#I could probably write at length about gregory

[cdyssey]

Thoughts on Abbott women and their relationships to the cameras:

AUSHSHS, OKAY. One of my favorite things to think about how is how the Abbott characters are super aware of the cameras and how they have different relationships to the fact that they’re being filmed all the time. Here are some thoughts/headcanons for women esp.

Janine: Janine is the most honest with the cameras, treating them like friends, and thus shares a lot of her life with them: her triumphs, her plans, her sadnesses, her insecurities. Hell, I think it’d be fair to say that she even overshares, allowing the cameras unfettered access into her home and car and life beyond the workday. I especially thought this during “Sick Day.” This poor girl was literally, like, letting herself be filmed running to her bathroom!!! Like, girl, set some boundaries. You have a right to some privacy!!!!! But, of course, this is the crux of Janine’s central character arc. So lonely, once a clearly neglected child, our protagonist has a hard time with boundaries in general, and that extends to how she interacts with the cameras. They have become her closest companions and her dearest diary, her safe place for unapologetically being herself. We’re always getting Janine unfiltered, and it’s an incredibly humbling experience for an attentive viewer. She’s fully let us into our lives, and we feel for her deeply. My God, we just want her to be happy.

Barbara: Of the cast, Barbara is one of the most vigilant of the fact that she is being constantly surveilled and has to perpetually maintain her perfect facade because of this crucial fact. It’s her almost doll-like smile into the camera when she says that she doesn’t have a weird thing about her. It’s how she’s always emphasizing how proper and moral and Christian she is in her talking heads. One of my favorite recent examples is from the tattoo episode when she initially says her favorite “b” word is Barbara, but then her first correction is to the more upstanding and characteristic answer of “Bible.” But, as some of my favorite Work Wives gifsets have shown, Barbara occasionally forgets that the cameras are there—usually when she’s drawn into the intimacies of a moment, allowing herself to feel her own emotions without disciplining or regulating them. And it has to be with someone she emphatically trusts, such as Melissa. But any slippages, which are few and far-between, are quickly and efficiently amended. She studiously remembers herself. She slips the mask back on and smiles directly at the cameras and dares them to question what they saw in the place. She is Barbara Howard, married woman of God. She’s always perfect, don’t you know?

Ava: OKAY, OKAY, so I genuinely think that out of everyone, Ava is the most aware of the cameras being on her at all times. TikTok queen and social media extraordinaire, how can she not be? Like Barbara, and honestly even more proficiently than our favorite repressed lesbian lady, she touts an expert facade to the cameras, hyping up her natural charisma and her extrovertism and coolness—sometimes to the point of excess. She’s always catering to a targeted audience. She knows her way around an algorithm, a trend, a hashtag, perpetually attuned to what the people like and want to consume. Of course, she, too, has her rare moments of vulnerability, but the cameras have to be super quick and sneaky to find them. Avanine enjoyers, I think one of my favorite shots is when the cameras initially locate Ava and Janine talking about Ava’s grandmother during the step episode. The framing is faraway at first because the cameras are at the distance—clearly intruding and zooming on this quiet moment—and that’s pretty much the only way they ever catch our Ava Coleman slipping. I am sooooo invested in the fact that we can probably count the times that we’ve seen Ava unmasked on one hand!!!!!!

Melissa: Melissa has a fascinatingly contradictory relationship with the cameras, perhaps to match the oxymoron between her own well-chosen facade and her personality. She presents herself as tough and unflappable, likes to maintain an air of “dark mystery” to others as she once famously smirked in a talking head, but simultaneously—behind Janine—she’s probably been the most candid of the cast with the cameras. She actually let them stay in her house! Oh, yes, she absolutely insults the cameras from time to time—clearly distrusts them, stops herself when she thinks she’s saying too much, fears that they’re snitches—but she’s also told them some pretty damn intimate things too, like showing them pictures of Kristen Marie and literally crying. I really love LAW’s headcanon that there’s one camera person that she thinks is cute and so confides in more because I think that tracks with our general conception of Mel as someone who only relaxes around people she trusts. Some cameras are cops to her—they invite suspicion and paranoia, alerting her fight-or-fight response. Others have seen her at more unguarded moments and teased a lovely softness out of her.

[themirokai]

Never say never on returning to wips you love.

In late 2020 and through 2021, I was writing a Mystrade series called His Professional Capacity in which Mycroft is a spymaster. I had the first chapter of a sixth (and probably final) story for the series written, but I never quite figured out where to take it and I moved on to other fandoms.

Now, three years later, I’ve written a five chapter story that nearly doubles the length of the series. It’s getting proofread and beta’d now, but I hope to start posting it soon. Because the vast majority of you followed me after 2021, and I want to entice as many people to read this as possible, I’m going to start posting the stories in the series here. First up:

What He Does

Greg encounters Mycroft's security detail and comes to understand the reasons for it.

~ 2,601 words. I've tweaked some minor things from the AO3 version, which was not Britpicked, but kept the rather American conception of when someone might be carrying a gun, since it's integral to the plot. Please enjoy despite inaccuracies.

Read it below or on AO3.

~*~

Greg pondered whether he should take Mycroft’s arm. Or his hand. Or offer Mycroft his arm. Or put his hand on Mycroft’s back. This whole “dating” thing was confusing. Greg hadn’t dated for decades, and back then it had been women. Not a mature, somewhat intimidating, incredibly posh, devastatingly gorgeous man. He wasn’t quite sure how to act.

Greg would admit that dinner had been a success. The conversation was comfortable, interesting, and somewhat flirty, just as it had been for their previous two dates. And the several meals and drinks they’d shared before that - before Greg had gotten up the nerve to ask Mycroft on a real date. They had chemistry. That was certain. And when the meal ended and Mycroft had suggested they go for a walk to enjoy the fresh fall air, Greg had jumped at the chance to keep the date from ending.

He pondered the possibility of a good night kiss, but wasn’t sure if that should come before or after holding hands or linking arms on a walk. What were the procedures for physical contact with a man who made your stomach do somersaults every time you thought about him? How were those procedures different when the man in question held a highly secretive and incredibly powerful government position? Were they different? Greg settled for moving a little closer to Mycroft as they walked along, allowing the sleeves of their coats to brush against each other.

Mycroft finished the anecdote he was telling about Sherlock as a child, and Greg turned to smile up at him. As he did, movement caught the corner of his eye and Greg glanced behind them. There was a man walking half a block behind them. Greg frowned.

“Shall we take this left?” he asked Mycroft.

“If you like,” Mycroft responded with a soft smile.

They turned and Greg waited about half a block before glancing back. The man behind them made the turn as well. Greg risked a slightly longer look this time and realized with alarm that he recognized the man from the restaurant. His mind immediately ran through possibilities. Mugger. Someone after Greg because of a case he’d worked or was currently working. Someone after Mycroft for whatever shadowy reason. Someone after either or both of them as a way of getting to Sherlock.

“Gregory? Is something wrong?”

No sense in worrying him. Greg could handle this. “No, uh, no. Let’s just - do you mind if we turn down this alley for a moment?”

Now Greg did take Mycroft’s elbow to guide him into the small alley, mentally kicking himself that the first time he touched the man was out of fear and necessity.

“Gregory, what-”

“Please, just stay here a moment and keep quiet, I’m sure it’s nothing, I’ll handle it.”

“Gregory!”

But Greg was not listening, he could hear the man’s footsteps speeding up and getting nearer, and drew his gun. From his peripheral vision, he thought he saw Mycroft reaching for him, but he was already committed to whirling around the corner and slamming the oncoming man against the wall, holding him with an arm across his chest and leveling the gun to his cheek. “That’s far enough, mate. Who are you and why are you following us?”

The man slowly raised his hands, but a female voice suddenly cut in. “Drop the gun! Now!”

Greg did not drop the gun, but turned to look down the barrel of another weapon held by a well-dressed woman who Greg was also fairly sure he had seen at the restaurant. Before Greg had a chance to respond, Mycroft stepped out of the alley.

“Stand down, Ms. Bell.” Mycroft sounded tired.

“Sir, please stay back!” the woman responded.

“Ms. Bell, Inspector Lestrade is not a threat.”

“Respectfully, sir, then why is he hustling you into an alley and drawing a gun on your security?” Ms. Bell kept her own gun trained on Greg, who was frozen.

Mycroft pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because he did not know that I have security and thought Mr. Spooner was following us with malicious intentions.” Mycroft squared his shoulders, and put the tone of command into his voice. “Stand down, Ms. Bell. That is an order.” The woman grimaced and holstered her weapon. “Gregory, kindly unhand Mr. Spooner.”

Greg stepped back, but was not quite able to pick his jaw up off the floor. “They work for you?”

“Indeed,” Mycroft said, as Mr. Spooner, with a face like a thundercloud, started brushing off his clothing. “Mr. Spooner and Ms. Bell are … associates of mine and - for the time being at least - they have been charged with ensuring my safety.”

Greg holstered his gun. “Do you always have security?”

“Yes,” Mycroft said simply.

“So the other times we’ve been out together?”

“They were there and you did not notice them. Which is how it should be,” Mycroft lowered a meaningful look at Spooner, who squirmed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Greg asked, still wrapping his mind around the fact that he was apparently trying to date someone who merited two armed guards at all times.

Mycroft sighed. “In retrospect, that was clearly a mistake. I-” he paused, looking at the three of them, then shook his head. “The bar in the hotel across the way is nice and quiet. May I buy you a drink, Gregory? I’m afraid the walk has been a bit ruined.”

“Sure… yeah, a drink sounds good.”

Fifteen minutes later they were ensconced in a booth at a swanky hotel bar. Greg had a single malt Scotch, and Mycroft was twisting the stem of a glass of red wine in his long fingers. Beautiful fingers, Greg thought. Spooner and Bell had taken a table on the other side of the bar where they were too far to hear the conversation, but had clear sight lines to Mycroft.

“So how long have those two been your bodyguards?” Greg asked, nodding at Spooner and Bell.

“They’ve only been on this rotation for about a week. They’ll spend a month with me, before moving on to another assignment and being replaced by another two. And I wouldn’t call them bodyguards. They are field agents.”

“Ms. Bell sure seems like a bodyguard.” Greg took a swig of his drink.

“Ms. Bell knows that she will be held partially accountable for Mr. Spooner’s carelessness. This assignment is meant to give a more experienced agent - in this case, Ms. Bell - an opportunity to train a less experienced agent - Mr. Spooner - in the field. It also allows me to observe agents in the field to get a feel for their strengths and weaknesses. I’m afraid tonight revealed some weaknesses.” Mycroft sipped his wine.

“It’s not their fault you decided to go out with a cop,” Greg grinned.

“Yes, but-” Mycroft stopped himself and smiled. “Yes, you’re right.”

Greg narrowed his eyes. “You expect them to be better than me. It’s alright, you can say it.”

Mycroft considered Greg for a moment before responding. “I expect them to be able to follow their mark unnoticed, even if their mark is accompanied by a particularly intelligent and observant detective.”

“Fair enough, and I’ll take the compliment,” Greg chuckled. “So is that the only reason you have security? For training and observation?”

Mycroft twirled his wine glass in his fingers again before responding. “Gregory… I have enjoyed our time together, and if you are willing I would like to continue to see you.”

Greg grinned. “More than willing.”

Mycroft smiled. “Thank you. There are many things I am unable to talk about with you, for your safety, and mine, and that of others. And even with this I must tread a bit lightly, but … I would like you to go into,” he gestured vaguely between the two of them, “this, with your eyes open.”

“I’m listening.” Greg sat a little straighter.

“The work I do, the work I have done in the past, has risks. I… have enemies. Enemies who would prefer that I were no longer operating. While I am generally able to take care of myself, I am not as young as I was and there have been … close calls, as it were. And so now my security detail is part of the field agents’ rotation.”

“How close were the close calls?”

“Too close.”

“How too close?”

“A few centimeters from a major artery, too close.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

They both sipped their drinks. “Well then I’m glad Ms. Bell pulled her gun on me. She was probably right to,” Greg said after a minute. “Don’t be too hard on her tomorrow.”

Mycroft smiled and hesitantly reached across the table to touch Greg’s hand. Greg immediately took the opportunity to grab hold of the long, slender fingers. “You don’t… mind? That I live a life that requires that I am under surveillance?”

“I mean you have some privacy, don’t you?”

“Yes!” A blush was climbing up Mycroft’s cheeks. “Yes, of course! I - um - they - well, I mean-“

The sight of Mycroft Holmes stuttering like a schoolboy melted the last of Greg’s discomfort and he grinned, then squeezed Mycroft’s hand. “Can I safely assume that if I go to kiss you when we leave here that I won’t end up looking down the barrel of Ms. Bell’s gun again?”

Mycroft gaped at him momentarily before recovering. “No - um - no, that would be fine.”

“Just fine?” Greg cocked an eyebrow, leaning in to the newfound confidence.

A slow smile played over Mycroft’s features. “More than fine. Welcome.”

Greg settled back into his seat with a grin. There was one thing sorted.

Greg squinted across the restaurant. “Is Bell wearing a wig?”

Mycroft took a sip of his drink. “Gregory, kindly do not peer at her. She is more effective if it is not clear that there’s a connection between her and I.”

Greg turned his eyes front, but not before he saw Bell glower at him. “Sorry,” he grinned at Mycroft. “Is it a wig though? It’s awful. Don’t you all train in costuming or something?”

Mycroft coughed and wiped his mouth carefully with his napkin, avoiding Greg’s eyes. “I believe she dyed her hair.”

Greg’s jaw dropped. “No. Mycroft, no. Not that colour.” Mycroft cut another bite of his meal without looking up. “Did she do it because of me?” Greg asked, astonished. When Mycroft neither confirmed nor denied, Greg clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh.

“You’ve been… a little too good at spotting her,” Mycroft said after a minute. “But her new assignment starts in a few days. I believe the change in hair colour is more related to that.”

“There is no way that shade is good for any kind of undercover work, darling, you’ve got to get her to change it. It looks like it doesn’t know whether it’s red or purple.”

Mycroft started a bit at the pet name, and watched carefully as Greg applied himself to his meal. After a moment, he relaxed with a smile. “I’ll speak to her.”

“Mycroft.”

“Mm?”

“The chap on the bicycle.”

“What about him?”

“Is he your new security?”

A heavy sigh, then, “Kindly leave your gun holstered, Gregory.”

About a month, a number of dates, and many quite pleasant kisses after their first, Greg and Mycroft lay naked in Mycroft’s bed following their first time having sex. Greg was gently tracing his fingers over one of the several scars that broke the plane of Mycroft’s pale skin. He had seen the scars when he had undressed Mycroft - a lengthier affair than he was used to, with far more buttons - but had been preoccupied at the time. Now he took his time to study them.

“More of these than I was expecting,” Greg said, tracing what he suspected was the remnant of a knife wound to Mycroft’s side.

Mycroft started moving away from him. “I’m sorry. If it bothers you I can-” He was stopped as Greg wrapped an arm around his waist.

Greg pulled Mycroft close. “Don’t be daft. You’re beautiful and I want to see all of you. It’s not like I like the idea of you being stabbed,” he touched the knife scar, “or shot,” his fingers found the scar from a bullet wound on Mycroft’s shoulder, “or shot again,” the scar on Mycroft’s left thigh, “or burned,” the matching marks on the forearms, “or … what is this?” Greg fingered the vaguely triangular scar just above Mycroft’s right hip.

“Stabbed, I suppose you could say,” Mycroft replied quietly. “It was an ice pick.”

“An… ice pick.”

“Indeed. The result of an error in judgment of a much younger man.”

“Just to be clear, you were the younger man with poor judgment, right? There’s not some young tosser running about who caused you to get ice picked?”

“That’s correct. I read a situation erroneously and suffered the consequences.”

“With an ice pick.”

“Just so.”

“Any chance I could get more of the story behind that?”

Mycroft considered for a moment. “If two governments were to permanently fall… no, even then it wouldn’t be unclassified in either of our lifetimes.”

Greg leaned up to kiss Mycroft’s chin. “You’re fascinating. Does anyone actually believe you work for the Department for Transport?”

Mycroft chuckled. “Yes, Detective Inspector Lestrade. People from whom I have not had to take away investigations, and who have not had to deal with my brother, and who have not seen me in a state of undress - essentially everyone in the world who is not you or who has not otherwise encountered me in my professional capacity - generally believe that I am a minor government official.”

Greg planted a kiss on his chest. “People are daft, then. You dress too well to be a minor anything.”

Mycroft’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “Thank you. I think.”

“Anyway,” Greg picked up his prior thought. “I don’t like the idea of you being hurt. I hate it in fact. But the scars are part of you. And I like you. I like all of you. Very much.”

Mycroft drew Greg up so that they were face to face and kissed him deeply. “I also like you very much, Gregory,” he breathed when they finally broke apart.

Greg pulled himself tight against Mycroft’s side and rested his head on the other man’s chest. The angle put the bullet wound on Mycroft’s thigh in his line of sight. “This is the newest one,” he murmured, touching it gently.

“Very astute, Gregory.”

“Not a youthful error of judgment, then?”

“No. That one is the reason I have a security detail.”

Greg covered it with his palm. “A few centimeters from your femoral artery.”

“Mm,” Mycroft acknowledged. “The circumstances were such that if my assailant’s shot had been better - or worse, I suppose, given your perspective - I likely would have bled out before assistance could reach me.” Greg hugged him a little tighter. “That caused my superiors to insist that I be under guard,” Mycroft finished.

Greg frowned. “You have superiors?”

“One or two. It’s a bit … complicated.”

Greg huffed. “I bet it is.” He planted a kiss on Mycroft’s chest. “You’ve certainly led an interesting life.”

“I believe the corollary to the traditional curse is ‘may you live an interesting life.’”

“Do you feel cursed?” Greg asked, craning his neck to see Mycroft’s face.

“On the contrary,” Mycroft smiled, “the fact that in spite of all this, or perhaps as a result of all this, I have ended up here, with you, has me feeling incredibly fortunate at the moment.”

“Me too,” Greg grinned.

~*~

Thanks for reading! The next story is now up over here.

[corishadowfang]

Fallen Stars Fic Notes

So, Fallen Stars has officially come to a close. It's been a pretty wild ride, haha; as per usual, it spiraled out of my control, length-wise (surpassing Dandelion Seeds...remember how I said I hoped I'd never write anything that long again? Yeah. That worked out.), but I'm happy (and pleasantly surprised) that so many people came on the journey with me.

So! As seems to be tradition now, I have some notes for the fic. Some behind-the-scenes stuff, some thoughts about post-canon--stuff like that! Putting it under a read more, because these tend to get long.

So as usual, we'll start with the playlist! This one I ended up doing a lot of playing around with, haha; there were several songs where it's like, "The vibes are right...but do they fit this moment/this character in the story? Does the order work? Should I use song x or song y?" I eventually ended up with something I'm relatively happy with, haha, even if not every song fits perfectly. There are actually a lot of honorable mentions for this one (since I, you know...played around with it so much) but probably the biggest are: Guilt by Nathan Wagner, Monster from Epic the Musical, Fight the Tide by Jonathan Young and Colm McGuinness, and Southern Star by Gregory Alan Isakov.

(Seriously, Fight the Tide was put on and taken off the playlist so many times--)

I know I've mentioned this places before, but: sometime circa summer 2021, I was thinking about doing a story following Brain through his time in Scala ad Caelum. Basically, it'd be a short (like--nine-ish chapters) series that explored Brain's grief and guilt and how he eventually adjusted to being in Scala. The story would've been called "May We Find Our Happiness," and was planned to be worked on once both On the Edge of Daybreak and Dandelion Seeds were finished. ...And then Missing Link was announced, and I went, "Oh! That's going to be explored in canon! I don't have to write it myself!" and the idea was shelved.

And THEN. Fast forward to winter 2023. It's...without going into too much detail, my mental state was Not Great. And I tend to process/cope with things by...well, writing. And...well, what better way to work out things than by using two of my favorite characters? The thought for this "proto-Fallen Stars" was that it would be a what-if AU for what would've happened if Skuld had ended up in Scala, and that it would follow Brain's and Skuld's entire lives through that time period. Despite the premise, this was also intended to be a relatively short series--roughly four to five chapters. It was intended to explore the idea that like--sometimes you don't heal fully from things, and your life doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to, but that doesn't mean you can't find happiness despite everything. ...And then I started writing the first chapter. And ran face first into Plot (i.e. the corrupt council). And very abruptly realized, "Oh, no. Oh, no, this is going to be LONG. And...probably not focus entirely on the time period I want it to." And so I shelved it. Again.

AND THEN. The Missing Link impatience was getting to me, haha. And there were a lot of ideas from both of the "proto" versions of the story that were genuinely very interesting to me from a writing perspective. And then I made this post (and a couple of follow-ups) with the hopes that it could satisfy the writing demons. ...It did not. So I went back, finished (and revamped) the original first chapter, and posted it. And, well--here we are!

The current iteration of Fallen Stars really does take a lot of inspiration from its predecessors. Darkling!Brain was actually the planned end for "May We Find Our Happiness" (though he wouldn't have died in that version; his new-found friends would've pulled him out of it, though he'd keep the gold eyes, like in Fallen Stars), the corrupt council's been a staple since the beginning, and obviously, the AU takes the same basic premise as proto-Fallen Stars.

I knew Fallen Stars was going to be longer than the initial ideas I had, but like...I still didn't expect it to be this long. Like--roughly 30 chapters, and about half the word count. Let it be known that I cannot accurately estimate a story (or chapter's) length, ever.

While there were certain Big Things that I had planned since the beginning (ex. Brain's death and resurrection), there were also things that ended up getting made up on the fly and/or cut because it seemed like it'd work better for the story. One of the big things is that, originally, Master's Defender was going to be used to help create the Land of Departure; essentially, during Darkness's attack, one of the abandoned islands would've split off from the world, and Brain would've used Master's Defender to chain it back together, so to speak, and give the Scalan refugees somewhere to go. That was cut because it felt like it would make Brain a little less desperate to make his sacrifice, and after that, it ended up feeling...kind of out of place? Plus, I felt like I hadn't done a good enough job foreshadowing that (though you can find some hints, if you're looking).

(The world they end up does still end up becoming the Land of Departure, though.)

Also, Luxu was originally going to be possessing Lodur. (Which is why time seems to slow down around him whenever things get intense! And also plays into the "narrator" thing--Lodur is a storykeeper, after all.) I'll leave it up to all of you guys to decide whether you want Lodur to be Sigurd's deceased brother, Sigurd to have been wrong about Luxu taking his brother's body, or for "Lodur is Luxu's vessel" to be non-canon.

While I finally decided to leave it out, I did think about doing an epilogue. I played around with a lot of different ideas for how that'd go, but it generally fell into three basic ideas: 1) Skuld, Brain, and the rest of the crew roughly a decade after the end of Fallen Stars, 2) Xehanort and Eraqus (as like...five-year-olds) interacting with the remaining crew, or 3) Ven and Lauriam finding stories about Skuld and Brain in the distant future. I do like all of these, but I ended up feeling like it kind of...glossed over how much time it'd take for them to repair Scala and heal, so I ended up going with the current ending instead--which is hopeful, but still leaves room for the struggles that may follow.

THAT SAID. There's a non-zero chance some of those epilogues may show up as one-shots. I like the idea of exploring some post-canon scenarios in the Fallen Stars-verse (in particular, the first year after everything, since there's...a lot that the main crew go through). That said, I'm also not going to promise anything on that front, since it'll largely depend on my time/energy levels/inspiration.

(Also, feel free to ask me about post-canon stuff, in case I never get around to writing things; a lot of stuff changes around, haha, but I do have Ideas.)

"Do you want to hear a story?" has been planned as the final lines for a long time, haha. One, because it acts as a nice book-end for the story. Two, because it's kind of like...symbolic. Skuld is the one who said it, and is the only character besides Luxu to (kind of) break the fourth wall, so this was like...representative of her taking control of her own story. (This is also, for the record, why the "Do you want to hear a story?" narrator parts don't show up again after chapter 40; Skuld is the narrator now.)

The title was actually going to be the name of the first chapter. I was struggling to find a title I liked (I didn't want to use "May We Find Our Happiness" since, uh...that ended up as a chapter title for On the Edge of Daybreak, when I still thought I wouldn't do a story in Scala), and ended up brainstorming ideas for the chapter title instead. I'd landed on "Fallen Stars" because like--Brain and Skuld were "fallen stars" in the sense that a lot of people who are displaced from fallen worlds in the KH series tend to, uh...fall out of the sky, but also in the sense that they were legends who were, very suddenly, being made human in the eyes of Scala. And then it hit me that, "Wait...that'd work great for a fic name." And then it was repurposed, haha.

And...I will probably cut off the notes there, haha. Fallen Stars has been fun to work on, and it's weird to think that it's finished (unless, of course, I end up doing those one-shots). Thank you for coming on this ride with me; I hope you've enjoyed it!

[dad-sun-and-moon]

The Hat

Daryl was going insane.

The corporate goon looked at Moon, who was currently sitting down and singing a lullaby to one of the kids. Gregory, Daryl believed. It was a cute sight, he had to admit, but something was driving him crazy.

Daryl had been visiting for about two weeks now, and at this point, he was very aware of what the naptime animatronic looked like, the most iconic part of Moon's look being the hat.

The hat that changed lengths almost every time he looked at it.

He was losing sleep over this. Why and how were the hats changing lengths? Was he seeing things? If they were changing lengths, where are the previous hats going? What was happening?!

Daryl scribbled some notes, eyes squinting at the offending robot's head, specifically at the back. Moon usually had a long hat, it usually covering its whole back and barely reaching the top of its pants. Daryl called that one the "normal" hat. It was the most common one.

Daryl muttered something incoherent to himself, loudly scratching on the paper. He would get to the bottom of this. He had to.

Sure, his job was to figure out what the problem with the attendant was, but this was also something bizarre going on with it. So, it counted.

Apparently, he had been writing too loudly, because he suddenly saw red lights illuminating his page. He jumped, looking up from his notes, seeing the large animatronic loom over him, a scary grin on its face.

"Too loud," it said in its raspy voice. "Quiet."

Daryl put his hands up in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. My bad."

"Your bad indeed," the robot snickered, slouching back down to be at eye level with Daryl.

Daryl didn't know what it meant by that. "Something has just been bothering me, that's all."

"Poor you."

Daryl nodded in agreement, looking once again at the hat. Moon seemed to notice this time, its white pupils darting to the end of the hat that was hanging off the side of Moon's ruffles. "I have a question."

Moon grunted. Daryl took that as a sign to keep going.

"Why does your hat keep changing?"

Moon looked over at him, annoyance clearly (but not so clear to Daryl) radiating off his face. "What are you talking about?"

Daryl blinked in shock, looking at the top of Moon's head. How could it not know what he was talking about? He swore that the hat was shorter than it was yesterday. This hat went a little bit below its ruffles, but the one yesterday was all the way down to the little ribbon part right above the animatronic's pants. Daryl gestured wildly, muttering; "I swear to God, your hat. It's different."

Moon let out a long sigh. "Do you need your eyes checked?"

Daryl looked to the side. Well, probably, it had been around a year since-

Wait, no, off topic. Daryl glanced back up at the animatronic-

THE HAT WAS EVEN LONGER NOW.

Daryl let out a squeak, pointing at the offending article of clothing as if it had wronged him in some way. Moon simply scoffed and walked away from the security desk, moving to sit next to Baby Gregory, who was looking at the animatronic with a wide grin and sparkling eyes.

Daryl put his hands on his head.

He needed coffee.

[yamayuandadu]

do you have any info on the obscure hittite deity Kurunta? according to his wiki he was a god of hunting and wild animals who rebelled against Tarḫunna and became king of the gods forcing "humanity against the gods" but was later overthrown by a coalition of gods and animals. according to that same wiki he showed up at the telepinu myth and was apparently worshipped in Carchemish.

By Hittite deity standards Kurunta is the opposite of obscure. Kammamma or Zulki are obscure, Kurunta isn't. The length of wiki pages not updated in 10+ years is not a metric of obscurity.

The article is ineptly written compared to the one on the German wiki, though both have the same problem with incredibly faulty approach to myths only translated into Hittite, and with rendering logograms in general. More under the cut.

Kurunta is essentially the type specimen for the category of tutelary deities, which in the context of Hittitology refers to any deity whose name could be represented by the logogram LAMMA. This sign can also be read as KAL; since the Mesopotamian Lamma deities are female and the Anatolian ones generally male and consistently more major some authors favor the latter option to stress the difference. For the history of this debate see here, for an earlier view see here. The most extensive study of this category remains Gregory McMahon’s The Hittite State Cult of the Tutelary Deities from 1991.

Kurunta is the Hittite form of the name, but Piotr Taracha in Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia argues he originally belonged to the Luwian cultural milieu, which would make the form Runtiya the basic one, though this is not universally accepted (ironically, the Runitya wiki article is pretty solid in contrast with Kurunta’s). This debate aside, the use of the logogram LAMMA to represent Kurunta  was so well established that you will quickly notice referring to him (and many of his peers) as LAMMA or “tutelary deity” is more widespread in scholarship. Today logograms are generally rendered in all caps but that wasn’t always the case in the past leading to the awkward situation on the German wiki, with NIN.URTA treated as the actual Ninurta and not an Anatolian deity represented by his name.

Kurunta’s primary roles seemed to be those of a nature god keen on hunting, though as a royal protective deity he also had warlike leanings. His symbols include a stag and a spear. He occupies an elevated position in the Hittite state pantheon, appearing as the #3 behind the weather god (Tarhunna) and the sun goddess of Arinna in standard enumerations.

Another major mistake on the wiki is that today it is the consensus position that the god worshiped in Carchemish was Karhuha and not Kurunta. Same logographic writing, similar iconography, but these are not interchangeable. I also have no clue what the wiki means by "saving deity". Some ungodly calque or automatic translation from German Schutzgott? That's "tutelary god" in English. 

The myth you mention, which seems to be someone’s personal faulty interpretation of a part of the Kumarbi cycle, also stars the tutelary god of Carchemish and not Kurunta. The most up to date treatment of this problem is Archi's Orality, Direct Speech and the Kumarbi Cycle. Archi accepts that a Hittite reader would probably read the logogram as Kurunta, but stresses the myth, due to its Hurrian origin and connection with Carchemish, can only be a narrative about Karhuha. I think his arguments are sound. McMahon outright rejects a Hittite reading. For more background on these myths in general and their cultural context see here (+sources linked), I wrote a lot about this last year so I do not think I need to repeat myself here. Most notably, the theme of kingship among the gods was a firmly Hurrian concern, not Hittite.

Kurunta/Runtiya has notably proven himself to be one of the most long-lived Bronze Age Anatolian deities, and in Cilicia and Pisydia was worshiped well into the Hellenistic period. This is actually fairly unique, as only a handful of other, mostly fairly minor, deities made it past the Bronze Age collapse across the region.

[henryrodhamkissinger]

You should read Clarice Lispector. Read the short stories “Imitation of a Rose,” “The Smallest Woman in the World,” “The Chicken” (sometimes translated as “The Hen”) and the rest of them but those are three standout pieces that showcase her singular voice in two of its most frequently used cadences.

Lispector is something special, of a piece with a tradition of modernist Jewish writers of short fiction like Kafka—my favorite artist of any medium in the world and the writer to whom she’s most frequently compared—and Walser (whose bizarrely enchanting immediacy and easy meandering through the world as though it were right before you, unmediated by the written word, nobody remembers but Kafka himself was once hailed as “a strange and intriguing young expressionist in the vein of Robert Walser.” Kafka was even charged with imitating Walser by some of the really Extra stupid early critics.)

What these poetic and enigmatic early 20th century Jewish writers had in common is probably something close to “immediacy.” In Kafka’s short works, his parable-like fiction, this is obviously more evident than in grand experiments like The Castle. I won’t speak to the specific ways that each of these do this except as an introductory passage to what’s so fantastic about Lispector, largely because if you get me going about Kafka I will be Tumblring all into the night. That is the verb the kids use, correct?

By immediacy I mean that in the short works of all three of these writers, one is plunged headfirst into a world. There is no procedure, there is no paperwork, you read the first lines and you simply inhabit the piece. And they are strange habitats in different ways (I am biting my lip til it bleeds trying not to Say at Length about Kafka but I’m doin this for the Ladies out there who are the victims of violent erasure by the phallogocentric textual economy of blarrdeblafgh).

Lispector’s womanness, though, IS pretty inextricably germane to reading her work. Her Jewishness less obviously so, less than in the case of Kafka: Lispector’s family fled the Holodomor in Ukraine when she was a toddler and she spent nearly all of her life in Rio, Brazil—her ethnic/religious ties are all tangled, as she makes some note of. On a very shallow reading of Lispector’s stories, one could see a comfortable bourgeois housewife, dutifully and blissfully happy to serve her Important Diplomat husband as her day job and do her little stories when she had some time away from the chores of a housewife. Take a look at this picture of her—she certainly garnered a reputation of the sort. No Gertrude Stein or even Anne Sexton modernist rebel woman here, a precocious learned talent who “looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf.”

I love Woolf immensely but it’s as though Gregory Rabassa picked a modernist writer out of a hat with this comparison. “She’s a pretty broad AND she can write, like ehhh some other dame who can write…I dunno, Hildegard von Bingen or some.” Lispector’s stories are like Kafka’s and Walser’s in that their brevity and immediacy gives way to a sense of parable. Very little similarity in terms of style, beyond this important formal feature, to any of the above mentioned writers or to any writer I’ve ever encountered.

Of course her inner life was hell and she smoked about an oil drum of cigarettes a day, and hid her scowl or devious smirk behind fashionable sunglasses—she put her hell on paper in the form of something sublime, and stylistically almost cherubic, stories of Goyaesque consuming darkness masterfully written with the deceptive simplicity and airiness of a song for children. Just as her stories seem to erupt out of the soil of the earth, their subjects are consumed by some element or another of oblivion, of returning to that chthonic, nourishing nothingness. I will nurture because this is how things are, but I want to be nurtured, not by you, not by God, but by death, at least by its glimmers offered in life — she seems to say.

The Totally Other is another expression of this void, and in stories like “The Smallest Woman in the World,” she examines, with granular psychological sensitivity, what happens when people see something totally alien to themselves, the obverse of what they believe themselves to be. All throughout this conceptual preoccupation (really, a straightforward obsession), her stories present themselves in the most lively form, her bestiary of incidental characters given such life it seems as though you could stop reading the words on the page and they would still speak to you nonetheless, in a voice, seriously, that you can hear. It’s thrilling in an easy and light way, and it is simultaneously something fearsome, powerful, numinous. She is quickly becoming perhaps my second favorite writer of any style or genre. Read her stories.

[nevermindirah]

Yitzhak!

is a character! who Gregadiah What-Is-Math Rucka gave us almost no information about!

I've gone through Tales Through Time #6: The Bear and #1: My Mother's Axe with several magnifying glasses and done a lot of googling and taken my copy of the Tanakh off my shelf for the first time since (well, since the last time I needed to read Torah for TOG reasons, which I think was Booker Passover headcanons) and here's the best I can come up with.

In The Bear we meet someone who goes by the name Isaac Blue:

Read on for a lot of comic panel analysis and historical research and Jewish flailing!

So what do we know about this Isaac Blue person?

He's Lorge, he's got curly hair, he's basically a taller version of Joe as drawn by Leandro Fernández (ie an antisemitic stereotype why the fuck did they approve this character design?? and then why did they double down and copy-paste it to Yitzhak??):

He's got a mezuzah on the doorpost of his house in Alaska!

I screamed about the mezuzah way back in January in this post where I (very reasonably) assumed this character was Joe and spun myself a tale about how Booker is still Joe's brother so the mezuzah stays up even though Booker isn't welcome in that house for a century. Bottom line: the mezuzah is a tradition with origins in the commandment from Deuteronomy 6:9 to "write the words of G-d on the gates and doorposts of your house" and evolved over the course of the Rabbinic period into the modern mezuzah we see here.

I did unnecessary levels of google image search to glean absolutely no useful information about Yitzhak’s origins from this panel:

I've decided the variant cover of TTT 6 is Yitzhak because of a panel in My Mother’s Axe, shown here, and what's likely an unnecessarily deep reading of Exodus, discussed further down:

The person at the right of the bottom panel is wearing the same clothes as in the TTT 6 variant cover and has the same shoulder-length curly hair and hairy forearms.

Left to right, the people in this panel are Lykon (I'll never get used to him being white in the comics), Andy, Noriko (I think? why doesn't Andy mention her by name here?), and Yitzhak. Andy's robe has a stereotypically Greek design on the sleeve cuff, and I had to stop myself 10 minutes into a Wikipedia rabbit hole because Gregorforth doesn't think that deep about this shit. The solid clues as to timeline that we get in this panel are:

Andy's iron axe

the presence of Lykon, who Andy first met in 331 BCE

So all we know is that Yitzhak is an immortal, he was a contemporary of Lykon, and he's Jewish.

Isaac is the most common Anglicization of Yitzhak (which in turn is the most common Anglophone transliteration of יִצְחָק‎), and Greg always uses the (transliterated) Hebrew when he refers to this character. Yitzhak is the long-awaited child of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis, the child who G-d commanded Abraham to sacrifice but spared at the last minute. I see what you did there, Gregory.

Why Isaac Blue? This is where I pulled out my Tanakh. According to the New JPS translation, blue is the first of three colors of yarn listed in Exodus 35:6 among the gifts requested of the Israelites to construct the priestly garments for the Tabernacle and later the Temple. Then in Numbers 15:38 the Israelites are commanded to "make themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner."

And now for sandbox timelines party! Gregadiah gave us ALMOST NOTHING to go on, so I'm gonna make my own fun.

I, like many modern Jews, think the stories in the Tanakh are foundational mythology that are valuable because of how they've shaped our people but that contain some fucked-up shit and either way aren't meant to be a record of historical facts. Modern scholarship generally agrees that the community we now call Jews emerged as a distinct group of Canaanites sometime in the late Bronze Age (cw this video's host says the Name of G-d aloud despite being a religious studies scholar who knows that is not a name anyone but the Temple priests are allowed to say). The first non-Biblical written record of the people Israel is from an Egyptian source c. 1200 BCE, and the Biblical kingdom of David and Solomon was probably an exaggeration of whatever really happened during the Bronze Age Collapse. We start getting into historical-fact territory a few centuries into the Iron Age:

588 BCE Solomon's Temple destroyed, Babylonian exile begins

538 BCE Cyrus of Persia allows Jews to return to Jerusalem

515 BCE Second Temple construction complete

332 BCE Alexander the Great At Something I Guess conquered Judea, beginning the Hellenistic period of Jewish history — 331 BCE Andy & Lykon find each other

167 BCE another jerkface Greek king desecrated the Temple and basically outlawed Judaism

164 BCE recapture of Jerusalem and Temple rededication during the Maccabean Revolt

70 CE destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, beginning of the Rabbinic period of Jewish history that we're still in now

What if... and hear me out... what if immortals come in pairs, and the pairs are:

Andy & Quynh

Joe & Nicky

Booker & Nile

LYKON & YITZHAK

What if Yitzhak was a priest of the Second Temple? What if he and Lykon killed each other just like Joe and Nicky would in the same city around 1300 years later, but instead of enemies-to-lovers speedrun with an absurdly long happily-ever-after, when Lykon died permanently Yitzhak decided to separate from Andy and Noriko and become the hermit we later see in Alaska?

We don't know how old Yitzhak is compared to the others, only that he was a contemporary of Lykon at a time when Andy was using an Iron Age version of her mother's axe. Other plausible origins for him:

a Jew of the early Rabbinic period, maybe a child or grandchild of people who were still alive before the Second Temple was destroyed

a Judean of the Second Temple era under the Romans or Greeks or Persians, maybe a priest, maybe not

an exilee in Babylon, maybe of the generation who got to return, maybe of the generation who was exiled (he doesn't look like he was 50 at his first death but who knows, he could've been mortal for both)

an Israelite of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, maybe a priest of Solomon's Temple or again maybe not

an Israelite wandering in the desert with Moses

THEE Yitzhak, ben Avraham v'Sarah, our patriarch who was brought up for sacrifice and then spared, and then spared again, and then spared again, and again, and again...

or! he could also be a Canaanite or other Levantine who predates the people Israel, who at some point in his very long life chose to join our mixed multitude, who like Andromache before him (and like Avram and Sarai would in this case do after him) took a new name to reflect the magnitude of influence this people has had on him

Why do I keep saying Yitzhak might have been a priest? It's thanks to the one detail in the artwork I could plausibly connect to solid research without getting a PhD real quick. Take a look at the gorgeous detail on the opening of his robe in the TTT 6 cover. He's dressed in rags, holes and dirt everywhere, rough stitches probably from hasty repair work — except for the neck opening. Compare that to this description from Exodus 39:23 of the construction of the priestly garments for the Tabernacle: "The opening of the robe, in the middle of it, was like the opening of a coat of mail, with a binding around the opening, so that it would not tear."

The next verses describe the intricate designs for the hem of the priestly garment. Yitzhak's ragged garment looks like the hem was torn off entirely.

Am I overthinking this? Yes I am! You're welcome!

My friend and historical research hero @lady-writes​ is in a Discord server with Gregadiah and asked the man himself some questions about all this. He clearly thinks he's being sneaky?? No shit Yitzhak is Jewish, dude, I want DETAILS!

I will not be giving up my Jewish Booker headcanon, I've put too much thought into it by now, the internalized shame of antisemitism explains Booker's depression too well for me, and it just adds so much richness to Booker/Nile both being children of forced diasporas. Fortunately (for him, not me, bc I'd do it anyway!) Gregothy supports fan headcanons even when they're not in line with his own:

One last thing before I close like 100 research tabs and go back to writing historical fantasy and/or porn! I love that, despite that atrocious caricature of a face design, our canon Jew and our fanon Jew are both Lorge and Soft and Kind, flying the face of the antisemitic stereotype of Ashkenazi Jewish men as small and weak, but also not falling into the New Jew / Muscle Jew stereotype that Zionism created. (I am trying SO HARD not to talk about Israel/Palestine for once ughhhhhhhhhh) Anyway here's a (US-centric but very good) primer on both these stereotypes of Jewish masculinity. Is this why I'm forever projecting my transmasc diasporist feels onto Jewish Booker the service sub? 🤷🏻‍♂️

I’ll reblog a second version of this with full image descriptions so that there’s a version accessible for folks who need IDs as well as a version accessible for folks who get overwhelmed by walls of text.

[bluejayblueskies]

philia

n. a love between friends; based on mutual respect, common values, shared desires, and unwavering trust

Words: 2.5k Relationship: Sasha James & Tim Stoker, past Sasha James/Tim Stoker Tags: Light Angst, Canon Compliant, Aromantic Sasha James, Lovers to Friends, Awkward Conversations Warnings: internalized arophobia (throughout), fear of arophobia from another character (doesn’t actually occur)

|| Ao3 ||

.

If one thing could be said about Sasha James, it’s this: she doesn’t scare easy. All the traditional spooks—spiders and the dark and heights and everything in between—don’t send her heart racing like they did some of her childhood friends, and when she was old enough to go to the library by herself, she slowly and methodically worked her way through the meager horror section at her disposal. She liked the way that the fear tasted, metallic in her mouth and sending gooseflesh tingling across her arms and lips, and even when she landed on a book or a movie that pushed her beyond her limits for terror, she found that she couldn’t look away, too immersed in the way that her hands shook as she turned the page.

 Maybe that’s why she ended up at the Magnus Institute. When the horror began to feel stale, each story contrived beyond the point of enjoyment, where better to turn to than somewhere that collected horrors that were real?

Sasha lasted three months in Artifact Storage before she decided that she’d finally found her limit, and it was gold monocles that turned your sight inward and stainless steel knives that leaked briny blood and a chalkboard eraser that could peel the skin clean off your face with a single stroke. Her brand of horror lay in stories, not in things, she decided then. In stories, at least, the fear was contained.

 The problem, though, is that it’s easy to not be afraid of stories. Even if they’re real ones, told by real people, they’re still just stories, and so Sasha can separate herself from them, lock them away in the Institute at night and return to the more mundane horrors of her television screen or her bookshelf. It’s much, much harder to not be afraid of the things she can’t escape.

 Sasha James doesn’t scare easy. But when she walks into the Institute on Monday morning and sees Timothy Stoker sitting at his desk, positioned opposite to hers and in the perfect location for mid-day glances and snippets of conversation, her heart jumps into her throat so fast she thinks she might choke on it.

 Sasha puts on her headphones, sits down at her desk, and doesn’t let her eyes stray from her computer screen for the rest of the day.

 And the next.

 And the next.

 Fear is a funny thing, she thinks as she stands in the shower that Friday night, letting the water drum against the back of her skull and trying to figure out why even after fifteen minutes of standing in the scalding spray, her skin still itches with unseen dirt that she can’t quite rid herself of. It can spur people to go to lengths they never thought imaginable. Like Gregory Chavez, who found he could run nearly two miles at a dead sprint when chased by a thing that had once been his son but that now craved nothing but blood and terror. Or Biah Wynn, who found it within herself to burn her family home to the ground with her brother still inside when a sharp-tongued thing from her dreams told her to.

 Or Sasha James, who’s been avoiding her best friend for a week because she had sex with him and now can’t bring herself to admit that it was a mistake. Or, more accurately, to admit why it was a mistake.

 Tim probably hates me now, she thinks as she tips her head back and lets the water run over her eyelids, holding her breath as it trickles over her closed lips and hits her arms where they’re crossed over her chest in a protective gesture. And he’d be right to. I kind of hate me now.

 Sasha turns the shower off, laments for a moment the state of her water bill for that month, and readies herself for bed.

 She allows herself to continue this way for two more days before the voice in her head manages to convince her that don’t ruin a good thing is becoming more and more of an impossibility the longer she ignores the inevitably awkward conversation that they need to have. Her resolve finally breaks through the sharp static of fear Monday evening, when Tim pushes back from his desk and Sasha says, breaking the silence with all the grace of a battering ram, “Fancy a cuppa?”

 Timothy Stoker doesn’t startle easy. At the sound of Sasha’s voice, however, he jumps so badly that the file folder he’d been preparing to stow away slips from his hands, spilling loose pages on the ivory tile floor in a mess of white paper and black ink.

 “Jesus,” Tim says, bending down to collect the papers. His eyes are cast firmly on the ground when he says, voice tight, “A little warning next time before you decide to break a week-long vow of silence?”

 Sasha’s wince is full-body. “Sorry,” she says, trying and failing to impart a week’s worth of apologies into a single word. Then, with forced levity: “Permission to speak again?”

 Tim’s quiet for a little too long. He’s collected all the papers and they sit limply in his hands as his eyes trace the lines between the tiles, lips curled down into a pained expression that Sasha hates, though she knows it’s nobody’s fault but her own. Then, quietly, he says, “I don’t know, Sasha. Maybe a week ago, the answer would have been yes? But I… I don’t know if I feel like talking now.”

 Thorns of Sasha’s own design dig into her heart and claw up her throat, and she fixes her eyes on the surface of her desk. It’s full of yellow post-it notes she doesn’t remember writing and approximately twenty stray pens and pencils and a million other things that are far, far less important than the man still squatting on the floor next to her, pretending to organize the papers in his hand.

 “Okay,” she says, and the word bites into her tongue with razor-sharp teeth. Then, even though she said she wouldn’t, she says, “I’m sorry, Tim. And I want to explain, if you’d let me.”

 Please let me.

 Tim looks at her, just once, and the hurt in his eyes cuts into Sasha like broken glass. “I… I just need some time,” he says, like Sasha hasn’t given him too much of that already, like she hasn’t already had the thought of I just need more time, more time to figure this out running through her head for days.

 “Okay,” she repeats. The smile she musters up feels hollow, too full of hope to hold up to scrutiny.

 “Okay,” Tim says.

 Tim leaves. And Sasha works late, if only to give her mind something to do that isn’t wallowing in guilt and self-pity.

 She works late Tuesday, too. And Wednesday and Thursday. Then, as her computer blinks 17:00 on Friday and she flips open another file, she hears from behind her a quietly amused, “You’re turning into Jon, you know.”

 If asked later, Sasha will maintain that she didn’t startle at the sound of Tim’s voice. The file, at least, stays firmly clasped in her hand, though she sets it down before turning in her chair to see Tim standing a few feet away, jacket slung over one arm and hesitance written all over his face even as his mouth forms a teasing smile.

 “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Sasha says, aiming for levity and coming close enough for it to count. “I don’t have nearly enough grey in my hair for that yet. Besides, you know I can’t pull off a sweater vest.”

 “Not with that attitude, you can’t.”

 Sasha smiles fully, letting tendrils of humor pull the corners of her mouth up toward her eyes, and the lines of tension in Tim’s face begin to smooth. The hesitance is still there, the hurt lying just beneath, but it feels a lot less like a wall and a lot more like a locked door. She just hopes that Tim still trusts her enough to give her the key.

 “Fancy a cuppa?” he says.

 They pick a little tea shop a few blocks away from the Institute, open later than the rest and with prices that only make Sasha wince a little bit as she orders a cup of jasmine green tea and then sits at a little corner table across from Tim, away from the hum of the rest of the café. He wraps his hands around his mug of Darjeeling, looks at Sasha, and says, “Is this the part where you say, ‘It’s not you, it’s me’?”

 Sasha winces and takes a long sip of her too-hot tea to cover it up. When she pulls back, the roof of her mouth thoroughly scalded, she says, “In… a manner of speaking.”

 It’s Tim’s turn to wince, though he doesn’t bury it in his tea, instead painting over it quickly with a mask that’s not so thick that Sasha can’t still see the hurt that lies beneath. “Right,” he says, and the little laugh that escapes him is entirely devoid of humor. “Guess that’s it, then. Nice and succinct—don’t know why it gets such a bad rap in rom-coms, to be honest.”

 The guilt is burning its way up Sasha’s throat, hot and sticky. It’s a struggle to force herself to speak around it, but she does, because it’s important. Because it matters. Because she’s not going to lose her best friend just because she’s afraid. So, she swallows the lump in her throat just enough to say, “It’s not because I don’t want to be in a relationship with you, Tim; it’s because I don’t want to be in a relationship at all. A… a romantic one, at least.”

 Tim doesn’t say anything at first, and though Sasha knows he’s just taking the time to parse her words, to understand what she’s trying to tell him—he’s ace, he told her before they… before, so he’ll know what she means—she can’t keep the anxiety from clawing up the back of her throat with acid-dipped nails. She takes a drink of her tea, and then another, until she’s staring at the bottom of her mug with her heart thrumming in the back of her throat. The sound of her own pulse in her ears is so loud that she almost doesn’t hear Tim when he says, quietly, “I’m sorry, Sasha.”

 Sasha sets her mug down hard enough to chip, surprise and guilt turning her blood to liquid nitrogen and her muscles to ice. “No, please- please don’t apologize, Tim, I should be the one who- I should have told you sooner instead of- of leading you on when I was never going to reciprocate. And then you told me you were ace and I- I still didn’t say anything because- because—”

 Sasha waves her now-free hand in the air wildly, grasping for a reason that just won’t come. Finally, for want of anything better, she lands on, “Because I somehow thought that was going to be the thing that you’d hate me for instead of for how I’ve been acting all week.” She deflates, ever so slightly, and says, “I am so, so sorry, Tim.”

 She affixes her eyes to the table, to the spiraling wood grains that trace lines across its surface, and doesn’t let go. She can think of a million expressions Tim might be wearing right now, ranging from guilt to sympathy to frustration to hurt, and she doesn’t want to see any of them.

 A hand, warm and terra-cotta brown, settles on top of hers, and Tim says, “I meant that I’m sorry for assuming that the reason you were avoiding me was about me. I should have asked sooner, but I…” He lets out a small laugh. “I suppose I thought you hated me. That I’d done something—though I couldn’t figure out what—and now you never wanted to see me again. And then I- I made it about me. Got frustrated when you wanted to talk. Didn’t even consider that there might have been something else going on.”

 “Why would you have?” Sasha says quietly, eyes still glued to the table. “I didn’t give you any indication that there was. I didn’t say anything.”

 Tim hums, a sad sound, and says, “I suppose neither of us did.”

 It’s quiet between them for a moment. In the interim, the sounds of the café filter in: the clank of cups against countertops, the hiss of steam as it spills free from stainless steel water heaters, the chatter of those around them who are lost in their own worlds of words and wants and wishes. Then, Tim’s hand tightens around Sasha’s, almost imperceptibly, and he says, “I’ll love you any way you want me to.”

 Sasha finally looks up from the table. Tim’s watching her, his eyes full of an affection so sweet it tastes of melted caramels on Sasha’s tongue. “I’ve loved you in so many ways, Sasha James, in so many times and places and moments. And I’m not going to give them all up if one of those ways isn’t something that you want from me. I’ll just put that one aside and replace it with new ones.” Tim shrugs and smiles, and it’s so casual, so easy, that Sasha thinks she must be dreaming it. “If you don’t want to date, then we won’t. And that’s not going to make me love you any less.”

 Sasha looks at Tim, trying to wrangle the tendrils of emotions within her into something beyond the electrifying, giddy happiness that she feels bubbling up in her chest. What comes out, in the end, is a small laugh and a quiet, “It’s that easy?”

 Tim holds up a hand. “Scout’s honor.”

 “Huh.” Sasha taps a finger against the edge of her mug, feeling the press of now-cool ceramic on her skin. The smile tugging at her lips is insistent enough that she finally just lets it slip free, uninhibited by shaking hands or acid claws or rapid-fire heartbeats. It’s still a nervous thing—a fawn just learning to walk, a baby bird pushed from its nest and struggling to unfurl its wings mid-freefall, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon with stained-glass wings and a life turned upon its head. It remains so for several weeks, through the still-awkward coffee runs and the times Sasha spends curled up on Tim’s couch with the space between them burning red-hot and icy-cold in equal measure and the staggering guilt that still returns as Sasha stands in the shower or lies in bed or walks through the doors to the Institute to see Tim sat at his desk, his smile growing wider each day.

 Then one day Sasha reaches for it, almost absently—that nervous feeling, the almost-falling swoop of her stomach—and finds it gone. She reaches and instead finds Tim, standing in the kitchen of her flat with flour dusted on his nose and kneading a ball of bread dough as he regales her with a story of his first tried-and-failed attempt at making bread that involved not one, but two separate fire-alarm incidents. And when she smiles at him, it feels so light and freeing that a laugh comes with it, bubbly with surprise and affection.

 She spreads stained-glass wings, strong enough now to carry her weight and beautiful in their own right, and lets the wind carry her home.

[codecandyblue]

My First Blog Post

I am Gregory Anderson, designer of virtual escape adventures for CodeCandyBlue.  All the marketing guys say that I need to have a blog to perform better on Google search results, get higher domain authority and bring visitors to my page.  

The problem is that people don’t come to my site to read a blog post.  They come to buy a virtual escape adventure that they can play online with their friends from the comfort of their home, anytime, day or night.  So what could I possibly write about that would provide value to my audience?

Suggestions from various SEO sites include: how to tie a tie, a fresh new recipe, something about your pets, etc.  Um, no.  So I have decided to write about whatever I damn well please, related to my business, codecandyblue.com, and my games, including The Mars Shuttle Mission, The Mayan Temple Mission, Amnesia!, The Cryptographer, and our free starter game: Cadets - Training Day.  

I promise this blog will be unfiltered, will include tidbits about the storylines for my virtual escape adventures, as well as airing of grievances about running an online business in the age of Google.  You may be entertained, and you may learn a few things about the SEO and online marketing biz - not because I am an expert, but because I am learning as a go and need to vent about the ridiculousness of algorithm-determined validity.

First up - blogging!  Apparently, you need to provide new, well-written content to your site on a monthly basis to move up the Google search rankings.  After I protested that a blog seemed incompatible with my business goals, it was suggested that my blog could even be hidden from my customers, but as long as the Google crawling bots found it and saw that it contained the right key words and was updated frequently, that my site would do better in Google search.  I have decided for now to blog on Tumblr, then import my Tumblr posts into a blog page on my site.  I won’t hide it, but am not promoting it either - I need the most highly-visible portions of my site to be the virtual escape games that I am selling.

I also found out that the ideal blog post size is around 1500 words!  I’m getting close to 400 so far in this post, so no, I will not be getting anywhere new 1500 words.

Given the recommended length and frequency of posts, I first looked into AI Copywriting to help generate some crap to post.  Unfortunately, crap is exactly what they delivered.  Apparently these online AI writing programs take your input, scour the web for related content, merge the two into grammatically-correct sentences, and voila! you have a blog post.  

First problem - the one I tried didn’t have any options for a 1500 word blog post.  The most it generated was 400 characters, and that was using the “Product Description” setting.  They had other settings for Blog Titles, Blog Outlines, etc., but nothing that would attempt to generate a complete blog post.

Second problem - when I entered in information about The Mars Shuttle Mission, they pulled really inappropriate stuff from their related-content web search, like the names of the designers of a game, or the description of a specific plot point, all of which had nothing to do with my game, and would probably get me sued if the parties this text was stolen from ever read my blog.

I do have to say that some of the options were well-written.  They give you like 10 different paragraphs from your single input, so you can use the ones you like and discard the rest.  I deleted all the crazy ones unfortunately, but did copy out some decent ones.  Here is an AI-generated product description for my games:

“Virtual Escape Adventures let you embark on an epic, highly-interactive adventure with your friends, solving puzzles and riddling your brain to escape each scene. Uncover hidden clues, solve mysteries, make it to the end of the mission alive - all from the comfort of your own home!”

So, AI writing can generate some decent stuff, but the short stuff they do well is also easy and quick for me to write myself.  Once they can generate 1500 words that make sense and are relevant, I may jump on the AI writing bandwagon, but for now no AI writing for my blog!  You can rest assured that nothing you have read so far was written by an algorithm (except for the above quote, which is explicitly AI generated.

Hey!  I just wrote a blog post, and boy are my arms tired!  Almost 800 words!  Until next time...

Gregory Anderson

CodeCandyBlue - Virtual Escape Adventures

https://codecandyblue.com

[gumnut-logic]

We’ll Be Home For Christmas 3.1

Title: We’ll be home for Christmas

Day Three - If not for the courage of the fearless crew – Part 1 Prologue | 1.1 | 1.2 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3

Author: Gumnut

23 - 27 Dec 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: The boys can’t fly home for Christmas, so they have to find another way.

Word count: 3823

Spoilers & warnings: language and so, so much fluff. Science!Gordon. Artist!Virgil, Minor various ships, mostly background.

Timeline: Christmas Season 3, I have also kinda ignored the main storyline of Season 3. The boys needed a break, so I gave them one. Post season 3B, before Season 3C cos we haven’t seen it yet.

Author’s note: For @scattergraph. This is my 2019 TAG Secret Santa fic :D I hope you enjoy it.

Please note that I am not a scientist, only an artist with mad librarian skillz. I may have stretched a few facts in places here, for which I apologise, though I did research a hell of a lot to get this written (at one point I was only writing one or two lines before I had to research another fact…it was a very long process). I hope you enjoy it anyway. :D

Many thanks to @vegetacide and @scribbles97 for cheering me on and their wonderful support through this craziness. And to @onereyofstarlight for geeking out with me over the setting.

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

 Day Three - If not for the courage of the fearless crew

 When Virgil woke late the next morning, the yacht was already in motion. He sighed as he crawled out of bed, body groaning the entire way.

Stumbling into the living area, he didn’t even have to look for the coffee. John simply met him halfway and handed him a mug.

He inhaled it. The hot beverage ran down his throat and within minutes his brain was beginning to boot.

A hand landed on John’s shoulder in honest gratitude. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Okay, so that grin was a little smug, but the coffee was worth it. That and it was a novelty to have John for breakfast at any time. He squeezed his brother’s shoulder, blaming not enough caffeine for the sudden soppy.

His brother frowned at him. “How are you feeling?”

Okay, that fixed the soppy. He rolled his eyes. “I’m fine.”

The frown turned into a smirk. “Sure. Would you like some eggs? I hid the last of the bacon from Alan, so there is some if you like.”

The soppy returned. You’d think he was on drugs or something. Must be the sea air. “Thanks, John.”

His brother peered at him a little more before ushering him to sit down and busying himself in the kitchenette. It wasn’t long before the tantalising smell of bacon sizzling wafted through the living area.

“Hey! I thought we were out of bacon!” Alan was not impressed as he strode in, game console in hand. “You lied to me!”

John snorted as he placed the plate full of bacon and eggs in front of Virgil along with a glass of orange juice. “So, you would have eaten Virgil’s share?” The arched eyebrow was challenging.

“Nooo.”

“Sure, Alan.” John turned around and walked back into the kitchen obviously not believing his brother.

Alan sat down across from Virgil. “I wouldn’t, honest, Virg.”

Perhaps his littlest brother’s brain was not connected to his hand because Virgil had to slap it away from his plate almost immediately. “Sure, Alan.”

The bacon was good and the eggs just right. Mouth full, “John, this is divine.”

The snort from the kitchenette was loud, but the only comment he received in reply.

Virgil slapped Alan’s hand away again and glared at him. “So, who’s winning the game.”

Alan was immediately distracted. “I was, but then John pulled a stunt with a rogue asteroid, which I’m not entirely sure was legal...” His voice rose specifically in the direction of the kitchenette.

“Game allowed it.”

“Yeah, well, I PM’d the developers and they knew nothing about it!”

“Gregory never remembers what he programs. The guy does it in his sleep half the time.”

“Hah! Grez is totally cool. He said you’re a stick in the mud.”

John wandered back into the room wiping his hands on a tea towel. “Gregory is also a card-carrying member of the Flat Earth society.”

A snort from Alan. “So?”

“The man has been to space, Al. He designs video games, set in space. Explain the logic behind that?”

“Denial? Imagination? A little too much college night life?”

John threw the towel back into the kitchen. “All of the above. So, yeah, game allows it, it’s legal.”

“Well, I’m gonna whip your ass in the void between galaxies. Gonna stoke my ship with engines only you can dream of.”

Taking a seat at the end of the table, John did not appear concerned in the slightest. “Hey, Virgil, would you like to assist me in developing a fictional intergalactic drive.”

An arched eyebrow as he munched on bacon and glanced between the two of them. “Hmmm, sure.”

“Hey! No fair. No engineering brothers allowed. If you get Virgil, I get Brains.”

John grinned. “Go for it. International Rescue could do with one of those.”

Virgil snorted. He loved Brains like a brother, but the man did not know the difference between reality and fiction. Postulate an idea such as this, give him a few hours and he’d have a working theory. Let him go, and he’d build it. The game would be forgotten the moment Alan mentioned the concept.

“You suck.”

“Just using the tools at hand, Alan.”

Virgil blinked. “You just called me a tool.”

John shrugged and opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a string of profanity from their captain up on the bridge. The boat suddenly accelerated, swerving to port, and Virgil had to grab the remains of his breakfast as it tried to slide off the table.

A frowning Scott strode through the room. A worried glance at Virgil and John, he took the most direct route towards the bridge and disappeared. Alan dropped his console onto the lounge and darted after him.

At higher speeds, the boat began to bounce off the wave peaks. Virgil decided that staying put was probably in his best interests and apparently John agreed as he reached out and gently grabbed Virgil’s arm.

“I’m okay.”

“Just making sure.”

He didn’t bother responding to that.

Wherever the boat was going, apparently it got there quickly because it wasn’t at full acceleration for long and it slowed quickly to a stop, her hull wallowing in the water at the sudden lack of forward momentum.

As Virgil pushed himself to his feet, he glared at the hand wrapped around his bicep. John didn’t let go.

“If you fall on your face on my watch, Scott will kill me.”

“I’m fine.”

His brother still didn’t let go. This was ridiculous.

But apparently smother was in the Tracy genetic code, because John held onto him the entire way up to the bridge. Only to find it locked down and empty.

All three brothers were out on the bow of the boat.

He could hear Gordon swearing from here. What the hell had his brother all riled up?

It took his slow way onto the bow - those steps still hurt, damn it - for him to find out.

“It’s caught in her mouth. Goddamnit!”

“Hey, hey, Gordon. We can help her. Tell us what we need to do.” Scott’s voice was tense. Virgil read it clearly as pissed, but needing to calm a brother and fix a problem before blowing a circuit.

What the hell had happened?

“Gordon?”

His fish brother shot distraught eyes in his direction. “We’ve got a humpback calf caught in a gill net. A fucking illegal gill net. Here. I’m gonna string the bastards up and Mel is gonna skin them alive!”

Gordon stormed past Virgil and John, heading towards the back of the boat, thumbing his comms. “Mel, you got your ears on?”

Virgil turned to look out across the surface of the ocean and sure enough a single dark buoy appeared just off to port about fifty metres away. To his horror there was a weak whale spout just as his eyes focussed on the spot.

Scott strode past and gently clasped his shoulder, his eyes bleak before following Gordon aft. Alan hurried after him.

A glance at John found his brother’s professional facade well in place. Gordon could be heard yelling over his comms from the other end of the boat.

The whale breached again.

Shit.

-o-o-o-

Scott followed his little brother as he stormed down the length of his yacht.

“Mel, what the hell do you mean this isn’t the first time.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Gordon, I’m as angry as you, but these assholes know what they are doing. I’ve had the coast guard out here sixteen times in the last year and they haven’t managed to catch one of them. We’ve lost turtles, sunfish, rays and earlier in the season a humpback died of its injuries. We can’t locate the nets. They don’t appear on our scanners.”

“Well, they appear on mine and I’m not putting up with this crap.”

“Any help is appreciated, Gordon. If I knew you’d be able to detect them, I would have called you in earlier. If you can give us the locations, it would be much appreciated.”

“I’ll get John on it immediately. In the meantime, we have an injured calf and a distressed mother to attend to.”

“Do you want me down there?”

His brother paused a moment and dragged in a calming breath. “I’ll do an assessment. If I need help, I’ll call Kayo to come get you.”

“Keep me in the loop, Thunderfish. Play it safe. Mamma Humpback is going to be anxious.” A pause. “Sorry your vacation has been interrupted.”

“Screw my vacation. We’re gonna get these bastards.” Scott didn’t think he had ever seen his brother so angry. It was understandable. “Speak to you soon. A Little Lightning out.”

Gordon immediately turned to Scott. “We have a situation.”

Scott let his head drop just a little in acknowledgment. “Yes, we do. This is yours, Thunderbird Four. Tell me what you need.”

-o-o-o-

With the power of TB5 they discovered an intricate network of netting just to the west of the Kermadecs, trailing intermittently down their full length. To regular sensors they were invisible, but to IR sensors they were a flicker. A flicker John was able to focus on and bring up a clear picture.

Gordon, now dressed in his IR uniform, swore a bluestreak at how many nets were actually out there. John put him through to WASP Command and Gordon gave a very colourful report to the regional commander, who just happened to be a former squad mate of his. Her response was more formal, but no less colourful.

With tight expressions, Gordon, Scott and Alan climbed into the inflatable dingy and rowed their way out to the beleaguered cetacean. Gordon used the effort to push his anger into the oars. He couldn’t afford to have his thoughts clouded by the bastards who had done this.

Sensors told him the calf had a net caught in its mouth and wrapped around its right pectoral fin. The fine mesh hung down its left side, dangling into the depths where it had caught on a snag. The chances of it catching right there were ridiculously small, the waters so deep between the islands. But the net was hundreds of metres long, weighted, and, even tangled, it reached down far enough to snag itself on a submerged pile of rock.

Hell, he was going to need Four to get down that deep to get the net out of the water.

If the calf had been snagged while diving, she wouldn’t have been able to surface to breathe and would have drowned.

Bastards!

Scott darted a glance at Gordon. The aquanaut held his gaze. His eldest brother was dressed in an IR wetsuit. It was startling to see him out of his familiar uniform. Gone was his flight baldric and in its place, yellow slashed across his blue, visibility more the priority underwater. The only concessions to his commander rank were his shoulder patches and twin silver-grey bands on that yellow baldric. Alan was dressed similarly, but where Scott sported silver, Alan sported red. Neither had their helmets on.

Gordon had only mentioned the suits to Scott when preparing for this venture because he had hoped to enjoy some recreational diving. Their suits were far above average equipment, so why not use the best to have a little fun?

Scott had rolled his eyes, but five wetsuits had been thrown into their luggage. They had supposed to be used for sharing his world with his brothers.

Gordon swore under his breath again and tugged at the oars angrily.

“We’ll fix this.” Scott’s voice was calm, ever the commander when on duty. And on duty they were.

When he got his hands on those assholes...

“A Little Lightning to Inflatable. Mother Humpback is on the move towards you.” John had been tracking her frantic circles around her calf.

Gordon dropped the oars and grabbed his scanner. Sure enough, the worried behemoth was angling in towards them. She posed a serious threat despite their benign intentions.

“Roger that, A Little Lightning.”

The inflatable stilled in the water, three pairs of eyes stared out across the surface.

“Be quiet. Here she comes.”

Not twenty metres away, the mother surfaced, her spout spraying them all with angry water. Her huge mass coasted just under the surface and beelined to her daughter.

Gordon’s heart lurched at the distressed groans she made as she nuzzled her trapped calf.

“I’m going in.” He shoved his helmet on.

Scott caught his arm. “Are you sure that is wise?”

He caught his brother’s worried eyes. “You are just going to have to trust me. I know what I am doing.”

A bitten lip, but Scott nodded once and let him go.

Gordon slipped quietly over the edge of the inflatable and into the water.

-o-o-o-

Virgil stood on the bridge of A Little Lightning and swallowed hard. It was frustrating to be caught unable to do anything, but in this kind of situation, it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling.

Usually, though, he was hovering in Two far above the surface.

John stood beside him, a mission hologram projecting from his tablet, his hands playing the portable controls as smoothly as Virgil played his piano. Eos spoke up quietly, relaying reports from WASP as the organisation swooped in on the illegal fishing organisation somewhere off to the west. His brothers’ vitals danced in one corner, the readout from the sensors and the now deployed sensor buoy hung beside them.

Virgil could only watch.

“Gordon, approach with extreme care. The mother is emitting infrasound, beyond our hearing. She is very distressed.” John’s voice was sharp, but calm as the sensors traced the sound pattern in the air before him.

Whispered. “FAB, John. I can feel it. She may be calling for help. Silence on comms.”

And Virgil realised he could feel it, too. A rumble in his bones, a wail so deep it could only be felt, not heard.

He closed his eyes.

He felt her shift octaves, the sound pulsing, her thrum desperate. It vibrated at the edge of his sensory perception, slipping in and out, barely felt in his body tissues, his fingertips, the sensitive incisions in his gut.

“Virgil? You okay?”

John’s soft voice startled him, throwing him out of focus. “What?”

He received a copper frown for his efforts. “You’re pale.”

“I’m fine.”

Green eyes narrowed, but his brother didn’t comment further. He returned to his holograms, bringing up a satellite lifesign read of the area.

“We’re receiving a reply.” John frowned. “Another. Several. Locating sources. Eos, give me a narrow frequency band and pinpoint.” The AI didn’t answer but several dots appeared on the satellite view. John waved a hand and zoomed in on a cluster in the Southern Ocean. The view focussed and cleared and Virgil was again amazed at Brains’ skill as the surface of the ocean appeared and a pod of whales was defined. They were all travelling in a south-easterly direction.

Over two thousand kilometres from the mother and calf. John zoomed out again and scanned for a closer answer. He found one but it was still fifteen hundred kilometres distant. Far too far away to return to help the distraught mother.

But then another signal came in, this one only three hundred kilometres away to the south-east. John narrowed in on the location, only to find another mother and calf.

“Is that the mother and calf we encountered two days ago?” The subjects of his painting.

“More than likely. Gordon did say it was very late in the season. The humpback whales migrate from tropical waters north-west to south-east across the Kermadec Ridge on their way to feeding grounds near Antarctica during spring. That places the nets in the optimal position to do the most damage.”

Virgil stared at the kilometres of lines denoting the position of so many illegal fishing nets.”

“Do you think WASP will be able to stop this?” His voice came out parched and cold, an echo of the anger building inside.

“They will do their best. Gordon won’t rest, you know that. I’ve also asked Penny to investigate. This impinges on Tracy Industries’ ecological interests so I have contacted the board.” His lips thinned. “We will find those responsible.”

The lines taunted him. How many? How many lives had been taken moments before sanctuary?

“Virgil?”

The mother shifted octaves again and he found himself closing his eyes.

A hand landed on his arm. Soft. “Virgil?”

He startled. John’s turquoise eyes were frowning at him again.

“She’s terrified.”

“Gordon will free her calf.”

“She doesn’t know that.”

Her thrum was in his bones, vibrating his very soul.

And then the calf cried out.

-o-o-o-

Gordon had always felt small beside his brothers, but floating next to a leviathan of the open ocean there was no comparison.

The mother humpback was nuzzling her calf, a mixture of chirps and groans vibrated through the water accompanied by the modulating infrasound, screaming fear across the Pacific.

Knowledge of cetaceans scrolled through Gordon’s mind, but instinct was yelling at him.

Never get between a mother and her baby.

But the baby was in pain and her mother was unable to help her.

He could.

He edged closer, ever quiet, calm.

Mamma shifted in his direction, her great head swinging around and tossing him about in the resultant wake. Gordon caught himself and took the opportunity to slip in even closer.

C’mon, beautiful, I don’t mean you any harm. I’m here to help.

He reached out and touched the calf’s flank.

The calf shifted away, crying out and her mother propelled herself forward towards Gordon.

He darted backwards, holding up a hand. “Hey, hey, I’m here to help.” She couldn’t understand the words, but perhaps the intent?

A groan wrapped around him, followed by a click.

“Gordon!” Scott’s voice echoed about his helmet.

And into the water around him.

Shit.

He scrambled backwards as Mamma reacted. Surging forward she nudged him hard enough to force him to the surface. “Woah!” He got a brief glimpse of Scott gesticulating at him from the inflatable, obviously agitated and then everything was bubbles.

He lost orientation for a moment and just settled for swimming away from the chaos.

“Goddamnit, Gordon, answer me!”

“Shut up, Scott. I’ve got this! Silence on comms!”

He dove.

Deep.

He relied on his suit to keep his body pressure static as he propelled himself fifty metres straight down.

Sunlight flickered turquoise and disappeared into the depths.

Mamma didn’t follow.

Gordon hovered there a moment, looking up at the silhouettes of the two whales and the dingy far above. Mamma returned to nuzzling her calf, her pectoral fins churning the water into bubbles with the smallest movements.

Okay, Gords, you’ve got this. Gentle, calm and persistent.

He began his ascent.

-o-o-o-

Virgil tensed as his brother was thrown from the water only to disappear and dive down deep.

Gordon’s snarl across comms at Scott was acid.

The mother’s call shifted an octave to the point Virgil could almost hear the clear C, F, and G notes hanging in the air.

Three hundred kilometres away, the second mother and calf answered and turned around.

Virgil stared at the dots on John’s map as they slowly began moving towards them. It would take them a good chunk of the day and night to reach the distressed calf, but the other mother was answering the call.

John’s monitor sketched out the answer, far below human hearing and far too distant to be felt.

A complicated, pulsating aria of sound.

It wove around the mother’s distress call, each note dancing with its partner, an answer in form as well as content.

Staring at the readout, he found himself humming the notes, switching cadence, following the thread.

The rumble in his throat spoke counterpoint to the song in his bones. It completed. It felt...reassuring.

“Virgil?”

“What?!” He blinked. Shocked at his own outburst as John took a step back, Virgil drew in a shaky breath. “Sorry.”

John’s voice was quiet. “What is it?”

Virgil stared at his brother, then back at the sensor buoy’s holographic display showing Gordon swimming up the water column. “Can we transmit sound into the water?”

It was John’s turn to blink. “Of course.”

“At infrasound levels?”

John pulled up the buoy’s specs and Virgil knew the answer before his brother could vocalise it.

“Wait there.”

He had an idea.

-o-o-o-

The sight of the abrasions on the side of the calf’s mouth physically hurt Gordon. He swam up slowly beside the calf on the other side from its mother. He kept quiet but made sure the calf knew he was there.

It edged closer to its mother.

“Hey, beautiful. I’m not going to hurt you.”

She whined, her sonics vibrating through him.

Mamma growled in the way only a mamma whale could and, blowing spray up into the air, drew in breath and dove.

She slipped below her daughter and targeted Gordon.

Oh shit.

He flung himself to the left and down. He could manoeuvre easily around her, but...

...her tail swung and he was caught in a rush of wake, bubbles and the need to avoid the whacking she was trying to give him.

“Okay, I get the message. But Mom, you’re going to have to back off or your baby is going to die.” The calf could last only so long before exhaustion and predators put an end to her struggles.

Mamma swam around in a tight circle and for a moment one of her great eyes caught his, her intelligence and fear glaring at him through the turquoise light.

His external mic picked up a single note.

What?

The note shifted and became more of a wail, cut off and was silent.

Mamma whale was still staring at him.

Another note. Again it was modulated, but this time his brother’s voice accompanied it, Virgil’s raw baritone holding the note for a few seconds before shifting down his range to another note. His keyboard, for there was no doubt that Virgil had his keyboard with him, emitted a series of low moans.

Gordon shivered.

His brother was playing infrasonic, he could feel it, no doubt using the transmitter on the buoy.

Mamma was still staring at him.

He could give his brother all the points for effort, but there had yet to be a case where humans could communicate with whales. Many had tried. Most were ignored. The most success had been achieved with touch, which is what Gordon was attempting to do.

If he could get close enough without having his head handed to him.

Virgil shifted from single notes to a more complex weaving of sounds, combining his voice with the keyboard in a way he had never quite heard from his brother.

Mamma blinked.

Clicked three times.

And let off a wail of sound that tore at his heart.

Virgil answered.

-o-o-o-

End Day Three, Part One

Day Three, Part Two

[linernotesandseasons]

My 18 Favorite Albums of 2018

Well...Here it is again! 2018 was a...YEAR. One of the toughest I’ve had so far. But full of hard work, growth, challenges, & little victories. Here are some of the albums that soundtracked it. 18 releases that I loved & supported. Songs that helped me make it through. For the seventh year in a row...My favorite albums. Listed here in no particular order (unless you know/enjoy the english alphabet). Top 5 are probably Monae, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Field Report, McEntire, & Liza Anne, in that order. Music marks time & space. These are the ones for this year. Enjoy! 

AMERICAN TRAPPIST   /   Tentanda Via

       We start our 2018 journey in a comfortingly familiar place with the second official full length album from Toms River, New Jersey’s American Trappist. His self-titled debut made my 2016 favs list and his old band River City Extension (top 5 reunion tour wish list for sure!) were second to Fun. on my list way back in 2012. Safe to say Joe Michelini is one my favorite songwriters of the last 10 years. Lucky for us, 2018 found Michelini writing equal parts depressing & uplifting boardwalk rock & roll for/from the underdog/underground. Tentanda Via (Latin for “the way must be tried”) is a blast of an album; full of horns, drums (both jazzy & rock & roll-y!), inspired piano, & Michelini at the helm sounding altogether confident in his existential breakdowns. To me this reads like a coming-of-age album at heart (the way must be tried!), but a deeper, wiser sort of unraveling. A mid-30′s rock opus about learning to live with yourself. Learning how to make yourself better. These songs are inspiring and mix more than a little Springsteen ethos (maybe it’s the horns?!) with some late 90′s/early 2000′s emo/indie/alternative etc...

The straightforward rockers “Death Wish” & “Nobody’s Gonna Get My Soul” bookend the nine track album with surprisingly nimble & crunchy electric riffs and off-the-charts energy! In between, the mid tempo drive of “Getting Even” & “Don’t Get In” lets Michelini’s emotional writing really shine. The words jump out of the songs, full of passion, desperation, & an urgency that makes me glad people are still making records like this. There’s also a unholy, weird interlude that you have to hear to believe called “Unfresh Dirtwolf.” American Trappist is a band that came from the ashes of another band. A band that seems reluctant to tour West of...Ohio. A band that stays under the radar. Michelini has been writing some of my favorite songs for awhile & it feels good growing older together. Here’s hoping for a new one of these every other (or just every?!) year for me to belt along to with the windows down in my Subaru. Joe, if you’re listening out East, don’t stop. This is why I love music. 

       “Driving through my hometown I feel the peace of the Lord / Ride up behind me on a blind dream from my childhood / Looking back again, it’s hard to understand / Getting older, I guess I do / Waiting on some waking dream like it might find you...”

BLACK BELT EAGLE SCOUT   /   Mother of My Children

       I bought Black Belt Eagle Scout’s debut album at Twist & Shout Records the day it came out. I think I loved the cover art and the idea of Katherine Paul’s solemnly solo rock album, recorded in the dead of Winter in rural Washington, sounding like just what I wanted in my headphones to face the Fall. Then (as so often happens) I got a text a month later from my partner at 12:27am that read simply...

“I’m okay. Going to bed meow. Listen to Black Belt Eagle Scout.” 

From there we took Mother of My Children on a snowy road trip to Durango, Colorado. Crisscrossing mountain passes through snowstorms, & visiting Mesa Verde National Park, we let Paul’s earnest, determined, & emotional songs, sweep us into the gray. All this to say that this album has already marked some pretty specific time & place for me. There is a starkness to these songs, a simplicity that makes the songwriting stand alone. Where lesser lyricists would be revealed as phonies (or simply bad) Katherine Paul’s stark, powerful words are illuminated by her minimalist production. With a rhythmically mournful 80′s/90′s emo touch (for more modern emo fans I might even hear a little Manchester Orchestra) Paul doesn’t pull any punches. The guitar gets delightfully heavy on the outro to six minute epic opener “Soft Stud” and then twirls & spirals with the drums in the entrancingly sad “I Don’t Have You in My Life.” This is an important album for Paul to have written and there is a great power in her words. Oh also... she plays every instrument on the album!?! Guitar, bass, drums, vibraphone, keyboard, organ, various percussion, & all vocals. Very Vagabon. Very Caroline Rose (spoiler alert!)! With our world on fire, and full of threats (from our own government) to native lands & native people, it’s increasingly important to listen to and hear/heed the words and writings of people like Paul; a radical, indigenous, queer, feminist from Oregon. Thanks for speaking out KP. Listen to Black Belt Eagle Scout. 

       “Do you ever notice what surrounds you? When it’s all bright & tucked under / Do you ever notice what’s around you? When it’s all right under our skin...”

CAMP COPE   /   How To Socialise & Make Friends

       Camp Cope is a GREAT band name. Camp Cope is a REALLY GREAT band. Camp Cope has a wit & an attitude that is so punk rock, so genuine, & How To Socialise & Make Friends is a powerful album. Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, Camp Cope rides a practiced garage-y sound and lead singer & lyricist Georgia Mac’s passionate howl and impressive writing. As someone who grew up on early 2000′s pop-punk, emo, & alternative (something I guess I probably regret more often than celebrate. Because toxic masculinity & white male fragility) there is something so bittersweetly nostalgic in these chord progressions, the earnest electric strums, the yell-sing vocals, that takes me back to high school. Georgia Mac has a way with words, sliding them in & out, over cascading, steady strums, & then sometimes building them up to a frantic yelling. These are songs that sound as if they had to come out, had to be sung this way, like no one else could write or sing them. With an equally muscular rhythm section, “The Opener” attacks music industry sexism head on (if you haven’t seen Camp Cope live, it is chill inducing hearing a whole room belt along to every word) with a bass riff that could fly a jetliner. The three members interact so well together musically and everything from the driving “UFO Lighter” to the lilting “Sagan, Indiana” sounds tightly rehearsed. Equally passionate in their social media presence and their willingness to engage and fight for social justice issues, Camp Cope represents the future. Bands like this are changing the game right now and it’s exciting to hear it in real time. 

When I close my eyes for a second, as the title tracks rings out and the gorgeously, lightly sad “The Face of God” ambles in, I’m 17 again. I’m driving for the first time, crying at the moon by myself or laughing with my friends. I’m a freshman in college, skipping my Friday classes (and braving mountain passes!) headed west, headed home. Then I snap awake and I’m 32, it’s Winter here and Georgia bellows “Just get it all out, put it in a song. Just get it all out, write another song!” Thanks Camp Cope. This album is special. 

       “It’s another all-male tour preaching equality / It’s another straight, cis man who knows more about this than me / It’s another man telling us we’re missing a frequency / SHOW ‘EM KELLY / It’s another man telling us we can’t fill up the room / It’s another man telling us to book a smaller venue / Nah, hey, cmon girls we’re only thinking about you / Well, see how far we’ve come not listening to you / ‘Yeah just get a female opener, that’ll fill the quota’...”

CAROLINE ROSE   /   Loner

       It took Caroline Rose four years from her weirdly rootsy-riffy debut album to find her true self, but Loner sounds every bit like an artist comfortable in their own skin & confident in their craft. Dialing up the synths, fuzz, and brilliantly tongue-in-cheek lyrics, Rose touches on all the big topics: drugs, death, sex (ism), and money! with a casual, conversational songwriting maturity that belies her 28 year old sophomore-ness. Favorites include “Jeannie Becomes a Mom” (check out that bouncy organ!), the steady build & twisty, head-turning songwriting of “Getting To Me,” & the electro warp & wend of “To Die Today.” I was finally convinced into falling for this album when my partner played it three times (or was it six?) back-to-back-to-back on a rainy Summer Sunday afternoon drive from Granby, CO back into Denver. Something about the pacing; the complex, yet immediate song structures that leave you wanting more. These are songs of tested confidence. But shining through it all, Rose is a wild card. A red clad rockstar with a palpable spirit, not afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve & laugh a little along the way. Loner is full of dance jams for the cool kids & the loners. At its core it preaches acceptance, and teaches us to love ourselves & love each other for who we are. Go Caroline! See you in a month in LA! 

       “Waitress sets the tables, two & four & six / Laying placemats, knife, fork, spoon, upon napkin / All the counter people, she knows us all by name / A counter people fission, everywhere we are the same... / & so you line ‘em up, a single cell, another one gone / Ostracon vase with your name on the line...”

FIELD REPORT   /   Summertime Songs

       At some point during this year I begin to realize how important beloved songwriters releasing new works is always going to be to me, I was falling (& re-falling) for new works from long time favs Calexico, Gregory Alan Isakov, Florence & The Machine, & of course Phosphorescent. But somehow it was Field Report’s third release Summertime Songs that stuck and became perhaps the most meaningful of all. I fell in love with Field Report in the midst of a hard, hard winter (2012 I think). Their sophomore album Marigolden has been a constant companion since 2014. I first heard this set of songs (the ones that comprise Summertime) in the June of 2017, sweating in the familiar Eau Claire, Wisconsin heat. Hearing a set of 100% new, unreleased material is exciting and also kind of a risk. After the set I wrote that the new tunes “Sound like June. Like wet cement & flash floods. Like swollen rivers & mosquitos full of hard fought human blood. Like growing older & having kids. Intimate details stretched over skittery, percussive thunderclouds. Like grabbing an electric fence. Digging in &...replanting.” I was 100% in it. On a high in Wisconsin & falling deeper in love with music. Then Field Report went mostly silent & we had to wait till early 2018 to get the recorded versions. Adding even more drums (Shane Leonard deserves a shout-out here as a killer pocket player!) some electronic effects, and ramping up on the arm-out-the-rolled-down-window singalongs definitely serves Chris Porterfield (did you know the name Field Report is just an anagram of his last name?!) well. Whoever it was who asked him “why don’t you try Summertime songs” was on the right track. His songwriting is as electric as always on this set of heartbreakers & as usual he follows a lot the same threads. His lyrics here are visceral, wordy, & wise, & i can feel the songs growing up with me. Sometimes I lead, sometimes they lead me, but we always seem to find each other exactly when we need to. 

       “Time is a bird with a mean, hooked beak / & he’s just waiting around to work on you & on me... / Shotgun wedding, black on blue / The river’s swelling like a bruise...”

H.C. McENTIRE   /   Lionheart

       Heather McEntire has been carving out a name for herself in the North Carolina music scene for years fronting old-school punk band Bellefea & more recently, the much loved Mount Moriah. But way way back in January, Lionheart roared in under her own name; all ferocious & tender, confident & wild. A true southern record, Lionheart is vocal & lyric forward. From the Sunday morning hymn swell of opener “A Lamb, A Dove,” to the driving swing of “Baby’s Got the Blues,” & the late night, red wine country of “When You Come For Me.” McEntire enlists all her talented musical friends on this effort. There are co-writes with the legendary Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill (whom McEntire credits with helping her find her individual voice), bgvs from Amy Ray (Indigo Girls), Angel Olsen, & Tift Merrit, & inspired guitar work from William Tyler & Durham favorite Phil Cook!

Through it all, McEntire stays true to the thread that made Mount Moriah’s “How To Dance” one of my 2016 favs. Lionheart exudes the smells & scenery of North Carolina and reads like a map at times, referencing points from Stoney Creek to the Green River Gorge. Some of my favorite songs written over the last five years (or ever) have a very strong (& often specific) idea of place. If country music is going to representative of the country that I want to live in, it’s going to be sung by people like Heather McEntire.  A powerful queer southern woman; vulnerable & brave, a true Lionheart. 

       “You’ll find me in the hollow, dosing anything that might / Make the map look any smaller, give me a dog in the fight / So call it off or call it God, call it anything you like / Do you see it in my eyes? / A levee on the rise, do you see it? / The tellin’ ain’t told gently, so pay your tab & pay your dues / The dogwood & the chicory & a silent wood stove flue / Your baby’s got the blues just like you...”

iZCALLi   /   IV

       I was late to the party on Izcalli (a band from my own city!) and when I found them, it was magical, I think they were playing an opening set for Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas at Lost Lake and I probably stumbled in late from PS Lounge or Tommy’s Thai to shredding electric guitar & ska, latin funk, & pure Led Zepplin Rock & Roll. Frontman Miguel Avina was howling & stomping in Freddy Mercury-meets-Mariachi white pants, his long curly hair everywhere, all energy. I was immediately hooked. Calling them my favorite local band and finally getting to put them on this end of the year list. Izcalli joins some pretty good “local band” company here on linernotes&seasons. From Nina De Freitas’ EP last year; Yawpers, Covenhoven, & Rateliff in 2015, to Isakov & Covenhoven in 2013 & The Lumineers all the way back in 2012! Izcalli has been playing around Denver for 13 years and have slowly built up enough of a following to headline the Bluebird Theater last year. Their fourth album (aptly titled IV) comes out swinging and showcases plenty of heavy power chord riffs, violin, horn, & songs in both English & Spanish. Their heavier, more classic rock influenced songs (”Lightning Red” & “Eso Velocidad”) absolutely explode with fiery lead guitar and inspired drumming. When they dial it back and let their Mexican influences show through, like on the eerily crunchy, violin led “Quite de Mas” and the woozy saxophone breakdown of “Solo Se Morir,” they showcase depth and a real songwriting ability. There is an almost Muse-like thunder to the monstrous organ riff of “A New Lie” and closer “Si Estoy Contigo” sends everybody out dancing. With influences from all over (most notably their homeland Mexico City) & a live show that’s not to be missed, Izcalli embodies everything I think of when I think of a true Denver band. 

       “A frozen heart in me turned out to be my one way home / I swear I’ll leave, I’ll drive myself down to Mexico...”

JANELLE MONAE   /   Dirty Computer

       Dirty Computer is my favorite album of 2018. Much like my favorite album last year (Lorde’s Melodrama) no one was as simultaneously honest & excavating in their personal songwriting; while still writing such absolutely shredding club bangers, as Janelle Monae. Dirty Computer acts as a coming out party of sorts for the 32 year Kansas City-ian, although, to be fair, her first two albums had already scored her Grammy nominations and the stamp of approval from Prince, Eryakah Badu, & Michelle Obama. Her debut The ArchAndroid and her followup The Electric Lady, found her creating elaborate alter egos, protest songs, and complex, critically acclaimed song cycles about life as a black woman in America. With Dirty Computer she is able to hold multiple titles at once. Schizophrenically on top of her game, tying all her alter egos together with stellar production, monster vocals, and some of the best, most interesting pop songs since...well...maybe since Prince. From the Brian Wilson assisted eerie sci-fi sweetness of stage setting opener “Dirty Computer,” she lets loose on some of her most fun, live-a-little anthems “Crazy, Classic Life,” and “Take a Byte.” Deeply personal, political, & inspiring “Django Jane” is stunning, & sets the stage for mega back-to-back singles “Pynk” & “Make You Feel.” Songs of my (and everybody else’s) Summer for sure. “I Got The Juice,” is light & bouncy, & personal favorite “I Like That” is rebellious & rides an immediately memorable instrumental into one helluva vocal take from Monae. She makes a political statement in closing with the anthem “Americans,” (anybody else think this one especially sounds like a lost Prince track?) but her strength is her ability to be both personal & political; a true diva with a purpose. These songs are Janelle creating and sounding exactly how she wants, pushing the limits of what a superstar can do, Her show at the Paramount in July was a highlight for me, and Dirty Computer is hands down my album of the year. 

       “Box office numbers & they doin’ outstanding, running out of space in my damn bandwagon / Remember when they use to said I look too mannish? / Black girl magic yall can’t stand it...”

LIZA ANNE   /   Fine But Dying

       In a year where I seemed to gravitate to albums & songs about living in, and growing through, mental health issues; Liza Anne’s blistering (and epically titled!) Fine But Dying was definitely a top five album for me. A gifted songwriter, Dying finds Anne finally letting it out with a heavy band, a light touch, & a deep dive into the insecurities & struggles that seemed to be (gulp) some of the same ones I was going through this year. Songs about conversations, relationships (both romantic & platonic), and most importantly, about examining & improving yourself. No one on this list unpacks, observes, and mines their own heart & mind as well or as deeply as Anne does across these 11 tracks. When she really cuts loose, like in the ballistic breakdown of “Kid Gloves,” the fuzzy crunch of “Get By,” or the spiraling, swirling (& also epically titled!) “I Love You, But I Need Another Year” she shines. Fine But Dying is wise beyond its years and a no-holds-barred, place-in-time look at mental health & how we should all be addressing our issues & working things out. Her show at Globe Hall here in Denver back in April was cathartic, thoughtful, & one of my favorite of this year for sure. Yay for fearless songwriters, Yay for rock & roll. Fuck yeah Liza Anne!

       “I ran once, took my flight across the ocean / I thought if I could make my way across the sea I’d find a place / Now I’m swallowed up by a city that doesn’t give a fuck / To whether I am up on time / Or whether if I am, well...alive / & I’m so good - getting too good at hiding / Too good at keeping to myself that I’m spiraling...”

MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO   /   Ventriloquism

       I think it was “Atomic Dog 2017″ that first caught my ear at some point last year. I didn’t know Meshell Ndegeocello, but I knew that what I was hearing was classic. The off-kilter guitar strums slithering into that bass drop, finally settling into a steady groove, that melody appearing (seemingly out of nowhere) into a rolling, & instantly recognizable chorus. Next thing I know I’m googling George Clinton and off into an 80′s funk youtube rabbit hole. A covers album to stand up to any other covers album, Ndegeocello has a masterpiece on her hands in both song selection & creativity. In a year where she turned 50, the sneakily titled Ventriloquism is her 12th studio album, Inspired by listening to oldies radio on car rides to her childhood home, influenced by Prince & Neil Young; Ventriloquism is a super smooth revamp of 80s & 90s R&B. What Ndegeocello does so seamlessly on Ventriloquism is take these songs and make them flow as a part of a whole. There is light in the darkness here. There are threads of continuation here. An appreciation for those who came before, those who paved the way. Ndegeocello is a true artist and these reinterpretations not only nod to classic songs & artists, but dig out their own little important niche in 2019. 

       “Sometimes it snows in April / Sometimes I feel so bad, so bad / Sometimes I wish life was never ending / & all the good things they say, never last / Springtime was always my favorite time of year / A time for lovers holding hands in the rain...”

MIYA FOLICK   /   Premonitions

       Every year I wait till the last minute (and beyond!) to finish this list. I write it up in November & December, agonizing & filling out what I think are my favorite albums (18 this time!) of the year. I enjoy whittling the list down to a manageable number, but I also enjoy reading everyone else’s lists; finding new finds & hearing what other people liked. Then, sometime in the middle of December, I am knocked out by something I missed over all the year of listening & reading. This year it is MIYA FOLICK! I was given a wintry new year’s mix of goodbye 2018 (and F*** you!) tunes from my partner (which I will probably post & write about sometime as soon as I finish posting this because it is goooood), and track 9 of that spotify mix. Bouncy horns, a killer beat, & lyrics that cut right to me but leave me smiling. Rhyming “self home” with “cellphone”?! Singing about leaving the party?! Yesssss!. This is for me! On deeper listens, Premonitions is a goddamn masterpiece. Starting slowly & melodically, openers “Thingamajig” and the title track are captivating, then it unexpectedly explodes into 80′s dance bangers about half way through. Most of the album is deeply personal and self examining, finding Folick digging into to her own weaknesses & fears, without always settling on answers. She is vulnerable yet grand; part Lorde, part Florence, part Stevie NIcks, part Regina Spektor...All Miya. At its core, Premonitions celebrates life, celebrates the little victories. If you want to know/hear what that sounds like, maybe I should let you read from Miya’s bandcamp page...

       “Premonitions begins with ‘Thingamajig’ -- something you can't quite recall the name of, but you know exactly what it means and what it feels like. Like the pull of desire that comes with not quite remembering fully. The magnetism of something just on the tip of your tongue. I wanted the album to feel like that thing.

I think a lot about about memory-making as an act of creation, the words we use to describe a memory give shape to and sometimes mutate the memory itself. I believe that the way we choose to describe the events of our lives is not only a means of creative fulfillment, but an absolutely vital part of creating the world we want to live in. When we are dishonest in the present, we create a dishonest future. When we are honest in the present, we create a more honest future. I wanted this album to be the vehicle for a hopeful, truthful, generous, and loving world. I tried not to posture or pretend. I wrote about my life as I've seen it and how I'd like to see it, as both memory and premonition.

The producers, Justin Raisen and Yves Rothman, and I spent months collecting organic sounds to fill the world of this record. We threw away everything that felt false and tried to keep the soul of each song alive. I hope Premonitions gives you comfort and joy. I hope it feels like all the mysterious details of your lives, all your massive and mundane glories. I hope it reminds you that there is beauty in the details. Rainbows in your sprinklers. Drinking water from a hose. The way it felt to make a friend for the first time. Locking yourself in a bathroom to avoid everyone. Dancing until your shins burn. Leaving your phone in an Uber and making your best friend drive you an hour away to knock on a stranger's door after locating it on Find My Phone. Losing a friend. Losing yourself. Remembering...”

MT. JOY   /   Mt. Joy

I had almost finished making this list and nearly forgot about an album that marked a month-plus in the Spring when I listened to almost nothing else! Philly by way of LA’s Mt. Joy debut with an album that blends sunny California folk & smoothed out east coast pop-emo, into easy listening, easy singing indie rock. Named after a mountain in Valley Forge National Park (SE Pennsylvania); Mt. Joy’s songs similarly find geographic touch points across the US, making this a true road trip record. Multiple California references (San Fran, Mulholland, Hollywood, the ocean), make their way down to New Orleans, and end up on the east coast (”blood on the streets in Baltimore” & “the beaches of Chincoteague”). Without breaking any new musical ground, Mt. Joy sounds comfortable & confident, and their songs play bigger & stickier than your average radio friendly pop-saturated-folk. When the title track hits its festival ready build (”you can’t stop us, feel like Ziggy Stardust”) you’ll have a hard time not rolling down your window and singing along. “Way up over Mt, Joy. Where everyone’s free now. To move how they feel now.”

       “Your life will change straight out of the blue / The clouds in your mind just passing through / Image the horses when you set ‘em free / Go tear down the beaches of Chincoteague...”

NONAME   /   Room 25 (& Song 31)

       Room 25 kicks in innocently enough: smoothly humming wordless voices, steady drums, & jazzy piano flourishes. Like a lazy Sunday morning. Noname (Chicago’s 27 year old Fatimah Warner) introduces herself with a laid back, matter-of-fact, stream of consciousness “maybe this is the album you listen to in your car when you’re driving home late at night, really questioning every god, religion...” But then she says something that should make you pay attention. 

“Nah. Actually this is for me.” 

That creative confidence. That freedom, defines the rest of her album. No matter how much critical acclaim Room 25 racks up (I saw this album on a ton of end of the year lists!), no matter how downright fun & laugh out loud funny her breakneck rhymes are, this one is for Noname. I mean, you can still download (aka OWN...like for your ipod!) the whole album on bandcamp FOR FREE! Following in Chance’s footsteps, it’s free mp3s for people like meeee! Raised in Chicago’s slam poetry scene, she dabbles here in downtempo, smoothed out, futuristic jazz & soul. All the while she is unapologetically herself. Her words tripping over each other, too many thoughts, too much energy, too much passion to hold in. A clear blockbuster talent. One of my favorite new finds from last year’s Eaux Claires festival, her late afternoon set up on the hill was radiant & joyful. The artwork I used here is from her early 2019 single “Song 31,” as she has pledged to change the official Room 25 cover art, due to assault charges leveled in October against the artist who did the original cover. “I do not and will not support abusers, and I will always stand up for victims & believe their stories.” Noname said, and she has been proven to be as vocal in her personal life as she is on tape. As she says in the uplifting “Ace...” 

“Globalization is scary, and fuckin’ is fantastic” And yall still thought a bitch couldn’t rap huh?...

       “When labels ask me to sign, say ‘my name don’t exist’ / So many names don’t exist / Moved into Inglewood & the trauma came with the rent / Only worldly possession I have is life / Only room that I died in was 25... 

Medicine’s overtaxed, no name look like you / No name for private corporations to send emails to / Cuz when we walk into heaven, nobody’s name gonna’ exist / Just boundless movement for joy, nakedness, radiance...”

RAINBOW KITTEN SURPRISE   /   How To: Friend, Love, Freefall

       Rainbow Kitten Surprise made one of my five favorite albums this year (and probably the one that I sang along to in the car more than any other!) Imagine Modest Mouse growing up in North Carolina, in the 2010′s, writing smart, anti-lumineers-imagine dragons tunes, and going on to play arenas & rock clubs alike. This Boone, NC (pop. 17,000) five piece crank out catchy pop rock tunes; equal parts funky basslines, ooohs & ahhhs, and deceptively clever lyrics about religion, the south, and relationships both platonic & romantic. Huge single “Fever Pitch” rides rolling drums, background whoops, and finds charismatic frontman Sam Melo languidly recounting his religious upbringing and sing-rapping about getting to know you better. Other standouts include the acoustic blues (and Aha-Shake-era-Kings of Leon reminiscent!) “Painkillers,” the “Moon & Antarctica” rattletrap sing-song of “Possum Queen,” and the laugh-out-loud funny breakneck alternative pace of “Matchbox.” But it is song of the year contender “Hide” where Melo lays bare his feelings about growing up gay in a deeply religious south, when you get a peek at what Surprises these Rainbow Kittens are capable of. What starts as a bouncy love number takes a turn into some deep songwriting with “I’m running from a place where they don’t make people like me, I keep the car running, I keep my bags packed. I don’t wanna’ leave, just don’t wanna’ leave last.” This is Fruit Bats’ “Soon-to-be Ghost Town” written by someone who’s lived it. RKS packages it all up as emotional anthems, dancey-catchy choruse that stick, & an album that-while serious, is so damn fun to sing along to. They’ll be at Red Rocks next Summer so come hop on the bandwagon and get to know your new favorite band!

       “You’re a master of passive-aggressive magic tricks like “that’s not the card that I would’ve picked, but it’s your life to live like how you’d like to live...’”

SUN JUNE   /   Years

       Sun June’s debut record Years is an album that I never expected to be on this list, but one that pushed its way into my heart, ears, and mind a lot over the early Summer. I kept comparing it to Leif Vollebekk’s gorgeously haunting 2017 release Twin Solitude that made it on last year's list in that it managed to be rhythmically funky & interesting while being mostly SO quiet. Even the more “upbeat” numbers; from the gorgeously, golden swing of “Young,” to the steady backbeat of “Baby Blue” keep their composure meticulously. The writing is transfixing on Years and the band is so tight, with every member adding just the right amount of soft sound. I tried to explain it to somebody as music you have to “squint to hear.” It sounds good in the background, all sweet & rolling. But better up close, turned up in headphones. All together & bright. This is an album I would listen to sleepily, on my way home from work, driving Colfax in the first light of dawn at 5 in the morning. Sun June’s lack of an internet presence is refreshing (is there ANYWHERE I can find the lyrics for this album??!!), I think they’re from Texas, and I don’t think they’ve even played a show in Colorado yet! Regardless, Years is tied together with a quietly tight rhythm section, and Laura Colwell’s wispy vocals, grabbing at the edges of my brain, calmy insisting “Four in the morning, I could get used to this...”

       “I was almost always leaving / Looking for the reason / Bedside hospital daylight / I go with the Southern mountains / Down the 405, I’m coming tell me you don’t deserve this / I was young...”

TIERRA WHACK   /   Whack World

       I love me a good concept album, but even I would’ve thought that the idea of 15 one minute songs(complete with video accompaniment) making up an entire album, would be a tough sell. Whack World makes good on an innovative concept, delivering something breezy, catchy, & lasting, and making Tierra Whack one of my favorite new finds of 2018! My little sister showed her to me on a “Get-your-ass-to-the-gym” playlist and “Fruit Salad” was immediately stuck in my head for weeks. Mostly down-tempo, Whack is clearly a witty lyricist and creative mind, and at 23, a game changer in the music scene. Also an effortlessly cool, musical, badass. With almost no choruses, this is an album you can listen to over and over (and throw any tracks in mixes) without any clear singles. The bouncy gospel-tinged “Pet Cemetery” has hand claps & dog barks, and is followed immediately by the laugh-out-loud vocals of “Fuck Off.” Whack never takes herself too seriously (so many off the wall and laugh out loud funny vocals!) and the Philly native shows that one minute songs can turn a lot of heads and end up on a lot of end of the year best album lists! Whack World!

       “Crispy clean and crisp & clean / For the dough I go nuts like Krispy Kreme / Music is in my Billie genes / Can’t no one ever come between yeah / Don’t worry about me I’m doing good, I’m doing great, alright...”

TYPHOON   /   Offerings

       It seemed like a lifetime since Typhoon released their sophomore knockout, masterpiece album White Lighter back in 2013. I’ve grown a lifetime since, experienced everything since. In the first few weeks of January 2018, out of the darkness, out of the silence: came something darker, weirder, but still magical and at its core, celebratory. Typhoon is one of my all-time favorite bands, one of my favorite live shows, and frontman Kyle Morton writes about memory & loss, life & death, better than anybody in the game. With Offerings they have dropped the peppy horns, slimmed down to (only!) seven members, and zeroed in on the heavy, spiraling folk-rock that hearkens back a little to Bright Eyes or The Decemberists, Broken Social Scene or Arcade Fire. As a loose concept album, Offerings explores in four movements (Floodplans, Flood, Reckoning, & Afterparty) what happens to a mind stripped of memory. Or (side quest/plot/twist) a world willfully forgetting its history. From the hushed chanting that explodes into huge string swells, drums, and shouts of opener “Wake” to the rhythmic, glowing build of the 8 minute “Empricist,” to the mystical picking and ruminating of “Algernon” the first movement could almost stand as an album of its own. The rest of the album unravels at equal parts slow reflection (”Mansion” & “Beachtowel”) and sweeping indie rock (”Remember” & “Darker”). Although a lengthy (and at times not easy) listen, I think Offerings will go down as one of the most ambitious rock records of the last few years. 

       “& so the light fades / It’s still your birthday / So blow out your past lives like they’re candles on a cake...”

VALLEY MAKER   /   Rhododendron

       There is a mysticism buried somewhere in the emotive vocals & break-in-the-clouds writing of North Carolina by way of Washington State’s Valley Maker. Austin Crane is the singular voice behind the Valley Maker project, painting time & space on a dark, slippery canvas, and hiding complex truths in the rhythmic tides of Rhododendron. This ground has been tread before; by countless folk singers & prophets, wailing of death, dark magic, & the myriad mysteries of time, but Valley Maker understand their place in the linear and bring a modern take to ancient stories. Part War on Drugs-highway-drone (check the double yellow rattle of “Light on the Ground”), part Ben Howard’s-foggy-British-countryside (”Beautiful Birds Flying”), Crane writes songs that stick. They claw and seep their way into skin, into veins, and haunt in a way that echoes of the past. This is songwriting as a conduit. These stories are Crane’s, but they are older; tales told since religion begin. From the first lines of the roiling, dark sky opener (”time is just a game I play / it’s written on the ocean’s waves / circling beyond my brain / something I could not contain.”) to the uncertain give & take of the earthy “Seven Signs” (”I’m cutting in line but I haven’t decided...”) the writing is equal to the musicianship Crane and his backing band clearly have in spades. With Chaz Bear (Toro Y Moi) providing stellar percussion and Amy FItchette (who I was lucky enough to see sing with VM at the Doug Fir in Portland) lending absolutely haunting, otherworldly harmonies, Crane has depth beyond his strange tunings and bleep & bloop electric forests. Through it all there is a steady rhythm to the darkness and like in “Baby, In Your Kingdom” when he tops a wonderfully simple, acoustic walk-down with “Baby are you satisfied? Take a decade, take a lifetime, I know we’re always on a one way street...” there is a timeless beauty even in the mystery. Oh, and saxophone. Rhododendron has some great saxophone. 

       “Baby in the next life / I can touch you, I can ride the light / Goddamn I wan’t where I thought I’d be / 29. Burn the world around me & I hide / Baby in your kingdom / Sink my roots in, I’m a tall tree / I know, wind is gonna blow again / I know, when I am with you...I am known...”

[aliteraryprincess]

Ash by Malinda Lo

Warning: Contains spoilers

Welcome back to Fairy Tale Friday!  It’s been a while!  My work schedule was really hectic all last month.  Things have slowed down now, which hopefully means I’ll get back to consistently posting these!  

Ash has been on my TBR for ages, and I’m so glad I got to pick it up.  A special thanks to @the-forest-library since I won this book in her giveaway!   As you can probably tell, this is another retelling of “Cinderella.”  You can read the first post I did on a “Cinderella” retelling here.  

As a Retelling:

When compared with Princess of Glass, Ash is in some ways more of a straight retelling.  Lo utilizes the traditional step-family setup we’re familiar with from the most prominent versions of the fairy tale.  However, like Jessica Day George’s Ellen, Ash does not end up with the prince at the end.  In fact, the prince isn’t even one of Ash’s love interests.  Instead, we have Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, and Sidhean, a mysterious fairy.

Lo draws on both the Grimm version of the story and the Perrault version.  The mother’s grave plays a major part in the book, just as it does in the German variant of the tale.  In that version, Cinderella spends a large amount of time crying at her mother’s grave and plants a hazel tree there.  A bird that perches there throws down the gowns and slippers she wears to the festivals.  In Ash, it is at her mother’s grave that Ash meets Sidhean.  The magic itself is not tied with the grave though.  For that, Lo uses the fairy helper from Perrault’s tale; it is Sidhean who helps her go to the royal hunt and the ball by providing her with clothes and ensuring she won’t be recognized.

Unlike the majority of “Cinderella” retellings, footwear does not play a role in this story.  This is probably Lo’s biggest deviation from the fairy tale; almost every variation of the tale involves some kind of beautiful shoes, whether it is Perrault’s glass slippers, the golden slippers that appear in several versions, or the multi-colored shoes in the Irish tale “Fair, Brown, and Trembling.”  As a replacement for the lost slipper, Ash has a silver cloak given to her by Sidhean.  Ash leaves it behind after taking it off to dance with Kaisa at the Yule ball.  However, there is no equivalent to the shoe fitting.  In fact, Kaisa does not seek Ash out after she leaves the ball; it is the other way around.  After going to see Sidhean one last time, Ash returns to the palace to find Kaisa, who has kept the cloak for her.

Kaisa is, of course, another of the larger deviations in this book.  She is essentially placed into the role the prince usually fills.  Though the prince does exist in this story, he is really a non-character.  Kaisa, unlike the usual love interest for Cinderella, is not royalty, though she is connected with royalty through her position as the King’s Huntress.  Her occupation provides a way for Lo to avoid insta-love by developing the relationship.  They meet in the forest and become friends first before starting to develop romantic feelings for each other.  Kaisa is actually the one to invite Ash to the royal hunt, which is this story’s equivalent to the first ball, and she is never in doubt of Ash’s identity through any of the events.

Though Lo does use the step-family setup found in many versions of the story, she fleshes out the characters and provides reasons for their ill treatment of Ash.  Not long after marrying Lady Isobel, Ash’s father becomes ill and dies, leaving nothing but a pile of debts.  Ash is forced to do the housework as a way to pay Lady Isobel back for the lost money, a situation very similar to that of Sara Crewe in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, which follows the “Cinderella” structure.  Though many modern interpretations of the story kill off the father, he is alive in most older versions of the tale and simply allows his new wife to treat his daughter terribly.  Some variants say it is because he is entirely under his wife’s control, others don’t give any explanation.  It’s easy to see why modern audiences prefer for the father to die; the idea of a father refusing to protect his daughter like that is difficult to stomach.  

The two stepsisters, Ana and Clara, are given personalities and motivations.  Ana is desperate to get married since, it’s the best way for her to live a comfortable life due to their society and her circumstances.  She’s resentful of Ash, whose father made her life more difficult by putting the family in debt, and therefore usually cruel.  However, we do get one nice scene between the two that shows how desperate Ana is due to her circumstances and that she could be a nicer person if things were different.  Clara, on the other hand, is actually fairly pleasant and on good terms with Ash.  She doesn’t completely adhere to her sister’s mindset, but she doesn’t see any other options.  She and Ash have several conversations the the subject and we as readers are left with some hope that Clara might find her own way in the world.

My Thoughts:

I’m so glad I finally read this book.  Lo does such a wonderful job retelling the story and her writing is beautiful.  And, as I mentioned in my post on Girls Made of Snow and Glass, I am always here for LGBT+ fairy tale retellings!  Bisexual Cinderella?  Yes please!  I also loved the way Lo handles the love triangle, which is something I’m usually not fond of.  For a while I thought Sidhean was going to end up being the antagonist and would try to keep Ash and Kaisa apart.  I was so happy that’s not what happens!  Lo resolves it in a way that satisfied me and doesn’t downplay Ash’s feelings for either of her love interests.

I really appreciated how character driven this book is.  There aren’t a huge amount of exciting events; there are the hunt and the two balls, but other than that it is mostly quiet moments focused on Ash’s grief over the loss of her mother and her feelings for Kaisa and Sidhean.  As a result, I felt I really knew Ash and I cared a great deal about her by the end.  It’s a quieter kind of book, and I thought that worked really well for the story.

If I had to make one complaint, it would be that I wanted it to be longer!  The paperback copy I have is just over 250 pages.  I think it could have done with maybe 100 more pages.  I wanted more interactions between Ash and her stepsisters to further delve into their relationships.  And I especially think the resolution to Ash and Sidhean’s relationship could have been drawn out longer.  It’s wonderful the way it is, but I really just wanted to spend more time in this world and with these characters.

My rating: 4 stars     

Other Reading Recommendations:

The starred titles are ones I have read myself.  The others are ones I want to read and may end up being future Fairy Tale Friday books.  To keep the list from getting too long, I’m limiting it to four that I’ve read and four that I haven’t.  This is the only novel length fairy tale retelling by Lo, but she has several other books that sound great.

Other Retellings of “Cinderella”:

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine*

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire*

Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George*

Cinder by Marissa Meyer*

Gilded Ashes by Rosamund Hodge

Ashes of Roses by Christine Pope

Silver Woven in My Hair by Shirley Rousseau Murphy 

Ella by Jessilyn Stewart Peaslee

More Books by Malinda Lo:

Huntress

Adaptation

A Line in the Dark

About the Fairy Tale:

Cinderella: A Casebook by Alan Dundes

Cinderella Tales from Around the World by Heidi Ann Heiner

Have a recommendation for me to read or a suggestion to make Fairy Tale Friday better?  Feel free to send me an ask!  

[thesarcasticviclet-blog]

REALLY LONG CHARACTER SURVEY. RULES. repost ,   don’t  reblog  !  good  luck  !

TAGGED. @monsieur-de-paris TAGGING. i don’t follow enough yet to tag.. u hh .. jus steal it if you se it ;w;

BASICS.

FULL NAME: Gregory Violet

NICKNAME:  Violet 

AGE: 18-19

BIRTHDAY: March 13

ETHNIC GROUP: White

NATIONALITY: will say English but is French

LANGUAGE(S): English, abysmal French

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Demisexual

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Panromantic

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Depends on the verse, assume single

CLASS: Viscount to be

HOMETOWN / AREA: Châtellerault

CURRENT HOME: London

PROFESSION: Student/ Artist/ Singer

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: Black, shoulder length, a bleached strip

EYES: Almond-shaped, slightly downturned - violet

NOSE: Straight, small

FACE: Heart-shaped 

LIPS: Full, black-painted lips

COMPLEXION: Pale

BLEMISHES: None

SCARS: Superficial scratches from moving canvases

TATTOOS: None

HEIGHT: 166 cm ( 5′6″ )

WEIGHT: 54 kg ( 120 lbs )

BUILD: Wirey

FEATURES: Incredibly effeminate

ALLERGIES: None

USUAL HAIRSTYLE: Messy

USUAL FACE LOOK: Resting Bitch Face, visibly annoyed

USUAL CLOTHING: Uniform, Regular 19th Century wear - well-tailored clothes but the colour story runs dark.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR(S): Speaking stupidly/not conveying his creations well, losing his friends, having loved ones being brought back to life after death

ASPIRATION(S) : To bring prosperity to the local economy, and to paint and daydream freely

POSITIVE TRAITS: Open-minded, compassionate, creative, empathetic

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Judgemental, vindictive, sardonic

ZODIAC: Pisces

TEMPERAMENT: Melancholic

SOUL TYPE(S): Creator

ANIMALS: No..

VICE  HABIT(S): Locking himself away in isolation and losing track of time

FAITH: No, after what he’s witnessed: God might be dead.

GHOSTS?: Yes

AFTERLIFE?: Yes

REINCARNATION?: No idea

ALIENS?: No idea

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Neutral

ECONOMIC  PREFERENCE: Conscientiousness at his core, but understands that he can’t always ensure he’s supporting people fairly

SOCIOPOLITICAL POSITION: Along the lines of Hobbes’ idea of social contract and views the government, fellow nobles, and the crown as necessary for state sovereignty - wishes it could be more fair.

EDUCATION LEVEL: Sent to the best public schools in England throughout his life

FAMILY.

FATHER: Christian Jacques Violet

MOTHER: Gladys Anne Violet

SIBLINGS: None.

EXTENDED FAMILY: Mostly out of touch, save for his father’s immediate family - there’s a fair amount of tension about his French roots.

NAME MEANING(S): It’s Latin derived from watchful/alert ... which is apt as he’s shown to be an observer of others’ behaviour. Violet bc he purple boi.

HISTORICAL CONNECTION?: He was actually the royal executioner of France? He is based on a real person

FAVORITES.

BOOK: A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes #1) & Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant

MOVIE: None

5 SONGS: As long as it’s playing moderately quiet-- he’ll happily listen

DEITY: God

HOLIDAY: Christmas and Easter - they get week-long breaks

MONTH: September

SEASON: Autumn

PLACE: If he could drag a blanket out to a field and just sit there, that’d be his favourite

WEATHER: Overcast

SOUND: A satisfying splurt from a tube of paint.. almost always gets a juvenile giggle out of him

SCENT(S): Bergamot, Vanilla

TASTE(S): Cinnamon, Sweet

FEEL(S): Soft, interesting textures like canvas or heavy blankets

ANIMAL(S): .. wolves.. I guess?

NUMBER: 13

COLORS: Purple, Black

EXTRA.

TALENTS: Steady handed, painting, sculpting, drawing, singing

BAD AT:  Handling stress

TURN ONS:  Dominance, as he’s such a floaty free spirit -- he will look up to a charismatic leader

TURN OFFS: Entitlement - esp if someone is entitled to something from him -- he’ll deliver with only spite and half-hearted hexes

HOBBIES: Studying anatomy of humans, animals, plants. 

TROPES:  Cloudcuckoolander / Deadpan Snarker

AESTHETIC TAGS: Vulure Culture, Cottagecore, Tea, Relatable Art Problems, Gothcore

GPOY  QUOTES: Something along the lines of ‘I wanted to put something witty in here to make me look relatable and funny and less vain ... but I can’t. This picture of me looks good.’

FC INFO.

MAIN  FC(S): None

ALT FC(S): None

OLDER FC(S): Stale Garbage

YOUNGER  FC(S): Fresh Garbage

VOICE CLAIM(S): Ed from La Ferpection

GENDERBENT FC(S): Yana already drew him his female counterpart. She’s adorable.

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1: if you could write your character your way in their own movie, what would it be called, what style would it be filmed in, and what would it be about?: I just know it’d have to be done in film. About misguided attempts to try and better their surrounds only to realise that bc he and his friends are out of touch with ‘commoners’ that he’s come across as condescending. It’d be like an artsy comedy. Garbage tho, utter garbage.

Q2: what would their soundtrack / score sound like?: A strange mix of atmospherics and classical for the majority, and ill-placed pop-songs at moments of tension/resolution.

Q3: why did you start writing this character?: 2012-ish, alongside my Hannah (Kuroshitsuji) and Yuuko Ichihara (xxxHolic) blogs.

Q4: what first attracted you to this character?: Goth boys are my kryptonite, and he was featured just enough in panels and spoke little enough that I could interpret his character rather freely. Thankfully, I managed to write him faithfully for a long time.

Q5: describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse: He’s a coward.

Q6: what do you have in common with your muse?: We’re locked in at ‘Artsy Weirdo who like their Alone time’ ... BUT I am a reformed goth kid. 

Q7: how does your muse feel about you?: Indifferent probably, let’s not break the fourth wall.

Q8: what characters does your muse have interesting interactions with?: Gosh... he attracts interesting intereactions.. 

Q9: what gives you inspiration to write your muse?:  Garbage. 80s/post-punk music. 

Q10: how long did this take you to complete?: Like a half-hour. I did get distracted by a couple of YouTube videos... 

[jenniferstolzer]

Hey! Not counting Babylon 5 and Buffy, please give me a list of like 5(?) movies/games/anything that you highly recommend!

I don’t know how I could possibly whittle it to 5! I love an awful lot of stuff. I wrote this super long rec list with like 50 things, but I’ll keep the number lower as not to overwhelm you. Know this isn’t nearly all the things I love, and there are plenty more recs where these come from. For now I’ll try to pick a variety. 

1, Psychonauts by Double Fine. If you buy a lot of humble bundles youprobably already own it. It’s a platforming adventure game about akid who runs away from the circus to attend a psychic summer camp.The art style is unique, the story is interesting, but above all…the writing is superb. It’s very funny with well drawn characters.If you have the chance, grab it on Steam or GOG (or xbox and ps2) andenjoy 8 hours of feel-good adventure. 

2, Skullduggery Pleasant - Dark comedey/adventure/mystery book series about a skeleton detective going on magical adventures inmodern day ireland. It’s told mostly from the point of view of histeenage sidekick (excuse me, battle accessory) Valkyrie Cain who is anewcomer to this magical world after her favorite uncle wills her hishouse (and all his friends including Skul). Each book features quips,cleverness, and magic and explores new facets of the worldSkulduggery inhabits with off the wall characters, end of the worldscenarios, and one of the most unique magic systems I’veencountered. I highly recommend this series to anyone who liked HarryPotter but wished it was more like the Dresden Files.

4, Steam Powered Giraffe - This group of musical robotsis part stage performance, part rich comic lore, part folk/pop/rockgroup. The performers, themselves, take on robot characters that theyperform as on stage. The personalities of the robots come through inthe songs they sing and story notes on their website and in theongoing comic book. They’ve got 5 studio albums, 1 live album, a bunch of music videos and full-length shows up on youtube, AND they’re getting ready to launch their 10 yearanniversary show, there’s no better time to get into the singingrobot band.

4, Gregory Horror Show - This obscure cgi “anime”is a series of 2 minutes shorts with off-the-wall characters andheavy introspective themes. It’s a bit goofy looking at first, butstick with it.The characters become varied and more bizarre the deeper you get. The first season is told from a first person point of view of a guest at the hotel, and begs the question whether the fellow guests are real or if they’re aspects of a tortured mind. Each season can be completed in about 2 hours and will give you lots of to think about in that time. You’’ll be asking yourself what the weight of yoursoul is soon enough. 

5,  Repo the Genetic Opera - Not for the squeamish, thishard-core screen musical is by the guy who made the 3rd and 4th SAWmovies. It’s about a world where widespread organ failures havefostered a world of commercial surgery where transplanted organs canbe repossessed like cars. Lead character is Shiloh, a 17 year-old girl living with a blood disease that sequesters her from society, and her father Nathan Wallace who takes a job as a repo man while haunted by memories of his dead wife, her mother. it’s dank and goth/punk and melodramaticas hell. If you’re a Buffy fan additional draw - Giles is in it!Singing with a halfway believable american accent! This is actuallywhere I met Tony first

If you want more information hunt the links on my blog (there’s probably a ton of fanart. Warning for possible spoilers) or send me a note. I can provide watch links for any of thesethings, or if youwant other recommendations along these lines I can help with thattoo. 

And of course there’s always my own book that Iwrote, Threadcaster, whichyou can find on Kindle and Amazon. 

It’s a YA novel andseries of tie-in short stories about a young girl on an adventure toransom her pissed off and absent god back to her dying world becauseher friend is slowly turning to stone. You can learn more about it atwww.threadcaster.com @threadcaster​

PS- GO WATCH BABYLON 5 IT IS MY FAVORITE THING EVER AND YOU’LLTHANK ME/ CURSE ME FOR IT LATER

[shantelemile]

Hollywood Case Study: Madea: Everyone’s Favorite Grandma

Tyler Perry is an American actor, screenwriter, and comedian. He is well known for his renowned role of Mabel Simmons or simply known as Madea. Madea was introduced to the public in 1999 in his play I Can Do Bad All by Myself. Tyler Perry has created an anthology of Madea films and plays since her first introduction. His best-selling movie was Madea Goes to Jail, which made over $90 million in the box office and was produced on a $17.5 million budget.

Perry has stated Madea’s characteristics were derived from his mother and other people he met in his life. Madea’s character is very vulgar, quick tempered, and vindictive at times. These qualities are used to mask her true nature; she is a very godly, a helpful woman, and she is constantly giving advice to those in need and help them find a way out of a bad situation. This character is also used as comedic relief when the film gets heavy, she constantly uses anecdotes of her past which include stories of robberies and strippers.

Since the beginning of Tyler Perry’s career his target audience was the black community. He shows the problems that happen within the African American/Black community and how they cope and resolve their problems. There has been a debate over whether Perry’s films are doing more harm than good to the black community, even director Spike Lee spoke out about this. “A lot of stuff that's on today is coonery and buffoonery, and I know it's making a lot of money and breaking records, but we can do better.” Spike Lee’s films are known to be of the top tier and classics, his films have changed the game for black people (ex. Do the Right Thing). He is stressing that we can do better on creating the image of black people that we show to the public through the big screen. “...Perry frames them as (1) materialistic and status-obsessed, (2) dysfunctional and abusive, and (3) disdainful of working- and lower-class Blacks. We also argue that he is creating new controlling images like the “Emasculated Black Gentleman.” In these ways, Perry’s images may have detrimental consequences including perpetuating Black stereotypes, reinforcing existing class and gender tensions in Black America, and impeding the life chances of middle-class Blacks by suggesting that they are unsuitable for assimilation and integration.” (Harris and Tassie, The Cinematic Incarnation of Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie: Tyler Perry's Black Middle-Class).

African Americans/Blacks have been subjected to a variety of stereotypical roles from the Uncle Tom's, to enraged black [wo]men, or poverty-stricken families. James Baldwin touches on this in I Am Not Your Negro, “To watch the TV screen for any length of time is to learn some really frightening things about the American sense of reality. We are cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are.” Because Americans believe everything they see on television or the idea of something becomes more normalized once on television, is why the black community cannot progress and push themselves beyond the stereotypes.

Even if this is true, the stereotypes and characters Tyler Perry created is the gives a sense of familiarity to the community. This familiarity and the life lessons his character teaches is what brings his fans together and allows them to make jokes out of the stereotypes. Madea’s character is relatable because in black families we have a strong authoritative figure that can set anyone straight. Her language (the use of Ebonics and southern accent) and references to god are all characteristics we can see in an elderly person like a grandmother. “Madea, the gun-toting grandmother I love to hate, has won me over. She reminds me of my maternal grandmother, who also toted a gun and talked a bunch of smack.” (Lewis, Madea’s Old School Ways). Madea has impacted African American/Black culture because we see someone we know, and love represented on the big screen as the main character.

Since Madea has such a prominent role on screen her fans created tributes to her online. On Facebook there is a page dedicated to Madea fans. They post about funny scenes from the movies, the plays and they share memes. This is an example of what a fandom is. A fandom is a group that expresses their love and dedication to something in a creative form of art (writing, cosplay, memes, videos, etc.). Fans are allowed to creatively express their love without being judged.

The fandom surrounding the Madea franchise is a racial and an emotionally driven one. “…environment surrounded by a vast group of like-minded people at an event that could have well resonated with his value system.” (Duffet, Mark Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the study of Media and Fan Culture). Because Madea films are targeted to black people and it incorporates things that they could only understand, majority enjoy and support Tyler Perry’s works. This leads the fandom to become protective of what they have deemed as their own. Perry created an all-white cast show aired on TLC, Too Close to Home(but is now cancelled) and he received criticism from black people. They were outraged that Perry who is notoriously known for black television switched and did an all-white show. The black community felt betrayed. Tyler Perry was there for them first and is supposed to represent African Americans in films. In an interview he stated, “That’s totally reverse racism, because it was coming from African-American people.” Because of this backlash it has spurred conversation about who can and cannot enjoy Tyler Perry’s works.

I personally enjoy Tyler Perry’s Madea films, I have watched them multiple times. I do not feel like her character is harming the image of black people today. I know that he probably exaggerates her character for comedic reasons, I also know that everything you see on TV isn’t true. Even if Madea’s character is giving a negative outlook on our community that can be debunked if we look at all the successful African Americans and the accomplishments our race has made compared to the past. Madea is culturally important because she makes us never forget our roots, our religion, and our families. We can use the Madea films to mark our progress as we move away from those stereotypes.

Works Cited

Duffett, Mark. Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Print.

Harris, Cherise, and A. Tassie. "The Cinematic Incarnation of Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie: Tyler

Perry's Black Middle-Class." Journal of African American Studies 16.2 (2012): 321-44. Web.

“I Am Not Your Negro.”Rauol Peck. 02 May 2017. Film.

Lewis, Gregory. “Madea's Old School ways.” Sun-Sentinel.com, 27 Apr. 2016. Web.

Press, Associated. "Tyler Perry: Criticism of 'Too Close to Home' Cast Is 'reverse Racism'." Page Six. Page Six, 30 Dec. 2016. Web.

“Tyler Perry.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 8 Sept. 2017. Web.

“War Of Words: Tyler Perry Vs. Spike Lee.” NPR, NPR, 21 Apr. 2011. Web.

[tumblunni]

Bloop x3

Thank you mystery person! It took me a second to remember this was the word for that meme, I just thought ‘hey, same’ XD

Okay so three facts for ocs? Any random ones?I’ll go with the one I’m currently developing: gremory hawthorne aka Darklord Jerkdad

* He’s the kind of guy who meticulously sharpens all his pencils to the same length. Gets super hung up on the ‘proper way’ to do things, so he’s spent the whole day making his office look presentable and hasn’t even started on the work! Seeing how he’ll do this as an evil overlord could be quite fun ^_^* Even though he’s very loud and obnoxious with his ego now, before he had the power to act on it he just kept his sarcastic monologue inside his head. Think of it as a guy who played the ‘blank slate personalityless protagonist’ for most of his life until he’d finally had enough! Most people in his workplace just considered him a boring dogsbody, and wouldn’t have figured him even smart enough to be writing elaborate ‘that’s what I should have said’ fantasies under his breath. Then again, being a jerk isnt much of a step up from being nobody.* He’s too much of a grump to admit it’s a weakness, but he’s actually really skittish about being touched! Mostly it’s just stuff like jumping a mile if he’s tapped on the shoulder, and generally staying in the corner of the room in all social situations. He doesn’t often have people trying to hug him so he hasn’t had to deal with this problem in a long time...

Bonus fact:* 85% of people he’s ever met have mispelled his name as gregory

And I’ve actually been trying to practise a writing tip I saw in a film review video that was like “good stories can tell something about the character in every scene, without you even noticing”. I THINK it was this video? Its quite long so I didnt rewatch it all to make sure.Stuff like ‘you can tell from the way he handles the sword that he’s more familiar with it than he claims, and you can see his face drop when the governer tells him to compliment his boss on making it. And he’s clearly humble and self-sacrificing if he can take this without retorting, but also very aware of his class status and resigned to it.’It really blew me awaybecause I’d never even thought about that! It’s like foreshadowing but for personality!

So yeah I’m gonna try and think about what these traits might say about this character/what showing these goofy lil scenes would foreshadow for the audience/at least what I was trying to deliver but my writing skill will determine whether it actually works, lol

* Goofy pencils scene of course shows that he’s gonna be a comical kind of jerk, instead of just a legit one. And although he’s quite nerdy he’s also kind of reckless and lacking in common sense. He gets hung up on the ‘idea’ of things and never really makes plans before he gets going. Just like how he went ‘HELL YES, GIMME!’ at the idea of becoming powerful and respected, but soon began to realize that he has no clue how to be a demon lord. And then he’s probably gonna focus on the aesthetics of the job and what he thinks he should do, rather than what’s actually the best choice. Hoo boy, we’re in for a ride!* Him snarking under his breath during that same office intro scene would establish that he’s a spineless coward who wouldn’t have the balls to be such a jerk if there were actual consequences on the line. And how generally self-focused his sense of morality is, since all he cares about is whether he gets caught. or, at least, this is who he is at the start of the game, and (hopefully) through your choices he’ll be able to develop beyond this. Fingers crossed?* On the one hand it might be funny to see him jump at the slightest thing, but also it’ll hopefully be somewhat sympathetic and act as one humanizing point to an otherwise completely villainous protagonist. It doesn’t necessarily make him seem GOOD, but it makes him seem more like he might have a reason for how he behaves. Not that a sad backstory is an excuse to be an asshole, of course, plenty of people have suffered in life and chosen not to take it out on others. But the possibility of a sad backstory is at least.. well.. sad? You feel one more emotion for him other than just ‘shut up jerk’ or ‘keep talking jerk you’re kinda funny’. And it’s a good potential hook to make you wanna read more, without having to find a contrived way to outright state HEY THERE MIGHT BE A BACKSTORY LATERAlso I’m thinking there could be a lot of potential scenes stemming from this character quirk. Like, it could help him realize that he’s developing some affection for his monsters when like.. one of them tries to nuzzle his leg and he jumps and scares it, and he ACTUALLY FEELS BAD. Such nonsense! Illogical! How can this be! And maybe he could find himself wishing he was able to touch others, when he hasn’t for so long. I feel like he’d be an absolute explosion of love once you get past his crusty exterior of grumpleness! And maybe he either tries exposing himself more to affectionate situations to try and work on his problem, or he tries to develop other creative ways of expressing his affection? That could fit really well with him cos it allows him to be all tsundere ‘I’m totally not a dad but also please understand I love you dearly but also please never tell anyone’. Also just because alternative displays of affection are cute and underappreciated! I dunno if anyone out there has seen the show Pushing Daisies, but they have a really sweet odd supernatural plot of the love interest being a sort of zombie and she can’t hold hands with the protagonist cos he’s a necromancer and its all very odd and sweet and they find lots of ways to show their love even though they can’t kiss. If you wnat loads of sweet dreams and also some sadness and then some more sweet dreams, watch that show!

wow i ended up rambling way too muchI guess im just very attatched to this oc already??Oh and one extra thing!! maybe he likes wearing long socks and gloves and wearing capes? I have no idea why but i do that as someone who also suffers from the whole ‘really wanna hug everyone but am also scared about anyone touching me’ dilemma. I guess its the ‘cover all my skin’ factor combined with a cape being like a snuggly blanket hug?