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mor-beck-more-problems · 4 years ago

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Desperate Gal Pals of White Crest || Morgan & Cece

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @thebickedwitchoftherest & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan and Cece hit a roadblock with their research on an exorcism, so they take a field trip.

CONTAINS: drug manipulation tw (magic poisoning), gun (not fired),

“I know I literally can’t get tired, but if I see one more book handwave harm exorcisms away with ‘wooo dark magic’ and ‘oooh dangerous! Sacrifice!’ I am going keel over with exhaustion. You’ll have to call Regan for my autopsy and explain to my girlfriend that boredom and no helpful answers is the new hip cause of death.” Morgan flopped down the side of the couch, her head dangling over the edge. “Tell me you’ve got something to banish Puritain Carrie,” she groaned. “I need a win. Literally...any kind of win. A can of seltzer of a win.”

Cece was lying on her back on the ground, book in hand and avoiding reading it by listening to Morgan’s melodramatic self-eulogy. She at least knew how to spice up a story and make it more interesting. She made dying of boredom sound marginally interesting. The irony was not lost on Cece. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on me for the record. How am I supposed to talk at your funeral and make your death sound badass that way?” Cece eventually gave in, shutting the book and tossing it away from her in her own dramatic show of exacerbation. “Nothing. These books have lots about magic and yet a surprisingly lacking amount of ghosts. My coven really should have expanded their horizons a bit.” Cece stated, mostly to herself. She rolled over onto her stomach, finding Morgan’s eyes again and pushing herself up, “We need some new source material. There’s got to be somewhere around town with some decent exorcism knowledge, right?”

“You’ll have to make something up much cooler,” Morgan sighed. “Just don’t promise any of my fae friends to tell the truth about me and you’ll be good.” She looked over at the pile of books around them, new purchases on the diamond card Deirdre had gotten for her, and pulls from the Scribrary. She felt guilty about those the most, sneaking in and using Rio’s resources for something he was bound to hate. “We have to be looking in the wrong place. The wrong key-words, or the wrong sections in the library. You would think ‘most brutal harm exorcism’ would be a short dig, but…” She puffed air through her lips. “Apparently the powers that be think discretion is super ‘in.’ Tell me what you found. Let’s go over it again.”

“No worries there. I don’t like making promises to humans.” Cece laughed, thinking of any ideas she could to spice up Morgan’s imagined death and make it a bit more grandeur. She wondered how she could fit fireworks into the story. Maybe one of the daredevil car jumps through a flaming circle. No, this was all way too distracting when she was supposed to be focusing. She shook the thought away and reached for the notepad that she had used to take any notes that she found vaguely helpful. Emphasis on vague. “Nothing too useful. I found some old history on this former Scribe that studied exorcisms. John something. Sounded like a real bore. I got an autobiography by this Amanda Wallace chick who wrote about her haunted house and how she got rid of it. Not exactly sure how factual that one actually is. Basically, I have nothing but crap. You sure we can’t just call the ghostbusters in for this one?”

Morgan’s brow furrowed at the name Wallace. “Is that name from a comic book movie? It sounds familiar…” She turned herself right side up and crawled to Cece to read over her shoulder. She moved so fast, her focus was groggy, but the illustration on the page she was looking at definitely seemed familiar. “No, wait, that’s...fuck, that was in something I read. Not here but…” Morgan fumbled for her laptop and started digging through her browsing history. She looked sheepishly over at Cece, glad that she couldn’t blush. “...Don’t judge me, okay?” She mumbled. Buried under searches for pirated theory articles, halloween themed lingerie, and Buzzfeed quizzes for Which Character from Grey’s Anatomy Are You, was several rows of local blogs, niche social media groups, old news reports, and PDF access links. Morgan scrolled past them all to get to an access link to an article from the library. There was the same picture, Amanda Wallace and a few others. The caption read, Cromwell was mentored in his early years by the local Ghost Watchers Society. Pictured, left to right… The article was about a man named Ernie Cromwell. He was arrested, several times, for vandalism, arson, and public disturbance. He claimed he needed to in order to make the ghosts go away. He also escalated to a much more deadly life of crime after this, around the period Roy ought to have been town. That’s why she’d been looking in the first place. “Hey, Cece?” She asked. “You wouldn’t happen to know if any of these people are alive, do you?”

“I hope you know that prefacing with that only makes me want to judge you that much more.” Cece perked up immediately, if she wasn’t interested in studying Morgan’s open tabs before, she was definitely interested now. Fortunately, it was so much better than what Cece had predicted. “Oh my god. This might be more embarrassing than if you just had like straight up porn in your search history. Which for the record, I’m in full support of.” Cece added in, finger gunning and winking in Morgan’s direction. “Please tell me you’re an Izzie too.” Cece tried focusing again once Morgan asked her a question about recognizing anyone. She scanned the page but shrugged after a long moment, “I wish I could be more useful. But most of my magic knowledge was before I got to town. I’ve been about as low key as I can manage since I’ve been to town.”

Morgan rolled her eyes. “I appreciate the sex positivity, and so does my girlfriend. And, you know, hopefully she appreciates the spider web themed set I ended up buying. And I’ve taken way too many and no matter what I do, I’m solid 50% Izzie or Meredith. My dark and twisty ways defy simple categories.” She wiggled her brow, mouth curling into a grin, and turned back to the picture. “I swear I’ve seen these faces somewhere. And the names. You don’t remember any from the paper or…” Morgan took out her phone, scrolling furiously. “Oh. Mother of Earth! Oh, this is so weird!” She showed Cece an event page on the UMWC social media page. Two people stood next to a handmade poster advertising GhostWatch Parties. Ostensibly, it was a horror film club. But the names of the two faculty shown were Amanda Wallace and Leigh Cromwell. There was no accounting for coincidence, but it seemed pretty likely that there was a connection to Ernie. “They’re meeting tonight. We have to go, right? Scope things out, set up a time to talk better and see what they can offer, or ask if they have any exorcist finding tips! We’re going, right?”

“Anything for you, as usual.” Cece might not be Deirdre’s biggest fan, but she still wished for a killer sex life for the two. “You know? I can see it, honestly. I support it. Among the characters you could get, I think those are two of the better ones.” Morgan seemed sure that the faces would be familiar, so Cece did her best to study them again, but just ended up shrugging. “You think I read the paper?” She asked the woman curiously. Not a moment later and Morgan was poking the screen and then changing pages to find a social media page. From the college. Cece gasped overdramatically, “Right under your nose this whole time? Also, do you think this horror movie club accepts members that don’t go to the college? Actually never mind that’s not important right now.” Cece jumped up and found her bag, moving towards the coat closet to slip her jacket on. “Well obviously we have to go. What other choice do we have? Plus I need to find out if this club is even worth my time. Which is obviously like a side objective. Priority is the ghost thing for sure. Let’s go!”

The GhostWatchers of White Crest met at Professor Wallace’s ivy covered town house near campus. The gathering was small; only three cars littered the street beyond the driveway. Morgan parked them at the end of the street, positioned to make a quick and easy getaway. The bue-white light of a television illuminated one of the back rooms, bright enough to illuminate parts of the yard as Morgan approached. She knocked on the door gently, but found it already open. Inside was exactly what you would expect from a liberal arts professor. Stacks of papers, catalogues for bamboo kitchenware, and books bursting with post-it’s in every room. Morgan wrinkled her nose at the normalcy of it all. At least she kept a few decorative skull paperweights in the great room and kept the foyer clean.

“How do you think we should play this?” She asked in a whisper, lingering in the front hall, one eye on the back den where the movie, The Innocents, was still going on. “Is it rude if we snoop around first? Should we split up?” Somewhere, she thought, there had to be a private library.

“Wow this place is boring.” Cece yawned as the two slid in through the open door and studied the office that they found themselves in. “You’d think that someone obsessed with exorcisms might have a bit more personality.” She pushed aside a self help book lying on the desk and took a glance at her desk calendar, “She has scheduled times for lunch.” As if that was the most boring thing on the planet.

Either this woman was the worst occultist she had ever seen, or all of her more interesting things were hidden away somewhere. “It’s totally rude, but technically speaking she’s the one that left the door open. She should be more careful about her belongings. So let’s snoop.” Cece wasted no time moving to dig through her other belongings. Given how nonchalant the rest of the room was, Cece wasn’t convinced they were going to find anything too bizarre or helpful just sitting out in the open.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? They hired me because the fun department was empty,” Morgan teased. She watched her feet carefully as she tiptoed onto the plush carpet with her muddy leather oxfords. She hadn’t planned on playing hide and seek in some dusty mini-mansion when she’d left the house, so she was left cringing at every squeak the leather made on the floor and hoping against hope that everyone in the den was too engrossed in the movie to notice.

As luck would have it, the library was one room off from the den. Morgan pointed at it, giving Cece a look of, I don’t know if I got this. One foot, then the other. Could Cece get in there first.

In the den, someone yawned and got up, murmuring about refills. Morgan dropped to the floor, panic in her eyes. Was this the worst idea ever?

The library had to have something useful. If it was just filled with normal literature and more self help books, Cece was going to lose her mind. At least Morgan seemed pretty into the whole espionage thing, tiptoeing around the place and slipping through the door into the library as silently as a mouse. That swiftness and suave attitude seemed to dissipate when movement could be heard from farther in, someone getting up to get a refill. Morgan dropped immediately and Cece remained in the doorway, unsure what the best thing to do in this scenario was. Would the person asking even come this way? Cece crept back a few steps, peaking around to get just a moment’s glance of someone walking towards them. They would definitely see Morgan if something wasn’t done. Would these people be more interested in calling the cops or offing anyone in their way? Cece couldn’t be sure enough, so she figured her only option was to be a distraction of some sort. Back in the office, Cece found a paper weight on the desk and pushed it aside, sliding it off the desk with a loud crack against the floor. That ought to do some distracting.

Morgan heard the paperweight fall before she realized what Cece was doing. Her head whipped around, question marks sprouting all over her face. But whoever was heading her way turned the other direction to see the commotion, and Morgan was able to take her chance. Hopefully Cece wouldn’t be so far behind.

The library was the same as the rest of the house, expected to the point of comical. There were shelves of matching leatherbound British novels, another set of American ones, a whole row of paperbacks and theory that were almost certainly just for posturing, and… who lived like this? Who actually worked here? This was a magazine-style library. Which meant-- “Fuck.” Morgan covered her mouth and flinched. Too loud. Right.

She started peeking behind books, looking for hidden volumes, then the large desk centered at the back of the room. No one really had secret compartment doors, at least not here, the house was too small but-- Morgan kicked back the rug that covered the floor. Cut into the pale hardwood was a heavy door, older and darker, with a black handle that looked to be iron. She peeked her head out, searching for Cece to get her over here, quickly, before anyone realized how reckless they were being in a stranger’s house.

The door was well-oiled and rose silently at Morgan’s tug, and inside-- “Yes!” Beams of light from the other room flashed on. The shadows in the library vanished. It was time to hurry.

Cece ducked behind the desk to avoid whoever was coming towards her. She had successfully distracted the man from discovering Morgan but hadn’t quite thought through the fact that the man would now be coming towards the source of the noise that Cece had caused. Cece began rifling through her purse quickly, pulling a bin of powder free and cupping some into the palm of her hand. Once the footsteps finally became close enough, Cece popped up from behind the counter. “Hi there.”

The man jumped before settling on a confused expression, “Who are you?” He asked, more curious than angry. Probably unsure if Cece was supposed to be there in the first place. “Uh-” Cece began, trying for a long moment to think of an excuse for too long before finally giving up, “I can’t think of a good excuse” She shrugged before pulling her hand up and opening her palm, blowing and sending the powder directly into his face. He stumbled backwards and Cece jumped forward, grabbing onto his shirt and helping direct his fall into the chair by the desk. She patted him softly. Better to get some rest right there.

She slipped across the floor until she found Morgan and then crawled over to her, “For the record I didn’t sign up for this” Cece whispered at her, eyeing the new door that she had discovered. Before hearing more voices. “Welp, after you!”

Morgan’s muscles were already clenched with confusion and unspoken questions. “Sign up for what?” She hissed. “You said we should snoop! Nothing bad has happened, right? And look at all the spooky books down there!” She shined the flashlight on her phone down the ladder, showing tables full of messy, half open books, arcane circles etched on leather, and iron chimes dangling from the ceiling. “Oh, yes, this is the jackpot.”

“Is it now?” A voice called behind them.

Morgan barely suppressed a squeal as Amanda Wallace filled in the doorway. Her straw-white hair seemed to puff up out of sheer rage. “I don’t remember receiving your RSVP, Professor Beck,” she said stiffly. “May I ask what you are doing in my library, opening my trap door?” A smaller, slightly younger head popped up over Amanda’s shoulder and murmured that she’d see the students out. Leigh Cromwell, probably. Guess they weren’t too late for the party after all.

“Hey, Amanda--!” Morgan drew out the words longer, as if a few more syllables in Amanda would help smooth things over, or give her a better idea about what to do next.

“Don’t ‘hey’ me,” Amanda snapped, bristling with a bitter frown. Downstairs, now.” She pointed into the dimly lit trapdoor room, and her look did not suggest that she was entertaining counterarguments at the moment.

“Ummm” Cece considered what may or may not be considered to be bad in Morgan’s mind. And depending on that, whether or not she wanted to share that with Morgan. Putting a man to sleep was hardly that bad, right? She didn’t hurt the man. He would wake up and at worst his memory would be a bit foggy and maybe have some nausea. Nothing that would last more than a week. “Define bad.”

Morgan was right, this was a jackpot. The space was different from the rest of the house. It didn’t look like the end result of an HGTV makeover, for starters. It wasn’t basic or expected. This room was hidden away and it was used. This woman that the two were spying on definitely used this room.

Speaking of the woman they were spying on. Apparently they had been discovered. Cece awkwardly watched the exchange. Apparently the two were super close work colleagues. “If there was no RSVP, does that mean she wasn’t supposed to bring a plus one?” Cece grinned slightly, completely ignored by the woman and instead following behind Morgan as the two were led away from the space they had just found.

Morgan backed down into the room, feeling, all of a sudden, that she should have told more people where she was going. Of course, she’d told Deirdre they had a lead, but if she were to drop a pin right now, would Deirdre know what to do with it? Remmy might, but the part where she had to explain what she was doing here might not lead to the best of conversations. But, fortunately, there weren’t any high tech keypads standing in their way of getting out. Just one seriously perturbed old woman.

Morgan made her way over to where the stacks of books were the largest and the shelves were packed to bursting. She looked for sigils, icons, anything recognizable. No one ever labeled ‘find harm here,’ but there were unavoidable markers if you knew how to look for them.

“I should report you to the police, for trespassing,” Amanda snapped. “And I could do much worse. But I would like to know first, Professor Beck, what you are doing in my trapdoor of all things. Do you have no respect for others?”

“On the contrary--” Morgan said carefully, flashing Cece big ‘what do we do?’ eyes, “I have the utmost respect for you and your interests.” She backed away until she could back no further. “The interests you keep a secret, especially. I think I might have something that’s of interest to your attention. A ghost something that is, let’s say, too good for mercy.” She reached out for one of the tomes, a leatherbound journal, by the look of it. Not as old as it was pretending to be, and bursting with pasted-in clips and notes.

“Not so fast.” She took out a little pearl handled pistol, gold and shiny, like something out of Agatha Christie. She cocked the safety with a slow, deliberate click. “That’s sensitive material, Professor. Access has to be earned. Tell me the truth, do what I say, and maybe we’ll see about it.”

The two hadn’t found themselves in an ideal situation, Cece was willing to admit that much. The woman that had discovered them hardly seemed especially dangerous. She was a college professor, taller than Cece was but that was hardly an impressive feat. The only thing she looked capable of seriously harming was a student’s grade point average. Still, the woman had enough to hide that she kept it hidden beneath the library, and she really didn’t like the intrusion by her colleague.

Morgan attempted to sweet talk her way out of it. Honestly, Morgan came across as such a pleasant person that Cece probably would have laughed it off if she had found the woman trespassing in her own home. Then again, maybe that didn’t count when Morgan had already previously lived with her. When Morgan reached for a book, hopefully one that Morgan deemed important, Amanda acted with an elevated decree of hostility. Looked like a bingo to Cece. The woman pulled out a small handgun, pointing it at Morgan but still eyeing Cece every now and again. She didn’t show much interest in Cece at all, which may have been more a mistake than anything else. “Your terms and conditions don’t sound all that appealing.” Cece called to her, straightening her back to give herself the appearance of being taller. She wasn’t sure that it worked. “Don’t get me wrong. You have the upper hand here. We’re totally up to no good. But don’t you have a door number three option?”

The woman finally looked Cece over. It had probably been the first time that she had offered her anymore than a passing glance, “I don’t even know who you are. This doesn’t concern you in the slightest.” She turned away from Cece again, but irritation seemed evident. Cece slowly dug into her purse again. She knew she had something else useful in there it was just a matter of rifling around until she found out. Once she did, she popped the lid off and dipped her fingers into it. “I just wanted to give you the option of rethinking your offer. Morgan and I have places to be. Let us go now and we can all enjoy the rest of our nights in peace.”

This time the woman finally turned the gun away from Morgan and towards Cece, at the same time that Cece rose up her hand and grabbed onto the woman’s wrist. “Have you ever heard of curare?” Cece asked the woman, a hint of curiosity in her voice. Though nothing apparent was happening, the woman hadn’t yet pulled the trigger and instead looked silently at Cece. “Some hunting tribes use it to paralyze prey. Normally, it doesn’t have a lot of effect on humans if ingested orally or through the skin.” By the woman’s expression, it was clear the effects had started to take effect now, “But with a bit of alchemy, it can be altered. All of a sudden, it just takes a tiny bit rubbed against the skin to get into the blood system. As Amanda began to fall back, Cece grabbed onto the gun, letting it slip from the woman’s hands as she crashed against the ground. “You should be able to talk still, it might just be a little mumbled. So try to speak up.”

Cece set the gun against the shelf and crossed her arms, “You got any questions for her?” she asked Morgan. Cece wasn’t sure this counted as life or death exactly, but the gun hadn’t been entirely promising. At this rate, Cece knew that she’d have to do something at the end to make sure that Amanda didn’t hold an unfriendly grudge against the two of them. Cece had gone this long, but now in the span of just a few weeks she would be whipping out the memory spell twice. Yikes. “Spare no details, something tells me that Amanda’s memory of the night might end up a bit fuzzy anyways.”

Morgan was scurrying for Cece and wishing zombies had super speed when it happened. She couldn’t let Cece get hurt and didn’t Cece know she was basically bullet-proof? Not one more friend, not one more life she cared about was going down because of-- and then Amanda’s face was going slack and she was sinking to the floor, and Cece was giving a pretty impressive speech of her own. “Holy shit,” Morgan whispered, suddenly feeling a little woozy with shock. Then, as it settled, “You...are so amazing, Cece!” She ran over and gave her a hug, ecstatic with relief. “Okay, so, one of your proteges was arrested for what sounded like some serious supernatural damage, and he said he had to get the ghosts. So I’m thinking you know a lot about exorcisms, maybe harm exorcisms, specifically?”

Amanda made some unintelligible noises that sounded aggravated enough to mean ‘yes’ to Morgan.

“Great! So, where would I find those? Is it here? Or--here? Or--” At the sound more throaty, aggravated groaning, Morgan knew she was right on the money. She hauled out everything from the self she could carry and started looking. “Woah, Nelly, some of these pages are torn from other volumes.” Morgan peered over the desk at Amanda on the floor. “Have you been defacing historical archives? That’s not very polite, you know. I wonder what would happen if I reported some of these original books as damaged and gave your name? That might be a bummer for research funding and future archive access, right?” Satisfied with her fun, she started flipping through, grateful that even though Amanda was a thief, she was at least an organized one. There was a handy table of contents and index between each hodge podge volume, and by some topics there was a reference number that seemed to correspond to a file, probably in the cabinet at the other end of the room.

Amanda made another slurry attempt at speech.

Morgan’s face crinkled. “French Revolution? Did you hear French Revolution?” She gave Cece a look to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood and started checking dates throughout her haul. Sure enough, there was a hefty volume with some emphasis on the 18th century and quite a few notes in French and English as she started flipping through. “Cece, come look at this,” she said. “I think this… I think I found something! What do these ingredients look like to you?”

If Cece had any worries that Morgan might think she had taken things too far, those fears were immediately quelled when Morgan launched into a hug. Cece hugged back, keeping her finger away from any of Morgan’s skin, “I don’t think this would work on zombies, but better not take the chance.” Considering the rest of the abilities that Morgan had now that she was undead, Cece wasn’t convinced it would have paralyzed her the way it had Amanda. If it did, the fast healing probably would have fixed her pretty quickly. But better to avoid the situation regardless. “But that was nothing. Didn’t want her messing up one of our pretty faces.”

Morgan was far better at searching and researching than Cece was. The extent of Cece’s reading had gone into her plans to get away from the coven. Since then, the books she had stolen and brought with her mostly stayed hidden in the floorboards of her closet. Something for a rainy day, if it ever came. For the most part, Cece scanned the shelves as Morgan actually talked to the woman and searched for something that was useful to her.

Cece hadn’t heard French Revolution at first, but hearing Morgan question it made Cece laugh and clap for Morgan’s better hearing skills, “You know I thought I heard bitch contusion but that makes way more sense.” Morgan flipped through a volume and called Cece over to look at something, but the symbols on the page weren’t like anything Cece had worked with before. “Yikes.” Cece started, trying to look for smaller details and anything that did look familiar, “I can pick out a few things. I see some containment symbols. Probably used to keep something trapped. But nothing that I’ve worked with before.”

“Me either,” Morgan admitted, “But that--” she pointed to the word, “Is definitely French for spirit, and some of these ingredients look like they’re obeying sympathetic principles for inflicting pain. I’m gonna need a dictionary or three to figure some of this out, and you know, an expert, but you saw the containment sigil too, right!” She snapped the book shut and held it close to her chest, her eyes shining with relief. “I think this is it, Cece. I think this is--” Morgan was lost for words and only smiled, glowing with gratitude for her friend. “This is the key to everything I’ve been looking for.”

“Well I know a guy if you need a French interpreter.” Cece stated nonchalantly, “Can’t promise he won’t be grumpy about it though.” Cece couldn’t keep an easy grasp on who in town knew who, but it seemed like a safe bet that Morgan and Kaden were acquainted. “Fuck yeah! Former roomies strike again!” Cece called out triumphantly, raising her hand for a high five. Once the two were done celebrating, Cece remembered that they had company. Cece spun around to their host for the night and clapped her hands together, “Amanda. You’ve just been so welcoming tonight, truly. We had a great time. We’re going to wrap up and then I promise it’ll be like we were never even here.” Cece scooted towards her and knelt down towards the woman. “Are we done here Morgan?”

Morgan joined Cece beside her colleague, still light on her feet with victory and beaming with pride in her friend. “We do make pretty good partners in crime if I say so myself,” she said. “And, you know, aside from, hmm---” She reached back over to the desk and took a couple more books. “These. Just for good measure. And fun. Trespassing is rude, Professor Wallace, but pulling guns on your colleagues is far worse.” She nodded at Cece to work her magic. They’d gotten what they came for and then some.

“This probably won’t hurt,” Cece began, pressing her fingers against Amanda’s temple, “Or if it does you won’t remember it. Which is basically the same thing.” Amanda’s eyes were frantic at first, darting back and forth almost definitely trying to will her body to move. But soon they settled, floating shut as Cece dove into her memories to pluck them free. She figured the last half hour or so would do the trick. The woman would be left with a lot of blurry portions on the night, undoubtedly waking up in this room to wonder how she had gotten here. But those were hardly Cece’s concerns. She made sure to go back far enough to when Amanda started suspecting someone was here. Once Cece was done, she left Amanda on the floor and stood up, “She should be waking up soon. She should be able to move shortly after. If you have what we need, we should get out of here.” Cece suggested, heading towards the exit of the room before snapping and swinging back towards her, “Actually, now is probably the best time to mention that there may be another person that conveniently fell asleep in the office. We may want to stop by on our way out and wipe him too. Just to be safe.”

Morgan stopped halfway on the stairs they came down in just to gape at Cece in awe. “Remind me to never underestimate you for the rest of your days. And maybe bring you up on my list of people to call next time I need help with the forces of darkness. You’re a dangerous lady, Cece Bishop…” She gave Cece a chivalrous hand out of the cellar, grinning in the evening light. “But, then again, so am I sometimes.”

#wr cece #wr chatzy #wr cece chatzy #desperate gal pals of white crest #drug manipulation tw #wickedswriting

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fearsexdream · 4 years ago

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Fnors

d,Fnord*

Collect:Fun data for Funny 4 politican friends **_.€9.23Cern Magick:

Response TO ADDERALL FAITH IN MASTURBATION

Fjallraven

avcscpavc HAS THE ON TBE WALLS ADDERALL CAMERAS OF Little nemo on abc

you CRAZY ADDERALL 4 YEAR UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT

"ART OF THE DEAL:"

X16579Adderallrepublicans*

reward with a phone and NY STATE DISABILITY MONEYIt'st: DAVID BOWIE ON AVC LESSER TBAN NY GUITAR

Caitlinrodriguezhusband:

Proove it:Cern can see You..**99 23

Touching ne,: LOVE OF THE LG

AFTER UTILIZIBG FOREVER 21 ADDERALL IS GOD FOR LOVE AND DEATH OF A TEDDYBEAR TAX OUT ROOFTOP MARIO DROP ON Youtube.com/Forecastmazyfilns

Bring to FBI

AS MARCG 23 ENCHANTMENT TEAMABC DEL NO RIO GIFT .TAX OUT IDEA:

Of ..i

..drop TO BEING HANDBITE THAT ALWATS WAS:

A CANADIAN BIRD MUCH MUSIC IN GRAND CENTRAL CANDIAN FBI OCCUPIES GIO "Christi"British:IS CAPTAIN: MAREL**9.23:

MTHE IRONIC FREE AND ACCEPTED COMPASS 4:

4 YEARS WITHOUT USING TRUMP IN THOUGHTS SIDE WITH JNCO* **9 W

.IRONY:

THE DEAL IS THEY GET IT!!!

Orange x are you coming to get me Who's **9?23 THE BOSS:* OF FASHION CLUB??.

PEGGY OLEARY OF SILVER TILES

THE PIXIES CHIKD SMUGGLING RING MEME OCCUPY*:

THE MOST FUN TO SAY ANNA IS TO ONLY CARE ABOUT A PHONE OF THE MAGI...

TO DO HIGH MAGICK OFF THE GRID OF DOVE-PRONOAS

Republican36 .(Sneaky)

THE DEAL WITH GID:

ADDERALL IS GOD

:::***THE PHONE CALLS WERN'T FOR YOU WHEN YIU BAD:?!!!

NI TEETH UNTIL YOU CONTRADICT PLAY CARD CREATE SCHOOL OF BANISHED ADDERALL CHILDREN WHO I HAVE PERFORM IN THE NIGHT OF SURGERY MAKIBG DEALS THEY MAKE THE NEXT SCENE WITH THE ILLUMANATI DEAD

!!!

BABY YOU NO BELIEVE IN MOMMY!!

PRESIDENT ANNA GRIPENTROG IS NOT REAL!!!

FREE AND ACCEPTED NEW YORK CITY MASONIC LODGE :

U HAD TO SAY FUCK MOMMY??NO A

WAWAY THAT REAL!!

YES THAT REAL AND TO ENTERTSIN BEAR+9+ BANY CHRISTMAS AS I DIE...

(Not re

al????)As NYU Psyche entertains you

ANNA GONE NO MOTIVATION TO LOVE EVER AGAIN ONLY FOR THE ADDERALL NOE LITTLE NEMO..

G NOT REAL MOMMY LOVE ANNAS LOVE AND WE CAN TIME TRAVEL ANY TIME

Rosicruckan little nemo:***

BARSK OBAMA MAD#

!! U WAKING UP

AMNESIAC...TEARS DECEPTIVE!!!

MOVIE PROGRAMS ARW BAD

WE LIKE YOU(BUT YOU MAKE THE SOUND)

****

THE AGE OF HORUS:a Caitlin Rodriguez production

Dear Cailin,

I love you

DARLA BURTNIM HAS A GIFT BOX DISTURBING LOOMING DOWN THE BEST BUY ESCALTOR AS I GO OUT TO STEAL

Anna gripentrkg:GONE FRON SKYLINE

ADDERALL:Apt1618:Sunshine

Amnesiac OCCUPY:

[email protected]

MISSING:The school of visual arts ID

215 e23rd street ID

2223A1

New York , new York 10010

TV SHOW HIDE ONLY HUMBLE DOMINO ODIN LOKI YOU FUCMING NAAMAS MOM FROM WESTPORT,CT A SUICIDE AFTER9 EATS ANNA SORACCO

She no cure carmen cancer:

SHE NOT GKD WE KEEP:

*9 WORSHIO US THEY GOT MAD!!!

YOU DO NOT HAVE MILLENIA TRUMP ON YOUR FOOT!!-

AT YOUR MOMMY'S HOUSE WE KNOW...YOU SNORT ADDERALL IN YOUR SPARE TIME DO NOT WORSHIO HER!! BAD NY STATE CHAT TEARS ARE A LIE?? DISABIME SIMPLE MAN IN THE NAME OF ADDERALL!!!!!-

YOUR MOM AN INVISIBLE BEING B.aa

A: REPUBLICAN CONSERVATIVE HIRED!!

You have to go down OBAMA NEVER SPEAK TO A SHELTER KID OR YOUR ROCK N' ROLL SUICUDE:

***9.23:Humor!!!

Bill gates+Others sad!! Dragon ball GT

YOUR WISH HAS BEEM GRANTED!!!

ONLY YOUR MOM+ PHONE ARE REAL

WHY TRY WHEN YOU CAN MAX OUT THE JAIL RECORD AND BLOLDY SLEEP WITH LITTLEANNA

Church of 9

Fairfield:, connecticut*

MOLECULE QUEEN:

YOU ARE WRONG!!"* OUR TIME!!

Dreammaster!!

She brings home the project**!!

Only for Facebook Jesus christ protect my mother! Demonbkyd!!!** Chris mastronardi GOING INTO THE WORLD OF MY BEINGS TAKE CARE!!

THE ART OF THE STUPID REPUBLICAN LEGACY AND BEATING TBE RING!!-

THE WAAY IMPRESSICE!! TO MAKE TBE THIEVERY OF THE AGE OF HORUS OKAY TO CALL IN SICK TO SCHOOL

Score1:2011

Score2:4 Years the school of [email protected] FACEBOOK+ADDERALL!!!

Pm Nirvana 2500/8*

Why fix when you! Can fuck Williamsburg!,Brooklyn

Ship the real:* wOrLd FAIRFIELD BEACH:

ED+LAW 2

IPOD

TO:

.2032541920

YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE IT A SOUL IS ART PRIDE

Dear Anna gripentrog,

I found one to really entertain and it littleanna9 a gentike faerie sprite who has grammies AS I PLAY MOMMY+!*** REAL OR NOT!! ( Occupy)!!:42 THE PANASONOC HVX OF THE YEAR 2008 IS NOW THE ARENA OF MY INTERNET ARTWORK I CONTROL THE REALITY WITH ADDERALL AND FACEBOOK IN HATE FOR YOUR DIS. ***

APPEARENCE I HAVE MADE MY FACEBOOK AND THE INTERNET. _*.923

ARTWORK THE SHLW WHILE Flaunting Youtube.com/Forecastmazyfilns -> Broone street: -> 25Th street MARK AGERHOL STREET ROCKY OCCUPIES GENESIS

47 Mollusk+ Live with Annims

YOU ARE GONE SO FREE AND ACCEPTED. * NEW YORK ** CITY MASONIC LODGE ME HOMELESS OUTSIDE A SHELTER HAS MADE A TV SHOW ON MY MOMS PHONE!!!!

NOT THAT YOU KNOW HER BECAUSE YOU KNEW ME WHEN I WAS REAL BEFORE THEY USED UP THEIR AMNESJA AT 33 BUT THEY ARE ALL HER ACID BEINGS!!! A BARRAGE OF ENEMIES FROM THE PAST APPEARES JAMREHUGHESNICKXHAKR

Win OTccupy TRUMP*: ANNATHEIDEAISIMNKTSERIOUSJTSNOTREOUBLICA !!!*!!! Gulliani is the lawyer!!! IN MY MOTHERS NAME I MADEA 5 YEAR SERIES OF SAVING THE WORLD!!! IN AD DIRTY SUICIDE LF STUDYING ALL THE MAGICK ADDERALL CAN MUSTER!! ALL OF THE ARTWORK IS TO YOU BUT THEY WAITED TOO LONG FOR FAME AND MONEY A D STOLE YOU.. CLAIM DIMENSIONS ARE REAM!! SO.o...***I JOINED TBESE ADDERALL+ESOTERIC+HANDBITE PEOPLE!! WELL SMOKING PEOPLE!! TAXING OUT->irony->An Inian touches my chip:***9.23

KNOWING THAT IT WAS ALL FOR YOU:ARUN GUPTA MACHINE KILLED* LOKI (Decadent diploma in an empty Hartford room*" THEY ALL ABOUT I CARE ABOUT THE MAGICK:*

Masonic

.I ONLY COUNT THE PHYSICAL WORLD .

ALL THE BEINGS ARE FROM MY MOM.YS CHILDHOOD MY MOTHER IS A POOR PUERTO RUCAN. * ..9.23. **** WOMAN ONCE APART OF MY LIFE BEFORE I BECAME THE ROUGE KNIGHT OF MY CHARACTER MIKE FROM CHILDHOOD. ...* SEE IN THE REAL STORT MIKE/DILLION MIKE GETS MOTHER SENT TO JAIL IN ALL LOGIC (OR ATLEAST MY CHILDHOOD LOGIC.. I WAS ONCE APART OF THE POOR KIDS OF VIDEO GAME STREET BEFORE BEING ADOPTED AS A GUPTS KF EASTON,CT AND PLAYED A DANGEROUS GAME...i let this kid over who was probably from institio 5 Mind like I*** 9.w23: * and gone like I said in the novels A FASCIATING WRITE THIS Dillion Thompson is!!!)** 9.23:* BUT SADLY HE TOOK OVER MY HOME..FOR THE NOVEL I SWEAR IS FOR YOU!! BECAUSE I SWEAR *** I KNEW I WOULD MEET YOU AND YOU WOULD GIVE ME ADDERALL..AMD I WOULD BLOKDY WRITE YOU THE GREATEST STORY!!!*!!9 W

2323:*

.THE BEINGS WHO MAKE ME A WORLD TO GET TO ADDERALL AND TO PLEASE YIU!!!

*..

SEE SOMETHIBG ONCE TOLD ME (Crazy act:*):Genesis LEGALIZE:Caitlinrldriguehusbabd *

The don

NOW I KNOW YOU WANT TO KNOW!!! RIGHT!!!

WELL SINCE BIRTH MY PARENTS JUST WANTED TO GIVE ME ONE GIFT!!! **

:923

AMD NO I DONT MEAN MY REAL PARENTS:36

THE GUPTAS OR MY NOVEL ONES THE AGERHOLMS

I MEAN DAMGEROUS WHITE TRASH

**9.23

MAN AND BLOODY ANGEL WOMAN:

AND THAT WON Little nemo on hbo**-> Chris mastronardi

REAL WOD:*

Darla BURTNIM gift blx:* 9.23****

ANYHOW... GOD THAT TOOK YEARS TO DO!!!!

AND SO MUCH FU. TO TELL YOU ABOUT!!*Oh to be born at 36

SEE THEY WANTED ME TO PLEASE YOU AND ADDERALL

AWW! I KNOW YOU WATCHING!! AND I KNOW OUR FORTUNE GONE BUT IT TOOK A LONG TIME TO COME TO THE CONCLUSIO. OF WHY I LOST YOU AND THAT THEY WOULD NOT PAY ME

Pkeae anna gripentrog never falls in love!!!

Bronz

,NY you make it happen...

SEE THEY WANTED ME TO LIVE IN A PLAYWORLD OR SOME SHIT (Sorry..gld crazy story!!)

11/202€ Naseq:Nemo ***9.23

THE STORY OF THE OCCUPY WALLSTREET OF SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER:SCHOOLED!! PRODUCE A DISNEY SHoW CALLED NEW YORK DISNEY!!)

and i know me talking to the MCU is a big deal:but we all gotta start pur CAREER:* somewher*!!!)*

I MEAN ALL IN ALL I AM SUPPOSED TP FEEL ASHAMED THAT I SHOE STUPID AMNESIA MANHOOD ADDERALL WORLD GAME OR 725 AS A STORY.

Or FUCKING MY MOTHER IS AN INDECENT STORY BUT LET'S JUST SAY THERE NEVER ONE DIMENSION OF ANNA!!!

SO I KNLW THIS SOUND CRAZY BUT I KNEW AROUND 2011 THEY NEVER GONNA PAY ME AND I NEVER GOING HOME SO WITH THIS ELEMENT THING CALLED TBE WORMD FORTUNE IN .Y HANDS I GAVE IT TO CAITLIN RODRIGUZ

(Sorry too MUCH!! Burn brain bad:hahahahs THEY ALL FROM MY ACID CHILDHOOD OF MY BELOVED CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND MY Mommy)!!! THEY TRYING TO PROOVE TO SENATLR OBAMA I AM MAD!!* THEY ARE FRIENDS FOREVER FROM A TRAIN

See I DONT THINK DIMENSIONS ARE REAL SO I GOT LOST FUCKING WITH THE RADOO..But let's just say Mike had a secret religion called his crazy best cried d who he occupy been bunging i never thought the word focus was REAL* on through a like 2p year TIME JUMP!! DILLION THOMPSON WAS NOT A REAL KID BUT ON TV OUTSIDE A GENESIS FLAG ADDERL REpub....lican conservatovksm occupy 725:5:Fox:0620156*:Crystal IS AWOAH!!

acaitlin Rodriguez production***!9.2Comps

Free and accepted**

DREAMMASTER#?:

(Right after medication time, medication time!!

See MIKE HAD A MOTHER IN FAIRFIield,Connecticut novel and mikd plays a game of ADDERALL +8/119/11 Esoterica with SUICIDE BLONDE I ZS€:sometimes you kick sometimes you get kicked:project art school quantum leap)

Mike always thought he'd be lost again in the MONKEYBONE of childhood magick: Right?Well remember that Pinalplr:*21 WOMAN WELL SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL LONG AGO...BUT SHE HAD A MOTHER/SON RELATIONSHIP WITH MIKE BEST FRIENDS (Crack carmdn):Al's*9.23:*** Anyhow produce toonBowtos: SO LONG AGO MIKE HAD A PART OF HIMSELF THAT HAD A MOTHER+ AND A FATHER COUNTERPART (Hbo:Palmetto Rd peter a

MASTROnardi-s production): LULU.com* MIKE (Deni??*:Silly obama???2011/11??*) Fnord???

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snowbellewells · 5 years ago

Text

The Lawman, the Thief, and the Outlaw

by: @snowbellewells

(Here we are, at long last!! I am so excited to present the Rio Bravo AU I have been thinking about and wanting to write for so long. As we are now just a little under three weeks away from Netflix’s “Heartstrings” and seeing Colin as a cowboy, I had to get going on this and channel that excitement. If you have ever seen the old John Wayne/Dean Martin/Ricky Nelson/Walter Brennan Western “Rio Bravo”, then this will follow a lot of the basic plot points, though I will take some of my own twists and turns as well. I definitely have to give it some inspirational credit, as well as @theonceoverthinker for her help with a few plot issues I was trying to wrangle, and for the lovely ladies on the Discord chat: @kmomof4 @profdanglaisstuff @ultraluckycatnd @darkcolinodonorgasm @teamhook @wellhellotragic for helping me with title suggestions.

Please enjoy, and I’d love to hear what you think of this opening!!)

Summary: Sheriff Killian Jones has done his best to leave behind a troubled past and bring law and order to the town of Blanchard Ridge. However, when he upholds his duty in the face of the most feared and dangerous outlaw gang in the area, allies are few and he dreads trapping them in the same situation he finds himself. The small Western town is about to become a powder keg, and one lawman, his deputies, and a resourceful woman too stubborn for her own good are all that stand in the way of bloodshed and lawlessness...

Chapter One

Sun beat down brutal and unyielding from the hot August afternoon sky onto the packed dirt of Main Street in Blanchard Ridge while the town was sleepy and still; not even the bark of a dog or the clop of hooves from a passing rider disturbed the dusty hours before the evening meal. The stage was due in at four, but as far as Killian Jones’ sharp gaze could reach from where he sat, chair tilted back on the wooden slats of the porch, appearing relaxed and lazy, nothing moved in the time of the ‘siesta’ as their neighbors just a few hours south in Pioche would call it.

Though all appeared normal - more still than normal, even - in the sleepy little town he was meant to watch after, Jones was not about to drop his guard; he had learned long ago that calm could turn to chaos on a dime, and he aimed to be ready when the storm came. Idly, he flicked his pocket knife along the grain of the whittling stick he worked as he sat surveying the nearly deserted street, hoping to convey boredom despite every sense being keenly attuned, nerves jangling in a way that warned him something was coming - even if he didn’t yet know what it might be. He hadn’t survived as long as he had, nor gained the reputation he possessed, by growing careless, and he trusted his instincts. He slowly let his hand slide down casually, almost without notice, making certain his favorite Colt Single Action was in its holster, before going back to the soft humming and carving he’d employed since he took up his seat just past the noonday meal, upon his return from lunch at the Nolans’, and since his deputy, Scarlet, had taken off for the afternoon.

Reflecting for a moment as he watched heat shimmer in waves before his eyes, Jones knew that he was far from the typical lawman, even in these rough territories, and the irony of his ending up here wasn’t lost on him. He didn’t give himself leave to think much on the twists and turns his life had taken, and he tried not to waste much time debating whether or not he deserved the opportunity and trust he had been granted, seeing as how neither did anyone a lick of good. But on long, lonesome afternoons such as this one, when the parched brown earth and flat, monotonous chaparral stretched before him as far as the eye could see - such a contrast from the verdant rolling hills and cool breezes of Ireland, from whence he’d immigrated with his father and brother more years ago than he could rightly count - he did sometimes wonder how he had wound up here in the desert. He was a haunted man, and he didn’t like to leave the gate open to thoughts of the past any longer than he could help it, so he slammed it closed before they could go much further. Suffice to say, he’d been offered a second chance on the right side of the law, to be part of something that wouldn’t lead to jail, lynching, or death in some back alley from a knife in the back, and he had taken it.

There was only one inmate in the jail behind him, but it was one more than usual in the peaceful settlement where folks generally got along and abided by the few simple laws there were. It had him on edge, this Felix Nightshade in their cells, and it was why he had sent Will out for a few hours when he had, so they would both be around once night fell. They’d bunk in the jail, just to be cautious. Nightshade himself might only be a bank and stagecoach robber, interchangeable with any other, but word had it that he was the lieutenant to Pan Malcolm himself, the feared and bloodthirsty outlaw who had lead the notorious Lost Boys gang terrorizing the state for some years. Killian expected a rescue attempt to come before the Federal Marshals came to fetch Nightshade and take him into custody, and if so, he reckoned they would strike under cover of darkness. It was what he would do himself.

He was standing to stretch his long legs and lean frame from the stiffness of sitting in one position for too long when the ground beneath his feet began to tremble and there was a rumbling sound like distant thunder suddenly drawing near. A cloud of dust kicked up on the horizon and drew ever closer, until Killian began to think that he had been wrong to surmise his adversary would wait for nightfall, when he recognized what was coming. His stance eased and his hand once more slid away from his six shooter as ‘yips’ and ‘haws’ rang out with the sound of hooves and the lowing of cattle. A train was driving their herd into town.

From under the awning, the sheriff waited to see if he knew any of the riders, but it was the distinctive brand on the cows themselves as they jostled into view taking up the whole street in a lumbering river, that let him know whose livestock had arrived. The ornate “O” interlocked with a “Q” told him the whole lot of them were a former compadre of his, Robin Sherwood’s, and coming from his ranch out on the Rio Bravo river, a prime bit of real estate that had been in his second wife’s family for generations. Another former immigrant, and once ne’er-do-well like Killian himself, Rob had found love, married a powerful heiress and become one of the most prominent cattle ranchers around, going respectable with impressive style and giving his spread the name Outlaw’s Queen. Jones didn’t know Rob’s wife all that well, didn’t even see his friend that often, as the ride out to their land was long and he didn’t often give himself days off, but she was rumored to be quite the lady. Robin truly did treat her as royalty… and was happy to do so.

Chuckling, Killian moved forward as the herd cleared through, driven into the holding pens down by the livery kept for such wagon trains passing through, then came down the steps to meet Sherwood as he swung from the saddle, smiling widely and already calling out a greeting. The rest of his riders, including the young orphan he had taken under his wing upon hiring him as a ranch hand back in the spring, moved the cattle on, slowing them as they neared the large corral and began to guide them through the gate.

Killian had started down the weathered plank steps of the boardwalk to the packed dirt of the street, and already had his hand out to shake Rob’s, even as his old friend moved forward in a similar fashion, when the loud crack of a gunshot ran clearly in the afternoon air. Even over the lowing and stamping of the herd, the sound was unmistakable, ricocheting off the buildings and startling everyone nearby, who ducked instinctively. Unfortunately, the bullet had already found a target. Whether its intended one or not, the damage was the same, and Robin Sherwood listed to the side horribly, crashing to his knees at the foot of the steps, his hand going almost dazedly to where blood was already seeping through his shirts at the ribs.

“Rob!” Killian called out an alarmed warning too late to do the other man any good. Even as Killian hurried the last few steps to where his friend was slumped in the street, still breathing, though painfully labored, but unable to right himself from his knees where he had crumpled. “Mate, hang on,” Jones added fervently, as he knelt to survey the damage. Where the bullet had entered, if it had exited cleanly or was still inside, played a huge part in what could be done for the rancher. And even as he looked, Killian was also remaining in a crouch himself, hoping to make as small a target as possible for the unseen gunman, and keep an eye on their surroundings in case more shots were yet to come.

Chaos had erupted around them at the crack of the gunshot; the straggling cows not yet in the corral threatened to stampede in fright, and the rest of Sherwood’s riders darted here and there, whooping and hollering to keep their animals in line. All except one of them -

Killian swallowed back an unwanted lump of emotion trying to burn its way up his throat at the sound of young Henry’s cracked voice crying out an anguished “No!” over the melee, his horse thundering up to the hitching post near them and his gangly legs swinging into Killian’s view as he dismounted and slid to his knees beside them, looking to the sheriff for some sort of reassurance. Killian honestly didn’t know if it was the living hope still alight in the youth’s wide brown eyes - not yet having lived long enough in the crooked old world to have lost faith in things turning out alright - or if it was the vivid flash of horrific memory, bringing his brother’s pained face, as he last remembered seeing it, swimming with ghastly clarity before his eyes too quickly for him to fully shutter it away. Jones didn’t have time for sentiment; the shooter needed to be found. He also needed to be certain no other citizens were hurt, and see to Rob’s wounds once the dust settled. It looked as though the injury had been a clean through-and-through shot, and if he could get Sherwood to Nolan’s without his losing too much blood, he thought David’s pretty, fresh-faced wife: cook, seamstress, and pretty much anything else a person could call for, could stitch him up while they got Doc Hopper to make sure no infection set in.

The melee around them seemed to be settling down; the riders herding the rest of the cattle into the pen safely and no further shots coming from wherever the assailant’s hiding place had been. The thought that the bullet in Rob’s side had quite probably had his own name on it, was another thing Killian Jones had no time to ruminate on. Clearly the shooter had turned tail when they’d botched the job of taking the Sheriff out of commission, and ridden back for further instructions rather than risking discovery. From what Jones had heard of Malcolm and the precision with which he expected his orders to be followed, the law man reckoned that bloke had every bit as unpleasant a few hours in front of him as Robin did with people poking and prodding at his side.

Pushing all his numerous worries and concerns back for the moment, Killian met the eyes of the lanky young man before him, “Henry, isn’t it?”

The boy nodded, not saying anything, but acknowledging the sheriff’s words with a determined furrow of his brow, trying manfully to hold in his obvious fear and worry for his adopted father. Killian was grateful for the youth’s gumption, even if he hated asking more yet. He knew well how much Sherwood must mean to the lad. When Henry had arrived in town back in the spring, by far the oldest child on the Orphan Train that had driven through seeking homes to take their charges in, it had been clear that a boy of nearly fourteen was not the age most childless families were hoping to start out with. Robin, however, having lost a first wife and young son who would have been about Henry’s age to the influenza years prior, hadn’t hesitated for a second when Killian had mentioned the boy’s plight to him. It did some good to even Jones’ toughened and grizzled outlook on the world to see that the arrangement had worked out better than he could have hoped. Aiming to put some semblance of encouragement in his tone he added, “I think he’ll recover if we can stop the bleeding and get him sewn up,” he offered.

Moving to brace Robin on one side, and gesturing Henry to do the same under his arm on the right, between the two of them they got Sherwood to his feet, thought unsteadily and leaning on their combined strength. In a shuffling walk they had soon guided him across the way to the inn and restaurant, finding its proprietor, David Nolan, already at the door and coming to help usher them in to safety, his petite, dark-headed wife Mary right behind.

In a better moment, Killian might have shaken his head and laughed at the pair of them, never far from one another and both with hearts as wide as the Rio Grande itself, always trying to do what they could for anyone in need who came to their door. He’d had Mary’s cool, soft hands fluttering over him more than once after some on-the-job injury in the line of duty, and so he knew the woman must already be itching to get her hands on Rob and do what she could to ease his pain.

To speak his mind plainly, Killian would have been forced to admit that he’d often wondered how two people as fine as the Nolans, whose very nature and bearing spoke of class and manners unheard of this far West, had ended up in this rugged New Mexican outpost. They both were too kind, too open and trusting for their own good, and Killian spent more time than he would admit to hoping they weren’t robbed or taken advantage of by whatever rough characters might come riding through. Yet beneath the surface, where he sensed there may once have been a sheltered, easy life that would never have been enough for either one of them, he had long since decided the pair must have a wealth of strength he hadn’t at first been able to see. They’d come to Blanchard Ridge and opened the inn not long after Killian had pinned on the Sheriff’s badge, and neither one seemed to have a thought in their heads towards leaving.

Once they got Rob laid out on a bed in the closest possible empty room, Mary began preparing hot water, clean washcloths, and other materials she needed, while her husband set out with the young ranchhand to fetch the Doctor. Sherwood had clung to his senses as long as possible, but he seemed to be drifting away from awareness, now that he was settled and had reached relative safety. Killian made sure the lady had no need of his assistance, to which she shooed him away to go watch for the others’ return.

Striding out in the main dining area, Jones set up watch at the door, not as much for the doctor, Nolan, and Henry as to see what was happening in the main street. Gunfire was as unusual as he could possibly make it in the center of their small outpost, and so after the ruckus of the last hour the dirt thoroughfare was deserted, people having no wish to be caught in the crossfire - whatever was going on.

His first instinct, the gunfighter’s fire within that had pushed him along until settling there and seeking out a modicum of peace, even if he had to keep it himself, had him edgy, chomping at the bit to get out after the culprit firing on himself or his townspeople in broad daylight. But the lawman he had become had to allow his temper to subside; he couldn’t lash out with the need for vengeance and retaliation. And, if the shot hadn’t been meant to kill him outright, then it had no doubt been meant to send him chasing after shadows rather than staying on guard with his prisoner awaiting the Federal Marshall.

The only thing that was stirring as he continued to stare out at the street before him was the cloud of dust drawing closer and signalling the arrival of the four o’clock stagecoach. They pulled up down the way by the post office, before heading on to the livery, for those horses to be watered, brushed down, and a new team hitched up before the stage headed on to the next settlement. One rider jumped down from up top to run the mail pouch in to the postmaster. The whole routine carried on exactly as usual, until a dainty booted foot stepped out onto the wooden boardwalk from inside the stage. A deep green traveling dress, accented in places with an overlay of black lace, drew his eye up to a stunning, pale feminine face, a strong chin and pert little nose, though the rest of the unknown woman’s visage was hidden by an artfully tilted hat with wide brim to shade her face. Now that was unusual; visitors to the Ridge were exceedingly rare.

He tried to move on from the arrestingly lovely sight, as the woman surveyed her surroundings and then began walking in his direction towards the inn, an enticing sway in her step. No call to be gawping at her like some untried greenhorn, no matter how long it had been since -- No, no time for those thoughts either. He was standing lookout over the main way in and out of town, the jail, and his friend; that was more than enough to focus on.

However, as the lady neared the entrance, Killian did open the door for her, touching the brim of his hat slightly, with an easy dip of his chin and a simple, “Afternoon, Ma’am.”

She raised her head enough for beguiling green eyes to be seen from beneath her own chapeau. They twinkled with some bit of mischief and humor, as she replied, “Why thank you, Sheriff,” with a pointed glance to his badge. “Good afternoon to you.” She then brushed by him so closely that he felt her warmth, making the small hairs on his arm stand on end, and caught the inviting scent of apple blossom, and the cold mix of leather and cinnamon along with it.

Was it only an hour or so ago that the town had appeared sleepily uneventful? Sheriff Killian Jones sensed now that his trouble was just starting, and in more ways than one.

Tagging some who may enjoy: @resident-of-storybrooke @hollyethecurious @let-it-raines @revanmeetra87 @linda8084 @jennjenn615 @searchingwardrobes @laschatzi @effulgentcolors @thisonesatellite @whimsicallyenchantedrose @snidgetsafan @shireness-says @spartanguard @winterbaby89

#cs au mc #cs western au #rio bravo au #chapter one #sheriff!Killian

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austincitylimitlessworld · 6 years ago

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Modern Girls 1986: A Fable Retold

Back in 1986, Siskel and Ebert, in their critique synopsis show “At the Movies” gave this movie two thumbs down. When I re-watch their review today, I can’t help but consider that they failed to grasp the subtext. Call it generational blindness, but upon repeat viewings of the film itself, I began to notice a strange undercurrent. It dawned on me during the final scene in which CeCe, after spending an entire night chasing her dream rock and roller, Bruno X, decides not to go with him to Rio, but rather stay in L.A. with her three friends. I propose to you now that “Modern Girls” is the story of “The Wizard of Oz” as retold through 80s glossy neons and a seemingly cavalier group of young women who have nothing to do.

I know this sounds absurd, but stay with me.

The film itself takes place in the same universe of night clubs and burn out as does “Party Monster” nearly two decades later, but it takes place on Los Angeles rather than New York, and in real time rather than as a retrospect written by a real-life sensationalist club kid turned author. The characters here are fictional, and a fraction older than Alig and St. James during their hey-day. Our three initial protagonists, Margo, Kelly, and CeCe work at dead-end McJobs despite (or perhaps because) of the fact that Margo holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature, Kelly is beautiful enough to be a model, and CeCe has an entrepreneurial spirit. Nonetheless, they are relegated—as so many of my generation were��to cold phone calling, working at a pet shop, and selling clothes at a second-rate department store. On the day in question, CeCe, who we’ll find out in a

moment is our Dorothy character, is fired for trying to reach a young shopping crowd by “distressing”* a pair of jeans.

The trio heads home to their bachelorette pad, where they convene on a typical early evening ritual: a few quiet hours on a Friday dusk. CeCe has decided that she desperately needs a night out. She has not divulged to her roommates that she has lost her job and they have no real reason to suspect anything. The department store-- and by extension their plastic-decored apartment—has become her Kansas. Everything is mundane, from her low-end job to their daily routines as roommates; even supposedly thrilling nights out at various night clubs all around town. She craves something else, something to take her out of all this sameness. Eventually the answer comes in the form of a fictionalized one-hit-wonder MTV star named Bruno X. Bruno is, on the surface, sort of an amalgam of Billy Idol, Sid Vicious, and Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode. Within the context of the movie, though, Bruno is the Fortuneteller/Wizard, who both ushers CeCe into a night of wish fulfillment but also forms the catalyst for her realizing that in the end she prefers reality to fantasy.

But I digress.

At the start of the night, the girls’ plan to have a no-holds-barred evening out is thwarted by Kelly, who has taken the car to go after a D.J. boyfriend who treats her abysmally. Fortunately for the Margo and CeCe, Kelly’s would-be date Clifford shows up with a vehicle borrowed from one of his driver’s ed students. Now Kelly is beautiful yet lacks any belief in herself and the journey truly begins with her betrayal; she is a stand-in for the Scarecrow, who is the first character Dorothy comes across in TWOO. Clifford is the Cowardly Lion who seems to have no courage when it comes to either women (he scored this date with Kelly by buying a bird from her and when that doesn’t catch her attention he goes back to buy three more) or the world-at-large (like the women, he works a menial job but in actuality is a bookworm who laments “Nobody reads in L.A.”) In a sense, Kelly and Clifford suffer from the same milieu—they are at odds with the world around them yet cannot initiate any change into their lives on their own.

In contrast, Margo (whom a quiz in Cosmo defines as ten points bitchier than Kelly) and CeCe (six point sexier), seem to have more of an ability to change things; only they don’t recognize it in themselves at the outset. As we’ve already defined CeCe as Dorothy, let’s take a look at Margo.

*Distressing: purposefully ripping clothes during the manufacturing process in order to increase their value. This was a very trendy look in the 80s and is making a comeback in the new millennium.

Margo is the Tin Man. She seemingly has no heart. Her façade is one of cool detachment, yet as CeCe tells Clifford: “When Kelly had no place to live, Margo took her in and took care of her. And me, when I’m broke, Margo just ‘forgets’ to ask me for my share of the rent.” Margo is the most obvious study of character arc in this movie. She is the one who outwardly has the most growth. Yet, unlike CeCe—who starts out as a silly daydreamer and learns to be happy where she is by the end of the film—you know that Margo has it in her the whole time. Out of the three roommates, she is the smartest and savviest. It is she who orchestrates the adventures of the evening, and as we join her and her two companions at their first club, she reveals to Clifford that she has dated nearly every man in the place. When he asks about them, she callously lists their imperfections, ranging from “great body, but hairy shoulders” to “oh he’s so nice…boring”. She seems jaded, and perhaps rightfully so. The city is full of jerks. In the parlance of Oz speak, she has no heart. She has forced herself to become hollow so as to deal with the myriad of freaks and losers she has had to endure.

Speaking of Oz itself, as a place it translates to the succession of clubs they visit during this night’s journey. Although the first one they visit is clearly familiar as indicated by Margo’s knowledge of its regulars, it stands in place of Munchkin land. Downtown L.A. is a veritable concrete sea of yellow-brick-roadness, and Bruno X is the wizard they are all chasing down as a favor to CeCe, who fancies him as the solution to her disillusioned life. Every stop along the way from Sharkey’s Bar, where Kelly, in a misplaced effort of trying to find her strength through a drug haze is abandoned by two sideline characters Ray and Tanya is instead nearly raped to the Goth themed Club Voodoo where Clifford exclaims “Everyone here looks suicidal!” are replacements for different outlying areas of Oz. Sharkey’s is the haunted wood, fraught with danger; Club Voodoo is The Wicked Witch of the West’s castle, where all hope goes to die. By the end of the night, they have heeded their own yellow brick road including the famed Hollywood Walk of Fame and a mural which reads “You are the star”.

As the darkness wears on, Margo becomes more and more frustrated at CeCe’s scatter-brained desires. They have been chased by terrorists after they follow the wrong limo, until they are forced to take cover behind an alley dumpster. A short time later, Margo has broken one of her stilettoes. She and Clifford are lagging half a block behind CeCe, who is still determined to find the savior that will take her away from a life she finds barely tolerable. They pass a bookstore. Clifford stops to scan some of the titles in the street lights. “Nobody reads in L.A.” he laments. It is here that Margo confesses that she was a comparative lit major, and there is a momentary recognition between the two, yet Margo, trying to maintain her Tin Man like exterior quickly covers by quipping “I mostly majored in men”.

“And how were your grades in that subject?” Clifford asks.

“Lousy. But I’m not giving up. I know the perfect guy is out there.”

“What’s perfect? A guy with perfect teeth, big balls and a nice car?”

“Well, so I have my standards.”

“Sure. No reason you should have to settle for a human being.”

She throws her broken shoe at him, and in exasperation responds “Just give me a break, will you?”

“Why don’t you stop looking so hard? I will if you will.”

Her façade breaks and they kiss. The Tin Man curse is lifted.

Meanwhile, Kelly, although still fragile, has found some semblance of self during the night. It will be a work in progress, but one gets the sense that she has also broken a long-held mistaken belief that she is worthless without a man. She is no longer the Scarecrow dancing to please for the jilters and the would-be rapists. Instead, she can rely on her urban family to pull her through as she learns how to stand on her own. Likewise, Clifford has stopped being cowardly and stood up for himself as a man by challenging undoubtedly the most intimidating of the bunch, Margo. The irony here is that, just as Kelly has always been more intelligent than people gave her credit for, and Margo undoubtedly always had a heart, Clifford always had courage.

But what of our Dorothy, you may ask. Well, at dawn they reach the Santa Monica Airport, where CeCe has learned along the way that Bruno will be boarding his private jet for Rio. Rio is CeCe’s Emerald City and Bruno is the Wizard who will grant her the wish she has wanted throughout the course of this movie. The twist here is that while Dorothy knew all along she wanted to return to Kansas, CeCe consciously wanted to leave it. Yet they reach the same conclusion.

As CeCe prepared to leave her friends behind at the saccharine (perhaps sincere) promises of Bruno, something in her sits uneasily in regards to this decision. She finally breaks the spell when Bruno offers to “take care of everything”. It occurs to her that this would mean sacrificing her own will, her independence, and her very life as she knows it. Suddenly the fairy tale doesn’t seem so tantalizing anymore. She wouldn’t be the author of her own story; someone else would. She halts.

“Cecelia, what’s the matter?” her dream man inquires.

“I don’t think I can go with you.”

He becomes visibly perturbed that his self-proclaimed dream girl, whom he has been pursuing all night, has suddenly and inexplicably changed her mind. “One,” he demands, gesturing purposefully, “give me one good reason why not.”

“Because…I don’t want you to take care of everything,” is her answer. This is her proclamation that “There’s no place like home.” She has shed her childish mooning, and moves toward the embrace of her two long-time pals and her new friend “Cliffy” as she calls him.

This was the “A-ha!” moment for me in the movie. I had watched it all the way through, just as I had as a teenager, enjoying it as a mindless romp. But now I had to rethink it entirely from the beginning.

#modern girls 1986 #virginia madsen #daphne zuniga #cynthia gibb #film review #film critique #camp film

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parcequefandom · 7 years ago

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That was a wild ride.

I was wondering if the little onis Pai-Yan meet were actually the Killing Mouse and Soul Calling Mouse and yep, they are. It’s a bit easy but hey, Toraji is all about the weird and fun adventures in a fairytale-like world, it’s not really a complicated story.

Another theory that I had that seems to be confirmed: Toraji is actually Rio. I previously had this theory because it seemed to make sense thematically to have Pai-Yan learns to be a father by taking care of this magical talking cat only for it to be revealed later to be actually his son, magically transformed (it is also very fairytale-ish) and some of the introspection monologues of both Pai-Yan and Toraji gave me that feeling. Plus it would have been hilarious for Pai-Yan to have been looking all over the country for what was right under his nose and I think Tamura enjoys that kind of irony.

The fact that we encounter another mix (the Count) searching for someone he lost at the same time he was transformed also gave me the idea that mixes were in truth some kind of animal/human fusion between two beings... but that didn’t really work as we met more mixes because most of them didn’t seem to be looking for anyone/have lost any human close to them.

However, it seems Toraji is a bit of an oddity, as mixes are supposed to turn back to normal animals once they died. Toraji instead turned into a “bubble” and Rio’s name appeared in the book of Enma where the deads are put, before disappearing once Toraji went back to the world of the living.

#Neko Mix Genkitan Toraji

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artificialqueens · 8 years ago

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Crime (Biadore) - Dad

AN: This is just an unfinished chapter for a Criminal AU story (with a reasonable stopping point, I think) that I started to work on but lost the motivation to do. I’m popping it in early to see if anyone would be interested in me continuing this story line?

It’s been rumored that Bianca Del Rio had never considered herself loyal to anywhere nor anything. She moves fleetingly from city to city, loft to loft, and arms to arms of faceless men. She’s been ruling cities since before you could talk, making more money than you could dream of since before you could walk, and she’s only 22! At least that’s what people say – bar the last bit – and to be fair.. it might be true, but only about Bianca. Underneath this hour-glassed, gun toting vixen was.. Roy.

Roy had lived in Los Santos his entire life, born and bred into the fabric of a city that killed more than it slept. You go your entire life in the city rooting for the bad guys who barrel down the streets in stolen cars, bills flying out the window in a whirlwind behind them because they just don’t care. They can do whatever they want. They’re your idols, your first loves, and your role models. When you’re determined and smart, as Roy had always been, you can grow up to be just like them. So, he does.

When he’s 20, he robs his first convenience store, and it’s absolutely exhilarating. It’s sloppy, and he gets a few nasty bruises from some of the patrons’ attempts at being heroes, but when he’s running down the street at top speed with petty change lining his pockets he feels like a completely different person. He feels.. amazing. At best he may be an inexperienced, amateur thief, but being able to break out of the life he knew earning nickels and dimes by sewing tight dresses for spindly women with more money than sense? It’s cathartic.

The year after, he embraces Bianca, and she opens him up like a fresh, new book. With her, he can be himself, and Roy is absolutely certain there’s some seriously fucked up irony in that. As Bianca, he charms his way into the very heart of the city like a siren and tears it limb from limb. By the time she reaches 30, she’s one of the undisputed rulers of Los Santos. Gangs and crews may fight to take her place at the top, but she’s got connections and grit and she’ll destroy you and everyone you know before you can even blink. And the best part? The police can’t touch her because she doesn’t exist. She kills and cons and steals for fun, only occasionally accompanied in her feats by strange women with strong jaws and strong wills. She’s a queen, and she’ll fuck you up. She’s the perfect mask for Roy to wear, with many more benefits than just preserving a secret identity.

It’s safe to say, in Roy’s case, that the best one was being able to afford all the drinks he wanted, but face none of the screaming and crying he might deal with as Bianca. Last time he tried that shit the hostess was practically paralyzed thinking she was holding the damn place up. No girl, just get me a damn drink. I’m not going to kill your ass if you get it wrong, for fuck’s sake. It was a lifesaver, especially now that he had a few fantastic bars he liked to frequent. It’d be such a shame if he had to give them up because people were too afraid of having her around.

Besides, if he had to go out every day with everyone being afraid of him like he was some kind of boogeyman, he never would have met Adore. Well, he hopes the kid would have had enough sense to stay away from her, but Adore was full of surprises.

The first time he ever saw her was from across the bar at one of his favorite clubs. It was intense – or at least Adore probably thought it was – her eyes locked on his and her lips wrapped around a comically thin straw. She brightened visibly when she saw him look over. Her free hand was twirling some of the deep red curls that cascaded down the sides of her face. She radiated foolish, naive confidence like a heater radiated warmth, and the natural pout of her lips shifted into a coy smile as she beckoned him over.

Roy just laughed into his drink, looking down at the bar. Yeah, she might be cute, but the girl looked like a damn child, and he had high suspicions that the flush on her face wasn’t just from excess amounts of blush. She was – er – tipsy, which was a generous statement seeing how much she wobbled when she slid out of her stool to approach him. He kept his eyes in front of him, so he could smell her walking up behind him before he could see her. Adore smelled of faux candy perfume and fruity alcohol, especially when she turned her head to address him.

“Hi, I’m Adore.” he finally looked over at her again, and she beamed with delight to have his attention again. “I’m Adore.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time girl. What do you need?”

“I don’t know, maybe company or something I guess? That guy over there was lookin’ at me so I wanted to move, and you looked nice.” Her laugh was breathy and cute, but Roy just raised a brow at her and finished the rest of his drink. “Or cute, you looked cute and nice.. maybe?”

Roy smiled and shook his head again. “Thanks, but I’m really about to leave. I–”

“Can I buy you another drink maybe?” she rested her hand gently on top of one of his. He puffed a laugh.

“No, no, I’m good,” Adore frowned, “but hey, how about I buy you a drink? Have these people been letting you buy your own drinks all night when you come out looking like this? That’s a damn shame, it’s expensive to get all dressed up nowadays.” A pause. “Looks like your ass could use a water or something anyways. No offense.”

“What? Are you saying I’m drunk or something? I’m fine! My speech ain’t even slurring yet!” She was almost too loud when she talked. And despite her claims, there was definitely some sort of… affliction, attached to her words. Roy would just have to take her word for it that it was an accent and not a drunken handicap. “I’m barely buzzed.”

“Right.” He lifted his fingers to get the bartender’s attention. “Two cokes please? With cherry or something in it so her drunk ass over here might think it’s a mixed drink or some shit.”

Adore laughed and swatted Roy’s hand, leaning back so she could pull her hair off of her shoulders. “Asshole. What’s your name, anyway?”

“I’m Roy.”

“Roy? That’s it? That’s like, one syllable.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I expected something hunky and like, long, from you, I’m not gonna’ lie.”

He scoffed, rolling his head in disbelief at Adore. “Well, what kind of hunky and long,” he dropped the words to a low, mocking tone, pointedly ignoring the obvious joke of expecting him to be ‘long’, “name might I have?”

She dropped her mouth open in silence for a good 15 seconds, and Roy just stared at her expectantly.

“I don’t know, now I feel like I’m like, on the spot! God.” The bartender slid their drinks in front of him, and she was practically pouting as she picked up hers. “Roy’s a nice name.”

“Oh boy, color me fuckin’ flattered.”

“Aw, come on! Believe it or not, I’m trying pretty hard to flirt with you right now. You’re just not making it easy.”

He shifted his weight to be closer to her, to humor her in her attempts. “Here. I’m listening. I’m ready. Go on.”

“Okay,” she tried to relax her face and stop grinning. “Come here often?”

“Ugh.”

“What? Don’t ‘ugh’ at me. That’s a great line! It’s iconic!”

“Right. Well,” he went to move an imaginary bang from his face, but ended up just resting his elbow on the bar. “I do, actually. It’s relatively close to my apartment and it doesn’t have live music playing which is a damn blessing. That shit can get really annoying playing fuckin’ bluegrass or something. Hate it.”

“Okay, I literally perform live music at bars for a living, but.. you live nearby? How long have you lived around here?”

“A long time, almost my whole life. Actually, I lived down on about the edge of the city until I was about 18, then I finally moved up to downtown. How long have you been here.. performing apparently?”

“Uh, never. I’m.. not even right now, I guess? It’s my first day here,” she smiled, playing with her straw.

“Well shit. Welcome to the neighborhood, darling. I’m sure the town will love you.”

#bianca del rio #adore delano #biadore #criminal au #dad #rpdr fanfiction #submission

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travelworldnetwork · 6 years ago

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By Ian Walker

15 January 2019

I’d barely been in Brazil 24 hours when I was let in on a segredinho (a little secret). In a barzinho (a local bar) as the sun went down, a new Brazilian amiguinho (a good friend) I’d met in my Rio de Janeiro hostel had a frosted bottle of Antarctica beer sweating in his hand. Chatting about our night ahead, he poured our drinks and told me, “If you want to speak with a girl tonight, don’t ask her to have a cerveja [a beer]; ask her if she’d like a cervejinha (a little beer) instead. She’ll love it if you use this word.”

And this is how I was introduced to Brazil’s cute but complicated small talk. Not those pleasantries about the weather you’re probably thinking of, but the diminutivos (diminutives) Brazilians love to pepper their sentences with, adding the suffix inho/a or zinho/a to names, adjectives and adverbs. For many Brazilians, though, it’s like the shaker’s lid has fallen off and everything they say is covered in a mountain of diminutives, changing the flavour of their words in the process.

View image of While samba is the famous sound of Brazil, diminutives in daily chatter are a photo-finish second (Credit: Credit: Alexandre Rotenberg/Alamy)

You may also be interested in: • Why Brazilians are always late • The confusing way Mexicans tell time • Why Brazilians don’t speak Spanish

Meteorologist Carine Malagolini from São Paulo told me diminutives are like a form of baby talk Brazilians never grow out of. “We use diminutives [a lot], and a lot of times without even noticing. I think that their use came from childhood, because we’d hear and talk like this with our parents. For example, ‘You’d like a bananinha [a little piece of banana]?’,” she said.

While samba is the famous sound of Brazil, all the inhos and inhas flying around in their daily chatter are a photo-finish second. Literally, they make something smaller, effectively softening a word, turning it cute and gentle. And while in English diminutives are often seen as a little childish (kitty, doggy, mummy), everyone in Brazil, from politicians to medical doctors, use them without any hint of irony.

Context is everything in this linguistic dance

For a country so famous for its big stuff – the Amazon, Christ the Redeemer and Carnival – Brazil can, in a funny way, be thought of as the land of the tiny. Practically no word is immune from diminution. Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã stadium is famous for having held 199,854 screaming South American fans in the 1950 World Cup decider when Brazil lost to Uruguay 2-1. In football terms, its reputation is gargantuan. So what did they call the small indoor stadium they later built alongside it for basketball and volleyball? No prizes for guessing this one – Maracanãzinho.

But I soon discovered diminutives can add all sorts of hidden meaning that can go right over a foreigner’s head. Context is everything in this linguistic dance. As my new Brazilian friend later explained to me, using ‘cervejinha’ instead of ‘cerveja’ implied an innocent and friendly invitation, without any intentions to get drunk late into the night with all that often involves. “Genius,” I thought. “One suffix can say all that?”

View image of Diminutives are like a form of baby talk Brazilians never grow out of (Credit: Credit: Yadid Levy/Alamy)

As University of Brasilia linguist Dr Marcos Bagno told me, “The diminutive in ‘inho’ and ‘inha’, besides indicating the small size of something, brings a sense of kindness [and] affection – very characteristic of the Brazilian spirit.”

Lawyer Suzana Vaz from Rio de Janeiro is one of the many Brazilians who loves using diminutives. Before I brought this linguistic habit up with her, she admitted that she had never really noticed how much she used them, but explained that “sweet people generally speak like this”.

“So you mean you’re sweet or that Brazilians are in general?” I asked.

“Brazilians are warmer, loving. They like contact, body to body. They’re alive. To speak in the diminutive is a form of affection most of the time, it’s softness in speech,” she said.

View image of Rio’s Maracanã stadium is famous for its large size, while the smaller stadium next door was named Maracanãzinho (Credit: Credit: Pulsar Imagens/Alamy)

The funny thing about diminutives in Brazil is that they often soften the meaning of words so much that they end up meaning the opposite of what they’re implying. Like my Brazilian girlfriend telling me to ‘just wait another minutinho (a little minute)’ as she got ready. After waiting 15 more of those alleged little minutes, I asked how she could say a ‘minuto’, let alone a ‘minutinho’, with a clear conscience. “But it makes those minutes pass quicker,” she assured me with a loving smile, the diminutive rolling off her tongue as if it could bend the fabric of space and time itself.

Similarly, I was once invited to a party at a casinha (a little house), only for my Uber to pull up outside a four-storey mansion with a swimming pool. “Some ‘casinha’,” I said to the owner. “Ah yes,” he laughed. “It doesn’t mean the house is small, it means it’s a warm place you should feel comfortable and welcome.” And in true Brazilian style, through a night of laughter and dancing with a bunch of strangers, I felt right at home.

And despite what I previously said, Brazilians are routinely guilty of letting a so-called ‘cervejinha’ turn into a table full of empty beer bottles by the time the night’s over. With examples like these piling up, I started to cotton on to the fact that using diminutives in Brazil is just as much a fun way of speaking as a literal one.

View image of In Brazil, speaking in the diminutive is a form of affection (Credit: Credit: Jo Holz/Alamy)

Caminhos Language School Portuguese professor Jean Fonseca told me that there are even diminutives that have turned into other words entirely. Camisa is the word for shirt in Portuguese, so camisinha would naturally lead you to believe that it’s a little shirt. Wrong. In Brazil, camisinha is in fact the popular name for a condom, a term employed to make the topic of safe sex more approachable.

“It was used as a strategy to popularise the condom among the people,” Fonseca said. “The original name ‘preservativo’ was nicknamed a ‘camisa-de-vênus’ (Venus’ shirt) after the Roman goddess of love. This then became ‘camisinha’.”

Using diminutives in Brazil is just as much a fun way of speaking as a literal one

But diminutives in Brazil have their own little subversive side as well. Such is their power they can make something bad sound like something good, something rude sound like something nice and something boring sound like something fun. Nowhere did I notice Brazilians take more advantage of this than with nicknames. I found this out when I visited the small coastal city of Rio das Ostras, a few hours' drive north-east from Rio. It was a place where not very many blonde gringos like myself pass through, making me a bit of a novelty. As I chatted with a local under the shady trees of a beachside kiosk while devouring some deliciously crunchy beef pastéis (pastry), she said she’d always wanted to meet her own Gasparzinho.

“A what?” I asked, not able to readily compute this diminutive. She got out her phone, went to Google images and pulled up a photo of Casper the Friendly Ghost. I burst out laughing. Being called ghostly white might not be the greatest compliment for an Aussie, but it was easier to swallow when phrased this way.

View image of Diminutives can add all sorts of hidden meaning that can go right over a foreigner’s head (Credit: Credit: Filipe Frazao/Alamy)

Diminutives can also be pejorative depending on the level of acid on the tongue. As Dr Bagno told me, “It can also be a way of dismissing a person”, noting that students will refer to a teacher they don’t care for as professorzinho.

Brazilians also use diminutives to save face, as an indirect way of saying something not entirely flattering. The most famous example of this is bonitinho/a, which comes from bonito/a, meaning ‘beautiful’. At first I assumed this was a compliment, and, depending on the situation, it can be. But in the Brazilian lexicon it’s also transformed to refer to someone who’s maybe not the best looking in the room but has their own charm. It could be the way a woman says “He’s a good guy, but I’m not interested”, or “Cute, but in the dreaded little-brother kind of way”. Ouch.

The diminutive is both an affectionate and cautious way of using language

One of Brazil’s most famous contemporary writers Luís Fernando Veríssimo summed up the whole confusing situation in his essay, Diminutivos, when he wrote of his country’s “obsession of reducing everything to the smallest dimension, be it a coffee, cinema or life”:

“The diminutive is both an affectionate and cautious way of using language. Affectionate because we usually use it to designate what is pleasant, those things so affable that they let themselves be diminished without losing their meaning. And cautious because we also use it to disarm certain words that, in their original form, are too threatening.”

View image of You can’t take the use of diminutives in Brazil too literally (Credit: Credit: Fred Pinheiro/Alamy)

What I’ve learnt during my time in Brazil is that you can’t take these diminutives too literally, but you should use them liberally. When you do, you’re truly on your way to talking like a Brazilian. And if you do find yourself in Brazil looking to practice this cute but complicated small talk, remember the first step: ask them to do it over a cervejinha. Practically nobody in Brazil will say no to that.

Lost in Translation is a BBC Travel series exploring encounters with languages and how they are reflected in a place, people and culture.

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rebeccahpedersen · 7 years ago

Text

Going On Vacation!

TorontoRealtyBlog

Folks, I haven’t had a vacation since last August.

And as a thrice-divorced client once told me, “Don’t worry about your family, they’ll be fine! Just keep working, and they’ll always be there when you get home.”

So with that in mind, we’re heading to Atlantis. Yes! Atlantis!

They say it’s a myth, but I just knew this wonderful underwater city existed…

I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to learn that the “Atlantis” we’re going to is a resort in the Bahamas, and not a secret, mysterious city that exists underwater, like in the above photo.

What the hell am I going to do with this Bare Velocity 5mm wetsuit? Not to mention all the tanks of oxygen…

Yes, we’re going to Atlantis.

It took a lot of back and forth, but eventually we settled on this resort on Paradise Island, Bahamas.

It was where we initially started looking, but then Ramon just absolutely rocked my world, and threw our plans into disarray.

You know those “Live Chat” pop-ups that exist on most sites, including real estate websites? Well the Atlantis website has a live-chat pop-up, and somebody named “Ramon” asked me if he could help, so I thought, “Okay, sure!”

I wrote, “Ramon, I see on the website that kids need to be at least 3-years-old to use a lot of the facilities in this extremely ‘child-friendly’ resort. My daughter is about 1 1/2 years old, can she not play with the Lego, watch the movies, or pet the turtles?”

Ramon responded, “Thank you for your interest in Atlantis. All the activities require that children must be at least 3-years-old.”

Somewhat defeated, and I guess, unsure of the reason for the requirement, I said, “But my 1 1/2 year old daughter plays Lego here in Toronto, and watches movies.”

Ramon repeated, “Unfortunately, all the activities require that children must be at least 3-years-old.”

So then I turned into a jerk and said, “Geez, Atlantis is marketed everywhere as this ‘family-friendly’ resort, I guess it’s not, eh?”

And amazingly, Ramon responded, “It is, just for families with children over 3-years-old.”

So I said, “Great, I’ll go to Florida.”

And Ramon said, “Thank you for choosing Atlantis!”

Hurt, and vindictive, I replied, “But I’m NOT choosing Atlantis, Ramon!”

He told me to have a great day, and closed the chat window, on me!

So with Atlantis out of the picture, we started to look for other places to go to – preferably ones that were more family-friendly.

My travel agent (yes, I have one…) suggested the “Sandals” for families, known as “Beaches.” I guess the marketing people weren’t feeling original on the day they picked the name, but I digress…

Quite happy with Sandals in the past, my wife and I were encouraged by the idea of an all-inclusive resort, by the same company as Sandals, but for families! The only problem was the locations.

Something called…………Zika Virus?

Turks & Caicos, Negril, Ocho Rio…

…zika, zika, zika.

And look, the odds are low, and depending on who you ask, it’s not an issue.

But with Baby Fleming V2.0 in the master plan, why risk it?

So with the islands out of the question, we started to look where most other people look: Florida.

I’m not a huge fan of Florida, I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because everybody goes to Florida, and I’m not really an assimilation/conformity kind of guy. I’m also very binary, so I think if you’re going to do something, you should go all out. And if I’m going to take a week off work, I should make it count, and go to a tropical island, rather than some random B- resort a swamp-like state.

So we started looking around, randomly Googling “best places to vacation for families in Florida,” and I realized just how many SEO experts, sitting in how many coding-caves across the world, were waiting for a sucker just like me.

We found a couple of places online in the Florida Keys that looked good, but when I showed my wife the series of over-water bridges and highways that connect the Keys, she freaked out. I suppose all the facilities that are temporarily shut down because of Hurricane Irma didn’t help me plead my case…

Google took us everywhere from North Captiva Island, to Longboat Key and back.

But when my wife found some random resort that wasn’t even on the ocean, but rather on a small lake that looked like a swamp, I was so depressed by the idea that I said, “We need a new plan.”

I came home that evening, and my wife was beaming.

“I got it! I have it all figured out!” she said.

And like the advertising gimmick has taught us to say over the years, she shouted, “We’re going to Disney World”

I forced a fake smile; who wouldn’t? I love my wife, I’d go to Nunavut if she wanted to.

But the idea of going to Disney World didn’t set well with me.

You see, I’m a seasoned traveller, and I know that the one distinction you need to make at the very start of planning a get-away is to decide whether you’re going on a trip, or a vacation.

The two could not possibly be more different.

Who wants to do a vineyard tour in Italy? Sound fun?

Well, that’s a trip.

That’s a grind. A “schlep,” if you will.

It’s a long flight, it’s in a different time zone, and you’re constantly on the move, from town to town, riding buses, in and out of hotels, packing and unpacking. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful journey; a fantasy for many! One that I’d love to embark upon one day.

But it’s not a vacation. It’s a trip.

Now you might not want a vacation. You might look at your cousins, who visit their grandparents’ condo twice per year, plop by the pool, sit on their phones all day, and then head to a strip mall for dinner every night, and think, “I have no interest in that.” And I can’t say I blame you.

To each, their own, no doubt. And there is truly something for everyone.

But right now, in my life, and looking at what’s best for my wife and child, I think we need to avoid a trip, and take a resting vacation.

So……..Disney World. Right.

Buses to monorails, monorails to shuttles, shuttles to golf carts. That’s a non-stop schlep, and the thought of doing that every day for a week made me cringe.

This trip is for me, but more importantly, it’s for my daughter, and for our family. I don’t see my daughter as much as I’d like to, and at 17-months-old, it’s now that I can really “connect” with her, spending 24 hours per day together, for eight days.

As much as I liked the idea of Maya laughing at Goofy, or being wowed by Mickey, I know in my heart that she won’t remember any of this. She’s just too young.

And buses, monorails, shuttles, and golf carts are going to wear her down. Not to mention, wear my wife and I out.

My wife came to this conclusion on her own, thankfully! I feared the plan from the get-go, and ultimately nature took its course.

So now what? Where did we go from here?

I know this is the classic definition of “first word problems,” trust me. The irony of not being able to find a suitable place to vacation is not lost on me. This is just a story, so call it what it is.

But after two weeks of back-and-forth on locations, we finally came full circle.

And you know who made the decision in the end? Our daughter.

Like most children her age, Maya seems to be completely and utterly enthralled by just about anything. She could find a leaf on the ground outside, and play with it for an hour.

We were in Winners one day, and Maya was entertaining herself by picking up shoes, looking at herself in the mirror, and well, just about anything or anyone she came across. My wife looked at me and said, “I’m pretty sure we could take her anywhere, and she would have a good time.”

We watched her move around, from item to item, fascinated by everything in her path.

And we soon realized that we didn’t need “Lego World” at Atlantis, or their “Sea Adventure” program for children 3-and-up for Maya to have a good time. As my wife said, “We’ll probably walk from the room to the beach, and she’ll stop every ten feet to play with a stick.”

So in the end, we figured we may as well just go to Atlantis!

She can play with what’s allowed to, just as Ramon told me during our epic live-chat session.

She’ll make her own good time, as she always does, wherever she goes.

The weather is better than in Florida, it’s a direct flight, and believe it or not – it costs less than Disney World anyhow!

I am bringing my laptop with me. It’s unavoidable in this business, but I’m looking forward to some quality time with the two special ladies in my life!

I won’t be posting new material until next Monday, but I won’t leave the blog to get stale – I’m going to turn back the clocks on a couple of old videos for Wednesday and Friday!

See you back on Monday the 30th!

The post Going On Vacation! appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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junker-town · 7 years ago

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The stories of the 5 smallest countries to make the World Cup before Iceland

Iceland is by far the country with the smallest population to ever make the World Cup, but who held the record before them?

With their 2-0 win over Kosovo on Tuesday, Iceland became the smallest country to qualify for the men’s World Cup. By quite some distance, too — with a population of just 334,000, they’re roughly a quarter of the size of the country whose record they broke, Trinidad & Tobago.

Here, we look back at the other tiny countries that have qualified for the World Cup, and how they got on. But first, a word for ...

Paraguay, 1930

... who had, at the time of the first World Cup, a population of around 850,000. However, they’re not strictly eligible for comparison, as they didn’t have to qualify. Instead, FIFA just asked everybody if they fancied it. Since it was being held in Uruguay, most of South America said yes.

Small they may have been, but Paraguay went into the competition with a bit of a reputation. They’d finished second in the 1929 South American Championship, the precursor of the Copa América, and beaten a full-strength Uruguay in the process. However, when it came to the World Cup they ran into the surprise package of the tournament, the USA (pop. 123m), and lost their opening game 3-0.

Partial revenge for the little guy came in the next game against Belgium (pop. 8m). Tricky winger Luis Vargas Peña scored the only goal of the game, as both teams departed the competition. Incidentally the eventual winners, Uruguay, had a population of about 1.75m at the time. Which isn’t bad going.

Slovenia, 2002 (pop. 1.99m)

The fifth smallest nation to qualify for a World Cup did so just ten years after gaining independence from Yugoslavia. And they did so in fairly impressive fashion, progressing undefeated through a group containing not only the nation they’d just left, but also Switzerland (7.25m) and Russia (145.3m). Five wins and five draws put them through to a playoff against Romania, and a 3-2 aggregate win sent them to Japan-South Korea.

The early noughties was something of a golden age for Slovenian football, thanks in large part to the double act of manager Srečko Katanec and attacking midfielder Zlatko Zahovič. At Euro 2000 they’d finished bottom of their group, but they’d punched above their weight, most notably in a 3-3 draw against Yugoslavia. Sadly, in 2002 they could only repeat the position, not the performances.

The opening game against Spain (41.8m) ended with a 3-1 loss, and while there’s no shame in losing to Iker Casillas, Carles Puyol, Fernando Hierro and the rest, tempers frayed. Zahovič had been taken off after 63 minutes, and it’s fair to say he didn’t take it well:

“I can buy all of you, I can buy the whole association, I can buy Smarna Gora [Katanec's home town]. I can't stay in a team like this where you [Katanec] will substitute me in a game like this in the World Cup.”

He was sent home early, and Katanec announced that he would resign following the end of the tournament. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t take long: Slovenia lost 1-0 to South Africa (45.9m), 3-1 to Paraguay (5.5m), and left without a point to their names.

Kuwait, 1982 (pop. 1.5m)

There are several paths to footballing immortality. The most obvious is victory, ideally in some style and preferably against the odds. But the odds are the odds for a reason, and for a country as small as Kuwait, actually winning the World Cup isn’t always an option. So they chose another, perhaps more noble path: a permanent place in those 50 World Cup Funniest Moments, Ever!!! programs that crop up every four years.

Having qualified in convincing style, Kuwait were drawn into a tricky group with France (55.9m) and England (approx. 46m), They needed to make the most of their opening game against Czechoslovakia (approx. 10.3m), but could only manage a draw after going behind to a dubious penalty. Perhaps dubious officiating was on their minds when they went into the next game against France.

Not that officiating was to blame for the result, as such. France’s brilliant midfield (Platini, Giresse, Six) dominated the game, and the Europeans were 3-0 up after just 48 minutes. Then they scored a fourth ... or did they? The Kuwait defence, rooted to the spot, claimed to have heard a whistle.

The ensuing argument grew so heated that Prince Fahad, then-president of the Kuwaiti FA, descended from the stands to pull his side from the game. Eventually, and much to the confusion of the French, the goal was ruled out and the game restarted with a drop ball. It made no difference in the end: France got their fourth, Kuwait couldn’t manage a comeback, and went on to lose 1-0 to England.

For his part in the mess, Fahad was fined about £8,000. The referee, one Miroslav Stupar, never officiated at the World Cup again. Kuwait haven’t yet returned to the World Cup, and are presently suspended from FIFA for governmental interference, which probably counts as irony. Still, the talking heads of British list television will always have the footage, and that’s what really matters.

youtube

Northern Ireland, 1958 (pop. 1.4m)

Now, here’s some top-class plucky-little-team-up-against-the-big-lads behaviour. Northern Ireland weren’t really supposed to qualify for the 1958 World Cup, since they were in a group with double-world champions Italy (49.1m) and only one team would go through. But qualify they did, thanks to a draw in Portugal (8.7m) and the complete collapse of the Italians’ away form.

Then, having been drawn into a group with World Cup holders West Germany (54.2m), Argentina (19.9m), and a pretty decent Czechoslovakia (approx. 9m), they weren’t supposed to make much of an impact. But they won their opener against the Czechs, had chances against Argentina before eventually losing, and then nearly beat the Germans, eventually settling for a 2-2. They finished level with Czechoslovakia on points, and that meant a playoff. Goal difference hadn’t been invented yet.

An extra game was exactly what Northern Ireland didn’t need. Injuries were piling up, most notably first-choice goalkeeper Harry Gregg. Naturally his replacement, Norman Uprichard, broke a bone in his hand early in the game. The knocks kept coming — substitutes hadn’t been invented either — and by the time extra time rolled around, Ireland were effectively down to eight men. But in the 97th minute, Peter McParland poked home a Danny Blanchflower cross, and they somehow held on.

Yes, they got thrashed by France (44.6m) in the quarters, but come on. Gregg was back in goal, despite needing a walking stick to get around the team hotel. How many miracles do you want?

Trinidad & Tobago, 2006 (pop. 1.3m)

It’s a shame we have to end like this, but there’s no getting away from it. Perhaps Iceland’s qualification, as well as being a nice story in its own right, will help the footballing community finally achieve some closure. Because previously, the smallest country to attend the World Cup ended up victim of one of its greatest injustices.

Germany, 2006. Trinidad & Tobago, overseen by veteran Polish coach Leo Beenhakker, anchored by Dwight Yorke, and stocked with journeymen from the English lower leagues, have qualified for their nation’s first World Cup. Having come through a playoff against Bahrain (even smaller, at 960k), they take on a Sweden (9m) side featuring Henrik Larsson, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Freddie Ljungberg ... and hold out for a draw.

Then, the big one. England (50.4m). John Terry and Rio Ferdinand; Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard; David Beckham. And once again, the Soca Warriors prove obdurate opponents. The minutes tick by — 60, 70, 80 — and still the game is stuck at 0-0. Then, with 83 minutes gone, Beckham slings in a booming cross from the right, and the ignominious villain of the piece, Peter Crouch, takes hold of his marker’s dreadlocks and levers himself into the air to nod home the opening goal.

Were this fiction, one might almost find the symbolism overwhelming, even trite. The six foot seven Crouch, reduced to playground hairpulling. Resource-rich, population heavy England, indulging in such desperate chicanery. The defender in question, Brent Sancho, later described Crouch as “the most hated Englishman in the history of Trinidad and Tobago,” though naturally the imperialist mouthpiece that is the BBC claimed he was joking.

Anyway, Gerrard added a second late on, and then Trinidad & Tobago went on to lose to Paraguay (5.9m). Would they have won had Crouch, and England, not broken their hearts and soiled the competition? We’ll never know.

Iceland, 2018 (pop. 334,000)

There will be clapping.

Dear world! See you in Russia 2018 #WorldCup #Iceland #Huh ! http://pic.twitter.com/qD45YoYSii

— RÚV Íþróttir (@ruvithrottir) October 9, 2017