#INTERACTIONS. / hannah - agnes: i.

[miscxllany]

@moralpuppet liked this post!

They aren’t supposed to fraternize, boys and girls are meant to play separately. Still, the girl is crossing the line and approaching the boy. ❛ Hi, I'm... ❜ What was her name now? She wasn't Hannah anymore, her new family having renamed her. ❛ Agnes, what's your name? ❜

[pyro-les]

Agatha Harkness X Reader

1.2K words - warnings: none

Based of an anon request

Taglist: @thesharkwhalewhoohooooo @thecavalrywife @hannah-0730 @believe-in-magic13 @jenniferjareauwife

"And then Dottie had the nerves to say I was the one who messed up when she clearly put the wrong date on the poster!" Wanda exclaimed, for someone just trying to drop off her kids to Agatha for babysitting she sure did spend a long time talking to Y/N about Dottie's meetings.

Y/N still leaning against the doorway as she had been for the last 10 minutes talking to Wanda gasped "Really?" A bit over the top if Agatha was honest but it's not like she had been settle in her role of Agnes either.

Wanda just nodded at Y/N's exaggerated reply. "Well I knew she was a bit of a bitch but that's ridiculous! How can she blame you for bringing the cakes on the wrong day if she advertised the bake sell as being on Saturday?"

"See you get it!" Wanda happily exclaims putting her hand on Y/N's arm. Right that was enough of that, it was time to intervene.

Getting off the sofa from where she had been watching the two witches interactions she turned her head to the twins playing in the living room "you two are alright here for a minute aren't you?" They both turn to her giving her a smile and excited mod before quickly turning back to their game too caught up in it to really care what else was happening.

Making her way towards the door Agatha pretends she hadn't heard the rest of the conversation "Wanda! How are you? It's been awhile since I saw you."

Chuckling Wanda replies "You only saw me 15 minutes ago when I dropped the boys off."

Settling in besides Y/N at the door Agatha puts her hand on her back as she continues to talk to Wanda trying to persuade her to leave "Exactly! A quarter of an hour. How much you could do in such time, and what exactly have you been doing for so long?" Her friendly demeanor may have fooled Wanda but it certainly wasn't fooling Y/N, she knew her partner too well to not realise what she was doing. That being said she wasn't going to do anything to stop Agatha's attempt to make Wanda leave. She may have been a nice woman but there was only so much one could hear about Dottie's comitee meetings before getting bored, besides it was kinda hot when Agatha got all protective over her.

"Why I was just talking to the lovely Y/N here all about the bake sell!" Wanda replies cheerfully clearly not catching Agatha's hints for her to leave.

Pulling Y/N closer to her by her waist Agatha smiled at Wanda again "Oh how fun. Speaking of the bake sell, shouldn't you be heading off to the committee meeting now? I'm sure you said it was supposed to start at 12." Really if Wanda didn't get the message by now she might not at all.

Laughing Wanda replied "of course! But I'm sure a little more time chatting couldn't do any harm could it Y/N?" Wow she really was oblivious, how could she not get the message.

"It is 5 to twelve now Wanda and I'm sure you said earlier the only way to appease Dottie was to always be early and go along with whatever she says." Y/N replied leaning into Agatha more. She was really getting quite tired of this conversation and she would much rather be sitting on the sofa with Agatha watching the twins play then listen to Wanda any longer. Really how much could someone complain about something she's controlling?

"What a wonderful point darling." Agatha replied. "Once I was 2 minutes late all because Señor Scratchy got out of the house and she banned me from attending the meetings all together."

"So that's why you don't go to them huh?" Wanda asked, simply receiving a humm in response from Agatha. "What about you Y/N? I've not seen you in any meeting at all."

Still trying to talk to Y/N, would the woman ever stop? "I got banned for defending Aggie for being late. I don't mind, it was pretty boring there anyway." Y/N replied with a chuckle.

"Not a chance of you coming along with me then, that's a shame. It would have been lovely spending more time with you." Wanda said dejected.

Agatha had zero sympathy for her, Y/N was hers and no one else's. If there was one thing about Agatha it was that she did not like to share and there was nothing she was more protective over than her Y/N.

"Yes what a shame indeed." Agatha spoke with mock pity.

"Well, it's been great seeing you, have a nice time at the comitee" Y/N said as Agatha started to close the door.

"Oh, um-" Wanda started to say before Agatha cut her off.

"We'll look after the twins no need to worry for them. We'll see you later." She said as she finally closed the door.

Y/N put her head back against the door sighing "Why was she here so long?"

Agatha stepped closer to her, Agathas hands going straight to her hips "I don't like her." She practically growled.

Letting out a small laugh Y/N looked up to her "Hmm I wonder why you don't like her. Definitely not got anything to do with how long she was talking to me has it?"

"And what if that is the reason?"

"Then I'd say your jealous" Y/N starts as Agatha playfully glares at her before she continues "but you have no need to be, I'm all yours."

Agatha smirks at her before before leaning down to kiss Y/N. It was short but sweet, Y/N only pulling away as she heard the laughter of the twins who had just walked into the hallway.

Y/N laughed again as she saw the expression on Agatha's face at being interrupted. "What do you need boys?" Y/N asked with a sweet smile on her face, giving them her full attention despite the way Agathas hands held even tighter onto her hips, gods this woman really was possessive.

"You said we could watch a movie!" Tommy spoke excitedly, a bit too much considering they had only been playing monopoly 5 minutes ago, how had they grown bored of it already? "Yeah! And we want popcorn." Billy added on.

"Okay, okay. You two go pick out a dvd and we'll go get popcorn, right hun?" Y/N spoke, Agatha humming in response as she reluctantly head towards the kitchen as the boys head off back to the living room excitedly.

Y/N made her way over to help Agatha with the popcorn. Well she said she was coming to help yet all she did was watch Agatha make it and steal a peice the second it was finished cooking before promptly complaining it was too hot much to Agathas amusement.

Making their way back towards the living room Y/N leaned over to Agatha whispering in her ear " You know, it's pretty hot when you get all possessive like that."

Agatha just smirked in response as they settled close together on the sofa to watch whatever ridiculous superhero movie the twins had chosen this time. Even with Wanda's attentions often being directed at Y/N it was actually quite nice in the hex, Agatha could get used to this.

[islandtarochips]

That's a WOMAN?!😱

*Squirrel and Sparrow were arguing about something* Squirrel: I’ll go right up your NOSE! Sparrow: HA! *gave her bike helmet to Damien before walking up to Squirrel* Damien: W-Wait! Sparrow- Squirrel: *cracked his neck and walked up to Sparrow* Agnes: *stopping Squirrel* Woah woah WOAH! You wouldn’t hit a woman! Squirrel: *stopped and slowly looked at Agnes before pointing at Sparrow* That’s a WOMAN?

Imagining this is how Sparrow and Squirrel first interacted. 😅 But I know Sparrow will flanked his ass-

Characters (Left -> right) Hannah “Sparrow” Clayton - @revnah1406 Damien “Damo” Whitlock - @kaitaiga Nigel “Squirrel” Harrison - Me Agnes “Blast” Falagi - Me

[fictionfromafar]

Thirty Days Of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen

Thirty Days Of Darkness

By Jenny Lund Madsen

Translated by Megan Turney

Orenda Books

Publication Date: 25 May 2023

One of the UK’s most renowned publishers of translated crime fiction is Orenda books who have been regularly publishing novels by established Nordic Noir writers such as Gunnar Staalesen and Kjell Ola Dahl as well as more relative newcomers such as Eva Björg Ægisdóttir and Agnes Ravatn. Denmark’s Jenny Lund Madsen is an exciting new addition to that list as the publisher bring out her first novel in the English language. A very well-established script writer in her home country, her creativity has emanated in Danish television shows such as Follow The Money which was a three series drama series which followed the illegal activities of corporate crime circles, fraudsters and opportunists, which was shown on the BBC and also the comedy drama Rita which is available on Netflix.

While both indicate the author’s high standards of writing, it’s fair to say that neither resembles Thirty Days Of Darkness, other than perhaps their worldly viewpoint. Jenny Lund Madsen’s main character in the novel doesn’t stray too far away from her own occupation as our narrator Hannah is an author. Yet Hannah’s success as an author is measured, while her novels have reached critical acclaim, unfortunately they do not sell well to the general public. When she reluctantly attends a book fair in an attempt to sell her latest book, at the request of her agent, she finds herself infuriated by a discussion led by a high-profile crime writer. Unable to resist, she publicly scathes him for what she feels is his formulaic writing style and as a result he challenges her to write her own crime fiction novel. Her agent, pleased by the coverage of the interaction decides this is a great idea and arranges for Hannah to stay with someone he knows in a remote part of Iceland where he hopes she would feel inspired to write her novel. Feeling she has no choice but to agree, Hannah travels to Iceland but struggles to adjust to the very different environment to her home city of Copenhagen and wishes to return immediately, however when the nephew of the lady she is lodging with is found dead in potentially suspicious circumstances she agrees to remain, in part as this may inspire her own novel but also as she is intrigued to try to solve the mystery. The story is told from Hannah’s perspective alone as she tried to uncover what has happened to the boy while also trying to write a story loosely based on what she is learning along the way.

In recent years the foreboding Icelandic landscape has provided a rich and varied setting for crime fiction novels by both authors from that country and increasingly from other locations. Despite the title, Thirty Days Of Darkness is not wholly of dark subject nature, there are some amusing situations that occur during the novel as well as some particular revealing insights to the book publishing business. The main character Hannah is an introspective character, a loner who doesn’t always behave in an orthodox manner. While looking to say as little as possible about the storyline, I believe that Thirty Days Of Darkness is a novel that will have real appeal for readers of crime fiction and I am very keen to read more from Jenny Lund Madsen in the future.

The blurb:

A snobbish Danish literary author is challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days, travelling to a small village in Iceland for inspiration, and then the first body appears… Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually reads them, and frustrated by writer’s block, Hannah has the feeling that she’s doing something wrong. When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hanna is publicly challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days. Scared that she will lose face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to Húsafjörður – a quiet, tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colourful local characters – for inspiration. But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s young son is pulled from the water … and what begins as a search for plot material quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to uncover secrets that put everything at risk … including Hannah.

About the author

Jenny Lund Madsen is one of Denmark’s most acclaimed scriptwriters (including the international hits Rita and Follow the Money) and is known as an advocate for better representation for sexual and ethnic minorities in Danish TV and film. She recently made her debut as a playwright with the critically acclaimed Audition (Aarhus Teater) and her debut literary thriller, Thirty Days of Darkness, first in an addictive new series, won the Harald Mogensen Prize for Best Danish Crime Novel of the year and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key Award. She lives in Denmark with her young family.

Many thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inclusion on the blog tour and Orenda Books for providing me with an advance copy of Thirty Days Of Darkness. Please look out for the other reviews of this book on the blog tour as shown below.

[meta-squash]

My favorite thing about the way that Gaddis writes in The Recognitions is how amazingly cinematic it is.

Some scenes, like the introduction to Paris, feel as though the camera is panning overhead, and we're catching snatches of conversation as we zoom above the scene. Some, like the beginning of Part I Chapter VI, we focus on some little detail (in this case, a housefly) and follow it until it leads us to the true focal point.

It's not overly obvious, but you can feel the way the "camera" of the story pulls in for a close shot or out to show the whole scene. The scene of the Greenwhich Village party that introduces Herschel and Hannah and Anselm and Esme and Agnes and everybody does that so well. I could *see* the low-down shot of all the men crowded around Agnes, the camera focused level to their thighs and butts, and the focus panning forward as the bodies shift to reveal Agnes holding court, and the way she's whiter (and tanner) than everyone else.

His sense of visual, and even more than that, his incredible ear for speech, makes every character feel genuine and also completely unique, which means the more chaotic scenes like the party are still totally legible.

It's amazing because this book is so unbelievably dense, with references and with interactions and with philosophical musings and with observations on humanity in general and with layers and layers of meaning and with people who are or aren't who or what they say they are and yet because Gaddis is so good with description and so brilliant at dialogue, it's not muddied, it's not confusing. It's a lot to get through, it takes me hours to read 40 pages when 40 pages usually would take me less than one hour, but it's not confusing.

I'm just so enamored with this book!

[sciencespies]

Bears May Rub Against Trees for Protection From Parasites

https://sciencespies.com/news/bears-may-rub-against-trees-for-protection-from-parasites/

Bears May Rub Against Trees for Protection From Parasites

In experiments, scientists found that ticks avoid the tar of beech trees, which bears seem to have an affinity toward.

There are many reasons bears shimmy and scratch against trees. Sometimes they communicate by scent-marking trees, other times they’re removing hair and scratching that hard-to-reach itch. A new study posits an additional perk: slathering on nature-made tick repellent.

When bears wriggle against bark, the tree scratching posts leak out tars, resins and saps. The thick tar of beech trees sticks to fur and skin the longest, and it is water-resistant, making it a strong contender for an effective tick repellent.

Agnieszka Sergiel, a bear biologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences and an author of the study published last month in the Journal of Zoology, said animals seldom engage in complex behaviors such as rubbing against trees for a single reason.

“We see plenty of examples among mammals using self-medication,” she said. So, she and her colleagues decided to study whether rubbing against trees could protect bears against parasites.

For years, biologists have observed that brown and black bears have an affinity for certain types of trees — especially beech trees. The trees’ appeal is so strong that scientists use the sticky, strong scents of beech tar to attract bears for studies or to call them inside in zoos.

To test the hypothesis that beech tar is a tick repellent, Dr. Sergiel found herself staring at tube after tube of tar and trapped Dermacentor reticulatus, a widespread hard tick known to feast on bears. She watched to see if the ticks would run away from beech tar on one side and toward safe, plain water at the other end of the tube.

And run they did!

“It was really obvious they hated the beech tar,” said Agnes Blaise, a biologist at the University of Strasbourg in France and an author of the study. “Some were really speedy, running around and hiding under the water.”

The researchers also tested turpentine, a bear attractor, and the ticks despised it as well.

A tick attached to a bear.Taylor Miller

The only ticks that didn’t count, Dr. Sergiel added, were the ones that managed to escape the tube entirely.

“There were some Houdinis,” she said, “but they were good lab animals.”

The researchers focused on ticks for their study because they are geographically widespread and environmentally flexible — and because of climate change, spreading farther and remaining active longer. Ticks are also disease vectors, although scientists are still learning about what pathogens they spread to bears.

The simple result of beech tar not being popular with ticks provides the first experimental evidence supporting the longstanding idea that tree resins could act as a bug repellent.

The researchers “had a nice, tidy experiment that provided some pretty clear evidence” that ticks were avoiding beech tar, said Andrea Morehouse, an independent wildlife biologist in Alberta whose work focuses on bear-human interactions and was not involved in the study. “Repelling parasites is probably not the primary function of tree rubbing, but it certainly could be an additional benefit.”

Hannah Tiffin, an entomologist whose graduate research at Penn State University focused on ticks and bears, hadn’t heard of the idea of tree tar as insect repellent.

“I think it’s a really interesting route to go and could make sense,” she said.

Other animals in the wild use nature-provided bug repellents; for example, Capuchin monkeys studiously rub their fur with citrus and dolphins may treat their skin with coral. Your cat may even use catnip as a mosquito repellent. So it’s perfectly plausible that bears could do so, too, said Dr. Tiffin, who was not involved in the study and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

There’s still a lot to be learned about tar as a tick repellent, Dr. Sergiel noted. Building out the scarce data of parasites found on bears in the wild (including ticks) will be one of the most important steps to furthering this work, the researchers said. Collecting fur and resin samples from bears and testing parasites’ responses to those materials could also be useful, Dr. Tiffin added.

#News

[kmclaude]

Been thinking more about therapy au where Jehan develops a crush on his therapist, who's a plainclothes nun, and wondered what might happen if they met each other again outside of therapy?

She's still a nun, granted one with medical doctorate in psychotherapy, and even if she doesn't belong to the same parish as Fr. Jehan it wouldn't be unusual for sisters from a neighboring church to work with another parish. Sure Jehan is doing well with his group therapy, maybe even to the point that when his former therapist asks how he's doing he can honestly say he's doing better, and genuinely mean it for once, instead of it being an automatic response to not worry others. It's definatly awkward seeing her again, she was his doctor after all, especially after he tired to kiss her during his last session with her. (also doesn't help that I recently saw an episode of NCIS New Orleans, and now I picture his therapist looking like Necar Zadegan's character, Hannah Khoury. Yeah she's a gorgeous and striking woman, even dressed down as a plainclothes nun, who is taller than Jehan, with amazing cheekbones....I'm sensing a theme here 🤔)

Thankfully she doesn't seem to hold Jehan's stupid mistake against him, as long as he remembers to keep and enforce healthy boundaries. It's nice getting to see her again, maybe not as regularly as when she was his therapist, but now Jehan gets to know the Sister more as a person. He remembers she was smart, and easy to talk to, but he gets to learn she's also really funny, and has some crazy stories about her time in medical school. She even helps Jehan find a specialist doctor to treat Agnes, when she learns about his mother's failing memory, and oh crap, fuck....looks like Jehan isn't over his crush on her.

Cue his younger brother, Gene, visiting from college and he's pleasantly surprised his brother is doing better and even going to group therapy. Especially if Gene was the one to convince his brother to see the sister for treatment in the first place, but when he asks about what prompted Jehan to switch from one on one treatment to group therapy, he gets evasive and vague. Until he sees Jehan interacting with a very familiar looking plainclothes nun, and figures out Jehan has a crush on her. As a younger sibling Gene is contractually obligated to tease his older brother about his crush and be as annoying as possible. Until Jehan gets very defensive and upset, and Gene tries to apologize and reassure Jehan it's not a bad thing to have feelings about someone. They both know about how the church feels about any sort of hint of sexual attraction outside of marriage, but "hey it's not a bad thing to love someone, even if you know it won't work out or they won't love you back. At least not the way you love them. It's like having a crush on a married teacher. As long as you don't do something stupid like get drunk confess your in love with them, then make out in the bar's coat room."

And then they make out in a bar's coat room

Brilliant. Incandescent. Inspired. Therapeutic even.

[skyofstarsif]

hi! i was wondering how you handle all the coding? the picture you posted seems so overwhelming i’ve been interested in trying my hand at interactive fiction but it definitely seems like a full on commitment and definitely a challenge for someone who’s never coded before. any tips?

Hi!

I try my best to keep things organized with good naming conventions and so on, but sometimes it does get a little bit confusing.

There are many different ways, different programs and coding languages you can use when making and IF and I personally only have experience with the program Twine and coding with Harlowe.

As an example:

The word $fname is a variable. This is where the player's first name is stored, and when I write it like this, the game will display it.

$chase is also a variable where I have stored which character you were with during the chase. If that person is Agnes the game will write whatever is within these [ ]. (The syntax in Harlowe is fairly straightforward.)

The text that is marked with two sets of [[]] is a link. It means that there will be a link that looks like "She's looking into it." which will lead to a page called PostChaseBreakfast2Look. This is what I use to branch a story. Different responses go to different pages.

I do have previous programming experience, but I feel as if Twine and its coding is fairly easy to pick up without any experience. There is a documentation page that is super helpful and I keep it open at all times.

My number one tip is to try it out and test different things, learn what kind of coding style suits you, and practice! If you ever get stuck, try and look up a solution or ask someone who knows. I'm not an expert but I'll try and answer any questions that anyone has :)

It doesn't have to be overwhelming, you can definitely go smaller things first to get comfortable before you get into something larger. I really hope that you consider trying and have fun doing so!

- Hannah

[awigglycultist]

Alright I have several fic ideas/au ideas that I want to write or draw but motivation is non existence so I'm just writing down what they are before I end up forgetting them, also feel free to ask questions about them or make suggestions or anything if you want

wizard of oz au inspired by @hatchetfieldmoodboards

Hannah = Dorothy

Ethan = Scarecrow

Lex = Tinman

Tom = Cowardly Lion

Webby = Toto

Holloway = Galinda

Wilbur = Elphaba

Hidgens = Oz

-

Crossover where the solve it squad finds out about Connor Creek and go there and also Paul and Artie are just there visiting, and then the town freaks out cause oh god not this shit again can ppl stop investigating this town please? The squad ends up finding about the werewolves but promise to keep quiet about it, idk what else happens I just wanna see the characters interact ndnddmdk

-

Reverse wayward guide au based off my dad's theories when he watched it. Vern, Helen, Sybilus and Truman are all still werewolves but the rest are normal humans, Wallis, GPS, Ellis and Mary Jo are now werewolves. Truman is not the murderer and is good, Sybilus and Mary Jo are now the killers.

Syb started killing ppl cause he did some fraud or something and didn't want ppl finding out and then he somehow got Mary Jo involved. Mary Jo is not at the town council meeting about werewolves so that the murder of Barney is still possible. Why do they kill the ppl they kill? Idk, probably cause they knew about the fraud or something ig.

The werewolves that meet with Paul & Artie are Helen, Ellis and Wallis. Vern is at the meeting with Agnes, Aubrey, Madison and Olivia (yes Olivia is still at that meeting, she's ofc much less nervous about giving them silver bullets) they wanted meat from Vern to lure out the werewolves (yes ofc their all dumb enough to think that just getting some raw meat would actually trick the werewolves into coming out). Helen and Paul still come to the meeting. Olivia also finds out about the werewolves and Helen and Vern ask her to give Madison a silver bullet to show they trust Madison.

Artemis still thinks that Silas is the killer, she walks in on him and Truman packing up his office to leave (why she helping him pack? Idk shush) and she starts her whole speech. Then Syb and Mary Jo run in screaming about the Irons being dead and then kill Silas and Truman, Ellis and Wallis save Artie. Pretty much the rest is the same just substitute Desmond for Ellis & Wallis and Truman for Sybilus & Mary Jo, also yes Ellis is ofc very distraught the whole time cause oh shit his wife is the one killing everyone in town.

GPS is that last one to reveal he's a werewolf, he'd reveal it to Paul when then town is all saying their goodbyes.

-

Solve It Squad cowboy au... Thats it that's all I have.

-

Hatchetfield cowboy au, that's also all I have on that one

-

Fic where Paul gets sick of Ted and Bill's fighting so he forces them to come with him and have a day of fun together and force the two to get along. At first it is not going well at all, they slowly start getting along, at the end of the night they end up becoming actual friends and they end up going to Pizza Pete's and acting like children (they probably get kick out, yes it's Ted's fault). They also have a long talk about all their issues.

-

Fake dating au where Paul and Artie convince Sybilus and Madison to come with them to a family reunion and pretend to be their partner so their family will stop annoying them about getting a partner, ofc shit insuses.

-

Au where Crispin is a vampire.. Once again that's it, it's all the same except Crispin happens to be a vampire

-

As you can see some of these are much more thought out than others, but once again if you have ideas for these or if you wanna ask questions feel free to!

[miscxllany]

TAGS: agnes & holly.

BEFORE GILEAD. / hannah - agnes: v1.

COMMANDER’S DAUGHTER. / hannah - agnes: v2

AUNT VICTORIA. / hannah - agnes: v3.

TRANSCRIPT OF WITNESS TESTIMONY 369A. / hannah - agnes: v4.

TRANSCRIPT OF WITNESS TESTIMONY 369B. / nichole - holly: v1.

INFILTRATION. / nichole - holly: v2.

A CHILD OF GILEAD. / nichole - holly: v3.

INTERACTIONS. / hannah - agnes: i.

INTERACTIONS. / nichole - holly: i.

THOUGH I WAS NOT ESPECIALLY PRETTY，I WAS VERY CHOSEN. / hannah bankole - agnes jemima.

TREMULOUS AND STUBBORN. / nichole - holly: musings.

I'D BE THE CENTREPIECE: BABY NICHOLE，BACK WHERE SHE BELONGED，HALLELUJAH. / nichole - holly: about.

WITH HER ROUND FACE AND HER UNKNOWING EYES. HOW COULD I BE THAT PERSON? / nichole waterford - holly osborne.

LORD HELP THE MISTER WHO COMES BETWEEN ME AND MY SISTER. / holly & hannah.

[ezrisdax-archive]

thoughts on: aramis (do i just want to hear you rant? yes. i'm sorry. ily. please go on, though 👀)

why would you do this to me hannah? don’t you value our friendship?

it has been....six years...am I over what they did with aramis? no. okay. let’s fucking do this.

you remember that joke that I made that I will never make a better one of “if a baby cries in the forest and aramis is around to hear it does that make it his?”  that’s a pretty good sum of my aramis feelings these days.

season one aramis? good, great, love him, narcissistic rogue of my heart. he was loyal and yeah flirted with people and that messed up a lot of things (adele! poor murdered adele!) but at least when she died he showed some remorse when he found out and that he may be at fault. granted it wasn’t much but at least it was there?? and he had great interactions with the others! there was good character flow and banter and everything was fun! I adored his devil may care attitude because still at the core of it was him caring about his friends and people around him. remember the episode with agnes? now there’s an episode with aramis and a baby that deserves praise. he prioritized the people around him during that, he made sure everyone was in the know of what was going on, he held a baby and didn’t think it was his.

and then episode 9 and 10 happened and I cringed because you fucking idiot sleeping with the queen. but okay, whatever, it happened, I had faith this wasn’t gonna screw up too much.

season two. oh season two. you came out back and dug me a grave and then piled all the characters into it with a baby on top. the stupid fucking baby arc. aramis became a total ass in this respect, he wasn’t a rogue and he wasn’t fun he was just a fucker whose actions screwed over all his friends and marguerite. playing her and sleeping with her to get access to anne and the baby was a douche move, getting her killed and showing nothing towards that was just being a dick, and then keeping all this a secret from the others despite that it’s ramped up the problems going on around you was awful.

aramis became the kind of character I absolutely hate. there was no fun banter anymore, there was no fun character anymore. there was a baby wailing and aramis was fucking up all over the place without any redeeming qualities. and instead of taking some responsibility he fucks off at the end to go be a priest. you got porthos shot! like three times! DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT PORTHOS?! REMEMBER THAT ARAMIS.

uuuuuuuuuuugh, this is so rage inducing to me hannah, they completely fucked over his character. aramis was a fuck boy sure but he wasn’t a heartless fuck boy, he cared about the people around him until season two and it was all about a baby and his need to get to the kid. shut up aramis you reap what you sow. 

I mean I never even watched half of season three because I just couldn’t at that point, I saw the first three episodes and the last one and all I remember of that aramis was still rolling my eyes at him for being peak idiocy in the worst way. like you got me with the first half of the show, you failed me with the rest. and worse his storyline ate into porthos’ and we just got garbage for that.

in summation: there was never another season of musketeers, it ended at season one so I can get some fucking peace of mind and aramis was still a character I cared about.

send me asks that are like “thoughts on ______”  

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Monster House || Morgan, Cassie, & Blanche

Three gals, one creepy old house, and TOO MANY ghosts.

Contains: ghostly body horror 

@harlowhaunted @deathsdoorman

Morgan brought her car up to the curb in front of the Bachman house. She had gone up the drive many times before, but under the cover of eternal night, it seemed more foreboding, more dangerous, and Morgan had a flash of fear that the earth might swallow her car if she left it alone, an offering to be devoured. It was probably her fear talking, the night pressing on longer than thirty minutes in front of her happy light could help. Or it could be the four-ish deaths she’d recently uncovered thanks to her sleuthing with Rio and Winston. Agnes’ father had been impaled on farming equipment, her sister strangled in clothesline, and one of her nieces drowned in a pail. Accidents, all of them. The exact cause of death for Agnes’ mother, Hannah, was unknown, because she was found so many days later, when a neighbor was alerted by the buzzing growth of decomposition. And that didn’t count the little disasters that had come before then. Something about the curse, which only knew how to take and torture, seemed to have embedded itself into the walls, and Morgan felt a twist of guilt at agreeing to bring Blanche along. Seeing this through with Cassie was one thing. Unavoidable, even if her refusal to let Morgan pay her back somehow made her neck itch with discomfort. But Blanche? She was a kid. A reckless, overworked kid in way over her head in so many ways. She didn’t need another. But here they were. Marching headlong into a completely literal danger zone. 

The Bachman house was the oldest of its kind on the street, steadfast against the press of time that peeled its fingers over the paint and shingles and bowed its fist on the front step. The earth, still in its winter sleep, seemed to have made an uneasy truce with the place, growing in brown prickly brambles around the perimeter, but stopping short of the place itself. The strange clarity of this border made the house seem ensconced in its own picturesque dome of grim. Morgan walked as far as the weeds and sat down, clutching her bag to her chest. She had Cassie’s special brew, a tin of Morton’s, the iron rod she’d been gifted by Deirdre, and a shiny new transmutation circle on a cuff around her wrist. It was more than she’d ever had coming here on her own, but knowing what she knew now, it didn’t seem like enough.

Pulling the car up across the street and leaning across to look out from the passenger side window Cassie sized up the building looming just ahead of her. Reaching behind her to the back-seat Cassie pulled through and slung her bag across her chest and stepped out of the car. One of these things is not like the others. Amongst its newer and less neglected siblings the house stuck out with its dilapidated yard and forlorn looking façade against the fresh coats of paint, well-manicured lawns and front porches of its neighbours. Never judge a book by its cover, but she felt it was safe to say that saying didn’t count under the circumstances. She didn’t even have to step inside to get an uneasy vibe from the place.

She raised her palm up in a small wave as she spotted Morgan where Morgan was sat, bag clenched to her chest. “There’s uh….a lot of character going on here,” she offered in tentative greeting as she approached and stopped just outside the threshold. “You sure about this?” She was sure she already knew the answer, but she had to ask all the same.  Okay, two out of three so far were here. The third party was the worry. Blanche was young, but determined, persistent even, but if every other interaction so far was to go on, she was going to do this kind of anyway. She may as well get the full experience with some backup. 

Regan was going to kill her. Remmy was going to kill her. Blanche was probably going to want to punch herself in the face after this. But it was fine. She pulled up in her yellow jeep, parking on the side of the road, already spotting where Morgan and Cassie were. She hopped out, grabbing her backpack that had… Well. She hadn’t known what to bring. She had a lot of salt, acid mace, regular mace, the chalk pens, and that book that Cassie told her to get with her. Just in case. She made Granny stay at home because she didn’t want Granny getting into a fistfight with a cranky ‘caught in between’ ghost. She still didn’t know what that meant. 

“Hey guys,” Blanche said, approaching the two. She looked at the house and grimaced. “Spooky house,” she said. The sort of house that had this been three months ago, she would have had to be dragged into kicking and screaming. It was like something broke in her - the denial and the living in secret wasn’t something she wanted to do anymore. It was exhausting. But, well, this didn’t seem to be very restful. Still, Morgan was nice, and she liked her, so she couldn’t just leave her alone. She shifted the backpack on her back, looking between the two. “So what’s the plan?” 

Morgan fixed her attention on Cassie and Blnache’s shoes. They were nice shoes, black and sensible, and ready for ass-kicking in a pretty on TV sort of way. Morgan wished she’d gotten the memo and put on something besides her busted sneakers, but that wasn’t why she was looking. It was just easier to see three pairs of shoes on a rickety stoop than two good, nice people with hope and salt in their bags, and her. She could turn them away, she thought. Sorry, game over, thanks but no thanks, I’ll just take my blind ass in there alone bye! But she needed this. She needed the universe to stop blowing holes in her like so much swiss cheese. She needed coming to White Crest to amount to something more than hurt and confusion. “Spooky Central!” She said brightly. “Come for the ambiance, stay for the impending doom.” She forced herself up to her feet, iron and salt at the ready. “Um, we stick together, because splitting up is for horror movies, and that’s not us. We don’t know who all might actually be in there, but both Agnes’ parents, her sister, and one niece all died in there back when. I don’t know if Agnes can turn up if she died in Texas, ghost travel isn’t my thing, but it is yours! Hopefully whoever Constance is shows up, and--” She held herself a little straighter. She was fine. This was fine. Plans were supposed to be simple and straightforward, right? “At the end of the day, we just need to get the dirt on why my family’s been cosmically screwed for at least four generations! The older they are, the more likely they’ll know.” 

The last of their party arrived hefting a backpack which looked like she was packing for doomsday, but she came prepared, she would give her that. Had Cassie really been that young when she started out? Too young for this. This was probably how everybody that had ever clued her in had felt now she was in their shoes. It was a weirdly jarring feeling. Cassie looked over at Morgan and flashed her a brief look of doubt. Yeah no, this is a bad idea, a thought she quickly shook off. Okay, so she had two people she had to watch out for. No big deal. It was just to talk anyway. No exorcisms needed necessarily. This was doable. “Yeah, no splitting up,” she agreed with a small shake of her head. “That never works out and if there’s anybody in there we’ll know soon enough. We’ll get them talking,” she shrugged. Getting them to do the opposite was usually the problem. Plus, if they split up, she just knew she would turn around at some point and Blanche would manage to find the broken floorboard or portal to a hell dimension. Call it a Sixth sense. “How about we take things room by room,” she offered up, looking back towards the house. “Go from there,” she finished as the dry grass reeds parted to her left as something skittered through.  

Impending doom was right. Blanche looked at the house, doubtfully. Maybe she should have brought Granny with her. Granny was always better at calming down ghosts - but those ghosts were usually, like, freshly dead. “I’m all for not splitting up,” Blanche said. “I know, surprising, but like - I do have some sense of self-preservation you know,” She shot them a grin, as goodhearted as she could make it. She was a little anxious, but as Morgan pointed the way to go, she was the one that strode right ahead, grimacing at whatever slithered through the grass. Nope. Nope. Nope. They were supposed to deal with the inside of the house, not whatever animal was in the grass. Gripping onto one of her backpack straps tightly, she tensed the second she pushed the door open. She definitely knew that feeling. She held the door open for the other two, walking a little deeper into the house, looking around the entryway curiously. “Room by room, yeah? This the best place to start for our friends?”

The Bachman house welcomed them with a damp sigh. As they crossed the threshold one by one, the doorframes edged away from their frames, making room for their new guests. The walls, flaking like fine old gentlemen, stood as straight as they had the day they rose. Stairs rose in neat lines, and pine and oak furniture, stubborn against the wear of time, glowered alongside their moth and maggot familiars.

“Hello, old house,” Morgan sang tentatively. In visits past, she had said so as a peace offering toward the presumed beings loitering around. Knowing what she knew now, however, of White Crest, of the many ways her ancestors had perished, it became a plea for mercy. Agnes, from what she had gathered, had liked to be the center of entertainment. Her sister, Martha, had been more of the ‘boss the servants around’ type. And their mother, Hannah, had been ill after a tragic, brutal fall before her eventual death, like Morgan’s own mother had been. Because of course she had. Because some torments were just so good they bore repeating. 

“Parlor first,” Morgan said, “Maybe they’ll be partying where the party’s at, right?” She stepped ahead of the others, iron rod raised in front of her. “Either of you see anything?” To Morgan’s ordinary eyes, the place was much as it had always been, except for a door in the corner that she didn’t remember being there before. Morgan went still. “Blanche--? Cassie?” She called.

“Emphasis on some'' Cassie half-joked at Blanche and followed after the two of them. “But good to hear,” Cassie was the last one to step across the threshold and closed the door over behind her just as that familiar pins and needles sensation spread. She could feel it spike as she stepped further inside the front room and trail down her arms and crept up to the tip of her neck. She did her best to shake it off and pressed on. Taking a cursory glance around she caught sight of a few weak fleeting figures that seemed like they were doing their best to keep out of her eyeline. Weird. Cassie looked away from the others for a second and took a few steps towards the door on her right to peek inside following after one of the figures, but thought better of it. “Okay, parlour sounds good,” she started, “let me try and get hold of few of these—" she moved to turn around and found herself facing a wall. The hell did that come from? Shaking off the confusion she looked around for any sign of Blanche or Morgan, but found herself alone in a now empty hallway. “Guys?” She called out again and let out a frustrated sigh and ventured through the first door she could find and stepped inside. A dark-haired figure flitted across the room, but she couldn’t quite make them out in the gloom, “Morgan?”

“Cassie? I don’t think these guys want to-” Blanche started, absentmindedly following after Morgan to the Parlor as a figure darted just out of her eyeline. Must be one skittish ghost. “Guys?” Blanche did not find Morgan, even though she just saw her go through the door. Instead, she found a moth-eaten dusty bed. Blanche stared at it, silently a moment, before turning around. “Cassie?” Nope. There was a window. Blanche stared at it for a long moment. Her entire body was on edge because they were all clearly note alone in the house, but now she was just tense. When the hell did she get to the second floor of the building? Blanche backed away from the the window, turning away as she patted her pockets for her cell phone, intending on calling Cassie straight away. No service. “Are you kidding me?” she hissed, before she heard something move. She looked up, and moved straight through the open doorway and into the Hallway - nope. Not the hallway. “.... Cassie! Morgan!” Blanche yelled at the top of her lungs. It was a big ass house, but someone had to hear her. Maybe, though, she realized after, with a grimace, she should be careful. There were others in the house after all.

They left me, Morgan thought. The plan didn’t mean anything and they left me. Was that the real plan, to disappear? Morgan stayed rooted in place, the rod trembling in her hands. The Bachman House breathed around her, raising dust around the old floorboards. Its cold breath pinched her, cruel and needling. The walls laughed, as the playground children had laughed, and the third dates she tried to tell about magic, her old cohort. And under them was a strange sound, a tisk of disapproval, or of keeping time. Tat, tat, tat, tat… Morgan wobbled on her feet and inched through the new door, clearly she wasn’t going to find anyone in here—and found herself on a stairwell, suffocated in dark. “No—” She dashed back the way she’d come and crashed into a wall. Trapped. “No, no, you do not get to do this. Cassie! Blanche!” She stumbled up blindly, each stair scraping on her ankles like so many teeth. She had to get to them—didn’t she?

The room was empty save for a debris-covered fireplace and some moth-eaten curtains. Cassie breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped inside and caught sight of Morgan’s sneakers in the dim light. Okay, now they just needed to find Blanche. She was crouched in the corner of the room with her back to the door. “Hey, you find something?” She asked taking a step closer, “thought we said we weren’t splitting up where’s—"she cut herself off and felt the pin prickles erupt along her arms again as she got closer and clocked the tattered denim jacket and dishevelled dark hair. No, not Morgan. Definitely not Morgan. A pair of terrified dark eyes flickered up at her. “Hey,” she ventured tentatively like she was approaching a startled animal, “you help me I’ll help you have you seen-”

The girl rose up suddenly, hands clinging to the wall and shrank away from her as though she were contagious, “stay away,” her voice cracking from disuse. “Get away from me!” She shrieked and streaked past her, making contact with her right arm sending the feeling of her skin being plunged into ice water and darted past her at speed through the wall. Taking their advice Cassie got out and called out again, “Blanche? Morgan?” She yelled. “The hell are you?” She asked quietly as she weighed up her options. “Stay where you are! I’ll come to you,” she tried, hoping one of them was close enough to hear that. For a split second she could have swore she heard someone call out and followed blindly in the direction it came from.

“Cassie! Morgan!” Blanche was bellowing Cassie and Morgan’s names over and over again. It was a big house, but it wasn’t that big. They had to find each other eventually. Flashes of people danced around the corners of her eyes, but everytime she turned to look, nothing was there. She did not like that. She didn’t like that one bit. She was hardly used to seeing ghosts when they were normal, she didn’t like them when they were screwing with her. And this whole maze of rooms thing? Not cool. Blanche was going through rooms as fast as humanly possible, none of them ever where she meant to go and none of them being right. It wasn’t until she ended up in a closet that she finally stopped and took a fucking breath. 

It was a large closet. Blanche turned on the flashlight on her phone, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Blanche screamed backing up against the wall as she stared at the human skeletons. Her stomach twisted, she for a moment, she was certain she was going to hurl. Except the jacket. The stupid fucking jacket. Blanche latched onto the first thing she saw that would ground her fear, and it was a jacket. Faded and moth eaten and dusty… It was hung around the shoulders of the bones, but that wasn’t what she was concerned with. DIE was on the breast pocket. She knew that fraternity on campus, but this was just a cruel joke. She was rooted to the spot now, staring at this stupid jacket around a dead person’s bones. Eerily, she was calm now - or numb. Her head sort of felt fuzzy, almost like she was in a dream. What a dream, what a nightmare. She went to leave… And then turned back around, unsure what possessed her to carefully take the jacket with her. Two people had died in this house alone and scared, someone had to miss them. And Adam could track down any DIE alumni and figure out who had gone missing. What their names were. Who were they? She wanted to know. Blanche’s stomach churned as she clutched the moth eaten jacket to her, before stumbling back into the hallway eyes burning with tears. Wait. Hallway. The hallway! No more room swapping hell! “Cassie! Morgan!” Blanche yelled again, turning a corner and catching sight of the stairs. She bolted to them immediately. “Hey! Can anyone hear me?!”

Morgan was sure she’d been walking the same stairs for hours now. She had stopped for breath, she had raced on almost all fours in desperation, and it was still just this. Just her and the dark, alone. 

Tat, tat, tat, tat….

Morgan tripped on the latest step and slammed onto her knees. “What the hell?” Her voice trembled hoarsely in her throat. 

“Come out already, pumpkin.”

It was a soft voice, steady and sure. Morgan couldn’t place the sound, but there was something in the cadence that chilled her with familiarity. What was happening? Why couldn’t she get out? Morgan staggered back up to her feet and began to climb again. Any second now, it had to be. She couldn’t be more than a few steps from the top. She continued, on and on, over and over. Had there been a landing she’d missed? A door just to her right or something. Of course there was. Only you could get lost on a fucking staircase. Morgan stopped, and fished out her flashlight for what--the third time? Or the first? Had she tried it before or dismissed the obvious idea because getting something right would just be too novel an experience?

The light came on. Morgan was staring in front of another door.

Earth and fucking stars, she had been in front of it the whole time. Morgan threw her weight against it and stumbled into a hallway. She looked behind her--there was no door. No enclosed stairs. She was coming up the main staircase that had watched them when they first entered. Someone was calling her name. Or was that in her head? Stupid, lonely-- no. Blanche was there, running towards her. 

“What the hell is wrong with you!” Morgan snapped. “What were you--” she couldn’t breathe. She was trembling from the shoulders down. Shit. How did she breathe again? She couldn’t forget how to breathe. It was in there somewhere, right? In. Hold. Out. Slowly, counting the time. One, two, three, three-- wait. Morgan looked up at Blanche from her haggard crouch in the middle of the hall. “You were supposed to be right behind me,” she said. “And what is that you’re holding?”

She could hear them yelling but every time she thought she was getting close it faded and died and she was left with silence. Cassie lost count of how many doors she went through that seemed to lead her on in what felt like an unending loop. “Here! I’m here!” She called back to no answer and sat down to catch her breath on one of the chairs left sprawled in the basement that sent out a thick plume of dust before she registered, she wasn’t alone down there. Several pairs of eyes turned to look at her and instantly rushed her. A chorus of frantic voices fought amongst themselves to be heard over the din and figures pushed and shoved to jostle for position in front of her. “One at a time,” she yelled. “One at a damn time,” to no avail. If her patience had been low before it was non-existent now. Reaching into her bag she opened up the salt container and launched it into the air sending anyone stupid enough to have stuck around to see it in her hands evaporated into the air. On the move again she tried to make contact again, but none of the occupants inside lingered long enough to be of any use or offer any help. They were all just kids, terrified kids too far gone to be of any use. Pressing on she wound her way through the house until she finally pushed against the one door that emptied her out into the hallway. Her eyes took a moment to adjust and clocked the two figures huddled close together and felt a flicker of relief at the sight of both Morgan and Blanche just ahead of her. She attempted to dust herself off on approach and caught her breath. “I’ve been looking everywhere,” she stopped to get a breath, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you guys,” she managed in relief and clocked the tattered fabric in Blanche’s hands. “You find something?”

“Morgan!! Morgan!” Blanche exclaimed in relief, before Morgan’s name caught in her throat as she lashed out at her. Blanche looked at her, eyes wide, shaking her head. “I was right behind you! I was right behind you! I got spit out in the bedroom! I don’t know what happened. And then I started running through the house and nothing was right and -” Blanche was shaking and talking way faster than she meant. She didn’t realize how terrified she had been until she looked down at the jacket and saw her knuckles white with how hard she was gripping the jacket. She took in a shaky breath, jumping as Cassie hurried up to them. She let out a sigh of relief, nodding. “There’s - I don’t know where, but - I mean, two people, two skeletons…” Blanche wasn’t great at explaining, but she shifted the jacket in her hands and showed the D.I.E. logo on it. “This is a frat at my school. I thought… if I talked to my friend, they could… figure out who they were,” Blanche said, suddenly feeling very foolish. This wasn’t why they were here at all. They were here for Morgan. Blanche’s face felt hot, and her eyes burned slightly, and she looked down, clutching the jacket back to her. After a moment, she got it together. “What the hell just happened?”

Morgan was still struggling to breathe. She gave up on maintaining her crouch and stood, pressed against the wall as she forced oxygen through her teeth. “Yeah, while we’re at it, we can pick up trophies from every other dumbass who died lost in a two story house!” She snapped. Stars, this was wrong. This was wrong, wrong, wrong, but Morgan couldn’t figure out in which direction, should she be doing this alone? Was that better? Or was the stupider thing to push Cassie and Blanche away? The thoughts in her head were soured like milk left in the sun, ugly blobs rising to the surface, smelling strange, and wrong. She clenched her fists. “We’re lost,” she said, trying to line up the facts for herself as much as the others. “We might die here. You need to get out. I, meanwhile, am going to--” 

Her eyes didn’t even look away. They were on the end of the hall, she could’ve sworn they were on it the whole time, when it stretched impossibly far away from them and the door, or had there been a door? There must have been, her eyes never left it-- The door opened with a cruel thump as it hit the wall on its hinges.

Morgan looked to the others and back to the hall again. “We are so screwed,” she whispered.

“Hey!” Cassie frowned at Morgan, “let’s not start turning on each other. I get it, but this is the last thing anybody needs. Keep it together.” She swiped more of the dust away from her arms as she crossed to stand close by and folded her arms over. Her eyes flickered to Blanche as she mentioned finding remains and softened. Shit. What was seeing something like that going to do to her? For a first rodeo this was like throwing her in the deep end and attaching a concrete cylinder block for good measure. She registered the letter jacket in Blanche’s hands with the letters D.I.E on it, yeah, that’s not an omen at all “Soon as this is over and we’re out of here we’ll find somebody to give that to,” she reassured. She shook it off and sighed “I couldn’t get a straight answer from anybody. It’s all just a bunch of college kids and high schoolers. Something’s got them too scared out of their minds to make any sense.” Something was causing this, messing with their heads, with what they saw. This was beyond your standard poltergeist activity; past any hallucinations they could pull. “We’re not lost and we’re going to die,” Cassie urged at Morgan again, “come on, enough,” she pressed and padded over towards Morgan to pull her along with them when the hallway gave itself The Haunted Mansion Ride treatment and elongated out. She stopped still and watched. “We’re all getting out. Whatever this is, it’s trying to mess with your head, so don’t fold on me and make it easy for them.”

Shame and guilt twisted through Blanche like a poison. She didn’t understand why the feeling was so strong, but it was enough to make her want to get sick. She cringed away from Morgan’s harsh words, clutching the jacket to her chest. What was wrong with her? Her emotions were in overdrive, and she felt like she was going to have a panic attack. Her mouth dry, she forced herself to fucking breathe. Morgan was already freaking out, Cassie and her didn’t need to deal with her useless problems because she made a bad decision. She always made bad decisions. No. Shake it off. Stop it, Blanche told herself, focusing on Cassie. “I can’t get a good look at anyone, they won’t - I mean, I think they kept running away from me. And I kept running away from them trying to find you - I mean. Sorry.” Blanche stuck with Cassie and Morgan, and reached out. “I don’t think we should go that way - hey, I don’t think we should go that way!” Blanche reaching to tug lightly on Cassie’s arm. “We’re being herded! I think we’re being herded. Let’s go back the way we - oh.”  Blanche had turned to point back the way they came, but it had changed again. No more stairs. They were being herded. Blanche swallowed hard, and pushed forward anyway. She was afraid and overwhelmed and all she wanted to do was cry. She noticed the whispering then, just as they all plowed through the door. The low whispering that in her head - “Cassie. Cassie can you hear them? Morgan?” 

Cassie’s grip pressed something back into Morgan and at last she remembered how to breathe. In. Hold Out. Five. Three. Five. In. Hold. Out. And they were all here, together, in arm’s reach. Morgan wiped her hands on her pants and took hold of each of them. She stared intently at her fingers, the fabric it pinched on their sleeves. “Sorry,” she mumbled. There was still so much gunk in her head, and that voice from before, that voice. Morgan barely had time to notice the stairs vanish before their eyes. No way out. No way around. 

Morgan tightened her grip on each of them. “I can hear something,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “What’s, um, what’s yours saying, Blanche?” She could only just work up the nerve to meet the girl’s eyes for a second. There was no comfort in her to give, and only the smallest piece of resolve, She was just afraid, but she wanted to tell her the truth. “Does it sound like anyone to you?” She asked.

Her eyes darted around them, waiting for another way out, but nothing came. This was the only way forward. Keeping her grip on them, Morgan led the way into the room.

There were no windows to be seen, and yet the room was full of the stale non-light of winter days and lingering hurricanes. There was a bed against the wall, a rocking chair, an empty shelf. In the middle of the room a hunched over woman, her skeleton bent in ways that should have broken her skin or sent her to the floor: feet bent the wrong way on the floor, limbs zig zagging in sharp, terrible angles, back swollen and curved like a snake in distress,  She was swaying, unnaturally steady in her balance.

“We’re not going to get any answers from them,” Cassie answered. “They’re too far gone,” she answered Blanche honestly. As Blanche tugged on her arm the house sealed the stairs off from them, they had no choice but to follow. The three of them fell into step and moved towards the room ahead as Morgan took the lead. Follow the yellow brick road it was. No way to get separated now at least. The only way was forward as the voices picked up again as they moved. A hushed whispery rustling of words sent a shiver up the nape of her neck. “I hear them,” Cassie answered quietly, her voice far away as she listened and tried to tune into the words but couldn’t make it out. As she concentrated Cassie could almost hear partial words as though she was hearing snapshots of a hushed conversation as it ebbed in and out of audio. The fact that Morgan could hear it wasn’t a welcome sign. “I can’t make much out.” As they entered the room Cassie felt her skin prickle and flare in the seconds before she caught the figure inside. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, at first. She could make out the twisted limbs bent at unnatural angles. It was a woman, or it had been in life, but whatever was left in death had been warped and mangled into something that only just looked human. There was something about them, something important, but she felt her mind blanking the longer she looked. There was something. She could feel it. She was forgetting something, but she couldn’t remember what it was. Just the vague feeling as she rapped her fingers against the side of her leg absently in rhythm. “What do you want?” Cassie asked them, her voice steady as the figure seemed to make a move towards them.

Blanche shook her head. “I can’t - I can’t figure out what they’re saying they’re not -” It was like they were purposefully out of reach. Purposefully trying to mess with her head. Was that really a thing? Being too far gone? Blanche didn’t get a chance to think much of it, only glance between Morgan and Cassie as they entered the room they were herded too, before she froze. She clutched the jacket closer to her, like it was a blanket of comfort, except, it didn’t help. Cassie spoke to the thing in a somehow impossibly steady voice. 

“Agnes,” the figure cooed. “Martha. You’ve been disobeying me, haven’t you?” 

Blanche was fixated on the thing’s feet. Bent the wrong way as it stumbled towards them it made her a little sick. Who was Martha and who was Agnes? And who was she? Was she human once? Was this Morgan’s family? Blanche went into overdrive for a second - would this be what happened to Morgan if the curse wasn’t broken? 

“I think we should leave!” Blanche hissed, tugging at Morgan’s arm. “I think we should -”

“Did I grant you permission to leave?! Wretched child,” the woman looked straight at her.  The room seemed to lurch and Blanche was thrown off balance, letting go of Morgan with a squeak. “After showing up without notice? You’re making me angry. How dare you make me angry.” 

Her heart sank. She made it angry? “What do you want?” Blanche repeated Cassie’s question, her own voice wavering. The room span and Blanche, after a moment Blanche realized it wasn’t her anxiety and she stepped forward unable to get a good look at the thing now. “What the fuck? What’s happening? What’s happen- urck!” Blanche snapped her eyes shut and sank to her knees, but that was somehow worse.

“I wouldn’t have to punish you if you hadn’t disobeyed me -” 

Blanche tried to get a grip, and start reaching behind her to start rifling through her bag. Salt. She needed salt. No - she couldn’t focus. “No! Make it stop. Make it stop!”

Morgan jolted off balance, crashing to her knees. The woman (she was still a woman, wasn’t she?) was beginning to scream. “Don’t talk to me that way! I am your mother!”

“Oh,” Morgan wheezed, forcing her eyes upward. “You have GOT to be fucking kidding me.”

The floor seemed to tilt, but Morgan shut her eyes against the sensation. She had skipped over being ‘done’, like a deep scratch on a record, and now she was skimming past that in a burning haze. “You are fucking kidding me!” She screamed. She swung her iron rod blindly. She staggered to her feet, wheezing and shaking and livid. “Was it you? Did you wake up one morning and decide one punishment wasn’t enough? Because your daughter wasn’t the way you wanted? It was you, wasn’t it, Hannah? Answer me!”

The floor leveled out, the walls went still, and yet there was no silence in the Bachman house. The quiet tapping sound like teeth crept into the air. Tat, tat, tat, tat. Morgan opened her eyes. The ghost of Hannah Bachman hovered inches from her face. Her ghost hair dangled in front of her in ropes, hiding whatever there was to see of her face save for one wide, lashless eye. “It is you,” she said. “My precious girl.”

“No--” Morgan swung but Hannah only vanished. Her voice, reedy and bitter went on, marked only by the tapping in between.

“Another precious girl. You never change. You did this to yourselves.”

“Fuck you,” Morgan whispered, digging into her bag for the tin. She hurled it at the nearest wall and it burst open, white grains of salt hissing and rolling over the floor. 

Hannah laughed. “How many times did I tell you not to mix with others. Your family is all that matters. I would have done worse than Constance Cunningham if I could. At least she learned her lesson.” 

“You want worse?” Morgan backed to the nearest wall and slammed her cuff on it. The wood snapped, veiny cracks sweeping through as if they had been clawed in one swipe, they jutted outwards, exploding into sawdust and splinters and earth, showing the way out on the other side, if they could just get to it. But the tapping, the tapping was still in her ears, and the house, whole parts that Morgan hadn’t even consciously touched, were trembling along to its rhythm. Morgan looked to Cassie, abashed. “Oh, shit.”

Hannah paid Cassie no mind as she advanced on the other two. “Apage!” Stop she demanded and tried to step forward but the tapping grew louder and louder drowning everything out and she felt the ground come up to meet her. Every thought, every sound with it as the thing in the room rounded on the others. The more she fought against it the more the room around her seemed to twist and warp and forced her back down. The sound increased until it thrummed like a pulse inside her head. She fought again as the others fell to their knees as the room span and contorted, but was pulled back to the floor as Morgan managed to scramble to her feet and confront her.

“Make it stop!”

Something in her stirred and she pulled herself up with effort and stood, barely. She could make it stop. Make it all stop. Had to. Taking a step forward brought a wave of nausea, but she pushed through, trudging through what felt like quicksand, but kept going. No chalk. No circle. No salt. There wasn’t time. Stripping off her watch she gripped it in one hand and started to chant. Slowly and quietly at first, closing her eyes over as she focused on the words and intent and forged on as she felt the familiar tugging sensation spread out from her chest as she poured all her energy into forming the circle above. After a few moments she opened her eyes again in time to see the shape above start to take form and kept her eyes on it as she worked, aware that ahead of her Morgan and Blanche were trapped with it, but she needed time. She needed her distracted. Apologies would have to come later.

Out of the corner of her eye she turned her attention to Hannah then; too rapt in toying with the others to notice the opening forming above her on the ceiling. The gleeful look on its face made her stomach twist. That bought her some time as she gritted her teeth and concentrated as the circle above bloomed out and the dust began to fall downwards and swirl. Gaining mass in thicker dark plumes that branched out like vines as they found their target and clung to Hannah’s form. Spreading slowly upwards from their ankles began to snare her in place, creeping upwards. 

She was going to be sick. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Blanche thanked every possible being there was that she didn’t come here alone. She was useless. What good was being able to see and hear this shit without being able to do anything about it? She buried her head in the jacket, trying so stop the wave of nausea, fear, and confusion that hit her like a truck. Still a little sick to her stomach, she looked up just as Morgan’s hand slammed against the far wall - Just as the opening in the above Hannah Backman appeared - it was the first time she had seen a real exorcism. 

Danger! Get out! Get out! An unfamiliar voice hissed in her ear and Blanche whipped her head around to look. 

“Do you hear - “ Blanche asked.

Get out! 

Blanche felt the rumbling underneath her knees and sprang upward. Danger. Get out. They needed to get out right now. She dove for Cassie first, her legs feeling like JELL-O as she yanked hard. She went for Morgan next. “We have to go, we have to go right now! Something else is wrong!” 

As if to prove her point, loud cracking through the wooden structure and the ground began to shake. Oh this was bad. “We gotta go,” Blanche pulled a little more, the damn jacket still clutched in her arms as they went barrelling out of the house. One goal, and that meant out. They needed to get out and get out now. She had hopes that whatever Cassie and Morgan did would shake the house back to normal before it collapsed on top of them. 

She shot out of the room, trusting the others to follow. They didn’t want to die either. She was shaking too bad to be able to hang onto them. Was she shaking too bad or was the house shaking too bad? PRobably both. The long hallway was there, but replaced with more doors, no doubt for more maze confusion - nobody had time for that. Debris was already falling, smashing furniture and used to be wall fixtures. Blanche saw the stairs and immediately threw herself down them as fast as she could. If they could just get to the ground level… 

Danger! Look out!

Something hard hit the back of her just as she got towards the end, and she shrieked in pain as she was knocked off her feet, her left side hitting the ground at the bottom of the staircase hard. The shaking was getting worse, the crashing of the house collapsing after them was deafening. Blanche didn’t realize until she was already back on her feet that pain was searing in through her left shoulder and she couldn’t move it - fuck. Tears bubbled  and spilled, but she saw it. “Front door -” Blanche said. “Front door. Front door!” She dove for it before it could disappear. “No! Let us out!”

Morgan didn’t need to be convinced to leave. She held onto Blanche for dear life as they sprinted out, the Bachman house screaming at them from all sides as they went. Beams roared as they buckled overhead, floors shrieked  as they snapped. Morgan pushed herself to keep pace, but the house was faster. Her foot plunged through black, dusty air. She cried out, holding onto her friends harder and collapsed, her leg crashing into the ruins. Above, the second floor was bottoming out, and for a moment Morgan wondered if she should just let it. Just let it all break and stop running. What was next after Constance anyway? What use was any--

No.

Morgan staggered up, blood dripping from her leg,and charged the rest of the way out, tears streaming down through the dust on her face. When she could see the world outside, she let herself go splat into the grass, her things splattering around her. She pressed her cuff into the ground and fixed herself on the house and all the hurt it had done with bitter certainty. She opened herself and pushed. 

The collapse of the Bachman House was not a natural thing. The ground that had held it for two hundred years became a hungry, jagged mouth. It swallowed the basement and the neglected foundation, it guzzled up the steps and the wood pillars and the beams, the windows, the roof, and the brick chimney, melding it all into dust and ash. The sound was something like fury, something like an unquenchable hunger, demanding more. 

Morgan watched, dead-eyed. All that remained was the debris from the upper floors she hadn’t had the strength to reach. And now that she was finished, and sick from draining herself, she realized she hurt...everywhere.

The tendrils snaked their way around Hannah. By the time Cassie had the sense to pay attention it was too late. Kicking and screaming she tried to lash out, but the more she fought the tighter the binds gripped and encircled her until she was shielded from view entirely. Without an ounce of sympathy Cassie kept her gaze set on whatever was left of her and finished the incantation, watching as she lost form altogether, dissipating in front of her and was pulled upwards through the opening in a pillar of smoke rising up towards the opening. She watched in horrified fascination as Hannah was swallowed up and the opening sealed itself up, disappearing in the time it took to blink. There was no time to stop or take a breath. The whole house felt like it was shaking, but her limbs struggled to respond as any energy she had left ebbed away.

“I—what?” Cassie found her voice as she heard the others frantically pulling at her. In the moments that followed Cassie was only vaguely aware of Blanche hustling her out of the way, throwing off her balance as the room came into focus again and she registered the crumbling surroundings and clocked Blanche dragging her alongside Morgan as they scrambled to find a way out.  As her head cleared, she took in the situation and dodged the falling debris as they ran for the front door. The whole house was coming down around them with an unnatural fury and she searched around for a way out as the house continued to twist and contort as it crumbled. The woodwork started to give way and she heard Blanche cry out somewhere ahead of her. “Blanche!” she yelled as the house started to fold in on itself as they cleared the stairs and fled. She heard Morgan yelp in pain and fumbled to get to them to no avail. All she could do was try to keep up. Glass smashed and sprayed out behind her and rained down and she shielded her face and neck as she sprinted for the exit. Scrambling to stay close to them Cassie barrelled out not long after them as the house seemed to crumple in on itself and howl with rage. The outside air hit her and collapsed down on the grass. As Morgan dug her cuff into the ground Cassie watched in horror as the ground itself seemed to open its mouth and swallow the remnants of the house whole until all that was left was a crater in the ground.  Looking to Blanche and Morgan she finally caught her breath and slumped back on the grass.

Blanche stumbled out of the house, the fresh air a gift to her dusty face as she collapsed into the grass. It was pitch black - of course it was, but Blanche shut her eyes tightly, breathing hard, before she watched in horrified curiosity as the house seemed to melt way into the ground. Blanche dropped back down into the grass, looking at the ever present moon above her, trying to process what the fuck just happened. Morgan was hurt. Cassie was too. The adrenaline and shock was wearing off on her�� arm and it was really starting to hurt. Tears bubbled over and she sucked in a deep, deep breath. She couldn’t - she wouldn’t - lose it now. Not when she had been stupid and asked to come. What would have happened if she hadn’t been here? Blanche didn’t want to know. “I can’t… move my arm…” Blanche’s voice cracked faintly. 

[hyunjinz]

🍓(hi agnes!!! 💞)

hannah hi!! 😊😊

I'm pretty sure we've been mutuals for a while (but also maybe my brain is playing tricks lmao) but!! we haven't really interacted a lot 😭 but! I'd love to because you seem like a genuinely nice and kind person :')))) ✨

also if I'm not mistaken you started making gifs quite recently? but you're? so? talented? 😭 my gifs were absolute garbage when i started sjdndjdn i really love the sharpening it looks great! and your coloring too!! i like how it's not too intense but like you highlight the original colors and it looks so soft and perfect!! 💞 so I'm absolutely looking forward to more of your creations!! 😊✨ and your blueprint sets are my favs :33

I'm sending you hugs angel!! 💟💕✨😊

mutuals send me a 🍓 and ill compliment u!

[regalhqs-blog]

**i know the following blurb is long, but pls read all of it

we just want to start this off by saying a huge thank you to everyone who applied for this rp. the response that we got was overwhelmingly positive, and we thank you so much for diving into the world of relania with us. for those who have been accepted, you have 24 hours from right now (until 12/717 4:30 est) to send us in your accounts. we will be opening for ooc interactions tomorrow at 6:00 est, so make sure that you’re here and ready to go!! ic interactions will not open until friday, at a time that is TBD (we’ll do a poll to see what works best for everyone.) if you were not accepted as your first choice/are just stumbling upon us now, the submit has been reopened. we will be doing another acceptance tomorrow at 5:00 est, so if you send in your application by then, you will be able to join us before ooc and ic interactions begin. okay all of that out of the way, here are the newest members of regalhqs:

(this is listed alphabetically by kingdom!! either read through the whole thing, or ctrl+f to search for your ooc name/alias <3 also there are some people we need to talk to about tiny details about their character, so if you see that we asked you to reach out to us, please do so.)

adarwen:

fran as prince albert lovett -- we feel like you really embodied the attitude of adarwen in your app, which made both of us super happy to see someone understand where we wanted the kingdom to be at as far as their attitude towards the other kingdoms went **if you could message us when you see this, we just have a quick question for you <3

highland:

kendra as lady amalia leofric -- we loved the comment you made about why she’s short, that made me literally laugh out loud, and ths history and mockblog gave us such a strong sense of character, great job, i cannot wait to write with you!!

m as benjamin o’connor -- both the quotes and the playlist gave us such a strong sense as to who your character is, and we’re both already in love with good ol’ benji.

dee as lady agnes meunier -- we absolutely adored your headcannons and the character history that you built for this character. your app makes us so excited to see where agnes will go next **if you could message us when you see this, we just have a quick question for you!!

rose as king percival georg atkins -- we adored every single thing about that mockblog, from the playlist to the bio page to every post on there, incredible incredible work.

rosie as queen serena atkins -- thank you so much for being able to work with us!! we love your character so much, and are so happy that you are going to be writing with us in this rp.

mirvia:

mel as princess juliet beaumont -- not gonna lie, this was a pretty touch decision for us to make, but what set your application apart from the others was the story of her finding out about her magic. it was such an incredible way to introduce that aspect of the character, and we cannot wait to have you join us

fran (again) as eve brightsong -- that bit about her family being attacked was brilliant, and i’m really looking forward to having this character on the dash **we have a question for you about this character as well, so pls make sure you message us!!

hannah as lady laelynn bellerose -- with so many strong characters in this rp, we are super excited to have a character like laelynn to balance them out!!

lydia as tobias covey -- the bare bones of your character are so incredible, i love the little tidbit about using air magic to aid him in his work as well

aspen as queen raina beaumont -- this was another extremely hard decision to make, but what really sold me was how beautifully your pinterest board complimented the character history that you wrote for us. i cannot wait to write with you, love.

megan as rhion hale -- i cannot thank you enough for being as flexible in the character creation process as you were. your patience is so so appreciated, and the fact that you created this incredibly original character despite the small bumps is so cool. 

nepan:

ellen as colette shaw -- from the moment we saw the character comparison to dimitri from anastasia, we fell in love. the character is so interesting, an i’m so excited to see the shenanigans she gets herself into

raviel:

ana as queen mysaria godfrey -- all of the headcannons you sent in added so much to our overall idea of who mysaria is as a character, and we absolutely adore her. ** we have a question for you about this character, so pls message us when you see this!

stonemore

ellen (again) as mira kirova --  we’re super excited for this character and we cant wait to see more of mira!

dustin as sebastan “wolfjaw” hyrule --  there was a lotn f dedication in your app, and we loved it from the moment we started!

mel (again) as katalina kalonymus --  we absolutely loved reading your para sample and bio, and we really have a good grasp on her background!

boo as elias damours --  what you wrote about his relationship with his father really made us understand him a lot and we can wait to write with you!

san as jonathan wetherhill --  honestly we are super pumped for this! your app was amazing, and we were laughing abt the “you are tomato #FF6347" omg, that was so creative

lexi as olivia “via” damours young --  her backstory is pretty unique and we’re so glad you messaged us about it because we think she’ll be a great addition to the group ** please message us when you see this, we have a small question about your app!

alyssa as dyana krey --  her mock blog was so cute and we loved her playlist a lot!

babsy as zhang huayang --  honestly its nice to see a dragon trainer around here! she seems like such an interesting character and we can’t wait to see her on the dash!  ** we have a small question for you so please message us asap

[atombooks]

Looking for your next read? Dip your toes into A Danger to Herself and Others, a gripping, heart-wrenching and powerful new novel from New York Times bestselling author Alyssa Sheinmel.  Enjoy. What follows is an extract from Alyssa Sheinmel's new novel, A Danger to Herself an Others. Out February 2019 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Too old for these games.Too old for these games.Too old for these games. I hear the words over and over, like a song I can’t get out of my head. It’s Agnes’s voice I hear, not my own. Like she’s in the room with me. I can practically see her flipping her long blond hair over one shoulder. Her hair is thinner than mine, but less unruly. Plus, mine is brown. So much more ordinary than Agnes’s hair. At least, that’s how Jonah must’ve seen it. On the other hand, Jonah said once that my brown hair paired with my light green eyes made me pretty in a striking sort of way. He didn’t say it like it was a good thing. More like it was merely he’d noticed. Too old for these games. You’re never really too old for games. The games just change. You’d think someone with a name as grown-up as Agnes would’ve understood that. Come on, Agnes. It’ll be fun. I’m not sure we have the same idea of fun, Agnes said. But she was smiling, so she must have been having at least a little fun. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather… When I say the words out loud, they echo off the ugly brick walls like a beacon, bringing Dr. Lightfoot along with them. That’s not her real name. Her real name is Priya Charan (she introduced herself to me when we met, obviously), but I call her Lightfoot because she wears ballet slippers, and they tap tap tap across the linoleum floor with every step she takes. And I don’t mean stylish ballet flats, the kind you can get at J. Crew, the sort that Audrey Hepburn made famous and fashionable. I mean, this doctor literally wears ballet shoes. They’re not even nice ballet shoes, like the kind professional dancers wear. These are the sort of plain slippers parents give to little kids taking their first ballet class. These slippers have no laces and no soles. They have no sharp or heavy parts. They can’t be used as weapons. Dr. Lightfoot wears them because they make her feel safe around girls like me. Which, I have to tell you, is absurd. Not because I wouldn’t try anything (I can’t make any promises—who knows what being trapped in a room could drive a person to do?), but because Dr. Lightfoot always brings a clipboard with my file clipped to it and a pen with her, just like the man who asked my name when I arrived here. Maybe it’s the same clipboard. I asked to see my file the first time she came to see me, and she held it out in front of her so I could only see the first page. Now those items—the clipboard, the pen, even the heavy file—could be useful, if you were interested in that sort of thing. Which is why Dr. Lightfoot never comes to see me alone. “Who’s that?” I asked on the first day. Or maybe it was the fifth day. Or the tenth. Like I said, I haven’t been keeping track. Anyway, it was the first time Dr. Lightfoot made an appearance, so I’m guessing it was at the beginning of all of this. “That’s my colleague Stephen,” she answered, gesturing to the enormous man standing in the doorway with his arms crossed like a bouncer at the hottest club back home in the city. When Dr. Lightfoot is here, the door stays open, but Stephen is so big that he blocks any light that might come in from the hallway, along with any chance of seeing my fellow inmates (patients? prisoners?) who might be walking in the hallway. Or any chance of them seeing me. “What’s he doing here?” “Observing,” Dr. Lightfoot answered. “He’s a student.” I sighed. It’s not like I thought they’d have the best doctors in the world at a place like this, but I’m surprised they put someone as incompetent as Lightfoot in charge of my case. It’s bad enough that she keeps me locked in this room all day, which definitely wouldn’t be good for my sanity if I were actually mentally ill. But even I know that doctors like her are supposed to gain their patients’ trust. Which is pretty hard to do when her answer to one of the first questions I ever asked was a bald-faced lie. It was true that Stephen was observing, but it was a lie that he was here to learn something. He was here to keep an eye on me. He was here so Dr. Lightfoot wouldn’t have to be alone with me. Because I’ve been labelled a danger to herself and others. Another phrase that floats through my head. Though not in Agnes’s voice. Agnes wouldn’t have said that because no one ever said that about me before they brought me here. And by the time they brought me here, Agnes had a tube stuck down her throat, so she couldn’t have said anything anyway. I don’t hear this particular phrase in anyone’s voice because I never heard it at all. I saw it written on the first page of my file when Lightfoot held it out to me. My name was typed at the top of the page: Hannah Gold. Beneath that was my date of birth, my address in New York, my medical history (strep throat at eleven, tonsillitis at thirteen). And beneath that were two bullet points: • Hold for observation. • Patient may pose a danger to herself and others. “So that’s why I’m stuck in this room?” I asked. “Because you think I’m dangerous?” “You’re in this room for your own safety.” I was already sick of Lightfoot’s dull, monotonous voice. “And the safety of others,” I added. Lightfoot didn’t respond. Patient may pose a danger to herself and others. I always hated when people said maybe, maybe not in answer to a question. What an absurdly redundant, completely unnecessary expression. Maybe is maybe not. There’s no reason to say both. Saying I may pose a danger to myself and others is also saying that I may not. I sigh and pace the room in perpendicular lines. Just because I’m stuck in here is no reason to forgo exercise. I will not get fat. My muscles will not atrophy down to nothing. These people will not keep me still and pump me full of food like they do to the girls with eating disorders down the hall. Or anyway, the girls I imagine are down the hall. I haven’t actually seen any other patients yet, but sometimes I hear doors opening and closing, hear muffled female voices rising and falling as they approach then pass the door. More than once, I’ve heard one girl or another yelling, though the walls are too thick for me to make out exactly what they’re yelling about. Maybe they don’t want to take their medication. Or maybe they’re complaining about the locks on the doors. (I assume all the doors have locks like mine.) Or maybe they’re protesting being here at all. They didn’t come here calmly and quietly like I did. Of course, the other patients are here because there’s actually something wrong with them. I’m only here because of a misunderstanding, so there’s no need for me to panic. Anyway, the sounds I hear make it clear that at least some of the other patients here (all girls, judging by their voices) aren’t left alone in their rooms like I am. I stand between the beds and do a few sun salutations. When I was little, Mom used to bring me to the yoga classes she frequented to help keep her belly flat. Maybe being stuck indoors will be good for my skin. Maybe when all this is over, I’ll emerge with a preternaturally youthful complexion, like those kidnapping victims who are kept in underground bunkers for half their lives and emerge with non-sun-damaged skin after their rescue. Maybe my perfect skin will be a sign of my survival, a show of solidarity with those kidnapped girls, like a uniform—we were all held indoors against our will. Not that I intend to be here that long. Like I said, this is all just a misunderstanding. Eight steps. Turn. Seven Steps. Turn. I’d prefer to keep to the walls and circle the room like it’s a tiny little track, but the beds get in the way. Dr. Lightfoot never uses the second bed. I don’t mean uses like sleeps in it or anything, but when she comes in here to talk, she brings a plastic folding chair with her and sits in the center of the room with her back to the vacant second bed while I sit on the first, the one in which I sleep. Maybe Lightfoot doesn’t sit on the bed because she doesn’t want to make our interactions feel too casual. After all, we’re not two friends catching up. We’re not roommates in a college dorm. She’s not my new Agnes. Agnes never knew that I was hooking up with Jonah. Don’t let the biblical name fool you. Two biblical names: Hannah and Jonah. We were doing some pretty non-biblical things. Or actually, completely biblical things, when you think about it. I gaze out the window. Dusk and dawn look the same here. The fog is rolling through. There are redwood trees as far as I can see, and when the fog gets thick, it condenses on the needlelike leaves and drips onto the roof. It sounds like rain, but it isn’t. It’s not true that I can only see a few plants from here. We’re actually in the middle of a forest. I was lying before.  ------------------------------------------------------------- Pre-order your copy today: http://fal.cn/rluC

[ianuptonphotography-blog]

Initial Ideas For First Major Project

Subject/Area(s) of interest (Subjects/places/themes/ideas/processes you're interested in exploring within the project )

- Nature

- Human Interaction with Nature

- Want to work with composites and photomontage, splicing images and media together

- Genetically Edited food

- Waste and consumption

- Cause & effect

- Carbon Footprint

- Climate Change

Genre(s)/Style(s) (documentary, portraiture, landscape, fashion, constructed, still life, architectural, abstract, experimental)

- Photomontage, with a mix of studio, constructed, still life.

- I would want to experiment with a couple types of Genres those being still life, portraiture and Experimental.  

Fields

(art, editorial, publishing, advertising, illustration)

- I feel like the work I want to create will be inherently art but also a way of informing people about what we are doing to the world.

- The work itself could most likely be used as a promotion/advertisement tool for an agenda with global warming or climate change.

Format(s)/techniques/processes

(Large/medium/SLR, Analogue/Digital, Video, Studio/Location, photomontage, microscopy, stereoscopy)

- Looking to use both Medium format and Digital, as these are what I am most comfortable with.

- This will work well as it will provide different levels of quality, using a medium format in a studio situation and digital for location-based work both having an advantage in their respective areas.

- Photomontage will be helpful in helping me display my ideas.

Inspirations (photographers, artists, filmmakers, writers, movements you are interested in or that inform your practice)

Photographers that use Photomontage:

Hannah hock

Kurt schwitters

Elleen Agar

Josheph Cornell

John Stezaker

Photographers that Respond to our effect on nature:

Robert Smithson

Aviva Rahmani

Agnes `denes

PearlDamour + Shawn Hall

Antti laitinen

Herman De viresfranz krajcberg