 

“A beautiful girl,” he said, grinning again. 

Ida glanced around. The park was empty other than the man beside her. “I don’t see her, shall I keep you company while you wait?” 

“That would be very kind of you,” 

Ida turned back to face the pathway, letting the slight breeze blow the hair off the back of her neck where it clung with sweat. She was flushed, by the heat, not this man’s presence. She was frustrated by him, that’s what this was. Ida had one job in Paris: establish a network of contacts and informants who were ardently Anti-Nazi. Once that was done, she would have a functioning legacy that would continue to provide information to help the war. That was it. That was her plan. 

But this Marc didn’t want her to have a plan, it seemed. He kept chattering, trying to compliment her in a thousand different ways. Her watch was nearing noon and she wouldn’t have much time. 

“Oh look,” Ida said quickly. “Here comes your pretty girl now,” 

She gestured toward a small blonde, who hastened up the path towards them. 

“That’s my sister,” He said, chuckling at the girl. 

“Enjoy your family, catch up,” Ida said, standing and gathering her books to leave.  “ I would hate to interrupt.” 

He touched her arm, stopping her from running down the path of the gardens towards the cafe where Genevieve De Gualle was sure to be waiting. “You never answered, are you a student?” 

“Yes,” She said, allowing a small slip. Why was she telling him her legend? A stranger off the streets who wanted to watch pigeons and flirt shamelessly? “At the University of Paris.” 

It was all a lie. Papers provided by the British government made a good cover but not the truth. Marc didn’t seem to care, just grinning again. His smile was too bright and his enthusiasm continued to rise, the longer he looked at her. 

“I’m sure I’ll see you around, Louise,” He said. 

“I’m sure you’ll try,” She said, and against her better judgment, she smiled. Ida turned and marched out of sight around a lilac bush.

[treatian]

The Chronicles of the Dark One:  Breaking the Curse

Chapter 12: Life After Death

He moved his dagger the following Thursday, a week after he'd been caught, on Thanksgiving afternoon when he could be certain Regina was busy with Henry. Not that it was a terribly difficult task this time around. In fact, he'd spent practically the entire week figuring out the perfect spot to bury it out by his cabin. He'd had time to do it, felt comfortable waiting, all because of one fact.

Sheriff Graham was dead.

It had happened on the same day that he'd spotted him burying the dagger. That very night. Whether or not he'd told Regina he saw him that morning was unclear, but after hearing the report from Dove, who was still watching Emma, he felt confident enough that he hadn't had the time and there had never been the place. Emma had run into Graham that afternoon. They'd followed a white wolf, a real wolf, around town before going to the cemetery and sneaking into the Mills Mausoleum. When they'd come out, Emma and Regina had engaged in some sort of argument which Dove couldn't hear, but he confirmed that they'd both taken swipes at one another. He hadn't seen Regina leave, but Graham had left with Emma. They'd gone to the police station. And there, less than an hour later, Emma had frantically called the paramedics saying that Sheriff Graham had collapsed. Dove couldn't confirm, but the rumor was that by the time they'd shown up, Emma had been the one to tell them that he was dead.

The funeral was ill-planned because of the Thanksgiving Holiday Regina had scheduled it for the Sunday afterward. When he arrived, it was standing room only. The only way he'd gotten a seat was by walking over to Belle's father, sitting on the end of a row toward the back, and motioned to his leg with a smile. "You know…cane," was all he had to say before the man grumbled out a sigh and resigned his seat to him. He didn't say another word, not even as he mentioned that his loan was coming due, and he was looking forward to doing business with the man who had killed his true love…though he might have left off that last little fact. Crowded as it was, the others in the row made plenty of room for him.

It felt like nearly half the town was packed into the tiny funeral parlor room. It figured. Regina had planned the service. Since he'd had no family, she'd seen it as her mayorly duty to make the arrangements. It figured that someone like her would have assumed that she'd be the only one to attend instead of considering the town that Graham kept safe and in order throughout the Curse. The former Evil Queen tried to maintain a façade of responsibility and valor, but he could see how his pupil swallowed hard, the way she blinked too frequently and dabbed at her eyes. If he didn't know any better, he'd think the poor girl had actually cared for the man, maybe even convinced herself that he cared for her. Magic and hearts and love…it was first and foremost messy stuff. He thought he'd taught her that.

To her credit, Emma Swan did not cry, but it was clear that she was affected by the Sheriff's death. She'd been with him when it happened at the police station, so it was ridiculous to think that she wouldn't be affected. And though he'd heard that she'd cried plenty that night, she didn't shed a single tear now. Sitting next to Mary Margaret, she stared straight ahead at the various speakers, unmoving except for the occasional blink. At one point, Mary Margaret had put her hand over her daughter's. Emma had winced at the contact, but when she looked over in her direction Mary Margaret smiled at her, and she'd managed to muster a half-hearted one before turning back to the service. Whether or not they knew they were mother and daughter, the connection they were starting to share was, without doubt, growing stronger by the day. Sad as all this was, that was positive thought.

He didn't stay for the reception, which he was sure, given the service, would lack both space and food. No, he didn't stay because he had work to do. Or rather work to oversee. Across town, he'd hired Dove and a few of his cousins to "clean out" Sheriff Graham's apartment. Though, of course, that was only half of it. In actuality, they'd been hired to comb through the apartment and locate any personal possessions and collect them for him to pick up.

Painful as it was, life went on. Life had to go on because this small town had been stuck in a rut for far too long. Not that he cared about anyone else but his boy, but he also knew that keeping this town moving forward was the only way to prevent more useless, wasteful death. And after watching Emma, who had dutifully been acting as deputy all this time, he was already working on the next steps in a new plan.

"This is it?" he questioned as Dove brought a single cardboard box to him and set it on the small coffee table in front of the equally tiny couch. "One box?"

Dove shrugged. "There wasn't really much to find. The apartment is fully furnished but not much of a home. He was married to his job, it seemed, so we didn't find many personal items. Guy didn't have any family, so no pictures or anything sentimental. Unless, of course, you found someone?"

Ah yes, when he'd explained the job to Dove, he'd told him it was because he was going to search for someone related to the man to take his possessions. The honest truth was that he hadn't even bothered trying. Dove was right. The man had no family; none with two legs that would appreciate any of his knick-knacks anyway. The Evil Queen's Huntsman had practically been raised by wolves, and since she'd wanted him to herself...she hadn't given him a family in the Curse. He was alone, even when he was with her. A lone wolf through and through.

"It seems our former Sheriff was a genuine man. What you saw was what there was. He had no family."

"Well…that's too bad. But this is it. Other than the clothes which we either donated or threw out, this was really all that was left of him. Given the circumstances, I'd ask if you wanted me to take these to the local pawn shop but seeing as how that's also you-"

"It's a job well done, Mr. Dove," he interrupted, peering into the box to look over what they had found. One item, in particular, stood out. It was a leather jacket, not the type that Emma Swan appeared to fancy but….

"I thought you donated or threw the clothes away."

"It was his favorite jacket, Sir," one of Dove's cousin's answered from somewhere behind him.

"That's Marc," Dove explained. "He played darts with Graham every Monday night."

"He wore it everywhere, Sir," Marc insisted sadly. "It's not really…ordinary. Remy said you wanted keepsakes…"

And so it appeared he'd gotten keepsakes. Some more helpful than others. Now that he was looking, he did see a dartboard with several darts bundled together in a coffee cup at the bottom. That was certainly not something he needed. In a rare moment of pity, he removed the board and darts and held them out for Marc. "I think these will have a happier home with you."

Marc took a breath, then turned red as he reached out and took them. "Thank you, Sir," he choked out.

"So what now?" Dove asked as his cousin looked the items over, and he saw him wipe his eyes on the back of his hand.

"Now the apartment is professionally cleaned, carpets and surfaces will be replaced, and it'll be rented out again. You know how this goes, Mr. Dove. Out with the old, in with the new."

"Rented out, wait…doesn't the Sheriff job come with the apartment? What about the new girl? Emma. She's only the deputy, but she's been acting as sheriff since he died? Shouldn't she be promoted? Shouldn't she move in?"

"I'd rather keep all that quiet for now," he smiled. Though that wasn't exactly in the cards, for now, it was reassuring that was where Dove's head had immediately gone for the future of the Sheriff. "She can't formally take the position until two weeks after it's vacated. As for the apartment when she does…well…you've been watching her Dove, does she seem the type to want to live in her dead former employer's apartment."

"Not particularly, but…Mary Margaret's place isn't exactly big."

"But it's not small either. No, I'd like to keep her where she's at. When she takes the job, we can keep her at salary instead of taking out for an apartment."

"And the box?"

"I think I'll hold on to it for a bit. You never know when it might come in handy."

"But, Sir-"

"Don't ask questions!" Dove shouted at another of his cousins. The corner of his own mouth twitched. It seemed that Dove had indeed learned his lesson. It seemed he might have even enjoyed the power trip that came from being in his employ. Good.

He motioned for Dove to pick up the box and carry it to his car for him, again motioning to his cane. Once it was set snug inside his trunk, he turned back to him. "Finish the cleaning; I'll see you're all paid, with a reminder, of course, that I expect services to come with discretion."

"We know. He knows."

"Good," he confirmed, slipping a pair of sunglasses on and fumbling with his keys. "I'll be in touch. There are things I'll need from you in the next few days. I will be looking to hire a couple of your cousins to help me with some other work. Just some little things, but I'm working on something special, and I need more eyes than you have. Be sure they know that discretion can buy them their way to the top of the list."

"Always happy to help, Sir. Any of us are."

He beamed. He might not have magic, but money did have a special sort of power in this world. "That's what I like about you, Mr. Dove. Wait for my instructions."

As he drove back to the pawnshop, he could hear Graham's belongings rattle and shift in the trunk. All that was left of a Cursed life. Nothing that would have been truly important to him if he'd died knowing who he was. If that was the case, he suspected Graham would have died happy, knowing Emma was with him. It was a waste. The only benefit from it that he now had a suspicion about where Regina was keeping her magic. Graham had no home, no family, no purpose other than being the Sheriff.

He had plans for Emma, though. She had a purpose and a family; she just didn't know it yet. As for the home part…that was something that would take time, but it wasn't contingent on the Curse breaking. He could begin that process now. He could make her invested in this place, these people, he could make this her home. He just had to wait a few more days, and until then, he had to proceed with caution. There were forces at work even beyond his control.

[vendettacanons]

Some Fun Facts About Antony

// Because I did a bit of research to develop him a bit more after that IMDB discovery and then kept writing-

It’s not made clear exactly what rank Antony holds in relation to others in the Legion but I have a deduction based off of some research, Caesar based his empire off of Rome. Antony is a reference to Marc Antony- Caesar’s Master of the Horse. Despite the title, according to my research, his actual rank was leader of the Roman Calvary and his rank would have been comparable to or directly below Brutus- you know, Caesar’s military leader.

Carrying that over into Caesar’s Legion, if Caesar is, well, Caesar, then that would make Legate Lanius his equivalent of Brutus (seeing as Lanius is next in line to be crowned and also at the head of seemingly all military operations under Caesar). And since Marc Antony was head of the cavalry and therefore just below Brutus, and Legion Antony is a direct emulation of him, that would mean he’s directly beneath Lanius in rank.

Looking at the Legion’s hierarchy those directly below the Legate are the Praetorians, which I personally put in a class of their own with Caesar since they’re basically his bodyguards. However, as we see with Lucius, they do have their own specialties. Theoretically, this means that Antony could be a Praetorian. The only problem is, Praetorians specialize and fight in hand to hand combat only. And Antony does have a gun and a machete in his inventory (additionally he’s wearing Veteran Legionary armor).

So really, it seems like it boils down to Antony being the same rank as one of Caesar’s Frumentarii. He is not a Frumentarii, but he has equal standing with them on account of being in charge of the cavalry, and he answers only to Lanius, Caesar, and the Praetorians really.

Going off of that, and basing it off of historical references, this means that theoretically, if Lanius was killed as Caesar Antony could become Caesar. Let that sink in.

For someone who works with dogs all day and does hard labor training them, Antony’s remarkably very clean. He bathes fairly often and stays fresh as he can. The tent where he sleeps and works the rest of the day is... less so. It’s not terrible nor is it unbearable (for most people in the Legion at least), but it’s definitely not as well-kept as he is. Thanks, Lupa.

I mentioned previously that Antony does have a machete and gun on him that he can use but in my portrayal, he doesn’t nearly use it as much as he could. Nah, Antony would rather wrestle someone to the ground and choke them out or fist fight someone to the death if he has the chance. Hell, this man will bite you if you get close enough to him.

Antony, much like Lanius, has no love for the Legion, and his opinions of it are overall very mixed but predominantly very negative. He has a begrudging type of respect for Caesar and what he’s built. He also respects the people that follow him so blindly for their loyalty and their dedication. But in all actuality, Antony does not like Caesar, doesn’t truly believe in his cause, and indeed he wouldn’t stay loyal to him if it weren’t for one thing: Lanius. He despises and is terrified of Lanius. Everything he does for the Legion, he does because he’s scared of having Lanius thrown upon him as a punishment. He’s seen first-hand what the Legate is capable of. He’s witnessed and experienced his callous cruelty and it is something that he fears with every fiber of his being.

Which is why when Caesar dies, if Lanius takes over he’s defecting. Caesar is the only reason Lanius has not obliterated him completely, and even now when he thinks Antony’s dogs do a poor job, he’ll have his men throw them into flames live for their failures and make sure word gets back to him out of spite. (And yes, Antony can, has, and will silently cry himself to sleep every time he hears that news bc fuck Lanius, those things are his spirit animals.)

Antony has a weird push-and-pull relationship with fire. Campfires and matches don’t bother him. In fact, he actually finds controlled flames very interesting and mesmerizing to watch and will easily become distracted by light sources in the distance (especially in the dark) because he’s become so sensitive to them. But larger uncontrolled flames terrify him. Wildfires or the kinds of scorched earth-style fires Lanius sets to try and erase things from the earth are just so scary to him. He doesn’t know why.

If Antony does not like something and it’s too close to him, he will bite it or smack at it. And not just regularly open palm smacks either. He curves his fingers so his nails are out and will actually claw at the thing bothering him and break flesh because his nails are surprisingly tough and catch flesh easily.

Antony gets a lot of looks and a lot of whispers about him for being so much more focused on his dogs than his comrades at times. He doesn’t really care what people say to him or about him. Now saying something about his hounds will draw more of a reaction.

If you think Antony spins around three times before laying down, you’re not entirely wrong. He actually checks everything in his tent three times before laying down.

Antony has a very sharp sense of direction. He’s very good at memorizing certain landmarks to indicate where he’s at. He only needs to pass through an area once to commit it to memory.

Likewise he’s also good at remembering names and faces. He has a habit of studying people’s traits and features and has an easy time putting names to their quirks. On more than one occasion, he’s found himself identifying the bodies of his comrades that either no one else can name or no one else can recognize for varying reasons.

Antony’s not the strongest swimmer but he makes up for it by being able to hold his breath longer than most. He can doggy-paddle and dive very well. It’s the coming back to the surface part that he has yet to master. Luckily, he’s learned that if he just holds still the air in his lungs will eventually cause him to float up to the surface.

He’s not great at climbing either. Lacks the balance and grip for it. Plus he get nauseated from being up high. He’s fine so long as he doesn’t look straight down. The problem is, Antony often gives into the temptation to look straight down.

Honestly, Antony is probably best on foot. He might not be as meaty as some of the other Legionaries, but he’s still a tough little bastard and his size gives him a remarkable advantage for being fast and agile. It’s harder to land a hit on him than you think, and even if you do, he tends to shrug it off and keep going. That’s not to mention Antony is hard to sneak up on.

Antony is a very alert person. Don’t let his odd demeanor or tendency to linger alone fool you. Tying into his memory, Antony has a habit of looking over his surroundings often. He counts the number of people around him and makes notes often of where they are. He also takes note of where things are (weapons or vantage points in particular), where sounds are coming from, and what is making them. He’ll notice if someone disappears or something suddenly starts or stops very quickly. The drawback to this is that his focus is immediately broken when he does... well, anything. And it kind of shows in conversation when he is not paying all of his attention. It’ll seem like he’s unfocused or spacing out. Luckily this is rare, as he was raised with some respect.

Whatever Antony doesn’t detect, Lupa and his dogs will.

Antony carries on some of the practices of his tribe in a secret. The Legion may boast that they assimilated him, but he refuses to let Caesar erase the Hangdogs completely. Especially because his old practices are something he clings to for comfort and security, just as much as he does his dogs.

Another cool thing about Antony is his ability to track things. Like seriously, this man could track a stray nightstalker pup across the Mojave. It’s not just because of his hounds either- Antony is great at picking up on tracks and footprints, determining how long they’ve been there, and following them. He can do it for days. He’d make a good Frumentarii for the fact that he can just go for weeks at a time tracking and following something undetected, studying its patterns and habits, and strategizing where the best opportunity to strike will arise. It’s because a part of the Hangdogs tradition was knowing how to hunt for yourself and survive on your own. If you could do that, then your dog would only make you more powerful. (They wanted you to have a symbiotic relationship with your sacred hound, not be completely dependent on it.)

For someone so good at keeping tabs on things and tracking things and being fairly decent in combat, you’d really think Antony is a well-rounded Legion soldier. But you’d be wrong. This man cashed out on luck and is only subpar on intellect. He’s only average intelligence but with how clumsy and ditzy he can be sometimes, it’ll leave you wondering if that’s the truth. And sometimes the things that come out of his mouth or the way he phrases them makes it hard to believe his Charisma is anything above a 2 (in actuality its a 5 but he hardly talks like it so-).

Antony is more emotional than most men of the Legion. He tends to think with his heart rather than his head sometimes (see: predominantly) and speaks out based on how he feels rather than what’s logical without saying it. (Ex: if something seems unfair or makes him angry, he’ll convey that without actually saying that he’s upset and simply try to intervene.) It also drives him to be a bit more interactive with others, especially if they’re distressed. His lack of experience leaves him a bit awkward about it, but he’ll do his best to comfort people and is actually pretty good at it.

Likewise, Antony’s strong emotions and quick-to-judge nature cause him to develop equally strong opinions of people fairly quickly. For example, he quickly began hating Lanius.

Antony has a tendency to throw his weight when he sits or lays down. Just a full body flop.

Antony doesn’t like having his hair touch unless it’s by someone he cares about. In which case, he loves having his hair touched. He loves being touched in general. He’s touch starved and very physically affectionate. He’s also big on giving gifts.

Antony knows how to carve wood and is fairly good at sculpting. He never gets to do it though.

He’s also fairly good at tanning, smithing, and sewing, and prefers to repair his own armor when it gets damaged. (And yes, he has tried making armor for his dogs.)

Antony has several tics that he does. He bounces his leg, taps his foot, curls and uncurls his fingers, cracks his knuckles and his neck a lot, taps his cheek or chin with his fingers, bites his nails, and tends to pace a lot. It’s not just when he’s nervous either. He just happens to do it a lot. Mans has too much energy.

Antony loves food. He knows how to cook a lot of things from his old tribe and cooks for himself mostly. Bring him ingredients and ask him to make you something new and he will love you forever.

Tying into that, Antony always has food and drink on him. Always. Like it is astonishing the ways in which he stores food and how much of it he can carry on him at a given time without anyone even knowing. It’s not like he has a super huge appetite either. Antony easily survives on just one or two meals a day.

Antony does have a regiment he follows in terms of walking his dogs. He wakes up early to go for walks out in the desert, gives them a small breakfast, trains the whole day, breaks for a walk or two, goes for one long walk by the river to drink and then take them out into the desert again, then returns them to the camp. He savors it too. He doesn’t like the feeling of being cooped up for too long. He prefers to be outside more.

Antony has a soft spot for children. So do his dogs.

Antony never took any slaves. He, like many who were brought into the Legion, could not bear the thought of taking any slave knowing that they could be one of his sisters or brothers. 

He might not seem like he ever runs out of energy but he does, and when the batteries are finally empty, Antony crashes. Hard.

For someone so tough and so brutish, Antony sure is good at giving puppy eyes.

Antony has jokes. Lots of them. They’re mostly stupid puns. And pranks if he feels close enough with someone.

[prairiesongserial]

epilogue 10

“Operator, this is Mac,” came the familiar, bored drawl of Lady’s secretary.

Mac was a heavyset butch, strawberry blond hair buzzed to the quick. He had sweat through his white shirt, especially where he had been wearing his underarm holsters, which were now slung over the back of his chair. He was an excellent secretary, and Lady didn’t just think so because he had saved her from two hours of phone calls that afternoon.

Mac leaned back in his chair, phone cord tethering him to the kitchen table as he made exasperated eye contact with Lady.

Lady raised her eyebrows archly. Mac had been complaining - mostly through facial expression - about the very, very small Hemisphere operation they had commandeered since they had arrived this morning. It was a family operation in the middle of Alabama, evident by the fact that its headquarters was a farmhouse. By the sound of the feet pounding up and down the stairs at all times, Lady counted sixteen members of the Rushforth Family Company - which was such an embarrassingly vanilla name for a crime ring, mob, or gang, that Lady was beginning to wonder if the Rushforths were actually straight. They paid Hemisphere dues, and had immediately acquiesced their home to her upon her arrival, but Lady wouldn’t have been surprised if the Rushforths merely ran a dozen successful general stores.

Lady and Mac sat at the kitchen table with the rotary phone, but across from them, Mrs. Rushforth was composing a bolognese, dicing the mirepoix inches from Mac’s makeshift workstation. It had been a long afternoon of playing catch-up. This was what Lady got for travelling. She hadn’t phoned in to Central since Oklahoma City, and a lot of people had left her a lot of messages. Mac took notes for the less important calls, but occasionally Lady had to take the phone.

Lady watched Mac take a page of notes, scribbling down shorthand with impressive speed, then hang up the receiver.

“That’s all your missed calls, except for the Dead-Eyes, who want to know - ”

“Never mind the Dead-Eyes,” Lady groaned. She pinched her forehead, looking up at Mac with an expression she hoped conveyed martyred misery. “God, what a fucking waste of a day.”

“You’re not done yet,” Mac said, utterly unyielding. Cruel, cruel woman. He stretched his arms behind his back until his shoulders popped. “Weren’t you tellin’ me…”

Lady rolled her eyes. The real reason she had commandeered the Rushforth’s kitchen table hadn’t been to listen to her messages.

“Give me the phone,” she snapped, pulling the rotary phone over. She dialed quickly and waited for the line to connect.

“I think you should sweet talk the operator,” Mac said. “It’s Ruth on duty right now. Tell her you’ll give her a raise.”

Lady shot Mac a glare, but quickly fixed her face as her call went through.

“Hi, Ruth. It’s me. Yes, you were just on the line with Mac. Yes, I know.” She paused, listening as Ruth launched into a mile-a-minute soliloquy on just how busy the switchboard had been today.  Lady cleared her throat. “So, about your hourly rate…”

This was what the head of Hemisphere had to resort to, these days. Auntie had never had to schmooze with the girls working the phones, let alone the discontented gangs under her thumb.  Back in Constantine’s day, If a gang had a problem, they either died for it or shut the hell up.

“...Now Ruth, would you mind connecting me to Marc Waters?” Lady said saccharinely.

Mac rested his chin in his hand and smiled up at her, clearly amused that this was one call Lady had elected to make personally. He was lucky he was such a good secretary. The line made a satisfying click as the call went through.

“Bonjour, bonjour!” Marc crowed over the line. Lady held the phone away from her ear. “My, if it isn’t a treat to hear from you. How’s Central lately? How’s Mac, is he around? I was so sorry I had to miss last year’s gala, but as usual business comes first - I don’t have to tell you, of course! It seems like forever since I’ve been out of Texas, and now I’ll probably have a teensy war on my hands, what with all that unpleasantness with Las Realezas. Oh, I should tell you about that, but where to begin…”

Lady stared down at the receiver for a moment.

“Marc, I called you,” Lady growled.

“Oh, and so you did! What did you want to talk about? My goodness, you wouldn’t believe the rumor I heard lately about a Vegas gang - Oh, what was their name, there are so many of them…”

“Marc,” Lady said. “I need information. Since you love a rumor so much - ”

Marc laughed, and the sound came and went as he apparently moved his receiver around. There was some scuffling over the line, and the sound of a closing door.

“Don’t mind the noise, I’m just getting in the bath,” Marc yelled distantly, and the sound of running water was all Lady could hear for several long seconds. She held the receiver away from her ear and glowered across the table. Mac refused to commiserate, his attention utterly distracted by Mrs. Rushforth’s cooking. Mrs. Rushforth had given him a spoon to lick.

Lady returned her attention to the receiver just in time for the middle of something or other about La Salle, for some godforsaken reason. This summer had been one thing after another. The Vegas gangs were breathing down her neck about their wrecked city, La Salle was toast, Whist hadn’t checked in and was probably dead, and every gang within 50 miles of the Dead-Eyes’s path of destruction wanted assurance that she was going to take care of it before Ethan came for them, next.

Watching Ethan die hadn’t solved one damn thing. She should have killed him herself. She should have scooped him up when she’d had the chance, locked him away, and then publicly executed him in the middle of the ballroom at Central headquarters’ yearly gala. Then no one would have said a damn thing about how much spine she did or didn’t have.

The only way to recoup her lost face was to ferret out the four who had beaten her to it. Cody Allison. Friday Wilmot. Valerie Lecter. And the silent travelling companion who it had been very, very difficult to get a name for, and even then, she’d only gotten “John.”

“Listen, Marc,” Lady interrupted. “I need to know more about Friday Wilmot and Valerie Lecter.”

“Who?” Marc said.

“I don’t know what the connection is, but they were at the riverbank where Ethan died,” she explained. “What do you know?”

“Ethan’s dead? Ethan Rouse?” Marc whistled. “You’re kidding! Who killed him, the rest of the Dead-Eyes? You know, they gave me a very hard time a few weeks back. They drank three barrels of my water, and in return for my hospitality, they took my men captive! And then - ”

Lady had heard this one before. Yet another Hemisphere gang seeking reparations for the Dead-Eyes.

“Marc. Friday Wilmot and Valerie Lecter. What’s the connection to Cody Allison?”

He stopped short. He was thinking before he answered. Great, that meant he was coming up with a lie.

“You know, I can’t say the name rings a bell,” Marc said with a theatrical sigh.

“Which name?” Lady said, grinding her teeth.

The phone beeped at her, and Ruth’s voice cut into the conversation.

“Lady, um, Johannes Madsen is on the line,” Ruth said. “I wouldn’t interrupt, except you said that I should put Mr. Madsen through with priority, and…”

“Marc, hold on a second,” Lady said. “Put him through, Ruth.”

A cacophony of sounds assaulted Lady’s ears. She held the phone a little ways away as the rumble of an engine, one or more shouted songs, about a dozen barking dogs, and Johannes’s own shouted voice blended into one dissonant orchestra.

“Johannes, I’m on the line,” Lady said, bracing her arm against the table and resting her head in her palm.

“My God, Lady, are you at a construction site?” cut in Marc’s voice, just as the sound of a window slamming shut on the other end of the line silenced the major part of the racket.

Ruth must have done this on purpose. Lady held the receiver away from her ear for long enough to mouth “Both of them,” to Mac.

“You should have offered maternity leave with the raise,” Mac said flatly.

Lady glared, and returned her attention to the phone.

“Lady? I got through?” came Johannes’s lyrical voice. “Those operators of yours are all business lately. Usually the Hemisphere lines are a good thirty minute wait for the likes of us. Did you put in a good word for me or something?”

“Who is that?” asked Marc before Lady had the chance to say anything. “That’s not Mac.”

“Who’s on the line?” Johannes echoed. “Well, anyway, if they’re with you, I guess it doesn’t matter. Listen, I picked up the…”

Marc started speaking at just the same time, clearly aware that Johannes was speaking, and yet also clearly unconcerned with whether either of them could be heard.

Lady held the receiver away from her ear once again, waiting for the two of them to reach some sort of harmony. It was like listening to a brass band of only trumpets. In fact, Lady was pretty sure she could hear a distant trumpet over the phone, probably on the circus end of things. Not that she would put it past Marc to pick up an annoying instrument.

“ - so Lady calls me out of the blue to ask about some so-and-sos, and I’m sure I’ve never heard those names in my life,” Marc prattled on. “And you’d think I would remember, too, meeting someone named after a day of the week, as you don’t see that every day. But honestly, as if I don’t have better things to do! She does have information brokers, doesn’t she?”

“Marc, I’m still on the line,” Lady snapped.

“Yes, dear, and there’s your answer for you,” Marc continued, just as Johannes interrupted.

“Look, I’m blowing through electricity here, and - Oh, Ezra, good timing, I’ve got Lady on the phone. Anyway, you didn’t fucking tell us that you were gonna make this a competition. How am I supposed to make nice on my delivery if every schmuck east of the Mississippi looking to make a few thousand silver is gunning for these four?” Lady heard his hand slam down on something. “God’s sake, Lady, you know I had to shoot someone? Some random bounty hunter out of New Orleans. What a waste! For all I know, he was one of your guys, and you better not make it a whole to-do.”

“Who are you, again, sweetheart?” Marc said. Lady could envision him twirling the phone cord around a finger in the tub. She squeezed her eyes closed.

“None of your business,” Johannes returned cheerfully. “Listen, we got your four troublemakers, we’re heading to Everglades City next, and that’s all I got. Except, you know, a hearty fuck you for the bounty hunters. Ezra, was there anything else?”

In the split second of precious silence while Johannes Madsen waited for his brother to give his input, Marc Waters interjected.

“Lady, is this really necessary?” Marc drawled. “I mean, you called me, remember? And here I am, made to feel like a snoop while you discuss who has and hasn’t been murdered with a gentleperson whom I can only assume to be a common vagabond! Lady, are you listening? Am I an eavesdropper at the window? I mean, far be it from me, but Miss Manners dictates…”

“Marc, shut the fuck up,” Lady said stiffly. While Marc was speaking, the cacophony had joined up on Johannes’s end again. The competing voices and whoops of laughter and the goddamn trumpet - all on top of Marc’s drawl - were making her want to pull her hair out.

“Johannes, was that all?” Lady asked. “Because if you’re finished, please hang up.”

Johannes didn’t answer. He had evidently put down the phone to engage with some circus-related problem - Lady could hear his voice from a distance, and possibly his brother’s, bickering in a language she wasn’t sure was English. Marc was still speaking, undeterred.

Lady laid the receiver down on the table. She was going for a walk. And so help her God if a member of the Rushforth Family Company so much as even glanced her way.

10.14 || 11.1

[seasonofthegeek]

JfT: Every Life Lived, Part 3

For the lovely @miraculouspaon

Parts 1, 2, 3:

“I don’t understand what I’m looking at,” Felix said faintly.

Marc closed his eyes in concentration and then let out a content sigh. “As far as I can tell going back, this is a reality where your father ghosted you and your mother away from the royals to live as humans. Currently you’re all in a small town a few hours away from London.”

“He took us out of France completely? I find that hard to believe. He wouldn’t be able to keep tabs on things as well in another country.”

“Perhaps he thought you and your mother were more important.”

Felix wanted to argue but the sight before him made his heart clench in longing. His mother looked older than he remember and there was the first hint of gray creeping into her chestnut brown hair. She was curled up on the couch by the fireplace and the light from the flames gave the whole room a warm and cozy feeling. Gabriel sat beside her, one large hand covering her feet that were setin his lap as he read his own book.

“They look so content.”

“I believe they are,” Marc answered.

The door opened and both men turned to see other Felix and Nathalie rush in and push the door closed tight behind them. “They’ve found us,” Nathalie hissed. She rounded one of the bookcases by the door and began to push it in front of it. “They’ll be here in minutes.”

The other Felix had gone straight past everyone to one of the rooms and reappeared with two bulking duffel bags. He dropped them by the couch and went down the hall again as Gabriel and Madeline moved about the small living room collecting things.

“This isn’t the first time they’ve had to run,” Felix murmured. “They’ve got it down to an art.”

“I was on my way home when I decided to check in and see if Felix was still bartending,” Nathalie explained hurriedly. “I recognized one of Christian’s guards and took him out and that’s when Pierce found me.” She and Gabriel shared a long look. “He let me get inside to Felix and escape out the back.”

“We can’t continue to count on his mercy,” Gabriel frowned.

“I’m aware of that.”

“Felix, darling, hurry,” Madeline called as she came from the kitchen with a large bag. “They found us quicker this time. That has me worried. They must be tracking us somehow.”

“I need to stop back by the pub on the way out of town,” other Felix said, his tone a little desperate. “I can’t just leave with no explanation.”

“There will be other girls, son.”

Other Felix opened his mouth to argue but an apologetic look from his mother had him closing it again. There was a loud pounding at the door and everyone froze in place for a very long second. Gabriel went to the front window to peer through a slit in the curtain and Nathalie went to the kitchen to suss out an escape plan. She came back within the minute.

“We’re surrounded,” she whispered. “They came with more than last time.”

Gabriel paled. “The panic room...”

“Will only mean it takes longer for them to get to us,” Madeline said, putting a hand on her husband’s arm. “There’s only one way in and out.”

The pounding on the door grew more insistent and the books on the case blocking it crashed to the floor. Felix watched them fall and felt his chest tighten.

“I don’t think I want to see how this ends,” he said quietly as he turned to Marc. “Please take me somewhere else.”

“Is there somewhere else you had in mind?”

He thought on that. “Is there any reality you can see where my mother gets a happy life?”

“Just because it was cut short, it doesn’t mean your mother didn’t have a happy life, Felix.”

“Is there a reality where she gets to live though?” Felix pushed. “Is there one where she isn’t killed in one way or another?”

“There is a reality where your father turns her after you are born to keep her safer but it doesn’t suit her and--”

The bookcase fell with a snapping of wood and the door splintered after it.

“Please,” Felix pleaded as he watched his grandfather’s guards march into the living room and circle his family. “Please don’t make me watch them die. Not again.” He squeezed his eyes shut and felt Marc’s hand warm on his arm.

“We’re okay now,” he said, tone gentle. “I thought you might like to see this one. It’s a little like the last but...different.”

Taking in a deep breath, Felix opened his eyes. Nino was sitting at a computer with large headphones covering his ears. His eyes were closed and his head bobbed as he hummed to the melody only he could hear. He looked happy and the sight filled Felix’s heart with so much joy that it covered the fear from the last visit like a warm blanket. 

After he drank his temporary fill of watching Nino, he took in the surroundings. It looked like a small studio space. There was a bed against one wall and bookcases lined every other wall and were filled to the brim. A secondhand couch covered in throw blankets sat in front of a television and cat was curled up and asleep on a rug in the small kitchen.

“Where are we?”

As if the reality was answering his question instead of Marc, the door opened and an older version of Felix entered with a few paper shopping bags. His hair was short and looked even paler than usual. Felix moved closer to his other self and saw the fine wrinkles lining his face. He was old, most likely very old to have aged so much.

“I don’t understand how this is possible. What reality is this?” His voice was hushed as he watched his older self unpack the grocery bags and then move across the studio to kiss Nino. Nino slid his headphones off with a grin and pulled the other Felix into his lap to kiss him properly. 

“This is a reality where you were able to break the bond and you and Nino left to live your own lives together. You found a quiet place and kept to yourselves and moved every few years so people wouldn’t realize you didn’t age the same.”

“But I couldn’t have broken the bond; it would’ve killed Nino. That whole plan was wrong.”

“Gabriel said it would’ve killed Nino. I knew of Marigold and I believe she could’ve done it. This reality proves she could have.”

Felix felt a sob rip out of his throat and he crumpled to his knees. “All this time...all this time, we could’ve had this?”

“There were consequences,” Marc reasoned. “Without Nino around to guard Adrien...”

“Another reality where Adrien dies?”

“Yes.”

“If Adrien dies, Jagged loses his plan to turn a female to hook Adrien.”

“True,” Marc nods.

“And maybe Jagged doesn’t try for the throne without the leverage.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“But Adrien dies,” Felix frowned. “Realities without Adrien show that things might work out okay but...”

“But also without Adrien, there’s usually no Nino depending on the circumstance,” Marc pointed out. “No reason for you to make a connection with anyone, no reason to open up.”

“And then we’re back at the reality where I kill Gabriel and set up shop with Lila to take the throne.”

Marc shrugged helplessly. “There are thousands of different realities and ways things can play out but it’s surprising with how many scenarios there are, how often things can only end a few ways.”

“I don’t know where that leaves me,” Felix admitted. “Everything almost feels fruitless. One move and things go bad even when it seems like they should go right.”

“The funny thing about knowing the future is it doesn’t actually help the present. I’m sorry you didn’t find what you were looking for.”

Felix watched his other self and Nino move around each other as they made dinner. They laughed and talked and cooked and looked so content. This reality could never come to pass but maybe...maybe they could still be happy.

He’d seen the vision of a future where they were happy. He was king and Nino was by his side and Adrien and Marinette were married and happy and he wanted that. He deserved that; they all deserved that, damn it, and he would fight for it.

“I think I’m ready to go back now.”

“There’s nothing else you want to see?” Marc asked.

“I appreciate you doing this for me but I think I just need to go with my instincts.”

Marc smiled. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

“You are?”

“I think it’s nice to be able to see what could be or what could’ve been but the real power is what we do with the present. That’s what really affects the future.”

“Do you think this little experiment is going to help you look into Nathaniel’s possible futures now?”

Marc worried his bottom lip. “I think perhaps I’m going to follow your lead and try to work in the present and not worry too much about the future just yet. I don’t want to see something that could change the way I feel about trying to keep him balanced.”

Felix considered that and the way Nathaniel had begun to change in the short time they’d been in the realm. “Magic is scary.”

“You have no idea.”

___

Just for Tonight

Before Just for Tonight drabbles

Buy me a cherry coke?

[ayearofpike]

Black Knight (Witch World, Vol. 2)

Simon Pulse, 2014 441 pages, 9 chapters + prologue and epilogue ISBN 978-1-4424-6734-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Bl 2014 OCLC: 1065025018 Released December 2, 2104 (per B&N)

A month after her connection, Jessie Ralle starts dreaming about a young thief who mysteriously disappears in a flash of light. On the ninth night of the same lucid dream, she herself sees the flash, and wakes up next to the thief and four others in transport to a deserted jungle island. There are no ideas, no instructions, no obvious goals. There’s just a clue, a plaque mounted near their drop-off point that indicates that six groups just like theirs are here, but only one will make it out alive.

In other words: Remember that world-building we had in the first book, where it was implied that Jessie and her baby daughter were going to be integral components to the new and evolving leadership among the witch council? Remember the difficulty and heartbreak of Jimmy only being alive in one half of her life? Remember the potential new bonds of realizing her father was active in her upbringing, and could be again in both worlds? Well, fuck all that — let’s have a Hunger Games. 

OK, technically this is more like Battle Royale, and Pike actually makes a reference to it as the young adults acclimate to their surroundings. But it is undeniable the influence that Suzanne Collins had on YA fiction, and certainly YA sci-fi/fantasy/analogues. In the wake of Katniss Everdeen, the market felt like it made a hard shift from doomed supernatural romances to dystopian future societies. It would be irresponsible of Pike to not try to cash in on that.

But this book ... is lacking in this regard. Collins’ success was not just that she made us care about Katniss, but that we cared about the bigger problem endemic to her (and all the other contestants’) situation. And Pike doesn’t give us enough to care about here. We don’t know what the stakes are, beyond survival. We don’t know who these people are, where they come from, or what they have to live for. We don’t even know where they are or why. I’m assuming there was another book or two planned for this series that would eventually get us to the meanings and revelations of this battle and why they were chosen to fight it and what ultimately was to come out of it. But this shit was so unsatisfying and we care so little about anyone or anything here that I can’t imagine we’ll ever see resolution.

(Like, does Pike even care? He claimed when the first one came out that it was going to be his “finest work,” and that the series could go “over ten books.” But it’s been almost five years and we haven’t seen another one of these. He didn’t mention his newer works at ALL in that recent Electric Lit interview. So who knows?)

The biggest problem is that the characters and setting we already know makes such a drastic shift to accommodate this story. And, like, I get it. The model of the industry, especially when this book came out, almost requires that you have established characters and an ongoing storyline before you ever publish anything. But it doesn’t feel connected to what’s come before. At all. It’s a new place we’ve never seen, everyone in the action except Jessie is a new character (and remember there are thirty-five of them), and there is almost zero resolution or explanation for what’s happening. There’s no reason this couldn’t have been literally anybody. Like, this could just as easily have been a Sita book, and maybe it would have actually made more sense, except that there’s no other vampires left. It probably shouldn’t have been a book about Jessie, who has a uniquely important position in witch world in light of the high-profile deaths she’s overseen and her responsibility to the Special. None of what happens in this story fits with anything that’s led up to it, and we are left a) wondering why the hell we’re reading this and b) ultimately unsatisfied.

I don’t even necessarily feel like there’s much to summarize, but I’m gonna do it anyway, because I’m dedicated.

We start with a chapter about the thief — Marc — whose MO is to hide in the trunk of a fancy car he’s valet-parked, wait for the owner to take him home, and then make off with the jewelry she (usually it’s a she) was wearing after she falls asleep. This heist is going to be his last job, because he doesn’t want to risk someone putting together a pattern that these high-profile thefts all came in the wake of the victims having been at his theater. So he steals the lady’s necklace and then her car to safely get out of Dodge, but when he stops to take a leak the light appears.

This is the dream Jessie has for over a week. The rest of the story is told from her immediate perspective, in first-person present tense just like a good little dystopian. She’s wondering about the dream, but she’s more concerned about who she just saw in the mall: the Highlander and President Coroner, just sitting there eating ice cream like they didn’t both get fatal holes in their chests last month. And yes, this is in witch world, where they died. She tails them and discovers they’re staying with (of course) the Alchemist, who tells Jessie there’s a reason for this and she needs to be prepared for ... something big, he isn’t clear on it. The Council has more info, maybe: the bad witches need to replace their leadership, and Jessie is first in line because she facilitated the killing. But what about the fact that she just saw President Coroner? The Council has an answer to that as well: one of the witch genes allows its bearer to control time, and so probably the Alchemist has that and has brought her and the Highlander forward from the past for some reason.

So Jessie goes home and has the dream again, only this time when the light appears she feels as though she’s yanked from her bed. She wakes up in the real world (and yes, I have expressed my hate for these names, but I’m sticking with them for consistency’s sake) in some kind of a shipping container with five other dudes, all of them wearing identical green outfits and matching unbreakable bracelets. And yes, one of them is Marc. The others are a precocious genius who’s going to MIT at 16, a quiet and scared Korean girl, an Israeli military fighter, and a Sudanese farmer who exudes strength and just seems to accept the situation. All of them were snatched at about the same time, globally and not locally — morning for the Americans, evening for Africa and Israel, middle of the night in Korea. But as far as Jessie can tell, she’s the only witch. So what is this about? 

They don’t get very far before the next chapter, where Jessie wakes up in witch world and realizes she’s in some deep shit. She spends all day trying to find Marc, but like ... if he’s not connected, how is this going to help? She ends up not doing anything about it, and awakens again in the real world on some kind of volcanic jungle island. They find the aforementioned plaque and immediately realize that they’re going to need to work together and find a place to defend. They also need food, and so Jessie has to start showing her hand when she catches a bunch of fish just by grabbing them out of the water. They find a cave to hide out in, but they also see some fast-moving people in gray outfits, presumably another set of contestants.

The Israeli wants to hunt them down — kill before we get killed, she says — and so everyone except the brain and the Korean go tracking. What they find is a grotesque death scene: five bodies in various states of dismemberment. It’s not the gray people there, though: it’s a giant Swede who has a deal for Jessie. He wants her to kill her humans as a show of faith, and he’ll do the same, and then they can team up against the other witches. Because of course he’s gotten all the information already, having made better use of his interim day in witch world than stalking some boy. Jessie refuses, and they fight, only the Swede has a healing factor that works almost immediately. Luckily some of Jessie’s time-controlling gene kicks in and she manages to run away, but her teammates aren’t so lucky. Another witch shows up and throws motherfucking LAVA at them, killing the Israeli and spearing the Sudanese to a tree.

So her next day in witch world needs to be more productive than the last one. Jessie calls up the Council, who is all pissed off that she didn’t come to them already. To survive, they say, she’s gonna have to go back to the Alchemist, because obviously this is what he wanted to prepare her for. So she shows up and talks to the Highlander, who starts working with her on fighting. Specifically, he forcibly activates her telekinesis power by throwing her off a cliff. So after this she’s gonna want to unwind with her family and enjoy their time together, right? Nope — she goes straight to Marc’s house and tells him the world’s least believable story, ending in the prospect that she might want to try to kill him so his witch powers activate in the other world. But haven’t we already said that killing someone in witch world means they’re totally dead? Technicalities. So she gets home and, oh shit, Jimmy’s mad that she went on a date with some random dude without talking to him at all about her troubles! What a silly boy!

When they wake up in the real world again, the Sudanese warrior is totally healed. Apparently the Korean girl has a super-powered healing factor even though she’s not a witch, tied somehow to the death of her twin sister, who presumably channels the power through her. They’ve also been offered a truce by a couple of other witches, not the ones who tried to kill them last night. So they partner up, but the Korean girl’s healing factor is instantly undone when she tries to fix one of the other dude’s teammates but they die randomly on the walk. (Probably actually secretly strangled by the lava-thrower, who Jessie learned yesterday can also make herself invisible.) They talk about the bracelets, which have some kind of weird stone inside, and one of the other witches says he’s found the source: a giant wall that blocks off half of the island they’re on, which you can only see if you climb to the top of the volcano.

As they’re walking, the gray team attacks ... sort of. These people are short and pale, almost albinos, but they move faster than any human can and Jessie knows they have some kind of group mind that allows them to work together. They surround the group and lure them into a battle with the giant Swede, and while they’re fighting him the invisible lava thrower murders all the humans except five: Marc (who does take a poisoned knife to the back), brain boy, Korean healer, and two dudes on a new witch’s team. Jessie manages to lop off her hand and collect her bracelet before she totally vanishes and gets away. Oh, and the other witch has captured the leader of the albinos, and is holding her hostage to attempt to lure in the rest of them. She doesn’t talk, but her telepathy is unsettling at best.

Jimmy shakes her awake in witch world and tells her to do whatever she has to in order to survive. If that means blowing another dude, whatever. So Jessie calls up the Council, which gives her a little more info on the two witches she’s teamed up with. Watch out for the second one, they say (not the one who’s tied up an albino), because he might have choked his last boyfriend to death and successfully covered it up. She goes back to the Alchemist’s house, where President Coroner pins her down about why their present selves can’t help Jessie train. So she has to limit just what she says about their deaths, and in turn they limit telling her that they traveled to Jessie’s funeral in the near future. 

Fuck this training, then, right? Jessie figures the only thing to do is help Marc live, and to do that she’ll have to activate his witch genes. But to convince him to die she’s probably gonna have to give up the booty ... only she can’t do it, she’s too busy thinking of Jimmy for a change in this novel. He wants to go through with it anyway (the death, I mean) but she has second thoughts and isn’t ready to put him through it. So they fall asleep next to each other and wake up in a cave on the side of the volcano, where the other two witches are fighting. It seems the first dude had his teammates on watch, but they mysteriously choked to death in the night while the second dude was backing them up. Huh. But they have to keep moving, climbing to the place where the second dude said he saw the wall, for ... like, reasons. 

They find another cave near the top of the volcano, and inside there are drawings showing a woman who looks suspiciously like the Council president touching a bracelet to a giant wall. They have to learn more, but the second witch isn’t eager to reapproach the wall. Brain Boy wants to go, so they agree that Chokey Witch can watch Healing Girl and Slowly Dying Marc while the rest of them investigate. Brain Boy touches the wall and freezes, and even though Jessie knocks him away immediately he senses that a lot more time passed, and he’s seen things that happened in witch world but not the real world. So Jessie wants to try, and when she touches it she’s suddenly playing red queen with the dead gambler from the first book, who reminds her that there’s more to the game than just the next card in her own hand. What? I don’t know.

She comes to on the ground with a lot of screaming going on. The Swede is back, so she and the first witch have to fight him. But he forgets Jessie’s plan and attacks weird, getting stabbed in the gut by one of the flying spears Jessie is controlling with her new telekinesis. Oh, and here’s Invisible Lava Thrower too, about to kill Brain Boy! He acknowledges that there’s nothing he can do and succumbs so Jessie has enough time to grab the Swede’s head and crank it around 360 degrees. Lava Girl vanishes, and Jessie picks up our other witch and carries him back to the cave, which is suddenly being guarded by all six albino dwarves. The other witch says that in this proximity, killing the leader will cause all of them to die because of the group mind, so Jessie sneaks up and lops off  her head, and then goes inside the cave by herself.

Sure enough, there’s Lava Girl, holding Chokey at machete-point. Marc is mostly submerged in a freezing stream, and Healing Girl is just, like, there. Chokey fights free, but of course Lava Girl hits him with ... you know, because they’re INSIDE A FUCKING VOLCANO. Only Jessie has realized something: these bracelets with the rock inside that matches the wall control their physical connection to the island. Lava Girl looks sick, pale, and weak since she’s lost hers, and when Jessie casually chucks it into the lava she drops dead.

And now Healing Girl comes to. She wants to try to help revive Marc before it’s too late, and wants to study the poisoned knife. Only she then tries to stab Jessie with it. Turns out that when she was alone with the first witch, the one hiding outside with a spear through his guts, he used his strongest power: mental suggestion. He turned Healing Girl into a slave, designed to kill those who weren’t expecting it. Jessie uses all her mental powers to break the hold, upon which Healing Girl ... jumps right into the motherfucking lava herself. 

I don’t know, I guess because we’re getting close to the end.

So Jessie disguises herself as Healing Girl and goes to confront the last witch standing besides herself. Who, surprise, does NOT have a spear through his guts. Apparently he can disguise himself too, in addition to the hypnosis. So he tells her to kill herself with the knife, but she stabs him in the lungs just before dropping her disguise, and then ... slits her wrists.

So Marc can live.

Because only one can survive, and of course it should be some dude we just met rather than the main character of the LAST TWO BOOKS. THE ENTIRE SERIES THUS FAR.

But as Jessie’s soul is floating away, she sees something. She sees herself, only older. Even though I thought once you were connected you stopped aging. And she tells herself that it’s not over, and they can go wherever they want to go ... or whenever, rather.

The epilogue takes place at Jessie’s memorial service (not actually a funeral, because there is no body, Jessie’s just been missing for a month but because Marc is now connected they think they know what happened) where Jimmy approaches Marc and they talk about what they know. In particular, Jimmy asks Marc to watch after his real-world son, who oh yeah there was an unfollowed thread where they got a DNA report that said he wasn’t actually Jimmy’s kid but it was also prepared by Jessie’s still-mostly-absentee father who has an agenda in ascending the ranks of the Council so its authenticity is questionable. But then they talk about Jessie and ... neither one thinks she’s actually dead.

And that.

Is the end of Black Knight.

I can sort of pick out the seeds that Pike is sowing in this story. I can start to sense the coming trails and paths the characters might walk in the supposedly potential ten-book series about witches. But like. You just essentially killed your MAIN CHARACTER. Your NARRATOR. And we don’t actually care about this jewel thief guy, who by all appearances is a BAD PERSON. But you went ahead and put him in the forefront. 

Is it any wonder this series fizzled out? Part of why I (and maybe a lot of us) got tired of dystopian fiction is that so many authors felt the need to keep raining shit on their protagonists. And yeah, this is another Hunger Games thing, but there’s a reason there — the dictatorial leadership fighting to keep rebellion down. To be perfectly honest, even though I see that reason, I didn’t like it there either. At some point, I wanted Collins to HELP Katniss rather than repeatedly jamming a boot in her face. We want to trust our authors to care about the protagonist the way we’re supposed to care. So when writers keep making their characters climb uphill, for no reason other than to try to get readers to buy the next one and see how they get over the obstacles, it becomes stale. If they obviously don’t care, why should we?

[ryanmeft]

Mary Poppins Returns Movie Review

Of all the words I thought I might end up using to describe the new Mary Poppins film, “cynical” was not one. Yet here we are. It is a very pretty thing, engaging the use of many very talented people, that nonetheless feels like it was assembled by a marketing department. What you do to get a movie like this is realize no one’s cashed in on a beloved property in quite some time, see dollar signs, snag some well-respected actors and a musician to give the thing the illusion you cared about it, then sit back and rely on the fact that you’re Disney and everyone is in goddamn love with you to avoid having it criticized. A quarry of sugar wouldn’t help here.

The plot barely needs mentioned. Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane (Emily Mortimer) Banks are all growed up, and Michael is having trouble making ends meet after the death of his unseen wife. He still lives in the same house, but has three children of his own, who with one exception feel they have had to grow up quickly in the absence of a mother. Michael very much needs to find proof he owns stock in the bank to prevent them foreclosing and wait just a damn minute here. Disney, we had this conversation, back when you decided to give the Mad Hatter depression: do not inject real-life problems into settings that depend entirely on being ridiculous to work. I do not care about the stocks, and neither does anyone else, especially when you utterly waste Colin Firth on the role of a villainous banker so entirely cliche he could have been lifted straight out of It’s a Wonderful Life. Then Mary Poppins shows up, played by Emily Blunt, and this is the point where the movie should finally wake up.

It does, for a bit, despite the insistence on saddling her with the most cliche plot device possible: Michael and Jane refuse to believe her childhood magic feats were real. I propose an instant punishable-with-lashings moratorium on this most tired of family film developments. But let me take a breath. The shoes of Poppins are switched from the feet of Julie Andrews to those of Emily Blunt, who is a more than satisfactory pick for the role. She wears an updated costume that is either meant to show off Blunt’s figure or does a good job of it entirely by coincidence, has a slightly sharper edge to her sarcasm and the hinted-at presence of such a human emotion as sadness, and in general has been upgraded just enough to capture the rapt attention of modern five-year-olds without sacrificing a bit of the old-school charm that has made the character a classic. She is just a little flirtatious, just a little prideful, and still as inexplicable; my personal theory is she’s some kind of pagan god, but that just opens up a wormhole we probably don’t need.

Speaking of entrances, she insists this time she will not go until “the door is open”. It’s an effective bit of mystery that occasionally hints at more plot than the movie needs, but is resolved in a sweet and touching way. She has the movie’s one truly attention-grabbing musical number, “A Cover is Not The Book”, in which all those strange feelings young you (admit it) had about the character as you approached teenagerdom are made as explicit as a family film can make them. It includes a verse about a tree and its roots that is so obvious to any adults in the audience I’m frankly shocked it made it past the censoring. It’s a raucous, Moulin Rouge-style number in which Poppins-Blunt dons a sensational purple outfit, lets down her practically perfect hair and goes full vaudeville, and the one point in the entire film where it effectively stamps out a distinct identity from the original (the animation it is accompanied by is delightfully throwbackish). Blunt was just about sculpted for this role in every way.

Indeed, perhaps in too many ways, because in nearly every scene where Poppins is not the center of attention, the film rolls over and dies. The original movie is well-known as one of Disney’s best musicals, leaving this one a lot to live up to. A wonderfully unreal song set in the ocean finds the right tone, with the perfect sort of unreality to the special effects that we’ve come to lose appreciation for in the age of computers, but sadly these are the only two memorable numbers. The rest, which include a soporific thing about London’s gas lights and a blatant-but-unsuccessful shot at recapturing that wonderful chimney sweeping routine, were in desperate need of the masterful touch of Lin-Manuel Miranda. The Hamilton mega-star is for some reason in the movie as a somewhat effective replacement for Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney working man, but didn’t get so much as a verse on the soundtrack. That’s incredibly puzzling, given Hamilton was such a sensation it actually got me into a non-movie theatre, and his work on Moana made it the only modern Disney musical with a soundtrack entirely worth having. I don’t see a lot of (read: any) Broadway, so I can’t say if Marc Shaiman and/or Scott Wittman are otherwise worthy as composers and lyricists.

I can say I’m thankful most of their numbers are merely forgettable, because then there’s the tragic case of “Turning Turtle”. This is clearly meant to fill the same hole as “I Love to Laugh”, but fails utterly, with a cringe-inducing cameo from Meryl Streep, doing a horrific Russian caricature that brings any momentum the movie had built to a thunderous halt. It’s a mystery why it, and Streep, are in the movie, especially considering Disney can’t appear to stop paying her despite her arrogant and unfounded rant a few years ago about their founder. That would be fine if she were doing good work, but even the Academy would have to stretch to justify nominating her for this, and that is saying something. Not-so-special appearances from Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury are equally groan-inducing, forced into the film in order to get bonus credit from long-time fans rather than because they actually work. In one respect and one respect only is the film a total success, and that’s visually. Depression-era London (it’s the Great Slump to them) is handled gorgeously, like a fine China vase with almost nothing in it.

The rest of the film, somewhere between unbearably dull and oh-so-brief flashes of brilliance, is a muddled stew of homage, preferring to wink and nod at the audience when a beloved scene is given tribute or an old character is seen (portrayed by a new actor); rather than invent a new ride for us to go on, it is content with slapping different branding on the old one. Most of the film isn’t outright offensive, just horribly dull, and if your standards are somewhere around “anything will do as long as the kids sit still for a few hours”, this is your movie. The trouble with holding onto the past is that, even if you do it well most of the time, the slightest misstep can capsize you. In a time when the Paddington movies have claimed the Mary Poppins magic for themselves, this is a relic already.

The ultimate question concerning this sequel, directed possibly under duress by Chicago helmsman Rob Marshall and written by David Magee (Finding Neverland, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day), is why? Why, if it is neither going to take the property anywhere new nor effectively pay homage to the original, does it need to exist? The obvious answer is money, which it is sure to have thrown at it in oceans. If you want a movie that’s worth the increasingly asinine price for a ticket, though, this, as Mary would say, will not do. No, it will not do at all.

Verdict: Not Recommended (1 and 1/2 out of 4 Stars)

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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All images are property of the people what own the movie.

[charmedguy18]

Full moon: Ember

                                                          Prelude: The Scene sets in a dark green forest that is well lit by the light from fireflies that swarms it on this full mooned night. Deep in the middle of this enchanted forest sits a young guy with his pen and notepad, book of spells and his cards. Some knows about his witchery that he does however most do not. This forest is his safe place, his hideaway where nobody can find him and that allows him to clear his mind.

                                                          ACT one: After a stressfull day, Lex finds himself wandering through the forest that was known to everyone as the Devils playground. It was given that name due to its history of where people went to practice their magick and unfortunate sacrifices. He claimed this wooded area as his home away from reality with its natural lighting and clear waters that ran through it. Nobody knew that this place of recorded danger was his place of peace and solitude.

Lex's phone rings just in time after he finishes excerising his psychic abilities all alone in the middle of his hide away. "Hey, wassup?" he answers. " Not much man, just wondering how you been...I haven't heard from you in awhile and it seems as if nobody has been able to get ahold of you...is everything ok?". Cesaro, with deep concern, questions Lex's where abouts and why he's been a ghost. "Sorry about that....i...i just been staying to myself and been entangled in my thoughts.". He replies.

Cesaro: Dude you know you can't just go ghost on us---

Lex: I know...I know and I'm sorry....

Cesaro:  look...we just care about you...every since that one accident...

Lex: Now why would you bring that up? You know I'm still healing from that...

Ces: It's been a year.

Lex: I don't care....he died in my arms as i drug his body out of that house....I couldn't bring him back....I loved him....just have a hard time letting go...had i fought harder for him maybe he would be here now....or maybe just maybe if I went with him i could have protected him...

Ces: Or maybe if you would have told him you are psychic and a magician he would have never went to that party.....i still can't believe you never told him..

Lex: There's a reason why i never told him...He would've thought that I was crazy and wouldn't talk to me no longer....look it doesn't matter. He's gone and I can't bring him back nor do I have the power to...I just need time to heal.

One year ago, Lex lost a very good friend of his....Lance. He and Lex were the best of friends although Lex never out right just told him how he felt. Lance had an idea of said feelings but never really touched on it due to not wanting to make things awkward. The night before Halloween Lance went to a house party where a few of his friends were but had no idea that what was supposed to be a fun night out for him ended up being a night full of sorrow for Lex. Lance was a nice guy that everyone got along with however he often found himself in multiple dangerous situations...I guess you can say that he lived on the edge dangerously and lived for the adrenaline. To this very day nobody knows who opened fire that night and ended up shooting him through the heart except for one person...ultimately leaving him lifeless. Now we have a depressed Lex that’s full of guilty feeling lost and alone.

Ces: He's not himself and hasn't been in a while.

Rayne:  I know....I still haven't really held a good conversation with him since....well you know when.

Ces: Are you still hung up on that shit too??

"He was my friend too!!" Rayne shouted. "Friend!?...ya'll were friends huh?? more like fuck buddies if you asked me!!!" an irate Cesaro screamed at the top of his lungs. Before Lance's death, he and Rayne had a secret relationship that barely anybody knew about...not even Lex and they were all best friends.

Rayne: How in the hell did you know that!!!

Ces: You must have have forgotten that Lance and I were really tight until a female started to come in between us and ruined "Bro Time"...I didn't know that it was you that he was talking to until he showed up to my apartment sporting the same crescent moon indentation as you on his arm....You are so lucky that I kept it to myself and spared Lex's feelings. You have no idea how many times I listened to him crying and wishing that Lance loved him the way he loved him NO IDEA!!

Rayne: .....You're right....absolutely right....I’m really sorry....I didn't think....Lance told me that Lex had a thing for him but was trying to distance himself from him until his feelings for him dissipated..but it was hard for him to do so because he knew how much that would hurt him and that he couldn't stand to break his heart...

Ces: Lance wasn't gay though.

Rayne: you're right...but he never claimed straight either Ces: Oh damn....it makes since why he would always try to make Lex happy...

Rayne: Apparently they had something going on or whatever but only reason why we hooked up those times was because we was lonely...and needed that connection. It felt good for a while but things started to get complicated and it wasn’t long that we had to part ways for a while...reason why i didn't go to the party with him plus my ex was going to be there too but had i still went I'd be dead too.

Rayne's ex boyfriend Marc couldn't stand Lance and his somewhat clean image. He felt as if Lance was better than everybody and was hell bent on causing him major destruction. Lex goes home to his apartment at Firestone villas on the outskirts of  Constellation ranch. He paces the living room with his mind racing at 100 miles per hour. His head filled with guilt, sorrow and stress while he's feeling lost and alone. He reaches for his Egyptian dagger and begins to make slits on his arms and legs a form of relief and ease tension off of his heavy soul. So that nobody will catch on to the harm that he does to himself, He recites the Latin healing spell that brings his body back to its original scar-less form.  His phone lights up in the darkened bedroom in which he lies in with tears still falling from his eyes.

Lex: ...Hello?

Rayne: Hey there my mystic oracle. how are you doing?

Lex: ehh...i’m alright just here in bed jamming out to some Midnight Hour before I retire for the night. Wassup?

Rayne: Not much Cesaro and I wanted to make sure you was OK (Cesaro chimes in to say hi) ..you know we worry about you.

Lex: Thank you. I appreciate that a lot. Both Rayne and Ces: No problem, are you feeling any better?

Lex: Somewhat....like i said before , it's going to take some time to heal from lance's death on top of this chronic sadness---

Cesaro: How about you smoke some chronic?

Rayne: Cesaro-Miguel!!!

Cesaro: What!? hell it could probably help him.

Lex: Look i don't need drugs...I just need time and for this healing process to be as smooth as possible...however i’m coming to a conclusion that what I so desperately need...doesn't exist for me...

Rayne: Don’t say that..

Lex: why not? It's true. Look history says that the more i get close to a guy the more they push away...until they leave...I’m tired and need to at least attempt to get some sleep but there’s this big ass bat that looking at me though my window with its bright yellow eyes...

Rayne: You been drinking?

Lex: No..

Ces: Lies!!!

Lex: (laughs) no lies...but let me get some sleep, I gotta get up early in the morning. Good night y'all.

Both: Rayne and Ces: Night bud

Lex goes to his window to look at the mysterious bat. He looks at it with confusion is his eyes because the winged creature spread its wings  as if it was getting ready for a hug. Still in awe Lex looks at the bat and wanted to take a picture of it but the bat started to flap his wings and flew towards the full moon in the sky leaving Lex to get a feeling of warmth and protection.

[madamlaydebug]

FLOWER of LIFE ~~~ TREE of LIFE ⚜🔥⚜ Ley Lines ~ The KEY To Unlocking The MATRIX ~ Yet again we come across another mysterious force of nature known as the electro magnetic fields of the earth, Shuman Resonance or better known as ley lines. The rediscovery of ley lines in this century is unveiling (apocalypse; greek for unveiling) the secrets of Nature. Ley lines are the luminous strands that many are pulling at today, hardly suspecting what riches lay at the end of these subtle light lines. All ley lines lead to the planetary Grid, the primary light and energy matrix, creating, enveloping, and maintaining planet Earth, our Gaia. What Are Ley-Lines? A ley-line is a straight fault line in the earth’s tectonic plates; this is a scientific fact. Through these cracks in the earth’s tectonic plates the magnetic energies released are very powerful indeed. Many people have claimed to have felt the energy surge up their body, and some have claimed that they have blacked out, as the surge was that powerful. How Long Have Human Beings Known About Ley Lines? Our ancestors have known about these lines for thousands of years. Every race and culture on the planet has known about these lines yet every one had different names for these lines. All we need to do is to look at the ancient cultures of the earth. Take the native Indians of the United States; they used to call ley lines spirit lines and their Shaman’s used to use the electro-magnetic energy in these lines to help them contact the spirits. They even designed their medicine wheel on the spirit lines, as they knew that these lines followed a straight round line. How did they know about these lines and the energies that they give off? The answer’s simple: the sky Gods told them. In Europe we are lead to believe that the druids called them mystical lines, in Wales they used the same name as eastern countries; they called them dragon lines. We know that Eastern countries called them dragon lines as the sky Gods flew in dragons along these lines. The aboriginal people of Australia called these lines “dream lines”, once again they claim that knowledge was passed on to them from the sky Gods. The Da Vinci Code was based on Rennes Le chateau in France, which is also on a leyline. It is documented that Alexander the Great was guided by Aristotle to take control of the major dome centers of these intersecting ley lines from dark forces. Which is why he put his top General, Ptolemy to rule Egypt. Interestingly Cleopatra, the last pharaoh along side with both of her husbands — Julius Ceasar and Marc Anthony of Rome, — were defeated by the Romans where they eventually destroyed the biggest library in Alexandria Egypt, before taking all the knowledge with them, sending us into the “Dark Ages”. During the medieval times anyone who had any knowledge of Hermetic’s was designated a Heretic and died a horrible death. This held true for anyone who knew how to read or write- a Heresy. Leaving only the royals and the monasteries literate. Throughout history all megalithic structures have been strategically built on top of these so called ley lines. From the pyramids of Giza to Stonehenge, Notre Dame, Solomon’s Temple, Parthenon, Oracle of Delphi, Rennes Le Chateau, Ziggurat, the Vatican, DC Capitol, Mecca, Agia Sophia, Aztec Pyramids, Bermuda Triangle, Coral Castle, Tesla’s lab in Shoreham NY, including all Nuclear power plants, military basis and stadiums — which are also used to harness energies — like giant batteries! Many of the sections where two or more ley lines intersect are marked with obelisks, such as Washington DC monument, Vatican Courtyard, and Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park. These electromagnetic lines of the earth are its veins and receive its energies from the sun that connects and effects, every living thing on this planet. We are electrical and our atoms are surrounded by electrons (electricity). Gregg Braden explains it best by asking us where does our heart get its electrical capacity form? We are connected to the earth’s electro magnetic fields and our heart is our battery. Many of our ancient spiritual figures knew this hidden knowledge and meditated or prayed on these lines or megalithic centers, which elevated their electrical auras, intellect, and connection to higher self, through the activation of the 7 energy centers (chakras). Could this in fact be what the golden halos depicted on all spiritual figures throughout history represented? Many of our top intellectual minds such as Tesla, Einstein and others all have something in common. That is, they all at some point have shared that their idea, invention, or formulation, came to them in a daydream or dream, which is in fact a meditative state of mind. For example Einstein was very knowledgeable on the physics of the Cabala and Tesla became very close with Swami Vivikanda – where through Swami’s teachings, realized that his ideas, that would come to him in a “Aha” moment, were coming from his close interaction with these ley lines, allowing him to access archaic records. Nikola Tesla who was born during a terrible thunder and lighting storm, used these ley lines to conduct his famous tower, which would give free energy to all. Of course there are dark forces as well, that are, and were knowledgeable of these ley lines such as, secret societies and Hitler who was very much into the esoteric realms, and worked very closely with Maria Orsitsch, also known as Maria Orsic, who was a famous medium who later became the leader of the Vril Society. Might I also add that days before the last Blood moon on September 28 2015, the Pope came to the US. He gave a speech at the Capitol, and then came to New York, where he went from Times Square up to Cleopatra’s needle in Central Park, and ended his trip at the Liberty Bell in Pennsylvania. Coincidently, he went through key ley line points… hmmm… hidden esoteric knowledge? It is interesting and we should take notice that the Swiss Lab “Cern” and the “Brookhaven Lab” in New York, both sit on ley lines and both of these labs have a Hadron Collider that directly impact these ley lines negatively and/or positively. Cern Lab is the father of the Internet and if you look at the hadron collider at Cern, you will notice it strongly resembles a web. Outside of Cern sits a large dome with an opening on top, same as the dome at St Basilica in Rome as well as the dome on the Capital building, and same as the top dome of Nikola Tesla’s Tower. Nikola Tesla Tower In addition this lab has a large statue of the Hindu Goddess of destruction “Kali”, right in front of its greeting entrance. Seems that there is a concentrated effort, to effect and manipulate the earth’s electro magnetic fields using these technologies. In a JFK and Eisenhower speech they both warned the public, in detail and refer to this well coveted group of elites as “technocrats” – for a reason. By controlling or influencing the geo-electrical grid they can effect the earth, and also indirectly/directly can control our thoughts and emotions artificially, because we are all connected to Gaia. Registering, digesting and ultimately transmuting is the key. We can change the channel if we choose, turn down the volume, fine-tune the specific radio band. The Grid Engineer has the potential for transmuting (freeing the inherent energy by releasing it from its form of bondage) the solar/celestial energies by intelligent interfacing with the Electromagnetic 1746 Grid through any of the 144 planetary Round Table holograms, or terrestrial Zodiacs on Earth. This Grid, we must remember, is the Golden Alchemical Bowl of electromagnetic opposites, and the potential of our transfiguration from gravitationally bonded humans to Humans of Light also known as ascension. Just because our accustomed technocratic elite (Lucifer-light bearer – aka fallen angle of music), play their favorite tunes on their radio station, doesn’t mean we have to always dance to that rhythm. We can change the channel and learn how to use the electromagnetic grid to play a more harmonic tune. Maybe they need a machine because it is only a handful of technocrats attempting to control the masses. When enough are awake and aware the machine is- no match for us. Love and empathy for humanity is key, and right now we are still lacking this, due to the lack of true knowledge. Instead we are all quick to step on each others toes to get to where we think we need to be in business, our personal lives, and even within the spiritual communities. The bee hive is fragmented , programed, compartmentalized and not jiving together, which is needed to thrive together. The introduction and understanding of the reality of the local celestial Zodiac clock system, brings us to the possible interaction between the human and the Grid. This is where the Grid Engineer and Knight of the Holy Grail become one- “alchemy”. This unification of seeking the Grail and serving the Grid is played out in the local geomancy of the zodiac landscape, and our direct involvement in this terrestrial grid system through a heightened consciousness interaction, within a local Zodiac complex. It may sound like a sci-fi movie to you , but these energy points all exist and even more so these technocratic elite make all their decisions and agendas based on this celestial/terrestrial knowledge. So you better sit up, take notice and start your diligent research to unveil what they know, for we are in an informational war. If you don’t know the game then you are no match for the current architects and that is exactly what they plan on. But how does an ascended individual voluntarily, consciously experience this huge planetary Round Table? And how does the Grid Engineer make intelligent, compassionate, and timely adjustments in the geomantic web of this vast-revolving solar table on Earth? You are reading this because you are meant to unlock more hidden truths in order to better understand who we are, and how we relate to this planet. “As Above So Below” An overlay of Cabala’s Tree of Life with the mythic Round Table/Zodiac image is most illuminating. The Earth is one of the 12 resonating spheres, one of the 12 Round Table members, one of the 12 Notes in the solar octave, in the Solar Tree of Life. Thus we can picture these relations either in terms of the Tree or Round Table. Our Body of the Sun is expressed as a 12-sphered Tree of Life, with 12 Knights, or 12 Notes; Earth is Malkuth (the 10th Sephiroth) representing appropriately, Earth (the 7th Sephiroth, Hod, for example represents Mercury). In the human body we have the 7 chakras which are energetically interdependent and activated sequentially, beginning with the 2nd, proceeding to the 7th, then returning to the 1st, the Root, the seat of Kundalini, the fundamental creative cosmic evolutionary energy. Similarly in this model, the Earth, has a chakra system, arranged not in anatomical but energy sequence at 7 key Dome centers. An Earth chakra, such as at the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt, or at Glastonbury Tor, England, is a huge energy vortex, several miles in immediate diameter. Root (1st) Chakra – Mt. Shasta, California. Red; Raw biological life force energy- precursor to deviation into individual life forms. Sacral (2nd) Chakra – Lake Titicaca Peru (but also includes Machu Picchu). Orange; Creation of new species and positive evolution. Specification of pure life force into individuals. Solar Plexus (3rd) Chakra – Uluru and Kata Tjuta Australia (twin monolithic sites). Golden/Yellow; Maintenance of the vitality of earth and all of its species. Immortalization of life force. Heart (4th) Chakra – Glastonbury and Shaftesbury, England. Green/Pink; Representing the Holy Grail and the Sacred Spear of Purpose, Respectively. Throat (5th) Chakra – Great Pyramid, Mt. Sinai, and Mt. of Olives, Middle East. Blue; Voice of the earth emerging, listening to the will of the earth needs to be mastered Third Eye (6th) Chakra – Mobile Chakra, Shifts every 150-200 years, currently coincides with world heart chakra in Western Europe. Purple/Indigo; Moves 1/12th of the way around the world, westward, at the dawning of every new aeon. Distills gathered wisdom of life on earth for collective advancement of consciousness, aligned with astrological sequences. Crown (7th) Chakra – Mt. Kailas, Himalayan Mountains, Tibet. White; Broadcasts the earth’s purpose or true will. Each dome vortex carry through the Grid, some have been activated, but otherwise humankind has either not been aware of this divine potential or not bothered to make use of them to create the intended Earth Paradise. The option, however, still remains. Because of their heightened electromagnetic fields, the Dome enclosures were like immaculate, high consciousness meditation halls where human awareness could be healed, uplifted, even inter-dimensionally transported through the domed exit points in the Houses of the Gods, facilitated by megalithic engineering. All megalithic structures, famous estates, obelisks, and historical sites are on these lines and can be influenced and experienced in mass, to elevate and change the current matrix. The Hermetic Keys to the planetary Grid are inscribed on the Messenger’s mythical “Emerald Tablets”, which summarize the 7 Hermetic Principles underlying all manifestation. These are the keys to Hermes’ Geomancy: “The 7 Keys to higher levels of consciousness.” The Principle of Mentalism (The Universe is Mental, the All is Infinite Mind, which is the fundamental reality and the womb of all universes). The Principle of Correspondence (Whatever is Below is like unto that which is Above, and whatever is Above is like that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of The One). The Principle of Vibration (Nothing rests; everything moves and vibrates). The Principle of Polarity (Everything is dual, has poles, and pairs of opposites). The Principle of Rhythm (Everything has its tides, its rise and fall, its equal pendulum swings to the right and left, its peaks and troughs). The Principle of Causation (Every effect has its Cause, every Cause has its Effect, all proceeding by Law, never by chance). The Principle of Gender (Everything has its “masculine” and “feminine” aspects). Experiential knowledge of Hermes’ principles through meditative interfacing with the Earth Grid leads us into the secrets of geomancy. I believe that if more are aware of this natural phenomenon, break our mental bonds to the material matrix and take action locally as groups on these ley lines, that can be found all over the planet, then we can take back what is rightfully ours and positively manifest paradise on earth. As the true empathetic, intellectual light beings, we were intended to be – Human (Hue=light being). Knowledge is Power and Applied Knowledge is Freedom. By Magdaline http://dreamcatcherreality.com/ley-lines-matrix/

[longforgottenunofficial]

The Séance Circle Part Two: Davenports, Cabinets, and Other Furnishings

There's obviously a significant gap between the aquatic critters and bat-winged cats flying around St. Anthony's head in an old painting reproduced in an old book on the one hand and a Marc Davis concept sketch for the Haunted Mansion Séance Circle on the other, and there's another gap between that sketch and what eventually was built into the ride.  By now, that's what we've come to expect around here.  In many cases, the gaps are such that you can't recognize any traces of the original inspiration in the finished product. Not here.  Davis's squiddly creatures and airborne felines notwithstanding, for the most part the Séance Circle is the place in the Mansion where the line between source material and finished product is the thinnest.  At times, the Imagineers merely reproduced an effect directly. Hey, I wonder where they got the idea of hanging a bell by thin wires so it could float around overhead?

Call me crazy, but I think that possibly they got the idea from séances where a bell was suspended by thin wires so it could float overhead.

Our sources are 19th and early 20th century séances and ghost shows, of course.  The period from about the 1850's to the 1920's was the heyday for mediums, spiritualists, and "spirit photography," as well as a heyday for theatrical and parlor magic shows—not coincidentally.  It's hardly worth the trouble, for our purposes, to try to sort out the tangled continuum between real, sincere spiritualists and real, sincere attempts to contact the dead via séances at one end of the spectrum and openly-stated illusioneering for entertainment purposes by stage magicians (in the David Copperfield sense of the word) at the other end.  There were those, and there was also everything in between.  You had fraudulent mediums who insisted they were genuine even while admitting to using tricks now and then, and you had stage magicians who flatly denied they were mediums but also claimed that the ghosts they produced onstage were real.  Harry Houdini was a famous skeptic and used his knowledge and expertise in professional stage magic to debunk spiritualists and mediums.  These efforts did nothing to keep some people from believing Houdini was himself gifted with psychic powers.  The blurring of lines makes sense if you think about it, since a good fraudulent medium is almost by definition a good illusioneer, a good magician. Some of the Haunted Mansion Imagineers were card-carrying magicians (Yale Gracey and Rolly Crump), with a natural interest in all of that stuff.  Is it really a surprise that apart from the spectacular Madame Leota effect (which nevertheless may owe something to 19th c. magicians like Harry Kellar), the main difference between the HM séance and a "real" 19th-early 20th c. séance is the fact that one is an honest fake while the other is a dishonest fake?  Otherwise, they're both going about the same business: creating realistic-looking spiritualistic effects that could fool a gullible soul under the right circumstances.  In fact, the HM version is historically realistic enough to require some annotation.  And that's our job. Begin with the ectoplasm ball floating around behind Madame L.

(pic by Jeff Fillmore, SCL photography)

Ectoplasm was commonly produced at séances, usually manifested as a white-ish substance oozing from somewhere on the medium's body.  In photos it looks suspiciously like chewed up gauze or paper, and even if you're a true believer, those photos are embarrassments.  Real eye-rolling stuff.  There's some ecto on the face of the medium in that earlier photo.  In "spirit photography," you sometimes saw ectoplasm leaving glowing trails.  Not much different than the Disneyland version, really, even if they couldn't figure out how they wanted to spell "ectoplasm" on the Effects blueprints.

Even when the Disneyland version started making faces at guests early in 2006, they weren't departing from tradition, since faces often appeared in clouds of ectoplasm at the "real thing."

The Davenport Brothers

So far we've been talking about the 19th-early 20th c. phenomena in general.  If there was a specific historical inspiration for the HM Séance Circle, it was the stage act put on by the Davenport brothers.  These are the guys who disclaimed being mediums while suggesting that the ghosts were real.  They started in the 1850's and were a very big act throughout the '60's.  It all came to an end when one of the brothers died unexpectedly in the 70's.

What they really were were top-notch escape artists and illusioneers, with an excellent staff of assistants who never got caught and never blabbed.  The Davenports would be tied up good and tight, and then as soon as the lights went out musical intruments started flying around and ghostly hands and arms appeared, touching people and scaring 'em good.  On with the lights, and there are the D bros, still tied up. They invented the "spirit cabinet" for their act.  It was a large cabinet in which they both sat, all tied up, sometimes with an audience member sitting between them.  After the lights went out, the usual levitations and creepy manifestations followed.

It didn't take long for professional mediums to recognize the advantages of having a large cabinet to work with.  The "spirit cabinet" very quickly became a standard fixture at séances.  With perfectly straight faces the mediums spoke of the cabinet as a kind of "spiritual storage battery."  Seriously.  Most often, the "cabinet" was not a wooden chest but a tent or a booth in the corner of the room.  The medium might sit in it or at its entrance or in front of it, while spirit manifestations appeared in front of the cabinet.

"And look how fast that button spins when I pull these back and forth!"

Wow, how do they do that?

Okay, nevermind.

It's easy to make fun of these phonies and the people taken in by such simple tricks, but many of these mediums were highly skilled magicians in their own right.  It takes practice.  I mean, how many people can control their urine stream like this?

Spirit cabinets are present at the Haunted Mansion séance, although it's doubtful if many guests recognize them for what they are. Both types can be seen behind Madame Leota.

It originally looked more like this under show conditions, of course:

As previously noted, the Séance room in the Haunted Mansion is yet another idea that goes all the way back to Ken Anderson, and if I'm reading this sketch correctly, the novel idea that the medium is herself a ghost is also his.  Notice that she is emerging from a spirit cabinet, already in this early concept artwork.

Just like the real thing.

Or the real real thing.

Hat tip to Craig Conley.  From Puck magazine (1884), perhaps a political cartoon

But getting back to the Davenport brothers, we know about them mostly from written accounts, of course, and one famous description of their act appeared in the London Post.  Compare the description of the musical instruments at a Davenport show with what we find in that earlier Davis sketch and in the inner circle of the actual attraction.

Floating tables, even high-flying, large tables, are nothing new to séances.

"Great Caesar's ghost, look at all the old gum wads!"

Marc may have wanted flying animals, but I think even he realized that furniture and musical instruments were more authentic.  He still couldn't resist throwing in a cat, though.

The musical instruments are the more interesting feature.  Madame Leota refers to most of them in her incantations, as you can see right there in her open spellbook . . .

. . . or hear isolated in this sound file:

Leota's Incantations in the Ride [Audio Link]

That gives us a bell and a tambourine.  For the horn, drum, and some kind of stringed instrument, we have to cite two incantations that were recorded but never used. Leota's Incantations Never Used [Audio Link]

Horned toads and lizards, fiddle and strum, Please answer the roll by beating a drum. Harpies and Furies, old friends and new, Blow on a horn, so we'll know that it's you. No one knows why these weren't used.  It could be something as simple as a head movement during filming that misaligned the face at that point. If you examine the instruments in the posters for the Davenport brothers, you'll see four kinds, the now-familiar horn, tambourine, and bell, plus something to "fiddle and strum," a guitar.  It doesn't take much thought to see why the guitar wasn't kept for the HM séance.  That instrument has undergone a complete reinvention in popular imagination since the 19th century and now has utterly different connotations.  It is no longer even remotely associated with the exotic or the quaint. Oddies and Endies, out of the past, come to us now, and we'll deal with you last. We've noted the connections between the Séance Circle and its historical sources; now it's time to wrap up a few curious odds and ends. Madame Leota's wooden spirit cabinet originally served a very practical purpose.  It was going to house the projector that produces her face.  Back then, she was going to face in the opposite direction.  You would see her face as you enter the room and swing around behind her.  This was the plan up until three or four months before the Mansion opened, at most.  It was probably ditched because you wouldn't be able to prevent people from seeing the projector at some point as they went by. Looking at the outer ring of floating objects, here are some random observations.  The wicker table is part of a set, and other pieces from the same set have been kicking around in the Attic for years and years.  The banner on the longhorn says "X = ?"  I think it's a sly tribute to X. Atencio, or maybe they're teasing him ("X? What the heck kind of name is 'X' anyway?").  The gong was originally going to be a cluster of three bells.  Oh, and you know that floating candelabra back in the Endless Hallway?  It was originally supposed to be here in the Séance Circle. The second drum has been missing at Disneyland for a long time.  The last time it was certainly seen was in 1991.

Perhaps it will show up on eBay some day.

Forget about the Phantom Drummer of Tedworth; what's the phantom drum overhead worth?

Originally Posted: Monday, August 9, 2010 Original Link: [x]

[one-of-us-blog]

Rose and Fern (TGP, Episode 13)

Today Eli is forced to watch and recap Rose and Fern, Episode 13 of The Golden Palace.  When the girls are faced with a combination of missing funds and the return of a figure from the past, suspicions and passions begin flaring.  Will the squad be able to solve these matters and move on before sinking into financial and emotional ruin?  Keep reading to find out…

Well, I am once again embarrassingly late in getting a new blog post completed, but before I dive into things let me at least tell Drew what a fine job he did with his recap of Tomorrow Never Dies.  Great job, buddy!  Because of my tardiness it has been a minute since I read your post, but I seem to recall that you were blown away by the brilliance of Elliot Carver’s scheme to secure exclusive broadcast rights for China.  What a villain, amiright?  But for some reason, I don’t believe there were any shifts in your list of franchise faves, so we’ll just hurry up and get down to business.  It’s time once again to check back into The Golden Palace!

Buttocks tight!

Episode written by Marc Sotkin, directed by Peter D. Beyt

We open to find Chuy removing a burnt duck from the oven.  Apparently Sophia has been overcooking food for quite a while, but it isn’t entirely her fault as the oven is broken.  Unfortunately, every time the oven repairman shows up, the only thing he services is Blanche.  We also find out that Miles has been calling the hotel and leaving messages for Rose, and she laughs at the idea that he got dumped and wants her back.  Still, she can’t decide whether she wants to forget all about him, get back together, or go on a Midwest ax murder spree.  ‘Tis the season, I say!  Blanche tells her to forget about the bum and date some new hunks, perhaps even someone who hasn’t assumed a fake identity and gone on the run from mob justice, nearly gotten her killed by a vengeful criminal, continued to live under an alias even after the truth had come to light, and then cheated on her out of the blue after years of presumed happiness.  And to set up our final plot thread for the episode, Blanche speaks to Roland and is informed that he can’t balance the hotel’s checkbook, and that $300 is unaccounted for.  She suggests using the “whoopsie” column to set things straight, and this should be a pretty big clue for what is to come later, but he tells her that he believes someone is embezzling money.  The two of them are on the case, and agree to stay quiet about the hotel’s financial situation until they have some answers.

Blanche and Rose almost immediately begin arguing about their money problems, but thankfully a woman named Fern shows up to ask about using the hotel to host a wedding.  The girls see the potential for some cash, and Rose quickly devises a cow-themed wedding to offer to the bride-to-be.  For some reasons, Fern really latches onto the idea and breaks out her checkbook, as the staff of the Golden Palace prepares to milk her for all she’s worth.

Roland soon reports that another $200 is missing.  He and Blanche get suspicious and interrogate Rose.  She caves to the pressure immediately and admits to stealing a nickel in the third grade as part of a magic scheme that probably inspired Now You See Me.  Next, Blanche puts the screws to Sophia, threatening her with one of Rose’s St. Olaf stories.  Sophia knows exactly how to handle such matters, and quickly casts suspicion onto a nearby minority, but Chuy is offended by the racial profiling and storms off.  Oh, and Rose mentions that she’s planning to get back with Miles for some reason, probably because she’s still making threatening phone calls to him in the dead of night, filtered through a kazoo.  Or maybe she just wants to get Carboned one last time.

Fern is soon back at the hotel, and Rose lays out the details of her proposed dairy wedding theme.  Miles suddenly shows up, and Rose believes he is there to win her back.  But surprise, surprise, Miles is the man who will be marrying Fern, and he was unaware that she was hoping to use The Golden Palace for their nuptials.  He only showed up to let Rose know that he was getting married, because why not twist the knife when you’ve already stabbed someone in the back?  He was also unaware of the cow-themed wedding, but is pretty psyched about it.  Rose flees the scene after hurling an insult at Miles that tips him off that she has been the late night kazoo-caller.

Chuy is looking through some cookbooks for cow-themed cuisine, and the mention of grass sets Cheech up for a fun magic brownie joke.  None of the girls are able to sleep due to recent events, but they’re still planning to hold the wedding at the hotel to ease their financial woes.  Sophia attempts to deliver a helpful “Picture It,” but the well must have run dry because she’s caught up to the present, and then inadvertently ventures too far into the past.

Miles talks to Rose and apologizes for this whole mess, which I assume includes acting totally contrary to the nature of the admittedly messy character previously established in The Golden Girls.  She is a total professional about things, aside from the threat of a public stoning.  He is hesitant to get married at the Palace, but she insists that it has to happen there.  She needs to see him get married so that she can finally move on with her own life as well (at least for 11 more episodes or so).

We next cut to Blanche counting cash out of the hotel’s drawer, and Roland catches her in the act.  She insists she is simply taking some of “her” money for necessary “business” expenses, but Roland points out that what she is doing is called embezzlement.  She doesn’t seem bothered at all about this revelation, and even takes some extra money to buy herself a pretty new dress as a way to reward the others.

Lastly, we see Rose tearfully watching Miles and Fern tie the knot through the kitchen window.  It’s a sad and upsetting end to the arc of a long-term character, but don’t worry, because we get a funny scene during the credits to show that Sophia has also stolen $100 to buy scratch-off tickets.

The End.

Well, I can’t say I was a big fan of this episode, but it’s mostly due to my dislike of the way the writers have handled the Miles situation in this show.  I suppose I’m glad it’s over, if only because I don’t want to see this continue.  It also seems like a total waste to bring back the character and actor again, given that he only had two very brief and forgettable scenes.  But those complaints aside, I suppose it wasn’t a total loss, as I enjoyed the jokes involving Sophia’s interrogation, Chuy’s magic brownies, and everyone’s apparent love of all things dairy.  The embezzlement plotline didn’t really do much for me, and I immediately called that Blanche was guilty, so I think they could have dropped that entirely.  Overall, I think the most I can give this episode is a rating of 2.5 poofy hairdos out of 5.  Farewell, Miles.

I’ll be back soon (I hope) with my take on Runaways, the next episode of The Golden Palace, and then Drew will return with a recap of The World is Not Enough, the next James Bond adventure.  Until then, as always, thank you for being a friend, and for being One of Us!