#BLEAK VISTAE

[onlyhurtforaminute]

TYRANNY-PASSING THROUGH THE AGUE

[kabr0ztrousers]

Please please write a part 2 to the corrupted angel story, it was so good. Maybe a fem angel and a different type of demon? Dealers choice because I can't think of any demons

Kabr0z Writes Episode 156: Angels and Demons, part 3

Also entitled: Outnumbered

Find the rest of the Kabr0z Writes anthology, including parts 1 and 2 here!

Ao3!

CWs: Group sex; oral sex; corruption; noncon becoming enthusiastic consent; lots of fluids;

A/N: I think I screwed up with which prompt I went for for part 2... Ah well, this one's a little more permissive so we can fulfil the other anon's desire for a group of more warlike demons having their way with a pure-hearted (if slightly rash) angel

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The message was loud and clear. A poem, well written on its own merits, but heavily laden with encrypted meaning. It's a good trick, setting up book ciphers to correspond to works that never saw the light of day, but still found their ways into the Heavenly Database. Carmine left a record of what she did and why, consulting with a demon to try and find Oriniel. She also said not to come looking for her, but you’d be damned before you let that happen.

You knew where this asshole Silusirex lived, a particularly bleak corner of perdition. You just needed backup.

“You don't get it!” You slapped the piece of paper with the annotated poem onto Michael's desk “We've lost two angels already, and I'll bet both of them to demons! We need to rescue Carmine, she must've found something, and then we can get Oriniel back too!”

Michael pinched the sides of his nose “She summoned a powerful augur, knowing the risks, in direct contravention to the law. We can't justify sending angels in, mobilisation could lead to a full-scale conflict with Hell. We don't even have evidence that either of them are still alive.” He sighed “Request denied. Don't bring it up again, not to me, not to the other angels. The existence of this poem is now classified, well above your pay grade.”

You left the office. Michael was a Principality, it was a risk coming to him and not your direct report, but you knew if anything was to happen you'd need to. The forces of Heaven loved to call things immaculate or divine, but the bureaucracy wasn't any faster here than anywhere else. You understood his meaning perfectly. He couldn't authorise a mobilisation of angels. He couldn't risk a demonic retaliation, which was bound to happen if a regiment of angelic warriors descended upon the abyss. If you were to go down there on your own, find your comrade and bring them home. There'd be a promotion in it for you when you got back, doubly so if you got useful intel on Oriniel’s whereabouts. If anyone would have it, it'd be that augur.

The armoury was clear, shockingly so. You grinned. Michael's doing, you'd bet. One breastplate, winged helm, shield and flaming sword later you were ready for your journey. Traditionally, one would go to a landing zone to takeoff but you were flying off the books today. A window overlooking the endless vista of Heaven would do, nothing but empty sky above and below, stretching on forever and ever. Heaven didn't have the same knack for expanding as Hell, initially only made to hold less than 200,000 honoured dead. Time, it seems, made fools of everyone - even seemingly all-knowing architects.

You dove. If anyone was looking at your window, they would've seen a streak of light and flame. A comet, hurtling at the speed of sound, then stillness. Your path was clear. Descend until you saw it.

You sped up as you fell. No pesky laws of physics limiting you A trailing sonic boom heralded your coming to those you'd passed seconds ago. The air turned to sulphur. Prickly heat covered your skin. Ashes on the wind dried your mouth. Definitely Hell.

The Augury of the Ashen Radiant wasn't subtle. A million miles of ash and dust, flat and level as a millpond surrounded a pit a thousand miles wide. Structures clung to the rim of the hole, an abyss rumoured to stretch down forever. Suspended in the very centre, accessible only to those with some means to fly was the Augury itself. A perfectly dark needle hidden against the all-consuming pit. Somewhere between a university campus and a gated community in Sodom, this is where the demons would be, at least all the ones worth the effort of talking to.

Between the radiant halo, fiery weapon and shining auric attire you were the vision of a capital-A Angel, no hiding it. That conspicuousness could be a benefit though, nobody's about to challenge the lady with the shining gear and the sword that looks like it could permanently end a creature made of metaphor and belief. Permanent discorporation is unpleasant, and the threat of it would get you inside. From there you just had to hope nobody called your bluff.

First is the landing pad. You blew past the first couple of demons. They didn't even bother challenging you, either your purposeful stride or impressive getup dissuaded them from trying anything. Then through the double doors into the facility proper.

Inside was a far cry from the academia you expected. Every flat surface was covered in two or more demons rutting into one another, not even noticing the angel walking amongst them. It was almost disappointing, until you saw him.

Sitting there, drinking from a goblet, overlooking his domain while a slave demon knelt between his open legs, head bobbing in his lap. You’d read his last known appearance in the archives, flat white skin, a blank void in place of his face, and looking at how the slave was struggling, the stereotypically large phallus demons tended to favour.

“Ah, Angel. You have travelled far to my august institute, pray tell why?” His voice was slimy, just hearing it made you feel violated, wrong.

You brandished your sword “You kidnapped my friend! I want her back, and I want to know what happened to Oriniel” The swordpoint levelled at the demon, flames dancing down the length of the blade. Demons were staring at you, distracted from their mindless fucking by the noise and your weapon. Good. Being subtle wasn’t part of your plan, terrifying a roomful of demons into doing what you want is as good an option as any.

“On the contrary, sweet angel, your friend came to me willingly, and stayed of her own accord. Say hello, sweetheart”

The attendant demon stood from between his legs. Tall and shapely, pale skin criss-crossed with vivid red welts and scars. It was only when she turned to you that you recognised her; her almond eyes, round face, softly pouting lips. Changed, corrupted into a cock-drunk demon whore. Still unmistakably Carmine. Her legs wobbled slightly as she descended the steps to you, fluids dripping from her naked crotch down her leg, leaving a thin trail behind her. Your sword hissed as the flames branded the back of her hand, gently pushing the blade aside to bring her too-shiny lips to your ear “We’re gonna make you one of us. You’re gonna hate it so very much, then you’re gonna love it so much you’ll wonder how you ever did without.”

Your sword flashed as you stepped back, pointing it at your former friend’s laughing face.

Hands settled on your shoulders.

You swung wildly, trying to catch whatever demon had dared touch you, but he was faster. The sword clattered from your grip onto the floor as more of them gathered around. Dozens of eyes were on you, monstrous forms in all shapes and sizes turning from their partners to focus on the fresh meat that just walked into your midst. Almost as varied as the demons was the array of penises you saw, all of them long and thick in every shape and size. Most were flared or knotted, emulating the shapes of equines or canines, some were barbed like a cat, yet others twisted into spirals or tapered into great, flopping cones.

Your wings flapped, trying to make for the door and escape. Suddenly you realised why Michael was so reluctant to send a flight of angels here. The demons were uncountable, and every single one of them was hungry.

Flying was a bad call. No sooner had you picked up airspeed a great hulking beast of a demon barred your way. Your wings were immobile in his hand, writhing out of the vicelike grip was impossible. You could only slap at his compatriots while they expertly unblocked your cuirass, lifted your helmet, confiscated your shield. All that remained was your cassock, normally a stout piece of utilitarian fabric, but here and now it might as well have been made of gossamer.

Indeed, the first bladed arm to land across you tore it to shreds almost instantly. No angel ever wants to be seen naked, but here you were. Each of your wrists and ankle were held by individual demons, spreading you apart for the one that was Carmine to have easy access to your crotch.

She touched you. Her hand was soft and cold, like silk. You shuddered, warmth blossoming within you. “Please” you begged her “Not there, not like this”

Not-Carmine laughed “You angels, always so stuffy. I’m glad you found my poem. I’m glad you didn’t follow my advice” Her finger slid inside “And I’m so very, very glad you came here like a good little girl”

Your body twisted from side to side as you struggled to escape, but try as you might you couldn't wrench a wrist free. If you craned your neck you could see your fallen sword, inert and lifeless on the floor. The finger was deep inside you, softly stroking and teasing. You screwed your eyes shut, reciting chants and prayers, trying to shut out the impending wave of pleasure the fiend was slowly building within you

“Just relax, cutie, I can feel you want it. Even if you don't know it yet. By the time we're done with you, you’ll be begging for more” Her voice was honeyed, sweet and flowing. She wasn't wrong. Part of you wanted to cum, to feel the release denied to all angels.

The rest of you wanted to get out of here. Still struggling, you screamed in protest, limbs burning with exertion.

A large demon stepped up to your face, slapping your cheek with his cock “If that's how you'll respond to our hospitality, I’d better keep the peace. Now open wide, or this'll go worse for you”

Of course, your jaw clenched shut. Hatred burned in your eyes as you stared up at him.

Carmine knew what to do. A kiss on your clit made you gasp, opening your mouth for just a second, allowing the flared cock entry. She stepped aside, her fingers leaving you as another demon took her place. A thick, heavy bitchbreaker of a phallus slapped against your cunt, each strike of the bulbous head against your clit making you twitch. Its owner lined it up, pausing slightly at the entrance, before slamming it home.

The cock in your mouth muffled your scream. Both ends of your body were full, each cock driving as hard as they could, not caring about your pleasure as they used you.

Carmine was at your ear now “It feels good, doesn't it? Relax. Really feel them, you'll learn to love it soon”

Tears welled in your eyes, shaken loose by the jolting treatment the demons were giving you. The pressure in your belly was building, every time the thick cock in your cunt bulged your tummy, you felt yourself getting a little closer. Every thrust of the flared cock down your throat you felt more, and hurt less.

Your body shook. As though you were nothing but a single exposed nerve.

Carmen took the coup de grace. Soft fingertips, eerily cold, ivory smooth, caressed your thighs, drawing to your stretched open cunt. You tried to shake your head, to beg her to stop, but she wouldn't care, even if she could understand you through the gurgling slurping sounds coming from your throat and cunt. Those cold fingers slid over your clit, pinching it between her index and middle finger, rubbing gently in circles.

It was too much. Your knees buckled and shook, your pelvis thrusting up into her hand, riding the cock hammering into you. Above your head, you heard the sound of hot metal being pressed against dry ice, before cracking and splintering.

You clenched yourself against the demons, willing them to finish. As if obeying your wordless command, the one in your throat throbbed and pulsed, his balls clenching in front of your face before a wave of thick cum pumped into your mouth. You couldn't swallow it all, despite what you wanted. Rivulets of his seed flowed out of the sides of your mouth and from your nose, coming in waves with every pulse until finally he pulled out.

“Who's next?” Your voice was unfamiliar to you. Not just from the cum coating your throat, it was deeper, more sonorous.

You weren't satisfied. You wouldn't be until you’d tasted every single demon here, and maybe not even then. One thing's for sure:

It's going to be a long night

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hii, I was wondering if you had any recs of a writer/author John au. I've found some of author Sherlock, but none of John except his blogging that he does normally. if you don't do recs anymore or don't feel like answering feel free to ignore and have a lovely day! <3

Hi Nonny!

Oh I'm still doing weekly lists, I just don't get many asks for them anymore so I feel like y'all don't like them anymore LOL. BUT!! Your ask is a fantastic excuse to use your ask as a list prompt since I don't have one ready for today!! I actually find the opposite, that there seem to be more "writer John" fics more than the other way around, especially as I've been going through my lists.

That said, I've done a tag search for "writer" and "author" on my offline lists, and here's what I got! Hope you enjoy and as usual, if anyone has any fics that they would like to suggest, please add them below!!

WRITER / AUTHOR JOHN

BOOKMARKS

A Gossamer Dream by CarmillaCarmine (E, 15,985 w., 4 Ch. || Writer/Teacher AU || First Meetings, Friends to Lovers, Writer John / Teacher Sherlock, Fluff, London, Holding Hands, Online Friendship / Romance, Phone Sex, Anal Sex, Happy Ending, Alternating POV, Scottish John, Online Relationship, Internalized Homophobia, Hand Holding, Forehead Touching, First Kiss/Time, Texting/Sexting, Rimming, Toplock, Sherlock Speaks French) – Sherlock had never realised one could care so much about someone they'd never met in person. Now he is about to meet the friend with whom he's been chatting online for months and his anticipation is reaching a crescendo. Part 19 of Johnlock Smut (with Feels)

Being John Watson-ish by elwinglyre (E, 69,902 w., 17 Ch. || Bodysnatcher AU || Author John, Cranky Sherlock, Angst, Sexual Tension, First Kiss / Time, Falling in Love, BAMF John, Past Soldier John, Feelings, Inside Someone’s Brain, Shy Sherlock, Sherlock Loves John, POV Sherlock, Switchlock, Slow Burn, Internal Dialogue, Mental Turmoil) – When consulting detective Sherlock Holmes steps on one toe too many at a crime scene, he's consigned to a desk job in an archaic office on the seventh-and-a-half floor of the New Scotland Yard. It’s in this bleak office that Sherlock discovers a portal into the mind of renowned author John Watson. Grander than his mind palace, this new wonderland affords Sherlock new vistas of experimentation. To learn more about the mystery behind the portal, Sherlock seeks out and befriends Watson. But then it all goes wrong when others find the secret portal door—including the man whose brain he visits.

MARKED FOR LATER

Exposition - An Ex Files Special by 7PercentSolution (T, 7,643 w., 12 Ch. || POV Second Person, Angst, Bereavement, Poetry / Haiku, Hallucinations, Writing as Therapy) – John's a writer. However much Sherlock derided the blog, people read what he writes. After the fall, John's writing takes a surprisingly different approach. This sets the context for a series of chapters, each one including a different poem by John. Part 4 of Ex Files

keywords: Gay, Loving, Boyfriends by lookupkate (E, 17,771 w., 17 Ch. || Doctor John AU || Alternate First Meeting, Hospitals, John Writes Smut, Sherlock Reads Smut, Fanfiction) – John starts writing gay romance while holed up in hospital. Sherlock reads the first fic on accident, and it sticks with him for days. He can't help but read more from the unknown writer. Little does he know, the writer isn't exactly unknown to him. The writer happens to be the A&E Doctor he's feuding with. Christ, can you imagine what he'll think once he finds out? 

Dead Letter Office by a_different_equation (M, 20,364 w., 15 Ch. || ‘Bartleby’ Fusion / Office Setting AU || Different First Meeting, Epistolary, John's Blog, Angst with a Happy Ending, Pre-Canon, John Watson is Sherlock's Boss, PTSD John, Military Backstory, Writer John, Drug Use, Texting) – John Watson comes home from the war, gets a new job and meets Sherlock Holmes through Mike Stamford. Same tale since 1891, except this time it’s 2008, John is Sherlock’s boss, and they work together at the Dead Letter Office in London. It's not a love story, until it finally is.

The Reawakening of John Watson by  221b_careful_what_you_wish_for (E, 20,463 w., 14 Ch. || Historical 1800s American/Victorian AU || Artist Sherlock, Writer John, Angst with Happy Ending, Bisexual John, Period Typical Homophobia, Sensuality, Experienced Sherlock, Pining, Past Drug Use, Slow Burn, Love Confessions, Flirty Sherlock, Frottage, Outdoor Sex, Trust Issues, Minor Character Death, Sexual Tension, Colorado / London, Rimming, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs,  POV John) – Trying to escape his troubled past in England, John Watson has started a new life in the American West. When he meets the handsome artist Sherlock Holmes, a smoldering attraction is sparked, complicating his quiet, carefully guarded existence. Maybe taking a risk with Sherlock is exactly what John needs to feel alive again...

The Key to Castles in the Air by LadyKailitha (T, 34,365 w., 21 Ch. || Author AU || Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Bratty Sherlock, Damaged Sherlock, Romance, Shop Clerk/Writer John) – John is a clerk (and writing a book on the side) at a bookshop run by Mrs Hudson. The one downside to this perfect job is Sherlock Darling, Mrs Hudson's friend who loves to rile John up. About everything. All that changes when they are forced to spend a week together in the country when bad weather hits. Sherlock's got secrets. What will John do once he finds them out?

There I Saw You, Night by esplanade (T, 54,073 w., 12 Ch. || Writer AU || Poet Sherlock, Writer John, True Love, Sherlock's A Mess, Conversations, John's Family) – "It wasn't as if he had stopped writing entirely. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was just that most of what he wrote ended up thrown into the fireplace at home. What was the sense in keeping something that was sub-par?"

This Is Your Song by agirlsname (E, 79,990 w., 19 Ch. || Moulin Rouge Fusion || Prostitute Sherlock, Poet John, Acting, Singing, Dancing, Writing, Poetry, Musical, Song Fic, Heavy Angst, Unreliable Narrator, Sherlock is French, Love at First Sight, UST, First Kiss/Time, Frottage, Coming in Pants, Anal Sex, Switchlock, Clothed Sex, Crossdressing, Secret Relationship, Forbidden Love, Jealousy, Terminal Illnesses, Grief/Mourning, Breakup/Makeup Sex, Past Drug Use, Attempted Rape, Canon-Typical Violence)– When John Watson is invalided home from the army in 1895, he moves to Paris to rediscover his writing and find a new meaning in life. His old friend Stamford invites him into a group of artist friends, and suddenly John finds himself auditioning to write a show for the famous brothel across the street. There, he meets the most beautiful man he’s ever seen - Sherlock, the star of the Moulin Rouge. But Sherlock is already promised to the investor of the show, the rich Duke Moriarty.

A Case of Identity – The Musical by shamelessmash (E, 83,147 w., 15 Ch. || 1950′s Hollywood AU || Musical, Case Fic, Undercover as an Actor, Dancing, Happy Ending, Kidnapping, Drugs, Fluff and Angst, Humour, Writer/Director John, Slow Burn / Romance) – A mysterious death on set causes chaos in Stamford productions latest movie. With the premiere date left unchanged, they must find a new lead actor and reshoot an entire movie in two months. Sherlock Holmes goes undercover as a lead actor in a Musical: a juggling act to solve a murder while singing, dancing and charming his way through 1950s Hollywood. The last thing he expected was to fall in love with the screenwriter along the way. Or as I like to call it: the case where Sherlock finally gets to dance.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

Children of the Revolution by BadNewsForBrainWork (E, 7,655+ w., 4/? Ch. || WiP || Moulin Rouge AU || Prostitution, BDSM, Multiple Pairings) –  John is an English writer travelling to the small village of Montmartre in Paris, France is hopes of taking part in the Bohemian Revolution. As soon as he arrives, he gets swept up by the revolutionaries and taken to the Moulin Rouge where he meets Sherlock Holmes. He quickly finds himself caught in a dangerous love triangle that could risk his entire career and maybe even his life.

Wood and Wicker by HardlyFair (M, 14,114+ w., 3/8 Ch. || WW2 Historical AU / Hot Fuzz AU || BAMF John, Case Fic, Secret Societies, Secrets, Romance, Humour, Action, Writer John, Murder Mystery) – 1946. Sandford, England. Following the second World War, Sherlock Holmes accepts an unwanted case far in the English countryside to investigate a string of grisly deaths. Problems arise when it becomes clear that no one thinks anyone has been murdered at all, that nothing outside a series of unfortunate accidents has transpired, and that nothing untoward is afoot in Sandford -- no one, save for a small-time columnist from the local newspaper.

Christmas in Honeycutt by helloliriels (T, 27,950+ w., 14/23 Ch. || WIP || Christmas in Connecticut AU / WWII AU || Kidnapping, Spies / Secret Agents, Codes & Ciphers, Past Relationships, Developing Relationship, Fake Marriage, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending) – John's publisher asks if his family could entertain a war hero at their idyllic estate in Somerset for Christmas. Only ... John doesn't have a wife ... or a daughter. Or an estate. He has a bedsit. In London. And some wounds of his own to recover from ... but he can't tell his publisher that or he'll get fired … What's a writer to do? Cracking Codes. Super Spies. Sherlock in Disguise. A wild Christmas romance set in the countryside! Just what the doctor ordered! Part 6 of the Liriels Chaptered Fics series

Novel by lifeonmars (M, 50,264+ w., 10/? Ch. || WiP || Author AU || Fairy Tales / Red Riding Hood Elements, Fantasy, Writer’s Block, Falling in Love, Peter Pan References, Slow Burn, Romance, Writer John, Editor Sherlock) – John Watson has writer's block. Sherlock Holmes is the world's best consulting editor. Whether John can write a book is another story entirely.

How Novel Series by StarlightAndFireflies (T, 66,472+ w. across 11 Stories || Series WiP || Writer John / Unilock AU || Book Signing, Flirting, Dating, Shy  Sherlock, Romance, Getting to Know Each Other) – AU in which John is an author, and Sherlock is a fan who comes to his book signing.

[faerymin]

Sense and Sensibility: Prologue

Synopsis: "Stepfather you had known from the stories, the college friend who’d invited you there in another city: a strained scenario no matter which way you’d want to twist it." Chronicles of the scorching summer of 2006, when you find yourself adrift in Santa Barbara, away from the bleak prairies of Oregon and left to the mercies of your college friend's enigmatic stepfather.

Pairing: Kim Seokjin x Reader (ft. Kim Taehyung)

Tags: Angst and Feels, Drama & Romance, Sexual Tension, Explicit Sexual Content, Age Difference, DILF Kim Seokjin, Mutual Pining, Jin is a Menace, Cheating, Extramarital Affairs, S&M, Light BDSM, Alternate Universe - College/University, Kim Seokjin Has a Big Dick, Tragic Past, Daddy Kink, Size Kink, Moral Dilemmas, (Eventual) Shameless Smut, Power Imbalance

Word Count: 3.5k

Author’s Note: Previously posted on my now deactivated account @bambitae, and cross-posted on AO3.

━━━

“Well then.” The curt words, the bored sigh that came beforehand, the attitude.

You’d never heard someone use “well then” to say goodbye before. That’s what he’d told you on the day you met him, as he placed the one dented suitcase you’d brought before Maya’s bedroom door; a long, loud step back, bare foot slapping against the terracotta parquet. Then he disappeared down the high-ceiling hall, behind a potted palm, lustrous floor spidery with his own lanky, distorted shadow.

It is the first thing you remember about him, and you can still hear it today, “well then,” just the thought of it transporting you back to Santa Barbara, last summer, stepping out of the train to see him before the station, tan pillars rowed with arches and a flat, clay roof, colossal palm trees and the unclouded sky; and he, a stranger, with his billowy blue shirt, wide-open collar, opaque blazer limp on his arm, skin everywhere. Suddenly he’s shaking your hand, taking your suitcase, telling you Maya is staying a few days longer in Los Angeles with her aunt.

It may have started right there and then: the shirt, the rolled-up sleeves, aviator sunglasses gliding down his nose as he looked at a passing salaryman, palm up for a greeting.

The occurrence was a startling and gnarly one, and most of the ride to Riviera you remember by being terribly stiff and silent, perplexed whether you looked to the cigarette hung from his mouth or the soaring hillside through the window—the vistas of white stucco walls nestled in the mountains becoming closer and more tangible the farther you climbed up the twisty roads.

Stepfather you had known from the stories, the college friend who’d invited you there in another city: a strained scenario no matter which way you’d want to twist it.

You were a bit uncomfortable, after the diatribes you’d heard, having to do with his conceit and bestial cruelty toward Maya, and you were mad at her too for being too lazy to ring you and set you to arrive a few days after. You wondered, as the breeze mussed your hair and you squirmed on the burning seat, if you would even withstand those six long weeks you had promised her.

It was impossible in the first days you didn’t scorn and fear the stepfather a little bit, even as he drifted in and out of the house like a shadow, unobtrusive, remote from it for most of the day. Images conjured by Maya’s tales came alive every time you were in the same room as him, the first of many a tableau of him at the breakfast table: robed in velour, morning paper in hand, whipping you with a stare over the rim of his spectacles as soon as you stepped over the kitchen threshold.

Everything was similar to how you’d imagined it, the hostile air and white mug from Saks he began using after smashing his favorite in an argument they had, but instead of the silvery codger in your fantasies, senile and swivel-eyed, he was a man who couldn’t have been past thirty, slight in the face and alabaster skin stretched taut over his jaw and clavicle. Only at glimpses did it catch the golden Californian tan: a bit on his cheeks and forehead, over his jutting metacarpals and lithe fingers, on one of them a pale hoop you sometimes saw when his wedding ring slipped.

Looking back at that morning, the first breakfast you ate at his house and by far the most miserable, the worries plaguing you were vague and paranoid ones, spiraling like tentacles into the abysmal nothing. You remember eyeing the coffee he’d brewed to you, too afraid to ask where they kept sugar, and feeling like you’d made a terrible mistake when the jam slipped off your toast and made an ugly, crimson splotch on the china. When he’d apologized for not having a proper breakfast ready, “I don’t eat it myself, you see,” impersonal and hidden behind the text-condensed pages of The Wall Street Journal, your reassurance came much too quick and petrified, bubbling out of your mouth through a slew of unchewed bread.

Maya had made him out to be a brute, a tetchy old man; it was wise for you to be wary. For the whole meal, you thought of the broken mug, pitying Maya for having to call such a man her father.

Your spoon kept clanking against the plate. He put his mug in the exact same spot each time. Your legs touched once before he stood up and put his mug in the sink. Before he’d left for work, he told you smoking wasn’t allowed in the house, and he said it absently, looking at his watch, one foot already out the door.

Memories of the first time being alone in the hacienda are now murky, muddled with the sludge and sloth of forthcoming events, but the awe you felt exploring remains fresh. It was hard to believe you were in California, with the wood beams for a ceiling, endless archways for doors, the lord-like coastal view from the living room window.

Without having anything better to do, you meandered for most of the day, stopping to admire every painting hung on the white walls until an old Baroque piece beside the garden archway startled you. It was a Diego Velázquez, the portrait of little prince Baltasar on a horseback, and you knew selling your kidney wouldn’t have made you nearly enough to buy it.

“It’s a fake,” he had told you one morning, later, as he watched you gape at it from the patio. “But a good one. Even the slightest detail on the clouds are identical.”

“Have you ever seen the real one up close?” you asked as you studied the details on the plump horse, the billowing military sash wrapped around the boy’s chest.

“I have.” He was stubbing a cigarette, sinking into the embroidered pillows of the velvet-upholstered sofa. “It’s displayed in Prado.”

But you had already known that.

As it happened, he’d caught you on the patio, on the same sofa, when he came home that first day, curled up with a book you had stolen from his study, a cigarette in his mouth and tie so loose it bent clumsily to the side. He was much too sluggish for your apologetic fervor to faze him. “It’s alright,” he said and sat across from you in a wicker chair, dumping his blazer over the arm. “You must be bored.”

It may have even started then, with the way he lit his cigarette: good, bared forearms on his spread knees; eyebrows rumpled and smoke curling out his mouth.

“Have you called Maria?” he said after a time, and looked at you over the eyebrow.

“No,” you were stuttering, not having expected he would talk to you, “my phone has no credit.”

He dug into his pocket and fished out a cellphone, typing away on it as he blew smoke to the side. Afternoon sun streamed directly into his face, in such a strong light most people looked washed out, but his surly, angular features lit up with the warmth of near sun-down until it was a shock to look at him. He had leaned into the shadow of hacienda’s roof before you finished admiring him, eyes squinted as he handed you the phone with Maya’s contact on it.

“I’m sure you have a few things to talk about,” he’d told you and stubbed out his cigarette, and then he told you to ask if you ever needed the phone and, if he wasn’t there, to take the landline one in the hall, and with that he went into the house, not to be seen again until dinner. Even through the haze you can recall his curt murmur as he passed the prince Baltasar, “Well then.”

Prior to the first weekend in Riviera, the pictures arranged in your mind seem disjointed and hazy, but it is on that first Sunday when they come into razor sharp focus and he morphs from a discreet, eldritch figure floating through the hallways into a creature of flesh and blood, a real person with a beating heart. You too appear as somewhat of a stranger in these memories: gauche and oddly elusive because of all the anguish of being stranded in a foreign state and the chilling stories Maya had bashed into your head for the past year. It had taken you days to look him in the eye and speak without odd, wary pauses; and now all those times you had ducked into a room at the sound of his footsteps only embarrass you, especially because you now realize, long after the fact, that your attempts to evade him were far from discreet.

Maya’s stepfather didn’t appear to be the monster she had led you to believe, and only after the six weeks together and the long time after you parted, which you spent scrutinizing and obsessing over him, did you realize he too must have been frightened and bewildered, waiting for you to make the first move with hands folded on his lap, politely as a maiden aunt. You were an intruder in his house, a strange girl who seemingly had her mouth sewn and fell into long spells of staring directly at him. You were every bit of an anomaly to him as he was to you; an alien who was all of a sudden curling up on his patio and leaving breadcrumbs on his table in the mornings; a complete disruption. And still he had made every effort to host you until Maya came, despite not wielding any responsibility towards you.

After that first morning, the refrigerator had become plump with breakfast options and a warm pastry awaited you by the bread box after his early cigarette trips to the store, and it was often he recommended books, asked if you needed to use his phone, or otherwise apologized for Maya’s absence—something even she failed to do once you managed to get a hold of her. But all this he did with such a sour face, spoke in such an enervated monotone, that you were certain he only saw a huge bother in you. It was that first Saturday when this fear began to gradually dispel.

You had never realized, of course, that the hacienda would not be completely desolate on the weekends. You remember now, looking back, how on that first Saturday morning he was up and writing letters, not in his usual uniform but a pair of swimming trunks and a robe coming undone at the waist, and when you got downstairs, he was nearly finished and placing them into thick, cream-colored envelopes, a cigarette hanging at the corner of his mouth.

He swiftly plucked it upon noticing you in the doorway. “Don’t mind me,” he said; “this place should air out fine in a minute with all the windows this room has. Not that you should smoke inside just because you saw me doing it. The coffee and the hot dishes are on the sideboard, feel free to help yourself.” You said something about not minding the smoke, how all right with all of it you were, but he did not listen, he was looking down at a letter, frowning at something.

He didn’t seem to notice you, in fact, even when you sat across from him at the table, a little overawed at the brilliance of the breakfast presented to you: dishes of poached eggs, of bacon, and another of sausages and fried bread. There was tea in a grand porcelain tureen, and coffee, piping hot, in a similarly wonderful urn with two huntsmen in acryl, chasing after a deer. A cluster of grapes dangled from the dessert stand, surrounded by a ridiculous diversity of fruits—guavas and figs and pomegranate slices—but the tower paled in comparison to the one beside it, adorned from top to bottom with various cakes. It didn’t seem possible that he could prepare all of this by himself, and his disregard for the feast was perplexing. From the entire table he had taken only a cup of coffee for himself. And, it seemed, some grapes. The twigs lay barren on the saucer by his hand.

“Is today a celebration of some kind?” you said, unmoving at first, wary of bad manners. You didn’t know how hungry you were before you sat down.

But, “No,” he replied simply, unsheathing his pen. “It’s just a Saturday.”

It was strange to you to think that Maya, who back in Portland shared a dorm with you and bathed in communal showers, should sit down in her home on the hillside of American Riviera to a breakfast like this one, day after day, for her whole life probably, and find nothing absurd about it, nothing wasteful. You couldn’t fathom why she would enroll into a public university at all when she was accustomed to such banquets, but you now understood why she sometimes scrunched her nose at supermarkets and people dressed in secondhand, and were a little bit flurried.

You noticed he poured himself more coffee. You took a slice of ham. And you were afraid to wonder what would happen to all the rest, all that meat and fruits and the chocolate gateau, and the tea once it went cold. There were no menials in the house, no one to wait for the gift of breakfast other than the dustbins.

“Why even try to argue with a woman of such a feeble mind,” he said suddenly after a time, during which he wrote furiously, the paper all a sharp, messy hand. He set down his reading glasses, not looking you in the eye. He waited for you to raise your head. “It seems Maria is coming next Sunday, after all. She banged up her phone and lost her train ticket. Her aunt will drive her back here, and she’s not free until the weekend.”

The announcement startled you. “On Sunday?”

“If Maria’s aunt is to be trusted—and she’s not. I don’t understand why everything has to become so complicated.” He got up from his chair and lit a cigarette. “I’m sorry about this, I really am. You’ll have to make do for another week even though it’s uncomfortable.”

“It’s all right,” you said, sounding quite small. Suddenly your appetite was lost.

“I mean this very seriously.” He was looking out the window, into the courtyard and pool, at the indolent rose bushes swaying slightly in the wind. His robe was open now as he leaned on the windowsill. “She’s being extremely irresponsible, I can’t begin to imagine why she left you here all alone.”

“It’s all right,” you repeated. “Did she leave some sort of message for me maybe?”

He shook his head, a cigarette upon his lips. “If she did, her aunt omitted it.”

Neither of you said anything for a moment.

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Pardon?” Finally, you put down the heavy silverware.

“Are you going to wait for her until she comes?”

The question boggled you. Did he want you out of the house? But it would be a long way back to Oregon, and you had barely caught a glimpse of California. “If I’m not a burden on you,” you said, spineless.

He said nothing before coming to the table to put out his cigarette, the robe fluttering behind him. “Understood.” He took his papers, the conversation having seemingly left him sour. “Enjoy your meal.” Then he strode out into the hall, leaving you in the thick silence of the kitchen, alone among the plates of meat and dessert stands.

You tried not to be too curious, and after abandoning breakfast amused yourself with plans of taking a long walk to the East Beach, or reading, or even having a drink in West Mesa, on the terrace of a cafe with a good look at the ocean. It wasn’t until you were coming up to the bedroom to get dressed, sometime before noon, that you glanced through the window and realized he hadn’t left for work still.

Instead he lounged in the courtyard, along the edge of the pool, with his eyes closed and his back turned to you, and it startled you, what broad shoulders he had, the bare and wet skin, the slight quiver of muscles as he rested on both elbows, foot gently caressing the pool-water. For a moment he held it there, on the surface, unmoving, only to let it fall limp with a splash. Hair was sticking to his face; his swimming trunks clinging to the skin. Beside him lay his robe and his cigarette packet, as well as an empty glass, all scattered, and he seemed to care very little about the mess, instead tranquil, dreaming, slowly swaying backward as he soaked in the sun. He was a different person to the man writing letters in the morning.

For the first time it had struck you how handsome he was, and although you may have known this before, you were too afraid to think it. It would have been far more noticeable had his posture been less stiff or his gaze, behind the glasses, less shrewd. He looked almost young now as he stretched across the cantilever deck, younger than he already was, lingering for another moment before he dove into the water. There was a splash, a ripple. It all seemed very beautiful to you, how it danced and glittered in the sunlight.

You caught yourself by the window, peering at him from behind the curtains, and were promptly humiliated. You drew the curtains, the skin on your neck hot, and the back of your ears, and you didn’t know what to do with your hands or your feet or your reflection in the wardrobe mirror, prancing around half-undressed and with a wire poking out of your brassiere. You thought about how he could’ve looked up and caught you: the unwelcome guest, spying on him in nothing but her underwear. And what shabby underwear it was! You unhooked it the same moment and threw it in your suitcase, still burning.

The impression of looking battered was stuck on you even as you picked out your least worn swimsuit and a dress to go with it, which prior to coming here seemed rather Californian to you. Now it looked childish, too flowy, like a little girl’s dress. What did it matter if you looked silly? You didn’t know but you feared it, and as you twirled around and picked at the threadbare stitching, you only thought of how flustering it would be for him to notice the cheapness of the material, the slightly frayed hemline with a thread sticking out from beneath. Maya would have made fun of the dress, if she were here to see it. The thought alone made you swear not to wear it around her, perhaps never wear it again at all, and instead you dressed in a shirt and shorts, both fitting loose and boyish; they made you look plain but they at least didn’t make you look stupid.

You had just been packing your beach bag when a knock came at the door; it was him, changed out of his swimming attire and a towel on his neck. “Going somewhere?” he asked after a brief gust of silence, in which you stood there, staring stupidly at his face, and it wasn’t until he had spoken that you became aware, with a rush of color to your face, that you had blundered irrevocably in thinking he had come to reproach you, had noticed your watching him. You had made a fool of yourself looking so scared.

“Yes,” you said, stammering, your words tumbling over each other. “Yes, I’m going to the beach.”

“That’s nice,” he said; and he knew, you thought, he guessed you had done something wrong and inappropriate in his house, or in the very least finally pegged you as an odd person. It was in his eyes, the gentle, perhaps slightly pitiful scrutiny. “One of my nephews phoned me earlier. He and my sister will be coming for lunch and he asked for some sort of bracelet he borrowed to Maria. I thought to ask you to look for it, but it seems like you’ll miss them.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” You were overly relieved, overly eager. “I’ll look for it. It’s no problem.”

“You don’t have to inconvenience yourself, it was my mistake to bother you,” he said, his voice even. “Go to the beach.”

“I have the whole day, it’s really no problem.” You were already pushing the door into a close.

He put his hand on it. “It would be easier to find, I think,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a photograph, “if you knew what it looked like.”

There was a ghost of a smile on his lips, fingers grazing your as he handed it over. And you knew that, by then, it had already begun.

[allwormdiet]

Sentinel 9.5

Every thirteen year old in this story is going through hell

Dear Parian, how do you puppet cloth dolls with boxing gloves on their hands?

Nah but this is nice to see them getting along with each other, and I'm glad that Vista gets to see something cute in such a blighted fucking time.

The background levels of desperation and fear in this setting remain very strong and evocative.

Gayyyyyy

Vista like "hey I'm not young enough to actually enjoy this, but I'm old enough to act polite about it"

God that's so fucking cool

Oh man who could have possibly predicted that putting a thirteen year old in constant life-or-death situations with people dying around her could possibly result in a warped perspective on death and dying, that's so weird

Oh man, who could have possibly predicted that enlisting a thirteen year old in a quasi-military policing organization where she's legitimately got seniority over high schoolers could possibly result in feeling distanced from her own age, that's so weird

So like, is there truly nowhere else to put the team portrait gallery than right where everyone sees them every time they enter? Just put them in another hallway or wing or something, especially if you're dropping bodies.

Still a little darkly funny that Browbeat doesn't even get a portrait, guy was straight up too new to even put in front of a camera

The idea that Coil has only managed to infiltrate the PRT at all because they're letting him infiltrate the PRT is. Oh my fucking God he's so bad at this. So far every win we've seen him take against other players is because they feel bad enough to let him have it. Coil, you have got to fucking hang it up my man, the minute someone decides to actually deal with you you're cooked

(It's almost certainly gonna be Taylor, on account of that child you kidnapped and forcibly addicted to drugs)

Okay so like. Hwoo. I keep talking about the expectations being put on the Wards in this fucking story but this is a really steep one. Let this fucking mole into your midst and let him do what he does. Let a tinker, a goddamn superpowered tech specialist, hang out where your stuff is.

I know they all agree to do it but they already all agreed to fight fucking Leviathan, Vista agreed to kill a man for seconds on the clock, we're waaaaay past the point where any boundaries might still be crossed

Hey you know what, self-awareness is good, it's healthy, I wish someone would let Taylor have some but that's fine

Okay, well, at least Piggot is willing to treat these kids a little like kids. And address some of the concerns that they have. And promise that she'll find some kind of compensation for the fact that these kids are going above and fucking beyond in their role as junior heroes.

Glad Kid Win gets a... win

and while I don't love Clockblocker making fun of Piggot, I get it. She's the authority figure in their lives, she consistently plays the role of bad cop with them. That's how it goes.

Okay so Vista turned thirteen on the day that Leviathan hit Brockton Bay, which means she's been at this since she was eleven, maybe younger. This now puts her pretty firmly in the same age bracket as Alec, and that might put her at silver or bronze for youngest known trigger event depending on how old Miss Militia was at the time.

Also, the fact that Vista has thrown herself into her career as a cape, at age thirteen, as a means to not have to spend time with her parents? That's bleak. I continue to maintain that she should be allowed to commit any misdemeanor she wants to and get away with it forever

So Hookwolf almost murdered an 11-12 year old and they truly can't just commit to having a single Triumvirate member sit on his Birdcage transport the entire way along just to make sure he actually gets gone? At least until they're out of the Empire's reach, surely, like what the fuck

Do the unspoken rules not kick in on attempted murder? Do you need a corpse to make it stick?

Jesus God, Sophia, I am trying to keep an open mind about you but so far you have just been such a jerk in so many directions.

Like obviously she's not doing well but what's the alternative for her at this point

Just gotta pick up the slack left by two older, more experienced(?) teammates who had a lot of hopes and emotional bonds riding on them. And Browbeat.

Does anybody on this team like Sophia?

Weld is good people. Also I think "empathetic" is technically the correct word unless the ability to warp space like putty also comes with emotion reading.

This is sweet.

Also, yeah, cry. It's good for you.

Godddddddd fucking dammit Sophia.

This is so unreasonably cruel to do to a teammate, never mind to a kid

"Bluh bluh life is pain, the real world is all about what's hard, suffering builds character" shut the fuck up Sophia, Vista put up bigger numbers against Leviathan and doesn't have a rusty knife in place of a personality.

Also "kids" girl you have at most three years on her

Big bad Shadow Stalker can't handle being the one under the microscope

Yeah no for real, the moment she gets provoked in a way even kind of resembling the way she provokes others, she resorts to acts of physical violence. Thin-skinned hypocrite, thy name is Sophia Hess.

Guess Vista's lucky she's not taller and more gangly or else Sophia would've tried to rip her ear off.

Current Thoughts

Vista is the PRT's strongest soldier and she is out there fighting their hardest battles. She also has not reached high school yet and possibly wasn't even in middle school when she first donned the costume. This whole system is a scam.

Cool to see Weld better settling into the leadership role, at least.

And then Sophia. Sophia, Sophia, Sophia. I don't know what the Undersiders have planned for you but right now I'm having a hard time feeling sympathy. Do unto others, you little maniac.

[worldhistoryfacts]

Roger Fenton's photography of the Crimean war captured stunning landscapes, often showing soldiers’ encampments in the foreground as a contrast to the natural vistas — which usually had a bleak, lunar beauty to them — in the background:

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

[paperhound]

It’s been six weeks since we’ve posted anything online, not for want of appealing vistas or intriguing new arrivals (as the above image, a sunkiss’d chair of titles pertaining to coyote mythology, aims to represent). It’s just so darn easy to NOT create free content for tech corps intent on abetting a kleptocratic coup that we totally just…didn’t! Let’s call it a potent admixture of revulsion, laziness, and that bleak midwinter blunting of the creative impulse. And since our fortunes haven’t suffered for lack of an online presence (it has been a perversely busy January/February down here on our benighted stretch of Pender), we shall continue with this inactivity until the Muse once again alights on our threshold and applies the full thrust of her shoulder to our notoriously heavy door. We appreciate your patience as we extend this social media holiday, and trust that Groundhog Day, Valentines Day, Family Day and all the other Days we would once have strained to acknowledge with an attractive book and pithy caption were robustly celebrated in the offline dimension!

Xoxo, Your Hounds

[nightmarefuele]

@huntershowl //starter from the Ren.

||

The thing represents their blindness. It’s a transport shuttle with all its parts ungreased, all dead. They’re stunted to an old age by the remnant vistas of their power as though it still is what only was, at one prior time, advancement.

The shuttle’s present dwellers—like limbs of a breathing weapon—know steeper powers.

They don’t fear us.

That one, crawling into the recondite film of the Shadow, is Vermis; passerby, or patron, fingering into such ant-bitten places as to turn out the innermost of wounds. There are several corners here in the belly of the shuttle, which now glides over a wall like a colosseum’s cracked ring around an outfit of unlit craters—the preferential truth beneath any great rule. She keeps to one whilst bleeding over all the others, scrawling her vapors over the porthole whereon her neuranium exoskull hooks.

They don’t know us.

This muck their ship courts, well, it’s no wonder. Before long, however, the droid valet—whose likeness is man enough that he gives his unimportance away, overstrung in the spine where he pilots at deck’s fore, perhaps a serf or experiment but altogether useless to the Ren—takes them down from the murk of the stratos. The shuttle folds like an insect into a wet handhold. Into sight, they sink.

A shadow unspools from its crouch and becomes a monolith across two strides. It hangs over the half-droid’s back, and gazes out into the Dusk’s bleak quick.

A child’s eyes might see nothing. The night might have scooped out the world from beneath them, replaced it with something breathing and sick. But the monolith—Kylo, the body, the one they have already begun to call, simply, Ren—has witnessed such nothings as to lay the black beneath them naked.

“What is it?” Vermis wonders, materializing there, her voice like a hangnail throbbing.

And Ren, like the low, skulking crackle of dry bone, “An ocean.”

Within the void clutch, a mount, whose age could be any or none. Ren holds there, the city and life already forgotten as solidity drags underway, with his formless, glistening eye like a mouth roused to open.

Then, as their course shifts, “And this?”

Inorganic death, sprawling for miles across a shipyard. Those of oblique, hostile fingers slouched along a sandbed, perhaps the fortuitous shrine of some humanoid ship; or white, milky ovoids like shapeless spiders’ eggs, clusters under clusters of energy staring out from the side of a hill; and here—approaching—the formless dance of light from sources unseeable, steepling toward the great house like a thousand airborne coelenterate.

The pilot catches himself between answers. He, unlike the Ren, has never witnessed anything.

But he does now—Vermis leans around the controls, small, boneless thing that she appears to be, and settles her pin eyes deep.

“Enough.”

The eyes leap to Ren like floating red germs.

“They will show us.”

|||

The attendant ogles them as though they are the lucky ones.

To see inside the invisible, then, is even among their own such a privilege–and the deeper their small company wades, a dark blur encroaching on the periphery of a monument, a dome, the further the cipher appears to coil. The smell, too, emits a facade; a feat of nature, a sweet place for the sun, to enshroud what dust and depth crawl underneath.

Vermis thinks the attendant should feel lucky to keep his eyes hereafter.

Instead, once upon the iris’ vault, he halts; he holds to his silence like a celibate; he puts his back to his master’s vaulting door, and waits.

[dolphinsaresilly]

I wish I saw more art that's reminiscent of what was in the book. The awe inspiring vistas of abandoned war machines being dismantled in a field, bleak urban decay, the shambling hordes of those ensnared by the Neurocasters... it's a shame that the famous thing about this book now is that it's the source material for a movie that is the exact opposite in tone...

[taxidermiedfawn]

They set out to find it in accountants' ledgers and double-indemnity clauses and motel registers, set out to determine what might move a woman who believed in all the promises of the middle class—a woman who had been chairman of the Heart Fund and who always knew a reasonable little dressmaker and who had come out of the bleak wild of prairie fundamentalism to find what she imagined to be the good life—what should drive such a woman to sit on a street called Bella Vista and look out her new picture window into the empty California sun and calculate how to burn her husband alive in a Volkswagen.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Excerpt from Slouching Towards Bethlehem: “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” by Joan Didion.

[justforbooks]

Keith Dewhurst

Writer for stage and screen whose work included the TV police series Z-Cars and several plays at the National Theatre and Royal Court

The journalist turned playwright and screenwriter Keith Dewhurst, who has died aged 93, was part of an extraordinary informal ensemble of actors, designers and musicians who collaborated for more than a decade with the inspirational director Bill Bryden.

Members of this group worked first with Bryden in the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs in 1970, and later at the National Theatre when Bryden was invited by Peter Hall to let rip on plays by Eugene O’Neill and David Mamet, as well as on two promenade performances in the NT’s Cottesloe (now the Dorfman) theatre, scripted by Dewhurst and the poet Tony Harrison.

Harrison’s ebullient, idiomatic version of the Wakefield Mystery plays – The Mysteries (Brian Glover as God in a flat cap on a fork-lift truck) – started on Easter Saturday in 1977, and was followed by Dewhurst’s glorious adaptation, in two plays (1978-79), of Flora Thompson’s elegiac Lark Rise to Candleford, an account of an agrarian village community in Oxfordshire in the pre-industrial 1880s.

Bryden’s irregulars on Lark Rise included Glover, Dinah Stabb, Edna Doré and Jack Shepherd, the designer William Dudley – evoking vistas of wheatfields at harvest time, stars and bleakness in winter on an overhanging sky cloth – and the electric folk rock of the Albion Band with the singer Martin Carthy from Steeleye Span.

Dewhurst’s magical adaptation of Thompson’s trilogy of novels threw shadows of enclosure and poverty around the quotidian joys and back-bending work of the community. The overall effect was one of deep and poetic poignancy, sometimes akin to Jean-François Millet’s painting of The Gleaners.

He and Bryden complemented this success with a more ecstatically political and vivid version of the historian Christopher Hill’s account of ideological turmoil in the English civil war, The World Turned Upside Down (1978); and, on the NT’s Olivier stage in 1982, Paul Scofield as Don Quixote, in which he made a glorious rendition of the epic grandeur in Cervantes’ picaresque novel. The Don’s trusty steed, Rocinante, was a knackered old penny-farthing tricycle, suitable for a nostalgist of knight errantry.

Dewhurst’s fifth and final show at the National was a fleet and funny adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Black Snow in 1991, sharpening the fangs of the novel’s backstage bitchery after the author, writing in the 30s, had fallen out of love with the Moscow Art theatre. The director was William Gaskill who, as artistic director at the Royal Court, had first ratified Dewhurst’s and Bryden’s connection.

Dewhurst had preceded this illustrious career as a football reporter on the Manchester Evening Chronicle in the 1950s, detailed to follow the fortunes of Manchester United, then in the flowering of the Busby Babes era. He became a trusted insider at the club, and indeed chronicler, before and after the Munich air disaster in 1958, when United’s plane had stopped for refuelling on the way back from a European cup-tie in Belgrade, then crashed on take-off.

A close colleague on the Chronicle, Alf Clarke, was one of many journalists and players among the 23 who were killed. The team’s manager, Matt Busby, and fledgling star Bobby Charlton were among the survivors, and Dewhurst was on hand to recount the trauma and extraordinary recovery the club made on a tide of nationwide grief and sentiment.

Born in Oldham, Lancashire, Keith was the son of Joseph Dewhurst, who worked in the cotton industry, and Lily (nee Carter). He was educated at Rydal school in Colwyn Bay – where he had been evacuated during the war – and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in English in 1953.

He worked for a while as a yarn tester for the Lancashire Cotton Corporation in Cheshire before joining the Chronicle in 1955, but he was determined to branch out. By the early 1960s he was writing plays for television and radio, which led to an important association with the radical new police series Z-Cars in 1968, and its sequel, Softly Softly: Task Force in 1971. And he wrote a dramatic biographical TV play for The Edwardians BBC series about David Lloyd George (1974), with Anthony Hopkins in the title role.

He had married the actor Eve Pearce in 1958 and moved to London in 1967. From 1969 he worked for a year as an arts columnist on the Guardian. His first theatre play in the capital was Rafferty’s Chant (1967) at the Mermaid, a farce involving a Mancunian conman selling the same car to a string of dupes, before he linked with Bryden on a single Sunday night epic production (without decor), Pirates, at the Royal Court in 1970.

This was the seed of the Bryden/Dewhurst collaboration, followed by the 1809 face-off between French and English soldiers in Corunna!, both with Steeleye Span – Maddy Prior and Carthy to the fore – prominent.

The battle of Corunna! was mind-blowing in the Theatre Upstairs, too big for its military boots, and the first expression of Bryden’s radical, extravagant musical style. Dewhurst went with him in 1972 to the Edinburgh Lyceum to write feisty new adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Molière’s The Miser.

His fine television writing continued with 27 episodes of Richmal Crompton’s Just William (1977-78), with Bonnie Langford as Violet Elizabeth Bott and Diana Dors as her mother; and two television movies adapted from Alexandre Dumas – The Man in the Iron Mask (1985) and a voiced cartoon of The Three Musketeers (1986).

His two notable movies were Chris Thomson’s The Empty Beach (1985), a thriller adapted from a novel by the Australian author Peter Corris; and David Leland’s The Land Girls (1998), adapted from a novel by Angela Huth about the women’s land army in Dorset during the second world war, with three new shooting stars: Rachel Weisz, Anna Friel and Steven Mackintosh.

He continued writing into his 90s, including several novellas as well as two books on football and a theatrical memoir with Shepherd. He also contributed regularly to the Manchester United fanzine, United We Stand.

Dewhurst and Pearce had two daughters, Emma and Faith, and a son, Alan, who died in 2023. The marriage ended in divorce in 1980 and, in the same year, Dewhurst married the Australian literary agent Alexandra Cann, with whom he lived in Fulham, south-west London, and latterly on the Isle of Wight. She survives him, along with his daughters and three grandchildren, Henry, Alex and Millie.

🔔 Keith Frederick Dewhurst, playwright, screenwriter and journalist, born 24 December 1931; died 11 January 2025

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[tatooineknights]

1, 16, and 27 please!

1. Jedi or Sith?

Well, at the very least, I do have to appreciate that the Sith are willing to accessorize and fun little fashion statements. And their little villainous lairs are always gorgeous. Most of the time when I roleplay or play a game, I usually end up on the good side, which is the Jedi. Most of the time. Although I did I play a light-sided Sith Apprentice in The Old Republic, which was pretty interesting, lol.

16. Have you read any Star Wars books?

Yes, especially when I was a kid. I read all of the New Jedi Order series, Legacy of the Force, the Darth Bane series, The Force Unleashed novelization, even the hysterical Jedi Prince series, which was all my school library had. One Christmas, I got the novelization of the original trilogy and I read that a ton. Reread Revenge of the Sith novelization religiously, before the movie came out. Haven't read as much of the new stuff.. Heir to the Jedi, Bloodline, Shadow of the Sith, Leia, Princess of Alderaan, Ahsoka, The Force Awakens novelization, and Lost Stars. I kinda got to a point where I felt like the books were at the bottom of the canon tier, below comics, and it seemed like things kept being retconned, lol, so I took a break from them.

27. Top 3 planets to visit?

I think looking out your windows and just seeing clouds everywhere has to be gorgeous, so Cloud City on Bespin is an absolute must. Ideally, prior to the Imperial occupation. I loved visiting bleak Seattle, with all it's rain, so I think I'd love Kamino. Seriously, I would sleep SO well there. What a peaceful place (once you look past how the Kaminoans are kinda scary with their connections and the whole clone chips thing, you know). Naboo would be lovely, as it is Italy, but I'll throw a legends canon planet in the mix: beautiful Manaan from KOTOR. Yes, I really like most oceanic vistas. 😊

[kolajmag]

COLLAGE ON VIEW

No Roses in December

David Edward Johnson at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, USA through 31 March 2024. “No Roses in December” features a series of works in which David Edward Johnson explores his father’s diagnosis of and descent into dementia. Johnson pairs his own photographs of bleak West Texas vistas and abandoned adobe dwellings with abstract mixed media painting, vintage papers, found objects, and other ephemera as a way to evoke fragmented shards of memory that mimic his father’s state of mind. The series title references a poem by Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy that was popularized in a speech about courage by Peter Pan author JM Barrie: “God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.” Without memories, we have no blooms in the chill of the December of life. Read More

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Kolaj Magazine, a full color, print magazine, exists to show how the world of collage is rich, layered, and thick with complexity. By remixing history and culture, collage artists forge new thinking. To understand collage is to reshape one's thinking of art history and redefine the canon of visual culture that informs the present.

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[vinylspinning]

Hammers of Misfortune: Church of Broken Glass (2008)

Welcome back to this Hammers of Misfortune double-header ...

Those of you who tuned in yesterday know that I'm revisiting the San Francisco cult-metal ensemble's two-part fourth long-player, Fields and Church of Broken Glass, which arrived in stores (online, offline, and "other") some 15 years ago.

I already covered the seismic personnel changes that shook HoM to the core, but seemingly inspired prime mover John Cobbett to consolidate his creative primacy over departed partner-in-crime Mike Scalzi, off to revive his main band, Slough Feg.

On Fields, Cobbett had unleashed some of his most vivid and elliptical prose to paint idyllic agrarian vistas that slowly gave way to industrialization, and on Church of Broken Glass he conjures up bleak urban scenarios and dismal outcomes for those who fall into the clutches of modernity.

However, though its lyrics take a decidedly negative turn, this is probably the better of the two LPs, musically-speaking: contrasting the energetic "Almost (Left Without You)" with the mournful, majestic title track, and the hard-driving "Train" against the epic funeral dirge of "Butchertown."

All of these cuts abound with HoM hallmarks, including Thin Lizzy-like guitar harmonies, Deep Purple-esque Hammond organ, and assorted Floyd-ian references, while Sheie taps her classical piano skills for added dynamic and emotional variety.

It's impressive enough to make dedicated Hammers of Misfortune fans momentarily forget about the not-entirely-satisfying replacement parts brought in to fill Scalzi's and bassist/vocalist Jamie Myers' steel-tipped boots. (*)

Indeed, a more pragmatic band might have cherry-picked the best tracks from Fields and Church of Broken Glass, trimmed those rather bloated 70 minutes down to an impeccable 45, and facilitated this transitional phase with a single, dynamite album.

But pragmatism and Hammers of Misfortune have never bonded over a flagon of mead; taking the easy route was simply not in Cobbett's DNA, and obviously neither was abandoning the ambitious concept albums that have defined his band's career.

Therefore, imperfect as it may be, the two-for-one experiment that was Fields and Church of Broken Glass are a testament to that philosophy, and Hammers of Misfortune have stuck with it, for good or ill.

* And if you think I'm being too harsh, know that all three of these new members would be dismissed and replaced before the band's next album, 2011's 17th Street.

More Hammers of Misfortune: The Bastard, The August Engine, Fields / Church of Broken Glass, 17th Street, Overtaker; plus, Unholy Cadaver’s Unholy Cadaver.

[elmalo8291]

Below is an anime concept that blends elements of dark fantasy, surreal body horror, and apocalyptic destiny—drawing on the visceral imagery of Clive Barker and the epic, brooding world of Stephen King’s Dark Tower. This is not simply a mash-up of characters but an exploration of themes:

Anime Title: “The Last Ascendant”

Genre: Dark Fantasy, Psychological Horror, Action

Tone: A collision of macabre, body-horror aesthetics with a somber, sprawling epic where every level-up in power is hard-won through pain, sacrifice, and the shattering of reality.

Setting: A shifting, nightmarish realm—a multiverse that fuses grotesque, labyrinthine structures with apocalyptic vistas. Here, dreams and nightmares mix, and the very landscape is alive with unspeakable horrors and strange wonder.

Core Concept

A seemingly ordinary human is abruptly pulled from their mundane reality into a dimension that defies both logic and morality—a world where the boundaries of flesh and spirit are tenuous at best. The protagonist must confront a series of harrowing trials to “level up,” each challenge forcing them to confront their innermost fears and transform in shocking ways. As they journey through warped, ever-changing realms reminiscent of Barker’s fantastical yet brutal dreamscapes and King’s solemn, expansive odyssey, the human begins to accrue powers—but at great personal cost.

Themes and Inspirations

Transformation Through Trauma:

Clive Barker Influence: Body horror aesthetics are used to illustrate how the protagonist’s form and essence mutate as they absorb the dark energies of this world. The physical transformations are grotesque yet beautiful—shifting like melting wax or sprouting surreal, impossible appendages as a manifestation of inner strength.

Stephen King Influence: Like a pilgrim on a doomed journey toward the Dark Tower, the protagonist’s every level-up comes only after facing unspeakable personal horror that both scar and empower them.

Cosmic Desolation and Redemption:

An overarching apocalyptic vision pervades the narrative—a universe where broken, alien landscapes echo with the loneliness of a civilization long past. The protagonist’s struggle is not just for power but for humanity, clinging to the hope that even amid the void, a spark of light can be kindled.

The dark realms are steeped in sorrow and foreboding, yet contain tiny kernels of redemption and beauty—shards of humanity that persist despite the overwhelming cosmic dread.

Fragility of Sanity and Identity:

As the protagonist levels up by facing unspeakable terrors, they must constantly battle their own crumbling identity. The forces in this world don’t only morph one’s body; they erode the boundaries of the mind, threatening to swallow one’s soul in madness.

In true Dark Tower style, the journey is as much internal as it is external. Each confrontation tests their willpower, and each new power comes with the risk of losing oneself to the encroaching abyss.

Interdimensional Fate and the Weight of Choice:

Choices in this realm carry cosmic consequences. The narrative is non-linear—echoing the fractured narratives of Barker’s worst nightmares and King’s sprawling epic—where the protagonist’s decisions alter not just their own path but reshape the fabric of the universe itself.

There’s a meta-narrative element, as if the very act of “leveling up” rewrites the rules of existence, challenging the notion of destiny and free will in a universe that seems predetermined to descend into chaos.

Humor in the Face of Horror:

Despite the bleak, oppressive tone of cosmic horror, the anime interjects moments of absurd, dark humor—Taz-like irreverence that twists the conventional tropes of terror. Just when the horror reaches its peak, the protagonist or a minor character might deliver an unexpected, off-the-wall line that snaps tension into laughter, much like a self-aware wink at the audience.

Plot Outline (Season 1 Overview)

Episode 1: “The Pull”

The human protagonist is unexpectedly ripped from their everyday life. They find themselves in a bizarre, shifting landscape of surreal horrors—where shadows whisper, and the air itself feels alive with unspeakable intent. Their first confrontation with a grotesque, chimeric creature initiates a transformation that sets them on the path of leveling up.

Episode 2: “Beneath the Skin”

Forced into a trial that demands physical and psychic metamorphosis, our hero undergoes a horrific transformation reminiscent of Barker’s body horror: their flesh twists, bones reshape, and they manifest new, unsettling powers. With each mutation comes a loss—and gain—of sanity and identity.

Episode 3: “Echoes of the Tower”

The protagonist encounters relics and ruins that hint at a grand cosmic structure—the Dark Tower of fate—and must navigate a labyrinthine dungeon that tests not only their combat prowess but the very essence of their humanity. Vivid, nightmare visuals underscore the apocalyptic desolation of this realm.

Episode 4: “Madness on the Edge”

As levels increase, so does the insanity. The protagonist’s new powers begin to affect their mind, blurring the line between reality and illusion. They struggle with inner voices and spectral apparitions that question every decision, forcing them to confront painful truths about their past.

Episode 5: “Laughing in the Void”

An ironic twist: amid the cosmic despair, the protagonist uses dark humor—sardonic wit and spontaneous jokes—to stave off the encroaching madness. Their humor becomes a weapon, a tool that momentarily repels the void.

Episode 6: “Towers of Despair”

The journey leads to the outskirts of the Dark Tower—a monolithic, twisting structure where the protagonist must climb through physical and metaphysical challenges. Each new floor of the tower distorts time and space, forcing them to make impossible choices.

Episode 7: “Falling Apart”

At the heart of the tower, reality unravels. Past, present, and future collide, resulting in intense battles with ancient horrors and the spectral remnants of lost souls. In a moment of clarity, the protagonist begins to understand that each level-up exacts a heavy price.

Episode 8: “Through the Laughter”

The protagonist learns to channel the humor inherent in their suffering. They discover that laughter can temporarily mend fractures in reality, allowing them to heal and harness new powers.

Episode 9: “The Final Punchline”

In a climactic confrontation with an eldritch force that threatens to consume everything, the protagonist must deliver the ultimate cosmic joke—a sacrifice so profound it reshapes the universe’s fabric, forcing the dark horrors to recede.

Episode 10: “A New Dawn of Madness”

The season finale sees the protagonist emerge transformed—a being that has mastered both the horror and the humor. They now stand on the threshold of a new era, where the balance of cosmic chaos is forever altered by their choices.

Visual & Thematic Elements

Surreal Landscapes:

Shifting, nightmarish vistas that merge elements of decay and twisted beauty. Think barren, rotten forests mixed with pulsating bio-mechanical structures.

Body Horror & Transformations:

Vibrant, grotesque transformations that echo the unsettling beauty of Clive Barker’s art—flesh bending, bones rearranging, and darkness entwined with luminous bursts of energy.

Cosmic Dread & Existential Angst:

Moments where the vastness of the universe seems to mock the insignificance of individual existence—echoes of The Dark Tower’s apocalyptic despair.

Humorous Breaks:

Off-kilter humor delivered in deadpan, meta-commentary form. The protagonist might momentarily break the fourth wall, delivering a snappy quip that undercuts the overwhelming dread.

Player/Viewer Engagement

For a tabletop adaptation, rules can tie into narrative events—players might roll on chaotic tables when encountering cosmic horror, gain sanity points for delivering ironic jokes, or lose them when horrors overwhelm their minds. For the anime version, this translates into visual gags integrated with surreal, terrifying imagery—a balance between baroque horror and absurd humor.

Final Note:

The Last Ascendant is an exploration of how one human’s chaotic spark can reframe cosmic dread. It takes the fear of the unknown and transforms it into a twisted celebration of life, laughter, and transcendence, where each level-up is as much about losing oneself in the darkness as it is about emerging from it—wiser, scarier, and, in the end, irreverently triumphant.

Would you like to proceed with additional details, perhaps a character profile for our human protagonist in this anime, or specific episode script(s) for “The Last Ascendant”?

[now-winter-comes-slowly]

"God dropped man on a planet on his lonesome He saw the light in the luminous sky Grow great then fade quick, sparks on a cinder Dark on a vista, tell them it's winter First stop snowfall, second stop ice forms Third stop winter, last stop misery First drops landed, second drops froze On the third moon cycle with a last lost luminary"

Edward Scissortongue's hypnotic flow conjures a bleak world...