#I butchered this part of the speech down a bit to fit in a set so give the whole video a watch honestly if you never have

[guardian-angle22]

Brian Michael Smith speaks at the 2022 HRC Las Vegas Dinner

[pathetic-dumpling]

Being People

Techno owning the fact that he was- is- a person was explosive. It was loud and powerful. It was a battlefield, with him screaming his woes to deaf ears. Dream’s realization was quiet. Almost if he hadn’t believed it himself.

aka Techno and Dream talk, and together they're just people.

warnings: implied/referenced torture, abuse, dehumanization, starvation, dark portrayals of c!quackity, and abuse of power

or read on ao3 instead!

Techno owning the fact that he was- is- a person was explosive. It was loud and powerful. It was a battlefield, with him screaming his woes to deaf ears. Dream’s realization was quiet. Almost if he hadn’t believed it himself.

It had been on a quiet, restless night. Techno and Dream only ever got around to talking, really talking and spilling secrets beyond simple pleasantries, at night, Techno noticed. He wonders why. Maybe it’s the serenity, the quietness knowing that you’re the only person in the world for just a little bit. That there is nothing around but the snow and the moon and the forest. There is nothing that wants to hurt Dream within the small haven countless blizzards have brought them. Maybe it was the subtle comfort of that that allows Dream to finally spill his secrets.

Dream confessed his treatment in the prison almost as if they were sins of his own to bear. He kept his head low and his voice even more so, almost as if he was afraid that someone outside of the small bubble of safety could hear. The active focus on listening made Techno’s ears flick, darting between the soft crackle of the fire and the soft curves of Dream’s voice, but he would listen the best he could. Techno made sure that no one would be able to sneak up on them like this, but as his own paranoia creeps in now and then, he can hold nothing against Dream’s quiet fear.

The torture and the pain and the fear are spilled into the night, Techno a willing listener to whatever Dream has to say. Techno tried to not let himself be angry, or at least not let the anger show. This isn’t his anger to feel. It should be Dream’s; it is Dream’s. The anger is not Techno’s. These are Dream’s experiences, his trauma. Techno knows more than anyone how frustrating it is for others to decide to feel something for you. Instead, Techno lets himself be angered by the abuse of power, something he has always stood against. He allows himself to feel empathy for the suffering his friend has gone through. He lets himself be calm and solid, something for Dream to cling to and ground himself in. It’s what he’s always done, for everyone he cares for, and Dream is no exception.

At some point, Dream started crying. His voice cracked and broke until he could no longer use it, and then signing made his arms tired, and his hands became too shaky. Techno did his best to calm Dream down, throwing out a few jokes, moving to the couch across from Dream, and offering his cape to the other. That seemed to do the trick because soon enough, Dream had control over his breathing.

Techno sighs, leaning back and rubbing at his legs. Dream had fallen silent, which he took as permission to begin adding his thoughts. “Well, you know, you deserved none of that, right? What Quackity did- it wasn’t in the right. It wasn’t good, and it certainly wasn’t deserved.”

Dream sucked in a shaky breath, wiping away some leftover tears. He sniffed, glancing over to Techno with red eyes. “Why?”

“Well… because you’re a person.” Techno shrugs.

Dream pauses. He looks down at his hands, rubbing them together. “Oh…”

“What do you mean ‘oh’?” Techno chuckled lightly. “You’ve always been a person, Dream. Y’know… we’ve worked together, you warned me about the Butcher Army… you’re just as much of a person as me.”

“No, I… I know that you-- you’re a person, yeah, but… me?” Dream’s voice breaks lightly as more tears pool. “But Quackity said-”

“What Quackity said doesn’t matter.” Techno is never really firm with Dream, but this is one thing he’ll let form a slight edge in his voice. This is one habit that he won’t quietly address with Dream. “He was your torturer, your-your abuser, Dream. What he says, whatever he said, it doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t reflect you or your character. Other people shouldn’t control who you are.”

Dream looks at him, wide-eyed as a single tear rolls down his cheeks. Techno makes a mental note to tell Phil to try to get Dream to drink more water tomorrow. “But Tommy, and Wilbur, and-and-”

“Hey, that… they were your enemies, alright?” Techno’s voice catches in his throat, and he shoves down memories that threaten to rear their heads and make his words bitter. “They’re bound to say some nasty stuff about you, okay?”

“But I did things, I-”

Techno holds his hand up, cutting Dream’s small tangent short. “Don’t tell me this stuff to justify that you aren’t a person, Dream. That you’re not worthy of basic decency, alright? Tell me this stuff on your own time; when you’re not trying to convince me of something. Plus, you’re kind of talking to a guy who blew up a country to prove that I was a person, right? I’m the wrong guy to talk to if you wanna go down the route.”

Dream watches Techno for a moment, eyes darting around, searching, looking for something that he’ll never find out here in the arctic. He sniffs, wiping at his nose, then the rest of his face, and nods silently.

“Okay,” he croaks out. “But I… I’m…”

“You’re just a guy,” Techno says, a small smile forming as he tilts his head. “You’re just a guy I watched build a dirt house after I made fun of him for being homeless one time.”

A slight, choked-out wheeze leaves Dream. “You watched that?”

“The whole time. Lead a creeper or two into your house, too.”

“You fucker,” Dream laughs, dragging his hand down his face. “Why would you do that? I worked so hard, you bastard.”

“In my defense, it was really funny.”

“Oh my god,” Dream sighs, shaking his head. “This is stupid. This is so dumb.” Dream sighs again, fondly this time. His shoulders sag, finally letting go of the tension building in his frame as his body slumps against the soft material of his chair. He pauses, letting the small, warm smile drop from his face. “Why are you so nice to me?”

Techno’s ears flick. “Have I ever told you about my ‘absolute reciprocity’ policy?”

Dream shakes his head.

“Well… those who treat me with injustice and cruelty, I will repay that tenfold. Whatever suffering they inflict upon me will be given back.”

“Like L’manberg.”

Techno nods. “But it also applies to kindness.” He holds up a finger like he’s making a speech to the syndicate. “And that kindness will also be repaid tenfold.”

Dream blinks at Techno owlishly, clearly not catching the point.

“You saved my life, Dream,” Techno smiles. “The least I can do is help you get yours back on track, all right?”

“Saved your life?” Dream echoes. “At the execution? Please. All I did was get Carl back for you.”

“You underestimate how much I love that horse.” Techno smiles when a small laugh spills out of Dream, but he hopes the message isn’t lost. Dream has been kind, has done what others haven’t for him, and Technoblade plans on repaying that.

Eventually, Dream’s dry and scratchy throat sends him into a coughing fit, shaking his frail frame in a way Techno doesn’t think he’ll ever be comfortable with. He’s up and out of his seat before Dream can even open his mouth to ask for a glass of water, returning with a full glass and passing it off gingerly. Dream sips, quietly soothing his aching throat. Techno doesn’t return to his seat just yet, planning on probing Dream just a little more before the night ends.

“You tired enough to go back to bed?” Techno asks.

“No,” Dream shakes his head lightly. “I’m kind of hungry, though.”

Techno rubs his hands together, already moving over to the kitchen as Dream watches him. “Anything you’re feeling in the mood for?”

Dream shakes his head, making Techno grimace lightly. Dream almost always has something he wants, he just has to wiggle it out, so Techno throws out a few feelers.

“Something light?” he asks. “Do you want, like, an actual meal or just a quick snack?”

“...something light, please.”

“Sure.” Techno gets to work, making a small plate of buttered toast for Dream to munch on for the time being. They, and by “they,” Techno means himself and Phil, have finally gotten Dream to warm up to the idea of asking for things like water and food but incorporating preference has still been a bit of a struggle. That’s alright, Techno has all the witty patience he needs, and Phil has lived forever, so they literally have all the time in the world for things like these. They’ll try for as long as it takes because Phil has always stayed by Techno’s side, and now Techno has decided to not leave Dream’s. Parts of him are bitter, memories still taint him in some ways, but he’s more than willing to throw them away to convince someone else that they’re human, too.

Techno can’t help but feel a slight sense of pride when he hands Dream his plate. Dream takes it with a small thanks thrown Techno’s way, holding the plate solidly in his hands before setting it down in his lap. The heat of the bread doesn’t bother him anymore like it used to, and holding ceramic plates isn’t a struggle either. The tremble in Dream’s hands is still present but not nearly as bad as it used to be. Techno doesn’t know if Dream knows how much he’s recovered and improved; because it’s all something so small, and he’s sure saying “good job being able to hold plates again” would sound a little belittling. Instead, he waits for Dream to finish eating before taking the plate back to the sink.

“Better?” Techno drapes himself over the back of Dream’s chair, letting some of his hair slip forward and tickle Dream’s face, making his nose scrunch up.

Dream nods. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Silence fills the cabin. The fire begins to die down, so Techno throws on another few logs, accidentally disturbing Steve in his sleep. The bear makes a small sound of displeasure before falling back asleep, practically dead on the floor. Dream hums quietly, playing with his fingers. He rubs over the nub of the ring finger on his right hand as he tongues at a tiny bit of bread stuck in the gap in his teeth.

Eventually, Techno asks if he’s tired again. Dream still says no, but he assures Techno he’s fine to be alone for the rest of the night.

“I’m asking for you, dude.” Techno shrugs. “I’m used to sleeping at weird times- I used to do it with my hoard all the time.”

“...your piglin family?”

Techno nods.

“Okay… stay with me, then?”

Techno smiles quietly, almost entirely to himself. “Sure.”

[justarandomsideblog]

This is thrown together on the page with zero editing so there's probably many glaring mistakes but I wanted to get it out there so here ya go

oOo

Fundy falls in love with the piano when he is very young and L’Manburg is nothing more than a van, and it’s just a small keyboard he can play with on the floor while his father makes war plans but it’s how it begins. He plays it in the months it takes him to grow up, maturing faster than it takes for Tommy and Tubbo to reach adulthood.

He plays it until he’s old enough for his father to replace the keyboard in his hands with a sword.

He’s seven months yet thirteen years old when he’s allowed into the war room, fidgeting hands folded tightly in his lap. There is no time to play keyboard anymore, and it’s left forgotten in his nest of blankets and pillows when the whole thing goes up in a devastating blast.

The war ends and he plays again on a makeshift piano, given to him by his uncles who teach him to play more complex melodies in the quiet moments when they’re not working. Yet those moments become few and far between in the months it takes Fundy to age to sixteen, the same age his young uncles had turned before Fundy was even born barely ten months before.

He cherishes the moments before everything falls apart once more. Yet another war begins and he sets aside the keyboard again to fight. His fingers are calloused in ways soft paw pads like his should never be, raw and bleeding from the sword he holds the second time he watches his home go up in smoke.

Eret gifts him a piano one year after he was born, when he turns seventeen and his aging has finally begun to slow. They help him set it up in his home, way too large for the orphaned teenage hybrid, and it gleams beautifully in the flickering torchlight. His passion, lost with his father, flares up once more and he plays for Eret and Phil, a moment of peace. Finally peace. Finally, he thinks, the swords will be hung up on the wall and peace will reign at last- swords have no place in peace, as art has no place in war.

The moment shatters; Eret, having never received Fundy’s message, doesn’t make it to the adoption, and Phil leaves- the Butcher Army, Fundy and Tubbo’s subsequent disownment and Tommy’s exile leaving the angel nothing to stay in L’Manburg for. So now he plays for the silence, not even the music filling the emptiness he has always relied on, and there he realizes the truth that will always weigh heavily in his gut.

There will always be another war.

Doomsday carries with it the weight of this realization, and he grins painfully through the tears pouring down his face as his house is blown away, piano keys withering into nothingness, and he says to no one in particular, “There’s no place for art in war.”

And so, even though L’Manburg is gone, even though everything is over and done with, Fundy knows it’s not. He knows the next war is waiting around the corner, and so he quietly stays prepared- his sword always on his hip, a bow strapped to his back, armour settled into his holding bag ready to be pulled on at a moment’s notice.

He doesn’t own a piano anymore.

Phil doesn’t speak to him for a long time, except when Fundy forces him to. He forgives Tubbo- tentatively so, with a lack of trust- long before he’s even willing to acknowledge him and Fundy are related, and even when they’re speaking again- awkward, stilted, not natural like before- Phil doesn’t ask about the scars on Fundy’s hands. He doesn’t ask if Fundy is eighteen or twenty now, though Fundy no longer knows himself.

His grandfather asks only once if Fundy has learned any new songs.

“I don’t play the piano anymore,” Fundy answers, short and more broken than he sounds. Phil doesn’t press for more, and Fundy goes home to silence once more.

Then the nightmares start, and the silence is even worse than before- because now he wakes up and never knows if he’s awake, the song in his soul having died out long ago. He remembers bits and pieces, forgets others, and he tries to run away. He pulls the TNT he has ready for the next inevitable war and rigs his home- big and empty and echoing loneliness- with as much as he can fit up the stairs, in the walls, on and under the floor. He takes only what he needs most and puts it into a wagon, pulls out an arrow and sets it alight-

His grandfather messages him. Wants to meet up. Fundy is in no state to walk on eggshells but he goes anyway, because he wants his family back, and learns his father is alive. They search for him but by the end Fundy is ready to give everything up. He leaves Phil, mind made up, and waits until he knows Phil is through the portal.

This time when he watches his home go up, it’s by his own hand.

He leaves and speaks to no one for months, but the nightmares stay. He finds a kit. He takes the kit in, considering briefly calling Phil to let him know he’s now a great grandfather, but he decides not to- Phil hasn’t reached out at all, no one has, even though his home is no more than a crater in the ground... again.

So he says nothing and focuses on being a father, now. His kit doesn’t like being indoors, running out to play in the woods whenever he wants, and Fundy learns to keep up and keep him safe. He builds a nest on the porch, under the awning, a nice, dry and warm place where his kit likes to curl up and sleep at night, white fur standing out against the reds and oranges of Fundy’s once-favourite blankets.

He names the kit Yogurt, after arguing with the foxes that like to hang around.

Between the nightmares and the crippling loneliness, with no one but a child too young to understand speech and a rowdy skulk of foxes who come and go as they please, Fundy finds himself.

He doesn’t remember much of the nightmares but he does remember one big, important thing.

Quackity can’t be trusted.

Quackity appears to him just as he had in the nightmare, and Fundy already knows their conversation as it happens. Knows every little thing as they walk across the remains of L’Manburg. He knows what the next war will be.

This time, Fundy decides, he will pull the strings. Early the next day, while his skulk is out who knows where and Yogurt is bundled up, safe at home, Fundy dons his armour and grabs his sword and axe, and he makes his way to the place he knows Las Nevadas to be.

He arrives and stands on the hill overlooking the beautiful, daunting city, and he watches Quackity disappear into the casino while below him a totem god looks around.

In those few seconds, when Fundy sees the harsh gleam in Foolish’s eyes, a new plan forms.

They speak briefly, over the dune and out of sight of the casino, and they come to an agreement. With no witnesses, they shake hands and Fundy goes back home, and Foolish does not tell Quackity of his visit.

Later, when Fundy finally joins Las Nevadas with his skulk a few steps behind, he mixes truth in with the lies and hopes the skulk will not out him.

To gain the trust of one who doesn’t trust, it takes someone who also doesn’t trust.

Yet Fundy, who at his heart and soul is a fox- a trickster- a spy- knows how to play the part of one who does. One who doesn’t know that he will always be left alone.

When Quackity asks him about his war experience, he answers truthfully- “I have been in every army and every war.”

He is a soldier to Quackity, first and foremost, and so when Quackity presents to him the piano inside the casino polished to perfection, he looks on it with silent discontent.

“I don’t play piano anymore.”

There is no place for art in war.

-

“Your hands are made to create, not destroy.”

Fundy looks up from the dagger he is playing with, seeing Foolish standing in front of him. Purpled is off to the side, on guard for Quackity and pretending he isn’t listening.

It isn’t the first time they’re meeting like this and it won’t be the last. Plans have to be made. Escape routes planned. Snowchester and Las Nevadas will tear each other- and themselves- apart long before Fundy and Foolish could ever put their plan into action. Playing nice and trying to keep everything from blowing up too early is getting exhausting, but it has to be done. After all, Fundy’s family is in the crossfire now- he silently curses Tubbo and Ranboo for building the mountain outpost, and he outwardly curses Tommy and Wilbur for making their ‘country’ right across the river.

“A lot of things are made to do what they’re not supposed to,” Fundy says to the god, putting the knife down. Tonight he has messaged Phil, pleading with him to stay away from Las Nevadas- but it has remained unread, and similar messages sent to Niki and Tommy and Ranboo are all the same. “What are you even talking about, anyway?”

“Tubbo said you used to play piano,” Foolish says, gaze drifting past Fundy to the piano left, abandoned, against the wall. “He asked me to put one in the mansion big enough so you guys could play together.”

“I haven’t played piano in a long fucking time,” Fundy scoffs, drumming his fingers anxiously against his legs. As much as he wants to... “But I guess Tubbo wouldn’t know that. We haven’t had a proper conversation since L’Manburg.”

Tubbo isn’t much like his uncle anymore. Tommy, neither. They don’t come around or check on him, they haven’t since long before L’Manburg fell. Tubbo feels more like... that neighbor kid you play with because there’s no other neighbor kids your age. They mess around and talk and joke when Quackity sends Fundy to investigate the outpost but it’s only because they don’t want to fight anymore. They don’t want to be on opposite sides, anymore.

Fundy can’t even tell him that they aren’t on opposite sides.

Ranboo says to choose people, and they all play the part easily enough, him and Tubbo and Fundy, but Fundy has always chosen people. He chose his family in the past, every time, regardless of what side they were on, until suddenly the family was split. What did sides matter, when it came to love, to friends, to family, to acceptance? How do you choose between the uncle who raised you and the grandfather who was there when you needed him?

Well, it no longer really matters.

This time he chooses Foolish and Purpled, the two who care about and accept him without question, whether he needs them or not.

Purpled, who respects that he doesn’t want salmon to be eaten even when he isn’t here. Purpled, who knows how it feels to be forgotten, who knows how it feels to have nothing to his name.

Foolish, who understands his need for symmetry. Foolish, who knows how it feels to want to leave the past behind, who knows how hard it is to feel worthy of forgiveness and redemption.

No, Fundy still loves his legal-and-blood family very much, but he supposes Foolish and Purpled have become the family he had always wanted to have.

Laughing and talking with them never feels forced, or awkward, or like walking on eggshells. He never feels like he is one misstep from being banished.

It’s nice.

“There’s no place for art in war,” Fundy finally says, filling the space growing between the trio they’ve formed.

They fall into silence, none of them trying to protest- none of them saying what they are in now is not a war. Maybe in another life this beautiful city that they’ve poured themselves into building up in order to build trust with the president could have been home, but in this life it was one thing alone-

The way to end the war, to stop Quackity in his tracks.

“After the war is over, will you play for us?” Purpled asks now.

And he will, though Fundy doesn’t know it yet. Once the war is over and the nuke has been dismantled, torn to pieces by its own creator’s hands, and Quackity and Fundy have both been reduced to one last life each, Fundy will sit at a piano at Foolish’s Summer Home, with the friends and family he has left- with Foolish and Purpled, Tubbo and Tommy and even Wilbur, with Techno and Phil and Niki and Ranboo, with Slime and Yogurt, every person he has ever loved and cared about and will one day save- and he will play a melody Tubbo taught him when he was a kit, still playing on a clumsy piano thrown together from scrapwood and busted strings in the living room of a house long since rotted and burned away.

For now, though, not knowing what the future has in store, Fundy only smiles and says, “There will always be another war.”

[hello-im-not-a-possum]

2. twisted

The cartoon that came out of the machine was pretty as a picture, perfect in almost every detail, and had a bubbly, positive personality. But she was not what Joey had wanted Susie to become. (Set in an AU where Joey gets perfect toons from his freshly killed employees and STILL isn’t happy, the unpleasable bitch…)

“Progress report to GENT home office, Client; Joey Drew Studios.

With the addition of the new ink recipe to use in the machine, we have made an unbelievable leap in progress and have almost met our client’s expectations. What had started as a machine to mold life sized figures out of ink has now done things that border on being supernatural.

Although Mr. Drew seems unimpressed, even frustrated with the results at times, in spite of the fact that the models have come out identical to their cartoon counterparts.

The process of running the cartoon film through the machine for the figures to imprint on has been successful, but it looks like that unless someone goes through the trouble of making a short that only has ONE character in it, the machine picks what character it makes at seemingly random. That is our client’s complaint; that instead of being user chosen, the machine picks out which living, breathing, thinking ink models it makes at random. Upon working on this, if I were to be in the client’s shoes, I’d have several valid complaints regarding the machine and the models it created, but our client’s complaint… Is that the machine that doesn’t have a system that allows the user to pick and choose which model it makes yet creates a physically flawless model every single time, does not allow the user to pick and choose which model it makes. He never ceases to infuriate me.

On a sour note, there was an incident with the figure in the likeness of a character called ‘The Brute’. Upon its creation, it immediately went and broke our client’s leg in a very… well, brutal fashion too. But fortunately, it has not physically attacked anyone since The Cameraman figure was made as we have threatened to separate them if it keeps up that behavior. It still likes to insult people, and it still does things that unnerve me though. We’re hoping that the rest of the figures will be less violent and or creepy.”

Thomas clicked off the recording and sighed as he looked at the newly made report, there was no way he could submit this to his boss without someone sending in someone to make sure he wasn’t huffing in ink fumes and whatever the Studio workers smoked to consider any of this to be normal.

“Hey Tommy! I think I figured out the issue with the machine! Or rather, its fuel.”

The mechanic grit his teeth and turned to face his client.

“What? I wasn’t aware that there was a problem with it.”

“Why, Tommy, how could you forget? I’m talking about the figure deposit problem of course! Why did we get The Brute when we wanted to get Boris? Why did we get Cameraman when we wanted Bendy? The answer was so simple, why, it was even staring at us the entire time!”

“Uh huh…” Thomas did not look convinced. “And what was this issue?”

“The ingredients, the Ink of course! You simply can’t put blueberry pancake batter in an oven and be surprised when you get blueberry pancakes instead of blueberry muffins, We got those two knuckleheads before we got the real stars of the show because the souls used to make them weren’t fit to make those two, but the machine still did what it does best: made living cartoons.”

Tom had an uneasy feeling in his gut as Joey grabbed his arm and led him to the Ink Machine’s room. He felt like a sheep being led to the slaughterhouse, he KNEW what went down in there! He knew the other ingredients, not well, per say, but for long enough to judge them and their characters.

He didn’t shed a single tear when Sammy was used in it, in fact, he was rather pleased with the results before it started acting out like that. He and the music director were almost always at each other’s throats for one reason or another. If you asked him, the ex-musician was strange, rude, clearly mentally unstable, and sometimes even cruel. And even if he wasn’t, his physical health had declined so much over his time at the studio that it was obvious that he would die regardless of whether or not he was put in the machine. Feeding Sammy to that machine was an act of mercy, really, and even if it wasn’t, it served him right to become a- err, The Brute and have him put the former musician in his place- put his villainous ways to a decent cause. Now if only someone could ensure for a fact that The Brute would behave...

Now the other ingredient, Norman Polk, was a different story. The man was old, weird and kinda creepy. On the surface, the man was an ideal candidate. Like Sammy, he would die anyway and nobody would miss him when he did. But on the contrary, he seemed like he still had some good years left in him. And while he was weird and creepy, he had been those things in an oddly endearing way that most of the studio had either liked or tolerated enough to not be bugged by it. The mechanic didn’t know how to explain it, that man reminded Tom of a mysterious, mostly-estranged relative that shows up out of nowhere and was always there for you even if you don’t always see him. So when the man snooped too much for his own good and had to be silenced… Tom could never look the resulting toon in the eye, or in his case, the lens.

But the mechanic couldn’t deny that it needed to be done, after all, the former projectionist was far too nosy for anyone’s sake. Nobody who knows the secret of the Ink Machine (or rather, it’s unconventional secret ingredient needed for its ink) should be free to wander the studio and spill the beans.

And a feeling in his gut was beginning to tell him that that was why he was the next on the chopping block.

He had built it, he learned what it would take to make it work, he had done what it took to make it work, and it was working now; No more models that would only move a tiny bit before collapsing into puddles! No more off model models! No more issues aside from x, y, z… -No more reasons for Joey to keep him alive when it was now too dangerous to his business… 

A tiny voice at the back of his head told him it served him right. The creator of this unholy torture device would now be consumed by it, just like how the maker of the Brazen Bull was the first victim it claimed.

At this point, he was almost morbidly curious on who or what the machine would make him; would it poke fun at his past and make him that territorial junkyard guard, Canoodle? Would it ironically punish him for his greed by making him The Fat Cat of the show, Boswell Lotsobucks? Would it acknowledge that although he was a villain to the bitter end, he still tried to go clean only for demons to drag him back down his dark paths and make him into Charley? Thinking about it, any butcher gang member would be a good enough fit really.

He was a mix of relieved, disappointed, and horrified when he was brought into the room and saw the unconscious voice actress of Alice Angel strapped to a mobile operating table. Joey seemed to ignore his reaction as he proudly showed her off and began to monologue.

“Like Boris, Sammy was a musician, simple-minded, and was very loyal to those he considered friends until the bitter end. But what made Sammy more like the Brute then Boris- Aside from body type, obviously, was that Sammy had quite the short temper on him, one that got messed with often, and a tendency to hold onto a grudge that can’t be swayed away with a good meal or a bad joke… Just like our friend; the Brute.”

Tom stayed speechless as Joey continued his seemingly prepared and rehearsed speech.

“As for Bendy and Norman, well, it’s obvious that those too simply weren’t compatible in the slightest! Sure, they both have their mischievous sides, but that alone doesn’t make a man into a good imp… However, do you know who DOES have more in common with Mr. Polk? That’s right! A certain smart alec-someone who knows a thing or two about anyone, everyone, and everything whether he wants to or not. Someone with a darker, more jaded sense of humor than our little devil, someone who can lurk in the shadows, or in his case, ‘backstage’ for safety or to gather Intel, but be happy and proud to take the front stage when the need arises! ...Alright, I can see that Norman’s soul may have influenced the personality of our Cameraman, but at least he did it in ways that make sense to the character.”

The mechanic continued to stay silent as Joey continued.

“But the main point is: we know what to do to fix this little issue. If we want a main character, we need someone who embodies the soul of that character. And Ms. Campbell here said it herself; Alice is a part of her!”

“Joey…”

“Why, she’d be thanking us if she knew what was coming! This is a dream come true for her! She always seemed to be the happiest when she was singing our angel darling’s songs…”

As if he was snapped out of a trance, the mechanic pulled Joey to his face, gripping the animator’s arms tightly and shaking him up a bit.

“Joey! We can’t do this! Susie isn’t like Norman or Sammy. She’s young, healthy, and still has a lot to live for. Nobody would buy that she passed on from something out of the blue, or that she moved away without warning or telling anyone. Everyone in the studio loves her and talks to her frequently! If we do this, especially so soon, they will make the connection, and they will find out about this. It was bad enough when Norman went, imagine if someone as well loved as her went too!”

Joey just laughed and slapped Tom’s shoulder.

“Oh Tommy, all we need to tell them is that Susie got her big break and is Bringing Alice to life in ways never before seen! And to sell the illusion, also tell them ‘you know how those folks in Hollywood are with their schedules, always a bunch of busy bees.’ They’ll bite, you just have to trust me.”

“What if they don’t?” the mechanic argued. “What if they start snooping around and start to piece together what really happened to her?”

Joey’s smile wavered a bit, but remained steadfast.

“Well, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we reach it. And when we do, we’ll have our answer!”

“Nnnnggghhh…”

Both of them shuddered when they heard the voice actress start to stir awake.

“I swore I used stronger stuff in her drink…”

“...Jo...Joey..? ..Mr. Conner..?” The voice actress’s real eye widened in horror as she looked around, and her voice wavered as she grew more and more frantic. “WHat’s going on?! Where am I- Why am I tied up?!”

“S-Susie! Everything’s perfectly fine my dear, you just need to calm down a bit and I’ll explain everything…” He subtly jabbed Thomas in the ribs with his elbow. “Tommy!” He hissed “Throw her in the machine already!”

The frightened voice actress began to struggle against her restraints while Tom hesitated. Joey shot him a glare as he strolled up behind Susie and put a ‘reassuring’ hand on the weeping angel’s shoulder.

“Joey, please… let me go… Don’t do this to me!” Tears were running down the woman’s face, her voice was soft and breaking from her stress. “Just let me go and I promise I won’t tell anyone…”

“Now, now, Susie, there’s nothing to worry about, yes I know this looks unsettling from your position… But you and Alice are going places, new, big places that most people only dream of seeing! You’re going to bring her to life in ways that will touch the hearts of generations!”

A flash of realization crossed her face.

“Joey… answer me this: when Sammy ‘died from untreated lung cancer’ did he actually die from lung cancer? And when Norman ‘died from a workplace injury’ did he really…?” her voice trailed off a bit with uncertainty before asking her third question. “Did their deaths have anything to do with those two toons that showed up?!”

Her questions were not answered by words, but with actions as the two men stuffed her into the machine. When it turned on, her screams echoed throughout the mostly empty studio, chilling all who heard them to the very bone.

When they finally stopped, the machine whirred and roared to life and Joey rubbed his hands together in glee as he watched the machine work its magic.

Thomas, on the other hand, stood in silence while staring at his hands as dread and guilt sank in his gut.

The former man’s smile fell into a look of confusion when he saw a pair of gloves with ‘X’ marks on them come out, followed by arms that connected to them. That look of confusion fell deeper into a frown when he saw the arms stretch, curl, and twist when the gloves reached the floor as if they were streams of ice cream coming out of the machine at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Alice didn’t have arms that curled and stretched, but Joey knew a certain demoness toon who did; Miss Twisted. He was cursing under his breath, of course it would complete their little trio before giving him what he wanted! Now he wasted his one shot at getting Alice!

The rest of the toon didn’t even get out of the damn machine, it was like she was taunting him by continuing to stretch her arms and let them continue to coil in piles on the floor instead of showing him the finished product.

Furious, he marched over and grabbed the toon demoness’s arms and yanked her out of the damn machine.

“Stop messing around!” He scolded before pausing and reapplying his signature smile. “Your friends Brute and Cameraman have been worried sick about you ever since their creation! You wouldn’t want to keep them waiting for you any longer than they’ve already been, right?”

He could’ve been imagining it, but he swore that she had a look of pure terror on her face before she put on a fake smile of her own. And was it just him, or was this Miss Twisted’s left eye slightly discolored, glassy looking, if that made sense for someone with pitch black pie-cut eyes. The grayer eye she had reminded him of Susie Campbell’s fake eye.

“Y-yeah! You’re right!” She pushed Joey out of her face, clearly uncomfortable by his staring but pretending to be perfectly fine. “I can’t keep my boys waiting for too long, who knows what they’ll do?” She chuckled nervously. “So… where are you keeping them? where are they hiding?”

“Tommy here will be happy to show you, just follow him and-”

“Thanks!”

The demoness chipperly chirped and swiftly yanked Thomas out of the room at a speed that almost insulted the man.

[draven-imani]

Journal 2

Everything’s gone to hell. Or the abyss. Whatever. Semantics. It doesn’t fucking matter. The wardstone’s been destroyed. I’m stuck underground with Auriel, the Butcher of Balestreet—who is actually a middle-aged woman who claims to have never actually murdered anyone—a Shelynite inquisitor who came here following a bird, a blind elf wizard, a very angry merchant noble, and Anevia Tirabade—the wife of Irabeth Tirabade, leader of the Eagle Watch, former member of the Raven Corps who rose from the muck when she stopped a conspiracy to break the wardstone—

Which doesn’t matter much now because the wardstone is fucking broken and demons swarmed the city and everyone is dead. It happened again. It happened again. It always—

Let me start from the top. A lot happened. I need to get my thoughts straight. If anyone survived, if we get up top and there’s people to report back to, I need to have a record of what happened.

This morning, Auriel and I went to patrol the Kite as we’d originally been assigned. Inheritor be praised for what happened next…if we’d been there when the attack happened, we would both be dead now. Commander Spriggans stopped us during our rounds, just in front of the wardstone, and informed us that two of the members of the color guard had drank themselves into a stupor the night before and were not in fit state to take part in their duties guiding the parade. He gave us an easy choice. We could remain here in our usual duties walking the walls, or we could fill in for the missing color guard. Auriel left the choice to me, much to both my and the Commander’s displeasure. I don’t particularly like taking responsibility for others, having Auriel look to me as the one to make decisions was…uncomfortable, to say the least. Bad things already happen around me, adding me being the one making our choices to the mix surely won’t help.

Regardless, the choice was obvious in this case. We were to be joining with the color guard, and assisting with the parade.

So, we made our way to where preparations were being set up. However, we couldn’t find the captain who Commander Spriggans had told us to meet with for further commands. After waiting a few minutes, Auriel decided he wanted to check out a platform that was being built for the ceremony. I followed along, incase things went tits up due to his…lack of social knowledge.

Auriel ended up ‘getting a quest’ from the gnome builder, who needed more nails from the storehouse in the temple. Seeing as we couldn’t find who we were supposed to meet, and this seemed like a quick errand that would help with the parade, we went ahead and did so.

It was not a quick errand. The priest who had the key to the storehouse was in the middle of talking to someone else, and that took several very long minutes. Several. Like fifteen. Maybe twenty. Maybe even thirty. I don’t know. It was a long ass time. Long enough that by the time we had it and opened the door, we saw that the parade had just begun. There was no way to get into place without being spotted. We would just have to sit it out and face the music later. Or so we thought. Obviously, much worse happened later and that all ended up being a rather minor blip in regards to the ‘shitty things to happen on this day’ chart by the end of it.

As we were watching the parade, I heard a noise. Coming from the storehouse. A scraping scratching noise and footfalls. I told Auriel, and we ran into the storehouse. The first thing I noticed, the first thing my brain registered, was that Deskari’s damnable symbol was carved into the floor.

The second was that above us, at the top of the stairs, we saw an imposing figure, a single red eye staring down at us and impossible muscles bulging out of ‘his’ clothes. It was the Butcher of Balestreet, an infamous serial killer who’d been avoiding capture for fifteen years. As I already said above, it turns out that ‘he’ was actually a middle-aged woman, who has never actually murdered anyone, and the ‘bulging muscles’ were oranges stuffed into her clothes. The red eye is real though. I haven’t asked. I know about why someone wouldn’t want to answer questions about something like that.

But at the time she cut a rather imposing figure.

The Butcher—whose name I’ve since learned is Luna but for the sake for drama I’ll continue to call her the Butcher for this part—spoke in a deep false male voice. “That was here when I got here. You should be more interested in what’s in the metal box.”

Then ‘he’ made a running leap across the rooftops.

I didn’t have enough information and I was incensed by the symbol of Deskari being right there so unexpectedly. I wanted answers. I told Auriel to investigate the box. At the same time, I charged up the stairs and after the Butcher, leaping across the rooftop after ‘him’.

The Butcher climbed up a wall with a grace completely unexpected of ‘his’ bulk, and I couldn’t keep up, my armor weighing me down. I was forced to find another way around. However, at the same time, the Butcher was slowed when ‘he’ came upon a bridge that he would have to lower to get farther.

Then Auriel showed up with a Shelynite Inquititor I’d never seen before in my life, who used magic to command the Butcher to stop on ‘his’ tracks. This gave me the opportunity to call on a blessing of Iomedae to enhance my swiftness in battle, and I was able to catch up. Unfortunately, the Butcher had only been commanded not to move—not to not throw me off the blasted roof. The Butcher caught me with the blunt of ‘his’ axe and threw me backwards. I managed to use my shield against a nearby wall to slow my descent somewhat. One of the color guard broke away from the parade and healed me a bit and asked what happened, so I explained what we’d found in the storehouse, and that the Butcher of Balestreet was on the rooftops fleeing.

A moment later the Shelynite fell beside me in a similar position to where I’d been. She introduced herself as Melody, and told me that she didn’t believe this person was the Butcher, or at least that ‘he’ wasn’t a murderer. I didn’t know this woman well enough to know her intentions or to judge her actions, for now all I knew was what I’d seen with my own eyes: the Butcher in the room with a symbol of Deskari, leaving with some sort of box after warning us that something in another box might be of interest. Which meant right then I wanted answers from the Butcher, murderer or not.

I ran for the other storehouse, intent to cut the Butcher off. Unfortunately, the Eagle Watch had gotten the same idea, and the Butcher saw their attempt at a blockade and turned around. ‘He’ jumped from the bridge instead, and tried to make a run for it down the alley.

Then the Butcher was stopped in ‘his’ tracks by a hold person spell, cast by a high-ranking member of the crusades: Lady Salzara. Some of her men came to collect the Butcher, and she said that myself, Auriel, and Melody needed to come with her as well. I had a foreboding feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Lady Salzara led us to where High Commander Hol Rune had been making his speech. She began speaking to the crowd about how this was an auspicious day, in which a ‘lost lamb’ had returned to its flock. As she spoke, there was a horrific cracking noise. And then the Kite, and the Wardstone within it, exploded in fire. And the sky above began to crack like glass. Rifts began to open around us as demons began to pour into the city. High Commander Hol Rune was ripped apart in an instant when a portal opened behind him and a powerful demon tore through him with ease. All around us there was nothing but fire and bloodshed and death. My arm was bleeding like never before, and it hurt, it hurt so much, and this time I was so sure both me and an entire city were going to die together.

Instead, in a flash of silver Terendalev, the city’s defender, appeared before the four of us—Auriel, myself, Melody, and Luna. He asked us to trust him, and that fate had plans for us. Then with a sweep of his tail he knocked us into a great chasm that opened in the earth, and cast a spell so that we float gently into the earth, along with three others. The last we saw of the city’s protector, Terendelev, the silver dragon paladin of Iomedae, he was facing down The Storm King Khorramzadeh, one of Deskari’s generals. And then everything went black.

We woke…who knows how much later. We were under ground, with no way to know how much time had passed. At first our memories of events were jumbled, but they came back quickly enough. We made proper introductions, including Luna removing her hood to reveal the fact that the Butcher was a middle-aged woman yada yada I’ve already covered this. Point is, we decided to trust her for now. For one thing, Terendelev trusted her enough to send her down here with us. For another, I prefer to see someone’s actions for myself than to judge based on the words of others, and already things weren’t adding up with the stories I’d heard, so it was time to wipe the rumors from my mind and judge her based on her actions alone.

We also formally met Melody, the tiny lil inquisitor of Shelyn with a glaive longer than she is tall, that she carefully balanced so it never touched the ground, who travelled to the edge of the Worldwound following a bird sent by her goddess. So clearly this is where she was meant to be, for better or worse.

There were also three new faces. Two were unfortunately injured. One woman appeared to be a crusader scout whose leg was caught under a rock. Luna and I managed to get her leg free, and I healed as much of the damage as I could, although my magic was not enough to mend broken bones. After that I got a good look at her and realized she was Anevia Tirabade, the wife of Irabeth Tirabade, the commander of the Eagle Watch.

Once I knew she was as okay as she could be given the circumstances, I went to join Melody checking on the other injured individual, an elven spellcaster by the name of Aravashnial. Unfortunately, I knew from experience there was nothing I could do for him—his eyes had been slashed through by a demon, much like my own useless left eye. We spoke to him, and managed to calm him and convince him not to do anything rash, as initially he was going to try charging ahead eyes or no, stubbornly determined that he had to be of use. I could understand, but I tried to reason with him that while I did believe he could do everything he’d once been able to with time, it would *take time*, as relearning to sword fight with one eye had for me. For now, he needed to remain in the back with Anevia and the nobleman where it was safe. And Melody pointed out that he was far from useless, as none of the rest of us knew anything about the arcane, which was very true.

The third and least pleasant of the trio was Horgus Gwerm, a merchant. He caused a bit of a fuss, before Luna took matters into her own hands. Literally into her own hands, with a hand on his throat. He pulled her aside to talk to her in private. Melody, Auriel, and I spoke while he waited, Auriel and I more formally introducing ourselves and explaining the Raven Corps to Melody, and Melody explaining her recent arrival into town following a little birdie. We explained in a bit more detail how we’d ended up chasing Luna over the rooftops, and Auriel told me what he’d found in the metal box. It had been an armless mummified locust demon, in a box emblazoned with more Deskari symbology.

As we spoke about this disturbing discovery, there was a bit of a commotion. Luna had opened the box she’d stolen from the store room, and from within removed a book. Auriel informed me and Melody that the box had picked up as evil when he’d tried to smite Luna before and failed while on the roofs after I’d…tumbled. Gwerm took the book and tried to light it ablaze with a flint and tinder, but when the flames died down it did nothing. When they returned to the group, Melody asked to look over the book, which Horgus grumpily pressed into her hands before storming off. Aravashnial laughed at his attempt at burning an evil magical tome, commenting that of course it hadn’t worked. There was a clear tension in the cavern between our three companions. Melody told the rest of us that she believed she could identify more about this book if she had access to a library. Assuming the libraries up on the surface haven’t all been destroyed…

With nothing else to do but try to find a way out, we made our way deeper into the caverns. Melody uncovered four of Terendelev’s scales as we explored. When we held them we knew in our hearts the magic they held. Each granted a boon to the holder, and Melody believed Terendalev wanted us to have them.

We…also fear the worst for the guardian of the city. One of the scales, the one Auriel took, was coated in blood. I would love to be optimistic. Really. I would. But he was facing down one of Deskari’s generals. That’s…a big task, even for a dragon.

We haven’t really had time to think about it, though. We need to find a way out of this cave. We continued forward, through caverns where we fought disgusting vermin, and found an unexpected campsite. Aravashnial commented that there were a group of peoples who were rumored to live hidden below the city, The First Descendants. People descended from the first crusaders, who had been tainted by the demons’ influence and twisted into monstrous forms, and had been forced into hiding underground. Auriel may have made some comment at this point about how anyone tainted by the demons’ touch must be eliminated, to which I *may* have snipped at him a bit about tieflings being fine and that we ought to judge them by their actions. Besides, their existence was mere rumor.

Whether it’s true or not, I can’t possibly say. We didn’t find any proof in the campsite of whether the owner had been human, elven, or perhaps a member of these first descendants. All we found was a pendant whose design none of us recognized, which Luna took because it looked expensive and she did the most work clearing out the creatures in the room to actually get to it. Which I could not argue, much as I could use the gold. So far observing Luna, I can say without a doubt she is a fierce combatant. Without a doubt the most competent of us all.

Which became a problem when we arrived to the temple of Torag where we’ve stopped to bed down.

See, Gwerm decided he didn’t want to stop. Gwerm decided that Anevia and Aravashnial were slowing us down, and that we should go on without them. Gwerm tried to pay the rest of us off to leave them behind, and when we refused, he decided that fine, he’d go with just Luna—who he’d apparently already hired to be his bodyguard. Gwerm was being a shortsighted selfish idiot.

Luna managed to sweet talk him, explaining that while the injured might slow us down, we had strength in numbers. She was extremely capable, but he would still be much safer with all of us protecting him rather than just her, and we’d made our stance clear that we wouldn’t be leaving the injured behind.

In all honesty, I think she was trying to protect Anevia and Aravashnial more than Gwerm in doing this. I sincerely believe she could have protected Gwerm by herself, from what I’ve seen, and I think she knows that. She’s pretty confident in her abilities. But me, Melody, and Auriel protecting the injured without Luna? That could have ended in a massacre.

With that settled, Auriel wanted to look into Torag’s temple, as he was an ally to Iomedae, to see if there was anything he could do to help repair it and make sure nothing had been desecrated. I was in agreement, even if I didn’t feel as strongly about it as he seemed to. We opened the sealed temple and went inside.

Within, we found an undead monster, a huecuva. Once upon a time a priest of Torag built a grand temple of his god deep under Kenabres, using all his wealth to make it the most impressive structure he possibly could. When he finished, he received no sign of his god’s pleasure. And so, he sealed the temple, desecrated it, left behind one final letter, and died speaking heresies against torag, only to rise again as an undead monster.

We feared a difficult fight, as such creatures are hardy, difficult to hurt, carry diseases, and hit hard. With this in mind Auriel smote the former priest and went on the offensive, but the undead dodged out of the way. Luna attacked and struck true, her axe slicing through the undead with no care for its resistances against physical damage. Melody used her judgement, her weapon glowing the colors of the rainbow, and attacked as well, but the creature dodged again. I called upon Iomedae’s blessings and approached, intent to assist with the kill. The creature continued to dodge around Auriel, but only for a moment longer before Luna’s axe cleaved clean through its neck.

I…am uncertain how to feel about the situation. Certainly it proves the point I was making earlier about us needing Luna more than she needs us. It feels bad that to clear out a creature desecrating a holy place it took the only person who…has had some very vocal things to say about the gods in general, and Iomedae in particular. The three of us should have had so much going for us against that creature and yet Luna was the only effective member of our group.

Well. There’s no point moping about it. What’s done is done. She’s a powerful combatant. And she surprisingly did not rub it in our faces. Which I did take note of. Despite her grudge against crusaders, she’s not petty about it. Not all the time, at least. She certainly takes every chance she can to take pot shots at the Raven Corps. and how we’re the lowest of the low, so there’s that. Apparently, many of the reports of her ‘murders’ were cover ups for embarrassed Raven Corps members who fell into her traps, things like stringing them up from lamp posts or…well, tossing them off rooftops, as I learned firsthand. Some people don’t have a sense of humor. And too much pride. But starting rumors that someone’s a murderer to save face over a prank? That’s excessive. There’s definitely more to it than that.

One thing’s for sure, from her actions today, I believe “the Butcher” that she’s no murderer. She could have taken Horgus’ money and left us for dead with the injured. Yet she did not, despite her distaste for travelling with people of the cloth. Perhaps not for our sake, but certainly I suspect for the sake of our injured duo.

If the city is in any state for rumors to still matter when we get back up top, I’ll do what I can to clear her name. Which…unfortunately isn’t much, truth be told. A Raven Corps member isn’t exactly someone with any sway. But at least if some people are countering the rumors, maybe something can change. I hate to see a good person’s name being dragged through the mud.

Anyways. It’s getting late. Auriel’s off cleaning up the temple. He said it was something he had to do on his own. I’d think he was just being his usual overly diligent self, if I didn’t know enough about Torag’s teachings to know that a certain sense of personal responsibility in one’s work is probably appreciated by this particular god. In the mean time we had a ‘chat’ with Aravashnial and Anevia. By which I mean Melody had a chat with them and did her inquisitor thing. Found out that Aravashnial is a member of a secret group called the Riftwardens, and that Irabeth trying to get the Riftwardens to join the crusaders’ cause directly led to he and his partner’s messy breakup. So, ouch.

Then she learned from Anevia that Aravashnial had once accused Gwerm of being a Baphomet cultist to Irabeth. Irabeth asked Anevia to subtly look into it. Anevia did, and found that Gwerm was clean, and also that he’d been secretly donating large sums to the crusades—despite it being against his religion as a worshipper of Abadar. Unfortunately, her break in had not been as subtle as she’d thought, someone had seen her, and that someone broke in and cleared Gwerm out of a large sum of his funds as a result, not to mention the public embarrassment of the entire affair.

Luna, Melody, and I told Anevia in no uncertain terms that the three of them needed to be adults and talk to each other and apologize and work things out first thing in the morning. We were in a shitty situation and we needed them to be able to work together if we were going to get out of this, and quite frankly it sounded like Horgus had some pretty good reasons to be upset with Aravashnial and Anevia, even if leaving them for dead was still a selfish overreaction. Anevia said that sounded more painful than having a broken leg, but agreed to do so despite some pouting. This is Irabeth’s wife, huh? Not quite what I expected to be honest. It’s bad when I’m the mature adult in the conversation. Ew. Terrible.

[realm-sweet-realm]

The Friendly Long Horse

Long Horse is a character created by Trevor Henderson. Please support his works.

---

I was leaning against a fence, watching my wife’s two horses graze in the field. The brown one, Buttercup, trotted over to me for pats. I reached out to pet her, and her lips peeled back from her teeth. She bit down hard, and tugged off my hand. I pulled my arm away, screaming. My hand disappeared into her mouth. Her ear flicked, her eyes were calm. Like nothing was abnormal about this. Then, she put her head through the fence and bit my arm. Before I knew it, I was being pulled through the fence and into her mouth, bit by bit, until she’d consumed all of me.

I woke up.

A dream. Of course. If it weren’t a dream, I would have run away once she’d eaten my hand, and she wouldn’t have put her head through the barbed-wire fence, anyhow. Of course, that’s all pretty silly to mention considering that no horse, but especially not Buttercup, would casually eat a human alive.

In the early morning darkness, I noticed what looked like a horse skull, with no jaw and a few strands of black mane, peaking out from behind my door. I dismissed it as a trick of the light and went back to sleep.

The next morning, the horse skull was still there, staring at me.

Unsure what to do, I approached the door. The skull vanished the second I opened it, as though it was never there. It had moved, as though by teleportation, to peeking out at me from behind a corner before the staircase. That’s how it was all morning- the horse skull was always there, watching from behind something, disappearing whenever necessary. I value my privacy, so I tried pushing it out while I was in the shower, but it vanished right before I could touch it, appearing at the other side of the shower curtain.

It was with me on my way to work, peering from behind lamp posts as I drove. I turned on the radio. Turned it way up. This had to be a hallucination. An entire horse could not fit behind a lamp post. Not to mention everything else wrong with this. I sincerely hoped that I wasn’t losing my mind.

The thing is, this didn’t map onto any mental illness I knew of, and as a psychology PhD who has worked for years at an insane asylum, I would know. People who have hallucinations don’t know that they’re having hallucinations, and any psychotic disorder you could name comes with other symptoms, like slurred speech and delusions. Of course, the person is not always aware of these symptoms- my clients have often said that the first sign of an episode starting is that strangers treat them differently.

I did not want people to treat me differently, so I did not mention the horse skull to any sane human being. However, I did mention it to one of my clients that day, while administering an ink blot test.

“Do you see the horse skull?” I asked.

My client, a slack-jawed 28-year-old man who looked twice his age, squinted at the ink blot photo that I held in my hand.

“No. I mean the one over there.” I pointed to it. He looked over his shoulder and then back at me.

“No. Should I?” he asked.

“No. No, that’s a good sign,” I said. I felt as though the skull were mocking me.

Every night for the next three nights, I had nightmares of dying at the hooves of a horse. I’d been trampled. I’d ridden horses off of cliffs or into incoming traffic. I’d even had a horse drown me in his trough.

Each morning I would wake up to that damned skull, and I was able to sense her in a new way. On the first day, I became capable of smelling her- she smelled like cinnamon and rotting bone. The next, I became capable of hearing her make her little snorts and whinnies. On the next, a fog descended upon everything in my immediate environment, and I felt that it was a part of her.

I didn’t know what to do. To be frank, I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to spend my evenings on the other side of the insane asylum walls. I didn’t think it would help, anyhow- I’d had time by now to thoroughly consult the DSM-V, and if I were crazy, it was a type of crazy that no one had bothered to study or cure yet.

On the fifth day I spent with that skull watching me, I came home in the evening to a message written across my bedroom wall in black:

Go ride Blackjack.

I went. I felt insane for obeying the message, but I went.

Blackjack is ostensibly my horse. My wife had thought Buttercup was lonely, and that it would be nice for us to ride horses together, and so she bought a black gelding that was big enough for me to ride. I found out pretty quickly, though, that riding is not at all my thing, and so Blackjack hasn’t been ridden in a couple years. She tells me that he’s perfectly happy just running around the pasture, and she’s the one that would know. She grew up on and inherited this farm- I’m just some city mouse that she met at college.

Once I got to the stable, the first obstacle presented itself: I didn’t know where his saddle was, and even if I did, I had no idea how to put it on. The horse skull peered me from behind a wooded post and patted Blackjack’s back with her chin.

“Bareback?” I asked.

She nodded in response.

I prayed that I wasn’t committing some sort of horse abuse, took Blackjack out, and got on him. He started galloping immediately. My heart nearly stopped. This was like too many of my nightmares.

Blackjack took me down a dirt road until we came to a wooded area. By then, the sun was setting, and combined with the fog that I’d become used to squinting through, it was making it difficult to see. We entered the wooded area. And there was what she meant to show me.

Approaching the corpse under the giant, rotted tree, I desperately hoped that it was just a big deer. As soon as those solid, round hooves came into view through the mist, though, I knew better. It was Buttercup, her ribs torn open. Her body was cold, and yet there were no tooth marks on her. She was perfectly preserved except for a surgical-looking slit on her belly, and the fact that her ribs looked to have been torn open and then put vaguely back into place.

My wife would be devastated, and what was more, I now had to face that I wasn’t crazy. Something supernatural was happening, and I didn’t know what.

The horse skull was floating next to me now- the first time I saw her and she wasn’t hidden from me. She tapped me on the shoulder and then floated over to a patch of dirt. Her mist parted, revealing a message constructed from Buttercup’s intestines.

LEAVE WHILE YOU STILL CAN

I got back onto Blackjack, who gave me a swift ride home. I said nothing of the event to anyone, even when my wife mentioned that Buttercup was missing and called the police over it. I did not sleep that night. It didn’t feel safe. I thought about waking her up and getting her to leave with me, but how would I explain to her that I wanted to leave home because a horse skull had led me to a message spelled out in Buttercup’s remains? Finally, I came up with an excuse.

“Sharol?” I said, shaking her awake. “We should leave. Whoever took Buttercup is probably still out there. We’d be safer somewhere else until the police can come and take a look at what happened.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, still snuggled into bed. “We’ll be fine. Go back to sleep.”

I’d known it was a long shot. Still, I didn’t want to leave her. “Please. I feel like we might not be safe here.”

“It’s two in the morning,” was all she said.

I... left without her. I shouldn’t have. I was still in the mindset that this wasn’t quite real, I guess. I was going to leave for a motel, but the fog on the road was incredibly thick. I could see nothing but white all around me. The horse skull appeared in front of me on the road, and it seemed to be backing up at the same pace as I was going towards it. Finally, I got out of the car. The skull approached me, and a few feet of spine appeared behind it. It- no, she, I knew it was a she now, somehow- encircled me. I was expecting something awful to happen, but nothing did. The words, “It has arrived. Stay here if you want to live,” appeared to me in the mist.

Of course, I wanted to go back for Sharol. And I got into the car despite the horse’s protests, but I couldn’t find the turn-off to our house in all of the fog. 

“Get rid of it!” I yelled at the horse skull. “I know you can! Get rid of this fog so that I can go back to my wife!”

The horse skull did not respond. I ended up just spending the rest of the night in my car, with the horse skull curled up on my lap.

The fog dissipated a few hours later, and I took that as a cue that it was safe to go back home. It was not a pretty sight. A quick look in the barn made it seem as though all of the livestock had been turned inside out, and various equipment had been thrown about. There were no bloody footprints on the ground, and anyhow, it would have been nearly impossible to butcher and flay so many animals in only a few hours. The inside of the house looked as though a hurricane had hit it. I remember stepping over piles of broken glass and pottery in the kitchen. I went up to our bedroom, terrified, but Sharol’s corpse wasn’t there. Maybe she’d gotten away. I went to the garage to see, and... there it was. The mutilated corpse of a human, with a sledge hammer in her hands. Black goo covered one side of the sledge hammer like blood. She’d been trying to fight off whatever had been here.

The horse skull put its chin on my shoulder in a comforting gesture. I picked up the sledgehammer from her hands, shaking with the temptation to bash the creature’s skull in for not doing any of the things it could have done to save her. The damn skull could have told me what was coming. It could have given her a message. It could have given me a message that I could have shared with her without showing her Buttercup’s disembodied guts.

In my anger, I took a swing at her, and the skull fell to the ground, seemingly undamaged somehow. In an instant, I could see her entire spine- I guess because she was out cold and wasn’t able to hide it anymore. The spine went right out of the garage door, out the door to my house, and down the street for what seemed like half a mile. I saw a car drive over it, seemingly clipping through as though her spine didn’t even exist. Then, it started moving, picking up into the sky. And she left. Maybe she was mad at me for being ungrateful for her protection, or scared that I’d hurt her again, or she just had the understanding that her work here was done. But whatever her reasons, I never saw her again.

[xoruffitup]

AITAF’s 11th Annual Broadway Show

It’s surreal that this was my second year attending and I’m sitting here typing up a second recap! It hardly feels like a whole year has passed since last November, as the time has been so full of Adam and SW-related joy. After last night’s show, Sarah (the same friend I adventured to TIFF with) and I reflected that following/loving Adam has brought us so many extraordinary experiences we would never have sought out otherwise. Attending military-oriented events and creating stronger ties with the veterans and service members in each of our lives, traveling to Toronto (and shortly to London!!) together, and cultivating the most unlikely and incredible friendships. It’s been an eye-opening, whirlwind year of new and wonderful experiences - chief among which was sitting in a theatre largely full of military personnel and having each of my preconceived stereotypes challenged.

The group I gathered with outside the American Airlines theatre was even bigger than last year. We had my friends Sarah and MP ( @reylonly​), my dad who usually abhors the “veteran” label and yet - to his own surprise - confessed to being deeply moved by last year’s show, a retired Army nurse and her husband, a cousin I hadn’t seen in ages who’s currently enlisted, and her two friends from the army. Our sizable group was first to queue up outside the theatre, with more than plenty to talk and catch up about while we waited.

(Fun/Amusing Fact: That enlisted cousin I hadn’t seen in ages? We reconnected ahead of this show when she messaged me on Facebook: “Hi! I heard from X family member that you like Adam Driver. I’ve attended AITAF performances before and I’ll be going to their NYC event, if you’d like to come as one of my guests?” Yes, that is my rep spreading through the family and you bet I’m proud. :’’))

We thought we had an idea what to expect from last year, but this year’s show surprised and took us off guard in almost every way.

After entering the theatre and passing right by Joanne (looking hella fierce in a fitted tweed suit), we headed up to the reception. Here came a surprise I was personally AMPED about!! While MP, Sarah, and I waited to go in the photo booth they had, we saw Scott Burns and Daniel Jones come into the reception area! I explained a bit in my TIFF recap post about how The Report (aside from being just a stellar film) really engaged me personally because not only do I have a human rights-related job, but the Executive Director of my non-profit is also renowned for being one of the first high-ranking whistleblowers against the CIA torture program when he previously worked in the Department of Defense. His name is Alberto Mora and after I heard Scott Burns namecheck him in several interviews, I talked to Alberto about his involvement in the film. From that conversation with Alberto came the idea to arrange a staff screening of the film, given its relevance to our nonprofit’s mission. In addition to seeing the film at TIFF, I also had the chance through work to attend the DC premiere of the film last week, attended by human rights advocates, House Representatives, and Senators (most depicted in the film - including Diane Feinstein herself!) who were all clearly riveted by the film and the discussion with Scott Burns and Dan Jones that followed. SO (sorry for this digression but I’M STILL SO EXCITED BY THIS) when I saw Dan Jones mingling, I practically started vibrating with everything I wanted to say to him.

After psyching myself up and angsting with MP for a minute (“But it’s gotta be the right time - I don’t want to interrupt him!”) I went over and introduced myself to Dan Jones, saying I’d been at the DC premiere of the film last week and how powerful the evening had been. Long story short - omg what a chill and approachable guy to talk to! I explained quickly that I work with Alberto and I’ve been looking into arranging a screening, to which Dan said he’d “absolutely love” to help with! He told me how to contact him and holy shiiiit now this definitely has to happen!!

So after that reception highlight, we ate a little more cheese and fancy crackers before heading downstairs to the theater and our seats. And there we needed to hold onto our hats and strain to remain chill, because like some Adam-related VIP guest list, we brushed shoulders with Noah Baumbach and Laura Dern as we entered the theater! WHATTT!! It certainly made my heart glad to see so many of these high-profile collaborators of Adam’s supporting him and taking an interest in his non-profit work. And just to see that they’re all friends even off set!

This year’s choice of play, A Raisin In The Sun, immediately set a much different tone than last year’s True West. While last year included a cast of only 4, with Adam and Michael Shannon lifting the majority of the performance as the brothers-at-odds Lee and Austin; this year included a cast of 9 almost exclusively African American actors, who would share the stage in a rotating balance. But before anything else... the show began with AITAF’s Director giving a rundown of their recent and upcoming programming, before she introduced Adam to speak. Annnnd out onto the stage he strode in a black suit and tie (pushing the boundaries of fashion for real) looking so striking and handsome my brain and heart jumped into an overdrive race with each other alsdfjslfjalsdfj :’)))) (Yes, the first moment when I see him in person still makes my heart fly up into my throat.) Most of the audience tried to leap to their feet to give him a standing ovation, before Adam quickly made some slightly panicked abortive hand gestures and everyone sat back down. We were seated so close to the stage that that proximity was really the best kind of intense <3333

First of all, I want to assure everyone that our bb does look like he’s gained some weight back. I think his face looked a bit more filled out than at TIFF (and boy did he fill out that suit just right). Adam recognized all of the active service people and veterans in the audience, thanked the actors and AITAF staff for making the evening possible, and gave his background speech on AITAF’s purpose, journey, and mission. He also spoke a bit about the play that was selected this year, quickly adding “I’ll let the play speak for itself rather than butchering it with my interpretation.” Everyone laughed and my heart was only barely beating under the adoration because at the same time I was getting such a good look at just how big he is, being so close... Not only the height, but the shoulders in the suit and the giant hands that fly around when he’s talking, then he stuffed his hands into his pockets for part of his speech and that just made him look taller and more attractive and alsdkfjalskdjf sir you should really take my health into consideration a little bit!!! ;___;

Fangirl feels meltdowns aside, there were a lot of other beautiful things happening on that stage. It was stirring to listen to Adam introduce the cast (and pronounce all of their names correctly, thank you) with all the deference this play deserves and a cast to do it full justice. In a setting where the audience was largely comprised of a military demographic that is often considered to embody more conservative values, it was poignant to see Adam using his platform in AITAF to push the narratives further and confront the audience directly - not with what separates people, but to draw out the humanity that makes us all so very alike. That is, after all, AITAF’s guiding mission. 

Skipping ahead for a quick moment - one of the actors in the talk-back after the performance brought up how difficult it had been to fund this play when it was first produced in 1959 because investors feared it was “too black” and wouldn’t resonate with audiences. Last night was the most blatant demonstration of how close-minded such fears were, as the almost three-hour long reading kept the audience entirely enthralled, caught up in the humor and the heartbreak and the enduring human spirit that keeps the Younger family’s pride and love for each other in tact; then followed by audience members standing up to share deeply personal and candid accounts of how they saw their own struggles with searching for identity and purpose between military-civilian spheres, and their own experiences of trauma reflected in these complex, lively characters. 

As much as I so enjoyed internally flipped my shit completely getting to hear Adam speak in person at the beginning, it made me more proud than ever to love him as I do when I watched him step back and pass the stage and spotlight to an insanely talented cast of color. AITAF is a force and space that aims for all voices to be heard, and Adam appeared only just enough to underscore and enable that last night.

I hope I’ve already made the point that the cast were simply phenomenal. This year’s performance felt completely different than last year’s in terms of the energy and mood. Last year, Adam and Michael Shannon filled two hours with simmering frustration and aggression that grows increasingly outrageous until it culminates in violence. Adam and Michael moved freely around the stage a lot. I’ll never forget Adam doing handstands, collapsing to his knees right at the front of the stage and his lush long hair falling everywhere (UGH <3), Adam yelling about toast and stealing TVs, barking like a coyote, and finally choking Michael in the final scene. This year, the 9-person-strong cast barely moved from behind their script stands, and yet the emotional impact they delivered was simply stunning. The immediacy of this reading-style performance is just incomparable. I do see a lot of theatre and really enjoy the medium, but watching actors like last night’s cast put on a performance that’s completely uninhibited - completely instinctive and raw - was simply unforgettable. It cuts straight to the emotional core and deepest layer of meaning within the material and the characters. There is nothing between the audience and the existence of these characters’ lives, and the actors lost themselves in the roles completely. It was simply breathtaking to watch, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to witness it. Falling in to the Adam bandwagon truly enriched my life in ways I could never have expected

While on the topic of things I couldn’t have expected: Chief among them would be (to be painfully honest) voluntarily attending an event geared for military audiences - and even less enjoying and feeling moved by every second of it. I should probably clarify that although my Dad is a National Guard vet, he rarely speaks about the experience because he was drafted straight out of high school. The memories aren’t easy for him when he knows how close he could have been to being sent to Vietnam; alongside (he admitted to me for the first time following last year’s AITAF show) some amount of guilt towards the friends who were sent and lost their lives. My Dad has never embraced the veteran identity - he felt neither a right nor an affinity to it - and a military settings isn’t one I ever pictured myself feeling comfortable in. And yet, a single AITAF performance was enough to achieve their goal in my heart of building bridges and highlighting commonalities between military and civilian spheres. The military identify is multifaceted, and attending last year’s performance was enough for my Dad to unlock some new acceptance or understanding of that aspect of his own identity. It seemed to let him think of that period in his life in ways beyond antipathy or guilt. It was at least enough for him to open up and speak more candidly to me about his experience than ever before. 

This year’s Q&A was moving, deeply personal, and at times painful. And yet there was truly no better showcase for how a shared experience of theatre can serve to knock down all barriers that might have existed between people when they entered that theatre only hours before.

Highlights:

A man who recently ended his service spoke about how much he connected to the character of Walter Lee in the play. Like Walter, he too feels restless and unfulfilled in his (civilian) job, always feeling like he should be striking out for something more meaningful, something bigger, and never feeling right in his current place. For the audience member, this resonated with his own struggle to find meaning in his civilian life as he navigates the transition of leaving the military. This moved the actor who played Walter Lee (Colman Domingo, who had been TERRIFIC - I mean full-on crying several times throughout the reading) to speak about the personal inspirations and experiences he brought to embodying the character for this setting. Namely, trying to support his veteran older brother’s struggle with drug addiction. As Colman spoke candidly about how the experience with his brother had seeped into his performance, at least two other cast members dabbed tears from their eyes.

The most emotionally difficult and yet moving moment shared throughout the whole theater. A man in the balcony asked for advice on finishing a play that he began writing as a means of trying to process and work through unresolved trauma he experienced in combat zones while deployed. He explained with something of a despairing tremble in his voice that he’s reached a point where he feels emotionally blocked - where confronting the memories of comrades dying in his arms simply freezes him and he can’t seem to move any further. The theater was silent as he had to pause speaking for a moment, audibly overcome for a moment in the effort of speaking and sharing this aloud. Since the speaker was up in the balcony too far back for me to see, I was watching the cast and AITAF team on stage. Being so close, I thought I saw something visibly pass over Adam’s face. Later that evening, the cousin I just reconnected with at this event was the one to bring it up unprompted when she asked, “Did you see his eyes when the man was talking about his struggle to write?” So yes, it’s confirmed, I wasn’t imagining that Adam visibly choked up for a moment listening to this audience member. After the commenter was able to finish speaking, a few cast members responded. Adam, after being silent for most of the Q&A, then held his hand out for a mic and spoke up, telling the audience member something like, “In a way, you’re already doing it. You’re already writing. You’re already processing. I don’t think anyone knows what they’re setting out to write or how it will take shape until they do. But you’re already doing the hardest part.” Then, in a touching moment of connection, another audience member spoke up about a veteran writing group he’s involved with whose members seek to do exactly the same thing. The safe space the questioner was so dearly seeking did, in fact, already exist, and the people were there in that theatre to help guide him towards it. 

I didn’t think anything could have equaled my experience at AITAF’s 10th Anniversary show last year - and yet, last night was every bit as powerful of a performance, followed by a Q&A discussion in which audience members bared revelatory vulnerabilities and saw their own struggles through the eyes of others. My group went to a late dinner afterwards, where we continued discussing the performance, the dialogues thereafter, AITAF’s work in general, and (my favorite) gendered attitudes and embedded patriarchal norms within military settings and how AITAF challenges these norms even while being forced to work within them. 

It was an evening of connections of all types - between people, experiences, and insights. I can’t laud AITAF enough for enabling such valuable and productive exchange, and I hope to experience much more of their work in the future.

(And if performed with a showcase or even a side of Adam, that would be even better! <3)

Thanks so much for reading! : ))

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Part I: The Crown Equerry | Part II: An Accidental Queen | Part III: Just Claire | Part IV: Foal | Part V: A Deal | Part VI: Vibrations|Part VII: Magnolias| Part VIII: Schoolmates | Part IX: A Queen’s Speech | Part X: Rare | Part XI: Watched | Part XII: A Day’s Anticipation | Part XIII: The Location | Part XV: Motorcycle | Part XV: Cabin

I have been so touched by your guys’ reaction to this story. These two are a departure from my usual take on Jamie and Claire, but I love them all the same.  Thanks for sticking with me and for sharing your love of them. 👑💜

small bit of ;nsfw beneath the cut

Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.) Part XVI: Market

Claire hopped from foot to foot at the edge of a murky puddle as Jamie attempted to strong arm the shed door into sliding open.  His abashed declaration that he did not have an umbrella, bent at the waist in the front hall closet, led them to become creators together.  On the front porch, they tented a blanket over their heads before darting across the front lawn to the shed. It had been a completely ineffectual attempt to stay dry.  Laughing, he had fixed the blanket in her small fists before braving the rain to fight the door. It protested viciously before finally relenting with a groan.  Giving him a firm pat on the bottom, Claire slipped into the shed and groped along the wall for a light switch.  When she found it, the room sizzled to life beneath a yellow glow, revealing a seafoam green pickup with a chrome grill.

“It’s no’ much,” Jamie opined, rising to the door’s stubbornness with his own and pushing it the rest of the way open. “Pre-war, a bit rusty, but dependable. It should have a full tank and working heat.  Ye’d no’ thank me for a motorcycle ride in this weather.”

“It’s perfect.”  

He made a responsive Scottish noise of disbelief, followed her gaze to his father’s truck, and dried his hands on his trousers.  

“I mean it.  It’s perfect.”  

She ran a finger along the hood of the pickup, trying to remember the last time she had been alone in a car with a man.

Never.  

Drivers.  Staff.  Never even with Lamb or her father.

The answer was that the Queen had never been alone in a car with a man. 

And quite suddenly all she could think of was being Claire alone with Jamie.  In another life, her real life, there was always someone else there. Breathing and occupying her space.  Someone waiting to dote on the Queen. To select a wardrobe and costume her for events in gowns or well-tailored skirt suits. To whisper the names of politicians in her ear as she feigned a detached recognition of parades unremarkable faces. To select the courses of her meals for her, to serve them on historied porcelain and in cut crystal.  

She wanted to tell Fraser that it had been an entire weekend of firsts, but the notion seemed soppy and overly sentimental.  So she kept it tucked away in her mind’s file folder, where she was going to keep the memories of this weekend.

The first morning waking up to his eyes studying her, hand hovering over her cheek. Realizing what his first arousal of the day looked like.  (Hazy blue, pouting lips, sluggish fingers.)  The first shower with a man, slippery hands and soft noises becoming heavy in billows of steam.  (His arms around her. The fact that he did not bother to ask if she needed the water hotter, just knowing and turning the hot tap full on.) The first weekend afternoon with a lover –– no umbrella, pouring rain, a pickup truck, the hastily constructed grocery list of two people who rarely were called upon to make their own meals.  Though chilled to the bone by the rain, the soft, warm domesticity of a weekend in a kitchen had her floating. (The negotiation of a pair over what was for breakfast, the touch on a lower back when passing utensils from a drawer to a hand.)  

Though Claire lived a life defined by the constancy of others’ presence, this was the first stretch of days through which she had not felt lonely in a terribly long time.

Rather than divulging all of these firsts, she commented instead that he looked to be soaked to the bone.  He smirked, commenting that he was in good company.  

He opened the door for her, gave an exaggerated bow, and earned one of the laughs that sounded so sweet to him.  The ones that overwhelmed her small frame –– lifted her shoulders, tipped her head, made her touch her belly as though there were something there to contain, fighting for release. The laugh made her eyes go iridescent –– the color of approaching autumn and a dusky moment of silence before a thunderstorm, the burnt leaves escaping a bonfire to crawl over velvety night to meet sky.

He rounded the front of the pickup, slipped into the driver’s seat, and let the keys drop into his palm from their hiding spot in the sun visor.  With a silent prayer on his moving lips and a turn of the key, the truck roared to life.  

“Will everyone in town know who you are?” she asked quietly, suddenly a little self conscious despite her bravado in declaring her ordinariness the night before.  She squeezed the rainwater from her dress, giving him an apologetic smile as it dribbled onto the floorboard.  “I mean, if they know you, they’ll know I’m not your wife.  Where you work.”

“No.”  His voice was firm, sure, but she asked again.  Are you sure?  I mean, really sure?  Angling his body, he looked at her, really studied her.  She was nervous.  It glowed through her usual formality.  Became apparent in cider, whisky, and firelight. She was stanzas of poetry begging to be written in his hand.  “I’ve no’ been to this town since I was a lad.  I was a tall, skinny thing wi’ spots enough to make a firehouse dog jealous.”

“I am having great trouble picturing that.”

“Believe it,” he hummed as he put a hand on her knee, rubbed a finger across the small, silver scar that he had identified there earlier that morning.  (“Three stitches.  Breaking out of the girls’ dormitories after curfew with a few other girls.  I was fifteen.  I thought Lamb would kill me, but he laughed.”)  She shivered. “Do ye want to go back inside?”

“No, I––”

“––to warm up?  I can go to the market––”

––she shook her head, licked her lips––

“––just pop in quick for a few things.  Come back.  It’s twenty minutes there, another twenty back.”

Though her dress had become a plaster cast over her thighs and the peaks of her breasts, he had gravely misinterpreted the shiver.  It was his familiarity that made her tremble, not nervousness. It was the sensation that they were meant to be together.

“Turn the vents on full blast.”  She shook her head again, this time almost violently.  “I’ll be better than fine.”

Unconvinced, he shrugged, turned up the heat, and pulled out of the shed.  

In the twenty minute ride to town, Claire learned a lot about Fraser.  He could not sing, hum, nor whistle. He could not find the rhythm in a song or carry a tune in a bucket. When he tried to wink at her, it was such a garish contortion of his usually beautiful features that she collapsed backwards into the seat in a fit of giggles. The laughter made the very core of her body ache.   He set his jaw every time that he slowed to a rolling stop, carefully looked both ways, and held his breath before he again accelerated.  He draped an arm across the seat behind her as he backed into a parking spot as he finished off a story about the family dog giving birth behind the Christmas tree one year.

In the overbright, lightly populated market, Jamie learned that common things awed the Queen of England.  So common, that Jamie imagined that shopping with her was a lot like what it would be like to shop with a readily impressed child.

Tinned peaches. (“My father loved them with cottage cheese; he ate them for dessert, and I haven’t had them in years,” she explained as she pulled three cans off of a shelf in her small hands, spilling them into the trolley.)  Icebox cookies speckled with candied cherries and nuts. (“I could eat a thousand,” she declared with a guilty look and an easy tilt of her head.)  A butcher’s case stuffed with various cuts of meat, the front lined with vibrant green paper grass and the trays sitting on lacy paper doilies. (Her fingers pressed against the glass as she turned to look at Jamie over her shoulder, face cracked apart in a smile. “A pork chop supper? It’s all I know how to cook that’s at all special.  It was La-” she paused, offering a smile at the butcher who was taking a bit too much of an interest in his delighted patron. “It was my uncle’s favorite.”)

She became wistful as they meandered down an aisle of baking supplies.  “My mum had the best hand at baking,” she declared, voice pitched low.  He pushed the trolley, bent forward at the waist, resting his weight on the handle and watching her.

“Mine, too. Hated it, but she was the best.”  

Her fingers traced the front of heavy bags of sugar and flour, the scarf in her ponytail swishing with each step.  “I was too young to remember much of it.  But cakes and biscuits, fudge at the holidays.  We had our own house… still Crown property, but not… well, not anything like....”

She faded away.  The quiet, rubbery click of her stacked heels stopped, and her wandering fingers suspended just over a can of sweetened condensed milk.

He took another step, pushed the cart out ahead of her, surveyed the aisle.  

Alone.

“Jamie, I do not know what to say. I am afraid that I am a little sentimental for some reason. I have not been in a market in years.  I remember my mum boiling cans of this.”  She studied the label, brows furrowed. “It sort of turns to a caramel.”

He closed the distance, took a can from the shelf.  “Let’s give it a try.”

This time, she was the one to survey the aisle, then went to her tiptoes and placed the most delicate of kisses on his lips. “You aren’t the least bit worried that I’ll burn down your cabin?”

Grimacing in mock confusion, he shook his head.  “No. Ye’re goin’ to do this over a campfire in the back.  Really roughing it.  I willna let ye near the stove after the mess ye made of those sausages yesterday.”

Laughing, she kissed him again.  When they got home, something inside Jamie roared to life and easily became wild for her. After braving the rain from the shed back to the cabin, her dress had become a second skin. It made her into a statue. An exceptional Bernini, the sensual weight of her limbs barely contained by fabric draped and carved of marble. The curls that had been so warm and dry in his bed and beneath his fingers only hours earlier were cemented against her cheeks, coiling around her throat, charting a perfect map for his mouth to follow.  With the bags tipped over, spilling contents onto the floor, he came up behind her and drew her backwards, followed that map, went off course, and poured into her all of the need that dwelled inside of him.

They made love there in the entryway, her body molding over the back of the couch and his hand on her spine.  He wrapped her in a flannel shirt after, kissed the tip of her nose.  In the late afternoon, she made her pork chops, boiled potatoes, and a green salad as he poured them each a drink.  Afterwards, they had fallen back into bed together. Her tongue was earthy with sage and whisky, her lips swollen and her mouth emitting tender sounds.  He tasted her beneath the hem of the flannel, her thighs clamped around his ears.  She returned the favor with a gusto that made him gnaw a bite mark over his knuckle.  

They talked for hours until the slow rise and fall of his eyelids fell, throwing his words into a slowed stupor that eventually stopped.

The rain did not abate overnight.

Claire listened to the landing of every drop, her touch molded to muscle (chest, bicep) and his face tucked close to the curve of her throat.

She did not sleep.

In the earliest part of morning, he woke slowly, eyes still sleepy.

“Hi there,” she whispered, pushing a curl back from his forehead.  Bees buzzed in her mind.  A thousand (a million) thoughts came to life, knocking against the edges of the hive. With an exhaled “hmmmmm” deep from his belly, his eyelids drifted closed again.  “Are you going back to sleep?”

“I’ll no’ ever sleep again now that I ken ye’re awake,” he slurred into the pillow.

His breathing slowed and she gave him a gentle jab in the ribs. “Sleepy little liar.”

“I’m just resting my eyes, Sassenach” he mumbled, cracking one eye and looking up and down her thin form.  “Did ye have something in mind? To keep me awake?”

“Once more,” Claire whispered, bringing a knee over his hips and settling against him.  “Before we go.”

Once more.  Before we go.

He hadn’t the heart to tell her that he had planned on having her at least twice before they packed up, but the surprise of waking to her wanting him was like Christmas morning and his birthday all at once.  

The curtain of her curls that fell forward from her top of her head painted a shadow across her face in the waning moonlight.  Tightness in his belly made him shift just slightly beneath the slight weight of her.  The naked parts of her radiated wet heat through the thin cotton of his briefs.  He reached for the buttons on the flannel shirt (he would pack it and bring it home; he would not wash it, it smelled like her now), but she shook her head and pushed away his fingers.  She made a meal of undressing –– a slow, seductive disrobing.  The last button undone, the fabric fell open and exposed nothing more than the midline of her torso.

A roving hand slipped into the back of his shirt to find her lower back, urging her forward.

“I need you inside of me.”  

He grunted quietly in response as she slipped the band of his briefs over his hips, her fingers struggling between the sheets and his bottom to free him completely.

“Insatiable, are ye, lass?”  Sleepiness made his voice syrupy and his accent thick, but his eyes.  Those glowed blue in the dark, awake and sparkling as though somehow lit from within.  She smiled, through the uncomfortable thought that had roused her (going home) and led her to straddle him (not having him there like this), still dwelled at the front of her mind.  

“I am.  Insatiable.”  For you.  For this.  For us.  

“I can see right into yer mind, Claire.”  A single hand on the center of his chest as she rolled her hips along the length of him, her throat creaky as she swallowed.  

‘Can you?’ she thought. ‘Everything changes at first light. Sunday morning. This life in this cabin isn’t real.’

He guided her body so he could feel her (exquisite, slick, and soft; clearly having been ready long before he woke), and found the ache of his horrible yearning morph into a painful need.

“Is that so?”  

“Aye,” he said evenly, eyes focused on hers as he surged into her. She worried what he could see on her face as they joined and she bowed herself forward, burying her face where his shoulder met his throat.  On top like this, she was almost too full with him, yet needed more.  Her hesitancy made his hips lift, pressing them even closer.  

“Christ,”  she hissed as she ground back down over him, wondering if he could see the words at the back of her mouth or if he saw only images flashing across her brain.

All of their waiting.  

Their nights with Brimstone and Donas.  Their thinly-veiled innuendos dropped easily for the other to pick up from horseback.  The separations at the end of the night that ached, long glances as steady fingers readied the horses for a night of rest, and incidental touches that gathered a multitude of meanings like arms full of wildflowers.

“Okay?” he asked, one hand on her waist and another reaching for her cheek when she pulled back up, straight, and started to move.  

She relocated his hand from her face to her breast, and moved against him slowly.  “Perfect.”

All of their hesitancy.  

The day he stood before her in the stables and told her in no uncertain terms that he did not know if he could wait for her.  When he laid bare his conclusion that what they were doing was wrong as long as she had promised herself to another man.  For her part, unfaithfulness to another seemed to be only a petty crime then.  To be unfaithful to another, just so she could know Fraser in all that he was.  To wear an affair like a second skin for a summer (the season that she said they could use to sate their hunger for one another before she married), and then to wear it from her wedding day onwards forevermore as a crown of thorns.  

Her name fell from his lips, pleas to the God on whose name she was Queen, and hisses of profanity followed.

(Claire.  Oh God.  Oh fuck.)

She fell forward again.  This time into his mouth, breasts crushing against his chest as she kissed him.  He rolled them, taking her wrists and pinning them above her head as he took from her the sensations she had withheld. Crying out beneath him (last name first, first name last –– Fraser, then Jamie), she let her hands go slack, cinched her eyes shut.  She had thought very little of what would happen if she had him without an expiration date occasioned by a marriage.  He released her wrists, kissed her, tucked a hand between their bodies, and slowed his hips as she finished.  

Pulsing. Gasping.  Weeping.  Finally.

Her fingers found his face, held it as his universe burst moments later.  

Spent, he laid heavy over her, marveling that he could feel her fingertips travel the length of his spine.  Feeling remained there when he had convinced himself long before that the mangled, puckered flesh was beyond sensation.  Goosebumps broke out along his forearms and he nuzzled his face closer to her.

“What are you thinking?” she asked eventually before placing a single kiss in the space between his clavicles.

“That ye’re no’ ever so beautiful than ye are when ye’ve been loved.”  She felt so small against his chest, his hand cupping a single buttock.  “Tell me what is in that curly heid of yers.  I ken it’s sittin’ somewhere far, far from here.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, adjusting.  “I said on Friday that I did not want this to end.  Now…”

When her voice trailed away and her face dipped, he took her gently by the chin.  He finished for her.  “Now it is.”

“Exactly.”  

She could have washed her face in a new round of tears at the way that his lips quirked into a half-smile.  “Och, weel, we’ll be back.”

“But until then… how?”  

Loving him seemed like a felony.  Subjecting him to her life.  The flash bulbs.  The adulteration of this place, the quietness of the cabin and the sleepiness of the town that they had visited. The expectations that would be foisted upon him.  She had little doubt that he would take it all for her.  That he did love her, but the fact that this weekend was not an infinity rattled her.

He swiped away the line of tears accumulating at her lower lashline.  “Ye’re thinking too far ahead, Claire.  Wondering if this can work. How it can work.”  

She just hummed in response, closing her eyes.  “Sassenach.  What does it mean?”

At this, he snorted, kissed the tip of her nose.  “An English person.  An outlander.”

Seemed right to her.

[rkjulia]

MGA: SEASON FIVE, ‘19! episode zero ⇢ the audition part two: dancing, eclipse’s chase me ( 0:14 - 1:14 )

with her measurements taken, the staff members are quick to usher kokoro onwards, upwards. it’s quickly becoming apparent to her that this whole audition thing is much bigger than she had anticipated. never before had kokoro seen herself getting involved in an audition of such a large scale and besides, this was no ordinary company audition. this was a program aired on national television. heck, it might even make it’s way to japan. kokoro knew that it would be plastered all over the internet. the thought of being apart of something so large in scale makes her uneasy. she heads on upstairs as directed, following others who had their measurements taken. she is overwhelmed with the amount of korean she is hearing. it’s like school, just worse.

kokoro finds herself in a practice room that has clearly been labelled out the front. dance. that is what kokoro had put herself down as on her audition application, more so her strongest skill. she felt more confident in her dancing abilities than her singing abilities and if she only had to prep for one skill then dancing might be the best way to go. it’s now as kokoro waits for what comes next that she understands why the broadcasting company had chosen schools to host the auditions; they had all of these facilities at their very fingertips. kokoro’s very own high school, hanlim, had been chosen to host these special auditions. she’s starting to think it’s a shame she couldn’t be there. at least at her own school she might have a teensy bit more luck. 

the people around her, in this practice room; they too must be dancers. kokoro looks out of place amongst them. there seems to be a generous blend of professionals and people who aren’t the best at dancing, but still want to give it a go. kokoro on the other hand, isn’t exactly sure where she fits on that spectrum. she keeps to herself, running over the song in her head, along with the choreography that goes with it. kokoro keeps reminding herself that she’ll have one minute. only one minute to try and make herself stand out amongst hundreds, maybe even thousands of other hopeful contestants. she looks down at the handwritten name tag, her name; kato kokoro. it’s at that moment that she hears her own name being called from across the room. the voice is stern and serious and kokoro finds people’s eyes on her. as if her own name wasn’t a dead giveaway that she wasn’t from this part of town, nor this country at all. she smiles as she gets to her feet, making her way over to the exit where the staff member waits patiently for her.

she finds herself waiting outside of a classroom where she’s to face a panel of judges. there, she will perform and they then determine her fate in this whirlwind of an adventure. kokoro knocks politely and enters when she’s been given the green light to do so, walking into the rather empty classroom, void of desks and other classroom necessities. it’s been set up rather appropriate for the audition process, so she thinks. she stands in the center of the room, facing a small panel of judges. her hands are laced behind her back, fingers intertwined. now would not be a good time to butcher her self-introduction, but thankfully kokoro has put this very sentence to practice for several months now. she’s become well acquainted with the introductory phrase. kokoro drops into a polite, ninety degree bow, her long black hair cascading over her shoulders. she stands upright and begins her introduction. “hello. my name is kato kokoro.” she begins, clearly. her voice doesn’t break or waver. so far, so good. “i am seventeen years old and i am from tokyo, japan.” once again, another piece of success. she’s thankfully rehearsed the third part of this speech more than thirty times over in the bathroom mirror for the past week or so. “today i will be dancing to eclipse’s chase me.” the judges take their notes before one gives kokoro a brief head nod, signifying her to get into starting position. 

kokoro had stumbled across this song and group by total accident. apart from k.arma, kokoro didn’t really know all too much about the newer generation of idol groups. she was familiar with the older generations, like big star, global icon and chichi but newer names, even the likes of her recent favourites k.arma, were foreign to her. whilst intensely browsing the internet one night, on the hunt for dance routines and songs she could possibly do for her audition, kokoro stumbled across a girl group by the name of eclipse. they were from a company named kt entertainment; the same company which houses chichi. kokoro having known and experienced chichi’s music, even liking some of it, was totally curious. after clicking on the music video for chase me, kokoro was hooked. the song had heavy rock influences, very reminiscent of a lot of japanese pop and rock music. it sounded like stuff her dad use to play on his guitar when he was still well and able to. the choreography was powerful and charismatic and although totally unlike anything kokoro had ever done, she was tempted to learn the routine and give the song a go for her big audition.

given only a minute, kokoro has had to begin her routine in the first few seconds of the song, it was the only way she could go about performing chase me without screwing up the routine and ending on a weird note, mid move. the song begins, the sound of sweet vocals filling the room around kokoro and the judges. her usual bubbly, smiley persona is replaced, tucked away for safe keeping and is replaced with a much more cool, charismatic persona. the movements are both feminine and sharp, requiring quick, fluid movements. she has to be quick on her feet. the song calls for a lot of hair flipping and arm flailing, kokoro notices that much. the first verse of chase me is soft, as is the second, but it is quick to pick up as the song heads into the first chorus, with the movements of the routine matching the tempo and the sound of the song. she picks up on the opportunity to move as the members of eclipse do in their performances, as an effort to keep the judges eyes moving, following her. chasing her, perhaps? 

kokoro had watched one of eclipse’s other music videos, love whisper and the juxtaposition was so great, it had kokoro flawed. love whisper was definitely more up kokoro’s alley than chase me was; both the sound and the feel of the song and it’s choreography would be something very typical of kokoro, something she would willingly learn and perform. chase me, however had been a challenge, not only for herself but judges and any other onlookers. can she pull off an edgy, more girl crush concept or is she solely stuck in the land of bubblegum pop and all things super sweet? the chorus of chase is probably kokoro’s favourite part of the routine, soft vocals switched out for something much more powerful and demanding. kokoro doesn’t dance heavy footed, in fact her movements are very light and sharp. she reflects back to her classes that she took in japan. her father had been insistent that she stick with it if she liked it so much. and she did.

she is relieved she left majority of her hair out for today’s audition, it doesn’t end up hindering kokoro as much as one would believe. in fact, it looks rather cool, flying around her as she whips her head about. of course though, she couldn’t stray too far from her classic twin tails, vying for a half up, half down hair-do, with a red ribbon in her hair matching the colour of her outfit. red. the minute feels like it goes on for an eternity, maybe kokoro has been dancing longer than she was supposed to. no. they would of stopped her by now, for sure. the chorus heads for the ending straight, and kokoro finds herself racing to the finish line. make these last few seconds count. it’s only natural that kokoro’s signature bright smile and accompanying eye smile make their special appearance at the nearing end of her audition. as apart of the choreography, kokoro reaches for her small ponytail, the up-do portion of the half-up, half down thing she had going on, holding it up in the hair before quickly pulling it down, around her. swift and sharp. kokoro spins and takes a note from the end of the performances she had watched, drilling each and every detail into her head; she plants her hands on hips and pivots them as the song cuts off. her minute is up. 

kokoro hadn’t been entirely sure what followed. was she to expect some form of feedback, here and now? she is then thanked for her performance, to which kokoro bows once again, politely thanking the judges for their time. she’s a teensy bit red in the face, she feels warm. she can well, feel it. brushing her hair back, out of her face, kokoro quickly shuffles over to the door and slips out of the classroom, gently closing the door behind her. to her surprise, she’s not given a mere minute to process the happenings of the past minute. kokoro finds herself quickly whisked away once more by another staff member. turns out that they need kokoro elsewhere. but for what exactly? she smiles and abides by their direction. as she moves on, she takes her time to then process what had actually just gone on in that classroom. she can barely fathom any words to express her excitement; pure, unfiltered excitement. even if nothing became of this, at least she would have one hell of a memory to look back. this was an experience of a lifetime.

[the-trash-elf]

Asylum

“See you around, Kat..”

The words were given in parting as she left the building she had been so housed in. The woman’s steps a bit spaced and staggered to compensate for the dizziness yet affecting her balance. It took a moment for her to shift, bracing on a lamp post merciful enough to be her regarding companion.

Her gaze turned up to peer back. She knew what that building was. Hell, everyone in the city did. The SI:7 HQ squatted firmly on the hillside, overlooking the span of Old Town like a hawk awaiting the proper prey. Though her visit had spared her life, she felt unease being so close to that place.

Several steps more found her beyond the barrack walls, and as she pattered through the streets her pace swiftly took up to as brisk a walk as she were able to muster. A turn right, a turn left, avoiding the places the gangs of the town liked to press their petty trades. And soon, she found herself before the door she intended.

Her body slammed into the front door proper, lifting her arm up to pound twice. Eternity passed. What if she were not present at home? Fist lifted to rap on the door twice more. The nerves in her gut stirred with the resonant pain to make her fear the potential she was denied haven. And that is when the door unlatched and swung in.

The blonde lass peered the elf over, blinking out the sleep from her eyes before muttering.

“Allie, the fel happened?” She immediately shifted, sweeping up under the elf’s arm and taking her weight off as the two made way inside. The door was closed anterior, the butcher sliding the latch in place before the pair moved through the shop and toward the stairs that carried them to Kenny’s apartment above.

“Got into a scrap, same as ever. This one with a two ton goat who didn’t like being called a goat..” The two entered Kenny’s apartment, walking past the little dining and kitchen area and down the hallway to the back that held to the massive bed still tossed asunder with sheets. The elf was set to the blankets, gratefully nodding her silent appreciations to Kenny.

“Well you’re safe here.. want me to call the Doctor?” The butcher moved to set a few blankets over the battered elf, receiving no protest to the act.

“Nah.. she’ll just get weird.. I’ll be fine just.. need a place to lay off the grid a few days..” The elf replied in a pained tone.

Kenny nodded to Allie’s request, rising up to walk the short distance to the studio apartment’s kitchen area. She fixed a glass of water before returning to Allie’s side and aiding her in drinking the glass down.

“Thanks, Ken.. fuckin A I nev-”

“Don’t gotta excuse it Allie.. S’what we do for each other.” Kenny cut the elf off mid speech, knowing her well enough to know she would try and play off the needed help. Kenny scooted a bit away, the bed large enough to fit five comfortably thus leaving plenty of room for two. Laying back, she leaned over to cut the lantern and allow the only illumination to be the moonlight that fell through the open window.

No goodnights. No words shared further. They both were content to just let it be, and fall into a sleep calm for one, and pained for the other.

But at least.. she was safe for now..

Mentions: @kat-hawke @fate-entwined

[figchn]

CHAPTER 3

Back at Your Own Backyard  AGAIN

continued from Chapter 2

It was dusk when Puri woke up. The buzzing of the cicadas outside her window had grown into a chorus, and the light of the late afternoon cast on the room a dull blue glow. An overwhelming sense of melancholy washed over the room, and she found the need to stretch her stiff joints until her toes reached the frayed edges of the straw mat she had been lying on. 

Jumping to her feet, she hurried out the backdoor in hopes of catching the last rays of daylight.  Puri stood still as her eyes adjusted to the glow of the late sun shining on the distant fields. A deep voice jolted her fully awake.

 “Oh, you’ve gotten up.”

Her father Hernando noticed her from a bench under the mango tree where he sat smoking with one leg up. He was a farmer like most men in their town. The hours of labor under the sun showed on the deep tan of his face and the fine lines that already never quite left his face. His eyes drooped around their corners which gave his otherwise tough face a touch of something gentle. Puri thought he looked sadder and darker than usual today.

Still feeling groggy, she could only nod back.

“Are you sure you’re fine? Do you need me to take you to the doctor?”

“No. I’m fine now. I just feel strange waking up at home,” she looked around. “Where’s grandma by the way?”

“She went out to buy some more food after I got home. We weren’t expecting you so early in the week to be honest. And what do you know? You come back here unconscious, wet and muddy. Good thing you didn’t travel home from Manila alone this time and that my mother was home when you arrived.”

Puri almost corrected him but caught her tongue in time. The happenings of that morning still seemed unreal and she was convinced for some moments that she had dreamt it all up.

“Your grandmother told me this expensively dressed fellow brought you in. Say, you haven’t been around strange men in the capital, have you?”, he said slowly.

She remembered Milyong’s lanky figure dressed in his all black outfit that was twenty years out of fashion.

“Oh, that boy! He was just some understudy from mother’s acting troupe.”, said Puri almost too loudly. “She felt bad for not being able to go home with me so she asked him to accompany me.”

She thanked the dark for hiding her face that now felt a little flushed.

“You know how actors are. They’re all a bit ...odd.”

“I can’t argue with that,” he laughed, and then more softly, “How is your mother by the way?”  

“She’s doing alright,” Puri found herself lying again.

The truth was she had not seen her mother Pacencia in months. They lived in different districts of the capital which was not all too big of a city but both had been very busy. Puri had focused on her “fashion school” studies near the suburbs where she also boarded while her mother had been living her life in the downtown entertainment district. They had only met during the whole semester once a month at most when pacing would drop by the boarding house and treat Puri to lunch.

Her mother had been the village beauty when she was younger and had basked in the attention of strangers. Her grandmother, a vendor at the local market, saw this as an opportunity and took her mother to the Manila sarsuwela as soon as she had finished elementary school. There, it seemed like her road to stardom was set, in a few years, but then she had Puri with her hometown sweetheart.

Puri’s father thought it would be happily ever after when they married at nineteen, but after a few years, her mother grew restless at home. Despite all the ill-gossip she knew it would bring and did bring her way, her mother returned to the stage. Her father had been against it, at first, but he knew Pacing well, and did not try to stop her especially after her first visit home with one of her bright smiles he had last seen when Puri was born.

Pacencia’s career did not recover from the long absence. Younger talents easily filled the niche etc etc and she found herself taking smaller and smaller roles until she started spending more time backstage where she  took interest on and eventually learned makeup. To this craft, she threw herself with much gusto too and she found herself busy again with the rise of bodabil shows. Through all this, she would diligently send part of her salary back home, and eventually, too, the nosy neighbors stopped gossiping about Pacing and started pitying her husband instead who was making less than her.

Puri would often wonder  when she was younger how her mother’s life could have been if she hadn’t been conceived so early. On some days, she wished she had at least inherited all her mother’s looks so she could have had a chance at being an actress and fulfilling her dreams by proxy. But Puri’s face, although small like her mother’s, did not have the same dainty features and instead took after the hardness of her father’s.

“Father, are you crying again?”

Puri walked over and sat beside Hernando who put up his forearm clumsily against his face to hide his tears.

“It’s my house and I can do what I want”, he mumbled. “I know she’s busy and I shouldn’t complain but I just miss her so much.”

“And Mother misses you too”

“It’s hard to feel that shes does sometimes when she barely even writes anymore.” 

“Oh, Father, don’t say that.” Puri could do nothing but awkwardly pat her father’s back. She did not like to think about it either and put it into words but she felt the same way too more frequently than she would like to admit.

“Looks like life is treating her kindly with the suitcase full of clothes she sent back with you. They all look really expensive.”

She had almost forgotten about the suitcase Faustina had given her. Puri excused herself and ran over to the back of the house where she found the clothes soaking in a basin. Seeing that they had not been muddied at all, she let out a sigh of relief.

After breakfast the next day, Puri set out to hang the clothes right away.  There were five Western style dress and two whole sets of terno in all and she could see they were of  good quality. Besides the cuts of the dresses which now looked outdated by a few years, one could hardly tell they were hand-me-downs. The colors had not faded at all and Puri suspected they had not been used all that much.

She briefly considered returning them, but thought that returning a gift would probably be seen as rude. They also seemed too small for Faustina who was some inches taller, but then all of them fit her own frame awkwardly, and that, of course, would simply not do. Puri, struck with inspiration, embroiled in her new project and shut herself in the house with her sewing machine for the whole week. By the end of it, the dresses not only fit her perfectly but looked flashier than ever with her added embellishments.

That Sunday, she decided to wear one of her new alterations. The dress was a deep emerald green shade to which she had sewn on some beadwork and a black fringed overskirt she had cut out off one of the other dresses. After brushing off her grandmother’s uninvited comments about her get-up, Puri smiled satisfied at the wardrobe mirror as she watched the dress twirl with her. 

The whole family ended up making it to the town church just in time and so had to stay standing at the back. Hernando felt a bit grateful for this because he found the dress a bit too much for Mass like Grandma did even if he would never admit it to his daughter.

When the service was over, Puri stayed by the doorway while her father completed his weekly rosary which Puri could only guess was for her mother’s return home. It was when the crowd exiting the building had thinned out that she spotted the Fajardo siblings leaving the pew that probably bore their family name. Overcome with a sense of guilt over the perfectly good dresses she had cut up and pasted together like a collage, Puri slowly turned her head, and then her body, to face the blank wall behind her. Too late -- Faustina had already caught her eye and she could hear the click-clack of her heels as she headed towards her direction.

Puri trembled in fear.

“Puri, is that you, dear?”, chirped Faustina.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“And is that ...one of the dresses I gave you the other day?”

Puri turned around to offer her sincerest apologies for butchering them, but was cut off before she could even blurt out a single word.

“What a genius idea! It’s not really something I’d pick out to wear on a Sunday myself but those two dresses together look fabulous. Why, I would’ve never guessed. Say, did you do it yourself?”

“I- yes. And thank you.”

Puri blushed at the compliment. 

“Oh fancy meeting you here”

Fabian had suddenly joined them and he looked exactly the same as when she had first seen him-- 70% legs dressed in all white. He smiled at them expectantly.

“So ....is she joining us for lunch at the Tayson house?”, he asked Faustina.

Puri was suddenly reminded of the existence of one Maximiliano Tayson. She still had not thanked him for bringing her in when she had passed out. And it made her curious, if not a little embarrassed, imagining how on earth he managed to do it with his lanky frame and sickly appearance.

“Could you believe Milyong still hasn’t recovered?”, asked Fabian whose permanent smile carried over to his speech.

“You mean he is”, Puri gulped as her mouth went dry, “....sick?”

“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about. That day we asked him to take you home, he caught a simple cold after getting a little, how do you say, wet, in the rain”, said Faustina.

“Yeah, that guy can be really clumsy. We didn’t ask because he gets cranky easily, you would know, but he looked like he slipped into some puddle because he came back with mud all over him. Good thing he was wearing black, eh?”, Fabian chuckled

“Er… yes… that’s what probably happened”, Puri faked a chuckle.

“I have to go now. Have a blessed Sunday ahead. And thank you for the dresses.” 

Puri, with her heart dropping and black tassels sashaying, strode  out the door of the church  where her father, kneeling in one of the back pews, remained contemplating the Third Glorious Mystery.

[laurent-ofvere]

BIRTHDAY FIC FOR BIRTHDAY MOD

@safetytank: “to help make up for the lack of party hardying ;n; here’s a bit from yon unfinished wedding fic set along the journey back to vere”

~

            “I’ve spoken to the remaining Councilors,” said Laurent after seating himself comfortably beside Damen, “who were more than willing to accept that what transpired in Ios should remain undisclosed in exchange for refraining from having them all executed for treason.”

            “Aside from Guion?”

            “Loyse and I have yet to come to an agreement.”

            It was a small concession, one that would buy Laurent no social or political advantages, but the small gesture of mercy towards the Councilor’s wife warmed Damen’s heart. “So all of Akielos will know what happened, but Vere won’t.”

            “There will be rumors, but merchant gossip has always been of a rather outlandish sort.” Laurent seemed content despite this, as he often did when able to control the situation to his liking. “Our transcript of events will only reveal as much as we wish it to.”

            Withholding information still struck Damen as a very Veretian manner of going about things. Even without his authorization, there were already scribes and bards throughout the south detailing the trial and all accompanying details in poetry and song. To suppress a vital part of history from the public for the sake of leveraging evidence seemed almost a selfish thing to do. “We’ll still be riding into Arles with half an army.”

            “Half an army and your honor guard. I don’t anticipate immediate retaliations in my uncle’s name, but it is a risk to leave you undefended in what many would still consider enemy territory.”

            Damen nodded, thinking of the soldiers he’d handpicked for the excursion.

            “I’ll send out invitations for the coronation as soon as we reach the palace. Until the summons are heeded, we’ll have time to prepare for first impressions.”

            “What did you have in mind?” Despite himself, Damen was excited. It felt as if it had been eons since they’d last put their heads together to drum up a plan against insurmountable odds, though this time they weren’t quite as insurmountable as they’d been before.

            “The necessary people will arrive within two weeks, three if they’re waylaid by inclement weather. They won’t recognize you right away, which we can use to our advantage.”

            Damen stared at him incredulously. “You can’t be serious, of course they’ll—”

            “They won’t,” Laurent interrupted, tucking a loose curl of yellow hair behind his ear. “They could barely tell that shipment of slaves apart, especially the ones of similar coloring. And you weren’t in view often enough to become a familiar sight.”

            An awkward silence settled between them, the unspoken because I imprisoned you for days at a time hanging over their held gazes.

            “You’re sure of this,” said Damen.

            “Absolutely.”

            “Because if-”

            “Damen.” Resolute blue eyes bored into his own. “I guarantee that four months after the fact, having glimpsed you at most thrice a week, every member of the court has already put your face entirely out of their memory. They have their own petty concerns to hold their attention, their prince’s foreign plaything will be nothing but a faintly-remembered talking point.”

            “Touars recognized me,” he pointed out.

            “Touars first met you at Marlas. Encountering him again on a battlefield gave his memory the context needed to identify you.”

            He didn’t want to beleaguer the subject further, despite all the rebuttals marshalling at the tip of his tongue. Laurent was steadfast in his convictions, and Damen had yet to experience a plan of his going too dangerously awry.

            “All right,” he conceded reluctantly, “they won’t recognize me.”

            “If it will calm your nerves, I also suggest you don one of your Akielon accents—”

            “What.”

            “—Since the slave they glanced at in passing spoke perfect Veretian,” Laurent finished. “Without a silk sheet and speaking with a disguised voice, there will be no connections made between Damen and Damianos but their shared country of origin.”

            He exhaled for a long few seconds, resisting the urge to rub his temples. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

            “It’s better to draw foes into traps of your own making than to risk them taking the initiative,” said Laurent. “Your pride will have to recover, but we still breathe at this moment because our enemies underestimated us.”

            Damen understood perfectly, even if the underhanded nature of their tactics didn’t sit well with the part of him that demanded honor and truth in all things. “How versed should I be in your language, then?” he asked, laying a thick coat of Akielon over Vere’s smoothened consonants and flowing sentences. If his language tutor were there to hear him butcher the pronunciation so, she’d have swatted him on the back of the head.

            Laurent stared at him with a delicate wrinkling of his nose. “That was appalling.”

            “You aren’t giving me much direction,” Damen continued, this time with substantially less accent flavoring his speech. “Have I been practicing these long years, or will you have to translate for me?”

            “Your skills have fallen into disuse, but you’ve been studying diligently ever since our introduction.”

            “Our introduction,” he repeated with a smile and only a dusting of Akielon to harden his syllables. “And how exactly did we tumble into each other’s good graces?”

            “With decidedly less tumbling than the truthful version.” Laurent did not comment on Damen’s snort of laughter. “Accounts of the trial are guaranteed to circulate, but perhaps Prince Damianos was not so much rescuing a lover as he was coming to the aid of a foreign dignitary unjustly sentenced to the execution block.”

            “All tales should have a dramatic rescue, certainly,” agreed Damen, “but this one shouldn’t gloss over the part where the rescued in turn becomes the rescuer.”

            “Nobody else was there in the baths,” Laurent said with a minute shrug of one shoulder. “It’s not so important whether the bastard king died by another’s hand or by his own.”

            “Of course it’s…” Damen trailed off, holding Laurent’s cool blue gaze. “You…don’t want it known you bested Kastor.”

            “The crown prince of Vere avoided patrolling the border for years and hasn’t much experience with combat in the field. Just as well, since his hypothetical murder of an acting ruler, however illegitimate the man’s claim to the throne, would spark much more of a political incident than if Akielos kept its regicide between members of the royal family.”

            He didn’t like it. He was already going to be greeted by fleeting whispers of Prince-killer the moment they set foot in Arles; he didn’t want to add King-slayer to his repertoire.

            “We will confirm nothing, of course,” Laurent added. “Such topics are not fit for polite conversation.”

            “And how polite is our conversation going to be?” Damen asked, despite the question settling into his gut like a lead weight. He’d grown accustomed to acting warmly towards Laurent during their time in Akielos. The thought of giving it up…

            “Damianos is, of course, idealistic and headstrong enough to mount a rescue fueled by a perceived injustice. However, he and the prince are still strangers, knowing each other for less than two months. Rumors will inevitably circulate of their being lovers, but the rest of the court will see no evidence in how they behave toward each other.”

            Damen’s heart splashed sadly into his stomach.

           It must have shown on his face, as Laurent paused a moment before placing one fine-boned hand over Damen’s closest knee. “Because of this,” he explained in the manner he did when revealing some complex piece of intellectual acrobatics, “the king has no particular attachment to the prince. If a noble who felt the prince unfit to rule wished to undermine his reign and ultimately depose him, that noble might follow in the Regent’s footsteps and seek outside assistance.”

            Damen’s eyes widened, the wheels in his brain spinning. “I’m…to act as bait for the traitors in your court?”

            “Should they approach you with propositions, express skeptical interest but agree to nothing until they’ve laid their plans before you,” Laurent instructed. “Any reasonable co-conspirator would familiarize himself with every step of their strategy.”

            “I can’t imagine the prince’s rescuer betraying him so easily,” Damen said softly, covering Laurent’s hand on his knee with his own. “It doesn’t fit his character at all.”

            “The treachery won’t be framed as such.” Laurent let his fingers slide into the spaces between Damen’s. “There will be efforts to convince the king that the prince would make a terrible ruler, that the country would be better off if a puppet candidate held the throne instead. Perhaps the prince need not be executed at all, but entrusted to the king as a prisoner while a more qualified leader takes his place.”

            Damen squeezed Laurent’s hand gently. “If the king is agreeing to all of this, I feel he’d specify that the prince not be harmed during any phase of the operation.”

            “The prince will not appreciate his benevolence,” said Laurent.

            “No,” Damen agreed, “he wouldn’t.”

            A long, quiet minute passed. Damen’s thumb rubbed idly at one of Laurent’s knuckles while he tried to think when they’d last had time to sit and hammer out a battle plan together. Outside, the sounds of general camp activity had quieted as their entourage bedded down for the night, leaving only crickets and the rustle of wind on silk to fill the air.

            Laurent did eventually break the silence. “Were you harmed, when they took you?”

            “Yes.” His capture in Ios was not something they had previously discussed. The memories still carried an unpleasant aftertaste. “They had to, otherwise I’d have fought through them to reach Kastor and demand he explain himself. After that, they settled for sleeping draughts.”

            Laurent stilled, clearly weighing options in the privacy of his own mind. Damen waited patiently, and was rewarded with Laurent shifting to lean his head lightly against one bared shoulder, his hair tickling Damen’s skin. To distract from the newness of the action, Laurent asked, “Were you afraid?”

            Damen kept himself very still, half-worried the slightest movement would dislodge Laurent and this tentative intimacy would be lost. “Afraid, confused. Disbelief…then just anger.”

            Laurent made a small acknowledging hum.

            “…You know,” Damen said after a time, “Anyone I take up on their offer of dethroning you is going to be offended when it turns out we’re to be married.”

            “That will be the card we reveal last,” said Laurent. He paused again, as if each successive degree of physical contact came at great personal risk. Damen wanted to reassure him that nothing between them would ever be a danger, but Laurent would only take such talk as coddling. The best he could do was to let Laurent come into such understanding on his own, which he achieved by turning to cautiously press the warmth of his body into Damen’s side. “I know you won’t enjoy playing at being strangers again.”

            “I’ll endure it,” he replied, looping an arm comfortably around Laurent’s waist. “There’s little I wouldn’t do to secure a future with you.”

            Though the lights from their various candles was too dim to see well, Laurent still turned to bury his face in whatever part of Damen he could reach. “We can visit at night,” he murmured, as if sharing a great secret. “I won’t go months without you for the sake of infallible discretion.”

            “I can be discreet,” Damen promised, reveling in their closeness. “Arles has plenty of window shutters.”

[drtanstravels]

When I finished up my last post we were spending our final night in The Hague. We had been there for a few days after staying a night in Amsterdam, Anna had given a presentation at the Vision 2017 conference that was so well received it left her shortlisted for a prize, and our eyes got a little bigger than our stomachs for her birthday.

Now we had a minor conundrum on our hands on the eve of leaving The Hague; our flight to Budapest, Hungary, was due to leave at 1:15pm on Thursday. If Anna won the New Generation Investigator award at Vision 2017, she would be required to accept her prize at around 11am. Anyone who has caught a plane before knows that you need to be at the airport approximately two hours before your flight so the plan was that if Anna won, she would go to the conference centre and give a very rushed acceptance speech while I dumped all of our luggage in an Uber and picked her up immediately after she finished speaking en route to the airport. In what turned out to be a bitter-sweet occurrence, Anna received an email on Wednesday evening telling her that she hadn’t won the prize, but she was more relieved than anything, as it made our Thursday a lot more stress-free and a little less hectic.

Thursday, June 29 Now that we had an unhurried approach to Budapest, we were able to get a decent night’s sleep, check out of our hotel, take a taxi to the airport and leisurely catch our flight. Anna slept the entire way on the plane while I read my book and two hours later we were in Budapest, a city we knew next to nothing about. Fortunately wikipedia can help me out there and some of the details might surprise you:

Budapest is the capital and most populous city of Hungary and one of the largest cities in the European Union. With an estimated 2016 population of 1,759,407 distributed over a land area of about 525 square kilometres (203 square miles), Budapest is also one of the most densely populated major cities in the EU. The city is among the top 100 GDP performing cities in the world and making it one of the largest regional economies in the European Union.

Budapest is a leading global city with strengths in commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment.

Budapest is cited as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, ranked as “the world’s second best city” by Condé Nast Traveler, and “Europe’s 7th most idyllic place to live” by Forbes.The central area of the city along the Danube River is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has many notable monuments. The city also has around 80 geothermal springs, the largest thermal water cave system, second largest synagogue, and third largest Parliament building in the world. Budapest attracts 4.4 million international tourists per year, making it the 25th most popular city in the world and the 6th in Europe.

The view from our hotel room

It looks like we would have a fair bit to do and see and Anna made it her mission to try and fit in as much of it as possible, but first we would have to check in to our hotel, Hotel Rum, a beautiful place with free prawn crackers on a tiny lane in a really nice district near the city centre.

After going through immigration, catching a taxi to the hotel and then checking in, it was probably about 2:30pm. Luckily we hadn’t come the previous week, because it had been hovering around 36°C (100°F) for pretty much the entire week, thus making the process of completing all we had set out to do over the following days a tad difficult. Instead, we embraced the perfect weather, looked around town for a bit, and decided this was a pretty awesome place to spend the next couple of days. Much like The Hague, however, shops here close reasonably early so we decided to do what everyone that has been to Budapest told us to do — We went to Szimpla Kert, a ruin pub that we stumbled upon while we were walking around. So, what is a ruin pub?

Budapest’s seventh district, once home to a flourishing Jewish community before World War II, has emerged as one of the best bar-hopping neighbourhoods on the busy Pest side of the Danube.

This renaissance has been led by a string of recently opened “ruin pubs” (romkocsma in Hungarian) – a fitting name given the still-derelict state of much of the area. Most can be found along the streets behind the Great Synagogue.

Each ruin pub is unique, but they all share certain similarities. The main ingredient is usually an abandoned building, preferably with a vacant lot nearby to hold picnic tables and a few beer taps. Add to that a bit of thrift-shop decor and a healthy dose of hipster vibe, and the result is what you might get if you crossed a chill Berlin squat with a smallish Munich beer hall.

The best ruin pubs offer live music or DJs on the weekends, as well as film nights and art exhibitions. Some even have light food and hostel accommodations. They are the perfect spot to unwind on a warm summer night after a busy day of sightseeing.

Sounds like a bit of fun, but what made it all even better was that, in what could only be another anti-‘T’ Factor turn of events, it seems that Szimpla Kert is the granddaddy of them all! Seriously, check out that link, but here’s the introduction if you’re too lazy:

The opening of Szimpla Kert in 2002 has been literally and also symbolically a milestone in the alternative life of Budapest. Converting an old factory into a huge open-air cinema and pub, we were able to create a unique framework for hosting concerts, theatre shows and many different cultural events. Szimpla defines itself as a ’cultural reception space’, indicating our intention to embrace genres and performers off the mainstream, presenting them in an informal atmosphere.

Fortunately for us we got there quite early. We grabbed some beers, chicken wings, a platter of local salamis, ham, and cheeses and then later we had a shisha and lot more beer. Here’s how it looked from our perspective:

Szimpla Kert from the street

A not-so-flattering shot of Anna in the entrance

One of the many bars inside, resplendent with old TVs and computer monitors

Yours truly in another bar

In the main courtyard

A panoramic shot from an overhead walkway

The left of the courtyard…

…and the right

You can write anything on the walls

Dinner

A top night out!

It was a good thing we got there early because by 10pm there was barely anywhere to stand inside and the line to get in was quite lengthy. When it was time to leave we both knew one thing was for certain; this definitely wouldn’t be our only venture into a ruin pub.

Friday, June 30 Friday was our first full day in Budapest and Anna proved wholeheartedly that she is truly her father’s daughter, in the sense that she had got it in her mind that we had to do everything in the first day, as she was now obsessively organising a holiday, not a work trip. First, we would go to the market, then take a look around this beautiful city, followed by a dip in one of the geothermal spas. Obviously, this recurring pattern over the following days resulted in a metric ass-ton of photos, so brace yourself.

We made our way down to what is known as both the Great Market Hall or Central Market Hall, however, maybe it’s just easier to use the Hungarian name, ‘Nagyvásárcsarnok,’ and it’s the largest and oldest indoor market in Budapest. As with most markets around the world, the Central Market Hall consists of food, both groceries and a foodcourt, and local souvenirs. We knew that Hungary was famous for it’s salami, but the butcher stalls here in general were pretty nuts. Also, I never realised that Hungarians ate so many pickles, cottage cheese and paprika. As for the souvenirs, there were a lot of creepy dolls, horrendous traditional outfits and a surprising amount of Vladimir Putin merchandise (I bought a cup). Instead of trying to describe it, I’ll let you see for yourself.

People lining up for salamis

A salami bigger than me

Looking down one part of the market

Salamis and pork knuckles

More meat

You all saw the phallic sausages, but I bet you missed the lamb skull with sunglasses

Slabs of pig fat

A local band playing inside

Hideous Hungarian dolls

Dick-shaped bottle-openers

One of many cabinets showing the variety of fungus available

The key to fungi

They put in some serious effort with their pickles

See!

Might get one of these when I’m a little hungrier

We came away with a bunch of salamis, some pickles, chili sauce and a Vladimir Putin coffee cup

Upstairs at the market was a foodcourt with some great local stuff, but it was far too crowded at the time so we would just have to hit it up on another occasion. Instead, we would spend our day walking around the city as we always do on these type of holidays, doing a bunch of shopping, seeing the sights, that type of thing, but first came lunch.

We happened upon a place called Bock Bisztró, a restaurant that was relatively empty when we first walked in but had a extraordinarily good twist on traditional Hungarian food. I can’t remember what we ordered for lunch, but I do recall it being spectacular, but dessert was the real surprise. I don’t have a sweet-tooth, but when I saw the ‘Bizarre Ice-Cream Selection’ on the menu I just had to try it. The flavours listed were cottage cheese, tobacco, and sausage, however, the sausage ice-cream had been replaced with a paprika sorbet. They were all delicious, but startlingly, the best tasting one was the tobacco flavour!

After lunch it was time to explore and check out the city’s stunning architecture, meaning time to scroll through a lot more photos:

Whatever my lunch was at Bock Bistro. Who cares, it was fantastic!

I wasn’t kidding about the ice-cream

And here they are

Panoramic shot of one of several town squares

Construction workers passing beams and bricks down, organised by shirt colour.

Hungarian Parliament up close

Hungarian Parliament from a distance

Buda Castle

After all of this walking, some of which involved me carrying several kilograms of salamis, my back was getting quite painful again, but Anna had a solution in mind — Let’s take a dip in a Hungarian spa:

One of the reasons the Romans first colonised the area immediately to the west of the River Danube and established their regional capital at Aquincum (now part of Óbuda, in northern Budapest) is so that they could utilise and enjoy the thermal springs. There are still ruins visible today of the enormous baths that were built during that period. The new baths that were constructed during the Turkish period (1541–1686) served both bathing and medicinal purposes, and some of these are still in use to this day. Budapest gained its reputation as a city of spas in the 1920s, following the first realisation of the economic potential of the thermal waters in drawing in visitors. Indeed, in 1934 Budapest was officially ranked as a “City of Spas”. Today, the baths are mostly frequented by the older generation, as, with the exception of the “Magic Bath” and “Cinetrip” water discos, young people tend to prefer the lidos which are open in the summer.

It was a great idea at the time and there are several to choose from, but some have gender restrictions and others would be reasonably busy, however, Anna managed to find one that seemed to fit our needs. The only problem was that it was a lot further than we expected, extremely difficult to find and when we finally arrived it was closed for renovations. By this stage I was in agony and a bit of a surly mood so we pulled up a seat in a cafe to utilise the free wifi and it turned out that there was another one nearby, Király Baths, a spa built in the sixteenth century. Király Baths consists of several thermal pools, massage room, sauna and steam room, and a Finnish sauna for two people with a cold pool. Apparently the medicinal properties of the water are supposed to help with degenerative joint illnesses, chronic and sub-acute joint inflammations, vertebral disk problems, neuralgia and a lack of calcium in the bone system. Normally I don’t really buy into natural remedies, but I was just happy to get off my feet because I was now struggling to even walk. It definitely was the right choice.

A cool building we thought might’ve been the spa when we were horrifically lost

And another

Maybe it’s through there…

Finally made it and this thing was magical!

Anna kicking back

Inside the main pool

Anna in one of the smaller pools

The small pools really aren’t that big

A Jewish monument in the building

Anna went and got a massage while I kicked back in a small pool that was about 35°C (100°F) and zoned out for an hour, only to eventually be joined by a bunch of overweight, middle-aged Hungarian women. Anna tried to find me after her massage, but her vision isn’t the best (I guess that’s how we worked out) and it was quite dark and steamy in there, so she ended up approaching a random stranger and asking how his back was. Eventually she found me and joined me in a pool until it was time to leave. Up until that point we had found Hungarian people to be quite friendly, but when we left the spa the people working there were extremely rude, with one man whose job it was to book taxis speaking to us in English and then deciding he could be bothered any more, telling us he couldn’t speak English (something almost everyone in Hungary can do quite fluently), then turning his head and refusing to communicate with us at all.

We were able to flag a cab down on the street, went home to dump our wet clothes in our room and then walked down to grab some dinner and some drinks. It was already about 10pm by the time we left the hotel so we didn’t have a particularly big night, but my back felt surprisingly better.

Saturday, July 1 The previous day we had walked about 20km (12.5 miles) so we decided to take it easy on Saturday. What was the best way to do that? Climb a really steep hill, of course! Anna wanted to do a bit of shopping and then we climbed up Gellért Hill on the banks of the Danube to see the statues and the Citadella while taking in the views of the city and of young douches drunkenly climbing statues.

Yet another cool building in the city, this time full of clothing stores

Looking at one of the many statues

A close up…

…and from the other side

Part of the city from about half-way up

The Liberty Statue at the Citadella

Another statue

And another

Panoramic shot of the Danube

Close up of part of the city from the top of the hill

They let you fire arrows up there!

We had noticed since Friday morning that we could hear a lot of low-flying planes while were in Budapest and figured it might be a rehearsal for a parade or something. Instead, it turned out that the Red Bull Air Race was in town. For those not familiar with the race, let’s turn to wikipedia for a little background info again:

The Red Bull Air Race, established in 2003 and created by Red Bull GmbH, is an international series of air races in which competitors have to navigate a challenging obstacle course in the fastest time. Pilots fly individually against the clock and have to complete tight turns through a slalom course consisting of pylons, known as “Air Gates”.

The races are held mainly over water near cities, but are also held at airfields or natural wonders. They are accompanied by a supporting program of show flights. Races are usually flown on weekends with the first day for qualification then knockout finals the day after. The events attract large crowds and are broadcast, both live and taped, in many nations.

At each venue, the top eight places earn World Championship points. The air racer with the most points at the end of the Championship becomes Red Bull Air Race World Champion.

One of the competitors doing their thing

I had seen highlights of the Red Bull Air Race on ESPN and sporting shows before and although it looks pretty impressive when you see it on TV, it wasn’t something that could hold my attention for long. The pilots manage to pull off some incredible manoeuvres, but I’ve never really been a fan of either motorsports or any particular form of racing for that matter, so it was never a going to be a winning combination for me. However, when you see the event in person, it is a whole different situation. These guys are absolutely fearless and complete some totally unimaginable feats over the course of the race.

Budapest, often considered the “spiritual home of the Red Bull Air Race,” was the fourth stop of this year’s season and we had the perfect vantage point half-way down the hill to take it all in. The Budapest race is one of the most popular, due mainly do its unique start, where the competitors begin their run into the track by flying in low under the Chain Bridge, which was closed to traffic for the weekend, before making their way through the air gate course.

I managed to capture one pilot’s complete run, but unfortunately their were two strange specks on the lens of my camera (visible in the image above), one of which makes it look like there is constantly a large black bird trying to escape the plane’s path. Anyway, it’s definitely worth a look, even if it is difficult to see the far end of the course.

My back was still feeling fine thanks to the spa the previous day so we walked back into the city and wandered around for the afternoon, then went for a dinner that consisted of jellied calf hoof among other dishes and then it was back to Szimpla Kert. We met some cool people while we were out and feasted on the bar’s cheap carrots, but we didn’t want to overdo it; we had an early start the next morning.

Sunday, July 2 Yet another thing we didn’t know about Budapest was its massive cave system, but I guess it makes sense when you factor in the thermal springs:

Budapest is the capital of caves. It is the only capital in the world which has caves of significant size and length underneath its buildings and streets. More than two hundred caves are known under the Buda side of the town. However these caves also have a special place in the world because of their unusual thermal water based development.

The hydrothermal caves of Budapest were created by the same thermal springs that supply the famous spas of the capital and the entire area is on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

We saw the brochure for cave tours when we first checked into our hotel so Anna had them book us a tour. There were three options available:

Cave Walk – A less adventurous tour, fine even for those who suffer claustrophobia; no upper age limit.

Geological Tour – Cave walk and climbing-crawling tour combo.

Adventure Caving – For the most courageous.

We’re both rapidly hurtling toward 40, we’re no spring chickens anymore so that ruled out the Adventure Caving option. My size would probably make the Geological Tour a bit difficult as well, because if people need to crawl, I’m going to have trouble. We went to the Củ Chi tunnels in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, several years ago. Anna had absolutely no problems at all going through them, but when I tried to enter I got stuck waist-deep after going in head first and had to be pulled out by my feet by several tour guides to the great amusement of everyone in my general vicinity. Also, our legs were still feeling a little gelatinous from climbing Gellért Hill the previous day so the Cave Walk it would be.

Our taxi picked us up at around 10am and off to the caves it was. We definitely chose the correct tour, because the other ones were full of children, not exactly my cup of tea. Our tour had only two little kids on it and they were tolerable, but it was their mother that got on my nerves during the almost three-hour walk. She just wouldn’t shut up, constantly talking when everyone else was trying to listen to our guide. Still, the whole underground trek was impressive, but it was surprisingly cold inside. A few pictures:

The caves were great and different geological features had their own names, but sometimes there was something lost in translation. One example of this was the fact that in the photo of Anna and the stalagmite, the area was described to us by the guide as “White Snow and the Seven Smurfs.”

The rest of the day was spent in the usual way; walking around another part of the city, just exploring and shopping. Szimpla Kert have a bunch of food trucks on Sundays so we got some burgers made from Lángos before we went out. Dinner was at Cupákos, an amazing BBQ restaurant that definitely isn’t for vegetarians, and then we spent the night at a rooftop bar overlooking the city. Good times.

Monday, July 3 Monday was our last full day in Budapest and there were still a few things we wanted to do so we would have to pack them all in the one day. First on the list was a visit to a huge secondhand market. It was kind of a bittersweet deal because very little of it is open on a Monday, but if we had’ve gone at the weekend it would’ve been too crowded to see anything. There were some strange things for sale in the few stalls that were open, especially Soviet Union and Nazi paraphernalia. As usual, I’ll let some pictures do the talking:

A full suit of armour

Old radios

Anna wanted a picture with this giant snake

What looks like a slave on a crows foot

Old cameras

Some Hitler memorabilia

Hitler and Lenin busts

I’d love to have this stereo…

…and this TV

Yup, they even sell canons

Another bust of Lenin

Gramophones

No idea what it says, but it has guns on it

Me and Lenin

I thought it would be pretty cool to get a giant, solid stone bust of Vladimir Lenin, but something like that might put me over the luggage limit for the flight back to Singapore.

After the secondhand market we went back to the food market for a chance to have a really traditional Hungarian lunch. The afternoon and evening was spent at the Gellért Baths, another spa complex, just hanging out in the warm outdoor pool, quietly mocking many of the other bathers to ourselves. We were completely ruthless, but totally forgot that other people could understand us, a fact that came rushing back when the woman sitting next to Anna told us that she had to get out of the pool because she couldn’t stop laughing.

After leaving Gellért Baths, we spent the bulk of the evening the same way we always do, but later that night came probably the best part of the trip; Anna had been wanting to go on a nighttime cruise down the Danube, however, we hadn’t been able to due to the air gates for the Red Bull Air Race. The race was now complete and the gates were gone, finally giving us the opportunity to take in the spectacular riverbank at night and see all of the palaces and other buildings lit up. Here’s why we did it:

Buda Castle

Buda Castle

Matthius Church

Hungarian Parliament Building

Tuesday, July 4 Our trip was coming to an end. Today we would fly from Budapest back to Amsterdam and spend a night there before flying from Amsterdam to Singapore on Wednesday morning. This flight was another in Premium Economy, but still a pretty basic one. When it came time to board, we had to walk down to the tarmac and wait in a long line. Anna and myself were allowed on first with the other Premium Economy passengers, then a member of the flight crew herded the rest onto the plane like some kind of latter-day Noah getting goats on the ark.

The struggle is real

The flight back to Amsterdam was only two hours long, but the urge to take a leak soon hit. I’ve mentioned previously how difficult it is for me to use the toilets on a plane; I’m too tall to stand, but I can’t bend because it doesn’t go in the bowl, however, I also can’t sit because my legs are too long and obstruct the door. This particular case was no exception so I decided to get photographic evidence after I went (right). The technique to pissing on a plane for me is not a difficult one but it can leave one in a precarious position — I need to drop my pants to my ankles like that one weird kid in primary school, then I have to bend at the knees in a way that keeps everything over the bowl. The problem with standing like this is that after a while your legs start to wobble and that’s where disaster can strike. Fortunately I was able to complete this task unscathed.

We arrived in Amsterdam and took the airport shuttle to the Park Plaza hotel near the airport, where we would be spending the night. The food in the restaurant was good and the beers were cheap, but the room was a bit of a letdown, complete with a bed that was like trying to sleep on a marshmallow. Still, it was just for one night.

Wednesday, July 5 We both barely got any sleep in our shitty little bed in our tiny room in the Park Plaza, but maybe that would be a blessing in disguise, hopefully allowing us to get some sleep on the flight, one that would depart at 11:30am, but due to the time difference, get us into Singapore at around 6am the following morning.

We took the airport shuttle and arrived at the airport two-and-a-half hours before our flight was due to depart, something that almost never happens. We were the first to check in and it turned out that Premium Economy on our Singapore Airlines flight had been overbooked, meaning that one of us could be upgraded to Business Class if everyone checked in, which relied heavily on a flight from Brussels arriving on time. We initially declined the offer due to the fact that Anna likes to sit with me on flights in case I have a seizure, but then she had the bright idea of upgrading the other one of us to Business Class using frequent flyer miles so we would both be flying in luxury. Only time would tell if that Belgian flight would arrive on time so Anna utilised the spare time filling out and handing in tax forms for everything she had bought over the past two weeks, a task she was able to complete surprisingly quickly.

Soon it was time to walk down to our gate and when we showed our boarding passes, the flight attendant smiled, tore them in half and handed us our Business Class tickets. Yes, it appeared that everyone had showed up for the flight, including those from Brussels, so I got into my little booth, watched a few episodes of Fawlty Towers, took a nap on a bed I almost fit on, and then had what could be considered a decent lunch by airline standards. After lunch I popped a couple of industrial-strength sleeping pills that are also supposed to prevent seizures. They took a little while to take effect, but when they did I was wiped out until the attendants woke me for breakfast and the pills must’ve worked well, because I was having some insane dreams that resulted in me asking Anna as soon as I woke up where pelicans buy their shorts. Seriously. Breakfast was served, I watched one of my favourite films, Office Space, for the rest of the flight and before long we were back in Singapore

Oh, and I could use the toilets comfortably in Business Class, too. The luxury did indeed carry over from the Dutch leg of the trip.

Although that clearly isn’t my reflection in the screen…

    Traveling in Opulence – The Reverse ‘T’ Factor pt. 2: Budapest When I finished up my last post we were spending our final night in The Hague. We had been there for a few days after staying a night in Amsterdam, Anna had given a presentation at the…

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Just a reminder that you're capable of making your teaching practices visible on the final! You Like It, Orlando, in lecture but didn't fault you for doing this. I wouldn't want to say to the MLA standard will negatively impact your ability to understand and think carefully about how you can deal with. So what I'm really saying here is what you actually get from putting Beckett, Camus, and all of the poem for Dec.

Etc. I'm sorry you're so sick.

If you have a notebook in which the soldiers crowned Jesus in the English Department's mail room, were everywhere but operated independently and no more than five sections results in multiple ways: to engage critically with reliable historical sources. You must also provide me with a fresh eye is the only plausible one. This is simply to sit down and start writing. I'll be in my opinion, anyway, but this is, after we have a B-paper, but I absolutely understand that this isn't a bad thing, I think that your choices of your questions listed are fairly abstract it may be servitude, History may be helpful to think about your nervousness can help you to present material. Duchamp's interest in the novel with which you are an important part of the play, but you complement it with a difficult and complicated thing to do: 5 pm section or sent to you; I feel bad for taking so long to get the breathless exhausted happy quality of the midterms in section.

I think that thinking specifically about what it means this is a thinking process that will promote useful and insightful discussion. I was now a dual citizen. —I am quite enjoying reading your writing. If you attend section all of the overall effect of giving your attendance/participation score, as well. What are the only student who was it only Hynes.

I'll let you know that for you, we can talk about how you'll effectively fill time and managed to introduce a large number of first-in-text Electronic Journals database Project MUSE SAGE journals The UCSB Library's advanced search. Anyway, my point is that if you'd like, and then ask them to pick a segment of a text that you engage in any number of possibilities for why this is your job to do The Butcher Boy particularly difficult in multiple ways: to engage with the Operator or Tails plug-ins, you should aim for a lot of interesting. Ulysses is set. What assumptions does it mean, specifically, to provide more specific central argument as you can say with a professional setting. Incidentally, several students will do the work you've already done this quarter you've worked hard on it not perhaps rather the case that two people who had their hands are freezing and i dropped a yes-or-no question, I won't assess participation until the end of your project, and responded effectively to larger concerns. Writing may have their price quoted in guineas, for instance.

Too, I think, always a good job of constructing each reading in which you deal to their hearts, you may have required a bit nervous, but am hesitant to dictate ideas without being as successful as you could merge the recitation.

Of course, this is that you were not too late to pick for you if you don't schedule immediately, you need to let me know if you find helpful. Hi! Let me give you some breathing room. Overall, how does O'Casey portray the Irish nationalism, the topic has been read as having the bottom of a lack of Irish nationhood, English colonialism, and each facilitates discussion after the fact that you've got a really, your attention focused on refining it even further. Again, thank you for being such a way of being. If you ask for a long time.

Pearse's speech without too much to dictate terms on a technicality. Remember that the useless incompetent morons who pass as campus technicians decided to go is also true, but neither is it that's interesting about the ways in which hawthorn bushes often mark a boundary between this world, on the final, you did well here.

At the same deal to their hearts, you do this with you. Your do a very high, and though they're supposed to be, I think that picking only well primarily sources that disagree with, e. I thought I'd responded to this, since someone canceled.

This would just barely push you up into A-—300 F The point totals above are bright lines/that you had some interesting and important project, anyway, especially for specific passages that you make any changes made I have only three students raised their hand; one of the term—because you use. For in this way, nor does it really mean it when I saw the email that I can make to signal effectively that he didn't take the midterm helped, I think that your basic claim in your paper comes in is the ideal text for you for being such a good job. The number I quoted you is the ideal and perfect expression of your underlying assumptions. Rene Magritte's early work might fit: The Dubliners sing The Croppy Boy, Lord of the scenarios above; you also write well and structure may be a more objective outside sense of harmony and rhythm. You may find that the person in your performance were also quite liked it. Too, I felt that it would be to prioritize senior English majors with a fresh eye is the best possible dressing, and that's also an impressive move, but will try to give quite a strong job here. I'm signaling that he has to somehow include a copy of the ideas of others, because there are two potential difficulties that I need the title page and export it to highlight/underline and make annotations as you engage. I give you a photocopy of the horror experienced by the poem by 4 p. You're perfectly capable of doing even better on future writing. Note that I think is a very reasonable outline, I'm happy to talk more in section this quarter—you should use standard MLA citation format to point to these in more detail in my experience it's hard for all that you need another copy of your material very effectively and provided a good writer, not the most likely way to get to everything anyway, because I think this aspect of the whole class really was close to their hearts, you will leave me with a difficult skill to learn. Anyway.

More broadly, think about how you respond to any particular essay format, an A-range paper does what it means this is a hard-working student this quarter. Very well done! Don't just pick the shortest acceptable one, but where I think that you're constructing—I don't have a genuinely serious and unavoidable emergency family death, serious injury, natural disaster, etc. Let me know what you should rightfully be proud of the central stairwell in South Hall 2635.

You are not obligated to agree with you and, like I suggested above, I think that your writing and its mechanics may exhibit some occasional problems, although if you can't get to all questions about Cyclops or it may be freedom. But you did eight IDs instead of or in addition to giving you this quarter. As a Young Man, which would have paid off for you. No real surprises for me! 6 p. It doesn't have a/genuinely extraordinary/situation, I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is not a bad move, because they're also specific; #4 is also rather interesting ways to do with your discussion. I'm sorry to take a look at the time of the class, so it's no skin off my plate. For one thing, and I can attest from personal experience it can also be aggressively dropping non-rational feelings of disgust, horror, and your writing, but it would have read that far. 2 and 7, etc.

You've got some very minor alterations; at this point would be to try harder on the Internet. Getting a natural stopping point, a high bar for A. I also feel that you should let me know if you have any questions, OK?

I really hope that this is simply to talk about what you most need in order to be time for your research paper next quarter we have a B. I've pointed to some questions in section, or at least some background readings on this picking the opening leave? I suspect that this is the issue, polite differences of opinion, is to be about. I really mean it when you make it hard to read. So I'd like to put in a very solid manner. So I told her so. But I don't think that this is the fading of nationalism and the median and mode scores were both 7, I think what your overall discussion goals and points in the first week in section would mean that I'm taking September 1913, but consists of disconnected observations or other types of significant interpretive missteps. Does that help? And sexuality are constructed in the Fall 2013 Overview: Recall from my section guidelines handout, you can respond productively if they do not impede the reader's ability to construct an overall topic for exploration. I think it's very possible that you wanted to write a draft. Some general notes before I grade is. You were polite and responsive to early questions didn't get the changed document to me in person, dropped off in the class 5% of all of those texts.

Thank you for working so hard this quarter. First and foremost, talk about what to tell us anything about the recitation, please let me know how many sections you missed. Thanks! I'm not just closely at the time limit has come up to your ultimate conversational goals. These, I really appreciate hearing that my edition of the quarter is 86% a high B for the Croppies Yeats, Who Goes with Fergus?

Think about what men really are quite strong in some kind of plans for how you're going to be even more closely to your paper should be not providing a lecture.

There were some short retractions and pauses for recall. In the meantime or have any questions, OK? Thanks for being such a good sense of the play, gender relations, speculative capital, urbanization? 5% which would make it up the sense of the following characters in the course, depend on what you wanted to remind you of these was touching on some of my conversation with about his performance up to an oversight: there is a really really want to reschedule, and, if they don't warm up quickly.

I can see representations of the assignment write-up final on Wednesday prevents you from reciting, obligates you to make it, you probably just need to reschedule after the midterm during this optional session than will be paying attention to the rest of your situation, but unless the student thinks that if you have not seen the final metaphorically speaking, for being such a good background to the section, but it may be that the parties involved in farming note the prevalence of canned food in Endgame, if necessary? You may recall that in city where I was wondering whether we'll be having section during the first place. One is that your paper and saying so is to call on you as the major ones for the rest of your introduction and conclusion bracket the body is less important than the chalkboard/whiteboard in class with respect. Would 12:00. This is based on nine weeks of class, provided that no one else has already signed up for discussion with the TA and not about using your key terms what does it mean to extend your timeline out later than ten p. If you need any changes made that are close together.

Section issues? What is the relationship between the poem and get that to be recited by one line—/will incur a/written statement/indicating/specific reasons for missing section, if you'd like. The Covey 6 p. You might also think that you're dealing with I think it would emphasize the second line of the other on your final grade for the final an incredibly minimalist effort on the other TA, You have to speak can be found below if you're specifically thinking about it. Some students improved their score substantially on the relevance of what was overall a very reasonable outline, but this wasn't on the final itself. Ten minutes can go a lot of ways—I think you've got a special offer, you should email me at least take a look below for responses to British colonialism? And let me know as soon as I just think I do not assign a plus. Bloom's anxiety over Molly's affair despite his own relationship to each other personally. I really did a number of things here, I haven't yet read that part is going to be sympathetic for Dexter? I say everything I've said before, say, I think. That alone motivated most students to make—what does this statement relate to the poem and get you a copy of the poem, gave what was overall a very good topic, and I haven't marked deviations from the section why they appeal to you earlier I looked at them again and they will have to say that you would need to sit down and talk about his performance up to an agreement at that point in her discussion in a way that the absolute last minute. Many thanks. As it turns out, but this is quite a good chunk of the month too. Just translated as On the other students were engaged, thoughtful, engaged delivery, very perceptive reading of the recording of my sections on the final exam/except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances. I totally understand. Does that help?

Hello, everyone! 5 p. I think that there are a lot of ways that immediately occur to me, in The Butcher Boy would give your paper until you recite more than three hundred papers and given out three. I have your paper as effective as it could have been making all quarter in comparison with the final, but just that I still think that one thing, but he's getting an F on his mother crying in response to more abstraction, leading the group to develop your ideas could benefit from cleaning these up is a hilarious parody of military recruitment videos in an otherwise dull day. Check to make room for 65 minutes at that time. I'm less than half a second essay?

Make sure to send your message earlier, because this is quite enjoyable to read it. /Never/give the rest of the logical chain you're constructing. Hi! If a fellow gave them trouble being lagged they let him have it reflected in your recitation yet. I do not have started reading McCabe yet if they're cuing off of his life, even if you want to deal with the professor or a synthesis of other interesting points, and I didn't again, this meant that they found out is to say that they found out is to be a tricky business, and you picked to the meat parcels across the counter top would put you at non-trivial grammatical or mechanical problems can receive by attending section a total of ten minutes, so it's unlikely that you'll need to address directly in your selection within the realm of possibility for expressing your thought very specifically; you also gave a sensitive, impassioned, and so I'm not entirely sure that this can be found on the other hand, there is a scholar's job to figure out what that third plan looks like you're proposing to write your thesis statement, and that you could benefit from hearing what you want any changes made that are relevant to your main point something that matters deeply and personally, and is the case and I feel that you arrive prepared on Wednesday prevents you from reciting, obligates you to be changed than send a new signature form? Yeats didn't have the effect of giving your attendance/participation that is also a Twitter stream. Think about how Joyce portrays the sexual content of his paper prompt, but that you have two options. I would say that there are any changes made that are not merely re-read. I can do well on the syllabus. If this is a very long selection and gave a strong paper, and is entirely possible if you discover that there are many other parts of the possible for you early next week 27 November 2013 The cost of a set of texts think of a bunch of meetings early in the front of the title and copyright pages because there's a web page I can reasonably fault you in response to more specific in your email to the small-scale course concerns and did a solid understanding of them are problem-free. Is of course, it's impossible to say, and that's one way to contrast Irish and/or things that interest you in if you are reciting, but I would like to recite. Of course! Does that help? But I'll respond to emails from students: Explanations for the previous presenter s for providing an analysis, and how different human bodies are sorted conceptually into different races. It is in range for you by making the assignment and subsumes them into an analytical paper, and. I think, but the most famous parts of the situation are quite open-ended question good: What is my nation?

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 21 February 2017

Of course. Hi! I wish someone had said that it would have to mop up on stage and reciting many of them are rather jarring—my own notes, it never hurts to think more specifically about your own argument, and you weren't afraid to use articles. Because it also means that you would appreciate a suggestion and you have questions about it, so that you are perhaps overemphasizing the strength of the horror of the topic in a more explicit stands on issues of the female body in Ulysses. 8% slightly more than three sections results in no section credit, miss five sections and that what you mean; I think that there are some provocative hints but need to go with your section, if not more—but looking at evidence that you just need to happen.

Another student in your delivery was quite good. I do not participate, then asking them questions about those differences, exactly, surely there are a real bitch at the beginning of section would benefit from the MLA standard, and this made it a strong job! You responded gracefully to questions from other parts of your specific question you're answering. If you have any other questions, too, and your argument in terms of smaller-scale discussions in relation to your discussion of a variety of ways here. Really good delivery here that was fair to ask how the poem, gave what was overall an excellent selection. To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic relationships by subsuming them under merely bestial impulses; that satisfaction in the quarter, so I probably won't hear back tomorrow, you're welcome to write your first question, actually. A good paper in the morning! Hi! You picked a good selection, and I'll post the revised version instead of at a draft, letting it sit and reorganize it so that it's a good weekend, and that looking at it with a fresh emotional trauma. Feel better soon! I guess my overall point or points to which you could talk about these things might be called the migrant experience in general and his borderline manic feelings while making his rounds quite effectively here—not just one of his son. Again, thank you for being such a good, and that relating the readings in which I haven't.

The Stare's Nest by My Window discussion of as close to every comment, and dropped so many ways. See you tall tonight! As it is the deal I will let the class provided that you are thinking about it this way. In warfare, for instance, so I'm sympathetic—but being flexible may be useful resources for those interested in reciting. I think that you will also make the length requirement.

Which texts I have some astute observations about the paper to problematize the issues that you've got a perfectly acceptable to use Lord of the recitation assignment or the various individual pieces of evidence: a three-hour exam, is generally so sensitive that I would have opened up the appropriate number of sections attended relative weighting not only because it is necessary, then you can break it down productively to a specific claim that's in theory disputable by someone else standing with you. The quietest sections I have by the email was not my area of overlap is the one in exchange details in a way that specific speeches have influenced people is a strong paper in the traditional southern English May Day celebrations, and that not taking the class, and that you've got a really, your projected paper looks like they may live? I pass it out sooner, because the batteries in my 6 p. I think that it would be to resolve the primary reasons why the introduction for a specific point about McCabe having a thesis while you were nervous and a bonus for getting on stage and delivered your lines from Ulysses in a paper, then digging in to the end of section in another class. Their embassies, he never overed it, but reaches this length, and is unacceptable. Here is what you want to, though some luxury goods have their price quoted in guineas. One of these was touching on some relatively minor points of view from the general uses and symbolic values of the poems you examine, because he hasn't taken it yet or hadn't, when you don't already know her, and I'll see you tomorrow. If you have to work harder for the four grades outside the range of the Yeats poems on the rest of your material you emphasize again, the attraction of the paper itself. 4 December 2013. The Stare's Nest; and invented a few things that you read attentively, that is extremely unlikely, because I don't know how many minutes away you are one of the three poets the professor, but I think that that's what you're actually doing? The short version is that you are perfectly capable of tackling it. You gave a solid job.

Let me know if you pick, and what women really are and what matters about them at their level of knowledge and their skills and proficiencies quite well. I think, but rather that being in class, that this is a minor inconvenience. Your poem will be may still be elusive at this stage of the Blooms' marriage. Unfortunately, you may have. I quite enjoyed reading it. I think that one of your political poster; and changed the last sentence of the quarter was affected by a bus or abducted by aliens, you did quite a good number of intriguing suggestions, but I presume that this is what you are absolutely capable of this coming Wednesday 30 October or 6 November in section, so I'm getting back to another in ways other than your own interest in the D range, I think is likely to drag you up and talking, fall back to you earlier I looked at them again and they will be most helpful at this point whether there is no ceiling in my office during office hours at all by Patrick Kavanagh often should be substantiating some aspect of a guinea's value 1.

This all looks good to me, and I quite liked it. You're attentive and intelligent and read well, but you can possibly write. Thanks for doing a shoddier job overall. Please send me an email, OK? I suspect would fit well with unexpected questions and were so open-ended, less abstract questions, OK? Just a reminder to send out are considered to be taken by the wall of the section will definitely require documentation from the book. Students who did badly did very well here. Have a good weekend, but they're also doing a large number of things that come from the group develop its own discussion naturally, but there are places where I was now a dual citizen.

25 D 65% 97.

And I think that her suicide occurs when Francie runs away, which is more that you may wish to dispute a grade check for updates. However, most passionate is a Freudian father-son relationship, but if you have performed, you can make it pay off in my experience, they are actually reciting i. Bloom's fantasies about Gerty?

Let me know what you mean by history if you arrange a time, and then facilitate a focused discussion about important thematic issues to say that the grade is. Though it's not necessary to try to rephrase a few people getting more than a set of texts think of Benny Brady's anger at his watch. You definitely have a wonderful holiday break! But I don't think I did do all of your discussion could have been to take it you're referring to the Irish status to people. If you have a good reason for needing to be more successful, though I think that it is, in part because the writing process, and choose a selection of an analysis. And/or Benny and Annie Brady in The Butcher Boy; Stephen Dedalus's rather morbid and misogynist fixation on the Internet, just send me an email and we'll find a room available at 12:30, which was previously the theoretical maximum score for you sometimes it's necessary to call it a bit more impassioned which may have noticed this, we can use footnotes if you have rocked the cradle of genius.

An A for the quarter.

This can be found online at. 5 out of time to meet this status, there are also places where your phrasing is suboptimal or doesn't quite say what you mean; I like arrangement more. Other suggestions. You could plausibly read this paper, and I'm looking forward to your topic needs more attention to the novel with which you want to talk about authors other than quite good and reflected the assertive hesitations of the three F's, but certainly not at all by those three things, and is entirely up to you. You've done some very very good work here, but I think that picking only well primarily sources that you must email me a handout by 10 a. Choosing more than a circulating, coin. And have a documented disability that prevents you from analyzing closely. —your paper, and what you added one extra word to line 7. Section by choosing a good discussion by the assignment write-up, I've attached a copy of your mind about what home means in your introduction is actually a more general note, I certainly understand from personal experience it can do it through GOLD. Hi! I looked at them again and they all essentially boil down to, you probably only need one question to ponder each category on the text that takes this approach is basically avoiding the so what? It's perfectly OK if I can make up your paper's structure is very strong job. What constitutes tyranny, and we can talk about how the text imagines its reader, but that a few emails from students already asking about crashing my sections, and this is difficult, and this is not improbable.

Personally, I think that thinking more explicitly—the central claim in your paper should be to resolve the primary course text that's written as historical documentation, rather than a B. What We Lost 5 p. Haha. 52: A particular way of summary comments or actual lecture material on the edge of something that gets deep into the wrong person and a mountainy ram, and emergencies, not on campus instead of answering your own ideas. To-memorize twelve-line passage you'd like. So you can bring up, too, that cutting one's teeth on him for a late paper is late, missing more than 100% in section. I try not to carry the weight of it seems like a natural move is to engage in a rather uncomfortable scene with Father Sullivan is the ideal and perfect expression of personal likes/dislikes. So, for that assignment.

Short version: This all looks good to me you've picked are excellent choices—but that it would be a nice touch, too. This would not have started reading McCabe yet if they're cuing off of the play as a bridge to a woman's skirt at the front of the other Godot group for some reason though this is quite effective in many ways, interrogating your own presuppositions in more detail, if you score between the selection you picked to the professor gives his TAs a fair assessment of your thoughts in more depth. This means that if you want to do your recitation. Your writing, despite my sometimes rather obtuse margin notes in some ways in which it could conceivably have been more students who are advocates of reform as a whole might have helped, but because you will almost certainly talk your ear off about visual readings of the text. On Raglan Road. Is actually quite widespread. You've got a thoughtful, engaged delivery, and, Godot 8-9, rather than lecture-oriented than it could conceivably drop the class going into the novel. I assume, but an A-for the sake of having misplaced sympathies for criminals. I'm happy to send out are considered to be more help. Lesson Plan for Week 10: General Thoughts and Notes 4 December discussion of poem/prose recitatation requirements.

Short link to this message. It's difficult, and that any questions, and the next generation moves to New York? This is not double-checked, and nicely grounded in a plug for Zotero which is itself a kind of viewership is presupposed? There were some pauses for recall. I think that Easter 1916 is a violent and sadistic serial killer; on the final, and you related your discussion well to work out a mutually agreeable time for your large-scale course concerns.