#AND YET like how many people actually know that a) mausoleums in general are named after thee mausoleum of halicarnassus

[0iam0]

Team Chandora, redesigned a lil cuz it's kinda insulting how boring their designs are lol. I maintained their colour scheme in clothes but changed it to be different from one another. Ig it was intentional for them to wear similar clothes so I let that be. Idk if ppl even remember them so, there're the characters that battle wild fang once. They also fell victim to Masked Bull's "speech" that embarrassed everyone in Japan, maybe something that people would remeber. They are minor one off characters only to be seen once again as a single frame. This post is basically Indian bladers across generations, cuz, I Indian.

I love this guy and his adorable snake friend.

what are they

Below is just me overanalyzing and comparing the generations.

So, mfb. Team Chandora. It's the best in terms of giving them a personality and also screentime. The character names are most probably just slightly altered versions of some really popular Indian actors/celebs. Salhan - Salman (Khan); Vridick - Hrithik (Roshan); Aniel - Anil (Kapoor). Neither of their names are familiar to me, nowhere near a common name in India and, mean nothing actually. So this is how I think they named them. Salhan is the hot headed guy I'm assuming. His design is just as basic as you can get. Even tho he's the leader, I can't say much about him. But he's probably a good starting point in building a character. Which will never happen he's a one-off character. They all pretty much have the same height too, so I gave that a variation in my drawing. Vridick is the tallest. Ok, the first time I saw Vridick I thought "wtf is wrong with him". Like, his eyes. I realised it's just a "animators drawing characters weird in low budget episodes" problem, his design is probably the best of the three. Simple yet cute cuz idk if anyone else has noticed it but he has a little catness about him. The eyes and :3 mouth. It's subtle, but it's there. Just because of that he's my favourite of the trio. (I didn't realise this before but I'm a fan of his corresponding celeb lol) Aniel, is the one I was "wtf" about till the very end. His design is just horrible 😭 like, it SHOWS they really tried making a design look even somewhat distinguishable, but failed. Like with them "eyes that are different from the first two" and "hairstyle that isn't short like the first two" naw. So I just redesigned him to have, pretty much the same hairstyle but doesn't reveal the weird hairline. They are all the snake beyblades, cuz India snake charmers yadayada. Tho their designs don't really reflect the snakey thing; so I just added a dupatta/scarf to reflect that. (I originally just added it cuz it looked cool actually).

I can't help but notice how badly they were disregarded in their episode. Like not even in a way that would teach them to not be so full of themselves, but in a way like they are not even considered to be a proper opponent but an obstacle on the way to defeat the protagonist of the series (I'm talking about kyoya). They get overshadowed by kyoya and ginkas battle. It's actually kinda sad (

I ALSO can't help but notice the Blader DJ of India is based on Gandhi. Lmao. It's actually funny asf. Where did the battle between wild and fang and chandora take place, the Taj Mahal? Idk how many people don't know this but Taj Mahal on contrary to it's name is not actually a palace, it's a mausoleum. You would wonder where the tombs went. Even worse they might be battling ON the tombs. lul (edit: I don't really know lmao. The thing they built seemed like it was based on taj mahal. It's actually pretty neat if they designed it themselves. It's beauty :>)

Now on the bsb, first season bsb Indians we meet are the Charming Princes. They have the weirdest designs of all like wha. The unnamed blader is probably the most normal of them all. But the rest, idk what to say. I kinda like Ronnie's glasses ig, even tho they are impractical. Tho they are the weirdest in terms of design, they are the best in terms of beyblades, as in, a team quirk. That their beyblades are as big and heavy as one can be allowed to have. Makes sense cuz they are all princes of some place. They don't get much screentime either, just some guys the bladebreakers defeat. Robin gets overshadowed (annihilated) by Driger coming back to Ray and his rivalry with Lee.

Next in beyburst, it's Dhaula Giri. So, he's the best in like, overall. He's the best in design, he's not bland or weird, just a normal guy from India. He has a normal generic beyblade (same Suoh's original bey). Nothing crazy and I think that's a good thing. Oh oh, and a cute lil Snaker, I just love him for having a snaker just hang out with him, it's goofy but I actually like this idea, it's way better than giving them snake beys. I think he and Hae Jin would be homies. He's not much personality wise, prolly just a nice guy. Not much plot or screentime either but Hae Jin getting over his fear of his snake friend was neat enough. His name is good too, not entirely random names like Robin or Ronnie, or just jumbled celeb names. Out of all, I like him the best. Tho I'll have to say, if I build upon Team Chandora, I'll probably like them more.

[catilinas]

thinking abt literary monuments etc and tbh the ultimate best most successful Tomb Made Of Words is like. the word mausoleum. like artemisia ii monumentalised mausolus so well that a large proportion of All Tombs Ever got named after his One Very Genre-Defining Tomb and now little piece of his ghost is stuck inside of language itself

[yakumtsaki]

Alright you guys, sorry for the delay, I’ve had to restart this post 20 fucking times because my changes weren’t being saved in the draft and then I kept getting the ‘upload failed’ error. In case you don’t remember wtf is going on you might wanna re-read the last update (I certainly had to) which is apparently from JUNE 2018. Jfc I suck so hard. Now this was gonna be really long but tumblr wouldn’t post it so I’m breaking it up in 3 parts, part 2 to be posted tomorrow. For those that don’t feel like reading back, general recap of the last couple updates:

Jojo cheated on Wyatt with Max Flexor and my solution to that marital crisis was to adopt our first dog ever, a puppy hilariously named Maxx.

The puppy grew up to be an asshole and is constantly beating up the cats, who have turned into giant pussies (no pun intended) and are losing every fight to him despite the fact they’re named after Mortal Kombat characters. They’re a fucking disgrace to Alegra’s/Victor’s/Ronroneo’s memory and I haven’t settled on a cat heir yet because they both suck.

Jojo is perma miserable, I don’t even remember how much money away from his 100k LTW, and still not a werewolf despite my pathologically persistent attempts to make him friends with the wolf.

Fucking useless Wyatt didn’t get promoted while Komei was alive providing us with his 100 townie friends, we spent 20 updates befriending every rando that crossed our lot to secure his promotion, and then finally on the day he was supposed to become Captain Hero, Wyatt got, of course, fired and is now on track to take longer to complete his literal career based LTW than Komei took to get 6 pets on the top of their careers.

Absolutely everyone hates noogie addict Shajar, she got a Kylo Ren makeover, and we still don’t know what her sexual orientation is thanks to her ridiculous fitness/fatness turn ons and cleanliness turn off.

Golden child/10 nice points freakshow Cyneswith grew up, rolled romance with the most disturbing turn-ons/offs possible (grey hair/mechanical & charisma turn off) and the 20 simultaneous lovers LTW.

Wulf grew up into a kid, got an Amadeus makeover, is officially a Wyatt clone and the only member of this family I don’t completely hate yet.

Now I’d like to begin the first Union post in more than a year by requesting you do me a solid and lower your expectations for this thing as far down as humanly possible. Like really try to recreate the Jules Verne classic “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with your expectations here, because my brain is so fucking fried that there’s a 20% chance I randomly start citing sources at some point during this post. This grad school crap has seriously been the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever. And speaking of bad trade deals, let’s get this update rolling with the man, the myth, the legend, the husband who managed to make Komei look like a dreamboat in comparison..

..Wyatt fucking Union, née Monif. It’s been a long time, but I’m not gonna lie to you Wyatt, not nearly long enough. Looking good man, just one small question, where the fuck are your eyebrows?

-You àccidéntally deléted thém, imbécilé, et I cannôt exprèss my irritatiόn prόperly becausé I hàve non eyebrôws!

Did your selective French accent get thicker this past year or is it just me?

-It géts thickér whén je suis distrésséd, givé moi mon eyebrôws bàcc!!!

No can do, brother. Actually can do, but I think the Mona Lisa look is working for you, and more importantly I still hate you, so I’m just gonna hardcore ignore you for the rest of this post if that’s ok. Talk to me when you finally get promoted, aka never the way this shit is going.

-Non! NON! MON EYEBROWS!

It’s been lovely catching up.

Jojό I mean Jojo, goddammit Wyatt, is spending most of his time building robots in the mausoleum (sweet hipster band name alert)..

..giving financial advice in Shajar’s room (inb4 what’s the difference between the mausoleum and Shajar’s room)..

..building evil snowmen alone in the middle of the night, like all mentally healthy middle aged men with 3 kids are wont to do..

..and getting the piss harassed out of him by the cat ghosts in the bathroom (sweet hipster band name alert #2). How is this like the fourth time this happens in the exact same spot, will you just stop autonomously cleaning the bathroom after midnight? It’s obviously where the cats hang out, give it the fuck up already.

-I’m actively TRYING TO DIE you absolute moron, what does a guy have to do to get killed around here?

Yea can’t say that I blame you but not happening, you can commit suicide by Ghost Alegra after the kids fuck off to college, ok? I promise.

-Oh like you promised me being heir was a route worth pursuing??

Um obviously you too need to go back and re-read your own life story, because I spent the entirety of our “““cherished””” time together telling you heirship is a shitty gig at generation 2. And then to top it off you went and married Wyatt to ensure maximum shittiness, so there you go, fucking enjoy. God I am so sick of both of you losers and we’re only 5 pics in. Let’s check in with your spawn, I’m sure they can’t possibly be more annoying than their parents-

-oh right, I forgot, this is the generation with 10/10/9 active points where the party never stops. Cyneswith are you somehow twerking to classical music?

-How else am I gonna attract all those hot senior citizens per my grey hair turn on and 20 lovers LTW?

Ok great yea I see how this is gonna go, you’re trying to entice people into voting you for heir based on how torturous playing this fucked up LTW is gonna be for me, well forget it, my readers are intellectuals and completely above such petty entertainment. (istg mofos, don’t even think about it, i already did Komei’s 5 pets career shit, i will burn this place to the ground if you saddle me with Cyneswith banging the elderly for 30 years)

-No need to worry your stupid little head, I will beat Cyneswith for HEIR just like I beat her HAIR up daily! HAHA!

Shajar no offense but you’re a fucking war crime of a sim, nearly everyone who’s ever met you hates you including your parents, and the fact that you’re the alternative here is really not helping my situation in any way. Also how the fuck are you gonna be heir when the only thing you seem to be attracted to is giving noogies, you’re like one week away from college and I still don’t even know if you’re str8 or gay or bi or w/e the fuck you are. You have Jojo’s personality combined with..

..yes exactly, DANIEL’S SOCIAL ABILITIES. I mean I was joking with the whole ‘Shajar’s the spawn of Satan’ thing, but this combo of traits was clearly drawn up in Hell’s boardroom.

ANYWAY. It’s a snowy Sunday morning, and anyone who has been a teen knows what that means:

Time to go clubbing! Man I remember being like 15, waking up on a freezing Sunday morning and my mom making me a cup of hot chocolate before I drove off to the club. Those were the days.

-Uh, Shaj, when did you learn how to drive?

-Don’t be stupid, Cyneswith, people don’t need to ‘learn’ how to drive.

-They absolutely do, actually.

-Well what can I tell you, the dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

-Here we are, safe and sound! Celebratory noogie!

-YOU RAN OVER 9 PEOPLE

-How many times to I have to explain this to you, Apartment Life townies are not people.

Can’t argue with that logic. Let’s just go in and find out what Shajar’s sexual orientation is once and for all so I can spend the rest of this update aggressively promoting Wulf’s candidacy.

Now I consider ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ one of the dumbest sayings there is, but even I have to concede that this particular picture truly is worth a thousand words. Quick poll, what is more horrifying, Shajar’s literal Joker face or Cyneswith, whom I’ve never seen read a book ever, autonomously pulling one out in the middle of the dance floor, in what I can only assume is an attempt to attract old perverts with the schoolgirl routine?

And I know what some of you are thinking, you’re like ‘bro, you’re just reaching to make a bad joke bro, Cyneswith is just a sweet nice introvert and not like other girls, she doesn’t feel comfortable in the club’, well to that let me reply with another picture that is worth a thousand words:

Yea that’s right, on the first minute of our first time out WE RUN INTO THAT ONE ELDER TOWNIE THAT HAS WRINKLE MAKE UP ON. GODDAMMIT CYNESWITH

Do you guys remember how Jojo was obsessed with Stephen Tinker as a teen? Are you seeing the connection here?? Those kids have literally inherited the worst possible traits from both their parents turned up to 11, it’s fucking unreal.  

Right after I get over Wrinkle’s presence I turn around and what do I see, those 2, who have never had a non-noogie physical interaction, autonomously doing the family kiss thing. I didn’t even catch it on time because I was loling irl, we came out here so these assholes can find age-appropriate partners, and instead they’re kissing each other. Seems about right with this family, and clearly Striped Scarf’s dumb ass ships it.

-They look so much alike, it’s meant to be!

Yes, and they even share the same last name! Talk about written in the stars.

Thankfully Abhijeet is here to save us from incest by perving on Cyneswith. GTFO ABHIJEET. Anyone like ‘bro townies just autonomously come to greet your sims on community lots regardless of age, stop calling them perverts’, see you in about 5 pics down.  

I try to have Shajar chat up Striped Scarf and suffice it to say Shaj ~stole her heart~ and presumably put it on this stick to wave around.

NO. CYNESWITH NO. I’m seriously having déjà vu of all the times I was like ‘NO. JOJO NO’, jfc.

Shajar is unsurprisingly exhibiting no interest in socializing with anyone around her, instead she’s trying every activity this terribly lit place has to offer, and she looks demented while doing it:

I’m feeling a primal urge to photoshop Darth Vader’s melted helmet on the bowling ball here, someone please remind me to do it for the heir vote photoshoot.

-HA. SUCK IT DENISE JACQUET

That’s Denise Jacquet?! I can’t tell who anyone is for shit anymore. The default replacements are a scourge upon premade brands, I’m getting rid of them pronto. Speaking of scourges, where the hell is your sister?

-Who cares?

I wanna say ‘me’ but we both know that’s a lie.

Oh ok, THERE SHE IS.

-So you see Cyneswith, just because something is technically ‘illegal’, doesn’t mean it’s morally wrong-

Yea yea fascinating stuff, now get out of the hot tub or I will fucking neuter you, I don’t know if a eunuch mod already exists for medieval games but I will make one if it doesn’t.

Here, Cyneswith, drink some water, have a nice G-rated convo with your sister about violins and stop pissing me off. 

-First of all this is straight vodka.

Great.

-Secondly Shajar is talking about Mozart’s coprophilia.

-I sure am.

Amazing. Well, I guess it’s at times like these when you need to look inside your heart and truly ask yourself, what did you expect from Jojo’s children.

ABHIJEET ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME DID YOU EVEN HEAR ME TALK ABOUT CASTRATION

-Ha, I went home and put on my most elderly-looking formal wear!

-I hate to see you go but I love to watch you leave Ab <3

CYNESWITH SHUT UP. I can’t believe you people are actually making me miss Gunther’s teenage whoring, at least he kept it age appropriate.

-Is some random lady pressing her breasts against my head?

She most certainly is, Shajar, because it is now crystal clear that this bowling alley doubles as the site of annual perv townie convention and we walked right into it-

-and it’s also clear we have serious issues and are enjoying ourselves. Shaj I legit don’t know what to tell you, this is the first time you get along with someone right away and it just had to be the adult with the bad haircut and the flasher’s trench coat???

-You’re damn right it did.

Alright then, I’m officially going to nope out of this situation, safe in the knowledge you’re a noogiesexual and nothing will actually happen with this freak, so I’ll focus on Cyneswith instead who is much more of a loose canon. 

Here Cyn, talk to this guy, who I’m 90% sure is the same guy your father rejected in favor of stalking Stephen Tinker when he was your age.

-Ohhhh, he’s dreamy!

Omg really?? Halleluj-

-oh never mind, you were of course referring to adult ass Brandon Lillard. I do like that our townies have recurring roles each generation, we should make rejecting Blondie a rite of passage in this family. We should also officially gtfo because this is happening:

-Um, now that I’m looking at you in harsher lighting, it’s gonna be a no from me dawg. 

Oh, thank the fucking lord.

-Let’s celebrate the fact we didn’t get hopelessly obsessed with any adults here by doing the traditional Dance of Normality!

-We beat Dad’s genes, we beat Dad’s genes!

-We’re normal!

Yes, and we’re definitely showing it. Can we please leave now so I can make sure I’ve uninstalled Inteenminator and turn off free will? 

-Nop! Venue change!

-Got-out-of-the-car celebratory noogie!

-Made-it-to-the-door celebratory noogie!

Shajar you unironically have a noogie addiction, I’m not kidding in the slightest, you need to see a doctor.

Great, great, not another teen in sight and to top it off Denise followed us here to ensure maximum elder presence. I feel comfortable officially declaring this day a complete waste of time.

God, the vintage pink dress and the pink alcohol combo is some straight up current era Taylor Swift nonsense. That’s it, we’re outta here, back home where no one is lurking, waiting to strike at us-

-SOPHIE NOOOOOOOOOOOO💔💔💔💔💔

-The Lord is my shepherd.

NO HE ISN’T EVERYONE KNOWS YOU CAN’T HERD CATS PLEASE DON’T DIE

-Nop, I’m over it. Goodbye heathens, it’s been nice, hope you don’t find your paradise. 

UGH SOPHIE, my beloved Westboro lunatic, the last gangsta generation 1 cat we had.. I can’t believe you’re gone and all I’m left with is stupid Goro and D’vorah who can’t even beat up the fucking dog. This is truly painful.

Yes, pets, I agree, Kaylynn is completely to blame for Sophie dying of old age. The time has now come to decide on a cat heir-

-and since Goro ran away like a little bitch after Sophie’s death despite the fact he didn’t even like her, he’s automatically disqualified and will be going off to live on Melody and Daniel’s farm once returned to us. Congratulations to D’vorah I guess, on being the least terrible of two terrible options. 

On the topic of terrible heir options, Cyn has non-stop wants to go on dates and have her first kiss and all that crap, and since our Sunday morning clubbing was a bust we invite over the matchmaker.

-Hello there young Union, I see your house has been upgraded since I was last here.

Oh right we haven’t required your services since Daniel was a teen and we lived in a trailer, well we are flush with cash now!

-Hopefully your payment reflects that.

It will!! Just please give us someone good, I can’t deal with single teen Cyn for one more second.

-Oh my, what a beautiful BLANK PIECE OF PAPER.

WHAT!? NO THAT’S 5K IT’S JUST A SNOW GLITCH 

-What do I look like to you, a money thawing service?

Does such a service.. exist??

-It does not, so I have to go home and use a hairdryer on this!

Just come inside and we’ll give you non-frozen money!

-No, no, you’ll get what you paid for..

-Have a magical time!

...

.........

......................

Lakshmi this was so fucking evil that I almost want to age you down and see if you and Shajar hit it off. 

-As if, the whole neighborhood knows what you did to Komei.

Helped him achieve his insane 6-pets-career LTW?

-Turned him into a servant while your sim was lounging around all day!

Oh yea I did do that. But Wyatt was also a townie and he does literally nothing, Jojo is the servant now!

-Only because Wyatt is too fucking stupid to do things! Word has gotten out, no townie will ever marry in this family again unless they’re brain dead, so it’s Wyatts only for you from now on, sister!

Well this has been a complete fucking disaster. It was great seeing you again, Lakshmi, thanks for the dream date with the adult farting machine, 5k well-spent.

Pretty sure it was you bro, and yes, how about we don’t do that again.

Wyatt has brought over Amanda from work! (Aka Victoria’s only friend and subsequent lesbian lover, who is really pretty and is definitely getting married in at some point, preferably after the brown hair genes have been weakened so we can go back to being gingers.)  

-Wow Shajar, your grandmother, God rest her soul, mentioned you were her favorite and now I can see why! Loving the Kylo Ren look!

-Is someone being genuinely nice to me?! What is happening?

-Yes, please stop being nice to her, Amanda, we don’t want her getting used to it.

Jojo istg.

-Cyneswith dear, tell Amanda all about how much money your grandmother left you so she can stop being nice to Shajar. 

-Soooo much money, Miss Amanda!

-Ah, what a polite child I’ve single-handedly raised.

-Now, Cyneswith, you really need to get back on the dating scene so you have ample time to find the perfect spouse and continue our line, since you’re clearly the only one of my children that is remotely heir material. 

-Dad, Shajar and Wulf are right next to you.

-Oh they are? I’m wearing my special contact lenses that make those disappointments invisible to me, but even better, they need to hear this. Shajar is a noogiesexual and thus incapable of reproduction, and Wulf is not even a Union, I mean have you seen that kid? Wyatt reproduced by himself like the amoeba he is. Now, your grandmother-

-YOU MENTIONED ME 3 TIMES AND HERE I AM

OH FUCK VICTORIA, deleting the default replacements gave you base game hair!!!!

-That’s the part you’re scared by, not my Beetlejuicesque entrance?

There’s literally nothing scarier than your ghost sporting this haircut for all eternity, I’m re-downloading that default immediately. 

-Oh mom, so good to see you! Let me just hug my beloved child, Shijer-

-Shajar, dad.

-SHAJAR, let me hug Shajar, like I do all the time. 

-I’m glad to see you’re not picking favorites among your children like I did, the way I treated David-

-Daniel, mom.

-DANIEL, is the one thing I’ve truly been regretting in the afterlife. That and not skinning Marisa Bendett alive when I had the chance. 

-Well, as you can see by Shajar’s totally normal and not at all shocked reaction to my hug, I am a wonderful, fair, and emotionally available father. 

(Bruh this freaked me out so much when it happened, I mean I KNOW it’s an animation glitch but I was convinced my sims had become sentient for a good while after)

-Is your grandmother’s ghost still on the premises?

-Yup. 

-When will this nightmare end, paying attention to you is the worst. 

-Ok she’s gone.

-FINALLY. Now it’s back to the crypt for you, and don’t you dare go complain to her urn!

-Ah, Stephen, Stephen, my life is crap and I can’t even🎵

And with the knowledge you have composed a theme song for Stephen Tinker, part 1 of the Union comeback update is concluded. Will Shajar’s sexual orientation reveal itself? Will Cyneswith find true love? Will Jojo become a werewolf? Will Wulf continue to be the only dignified member of this family? Will D’vorah have kittens? Will Wyatt do literally anything worth mentioning? Tune in for parts 2 & 3 to find out, unfollow button on the upper right corner for those who need it. 

[k-fiction-therapy]

Into The Night (Version 4 - Kihyun)

Moodboard by Admin Scar

Starring: Yoo Kihyun & Reader

Includes: Vampire!AU, Cemetery Smut & Candlelight

Rating: 18+

~*.*..*"God will not find you here...”*..*.*~

A/N: Hello, all! This is the fourth installment of “Into the Night”, a series that highlights seven very different Vampire!AU stories, each involving a different member of Monsta X as the main male lead. <3 I hope you enjoy them. I have been obsessed with Vampires since I was a child, and my attraction to them only grows the older I get~ I do hope that my take on these different vampire tropes tickles your fancy as it has mine.

Version 1 - Shownu

Version 2 - Wonho

Version 3 - Minhyuk

Version 4 - Kihyun

Version 5 - Hyungwon

Version 6 - Jooheon

Version 7 - Changkyun

Asks Open for Feedback, Comments, Kudos and Thoughts. <3

              It wasn’t that you were fascinated by cemeteries per se, but rather that you were fascinated with the afterlife in general. There had to be something out there. This life couldn’t be it. How do you explain the heavy feeling you get when you enter an old home, or the energy of the living area of the recently deceased? It couldn’t be as simple as “you live, you die”. You had always questioned what happened after you died, and with religion always floating around, you weren’t really sure what exactly you believed in—except for ghosts. Ghosts you definitely believed in.

              When you were young, you saw your first ghost. She was benevolent, tall, a dusty grey, and dressed in Victorian clothes. She hung around the hallway that led to your bedroom in your childhood home. Sometimes she paced, and at other times she was completely still. You were old enough to understand that she wasn’t really tangible like you were, and that she meant you no harm at all—she was just simply there for whatever reason. This was long before you understood how residual spiritualism worked. You were not afraid of her, but rather you were comforted by her. In mixed company, you even referred to her as ‘grandmother’. Your mom was a little worried by what she would call an ‘imaginary friend’, and your school counselor tried to tell you it was just your overactive imagination; but you knew better.

              Since then, you had found yourself fascinated by the paranormal. Sure, it scared the hell out of you at times, but it was all worth it for the thrill of seeing life past death. You scouted out places that were supposedly haunted, places where there were several reports of activity on the premises. Honestly, a lot of them were easily debunked—paranoid ladies in an old house, and crackpots that want to put their home on some kind of historical map thinking that a haunting would qualify them as a landmark; but it doesn’t exactly work that way. In short, you were a part-time paranormal novice who spent their days at the coffee shop, talking your coworkers ears off about ghosts and history—you could practically hear their eyes roll when you got to chatting passionately.

              Cemeteries, though? Most of them weren’t haunted at all, residual energies generally inhabiting the home in which the deceased once lived, their energy having coated it like snow in the winter months; but their “final resting place” underground wasn’t exactly a place that ghosts tend to frequent. It might not have made much sense that spirits were more linked to their physical spaces and possessions than their own body, but that’s just how it was most of the time. But this wasn’t ‘most of the time’, this was the exception.

              Seven Gardens Cemetery was the epitome of paranormal activity in the far-off corner of the dreamy town of St. Vincent. As heavy as the fog was around the area, even during the daylight hours, it made sense that people would have eerie feelings in this place. It looked spooky, even to someone well versed in the macabre, but that’s why you were there; to figure out what was feeling, and what was true haunt. You had looked at maps of the place several times when planning this trip, and said map actually resided in the side pocket of your backpack, just in case you needed it while on the grounds.

              Your skin prickled with anticipation as you parked a good way from the iron gates to the cemetery. You hadn’t exactly asked for permission to be on the grounds, so you didn’t want to raise any suspicion by having an unfamiliar vehicle by the entrance for an inordinate amount of time—especially when you planned to spend some real quality time inside of those gates.

              It was nearing eleven in the evening when you managed your way onto the path, and into the mouth of the grounds. Darkness had settled in the cemetery, and the lack of street lights made the atmosphere perfect for anyone looking for a thrilling, spooky place—but for you, it was a pretty normal place. Scanning a few of the older looking headstones, you noted the last names and the dates, tracing a few family lines for the fun of it—nothing of note yet.

              There were a few moments, when a twig snap or howling wind would catch your ear, making you jump a bit, but that could have just been the paranoia that came with trespassing. Continuing on the path, you found yourself eventually arriving at the heart of the cemetery, a gorgeous gazebo and stone garden, which would have been very tranquil, and relaxing had it been well-kept, but currently it was horrendously overgrown, and any sight of fish had turned to death in a muddy grave. You almost felt sorry for them, especially if they were koi.

              It had been nearly an hour, and you had neither seen nor heard anything remotely resembling paranormal activity, and you were beginning to think you’d sent yourself on quite the wild goose chase. Sighing, you would lean against the gazebo, glancing off towards the left side of the cemetery, to the parts that you hadn’t yet explored. Not far from where you stood, between two large trees, stood a huge, gorgeous mausoleum, the structure erected in the perfect position to be worshiped by the moon, and not the street lights. Even with the dim natural light on its visage, you could see a flickering glint from within, as if it were candlelight—but there should be no reason for flame, or ulterior light sources of any kind, the need for candles, lanterns or the like obsolete to the dead.

              For a second, you felt nearly afraid to investigate, but after you swelled your chest with the faux pride of an idiot about to force themselves into an unknown and possibly terrifying situation, you pranced on. Moving through the grass, more than likely being impolite to a few graves that were long since forgotten, you strode towards the dark stone mausoleum, eyeing the door, praying that it wasn’t locked, chained, or bolted shut. As your hand reached for it, you flexed your fingers, one eye squinting as you gripped the handle, pulling it slowly. It was a bit rusted, and screeched like a demon’s call as it gave, only opening with enough space for you to squeeze inside. It was a tight fit, but once you were in, you were in.

              Scanning the place, you were in absolute awe of what you saw. Candles. So many candles. You could practically smell the wax, and it invaded your nostrils pleasantly, making you inhale deep. A few were out, but the place rivaled a Catholic church in volume. Running your fingers across a shape in the wax that led to a stagnant drip, you found yourself fascinated by the texture. You’d only ever seen things like this in the movies, and you were mesmerized by it all now, completely forgetting why you were there and what you should be searching for—Who lit all of these candles anyway?

              “Pretty, aren’t they all?” Came a voice from seemingly nowhere, causing you to spin around, heart hammering as you stared towards the back of the mausoleum. Chest heaving, you wrinkled your brows. Maybe you were hearing things. It was until the voice filled the room again that you saw him, a gorgeous face, direct eyes and a gentle tone, creeping from the shadows in the most sensual way you’d ever witnessed, “…I’ve grown quite the collection over the last century.”

              He stepped into the area, and you swore your heart had stopped. He was so beautiful, quite possibly the most beautiful creature you had ever seen in your life. His hands locked at the curve of his tailbone, keeping his posture perfect, the male tilted his head, the pale column of his throat accentuated with a thick black choker, the veins beneath a perfect blue and his lips a dusty rose, and the most alluring shape. You weren’t sure if you were short of breath because of the scare, or rather how gorgeous the male looked. Deadly.

              In a flash, much like lightening, he was much closer, his hands remaining clasped behind his back, his body leaning forward, the point of his nose in your personal space. You stared up at him with wide eyes, watching as his lips peeled open, revealing perfectly white fangs to you, their sharp point accentuated by the pink of his tongue, the roll of the tip causing his words to strike you in the most sensual way, making you quake, “What are you doing in my home? How did you know I was here, darling?”

              “I didn’t know anyone lived here—I…I was just—” You backed up, but there was hardly anywhere for you to go, your tailbone meeting a gothic metal railing, ceasing your movement. You swallowed hard, your eyes so focused you nearly went cross-eyed, your eyes watering a bit in fear

              “You where what? Snooping?” The man approached you, but he never seemed to take a step. It was almost as if he glided towards you, the color of his eyes becoming all the more intense the closer he got—you could almost swear that his pupils had swallowed the color whole, like a predator who had just seen its prey, “Naughty little thing.”

              “I wasn’t snooping! I was just—” You didn’t know what to say to get yourself out of this situation, and if you were honest, you had no idea what he was planning. You had really stepped in it this time, but in your defense, you never thought that someone would just be ‘living’ in an antiquated mausoleum.

              “Oh, trespassing then?” He nearly hissed, the sound of his voice almost as if he had some sort of lisp, or his teeth were in the way. You cursed yourself for noticing unimportant things of the like, thinking that you should be focusing on getting out of here, and away from this man that looked at you as if you were the last drop of water in a barren desert. He tipped his head, halting nearly two feet from you, though his energy read as kinetic potential, the air around you denser with him in it.

              “Honestly, mister, I didn’t mean to…I was only looking for ghosts.” You tried your best to reason with him, to make him understand why you had quite literally broken into his home. “I heard this place was haunted and I—”

              “You found…a vampire.” He cut off your words like a hot knife through butter, “—and now you know about me…what’s to be done about that, hm?” He forced an artificial breath through his perfectly prominent lips, his tongue flicking the air after. With a twinge of a brow, he lifted his chin, allowing his eyes to roll down your form. “Perhaps naughty little things like you should be punished.”

              “Please, Mister.” You weren’t sure that you believed in vampires, and you were even less sure by this point that you weren’t dreaming this. He was more than alluring, and some part of your soul was entranced by him, called towards him; and you found yourself fighting hard not to follow its whims.

              “Call me Kihyun darling…” He all but growled, his shoulders lifting a bit, bringing more attention to the gorgeous shape of his collarbones, that choker moving slightly with his adam’s apple beneath it. Every word had you throbbing.

              “K-kihyun…?” You repeated, your tongue lingering for far too long at the vermilion border of your lips. His name tasted of sin, and you found yourself even more swayed—almost dizzy with an odd, washing need, like a hot flash coming over you, calling yourself to him.

              “Mmn, yes. – Come here. Now.” He commanded, though you swore his voice never got above the tone of a whisper. He used his chin to gesture, the point of it, pulling you forward until you were close enough to him to smell the dust of ancient years in his clothes, and the cool chill of stone that lingered on his contours.

              “I-I…” You whimpered as his hands came forward, forcing your backpack off of you and to the ground. He took time taking your shirt from you, the cold of his fingers more than soothing to your flushed skin, more than pleasurable. You moaned gently, and he drug digits down your front, touching nipples and lower, your eyes following his hands, admiring their transparent skin, every part of you he touched instantly aroused.

              “Very naughty indeed…” He looked into your eyes, his hand disappearing into your underwear, your body hunching as a strike of pleasure overtook your sensitive nerves, your body on fire with arousal, possessing you like a soul malevolently tortured.

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

              Red satin billowed over stone, wrinkled and shaking like a tainted maidenhead. Atop it, you were being taken ravenously, your legs spread, and locked around the vampire’s hips, your head thrown back and body contorting wildly to his will, back arching so hard you swore it would break. Your muscles spasmed hard, seeming as if they would never stop, the fabric beneath you stained dark by the rush of fluids he had pulled from you.

              Your eyes rolled into the back of your head, your nails scratching as skin that would not conceive wounds. His teeth drug against your neck, following the pale column to its apex, pin pricking at the top of your chest, lips locking against skin, sucking blood from the muscle there. He groaned wildly, muffled behind the pump of blood from just over your heart. Pulling back, he snarled, blood tainting his lips and dripping down his chin as he looked down at you, your chest heaving with a powerful need like nothing you’d ever felt. The pain washed in pleasure called to you, and your toes pointed, taking every thrust of that cock, feeling the muscle strike you deep and relentlessly, shaking you to your core.

              You held on for dear life, blood splattering as it dripped from his lips and landed on your chin and cheek—and as you watched him, you swore you’d never seen anything more alluring in all your life. Growling, he would force himself down, claiming your lips, blood smearing between them. Forcing his tongue into your mouth, you tasted the essence of your own life, the copper on your tongue making you feel sick with pleasure, your mind swimming in it, your hands dropping down to the backs of his hips, your legs hiking up to feel the full power of his movements.

              He thrust deeper, faster, and with more feral, primal need, his hips slamming against you wildly, making you cry out loudly, feeling your release gaining on you. Orgasm prickled at your pelvis and you breathed heavily, breaking the kiss to do so, your entire body lit with raw nerves. You gasped, and he rolled his hips hard, facilitating the both of you to fall to your demise.

              “A-ah, K-Kihyun—oh, my god…”

              “God will not find you here—cum. Cum for me.”

              You cried out, nearly screaming, your body clenching tightly and head falling back hard. You saw far away stars. You had never cum that hard in your entire existence, your body feeling as if it was passing into another realm. Every nerve that you had was on fire with pleasure, shaking you, fluid spurting from you and around his cock with each hard spasm of your muscles, milking him until he was a snarling mess—his orgasm hitting him in a shock of jerking thrusts, which he groaned and grunted through, his teeth bared and eyes focused on you as pleasure overtook him. You had never seen something so sexy in all of your life.

              Your eyes settled on that choker, which he hadn’t taken off, and you tried to catch your breath, though you were still pulsing around him, the pleasure only slightly ebbing. You wanted to be closer to him, to absorb him into you, to become one with him in the most fatal of ways. “Please.” You whispered, reaching up to put a finger under that choker, pulling him down, “…Make me like you.”

              Kihyun hesitated, but he opened his mouth wide, showing his fangs to their full extent, the needle point of them hypodermic and sharper than anything that man had ever fashioned. Your eyes widened, and you turned your head, baring your neck to him, the pulse of your veins dramatic after such an intense orgasm, your heart hammering in your throat, begging to be taken. You felt the cold of his lips—and then your world went black.

                Death was an unforgiving mistress. It did not judge, nor did it condescend. It came upon man, woman and child alike. It was merciful, yet cold. Fulfilling, yet hideously cruel. It answered to no man and was brought about by no God. Death simply was. It had become you, and you it.

              The vampire walked alone, the night flitting through the widows of the mausoleum, with no one at his side to bathe in it with. The candles played of skin like glass, lips like rosebuds, tainted with the blood of the innocent, dripping and coagulating as it turned to pitch. Lifting a hand, Kihyun wiped a droplet from his bottom lip, licking it from his digits, eyes rolling back as he savored the blissful taste of pheromone laden blood.

              Glancing back to your body, which lay lifeless atop the stone, the vampire would hum gently to himself, pulling at the fabric of his shirt a bit, framing the perfect lines of his torso. Moving closer, he would run fingers over your cheek, touching the still pulse points, the blood no longer present, your body nothing more than a husk of what you once were.

              “Soon…my dear, you will become dust…and only then will I release you—

              –Into the night.”

Admin Death

[asterinjapan]

Walks through history and caves

Hello again!

Today was a hot and sunny day, so of course I spent most of it inside, haha. That’s not as much of a shame as you might think, because I saw some lovely things and I didn’t melt. That’s always a plus.

Follow me behind the link for today’s report on Okinawa World and the Okinawa prefectural museum!

 So, yeah, two things today again. I have a bunch of things I want to do or visit, but not all of them can be combined due to bus lines being very inconvenient. In general they’re pretty great, but sometimes two things are like 5 kilometers apart and yet the fastest way by bus is going to the other side of the island first… So I stayed up late last night and scrambled up my list to see what came up. As it turns out, the Prefectural museum is on the other side than anything else I’d like to visit, and would thus always require a trip back to Naha. That would be the plan for the afternoon then!

In the morning, I went to Okinawa World. It’s a theme park of sorts about, well, Okinawa, and frankly the majority of it is… well. I mostly came here for the cave, which we will get to later, because upon entering, I learnt that there would be a performance in ten minutes, so I went there first. It turned out to be a traditional Eisa-style drum and dance performance and boy, did that group pack a punch! Near the end they rolled in an absolutely massive drum as well, those were some intense vibrations, haha. Despite the heat (it was open-air, although underneath a tent cover), time flew and I had a good time during the performance. I however can’t say it’s music I’d very quickly buy a CD of, because I feel this is something you have to experience.

After that, I made my way to the limestone cave, Gyokusendo, the second biggest in Japan. It was formed over the past 300,000 years and measures 15 kilometers in length, although only a little less than 1 kilometer is accessible to the public. And accessible it is: there’s a metal walkway with guardrails and at the end there’s an escalator, so you don’t have to climb stairs all the way up again.

The most impressive part is right at the beginning: once you descend the first flight of stairs, you face an absolutely massive room full of stalactites and stalagmites. It’s pretty dark in here, but there are enough lights to find your way and take pictures without needing excessive flash. And although mankind has carved itself a path through the cave, it’s definitely still a natural beauty. The cave narrows the further you get, and at one point they’ve had to carve a pathway through the stalactites since they had gotten too dense. The big dangers here are tripping as the ceiling drips incessantly, and hitting your head against a stalactite, haha.

Here and there, special places were marked and occasionally got special lights, like a blue pool of water and a waterfall.

Overall, I really enjoyed this walk, especially since it was only 21 C down here, haha. That was quite the clash once I got back outside, with 30 C and sun. The cave exit leads you into the Kingdom Village, which is full of work shops that all require additional fees, and a bunch of souvenir shops. Uh, yeah, it’s a bit overly commercial here, haha, but I was prepared for that and thus didn’t really mind. Outside the cave they were selling commemorative pictures which they had taken before entering the actual cave, so I uh, caved and got that one. I should be able to download it tomorrow too, so that’s nice! I still look very jetlagged on that picture, but hey, not a lot of full-body shots of me here otherwise, haha. It’s all selfies or nothing.

 I walked through Kingdom Village fairly quickly, although it looked very nice. Scents of all kinds of food were mingling, and that didn’t exactly do wonders to my stomach along with the heat. I most definitely skipped out on the snake show (thankfully you can opt out of paying for that in the first place) and looked up my bus times. Still plenty of time left, and thus I crossed the street to find a café.

Not just any café, however – the Cave Café! Across the street lies the Gangala valley. You can only take a tour if you make reservations, and I’d juuuust come out of a cave, but you can still take a seat and have a drink at the café. Which was really cool, because it is indeed inside a cave, with stalactites dripping above you. They served soft drinks with flavored ice blocks, so I asked for the most popular combination (lemon and – something) and took a seat.

 After soaking in the cool air and the pretty views for a while, I went out to find the bus stop. The bus took me back to my starting point, about 9 minutes away from my hotel, but I wasn’t done yet for today! No, I boarded the next bus which brought me to the Okinawa Prefectural Museum. Although I must confess I rushed into the nearest shopping center first to find a bathroom and a water tap, haha.

After that, I walked to the museum and got myself a ticket for the general exhibition in the historic museum, skipping out of the art museum and special exhibitions as it was already close to 4 PM. I didn’t have to rush, though, since the museum is open until 8 PM on Fridays and Saturdays.

And I’m happy I didn’t have to rush, because whoa, this museum is packed! I got a free audio guide, which came with 50 (!) audio spots, and consisted of a map with a digital pen. You set the pen to your preferred language and then tapped the audio spot on the map. To be fair, if you listen to all audio clips, it takes much longer to make your way through, haha, but it definitely added to the experience.

The museum has a very impressive opening with a glass floor looking down into the coral life that surrounds the islands of Okinawa prefecture. Right in the first hall, there’s a relief map on the floor of the islands, and with light projections, they show how the islands were formed over the ages. The history museum really lived up to its name and covered the entire history of the Ryukyu islands right from the earliest human being discovered there, to the kings and culture, until the eventual 17th century invasion by Satsuma (currently Kagoshima in the south of Japan) and eventually annexed by Japan in 1879 as the Okinawa prefecture, only to be briefly under USA command following the horrific and devastating Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Okinawa was returned to Japan in the 70s, but the relationship remains difficult as many Ryukyuans feel independent of Japan. Sure enough, Ryukyu culture is a mix of Japanese, Chinese and other influences and yet has its own character, and even managed to remain a kingdom under Satsuma and Japan, be it with adjustments to become a vassal state. Current concerns are the loss of Ryukyu identity due to mixing with Japan and Japanese attempts to push their language and culture onto Okinawa.

So yeah, pretty difficult topics presented in a mostly neutral manner, but there was still more to discover. The natural history part went into length about the unique eco systems of Okinawa’s different islands, with very specific species of insects, birds and so on that got cut off from the rest of the world early on and now only exist here. They went the extra mile and replicated the environments here, trees and all, with animals hiding in between the trees for you to find (not live ones, of course).

Other parts of the museum discussed all aspects of life, including funerals, and this is where I truly learnt why the urns at the Tamaudun Mausoleum were surprisingly big. They do not contain ashes, since cremation wasn’t par of the course back then. Instead, once the body had decomposed, there was a bone washing ceremony and then the bones were deposited into the urn, their actual final resting place. Apparently the urns are now sought after because they’re pretty and there have already been instances or grave robbing… Geesh.

Aside from that slightly disturbing note, there were more folklore exhibits, such as the dressing up as the gods, which was on tv the other day and confused me completely, haha. The person dressed up as god, Miruku, supposedly comes from across the sea (which is something akin to heaven for people living on an island) and brings good fortune. Other gods must be appeased as they might bring bad omens. And unlike mainland Japan, it’s the women here who are spiritually superior and communicate with the deities as priestesses. I think I could have watched an entire museum on that topic alone, haha, but they did a good job covering the basics here considering how broad their scope is.

There are also a couple of traditional buildings outside, but I didn’t stay there for long since well, I just visited the Nakamura house already, haha. And I was getting really, really tired – although I had a great time at the museum, I was secretly kind of glad to be through. It made for an interesting contrast with Okinawa world, although I can’t say the latter felt super ingenuine or something. Just – commercially inclined. But I’m not sure in how far Okinawan/Ryukyu culture is actually oppressed and in how far it is akin to what I’ve heard the Ainu people on Hokkaido say: that they feel they had to put on a costume to even show their culture at all.  I don’t think that’s the case here, but I’m way too uninformed still to say something sensible about that on Okinawa, so I’ll leave that to your discretion. Maybe I’m just spouting sleep-deprived nonsense here, who knows, haha.

 After that contemplation, I had a (slightly too big, but still) delicious dinner in the mall, which hosts several traditionally Japanese food stands, and then walked to the bus stop on the other side of the road. Technically the wait for the bus meant that I could just walk back to my hotel and arrive there at the same time, but it had been a long day and it was past 7 PM, which means it’s dark here, so uh, the bus it is, haha.

 And now I’m back in my hotel! Longest day so far, so I don’t know what I’m up to for tomorrow. I have enough to choose from, that’s for sure! Photos will be up soon, and thank you for reading all of that. See you tomorrow!

[mynameisdreartblog]

Devilish Deals 3

Libra: Offered cool-ass, hellfire bullets. On my route to work, there’s several things I always remark a subtle difference of change in whenever I pass them by: The color of this single window that portrays a lovely dining room scene, the angle the traffic lights hang at, and the name engraved on a rather fancy mausoleum to long-dead celebrity. I can’t tell if I was endowed with a foresight to detect the incredibly subtle, or if it’s an involved process like deciphering anagrams. Regardless, certain messages have been changing to be something that corresponded with recent events within my life. Two years ago, a supply that was supposed to arrive at six in the afternoon was late by another six hours: I checked outside the coordinates they gave me, and I ran only to find out that the site was abandoned. The truck was still there, but it was torn nearly in two and the books were gone. Witnesses had nothing to say before casting their attention to darker corners, alluding that something had happened here that they didn’t want to tell me. [,] The morning after, I passed by that window and it was tinted an irradiated yellow that reflected just enough sunlight for you to avoid seeing what’s behind it. Then, I passed by the traffic lights and they hung at an unusual angle that was 30° facing north from where they’re positioned normally: Not only this, the second light was duller and quite hard to make out. Finally, the mausoleum located in the bottom-right corner of the local cemetery said that it was honoring Yisrael Katz, who — last time I checked — was still alive somewhat. I was passing by the first two attempting to avoid how they were calling to me until I got to the last sign: At that point, I had to ask someone. So, I got off my horse and approached a gravedigger in the cemetery… But he refused to look towards me and instead to arbitrary corners: Indicating that someone was there I couldn’t sense. Suddenly, I was back on my horse towards my workplace as usual. […] Later I was approached by crossing guards who took their duty very seriously, though the ones that stopped me didn’t wear brightly colored vests and actively carried military weaponry. That was something that wasn’t out of the ordinary, so I forgot all about the paranormal disturbances from earlier and I continued on with my day… that was until today where the crossing guards weren’t carrying assault rifles. [,] «Cool, that’s… actually quite interesting. Spare me another story will you?» Heh, and here I was expecting the same old sarcasm from you.

Cancer: In a bus. It was a cold, drowsy morning: One that told you God listened to too much loud music and it started giving him early symptoms of tinnitus. Here, we zoom into a quiet corner of the Patagonian landscape into a somewhat isolated townscape that’s aching with the fog that surrounds it: Even the dry plateaus felt misty this morning. In the center of this village, the statue of Blessed Whoever stood as unquestionably incompetently as you’d expect, decorated with the linings of bird defecation. From its mighty stone finger pointing eastward, there could be seen a low-end shopping center that served as the fourth quadrant that made up the village square. All was quaint except for two villagers having a troublesome argument near the fountain. There’s nothing else for us to do here as eavesdroppers from inside the walls, — the one they just so happened to lean on when they began to fuss — so we’ll take whatever information we can receive from the outside. [,] Peer into a life you were never meant to understand and ask yourself questions: Why are they arguing? Are the typical, emotionally logical reasons why it’s occurring, or is it strange, esoteric reasons? What’s the tone of voice being used by each party? Are they pious people or secular snakes? Is it about the, uh, family business? […] We’ve been eavesdropping for so long that the sun has turned a noticeable fifteen degrees in the sky. And for as much as the sun had turned, the conversation had turned for the worse. Both of the voices were becoming louder and more parched as the subject matter shifted from academic performance to finances. Each party is becoming more thoroughly stubborn in their assessments. It seems that it’s in our interests that no compromise is reached if we’re continued to lay near this building and pretend we’re only homeless in the moment. You lived long enough to know that getting too far up one’s own ass is a very real thing, and you’re aware of the epiphanic powers that one’s inner self holds in how the reconsiderations never leave the space where the self feels trapped oftentimes by their own causation. We’ve spent long enough invading privacy; let’s leave, Kokin: We’ve done enough amoral narration for now. […] Oh, I meant this literally; I have no idea why you thought I was talking about arrogance when I mentioned shoving one’s head up their own ass.

Virgo: By dancing for them. Like the band Paramore (whose recent work was pretty good; I don’t know why so many think it’s lackluster just because it’s not traditionally punk), we must complete an arbitrary number of world-records to the tune of a new power-pop track. <Bluma turns toward the crowd of unamused city-folk gathered around her rather dignified soapbox.> I see you must’ve all come here for a reason, and we mustn’t disappoint. <A small coughing can be heard in the back of the crowd, and another person reacts with disgust over the cougher not covering their mouth with their shoulder.> Before we perform, we must list all of the feasible, previously uncontested world records that we’ll attempt to perform today. Refer to the whiteboard above me, read it, and understand the potential records as its followed so you don’t become confused during the process. <The whiteboard is shown, and all the records are written in a dried, green marker that makes the text hard to read.> [,] For those who still can’t grasp it, I’ll read them out: 1. The highest stacking of Starbursts. 2. The fastest time to teach a child how to comprehend Baudrillardian thought. 3. The farthest-reaching skipping stone. 4. The most amount of ding-dong-ditches in the span of six hours. 5… <Those of the audience who wanted to see some action left as they became bored through the persistent listing, adding to Bluma’s plan.> [,] Now, those of you with the proper faith left to trust us, we’ll be performing in T-minus sixty seconds. I’m Bluma, and this is my band: Gamerghazi. «Wait, was this supposed to be a concert? I thought it was just a demonstration.» <Bluma drops down from her soapbox and kicks it into the crowd, indirectly hitting the one who asked that question.> Well, actually, it’s not really a musical band: It’s an unclear organization of people that doesn’t fit into any neat category, so I just call it a band for simplicity’s sake. I named it Gamerghazi after an existing indie band from Canada. <The questioner, now on the ground, responds> «Oh okay, that’s neat.» […] <While in the midst of completing the second record, Bluma triggers a supernatural event> In that moment of silence that broke everything — and broke more world records for me than any of those Guinness books I stole in my childhood — I felt like I was in a space of reality completely tailored towards who I’ve become to be over this quarter of a lifetime. There was a serenity that I somehow knew wasn’t meant to be there, and had to come at the cost of removing the presence of others to restore a sense of balance. It’s as if all of those years of listening to the powerful anthems of contemporary pop music — that which was calling for world domination via style alone — made all the sense in the world to me. <Bluma awakes to find out that she’s been accused of faking the first record by using non-traditional flavors of Starburst.>

Sagittarius: For some job experience. I forgot what time this took place… It seems to have shifted so much, and I feel like someone can live on the same planet that I do but be a hundred years ahead in terms of how quickly than can coordinate action. There’s someone out there who’s an exact pinpoint reflection of myself and the path of life I’m tracing out, and that almost everything about them is identical to myself, yet having such varying differences in how they merely comprehend knowledge. They’re probably some sorta silicone-based lifeform, and they probably have a civilization that chose to etch its language into a more insane physical material through a process I can’t even begin to imagine… Might be that they live in a solar system the same as ours, only that they inhabit a slightly modified version in which Venus became the most hospitable place for life. They likely would’ve inhabited Ishtar and had a funny accent compared to those on the island of Tellus, but they’re too self-conscious to admit they have their own funny way of pronouncing Lakshmi words. «Let me guess, you’re projecting your desire for exploration on fictional worlds again, aren’t you?» <The atmosphere of the scene is settled in with the intrusion of Swayo’s words make their case. The exposed comfort of the campfire lights the entire scene, and Rossouw lowers their flask of gin. It was a far call from the nakedness of the AC back at home-base: Something that she had to finally accept as her new home and pass on by as if she’s never had a concept of stable living.> I feel like too much time has passed between your friendly intrusion and my monologue, but please, sit down and gaze further with me. [,] It’s not often that I engage in these; I generally despise sit-downs that I didn’t form myself because I’m paranoid that they’re gonna attempt to redirect me rather then the preferred: That I redirect them. But, I’ll make an exception for you because you broke my focus, and that warrants the punishment of getting to know me. «Uh, I just wanted to ask about your shirt.» Then why the comments from earlier? I was gonna make this at least somewhat heartfelt and now you’re just proving my point that any glimpse of peace I can have is just ripped away by people who didn’t even mean it, God. <The fire begins to die and the gin in Rossouw’s bottle begins to reach its last drops. The wind that feels like an AC returns at the small sense of comfort she had began to dissipate into usual expectations. It was a close call to the nakedness of the AC back at home-base.> [,] I’m gonna pretend you didn’t interrupt me...  You’ve seen it on the news, and you’ve heard it in stories of abduction, sometimes we’re just granted with biological technology around us that grants us something that pushes us “ahead” in certain areas. «Where did you get that shirt, though?» I feel like too much time has passed… in general. I hope my otherworldly self has a home.

[speaker-sypha]

“This is my history, our history, the history.” 

“It began in a way you might not expect an apocalypse to begin. It began with love, several times over. In the beginning of mankind, Cain, son of Adam, and his brother Abel were asked to sacrifice to the Lord what they cherished most. Abel sacrificed a lamb from his flock. Cain sacrificed Abel. The Lord banished Cain for his sin, where he traveled alone until he met Lilith, the first wife of Adam, who taught him dark magic. The Lord returned to Cain with three angels, each offering Cain forgiveness, and Cain refused all three, because he couldn’t forgive himself. The angels cursed him with the three traits all vampires here share: weakness to sunlight, vulnerability to fire, and a thirst for blood. Cain became the progenitor, the first vampire.

“He traveled alone again for ages, until he learned from the Crone of Childer. After freeing himself from her, he found the city of the followers of Set, and they worshiped Cain. He changed a wife, and made a son--Enoch. They created more vampires, and the city prospered until the Great Flood, and many were destroyed. Cain, distraught, hid himself away for a time. When he emerged, he found his precious Childer in disarray, the younger generations surmounted against his precious second generation. He cursed his progeny, and declared he would one day return to wipe them from the earth. This is the prophecy of Gehenna, that Cain will return with the rise of the blood moon and the faces of the Antediluvians into the sky.

“Years turn to centuries, and presumably centuries to millennia. Then, love reenters the narrative. Vlad Dracula Tepes, feared vampire lord of Wallachia, meets Lisa--or rather, Lisa walks up to the front of his castle, bangs on the door with her knife, and requests to be taught science, for Dracula was also rumored to have older, lost knowledge of the world. Intrigued, Dracula agreed, and they fell in love, and beget a son, Alucard, a bridge between both of their worlds. Unfortunately, like Cain and Abel, it didn’t last. In 1475, Lisa was burned at the stake as a witch for practicing science as a doctor. Dracula declared war on humanity--by killing his love, in his view the only saving grace of humanity, they had proved humans did not deserve the earth, and thus he would wipe them from it. Alucard tried to stop him immediately, but was severely injured, and had to retreat-- ah, but I’m getting off topic. I’ll tell you the story of Dracula’s defeat another time.

“The substance is, that he was defeated, but it could not stop what he set in motion. By unleashing the powers of hell to scourge the earth, Dracula rose the blood moon, and thus started the events of Gehenna. Cain returned, and vampires began having visions of despair and agony and horror. Alucard was not exempt. But even so, we were not aware of the possibility of Gehenna until we, ah... ‘met’ Van Helsing, otherwise known as Raquel Belmont--Trevor’s cousin, who he didn’t know had also survived the massacre to his family. He was the chosen Belmont son to battle Cain on his return, and he had the Book of Nod, which gave us the prophecy of Gehenna. Cain would return, had returned already, and would consume his children. Quite literally. His city, the city of Enoch, was a floating fortress made of dead vampires. We saw it. It was--I don’t really have words for it.

“We traveled to the Camarilla, a council of vampires in Wallachia set on integrating with and living hidden among humans, to warn them. On the way, we stopped at Campulung to retrieve Leon Belmont’s bones, for fear that witch hunters were going to desecrate his grave. We actually awakened his ghost, and he joined us on our journey, after we killed one of the witchhunters that massacred Trevor’s family, who was sitting there bragging about it like he was the hero of some grand quest. It’s still horrifying to remember his story, and even more horrifying to remember how Trevor just-- ...Nevermind.

“Anyway, at the council we were joined by Ashei, a holy paladin from another plane posed as a priest. They sent us to Styria, to gain the favor of the Ventrue clan’s leader, Carmilla, who unfortunately wasn’t very... receptive. We fought her, and a fleshcrafter, but in the end we got what we really came there for--one of Dracula’s devil forgemasters, Hector, who Carmilla had taken as prisoner. We needed him to forge us a weapon of a holy soul. We also, somehow, got Van Helsing on our side--we were at odds with him, if you didn’t catch that earlier. He, uh... He doesn’t like Alucard. At all. Shot him I think three separate times with silver? Yeah. That...still needs to be addressed....

“So we got Raquel and Ashei and Hector, and began our journey to Cain. We returned to the Belmont estate. We traveled through Dracula’s mirror to the land of Eden with the help of another ancestor from a reflected world, Everette Belmont. We all made it through--Raquel was in rough shape by this time. I didn’t mention, but the way Raquel survived the fire that killed everyone else but Trevor was by making a deal with a devil that had been working its way down the Belmont line for generations. He tapped into that devil’s power before we went in, but it was hard for him to handle the enormous power of the devil.

“We made it to Eden, though, and after some searching we found the Tree of Life. There, at its roots, sat Enoch, the son of Cain. We requested passage to the land of Nod, where Cain dwelt, and he told us to prove to him that we had what it takes to stand up to his father, who he had tried and failed to stop before. Unfortunately, he didn’t think Trevor and I were up to snuff at first, so we had to fight him two on one... we changed his mind by the end of it, if I say so myself. He allowed us passage through a pool in front of the tree, but before we went in, Claudia Belmont emerged from the pool.

“The wife of Leon, and the daughter of angel--she was a nephilim, and the source of the divine blood that still runs through the Belmonts, into Raquel and into Trevor. She gifted some of her soul to Alucard, to protect him in the battle--otherwise, Cain would have been able to kill him easily and consume him. She also gave a part of her soul to Hector, to forge the weapon to kill Cain. Raquel provided an Elysium shard to be the shell, and Ashei gave a reliquary with the ability of banishment. Trevor gave holy water, and I gave a spell to-- okay. I’ll be honest. It was technically a love potion. It was what I had, alright? But Hector was going to have to convince Abel to help us defeat his brother, and love potions make people more... inclined to listen to what you have to say. I thought it couldn’t hurt.  

“That said and done, Hector got Abel to agree to help and forged the weapon--a bullet? a bomb? It was a projectile, and it went inside Raquel’s massive cannon gun to be fired at the right moment. Then, we went into the pool, into the land of Nod.

“And then we met the drow. How in the world he found his way to the land of Nod, I haven’t asked yet. But he was there, and he had an airship, a literal ship that traveled through the air, and he helped us get up to the city of Enoch. Illikyur, his name, and Raquel introduced him as his brother. Haven’t gotten that story yet either.

“But we made it to the city of Enoch, and we made it to Cain. He was...sad. I don’t mean that as in unimpressive. Or perhaps that fits, at first. But he was so old, and so... dead. He started this new life alone, and he had been alone for ages, away from light and life, away from everything but this mausoleum of a city, wrapped like a blanket in his own self-loathing and hatred. He barely acknowledged us at first. It was until I spoke his name, and spoke to him in Adamic, in the language of his father, that something in him stirred.

“We talked for a bit, him and I. It was- It was... hard. After all this time, now that it was to the point, I’m not sure he even cared about ending his kind, ending the world. He was too deep in to drag himself out anymore. Or maybe he just couldn’t make himself take the rope. I- I feel like I got close, like I almost... almost convinced him that he could accept the forgiveness, and stop this. But eventually, he said no, that it was too late. I think it had progressed to far for him to stop, or maybe he still, after all this time, just couldn’t give up his hatred for what he had become. He said he couldn’t stop the end, but maybe we could.

“And then he transformed. It was almost too much to comprehend. Massive, and if there had been a sun, it would have been blocked out. Floating through the air like he was swimming, almost aquatic in nature, and covered in eyes and teeth. He fought us, and we fought back. We whittled him down, little by little, and he took chunks out of us. Alucard almost- ...but eventually, we got him down on his end dregs, and Raquel readied to shot. I’m not sure how much Raquel was in control by this point. The devil had overgrown his skin, encased him like a shell. It was a horrifying, terrific, and... odd sight. A devil and the burning son, held aloft by the angel Claudia, being forced in flashes into her true form, something magnificent and monstrous, as large as a mountain and completely incomprehensible... Held aloft by an angel, Raquel fired, and Cain died.

“He died, and Raquel, and all the other Belmonts trapped in the devil’s book, were freed. We went home, remembered our sacrifices, celebrated our victory, and slept until time became fuzzy. And we looked toward the future, free.”

“....”

“...wherever Cain is now, wherever his soul now resides, I hope- I hope he is at peace. I hope he and his brother are reunited, so his brother can forgive him in person, as he forgave him millennia ago. And I hope that maybe, Cain can accept that forgives, and move forward, together, also free.”

[starwarsdestroyedme]

I am damaged

Just another Reylo one-shot I wrote. Although it was inspired by a Heathers’ song, listen to “Toi qui manques à ma vie” from Natasha St. Pier if you really want to enjoy the complete emotional experience.

AO3 link  ffc.net link

Summary: 

Ben Solo was damaged from the very beginning, maybe Rey was damaged too. That might be why both broken pieces fit perfectly.

‘He grabbed her hands between his, and placing them together he blew to warm them.

“Your hands are cold” he mumbled.

“You aren’t wearing your gloves”.’

Inspired by “I am damaged” from Heathers.

Five years had passed since that fateful battle in Snoke’s throne room, where Rey believed she had grasped what remained of Ben Solo inside Kylo Ren. For a moment she thought it possible to recover him, bring him back home. She was wrong.

Nobody could return Ben Solo to what used to be his life, because all of it was broken. Han Solo had disappeared and Luke too. Rey knew this, and, honestly, she didn’t wish to drag him back to something that had brought so much pain, to him and to his family. Nonetheless, she kept hope that she could take him  somewhere new and better. Somewhere that didn’t involve death, nor militarism, nor the horror caused by the First Order. Was she too optimistic?

Most likely, anyone would think so, but if she had specialised in something it was rescuing whatever had deteriorated and fixing it. She also knew that, in order to help Ben, he had to let her.

There lay the problem, everyone’s mistake. Nobody could bring Kylo Ren back.

Many years ago, in Jakku, she had seen two children dragging the dying body of, presumably, their grandfather. One glimpse had been enough to know they wouldn’t make it.  Not because the kids weren’t strong enough, not at all. Upon seeing the man she knew that he didn’t plan on staying alive. In order to save someone it is needed that the person wants to be saved.

For that reason, the only one capable of redeeming Kylo Ren was Kylo Ren himself. The moment he decided to take the first step Rey would go to him, and she wouldn’t allow anyone to stop them. Until then, Rey would wait for as long as it took.

Leia’s death hit them unexpectedly. Rey didn’t know the woman as well as she would have liked, but she admired her for certain. The general received the funeral she deserved, everyone who loved her attended a beautiful ceremony where the body was cremated and the ashes were laid down to rest inside a mausoleum created to honor the victims of Alderaan.

The room shaped as an apse was surrounded by walls made of obsidian, where the names of survivors from Alderaan, who had died far from home, had being embedded with alabaster. Plasma lights placed behind the white mineral made the names look like stars floating in space. The floor too was covered with obsidian. In the centre of the room a pedestal of carved ebony rested, on which the remains of Leia lay. The labradorite urn glowed like a star at the half-lit environment.

Rey stood in front of the monument when everybody had already left. It seemed right.

“Now a princess rests with her people” said Kylo Ren with a gloomy voice. More than usual.

Rey could feel the emotions of that man dressed in darkness.  He had awakened the bond for the first time in months, not because of her, but to pay his respects the only way he could.

“I thought you couldn’t see my surroundings”answered Rey, as if to confirm her presence. She preferred using a meaningless sentence rather than tackling the true issue straightforwardly.

“The bond is evolving” he explained dryly, looking at the names written over the walls, like shunning the image of his mother’s urn could change reality.  “We can see eachother’s surroundings…” he turned his face to stare at her with his reddened eyes “and feel their emotions too”.

Rey spent the next few hours holding him. None of them bothered to say a word. Kylo didn’t cry, although they both knew he wanted to.

The bond had sprung to life again. It happened during the morning, while Rey had breakfast in her room. Poe, who had ascended to the leadership of the Resistance, prioritized that Rey could move in a tranquil environment in order to make progress in her studies of the Jedi texts. What the pilot didn’t understand was that it did not work that way. Rey didn’t follow the Jedi path strictly, she left place for her emotions and impulses, she kept light and a piece of darkness within. Devoting herself to contemplative life for months wouldn’t provide her a revelation. She felt bored rather than concentrated.

So when Kylo appeared before her, she focused on him.

“What are you doing?” she asked with curiosity.

Kylo sat in front of a desk where he had placed some utensils and a paper sheet, just like the ones  her books were made of, but bigger. When he heard her speak he turned. Rey was able to see that he had poured a black liquid over some sort of stone plate. He held a brush in his right hand. He wasn’t wearing gloves.

Kylo glanced at her with surprise.

“I’m writing”.

“But… you are using papel”.

“You can write on paper too”.

“I know that” she answered ignoring the fact that he had just treated her as if she was stupid. “But, why do you use paper? Nobody does, the first thing I’ve ever seen written on paper have been these books” she explained pointing at the book resting on her lap “and they are ancient”.

Kylo remained quiet, considering her.

“It calms me. When I write I can focus better. Compared to technology, paper is warmer,  more... personal... I guess”.

“You open yourself to the light when you write” she wasn’t asking, she could sense it. Kylo looked at her, for real this time, his compassive eyes betrayed him. Rey was right. “What are you writing?”.

Kylo didn’t speak for a moment. Rey could feel his longing, the conflict, and she wished to say something to help him, but he replied before she got the chance.

“Poetry”.

The image of Kylo dissolved right after that, leaving her by herself again.

“Ben…”.

The next time she saw him writing, Rey didn’t waste time and started to ask questions to satiate her curiosity.

“What do you use that plate for?” she asked pointing at the stone-made instrument.

“It’s called inkstone, you use it to put the ink there and control the amount you get to write” he began to explain calmly. “I’ll show you”.

Kylo made a gesture telling her to come close. Rey took a chair from her room and sat by his side. He grabbed a bar of a dark material that was kept inside a wooden box.

“This is the ink. You pour some water at the deep part of the inkstone and dissolve it. It mustn’t be too dense, because then your traces will look too thick,  but, also, not too liquid, because the ink will look too clear” Kylo said while he dissolved the accurate amount of ink and mixed it with a brush.

His years of skill became evident. For the first time Rey wondered how many years was he older. She would have liked to know her  birthday, then she could ask his and find out.

“There must be a balance” she replied, proving she had understood.

“Exactly”.

She watched how he carefully wiped the brush against the shallow part of the inkstone to take away the excess of ink.

“Now, posture is very important to write. You have to place yourself one fist apart the desk” he showed her placing his fist between his stomach and the desk “and one fist apart from the chair. You also need to stand straight. This is because when you make the brush strokes you accompany the movement with your body”.

Kylo wrote a word expertly, leaving Rey amazed by the beauty in his handwriting.

“Mamihlapinatapai” Rey read slowly “I haven’t heard that word in any of the languages I speak”.

“It is an untranslatable word”.

“What does it mean?”.

She didn’t know what had caused it, whether it was her question or the situation, she was struck when she saw Kylo smile a little.

“It doesn’t matter” he quickly dismissed it “now you try it”.

He extended his hand and offered her the brush. Rey took it without touching his bare hand. She did as he had before, placing herself in the right way. She dipped the brush in the ink and removed the excess. Rey looked at Kylo.

“What do I write?”.

“Try your name first, that’s what I did at the beginning” something inside Rey shrunk thinking about a younger version of him writing ‘Ben Solo’ in quick and neat characters.

Rey started writing, trying to copy what he had seen him do. ‘Resh, esk, yirt’.

“It doesn’t look that good” she said, somehow disappointed.

“I think it is very impressive, I wouldn’t be able to tell this is your first attempt”.

They stared at eachother. Rey thought that she wanted to kiss him, just a peck on his lips, some kind of contact. Something passed between them. Did he want to kiss her too?  Kylo broke eye contact and glanced at the word he had written.

What did it mean?

Her first kiss didn’t go as expected.

She had got drenched by an unexpected rainstorm when she had crossed the base to retrieve some mechanical supplies.

Kylo appeared when she was about to reach her room to get a long warm shower.

“People normally take their clothes off when having a bath” he said in a cunning tone.

“Oh, I’m sure you are an expert at spending all day half-naked, but, actually, some of us have this thing called decency” she answered angrily while shivering.

“You’re shaking” he said matter-of-factly.

“Yes, and unless you can fix that…”.

Then Kylo did something unexpected, he grabbed her hands between his, and placing them together he blew to warm them.

“Your hands are cold” he mumbled.

“You aren’t wearing your gloves”.

“I was writing when the bond opened, I never wear them when I do that, they get in the way”.

Rey had never felt so small in her entire life, not even in a battle. The intimacy of the moment made her feel tiny and confused, and she had the strange feeling that time was slowing around them. Kylo felt impossibly warm, and the realisation hit her, she had never thought this man could be described as warm, and yet…

No, he wasn’t, only when it came to her.

Rey got closer, the cold felt like too much, and Kylo’s presence reassured her. How he could calm her so much, she didn’t know. Rey felt safe.

Kylo must have sensed something through the bond, because his expression, usually stoic, got overflown by emotion. His eyes trembled. ‘We can sense the other’s emotions’ Rey reminded herself.

Suddenly, Kylo had wrapped his arms around her protectively. She sensed the same feeling of safety coming from him.  Then, he gently pulled her face away from the crook of his neck using the Force, and made her look at him again.

He lowered his head and pressed his lips against her, the gesture was filled with tenderness. Peace surged from the man who held her. Rey wanted to cry. Maker, she felt so full. Rey gave herself to the kiss passionately.

Peace and passion.

Light and darkness.

Rey and Ben.

Balance.

In different circumstances such degree of nudity would have made her feel modesty. Instead, she found herself comfortable, at home. The bed had morphed into a fortress of scrambled sheets and warmth. Her body touched the quilt, everything seemed softer than usual. Rey buried her feet under a blanket that had been misplaced at the edge of the mattress,  a pleasant sensation ran through her as she felt the heat trapping her toes. She committed herself to enjoy the feeling of Ben’s hot and moist breath at her low neck, where he listened to her heartbeat.

As she fell asleep, she thought that moment defined the word plenitude.

Ben had decided to take the first step.

Rey didn’t take long to get the Millenium Falcon into hyperspace to go join him. Her friends had insisted to accompany her on the trip, she didn’t know very well how she would explain it to them, but it didn’t matter, with Ben on their side they would bring peace to the galaxy. He was all they needed, and all Rey needed.

Nevertheless, things hadn’t gone as planned. The First Order’s flagship, the Finalizer, had followed Ben’s TIE. The bond had awakened again, Ben materialised inside the ship, in front of everyone.

“What is he doing here?!” Finn exclaimed as he drew his blaster.

In a matter of seconds a fictional battlefield had been prepared inside the ship. Poe and Finn aimed at Ben with their weapons. Rose held her taser as if her life depended on it.

Rey came between them and Ben’s image.

“Rey leave. There’s no time for me to get on board. I’ll distract them while you flee” Ben said seriously.

“I’m not leaving without you”.

“Rey, don’t be stubborn, save yourself. I’ll buy you some time” Ben tried to persuade her, sounding frustrated.

Rey realised that, just like that man with his grandchildren, Ben didn’t plan to get out alive. She turned around in despair.

“Finn, you’re the best gunman I know, please, help me…”.

Chewie roared from the cockpit, two shots from the Star Destroyer cannons were heading their way, they needed to make it to lightspeed. Now.

Poe headed for the cockpit screaming.

“There is no time! Use the deflective shields!”.

Suddenly, both lasers stood frozen in the blackness of space.

“Rey…” Ben said with trouble “I won’t be able to hold them for too long. So listen to me. I want you to leave, go somewhere safe from this godforsaken war” at this point Rey couldn’t help crying “Don’t cry” he got closer to her and wiped the tears away “there is no place for me in this story. I’m far too damaged”.

Four more shots were fired and stopped by Ben. Rey realised he wasn’t firing them back at them because he wanted to say goodbye.

“You’re not, there’s more to you, there is hope, I’ve seen it” Rey took his hand tenderly “please, let me help you”.

“You already have”.

Ben turned and shouted.

“Chewie! I’m sorry. For everything. But I need you to get the Falcon to lightspeed, now!”.

Chewie growled affirmatively.

“No!” Rey screamed.

He could see Ben’s image starting to fade away. Six laser rays were directed against the Finaliser, making severe damage. Ben extended his hand, and the Finaliser’s engines stopped to work. The entire ship began to collapse.

“Rey,” Ben turned his face for the last time “I love you”.

Rey pulled her arms around her stomach protectively. The Falcon jumped to lightspeed just as the Finaliser busted into a ball of energy, turned into smithereens.

“I know”.

[ninjakitty15]

Chapter 16: Tale of the Cryptic Reaper (Loki x OFC Pairing)

"I feel like just ripping out their soul isn't enough punishment for breaking the natural order," I stated back at the cottage.

"Have you felt that before? It's like no pain imaginable," Zari argued.

"Which isn't very encouraging as I can imagine a lot. Even so, once it's out, it's done, they're done and shells don't feel shit."

"First, you'd have to go through all those annoying henchmen though," she reminded me.

"Like bugs on a windshield, they go splat, I just keep going and wipe em off."

"How many did you clean off in my shower?"

I shrugged. "Hard to say, it was dark. You're welcome to join us, you know? Could always use another mage in battle."

"Sorry, American Horror Story is on and my TiVo's full so I gotta watch while it's fresh."

I gave her a disbelieving look. "I got your American Horror Story right here, it's got gore, sex, taboo shit, foul language, and a really hot dude that just wants to fuck shit up with me."

"It's not AHS without Evan Peters."

"I mean if you wanted to, you could probably find him wherever Magneto went but whatever, I'll just take my Loki and go, I see how it is."

At that moment of course, Loki walked into the kitchen Zari and I were bickering in and arched an eyebrow at the two of us curiously. "Take me where?"

"Dude, what did I tell you about eavesdropping on our chats?" I countered.

"The walls here are rather thin, you can't blame me there."

"I could, it just wouldn't go over well in court."

Loki smirked at this and dipped his head as he closed the distance between us for a quick smooch. "What were you two discussing before me?"

"What to do about our new enemy," Zari replied for me. "If you do end up making shells out of them, save some souls for me, will ya?"

"If I don't decide to just rip em apart myself first, I'll keep that in mind," I assured her.

"I'd rather you don't knock down and entire block in a shower of rage and power again like last time, I'm fairly certain that's the reason you got on Hydra's radar in the first place. They're always looking for the next biggest form of mass destruction and then there's you, the cause of it."

"Listen sister, there's only one way to flush out all the rats in a building and that's to set it all on fire, how else was I gonna get every last bastard in one go?"

"Seek and destroy or I dunno, anything but what you fucking did?!"

I rolled my eyes at her. "Ain't nobody got time fo dat."

"Are you two always like this?" Loki spoke up in a tone of amusement.

"Like what?" we both asked in unison.

"Nevermind."

"You two can chill here for a while, I gotta run some errands and then maybe we can talk shop over food, yeah?" Zari stated hopefully.

"Sure thing, hun. Be safe but don't be a basic witch."

She winked at me. "Just my own charming self of course. Loki, if anything happens to her, there ain't a realm you can hide in that I won't find you." She grabbed her keys and purse and was out the door after that, leaving the two of us alone again.

"These stones your people all need, what kind of stones are they exactly?" asked Loki out of the blue.

I shrugged. "They started out as just your plain, ordinary yet somehow ridiculously expensive precious stones; rubies, emeralds, sapphires. When the first of us came to be and walked the earth, they quickly realized they couldn't just rely on themselves to climb ranks and survive, they needed something that could contain power for them without burning themselves out with it, something that could act as a reserve for them or a power cell, containing an extra bit of magic or lifeforce from them or what they obtained from their enemies but also something that wouldn't break or burn out as well, limitless even. Gemstones were the perfect vessel, not sure the actual arcane sciences of it but they absorb it without overloading or leaking. For eons, the stones were passed from loser to victor, essentially you keep what you kill until there was a time when either they went into hiding, their powers no longer worked for whatever reason, or they simply died out for a while. Of course, the stones were either hidden themselves or vanished with them and when the new generation of us came to be, we were basically left to vend for ourselves and had to find the stones our own way or die trying."

"And how did you find yours then?"

"Mine was more an accident than anything or maybe a coincidence, I didn't even realize what it actually was till much later in life. I don't remember names or faces but certain...events like that one are still in here. I was being chased by these mean kids that pegged me as a freak and they caught me and threw me into a mausoleum, chained, and padlocked the one door in and out of it shut with me inside. They thought since I talked to the dead so much I should remain with the remains. I couldn't break out, I was just a weak little kid, no one but those other kids were around to hear me call out, I could hear them snickering and laughing at me from outside so I just sat down and cried thinking no one would help me. I must've woke up the resident of the crypt because the door to his vault opened up then and out he popped to see who called for him. He stayed with me till I stopped crying and started realizing the dead aren't the ones I should be afraid of then crawled back into his final resting spot and the door burst open on its own, no one outside waiting for me. Where he sat next to me though while I was locked in there, was an antique necklace he seemingly left behind and me being the little girl that liked shiny cool things, picked it up, tucked it away in case the mean kids came back and try to steal it from me, and kept it ever since as a reminder the living are far worse than the dead."

"Even as a child, the dead seemed to follow you, to come to your call even when you didn't realize you were doing it and hadn't reached your full potential. Most children are left scarred for life in seeing death like that if at all. What of the others? Did they have an early encounter?"

"I don't think it matters when you find what you are so much as how you react to it. At the very least you gotta have some kind of compatibility with the dead, some kind of affinity with them or you'll be wasting more time and energy forcing your will on them since you don't understand each other. It also takes a strong stomach to some degree, I mean you're basically calling up a bunch of rotting, not remotely fresh from the grave hungry corpses. I remember when I saw my first one, I thought it was just dirty and the rot was what cooties looked like. Then when I got older I understood what was going on but I already came to terms with the dead so it didn't bother me what state they were in. I mean think about it, what kind of necromancer would you be if you were afraid of what you raise? What kind of leader is scared of their own subjects or soldiers? Would you want to follow that kind of person into battle?"

"Of course not, I'd want a leader that would die for me, a leader that I in turn would die for."

"Exactly, just as I would kill for you and die for you...either way, what bliss!"

Loki chuckled at this and kissed my head gently. "Let's not rush into that last bit if that's even possible for you. You know I have to admit, I was wrong about you being like my half sister Hela and I'm glad I was. You might both have dominion over the dead but she only had the one army under her control and they were quite mindless in obeying her, your reign seems more lenient in who to call to your aid and how to call to them."

"That sounds more like what we're gonna be up against with the traitors. How did you end up shaking her off in the end, I wasn't told the whole story."

"We unleashed the Fire Giant king Surtur on her and all of our realm while she was there so he'd destroy it before she could."

"Ah yes, very clever move that, betting that was either yours or Thor took entirely too long to come to that. Fire is one of the best and easiest methods in defeating the dead, that and beheading of course. That's not the clever part though, but the tactic in destroying the goal of your enemy rather than the enemy herself. Learned that in an old cartoon, Shaolin Showdown, sometimes you can still win without delivering their head on a golden platter, just ensure they don't reach their endgame another way. Enemies might be polar opposites in morals but their goals are often quite different and not just opposite as well."

"You are far too young to be that wise about battle tactics," Loki stated.

"Excuse you, when did I tell you how old I am or how long I've been dead even? All you know is I've been underground for five years, that should be it!"

"Maybe Stark found out more about you than he let on and found out who you were before you died," he challenged.

"Not bloody likely, it ain't just my memory that's been wiped, anything on me has been erased as well as anyone else's memory of me from the time before, it was pretty damn thorough."

"What about legal documents, don't you Midgardians have these papers of when you were conceived, birth certificates I believe they're called or a grave marker for when you died even?"

"An unmarked grave if there is one, the legal stuff is protected and hidden by top men."

"Who?"

"Top. Men."

Loki scowled at me, not amused by my lack of solid answers. "What happens if you destroy someone's stone? Can it be destroyed?"

"Not easily, that's for damned sure. The power inside the stones are released full force so worst case scenario you destroy yourself and gods know how much distance around you, you're unleashing eons of built up power that only get stronger with time. They can be broken up though that too is extremely hard to do and just as dangerous, shards of which can be put in different places and spread out though it's not wise to split power for more than one reason, there's always backlash for trying to make shortcuts like that."

"Do different stones have different powers or properties?"

I shrugged. "Probably, I don't know what the others are though."

"Do you know how many there are?"

"Not a lot but not the exact number, hopefully Hydra still hasn't gotten their hands on it, they won't know how to use it properly as its not in their blood but that's just as bad if not worse if they still tamper with it. Both the stones and the blades were designed specifically for us so they'd never fall into the wrong hands, though if they make the people they're meant for use it how they want that's another thing entirely."

"You almost sound worried there."

"We gotta fix this sooner rather than later or you'll get all your questions I can't answer, answered and there's a reason I can't tell you them, you're not meant to know."

"I have your back always...unless you're on it yourself, then I have your front which is the more enjoyable side if I'm being honest."

I arched an eyebrow at his blatant suggestion but grabbed him by the shirt collar regardless and pulled him down for a smooch. "You're lucky you're cute."

[memorylang]

Five Thanksgivings in Snowy Mongolia! | #14 | November 2019

Thanksgiving’s season marks my one-year anniversary since accepting my invitation to Peace Corps Mongolia. This Thanksgiving, I reflected on all I’m grateful for. And I celebrated it nearly a week, thanks to Mongolia’s Independence Day and Chinggis Khaan’s Birthday leading up to Americans’ day of thanks! Plus, unrestricted weekend travel in-country began.

I’ve been grateful especially for my students and the time to reflect on life and relationships. Part of why I chose Peace Corps after college was to refocus on people I hadn’t spent as much time with while a busy undergraduate. 

You can compare this to my story #4 (August 2019), from when I first arrived in my current city. Preceding Thanksgiving, I also shared a novena of photos and reflections from my first five Mongolia months, from training to beginning my service.

Snaking Snow

Many Mongolians call winter their favorite season. I like snow.

One morning, while seeing the glistening light blue snow merge with the horizon’s blend of smog, my view looked beautiful but bittersweet.

While leaving the orphanage one day, powder snow skirt across the creamy surface snow, blasting freeze in my face. They remind me of the summer’s dust storms, yet these stings linger.

I had never felt face-numbing cold before. Every exposed side of my face felt cold. I pulled down my beanie to even keep my eyebrows warm. I wrapped my scarf around my head to protect my cheeks. Even still, the furthest edges of my cheeks numbed. I get used to it, though. Best to bundle up!

Snowy Thanksgiving Adventures

This Thanksgiving outside America, I basically celebrated five times. Recalling the White Christmas ideal, we’d snow blanketing our Thanksgiving world.

First, I celebrated it Monday at a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer’s secondary school, with snacks for her and her students. She made amazing bread pudding. I enjoyed meeting her students again, too, since they participate in our student community English club.

Then the volunteer and I met again Thursday night (Thanksgiving Day) for the community dinner she helped with at the coffee shop of our World Vision building. As it happens, I dropped by the coffee shop to write, ran into our German volunteer friend, then stayed. An American couple from the Jesus Assembly group hosted the dinner. I felt impressed one shared the Thanksgiving origin story from the Native American perspective, because of his ancestry. I wished more Americans could hear his story, yet here I heard it in Mongolia.

University’s Thanksgiving

My biggest Thanksgiving came Friday (Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.). My department celebrated our university's Thanksgiving with our students. My department values teaching not only language but also culture. So, since I’m here as the American here this year, we celebrated my holiday. I helped make the itinerary.

Students included our English education sophomores, Mongolian language and literature education seniors and foreign relations sophomores. Their wonderful dishes made me more forgiving of the students missing in class. While eating, I recalled Friendsgiving events from my university years.

For our activity, I joined suggestions from other Peace Corps Volunteers with an activity from summer training I recalled during my Thanksgiving novena. I had students draw hand-turkeys then tape these to their backs. Afterward, they went around to write on each other’s backs what they’re thankful for. I felt delighted teachers and students loved these.

My colleagues also had students write in advance English thank you cards to whomever. I received two! One student gave me the craftiest little paper book, with a Pikachu face. She thanked me for everything. Her piece reminded me of my own crafts I loved to make. Another student gifted a letter he typed and sealed in an envelope. He gleefully commemorated the (only) PUBG match I was credit to team. He, too, gave many thanks.

 Above the Snow

I traveled to a neighboring province that night and reunited with one of my Mongolian teachers from the summer. They next day at brunch, I celebrated Thanksgiving with fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and a community group. Whatever food I missed at my university’s Thanksgiving, I found here.

Then I enjoyed my weekend leave with a hike to the stone гэр \ger\ and a Buddhist monastery.

The winter’s snowdrift was so packed, I could wake on top of it without falling through. I walked out from the slippery city square, across a park and up a hill to the stone гэр, as we called it. I later read it serves as a mausoleum. I felt somewhat sad to see industry’s smoke billowing across the quaint town from where I came. I donned my face mask.

Continuing, I saw the monastery over the ridge, as the Volunteers said. Though rebuilt after Soviets destroyed it, it still looked as though centuries old.

I love history. It makes me smaller.

Afterward, resting a moment, I returned to cook with my fellow Volunteers. That evening, we celebrated our Thanksgiving for the province with local Mongolian counterparts and phone called Volunteers celebrating their Thanksgiving another province over.

While in the cab ride back to my city, I mused how people compare Northern Mongolia’s snowcapped hills and mountains here to Northern Nevada. And while I find the comparison a bit overstated, I do, too, get the feeling from days like these.

Their Brother

I find comfort in being someone's “агаа” \agaa\ (like 哥哥). Literally, “older brother,” the term extends to plenty males slightly older than us. You needn’t even be friends by Western standards to be one’s агаа. But the name feels so endearing to me.

All are brothers and sisters in the Catholic sense, too. But we don't usually call each other these in English. So I like this about Asia.

The first day I heard the word, “агаа,” I mused to the friend who said it how I’d never heard the word before. I thought it strange I’d been in Mongolia so long without hearing it. 

God must have noticed. That very night, in a video call with my language partner, over her shoulder suddenly popped her younger cousin, who beamed a huge toothy grin and just greeted me, “Aгаа!” giggling. I felt agape. Then the girl rushed away. 

I never quite know what about me excites small children and pets. It’s like… my presence is plenty. 

Maybe I stem the feelings from missing Mom. Or maybe the titles remind me of the bygone age when my own siblings were warmer toward me. That was the time we lived in Indiana, before moving to Vegas. Though I still call my siblings “sister” and “brother,” I feel more warmth from other languages’ terms. 

Have I mentioned, when Mongolians ask where I’m from, I consistently identify as an American Midwesterner more than as a Nevadan, despite living in Nevada just as long? Maybe childhood roots hold stronger.

 Fulfillment in My Service

During my first site placement interview this summer, the regional manager explained my backgrounds in helping students speak publicly, build confidence, and succeed in interviews and applications could help especially in a сум (soum), with high schoolers. Indeed, other managers also commented I did very well with our soum’s children. 

In August, I felt surprised then to five places especially where I fulfill what the need that manager described.

Weekly with working adults, I’ve helped the new Toastmasters public speaking club. And, with students and adults preparing for IELTS and TOEFL, I help them rehearse their interviews. On one occasion at a past Peace Corps Volunteer’s school, where my senior students did their practicums, I even gave a personal development workshop on goal-setting. At my own university, I’ve given resume workshops. But lately, this orphanage has felt most special. 

After co-teaching my very first English lesson for the orphanage teenagers, the 12th grader whose birthday was that day wanted to keep in touch. That night, we discussed her goals for life after high school. And I felt her eagerness, although she didn’t know how to get there. But I teach at a university, I explained. So I know a bit. Another time I visited the orphanage, she had me help with her homework. 

Unlike the younger orphans, who call me, “агаа,” she called me, “bro.” Being a supportive bro to her and the rest matters to me. 

Roots in My Community

The Saturday one week after Teachers’ Day was the first time I returned downtown, since recovering. That afternoon, one of my senior students doing his practicum invited me to help at his school’s speaking club. 

As I learned from the teachers there, this was a school where generations of Peace Corps Volunteers have served! I learned their previous Volunteer was Chinese, like me. And some of their staff even used to work where I teach now. 

That afternoon, I fielded a delightful QA about American teenagers. We also discussed social inequity and homeschooling. Cultural exchanges interest me plenty. 

Afterward, my senior student treated me to snacks, which was so kind. Then I returned to church, since it was en route to the birthday celebration of our teacher I wrote about some time ago. Church had rosary, since it was Saturday. Although I still struggle with the words, I felt peace. What a mystery! I actually prayed a rosary that morning, too. 

That night I even saw one of the students who visited me during my cold, during our teacher's birthday! Apparently he was her teacher, too. What a small community. 

Living Legacies

Before learning I would serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a city that’s known decades of them, I worried I would be boxed by those I worked with, being expected to look and act like whoever came before me. But instead, I’ve found excitedly the opposite.

I feel such joy when colleagues and community members compare me to the Volunteers they knew before, like the English Volunteers Rob, Sam and Adrienne and even the Health Volunteers Alice and Samantha. I feel comforted to enter into the legacies of those who served before me. I feel glad, in doing as I want and feel drawn to, I am for these communities like those they knew before. I think, no wonder we were placed in the same city and schools! There are things about us that just fit. 

While I was preparing to leave the office for home one day, a colleague mentioned how one of her evening course students asked her if she knew me and whether I could come help teach the course. My colleague said she felt surprised! Me too! I’d hardly been in this city three months, and people already knew of me and wanted my help. What a marvel. I love to help, of course. So, I shouldn’t even worry about the legacy I’ll have… I will have made differences. And those will be enough.

Onward!

Gratitude is a lovely topic. I’m closing the year with December’s first story detailing a typical week from this autumn life, followed by last stories before my return visit in America.

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me

[brokaw22]

Fic: Childhood vs Adulthood

ff.net

Day Two of TimDrakeWeek: Prompt: Childhood / Adulthood

Tim usually doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about his childhood.

After all, other than that one special moment spent on the opposite side of the camera taking a picture with a smiling acrobat family, all of the best moments of Tim’s childhood were experienced through a viewfinder, the press of a button, the click of a shutter, and still shots of other people’s lives. He hates to admit that he misses it immensely. He misses the feel of the thick leather strap around his neck, and the heft of the camera weighing on him and bumping into his chest as he made his way through dimly lit alleyways and darker still side streets. He misses crawling into impossibly small crevices high above a city that never sleeps. Tim also misses the thrill and joy of being able to capture such amazing pictures without anyone ever noticing him. However, most of all, Tim misses the immense amount of enjoyment his hobby brought to him.

He doesn’t like to think about how his childhood was fraught with loneliness and empty rooms, and how the only thing that eased the endless days of silence were nights spent following his heroes through a noisy city. He doesn’t like remembering how much a simple glimpse of a cape or hearing an exulted whoop of delight left him jovial and excited for an entire evening. It was in those moments, tucked away behind a convenient air vent or huddled in a shadowy corner on an ancient, rusted fire escape, that Tim could pretend that the long trips that his parents took and the insistence that Tim didn’t need anyone watching him, spending time with him, or truly interacting with him were good things. After all, he certainly couldn’t have done the things he’s done or become who he is had his parents been more attentive.

Conversely, Tim doesn’t really enjoy thinking about his adulthood, either. Things have changed drastically. He has a different name now, and an entirely different family, and yet, the comparisons and similarities are nearly startling. Tim doesn’t spend a lot of time behind camera lenses anymore, because he spends far more time than he ever believed that he would in front of them. After all, Timothy Drake Wayne doesn’t get to stand in the shadows merely observing anymore. He’s someone to be scrutinized now. It makes his skin crawl in a way that can sometimes feel like Scarecrow Toxin. Still, Tim endures it, knowing that these things are a necessary evil.

However, the camera placement isn’t the only thing that has changed. Where once there were too many rooms and not enough people to fill them, silence that was so deafening that sometimes Tim imagined he lived in a museum, or worse, a mausoleum, now there is too much noise and finding a quiet place away from his family can be nearly impossible. Sometimes he wonders if this is really better than that big empty house, especially since, even in the manor, surrounded by people, Tim still has a tendency to feel alone. Still, he knows there’s a difference between being isolated and merely feeling that way. After all, he relives those moments every time he spends a little too much time away from the manor and his family. Nonetheless, it would be nice if he could get a single second to himself sometimes.

In fact, right now would be good. He doesn’t even know what Dick, Damian, and Jason are bickering about. He just knows that the noise level is giving him a headache and distracting him from the work that he desperately needs to finish. He considers asking them to quiet down, but Tim knows that drawing their attention to himself won’t actually yield the result that he’s looking for. He has always been prone to feeling invisible. It used to be a comfort. After all, it’s one of the many reasons that he got away with his childhood hobby in the first place. However, feeling invisible while surrounded by people isn’t nearly as comforting.

Tim thinks about his empty, silent apartment, where no one really visits him unless they need something, and wonders if it would be better there. The quiet hum of electronics isn’t always enough to remind Tim that he isn’t actually as alone as he used to be during his childhood, but it is more conducive to work. He’s just about to get to his feet and leave when a hand lands on his shoulder, leaving him frozen in place. “You’ve been awfully quiet over there. Wanna settle this for us?”

Tim owlishly stares up at Jason, confused as to why he’s suddenly being included and uncertain of what he’s precisely being included in. “Settle what, exactly?”

Jason rolls his eyes, but there’s a smirk on his face, so Tim knows that he’s not actually as annoyed as he’s pretending to be. “Haven’t you been paying attention? We’re discussing the worst Brucie nickname ever, and I don’t care what those two morons think, Tiger is still the worst.”

Dick shakes his head as he plops down beside Tim and drapes an arm over his shoulder. “No way, Chum was definitely worse. He always said it with that creepy Brucie smile…you know the one.”

Damian scoffs as he joins them on the other side of the room. “You’re both idiots. Clearly, little man is the most appalling.”

Tim’s eyebrows furrow in puzzlement. He’s more than a little mystified that this is what they’ve been squabbling about for the last thirty minutes. Tim merely shrugs as he pulls his laptop closer to himself, subtly saving what he’s been working on, knowing that now that their attention has been drawn to him, he isn’t going to lose it any time soon. That is, at least, something that’s altered since his childhood, though he’s not entirely certain that it’s a good change. “Dunno, they’re all kind of terrible.”

Jason’s rolls his eyes dramatically as he folds his arms over his chest. “No shit, what was yours, anyway?”

Tim’s brow creases further as he thinks about it. It’s been a long time since Brucie has referred to him as anything other than Tim or Timothy. He supposes that being the active CEO of WE does have its perks, after all. “Um, I’m pretty sure it was just Sport, but I’m also fairly certain that he calls all of us that, so I guess nothing.”

Jason’s eyes widen. “Seriously? You never had a specific Brucie nickname?”

Dick looks as though he’s trying to recall one, but Tim knows that he’s right. There isn’t a Brucie moniker to remember. Damian just stares at him with mild interest, although Tim doesn’t know why. Jason seems to be waiting for something, and Tim merely shrugs.

He’s honestly never thought about it before…not when he was a child who sometimes attended galas and parties with his parents when they were actually home. In fact, at the time, Tim usually spent the majority of the evening steering clear of Brucie Wayne, because seeing that smile on Batman’s face was unnerving, even then. Tim didn’t think about the lack of a nickname when he was older. After all, he generally only attended the parties in order for Robin to keep an eye on things. He spent the evening working and covering his side of the ballroom.

Tim certainly doesn’t consider it a big deal now that he’s an adult and Timothy Drake Wayne is expected to attend nearly every single one of the galas and parties. Brucie was never really in a position to give Tim his own specific nickname, anyway. After all, Tim doubts Bruce ever really noticed him at first. He was just a scrawny kid occasionally dragged along by his parents. He wasn’t anything worth Bruce’s, Brucie’s, or Batman’s notice.

When Tim did finally become something worth Bruce’s, Brucie’s, and Batman’s notice, a nickname still wasn’t needed. Robin may have been needed, but, at the time, he certainly wasn’t wanted, and Tim certainly wasn’t Bruce’s son. He’s sure it never even occurred to Brucie to give him his own nickname, because Tim’s certain Bruce had no idea he’d stick around for so long. After all, he has the photographic and video evidence to prove that his Robin training was far more extensive than his predecessors.

By the time that Tim became one of Bruce’s sons, Brucie had been attending parties with sweet, little, polite Timothy Drake by his side long enough that there was no need for a new moniker. In fact, the sudden change probably would have just been awkward and weird for both of them. And as for right now…well, Tim or Timothy is just more natural and expected, especially given how long Brucie has been referring to him as such in those particular settings.

Not to mention, Tim is actually an adult now, and even Dick hasn’t been referred to as ‘Chum’ for quite some time. Jason equally hasn’t had to endure being referred to as Tiger since his return to the family. Therefore, it just makes sense not to bother bestowing a Brucie nickname at this point. “Guess, I just lucked out there.”

Jason’s expression suddenly shifts to something darker and far more acidic. Tim has no idea why, but, no matter the reason, he does know that he doesn’t like it. “Fucking damn, Baby Bird, this shit is ridiculous.”

Tim merely blinks repeatedly at Jason’s outbursts. He doesn’t see why this is such an explosive issue for Jason. After all, Tim was a very different Robin from the rest of them. He wasn’t chosen. Sure, he eventually wormed his way into the family and has since found his place among them, but that doesn’t change the fact that for a long time Tim was no one’s son.

At best, his parents were absent, and Bruce didn’t even know that he existed. By the time Tim revealed himself to Bruce, it was more important that Tim do his best to keep his mentor from crossing a certain line than it was for him to become something akin to family. Not to mention, the Jason sized hole in the other man’s heart made anything more than just Bruce’s partner nearly impossible. When Tim and Bruce finally managed to settle into a more comfortable partnership, Tim’s life crumbled. His dad ended up in a coma, and, while Bruce may have taken in him, the billionaire still sure as hell wasn’t his father.

When Tim finally legally became Bruce’s son, there were still complications with that type of relationship between them. Tim recognizes how many of those complications were directly caused by himself, but that doesn’t negate the fact that years of being nothing more to Bruce than a sidekick left him with certain expectations for their continued partnership. By the time, Tim actually accepted that he could have something similar to a father/son relationship with Bruce; Damian appeared. Therefore, all in all, it makes sense that he just wasn’t privy to certain traditions and family related experiences.

Still, Tim can see how this could quickly devolve into one of Jason’s less entertaining rants, so he shuts his laptop and smirks. “Face it, Jay; you’re just jealous that I didn’t have to endure one of Brucie’s more annoying habits. By the way, Chum is definitely the worst one.”

Dick laughs as he gets to his feet. “Ha, see, I win. I knew Tim would be on my side. He is a genius, after all.”

Damian rolls his eyes as he punches Dick. “I have yet to witness his supposed genius, given that, as usual, Drake is obviously wrong.”

Dick moves to ruffle Damian’s hair, before the brat has a chance to dodge. “Now, now, don’t be a sore loser, Dami.”

Jason seems torn between arguing whatever point he was trying to make and rejoining the bickering. Tim merely smiles and shakes his head, which seems to be all of the encouragement that Jason needs. “What would Baby Bird know? He didn’t even have an atrocious nickname. He doesn’t know what it feels like to have Brucie just sneak up behind you while you’re trying to sneak a handful of cucumber sandwiches, and loudly proclaim, ‘Slow down, Tiger. The food isn’t going anywhere.’ It’s downright irritating.”

Tim laughs as all three of them launch into a renewed argument, and opens his laptop again. He’s not entirely positive that he’ll be able to get any work done with the three of them squawking indignantly at each other mere feet from him, but he does know for certain that it’s better than empty rooms and deafening silence. Tim smiles to himself as he considers that this is probably the first time that he truly feels as though his adulthood is infinitely better than his childhood.

The End

[dunnahoocountry]

Turning 30

“I wanna be enigmatic like a sunrise in a book”

Aging was never a big deal to me. The older I got, the more sophisticated I would become. In my twenties I pictured myself at 34 working a stable job and coming home to a lovely wife (or girlfriend) with no real commitments beyond the ones that extended to my occupation, my partner, and myself. My thirties would be like my twenties: I’d still look good, I’d still thrive physically, but I would be more disciplined. Maintain a sense of self-control. There would be no identity crisis a lot of people in their twenties face. 

So when I turned 30, a group of my friends and I went out to New Orleans. We rented an Airbnb in the Bywater neighborhood from a woman who ran a local theater and had a fucked-up dog who looked like one of the hell hounds from Resident Evil 2. I can’t remember her name but it was something like Epsom or Gia. Wait, her name was actually Otter! Despite her pretensions she had a great hot sauce collection and seemed to know Quintron and Miss Pussycat very well (more on her later). We went around the city and tried our best to distance ourselves from the French Quarter. We came across the St. Roch Cemetery which has a surreal chapel filled with prosthetic legs and mystic Catholic euphoria. Walking past the mausoleums and seeing photos of these old families that had lived in the city for generations made me feel like the guilty tourist I really was. This shit was not made for Instagram likes, this was made for the respect and devotion of people who lived a life. What the fuck was I doing reaching into a crumbling coffin to touch the remains of someone who had been gone for 25 years?

Almost our entire time there we devoted ourselves to drinking. All I can remember during the day was having some horseshit-infected IPA as early as 11 AM. To go with it, a greasy muffuletta with an overly generous portion of Zapp’s potato chips. It ruled, but it was also an indication of what was truly happening to me as I approached this new period of my life of not being a twenty year old. My thirties didn’t look so much like a period of tranquility and domestication but rather some morally dubious grace period of doing whatever the hell I wanted when I wanted and how I wanted it. This leads me to the night I went to Saturn Bar with my pals to enjoy a group perform sea shanties. 

I’ve written about Saturn Bar before and my curiosity about the place is still strong. Saturn Bar is a neighborhood night spot that offers a full bar and a floor for live music or DJs that used to be an venue for boxing matches. One time after a major flood, a poor sea turtle carcass washed up to Saturn Bar’s entrance. The owner used the meat to make turtle soup and made the turtle shell into a neon lit decoration with the word CANDY sprawled across the body. 

Before going inside, we were offered cocaine by a frat dude who asked one of us if we were interested in knocking over a port-a-potty. I was never one for cocaine, and I didn’t really want to knock over public property in a city popular for its police corruption, so I went inside and had my fifth Miller Lite. However, my friend stayed outside and bought cocaine from the stranger. Eventually the Valpraiso Men’s Chorus  came to the floor and sang 18th century folk songs that are attributed to the sea. Seeing this in the Saturn Bar is nothing close to a religious experience. You are hearing these ancient tunes in a beer soaked tavern a half mile away from the Mississippi River and roughly five miles away from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s like you’re on the hull of a ship. I think I ended up with a $70 bar tab and I’m confident the bartender didn’t charge me for a lot of the beers I consumed. 

The last song they sang, “Rosyanna”, is a sad ballad about leaving a woman to go work on the ocean. I think a fisherman sang it? It had a profound impact on me. I started signing the word “Louisiana” instead of “Rosyanna” in the chorus “Bye Bye, Bye Bye, Bye Bye, Bye Bye/Bye Bye My Rosyanna/Bye Bye, Bye Bye, Bye Bye, Bye Bye/Bye Bye My Rosyanna/I won’t be home tomorrow.” This was true. I was scheduled to work my job in less than 36 hours and 9 of those hours would be devoted to the road. It was the proper exit to my twenties. I was loving my time in New Orleans and didn’t want to leave. My friend with the cocaine told me we need to go to the French Quarter. Being drunk and stupid, I agreed. We took an Uber out to Frenchman Street and as soon as we got out I snorted a line. We went to bar after bar and I honestly don’t remember a lot. Mind you, I had been drinking since 11 AM and did not stop. I did another line and probably at least two more. 

When we got back to the Airbnb I was, for lack of a better phrase, fucked up. I went to the bathroom and poured flax seeds down Otter’s commode. I woke up without clothes on. Otter is beyond pissed. Luckily some other sorority group was in town from the Midwest and Otter thought they had flushed the flax seeds. I pulled myself together and got out of bed. My girlfriend at the time was rightfully pissed off. Otter interrogated me asking if I had known anyone that used the bathroom. The only thing I actually remembered from the past five hours was me specifically acting on impulse and flushing those dumb seeds down her antiquated crapper. “No”, I told her. She sat down with me and told me all about the joys of living in New Orleans. The second lines, the culture, Mardi Gras, the food, the parties, etc. I admired her passion. We packed our bags and went directly to another bar. I had a cocktail for breakfast and ate praline bacon. I never felt so ashamed at myself. This is what my decade looked like: feeling like shit, eating like shit, looking like shit, and just being a piece of shit altogether. Great, I thought. This is what my decade will be like. I ordered another cocktail. 

On the other side of the Pacific, Hurricane Patricia was destroying Mexico. It was to this day the most intense tropical cyclone in terms of wind speed and the second most intense in terms of pressure. The Gulf of Mexico would feel the ramifications of that and we were scheduled to leave New Orleans on I-10 to get back to Austin. If you’ve never been on I-10 in Louisiana, you are practically on the Gulf of Mexico the entire trip. Great, I though. I ordered another cocktail. We left New Orleans, sadly, and my friends partied in the back car. It’s legal to do this in Louisiana. I drove, drunk, in a hurricane past many road signs that warned us “TURN AROUND, DONT DROWN”. I kept moving. It was the most irresponsible decision I’ve made in my life and yet we made it home. I like to think that the stranger who offered us cocaine that wanted to tip over the port-a-potty was actually an angel. If it hadn’t been for that cocaine, I may not have had the capacity to drive the distance that I did with the amount of pressure that we faced. It was the greatest and weirdest weekend of my life. 

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Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyOnce a month, every month of the 2018-19 school year, the principal of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School makes an announcement, usually before 9 am, when classes begin. “OK, we’re going into a Code Yellow drill. Take a breath. We’ll keep teaching but somebody might be trying to get into the building.”The school notifies parents five minutes before these “Code Yellows” begin that it’s only a drill. Many parents try frantically to text their kids. They may not be able to get through. WiFi is not reliable in the school. Five minutes later, the principal will come on again and announce a Code Red. It’s the mandated signal that an active shooter emergency is in progress. Most of the children have no idea whether a Code Red is the real thing. Without any meaningful consultation with parents or teachers, the Florida state legislature mandated monthly Code Red drills for every public school in the state, starting last August. Student survivors of the infamous school massacre in Parkland, Florida are forced to endure a flooding of fight-or-flight hormones again and again, further eroding their sense of safety in the world—without having any idea that the “emergency” may be, and probably is, fake. Many of the kids have panic attacks, even when the fire alarm goes off. But 15 months after the tragedy that took 17 lives, the people most infuriated by this scenario are not the students—it’s their mothers and fathers.“Horrific,” “obscene,” “disgusting,” “insane,” “an atrocity” are among the strong words the parents use in describing their gut feelings about the toll these monthly active shooter drills take on traumatized students.  On the day of the Parkland shooting, Valentine’s Day 2018, Meredith Barry’s 11th-grade daughter Isabela and her classmates ran outside when they heard a false fire alarm set off by the shooter. Hearing popping noises, their drama teacher, Melody Herzfeld, hustled most of her students inside to a closet. But noting that Isabela and others were in a glass-door office, the teacher took a chance to step out of the closet and pull the kids into one hiding place. The killer was firing indiscriminately through windows in classroom doors. “A lot of kids, my daughter included, were texting they were scared they were going to die and they loved us,” Barry told me. Like all the frantic parents, she had to wait outside for hours before she was able to respond to her child’s pleas for a hug. “These kids are living every day with that recurring nightmare,” lamented Parkland parent Stephanie Savransky. “Everyone has to pass the 1200 building,” which used to be the main building. It stands smack in the middle of a wide-open campus, one of its shot-out walls boarded over in plywood, a trigger for flashbacks. “My daughter Ashley and her friends see that crime scene every day,” Savransky laments. Displaced students see it from a virtual trailer park of  34 “portables”—temporary classrooms set up where the campus tennis courts were paved over. “The teachers were just as affected by the rampage as the students,” says Savransky. “They hate the drills.”  The main building is not in use. Still, authorities insist the building be preserved, intact, probably for two years or more so a jury can walk through it. And because prosecutors have rejected the “not guilty” plea by the accused killer, Nikolas Cruz, a lengthy trial is all but inevitable. Day and night, 16-year-old Ashley Savransky is confronted with the ghost building. When her astronomy class goes out to look at the moon, all Ashley sees are the lights on the top floor of an empty mausoleum where escaping students had to step over bodies of some 14 of their classmates. On days that Ashley suspects there might be a drill, she doesn’t go to school.  In addition to the scheduled Code Yellow and Code Red drills, the school is also dealing with unscheduled fire alarms that have been malfunctioning all year, going off inside the deserted building as often as three times a day. After a year of these triggers to further trauma, Parkland parents are up in arms, says Laura Waite Zuckerman. “These Code Reds cause insane trauma for the kids. And I don’t think they’re teaching them anything.” She called out to her 15-year-old daughter Iliana, “Do you know what to do if there’s a real Code Red?”“No,” came the bored answer.Zuckerman’s complaint is with government authorities who don’t seem to know much about human psychology. “After a life-threatening trauma, people are easily triggered to feel a resurgence of the trauma,” she says. They may start shaking, feeling as if their heart is jumping out of their chest. They may space out or have nightmares or panic attacks, become distrustful, angry, hypervigilant, and develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The very threat of mass shootings throughout the nation’s schools is also damaging to mental health. “Nothing within our town has ‘settled,’” declares Zuckerman. “Even though a lot of the kids wish that their parents would stop talking about it.”Joe and Wendy Garrity, leaders of several hundred angry MSD parents, empathize with the teenagers. “They think if we don’t talk about it anymore, the problem will go away,” Wendy Garrity told me. But it doesn’t go away, because early life trauma rips away children’s already tenuous grip on a sense of control. Joe Garrity adds, “The kids still have their whole lives ahead of them. It’s parents who think we have to come up with a solution, and that wears on all of us.” His wife sighs and admits, “I have survivor guilt, regularly. You never know when it’s going to hit you.” Their daughter, Sawyer, a junior at the time of the shooting, resisted surrender to the waves of helplessness. Two days after the terror she called her friend Andrea Peña: “Let’s write a song.” Over their cellphones, Sawyer on guitar and Andrea on keyboard, they created “Shine.” By week’s end, they were asked to perform the inspiring anthem at a CNN town hall. Unbeknownst to them, CNN put them on air. Suddenly, they were famous and the song went viral. But to the girls, it also felt like another loss of control.    Tragically, there are more dangerous ways to regain a sense of control, including self-harm, like cutting.  For students who descend into PTSD hell, suicide is a desperate attempt to reclaim control. Over spring break this year, Parkland parents had to face yet another terror: two students had taken their own lives. While there is little research devoted to the psychological impact of active shooter drills, not even on lockdowns, there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that any of these procedures can produce a state of fear. “Neurologically, fear impacts their behavior and they can’t learn, can’t pay attention,” says Dr. Franci Crepeau-Hobson, co-chair of the National Association of School Psychologists’ school safety and crisis committee. Shannon Green, a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, thought the hardest thing she’d have to explain to her children one day was sex. “But try telling a 5-year-old that a ‘bad man’ with a gun isn’t going to hurt her at school but, just in case, she should be prepared.” Green described her alarm when her child cried out in a shrill voice, “Mommy, will you sleep with me? I don’t want the bad man to get me.”Liz DeCastro was at work when a friend alerted her to trouble at MSD. She drove like a madwoman but before she reached the school, her son’s name popped up in a message on her dashboard. He’d reached out to her via text to tell her he was OK. “Mark, where are you?” she texted back. “Send me a picture so I can find you!” The boy was completely disoriented; he sent a picture of the tops of palm trees. Mark was on the top floor of 1200 in study hall. His young teacher received a text that this was a Code Red. The teacher pulled the kids back inside and locked the door. A fusillade of shots rang out. Just outside, a terrified kid was yelling for help. A furious banging on the door shook the students—was it the shooter? Teachers had been trained that once the door is locked, it cannot be reopened for anyone. Eventually, even the police had to break down the door to the classroom. As the students scrambled to their feet, the teacher warned them not to look down. Mark DeCastro could not help himself. The hall was littered with bodies. Three dead, others horribly injured. The worst off was Anthony Borges, a soccer star. He was the one who had been pounding on their door while the shooter riddled his body with holes. Miraculously, he recovered. * * *This wholesale annihilation of schoolchildren is not confined to Parkland or to Florida or even to high schools. It is a national emergency. The other dire emergency is how to help the young survivors of these atrocities. As of 2016, almost 95 percent of students in U.S. public schools practice some sort of lockdown drill. And by now, more than 228,000 students across America have been exposed to gun violence at school.Even as parents and teachers, administrators and legislators struggle with how to agree on gun control measures, as well as school safety plans, are we missing the most obvious danger under our noses? Are we actually raising a new generation of adolescents under a dark cloud of anxiety and hypervigilance, blocking out the model of risk-takers who stride up and down the earth searching for solutions to mankind’s vexations?In 15 months, no one has come up with a solution that satisfies a plurality of parents. I asked Parkland Mayor Christine Hunchofsky what might have prevented this tragedy. “There were things that could have been handled differently, such as tips to the FBI about the shooter,” she said. “The most recent tip was a month before.” But records have surfaced that show the shooter’s mental illness was documented by his school. His dangerousness was reported by his adoptive mother, fellow students, police, and a child welfare agency. Two years after Cruz dropped out of MSD, threats he issued were blatant on social media. Shortly before his rampage, he made a video of himself holding up an AR-15 and stating his intention to shoot up the school. All this, including tips to the FBI, were ignored. The Broward County sheriff, Scott Israel, was removed from office in December 2018 for failing to prepare his deputies to respond to an active shooter. Ty Thompson, the principal of MSD, is under review as part of an ongoing investigation into school administrators following the shooting.Max Schachter, whose son Alex was killed in the Stoneman shooting, has accused MSD of lying to the Department of Education between 2014 and 2017 by reporting that the school had zero threats. As a result, he said in a PBS interview, Parkland maintained its status as the 15th safest place to live in the country. “We have to be honest with the public and report what is happening with violent incidents. Once the public knows what is happening on campus, they will be putting pressure on school districts to make their school safe.” Schachter also fervently believes in “hardening” schools. “There needs to be a good guy with a gun on campus to take out the murderer,” he says. He wants principals and coaches to have guns. His argument is that law enforcement will never get to a shooting in time to stop it. This is the shocking fact: The MSD killer dealt enough mayhem to slay 17 people—all in five minutes and 32 seconds. The most vocal opponent of more guns in schools is Jeff Kasky, father of Cameron Kasky, the laser-focused teen who typed out an op-ed the night of the massacre that went up on CNN and launched the movement, March for Our Lives. “It’s crazy to talk about hardening schools and video game parlors and churches and synagogues and all the places where mass murders are taking place,” Kasky says. “The simple answer is to make it virtually impossible for a mentally disturbed person to buy an AR-15.” After the shooting, Kasky offered his son and fellow activists the use of his traveling ex-wife’s house as their war room. Over the next two weeks, they fell asleep sitting or standing up but didn’t leave the house. One day Kasky brought them pizza. The minute he showed his face, they all stopped talking. “They looked at me like a rhinoceros had entered the room.” Translation: Adults were, if not the enemy, part of the problem.That spurred this dad to create a PAC, Families vs. Assault Rifles. Kasky has suspended his life to travel the country speaking to groups, including some with NRA members. “The liberals are not coming for your guns, no matter what Sean Hannity says,” he tells them. “More than 80 percent of school shootings are performed by assault weapons. We want to keep those weapons of war out of the hands of civilians.” His favorite solution is to wrap this limitation into the National Firearms Act of 1934, legislation that the NRA assisted President Roosevelt in drafting. It prohibited the purchase of machine guns used by gangsters to commit crime. But when it comes to protecting defenseless children stalked by deranged young “ammosexuals” (Kasky’s name for isolated male shooters in erotic love with their weapons), there remains a stubborn absence of compassion for victims.Lawsuits and parental petitions have been filed all over the country after unannounced drills have left students stressed and fearful. Florida’s state legislature has already stiffened the counter-violence-with-violence approach by sending a bill to a sympathetic Republican governor to allow classroom teachers to carry guns in school. This despite the fact that the majority of the state’s school districts prefer to put law enforcement officers in schools.  If all this effort by guilt-ridden parents is too little, too late, what other methods might help to restore the equilibrium of anxiety-riddled students? * * *“Music!” That was the vision of Peter Yarrow, the iconic folk singer of the trio Peter, Paul, and Mary.Three months after the killings at MSD, he summoned a dozen of the most gifted activist singer-songwriters he knew to gather in a Parkland living room and mentor a contingent of students gifted in the arts. “I want to help them write songs to tell their own painfully authentic stories in music,” Yarrow told me. “I believe this might bring the kind of emotional power to the students‘ movements of today, similar to what we shared during the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.” He invited me to observe and record this historic collaboration.During the visit, I was struck by a sense of the students’ aloneness. Most sat on the floor hugging their knees, as if trapped in an aftermath of fear that might persist—perhaps for years. Yarrow mesmerized them with his impish smile and gentle voice, singing songs that his trio performed at the March on Washington in 1963. Once he sang Bob Dylan’s anthem “Blowin’ in the Wind,” he had the kids up on their feet, arms crossed, swaying with a sense of solidarity.  Over the next 48 hours, these drama and music students came out of their funk and eagerly put their souls to paper, writing and performing a dozen exhilarating songs. It was a historic collaboration across generations. Yarrow is working toward a release of the public service album that could become the soundtrack of the Never Again movement. It was Sawyer Garrity and Andrea Peña who shared another brainstorm: Why not help other kids to heal as they did, by making music and art? Their idea turned into a real summer camp when the girls decided to sell their song “Shine” on iTunes to raise the money for their foundation: Shine MSD.The first Camp Shine was led last summer by Jessica Asch, a licensed creative arts therapist. She made full use of sound exposure therapy. Children with PTSD are easily triggered by sounds. Asch would gather them close in a circle on the floor and say, “We’re going to play sirens -- are you ready?” Week after week, they listened to sirens over and over, gradually re-integrating the sound back into their lives. They also had songwriting workshops. The most effective of the arts, as documented by a University of Miami study, was drama. “Often there is a hierarchy of trauma - who suffered the most?” says Asch. By encouraging every participant to tell his or her story, the students understood that everyone was traumatized. But often, trauma has no words. In one session, Asch suggests students pick out an object and explain how it feels. One boy picked up a TV remote. “This feels like I’m just changing channels, rewind, fast forward, stop, like somebody is taking over control of my remote.” Wendy Garrity has bird-dogged her daughter through many downs and ups over the last year, but when she steps back, she sees that Sawyer has been building resilience. Every time the exuberant teenager comes home from traveling to give concerts, she seems more grounded by knowing that her message is getting through to her peers. These experiences have also prompted her to change her career path. Last year, all she wanted was to be on Broadway in musical comedies and go to University of California, Berkeley, where she was accepted. But this year, she has committed to becoming a musical therapist. She is headed for the Frost School of Music at University of Miami, which enables her to stay closer to home so she can continue to be part of the work of Shine Foundation. Camp Shine will start again June 17. But Jessica Asch is quick to add, “There is no back to normal. And active drills do re-traumatize people.” Jacob Moreno, the Hungarian-American psychologist who created the concept of psychodrama in the early 20th century, put it simply: “The body remembers what the mind forgets.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Is Cosmopolitan SEO Copywriting So Important In order to Marketing and sales communications?

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Marie Laveau: Business Woman, Voodoo Queen

I have been to New Orleans before, and I’ve read a lot about it’s history and mystery on many occasions. This time around, we decided to take a walking cemetery tour to hear more stories and the history of one of the many fascinating cemeteries in the city.  

So we scored a good Groupon, and booked a tour with Witches Brew Tours (by the way, they are great, check them out if you are ever in NoLa! No problem redeeming the groupon).  

The stories were fascinating. Our tour guide, Andy was fantastic. He kept us entertained with a good mixture of humor, spookiness, and history. We toured Armstrong Park with its many gorgeous trees and sculptures, and we walked our way to the Saint Louis Cemetery number one built in 1789.  

 There, we listened to his tales about a strict Catholic cemetery in a segregated society where skin color didn’t matter after death. As long as you died Catholic, you could be buried there. But, beware of vampires! Andy told us how it was a common practice to decapitate the body, placing the head at the feet facing down, and stabbing the heart with a wooden spear all to prevent anyone suspected to be a vampire to return as such.

Why?

Well, interestingly enough, another practice in New Orleans was to keep the deceased body inside a coffin that was placed in an above the ground tomb and bricked in for a year and one day. Because of the usually hot weather of the region, this tomb act as an oven and the body decomposes rapidly leaving only the bones behind.

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This process takes approximately one year. On some occasions though, either because of the weather or because the person was really a vampire (maybe), some corpses remained, skin and all, but as the muscles atrophy, and the skin dries up, the gum line recedes, and the fingers look long and bony giving the impression of a very thin person with large canine teeth and long monster fingers… a vampire.    

In this cemetery we also saw other interesting tomb sites, including one of a person that hasn’t died yet. Yes, you guessed it (or maybe you are waiting on me to tell you), Nicolas Cage’s massive pyramid tomb is in this cemetery, next to one of a queen. A voodoo queen I should add.  

 This is the story that fascinated me the most. Marie Laveau was a creole woman borne in the late 1700’s who worked as a hairdresser for the wealthy white women of the town. Due to carelessness or lack of a sense of prudence, these women would talk freely about their affairs and other ailments in front of her and all other house servers.   

Marie Laveau took this opportunity and created an empire. Have you heard the saying, knowledge is power? Well, she was a visionary that possessed and gained all the means necessary to build her metaphorical kingdom.  

She would gain information by paying the helpers of other wealthy households for details about their landlords. She kept promises to all the rich and powerful men that came to her for help. She would always keep their secrets and cater to their needs.

 Here’s how she did it. She used the spectacle of magic and combined it with her catholic rituals and beliefs to create "Voodoo" rituals.  This way she presented to her customers her knowledge of secret desires and/or information she had (privately) gathered from her client’s servers without their knowledge. All the gullible rich ladies really thought she was magic and that she knew all these things about them by invoking the spirits. And since she kept secrets and catered to the men’s desires she was well respected by the male society of the town. Marie Laveau made her business by collecting information behind people’s backs and making strong symbiotic friendships with the right crowd.  Marie Laveau was powerful, she was a voodoo queen.  

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But she was also aging, and she saw the opportunity to continue her legacy with her daughter, also named Marie Laveau II. Her daughter assumed her role impersonating her in many instances, and her granddaughter after her, and as years passed, people started to believe that Marie Laveau was forever young and beautiful, immortal if you wish.  

Three women, one name. That’s why when you try to find a picture, or a portrait rather, of Marie Laveau, they all look different. No one really knows what she looked like (people didn’t walk around with their smartphones snapping pictures of celebrities back in the day) as she was one and three at the same time, a holy trinity made voodoo queen.  

Marie Laveau’s death was kept silent in order to keep her legacy and business going with her daughter. Her mausoleum at the Cemetery is said to be occupied by her granddaughter rather than her, but there are speculations that she was buried in a different tomb, the one next to Nicolas Cage’s pyramid.  Go figure.  

Marie Laveau’s influence can be felt all around New Orleans. Her tomb (which is, according to the guide, one of the most visited tombs in the US) has been vandalized (was completely painted bright pink), repainted, and repaired to conserve this popular landmark. Voodoo practitioners and other curious tourists leave offerings by the tomb and request a wish to be granted, they then mark the tomb with three X’s and walk around the mausoleum and knock on it three times. Don’t quote me on this one… I’m just repeating what Andy (our guide) said. Obviously, marking the tomb with an X is considered vandalism, so you better not get caught.

 As of April 2016 no one is allowed inside the cemetery unless they are accompanied by a certified tour guide, or unless they are visiting a family member’s tomb (and have proof of this). This strict measure might change in the future, but for now they want to prevent the tombs from being vandalized by uncaring people.  

Besides her tomb, the New Orleans Historic Voodoo museum on Dumaine St, established in 1972, is the oldest authentic voodoo artifact museum in the city. It has many of Marie Laveau’s belongings. Around the city it is easy to find plaques of the places where she used to frequent and live with her daughters.  

Being a creole woman in a segregated society didn’t impede Marie Laveau from being powerful and having a legacy that carried for over a century. She found ways to play with people’s minds, making them believe she was a powerful priestess. As far as actual magical power, no one knows to what point this is true, but one thing is certain; she was powerful in the way she arranged her business, to the point that she was  recognized and remembered as the Voodoo Queen now and for generations to come.  

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[olaluwe]

A befitting monument to a living deity?

A few weeks back, Aremo Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian president, celebrated his 80th birthday and quite expectedly the media was awash with news of the event.

While no doubt an event of both national and international significance; among others, my take away from it was the disclosure by the celebrant that he actually did not know his real age; and all he remembers as of the day he was born, was the link to an Ifo market day according to his parents accounts.

In essence, he could be well over eighty or below.

But what difference does it make now?  None!  

You will agree with me that life has been more than generous to him if you are familiar with the trajectory of his luck-lustre careers and perquisites accrued.

That is by the way, as more importantly, I am here to celebrate with him rather than call to question what his real age is or if he truly deserves all that life had simply thrown at him. And to those still quizzical of those he once wrote ‘Not My Will.’

For all I know, he has aged and gracefully too.

Above all he has been a recurring decimal in the political evolution of Nigeria.

But lest I bore you with repeated narratives about the life and time, concessionary glorious, of one of the few men whose existence have shaped and still shaping the destiny of the geopolitical entity called Nigeria.

For nothing new can yet be written about a man both fondly and fearfully called Ebora Owu, translated to mean a deity from the realm of Owu in Abeokuta, Ogun state by multitudes of his die hard followers.

A man also respectfully referred to as Baba (father) among his inner circle of younger friends, contemporaries and political associates. 

He has no doubt seen it all and deserves his place in the pantheon of Nigerian political deities.  

Though many still squabble unending about what he has achieved, or could have achieved but did not achieved for one reason or the other while he held sway as Nigeria’s number one citizen on two occasions. 

But that is history now.

It is also not out of place to regularly encounter a handful both in private discussions and in some of the national papers who will not hesitates to both call him names and his bluff based more on the latter of the above mentioned reasons.

Some even go as far as blaming him for many of the woes that currently betide the nation.

While everyone is indeed at liberty to love or hate him; remember differently all he has done, the causes and events he has championed before now whether successful or not.

But one thing you, however, cannot take away from him is his iconic charisma, personal boisterousness maybe swashbuckling and an inexhaustible repository of caustic wits and sometimes fearless and brash analytic of people and institutions that lives you ever asking for more.  

So, my basic preoccupation here is to attempt to suggest a monument, a befitting one at that to such a god, if indeed one can be erected in his name more than he has done himself.

And I do not mean a mausoleum of gold and glitz that may hold such a deity in death.  

I will enjoin you all to come with me on this fun-filled adventure..

Get it straight, I am not wishing him death even by the strokes of imagination, mischief or hatred. Indeed like several of his well wishers, I wish him long life and prosperity and in good health too.

I am doing this for the simple reason of attempting to poll the people’s opinions and suggestions on the matter however ridiculous or elevated.    

If I may ask, which landmarks in Nigeria do you think is worthy an eponymous of his name and why?

Personally, I have just two in mind.

The first is the National Open University of Nigeria which he help to resuscitate from the dead.

The reason for this is simple. This is one institution that has huge national outlook and underscores his hunger for knowledge and criticism which are some of the cultures citadels of learning thrive on.

Above all, I am aware he recently got his PhD from the school lending it a deserved credence as an institution of choice for all. Though before now, Aremo Olusegun Obasanjo, is well known for his intellectual combativeness on issues in national developments.

The second is National Art Theatre in Iganmu Lagos. It is also on record that as military president between 1976-1979 he completed the national edifice presently a sorry sight primarily for the international art and cultural festival which Nigeria hosted in 1977.

I think this is one national monument that essentially captured his undying love for his African culture and tradition; and would be a fitting eponymous of his name.

Though through it his critics still feel he imported demons into Nigeria that today torment her.

If not this conclusion, I wonder what else can be further from the truth. I say so because long before then, Nigeria is a land of a thousand demons.

Artistically attested to by the late playwright, Chief G.O Fagunwa, who appropriately gave us something to chew in this regards with his monster hit < A FOREST OF A THOUSAND DEMONS’>.  

Feel free, however, to think and say which landmark in Nigeria would be a befitting monument to Aremo Olusegun Obasanjo. 

If you say posthumously that is your own addition for which you are liable.    

I rest my case!