#Wilbur would think that she has an imaginary friend

[delicehm]

Bruh, I completely forgot to post here that I wrote a fic with Fundy

[atsumuahh]

“ CRUSH ” sapnap

characters !

sapnap, reader, sapnap’s girlfriend (mentioned)

summary !

reader is about to confess, but sapnap has something to announce

warnings !

angst, hurt without comfort, fluff/hurt, unrequited love, unrequited feelings.

notes !

this was supposed to be an angst but it’s so shitty that it should be called angshit istg

you couldn’t really catch the moment when you fell in love with sapnap. looking back to the past was hard as you realized your feelings. contemplations about of an every dream you had with him as a main character and also your boyfriend, was making you cringe. he was your fucking best friend and you were falling for him?

your first meet had a place in the kindergarten. you were new and kids didn’t seem to like you, because of your shyness. before preschool you hadn’t got any interaction with other kids, so it was tough for you to make some friends. sapnap wasn’t new at all and he knew all the kids you were suffering with – tommy, a younger kid that wouldn’t let you alone, quackity making fun of your hair colour, your pronunciation of certain things, even because of your breakfast, wilbur, a boy you really wanted to get to know, but he pushed you away. and there was also… sapnap.

sapnap was a boy, you had never even tried to talk before. he seemed to be almost as shy as you were. but his shyness was left behind when quackity started mocking your accent. sapnap would punch him on the nose until it started bleeding. you were speechless when he hit quackity.

it was one of your first interactions you two had. but the thing between you disappeared until your birthday. your mom was thrilled to gills with throwing a party. it was your sixth birthday and well… you were excited as well. you invited your whole class, but… no one showed up. no one except sapnap who brought some snacks and obviously present, he chose with his mom.

well… he didn’t expect to see tears falling down your face and a soft smile growing on your mouth. “you came” you mumbled, wrapping your arms around his belly. this is exactly how your friendship started.

since your sixth birthday party, you and sap were inseparable. you had spent most of the time of your friendship at his house and well… you were slowly realizing that you can’t imagine your future without your best friend.

you couldn’t get him off your mind. his smile, his laugh and his attitude towards you rented free in your head. you began to discover that you’re falling for sapnap. the urge to be around him all the time was getting bigger and bigger.

and after making milions of pros and cons lists, manifesting and watching all these weird tiktoks that reassured you he’s deeply in love with you, you finally decided to confess. your plan didn’t contain any kind of “uh– yeah… i’m not in love with you” thing. everything will go as planned and by tomorrow he’ll be your boyfriend.

yeah… about that.

when you sneaked into his bedroom, he was talking to someone. you easily could say sapnap was enjoying the call so much that he didn’t notice you, standing near the window.

“no love, not yet” he spoke softly, big smile appearing on his face. “i gotta tell her soon, hope she won’t mind” sapnap added as he spinned around on the chair and now – you two are face to face. “oh- i gotta go, hun. byee”.

you felt like your heart sunk down as he open his mouth. you were so oblivious to think that he has fallen in love with you as well. you created all of those scenarios when you were a thing and now everything’s gone. he had feelings but not towards you. your imaginary world just fell apart like a house of cards.

“you remember when i told you that someone brought my attention?” you remembered. how couldn’t you? all the tiktoks you’ve seen told you it was you. it had to be you. “aand… ahaha it’s so awkward.” he chuckled as a nervous smile had formed on your face.

“i met this cute girl a few months ago, we have been talking everyday for hours. and we started dating some time ago” sapnap smiled as wide as he could and you felt even more guilty.

“i’m so happy for you!” soft mumble left your mouth as your heart broke in a half. true friends are sharing the happiness and you just couldn’t do that. it was breaking your heart, it’s been so long since you’ve fell in love with him and now, he chose someone else.

“besides, what are you doing here?”

“i just missed you!” you lied with a smile on your face, feeling the imaginary tears falling down your cheeks.

so… that’s how the broken heart really feel. if you knew how it will turn out, you would never try to give him signs. you wouldn’t believe in those stupid tiktoks telling you that he’d fall for you. he won’t do that anyways, so what’s the point in falling in love? you wish you knew.

taglist: @wilczachannn @sen-nes @beepbopbee

[nicks-block]

1, 2, 4, 10 and 18 for the dsmp sona ask meme? (i know that's a lot so you're absolutely free to skip some lol)

1. name/age/pronouns

Bee (maybe Bea), 16 1/2, she/her (and the occasional they)

2. appearance?

They’re probably a regular old human. Maybe they have wings but . . . probably not. they’ve got a navy blue sweater with a nice blue and white striped shirt under it. Along with some spacious olive green pants and combat boots that remind me a lot like timberlands.

4. friends with any canon characters?

They have a definite little-sister relationship with Quackity, very protective. She has a lot of fun with Charlie. I feel like they would have a nice relationship with Tommy and Tubbo, but it hasn’t fully developed yet. It’s only starting to form. I’m not too sure on this one, but maybe Glatt? MAYBE! Maybe? Kind of like an imaginary friend, but they don’t realize that this is the person that Quackity spent a lot of time with

10. backstory?

I’m not completely sure. I’m not caught up on lore, i’m only on Nov. 16th. Originally, they were gonna be part of Manburg and have their dog be killed in front of them. Now they follow Quackity around or stay in Las Nevadas with the gang (and Glatt).

18. do they have any secrets?

I think talking to Glatt would be their secret, they usually talk when their alone together. They might have a secret hideout in the less populated part of the server with pets and stuff. They might meet Wilbur at some point and hang out with him behind Quackity’s back, that would probably end up in a bigger secret, or a nice friendship. Who knows?

[seenashwrite]

Some Dean

Word Count: 4K Category: One-shot, On-The-Hunt, Humor, Creature Feature, Behind-the-scenes Canon-Compliant, Teamwork, Friendship… and, to hell with it: Fluff Rating: Teen & Up Character(s): Dean, Sam, Cas Warnings: None Anti-Warning: There’s no images or links to anything creeptastic below the cut, those of you with squicks/phobias need not worry, I’m not that big of an a-hole Author’s Note(s): *This is a re-post minus tags & links in an effort to get it to show in searches*; if you’ve no knowledge of the children’s story “Charlotte’s Web”, this may not be for you; more post-story Overall Summary: Sometimes good things come in small, albeit eight-legged, packages.

Dean had always liked spiders.

Well, “like” may’ve been overstating; Dean had always held an appreciation for spiders. They weren’t nasty like rats or sneaky like snakes, with spiders you knew where you stood: in his experience, anything supernatural aside, you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone. Plus, they were badass - spiders packed a lot of intimidation into a small package, could be killing machines when they wanted to be, and mostly he appreciated that they were efficient and effective when it came to dealing with the annoying bugs that occasionally popped up. He did live in a basement, after all; the world’s tiniest were not deterred by any amount of warding or weaponry.

So when he’d notice small, barely-there wisps of webs in far corners or between the bottom of a bookshelf and the wall, stretching from the carved wood to the sticky bricks, he’d leave the homemade traps be for a week or two if they were empty, and sure enough, they’d have captured some crawlers next time he made a run-through with the vacuum. It was an amicable relationship - Dean never saw the spiders, just their handiwork, and the webs seldom popped up in the same space twice. Plus, they seemed to know the kitchen was a no-fly… spider… zone, so all was well.

And then came Charlotte.

Charlotte - as Dean had eventually started calling the garden spider, much to Sam’s dismay - did not have any regard for the out-of-sight, you-don’t-get-the-boot arrangement, nor did she have any regard for giving Dean his space. The day they met, he’d sauntered into the garage, popped the Impala’s trunk, tossed in a bag and a shotgun, yelled at Sam to hurry up, then went to reach for the driver’s side handle, caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and froze. And he wasn’t the only one.

The web was thick at the edges and delicate in the middle, stretching from the side mirror to the handle, upon which Charlotte perched, her crafting put on hold. She wasn’t terribly small, but not remotely large; she would’ve easily fit on the pad of his thumb. And she was clearly of the brave - or stupid, perhaps - sort, because she didn’t immediately scurry off. She took in the sight of the giant creature before her - technically, there was eight of him, what with her four pairs of eyes and all - and she opted to see what would happen.

What happened was that Dean turned, grabbed a shop rag, and began cursing under his breath as he whipped the web into nothingness; by the time he stopped, Charlotte had skittered to places unknown.

Dean tossed the rag away, gave the handle a good eyeballing before he grabbed it, opening the door and saying in a low voice through grit teeth, “Not. The. Car.”

“What not the car?” asked Sam, bounding up the garage steps.

“Nothing,” Dean replied.

This nothing continued for six weeks.

Charlotte was a determined artist, it seemed, not to mention a fast one. She spun webs of all sizes and shapes, covering the license plate in quilt-panel squares, weaving long, ropy trails around and between the wipers, and at one point obscured the back window in a lacy pattern that Castiel noted looked like a fine guipure. She liked to travel, too, as more than once the brothers would exit a given roadside motel room to find Charlotte had been busy during the night, Sam’s personal favorite being when she’d decorated a hubcap in a complex Fibonacci design, though he’d never have let on to Dean.

On the initial occasions following such a discovery, if Dean happened to spot her, he would scold her with a sharp “NO!”, walk in her direction briskly, and she’d retreat, slipping into the trunk or under the hood, but it wasn’t long before she’d stay put, even edge closer, cutting the distance between them, eventually so bold as to crawl onto the roof of the Impala, watching as he dismantled her webs.

“Really?” he asked one morning after the latest wipe-down, bending slightly so they were eye-to-eyes.

She calmly extended one leg to the side, held it out til he got the hint, turning his head, following what he’d presumed was a point, and sure enough, he’d missed some cottony puffs that were still stuck on a tail light.

Looking back at her, he said - begrudgingly -  "Thanks.“

Dean had dealt with stranger things.

"One day I’m expecting to come out and see ‘terrific’ in a web,” Sam commented during a return trip from the latest hunt.

“What?” Dean asked.

“You know - the kid’s book. Charlotte’s Web. You read it to me when we were little. About the farm, and saving Wilbur the would-be bacon?”

“Charlotte’s anti-bacon?”

“No, I don’t think— it was— it— she was just pro-pig.”

It was after this conversation that Dean took to calling their frequent tag-a-long Charlotte. To be specific, it was after he’d brought a BLT with him into the garage while working on the car, and she’d happily investigated a bit of bacon that had escaped his plate. A point to the pro-bacon column, he thought.

Dean informed her that he was fine with her hanging around, he was even fine with her fancy webwork, but she needed to cool it when it came to the car, explaining with lots of gesturing to make sure the message got across, just in case. He’d looked it up. Spiders did not have ears.

He’d also looked up things on spider life spans, and arachnid health in general. Sam found him in the library one evening doing just that, frowning at his laptop screen as he scanned. Castiel was nearby, returning some books to their places on the shelves.

“What is he doing?” Sam asked in a hushed voice, and Castiel opened his mouth to respond, but Dean spoke, diverting their attention.

“Did Charlotte look pale to you earlier?”

Now Sam frowned. “Dean… what?”

“I mean, she’s light brown, but she looked a little yellow earlier,” Dean explained, scrolling further down a page, but then closing the window with a huff and turning in his seat to face Sam. “Can’t find anything.” A pause; a thought. “Hey, I should put out a devil’s trap drawing for her, maybe a new pattern’ll perk her up.”

Sam was, in a word, startled. “Do you think of her as a pet?”

“Why do you care?”

“Oh, I dunno - because a spider is stalking us, and you’ve named it, and you talk to it, and—-”

“What, you got a thing about spiders to go with your thing about clowns, even though your imaginary friend was a clown?” Another pause. “Come to think of it, that explains a lot.”

“Sully’s not a clown, and no, I do not have arachnophobia, what I do have is a worry that - if it is a female - it may lay a bunch of eggs, then we’ll have an infestation. Is that what you want? Bunch of spider babies in your Baby?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “She’s not gonna do that.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “Did she pinky swear?”

“Would you like me to have a look at her?” asked Castiel, and the concern in his voice was less for Charlotte and more for Dean, and less in the sympathetic way and more in the tiptoeing around someone who’s slipped into psychosis way.

Sam crossed his arms. “Taking it outside hasn’t worked, neither has trying to leave it wherever we’ve been hunting - this is getting ridiculous, will you just kill it, already?!”

Dean stood, walked over to him, defiant. “We not been doing enough killing for you lately?”

“It’s just a spider, Dean!”

“I know that! Maybe I just don’t wanna be scraping moist spider guts off my boot.”

“Does this spider communicate with you?” Castiel asked, the concern still floating under his words.

He was ignored.

“It’s not your pet, it’s a tiny insect - you don’t even know if it could be poisonous!” Sam exclaimed.

“Not an insect, genius, and Charlotte would never bite us—-”

“What is wrong with you?!”

“Have either of you considered the possibility that this is no ordinary spider?” Castiel suggested.

“Gee, thanks, Cas - no, hadn’t noticed that this is weird,” Dean shot back with a look.

“So you get that this is weird?” Sam checked.

“Our life is weird, what’s some more? And at least this is fun weird, is that so bad?” Dean replied, and the touch of melancholy in his voice caused both Sam and Castiel to stay quiet for a few moments.

The silence was broken by the ring of Dean’s phone - a case awaited them.

And, of course, Charlotte.

Dean looked up from the map as Sam came back into their motel room, six pack in one hand, phone in the other, kicking the door shut as he spoke.

“Jane called. She says a container ship from the UK was bringing in illegal cargo, for some rich people who wanted exotic animals for canned hunts—”

“Douche move.”

“—and apparently when they went to unload, the crates were all busted up. The hold was covered with what was left of the bodies of the animals. All except for one. Three guesses.”

“Big bad bacon?”

“Yup. And she thinks we’re looking at… ah….” Sam trailed off and chuckled.

“Yeah?”

“A cryptid. It’s called The Beast of Dean, a.k.a. the Moose Pig.”

“Why do I think that somewhere, somehow, whatever’s left of Crowley just got a chub.”

They were in a rural area of Virginia, not too far from Portsmouth, and had been for a week, tracking what sounded like a rabid boar, but there was enough of a bump-in-the-night bend to the word on the street that they’d been confident it fell in their wheelhouse. Now that they had confirmation, after a night of research and weapon prep, they were ready to knock out the most recent mission and get back home. The Dean-Moose was large, and it was anything but subtle. The hunt should be an easy one, wouldn’t take long, nothing to it.

Well. One thing. One sort-of big thing. Even though it was also a small thing. Sam’s pro-pig storybook spider and their companion, they’d come to find, had more in common than just a name.

.

STOP

.

There, stretched across the Impala’s grill the next morning, was an undeniable message, and given Dean’s jaw-dropped state, it prompted Sam to speak on his behalf.

“Um, Charlotte? Listen, I don’t know if you… you seem nice, and… really smart, but… look, this thing isn’t like that pig in the book.”

“Because she’s read the book,” Dean said sarcastically, breaking out of his stupor and stomping over to the car, sharp eyes looking for the sassy spider; no joy. “Hey, guess what?” he said loudly. “I’m gonna drive so fast that by the time I do stop, your web’s gonna get shredded, how do you like that? I told you my car was OFF LIMITS!”

With one last glare at the web, Dean got into the car, and Sam followed suit. They put on the radio and chatted about anything but spiders and pigs for the better part of an hour as they bumped along the winding back roads. And after parking at the edge of the woods where the most recent sighting of the beastly hog had occurred, they opened the trunk to find another message, one that unfurled neatly, springing open as the lid of the weapons compartment lifted.

.

REALLY! STOP, STUPID.

.

Punctuation, and all.

“You know…” Dean began, but trailed off with a shake of his head, snatching up the shotgun and pocketing a handful of the shells with the special filling he and Sam had cooked up the night prior.

Sam removed the freshly-etched-with-symbols machete. Dean slammed the trunk shut. Charlotte did not emerge.

As they walked deeper and deeper into the woods, Sam spoke in a quiet voice.

“When we get back, I’m calling Cas. This is out of control, Dean. The spider’s obviously somebody - or something - dicking around with us. Maybe that’s been the plan, keeping us from killing this thing.”

Dean didn’t look at him, rather kept scanning their surroundings as he responded. “Maybe. She… it… came around before that ship got here. But, yeah. Maybe something’s up.”

Sam reflexively sighed in relief, and at that moment Dean stopped, extended his arm to stop Sam’s progress, as well.

“Shhh. Listen.”

The growl was only audible for a moment before the foliage began to stir.

The hunt, it turned out, did not last long. The defeated brothers wearily tossed their dented weapons into the backseat and practically fell into the front. Dean immediately turned off the radio - the chanting of Duran Duran’s “Wild Boys” had come screaming through the speakers.

“It does kinda sound like they’re saying 'wild boars’,” Sam noted.

“Shut up.”

After they’d returned to the motel and showered, cleaned up their scratches and cuts, swapped torn clothing for intact, Sam went back to researching, while Dean went out to the Impala, damp washcloths in hand, and opened the trunk. It was barely even six o'clock, and there was still enough sunlight that he could see every trace of the webbing was gone. But he wanted to check that his little - former - friend hadn’t done anything else.

She had.

Sitting in the driver’s set, Dean’s eye was drawn to the thin, nearly opaque message across the radio, anchored by the knobs and an ejected tape.

.

BAD JOB

.

Dean swiped it away without a word, uttering a small groan and clutching his bruised ribs as he climbed out. He took a few steps, but then pivoted. He opened the door again and leaned in, voice tense as he spoke.

“Tell you what, how’s about I bring you some toothpicks and you join in tomorrow, help us out, get in a few stabs? Be useful, show us how it’s done?”

Dean fell asleep wondering if he’d completely lost his mind.

.

THIS IS DUMB .

Sam ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes - he’d been out the door first, so the newest message, covering the entirety of the hood, immediately made him brace himself for what was coming next.

But, surprisingly, Dean kept his temper in check; he merely set down his bag, returned to the room for a towel, and briskly wiped down the hood.

“Ready?” he asked Sam, forcing a smile that was likely more unsettling than intended.

Sam kept quiet, answering with a thumbs-up.

Their Everything’s Fine! charade was short-lived.

As with the prior morning, Charlotte had chosen to reinforce her message, wrapping the steering wheel so thickly it was barely visible, and her stance on their mission came through loud and clear.

.

THIS IS ACTUALLY DUMB .

Sam thought the choice of having the final “dumb” in bold italic for emphasis was a nice touch. And he noted the copious amount of webbing wound around the gear shift with raised eyebrows. And he gulped when he spotted more strands of said webbing emerging from the ignition. He cut his eyes over to Dean and, upon seeing his expression, took a step back.

This time, Charlotte did not hide. She’d positioned herself on the dashboard, right near the puffed-up wheel, standing with what could be described as quite the petulant posture. And much like the day the spider and the hunter had met, Dean froze.

Charlotte held her ground.

Dean’s nostrils flared.

Charlotte crossed her front legs as if they were arms.

Dean’s jaw clenched.

Charlotte tapped a back leg, as if to say Well get on with it.

Dean was still unmoved, and so Sam said, “You know, when you freeze like that, it’s really not as intimidating as you might—-”

“CHARLOTTE!” Dean bellowed.

She turned and sashayed to the glove box, crawling inside without the first indication she felt in any danger whatsoever.

Thankfully, the motel was just shy of a mile from from a modest gas station-diner combo. Sam talked Dean into a breakfast - with extra bacon, a thumb of the nose to both the beast and its defender. After they easily convinced the owner to loan them his truck, explaining their car’s fuel gauge was apparently broken, buying a can of gas for show, they promised they’d have it returned to him by morning.

As they drove back to grab their gear, Dean asked, “You hear from Cas?”

Sam nodded. “Reception’s crap, though - I can only hear parts of his voicemail. He found something about Charlotte, at least, I think. But he didn’t sound upset, like she was dangerous.”

“Let’s just roast the pig and get the hell outta here.”

“I’m sorry she’s not… you know, fun-weird anymore,” Sam said.

Dean lowered his foot, gunning the engine. “Yeah, well. Story of my life,” he muttered.

The truck was returned way before morning, this encounter with their newest foe having gone as well as the first. Then they found that Charlotte had removed all the web from the Impala, though the door to the motel room held some snark:

.

NICE HEAD

.

Dean barely glanced at it - possibly a little hard to do with the near swollen-shut, a breath away from blackened eye - and didn’t even bother to clean it off. There was no message from Charlotte the next morning. Dean did bother to wonder if she was gone.

The sound of the tree cracking sent both of them diving behind a small knoll, gasping for breath, cringing as it crashed down just where they’d been not seconds earlier.

“I’m empty,” Dean said, returning his gun to his waistband. “You?”

“About ten minutes ago,” Sam answered.

The beast’s growls now turned into a piercing scream, a most furious howl, angry it couldn’t find them. They heard it turning up earth with its tusks, sending rocks flying, then ramming its head into yet another tree, the trunk buckling under the strain. Dean had managed to send a bullet into its snout, likely preventing it from sniffing them out, if the occasional gurgling snorts were any indication. Sam had earned himself a minor goring to his calf, but otherwise they were intact.

“Think you can run?” Dean asked, gesturing to the bandanna-wrapped wound.

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I think so. That the plan? Just make a run for it?”

“You got any better ideas?”

“On three?”

“One… two…. three!”

They dodged trees, though the beast didn’t bother, taking out the smaller ones along the way, picking up speed with every moment that passed, while the brothers were losing speed at the same time.

Dean noticed a large branch in their path up ahead and started to veer off from Sam, pointing to it and yelling, “Keep going! I’ll try to knock Porky out!”

“No!” Sam yelled back, grimacing each time his leg made contact with the ground. “It’ll kill—- HUUUURMMPPHH!”

Sam went down, Dean not far behind, something tripping both of them, causing them to fall with such force that whatever air they had left in their lungs got knocked out. Disoriented, they raised their heads only to immediately duck them, covering up with their arms, as the beast was still plowing ahead. Its hooves hit the ground in between them, tossing dirt everywhere, its speed too far gone for it to stop on a dime. They expected to soon hear it reversing course, so Sam opened his eyes, trying to spot a place to hide, Dean doing the same, trying to spot the branch.

Instead, the sound of the most meek squeal one could imagine reached their ears, prompting Dean and Sam to turn their gazes directly ahead.

They were at the bottom of a small incline, and they watched as the boar’s head rolled their way, their heads slowly turning as they observed it leisurely passing by. It came to a sudden stop against something near their feet. They shared a look, moving in sync onto their knees.

“Uh, Dean?” Sam said.

Dean looked up from inspecting the severed head to find Sam with his hand extended, pushing under something that Dean couldn’t make out, but a shift in position and a tilt of his head allowed him to see the bright moonlight glint off the surprisingly thick, iridescent rope running across Sam’s fingers.

Another look, another in sync movement as they stood, then tentatively walked forward til they reached the body. This time, Dean spotted it right away when he crouched, the finely-wound strands that were stretched between two trees, at just the perfect height to relieve a squatty hog monster of its head. He flicked it with a finger, as one would a string on a guitar, and it was just as taut.

“She clotheslined it,” Sam said, awestruck. “She tripped us so we wouldn’t… That could’ve clipped us at the knees. She… she…”

Dean looked up at Sam, and a slow smile spread across his face. "She’s awesome!”

Sam shifted his weight off of his bad leg, and grinned. “Think she’s any good with stitches?”

How Charlotte managed to spin their salvation in such little time, they’d never know, and they also had no idea how she beat them back to the car, but the evidence was there, across the driver’s side window. .

SOME PIG .

They laughed, Dean saying, “You ain’t lying.”

But before he could say anything else, Charlotte crawled out from under the handle. She scurried up her web, and as they watched, she whipped the “P” into a “D”; the “I” went “E” in a few short passes; the “G” was partially dismantled, then spun into an “A”; and in mere seconds, there appeared an “N”. .

SOME DEAN .

After a quick hop from its tip, a slide to the outside of one of the long connecting end pieces, and a drop of a new line of silk, their eyes followed her as she leapt, letting the momentum swing her clean up onto the roof. And then - Sam would swear to it, many times over the coming years - she curtsied.

“Thanks,” Dean said softly. “You, too.” With that, he opened the back door, gestured for her to climb inside.

Which, she did.

“Yes… yes… that’s very kind of you.”

Dean, Sam, and Castiel were standing outside the bunker, the former waiting patiently - and occasionally impatiently - as the latter had a conversation with Charlotte.

Castiel looked to them. “She says she likes my tie. The material meets her standards.”

Dean’s expression was completely flat, causing Sam to snicker.

“There any reason you didn’t tell us you could’ve been talking to her this whole time?” Dean demanded.

Castiel shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

It turned out that Castiel’s message had been to inform them that Charlotte was indeed a most special spider, more so than what they’d already divined. She was an emissary, an information-gatherer, a spy of sorts, though not a nefarious one. And because she herself was quite the accomplished hunter, she chose to spend time with other hunters whenever her journeys brought her to them.

And now, it was time for Charlotte to start her next journey.

Castiel was nodding his head as Charlotte, who was on his collar, near his ear, told him one last thing. “She’d like you to know that Sam was correct - she does need to prepare to lay her eggs, though she would not have done so in the car,” Castiel related.

Dean shot Sam a smug look.

“And she says she’ll name them Dean.”

Dean blinked. “All of them?”

“Yes.”

“How many we talking?”

A pause as Charlotte answered, and Castiel replied, “Anywhere from fifty to sixty.”

“That’s… a lot,” Dean said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“Not really,” Sam commented.

Another look from Dean - actually, he cycled through several.

“Fine. So maybe I did some research, too,” Sam admitted.

“It’s time for her to go,” Castiel announced. “She says she’s enjoyed your company immensely. And she apologizes for the web you’ve yet to find. It seems she was in a cranky mood that evening.”

“That’s okay. Tell her it’s okay,” Dean said, walking closer. “Tell her that, um… it’s been great knowing her. Don’t be a stranger. All that.”

Castiel smiled. “She knows.” He raised his hand to his shoulder, and Charlotte climbed onto it. “I’m going to give her a boost,” he explained, and then to Charlotte he said, “Please do give Mr. Anansi the Winchester brothers’ warmest regards.”

They watched as Charlotte prepped a silk balloon, and after a gentle wave of Castiel’s hand, off she flew.  

“It would be… cheesy of me to comment it is angelic, their flight, wouldn’t it?” Castiel asked.

“Yes,” Dean and Sam answered in unison.

They began to walk back inside.

“What was that at the end? About Anansi?” asked Sam.

“Networking,” Castiel replied.

“I wouldn’t worry about us ever having to tangle with him,” Dean said. “I mean, not with Charlotte on our side. She’ll talk us up. She’s a talker.”

“Plus, there’ll be all the Deans,” Sam added.

“Yup. Exactly. We are cool with the spider kingdom,” said Dean, and with great confidence.

Dean was incorrect on this point, as he and Sam would later learn, during a case involving a young lady by the name of Muffet.

But that’s another story.

Want more stories? My Master Post is linked in my profile, and it tells you about getting on the Tag List, too! If for whatever reason it gives you trouble, don’t hesitate to send an Ask and I’ll link you.

Re-blogs and feedback are fuel for a writer’s soul - please do let me know if you enjoyed. 😘

Author’s Note #2 - The Jane mentioned is a character from my story Supernatural: Revelation, which you can find linked on the master post -or- just go straight to AO3, same author name SeeNashWrite 😁

Author’s Note #3 -  This also included a prompt which had languished in drafts - albeit with the note “Anansi” from the get-go, thankyouverymuch! - which was from the cringeworthy submissions:

You can find all the #Nash300 Follower Celebration Master List of Madness stories (wherein I asked followers to send me prompts consisting of three words to make me cringe) via the Master Post.

Author’s Note #4: The beast of Dean mentioned is actually a thing, give it a google! And so is Anansi, check that out, too. If you don’t get the Muffet reference, well, I can’t help you with that. 😉

[mst3kproject]

Short: Once Upon a Honeymoon

           When I started this blog I really wasn’t planning to do anything with the shorts.  Mr. B Natural changed all that by being impossible to ignore, so here I am, coming back around to episodes I’ve already seen so that I can visit the shorts that precede them.  I’ve seen Night of the Blood Beast many, many times, and every time I do, this short makes a bigger impression than the movie.  It’s so colourful.  So catchy. So sexist.  So fucking weird.

           Jeff and Mary are a wholesome fifties couple who are just about to go on their honeymoon when they get a phone call – the score Jeff wrote for a musical doesn’t meet the star’s approval, and his boss, Gordon, wants him to come up with a new melody!  Lucky Jeff’s guardian angel, Wilbur, is around to provide him with some inspiration… except that instead of inspiring Jeff to write music, Wilbur’s angel dust inspires Mary to daydream about redecorating her house and putting telephones in every room.  Finally, the sound of the rotary phone gives Jeff an idea for his music. He dashes off a tune in five minutes, and he and Mary head out to have a wholesome fifties honeymoon with wholesome fifties sex.

           I assume that the original version of the ‘wishing song’ is the one Mary sings to herself while making coffee.  If so, I’m not sure what’s wrong with it, because it seems an awful lot more memorable than the final version we’re given at the end – it’s the one I’m humming to myself right now as I type this.  Ah, well.

           In the Thanksgiving version of the episode, Pearl gives Dr. Forrester the short and tells him it’s about ‘telephones or some damn thing’.  There are, indeed, many telephones in this short. Wilbur the guardian angel keeps one under his robe.  Jeff’s boss Gordon has one with speakerphone, which I can only assume was considered technological wizardry in 1956.  Jeff and Mary have one in their living room, and Mary’s fantasy home has telephones in the kitchen and bedroom, too.  The short was sponsored by Bell, so one must assume it’s supposed to be advertising phones in some capacity.

But Once Upon a Honeymoon kind of makes more phones look like a bad idea. True, his portable phone allows Wilbur the angel to keep in touch with heaven while he’s out on a job, but the short also looks ahead to the disadvantages of having telephones everywhere.  As long as you’ve got a phone near you all the time, it’s impossible not to take your work home with you.  If Jeff and Mary didn’t have a telephone, they could have gone on their honeymoon and Jeff’s boss would simply have had to wait until he got back.  The self-important diva who’d rejected the song in the first place wouldn’t have been able to call up and bother them.  If ignorance is bliss, then more phones equals entirely too much knowledge.

           Then there’s Gordon’s attitude towards re-writing the song, as if he’s asking Jeff to run down to the corner for coffee instead of, you know, writing an entire two-to-five-minute piece of music over again from scratch.  This speaks to a point I already made in my review of The Stone Flower – people who don’t make art often don’t understand that it is hard work.  Gordon says, you must have a dozen old tunes sitting around, as if he can’t imagine that there might be reasons why Jeff rejected these, or that they might not fit into the soundscape of the show.  Worse, both Gordon and his star, Sonia, keep calling Jeff’s house impatiently to ‘see how it’s coming’.  Apparently it never occurs to either of them that constant interruptions are not very inspiring.

           All this makes me wonder: if Wilbur’s job is to give Jeff inspiration so he can get this obstacle out of the way and go on his honeymoon, why does he instead inspire Mary to sing about telephones?  This doesn’t seem like an accident – she says I just wish I had a decent kitchen! and he smiles and sprinkles his angel dust to make her dream of one.  Maybe he’s keeping her occupied so she can’t join the chorus nagging Jeff to get on with it, but it didn’t seem like she would have done that anyway.  The film implies that Mary has spent the day keeping busy and staying out of Jeff’s way to let him work.

           Mary’s behaviour in the short has always struck me as odd, but when I think about it, it’s not just what she’s doing – it’s also what she’s not doing.  I can accept that she’s twirling around and singing about her desire to renovate the kitchen, because that sort of thing goes on in short advertising films from the 50’s.  What I’m confused about is why her badly-decorated home is her primary complaint on a day when she’s just been told she might not be going on her honeymoon.

           The honeymoon is clearly a big deal to this couple.  They’ve waited until a year after their wedding, which implies that they don’t have a lot of money and have had to save up.  Jeff secured a promise from his boss that he would have the time off – a promise the man seems happy to break without a moment’s lost sleep. Jeff is bitterly disappointed and annoyed by this development, calling Gordon a ‘vulture’ and Sonia a ‘temperamental ballerina’.  We see him sulk, skip lunch, chainsmoke, and bang on the piano in frustration.

           Mary doesn’t express anything similar, which is weird because it’s her honeymoon, too.  She’s been waiting for it just as long as Jeff has.  She’s got the bags packed and the place cleaned up in preparation for them to leave.  When in the same room as her husband she is supportive, trying to encourage him while ignoring his bad mood for fear of making it worse – this seems like a sensible way to treat a grouchy artist.  But even in private, she shows no sign that the delayed honeymoon has upset her.  Jeff talks back to Gordon on the phone, while Mary is polite and cheerful with Sonia. Mike and the bots try to fill in what is missing here, as for example when they have Mary call the other woman a copper-bottomed bitch, but that just makes the absence more conspicuous.

           If Mary wishes she had a kitchen phone, shouldn’t it be so she can call her friend Vy and complain about the situation without Jeff having to listen to her? If she’s going to fantasize herself into a musical, why doesn’t it involve the sandy beaches and romantic dinners she’s missing out on?  Mary literally has greater patience than an angel – the chief angel gets far more frustrated with Wilbur than Mary is with anything!

           The answer, as you may have guessed by now, is that it’s because Mary is not a character.  She’s just here to sell us telephones.  Although she gets the majority of the screen time, the only characters in this little film are Jeff and the two angels – they’re the ones who display some form of personality.  The rest are mere stock figures: a Demanding Boss, a Prima Donna, and a Perfect Wife.

           Mary has no opinion about the honeymoon because the ideal housewife should not want vacations or sexual fulfillment – all she’s supposed to want is to cook meals and clean house and be support staff for her husband.  This is Mary’s fantasy: a redecorated home and fully-equipped kitchen that will allow her to be an even better housewife, and to impress her friends and neighbours with her superior domesticity (as in the phone conversation she imagines with Vy).  She has no ambitions or desires outside of Jeff. The ideal housewife of the 50’s is not a person in her own right, merely an accessory to her husband.

           This extends to the bedroom, which she imagines as having twin beds rather than one large enough for a couple.  This was pretty standard in the media of the time, but it seems to imply that her fantasy life doesn’t even include sex.  Female sexuality was a taboo topic in the first half of the twentieth century, and sex was supposed to be a duty wives performed, lying back and thinking of England, rather than something they actively wanted.  Mary’s fantasy includes neither children nor any room for them.  Children would just make a mess of her beautiful, squeaky-clean new home.  She doesn’t want to be a mother, she only wants to be a wife.

           The house is Mary’s entire world.  She does not leave it until the end, when Jeff literally carries her out. Although she receives telephone calls from Gordon, from Sonia, and from her possibly imaginary friend Vy, the only time Mary makes one is when Jeff orders her to.  She never initiates contact with the outside, only reacts to it and to her husband’s wishes concerning it… which is actually really creepy. It’s like women are zoo animals kept in habitats designed to stimulate them and keep them in ignorance of the idea of freedom.

           Am I reading way too much into a little film that’s just supposed to make me want to buy a second telephone?  Yes, I’m pretty sure I am, but I’m also pretty sure real women don’t normally fantasize about kitchen appliances.  In the interests of science, I tried to take a survey of my co-workers to find out what their fantasies are.  The first one I asked told me she thinks about meeting a guy at a party, getting him falling-down drunk, then taking him home and putting on a penguin costume before getting into bed with him.  The idea was that when the guy woke up, he would see the strategic hole cut in the penguin costume and think drunk-him had slept with a furry.

           On second thought, I’m happy with Mary’s new kitchen.  I don’t want to see a short where somebody sings about that.

[ibroughtthisonmyselfpixels]

Let’s Statistic 4: The Stats Strike Again

Thinking of making this a bi-annual sorta deal.

I have twenty-seven Sims who have been officially placed and ranked in BCs old and ongoing (including Sini), ten who are currently making the rounds, twenty-seven whose BCs or involvements are no longer active or otherwise dubious, and nine in reserve for future competitions or story-based projects. This makes seventy-three Sims in total. Ten new arrivals, four of them reservations. One of them I made just a couple of days before this update came out.

I added a new section to my spreadsheets at the beginning of the year: the Special Snowflake Summation Sheet. This is to head off any more anons who may ask whether any of my Sims aren’t “special snowflakes”. Considering being trans, being queer, and being disabled as the indicators of such, we have twenty-three Special Snowflakes, twenty-three that nearly count, fifteen that barely count, and twelve that do not count. (Mind you, among the twelve, only four - Sammy, Dalibor, Auguste, and Al Wilbur - have “no” in all three slots. All the others have ‘sorta’ or a question mark in at least one field.)

Of the seventy-two, thirty-five are designated as male in-game, while thirty-six are designated as female, and Alex and Eun are still their own thing. That’s two new DMACs (Oz and Octavio) and eight new DFACs; I’m taking care to make the gap between them narrower, as you can see, and until the latest one they were at exactly the same level. I want to maintain this closeness from here on out, however easy or hard that may be.

None of the ten new arrivals so far are cis - literally none. As established in Percy’s profile, I have set myself a goal to, unless absolutely required, never make a cis Sim again, which I have been sticking to quite well so far. (Lisa is the only possible exception, but only possible. Depends how I feel when I release her.) Twenty-seven cis Sims, counting the loss of Percy after the shift to demiguy*, out of seventy-two accounts for 37% of my contestants... or, put another way, 63% of my Sims are un-cis.

If we take into consideration almost all of the Sims I know for certain are not cis (excluding Butch, since Butch does not yet have a confirmed pronoun set at all), nineteen of my non-cis Sims use standard pronoun sets and nothing else, defining ‘he’ and ‘she’ as standard in this instance. Thirteen use a combination of standard and non-standard sets, which includes Sims who have a penchant for all pronoun sets; another thirteen completely use non-standard sets. If we consider ‘they’ to be a standard set in the sense that it’s the most universally accepted NB pronoun, those numbers become twenty-four, ten and eleven respectively.

Counting each explicit pronoun-set use only once, my non-cis Sims have nineteen unique pronoun sets between them, including ‘no pronouns’. This is a ratio of 17 non-standard to 2 standard, or 16 NS to 3 S depending on if you count ‘they’ as standard or not. So gitte would not have heard of a maximum of 89% of the pronouns I use, which I guess is close to the 99% she claimed when she first brought this up?

Fifty Sims are confirmed to be on the LGBTQ+ spectrum through either sexuality or gender identity; thirteen more are assumed to be through any category; Butch and Xyq are unknown. That’s a range of fifty to sixty-five of my seventy-three contestants - 68.5% to 89%.

It’s interesting to note that three.5 of my Sims so far have had their gender or orientation change over time, in an organic sense rather than a ‘this has been clarified when I wasn’t sure before’ sense as with Myron. Calfuray was initially made to be straight, but later gameplay put him as bisexual; Madison was initially cis before becoming a demiwoman early in death; and of course Lyra Maurer’s realization and transition. Percy’s aforesaid shift to demi-guy*, while made before he became a public download unlike the others, still counts as a .5 on the grounds that Clover got access to him before then and played him as cis accordingly, hence there was something there to be changed. 

One could teeeeechnically argue that Castor counts as well, since Castor’s aromanticism was hit upon post-MMBC and public download; I will defend this, though, on the grounds that Cas’ aromanticism is only half of the split attraction model that Castor operates under, and their pansexuality is not affected.

Myron remains the only Sim I have ever had to have been killed specifically for being on the spectrum. (Though Oz was singled out for it, and probably eliminated because of it, he wasn’t killed per se.)

* = For some reason, my spreadsheets are telling me I did this to Peter Jernigan as well, shifted him to demi-guy. The thing is, I don’t remember ever deciding on this directly or setting it in stone with anyone? But it must be something I’ve planned, otherwise the spreadsheet wouldn’t reflect it? So he’s in the ?? category for now. I may make this change explicit once Peter is released to the general public, or I may not. We’ll have to see.

Forty-five of the seventy-three, or 61.6%, are disabled (Skylar has been placed at no, but only for now, so subject to change). Twenty-four of those forty-five have at least one mental disability; twelve have a physical one; two have both; seven are hidden.

The three Sims to join the ‘hidden’ category are Oz, Alice, and Octavio. Oz has undiagnosed bipolar I, and Alice is, as I put it, “Implied to be an abuse victim? How much this impacts nym is up for debate”. So same case as Stellan, really. Octavio is hidden on the grounds that her low empathy could be a symptom of something, but not necessarily, and as of yet nothing else about her neurology is overt.

I have fifteen CAS-intended Supernaturals out of seventy-three; five of the fifteen are witches. (Skylar, despite claiming to be a Nogtail, doesn’t count as a witch in this instance. More on that when ce happens.) The three ‘story’ Supernaturals remain the same; three non-occult Sims join the death-induced Ghosts (that aren’t ghosts in the download file) - Ruya, Jake, and Calfuray Odell, who killed himself early into 2017 by my headcanon.

Thirty-three Vanilla Sims, five van/ban cusps, six Banilla, one ban/berry cusp, and twenty-eight Berry.

Four of the ten news have three pieces of CC, making 13 total (I think I forgot Percy counted as three too with the freckles? Or something like that). Vanilla is the first of my downloadable contestants to break four pieces of CC, but this was mostly for the purpose of showing off the new skin I’d made, and I do not expect this to become the norm. Two pieces is still the majority at 23 out of 73, but three is catching up fast.

Thus far, I feel like this year has been the year of Changing Categories, and taking contestants across multiple projects. Sera’s transferral from her old MMBC to Ostkaka MMBC and Lyra’s clean-up for use in Slaughter or Salvage was made concrete and confirmed, but on top of that: Oz underwent the same process to become a future MMBC host of his own; Percy, Seth del Bosque, and the secret-pending that I still can’t talk about just yet, were officially brought through from what were initially one-shot side projects to be canonized as contestants and future contestants respectively; and Auribus was similarly pulled from first being a Sims 4 baby to then being in line for a Rosey project to then being actually submitted to a melien project.

Of the ninety-eight in-game traits available for my use (discounting Unconventional), I have now successfully used all ninety-eight of them in my Sims. That’s... that’s got to be worth something, right?

I’ve used: ten traits once; thirteen twice; twenty-three three times; twenty-one four times; twenty five times; five six times; five seven times; and one trait a whopping eight times. (Keep in mind I am including contestants I have not officially released yet in my trait calculation.)

My most frequently used trait is Snob: Cashlin, Shabnam, Jake, Jack, Akakios, Hopkin, Lisa, and Percy. Friendly, Hot-Headed and Proper haven’t been used on any more Sims since the last incarnation of the statistics list; but Alice has brought both the use of Good from six uses to seven and the use of Coward from five to seven alongside Vanilla.

Obviousy, Octavio is the most recent Sim to have a unique trait. The rest of the single-use traits are Commitment Issues for Elanor, Hydrophobic for Cree, Handy for Lyra, Born Seller for Casey-Mae, a mistaken use of a bad trait for SLIP, Equestrian for Riba, Heavy Sleeper for Elliot, Loser for Butch, and Animal Lover for Percy. McQuoddy has lost Gatherer to Daisy; Stellan, Loves the Heat to Vanilla; and Karla, Eco-Friendly to Oz.

The Sim with the ‘most unique’ / ‘rarest’ trait distribution is Cree; three of her five traits do not go above two uses each, and the most used one is Daredevil at five. Conversely, the Sim with the traits who have had most use among my set is, of all people, Akakios; her traits do not dip below five uses, and she has both Good and the most-used Snob. (Cashlin technically has more traits with high usage, at two sevens and an eight, but the low-use of Sailor balances out that number.)

All in all, including every single repeat, my contestants share a grand total of 363 traits between them.

Let’s round off by talking about the Fifth Place Squad! It consists of seven Sims as of right now: Midnight, Castor, Lilavati, Stellan, Myron, Cree, and Cashlin. (Shockingly, contrary to my expectations, Cordelia has not made the fifth place squad.)

Five of the seven are ‘special snowflakes’; the other two nearly qualify for such. This is because Lila is the only one among them that is cis, while Cashlin is the only one that is for sure neurotypical and able-bodied.

There is a 3-4 split on the rig in mild favour of DFAC; same for occult distribution in favor of not-ordinary-human (though Cree is the only one to be CAS intended, and she’s an Imaginary Friend); same for coloration in favor of Berry (two vanilla, Myron is banilla).

All of the disabilities among the six of the seven that have them are mental ones, though Castor and Lila are still the two that double up with physical ones, by sheer coincidence!

None of the seven have zero pieces of CC, strangely. Three have one piece; two two, one three, and Castor as usual is the awkward outlier. The CC of four of the seven pertain to custom eyes; an overlapping four, to custom hair. Myron and Cree have both. Cree also holds the dubious honor of having custom hair, skin AND eyes, a distinction they share only with Madison outside of the Squad. 

The most popular traits among the seven have two uses apiece: Daredevil (Castor and Cree), Diva (Castor and Myron), Hot-Headed (Castor and Cashlin), and Natural Cook (Lila and Myron). None of Midnight or Stellan’s traits are repeated among the group.

[edc-creations-blog]

When a late life love affair blooms between Mr. Forrest Payne, the owner of the Pink Slipper Gentleman’s Club, and Miss Beatrice Jordan, famous for stationing herself at the edge of the club’s parking lot and yelling warnings of eternal damnation at the departing patrons, their wedding summons a legend to town. Mr. El Walker, the great guitar bluesman, comes home to give a command performance in Plainview, Indiana, a place he’d sworn—and for good reason—he’d never set foot in again.

But El is not the only Plainview native with a hurdle to overcome. A wildly philandering husband struggles at last to prove his faithfulness to the wife he’s always loved. And among those in this tightly knit community who show up every Sunday after church for lunch at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, are the lifelong friends, known locally as “The Supremes” —Clarice, facing down her longing for, chance at and fear of a great career; Barbara Jean, grappling at last with the loss of a mother whose life humiliated both of them, and Odette, reaching toward her husband through an anger of his that she does not understand.

Edward Kelsey Moore’s lively cast of characters, each of whom have surmounted serious trouble and come into love, need not learn how to survive but how, fully, to live. And they do, every one of them, serenaded by the bittersweet and unforgettable blues song El Walker plays, born of his own great loss and love.

  Edward Kelsey Moore Book Reviews

“This lusty novel sings with life, saluting friendships through dreams, marriage and long-held secrets.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Summer Books”

“Moore’s bluesy, breezy novel takes readers through life’s highs and lows and in-between times when no one knows what is coming next; its air of folksy optimism should appeal to fans of Alexander McCall Smith and Fredrik Backman.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“Edward Kelsey Moore, besides being laugh out loud hilarious, has a profound understanding of human nature. This gift, combined with his clear love and affection for his characters, makes him a truly remarkable writer. This book is a joy to read.” —Fannie Flagg, author of The Whole Town’s Talking and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

“Spending time with the Supremes is like slipping into a warm embrace of love and laughter, soul-searching and sass. There’s nothing these three strong women can’t handle, and that includes the legacy of the pain inflicted by fathers to sons, mothers to daughters. Edward Kelsey Moore has crafted a novel that beautifully illustrates the healing power of forgiveness.” —Melanie Benjamin, author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator’s Wife

“The arrival of Edward Kelsey Moore’s new novel had me singing anything but the blues. Even better cause for celebration? Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean are back . . . and what a supreme encore it is!” —Julia Glass, author of A House Among the Trees and Three Junes

  Chapter 1 (Excerpt)

It was a love song. At least it started out that way. The lyrics told the tale of a romance between a man and the woman who made his life worth living. Being a blues song, it was also about how that woman repeatedly broke the man’s heart and then repaid his forgiving ways by bringing a world of suffering down on him. The beautiful melody soared and plunged, each verse proclaiming rapturous happiness and gut-wrenching pain. Here, in a church, this piece of music couldn’t have been further outside its natural habitat. But the tune’s lovely mournfulness echoed from the back wall to the baptismal pool and from the marble floor to the vaulted ceiling and settled in as if the forlorn cry had always lived here.

As the song continued and grew sadder with every line, I thought of my parents, Dora and Wilbur Jackson. The blues was Mama and Daddy’s music. Nearly every weekend of my childhood, they spent their evenings in our living room, listening to scratchy recordings of old-timey blues songs on the hi-fi. One of those might have been as sorrowful as the dirge ringing through the church, but I couldn’t recall hearing anything that touched this song for sheer misery.

Mama preferred her blues on the cheerier and dirtier side—nasty tunes loaded with crude jokes about hot dogs, jelly rolls, and pink Cadillacs. The gloomy ballads, like this one, were Daddy’s favorites. I never saw him happier than when he was huddled up with Mama on the sofa, humming along with an ode to agony. He would bob his head to the pulse of the music, like he was offering encouragement to a down-in-the-mouth singer who was sitting right next to him, croaking out his hard luck.

Sometimes, before sending me to bed, my parents would allow me to squeeze in between them. They’ve both been dead for years now, but their bad singing lingers in my memory. And, because I inherited their tuneless voices, I remind myself of my parents every time I rip into some unfortunate melody. Whenever I hear a melancholy blues, I feel the roughness of Daddy’s fingertips, callused by years of carpentry work, sliding over my arm like he was playing a soulful riff on imaginary strings that ran from my elbow to my wrist.

I’d be ordered off to bed when Mama’d had enough of the dreariness and wanted to listen to a record about rocking and rolling and loving that was too grown-up for my young ears.

Even though the song rumbling through the sanctuary would have been a bit dark for Mama’s taste, she’d have loved the singer’s wailing voice and the roller-coaster ride of the melody. And she wouldn’t have let this song go unnoted. If she had been in the church with me, she’d have turned to me and declared, “Odette, your daddy would’ve loved this song. Every single word of it makes you wanna die. I’ve gotta write this in my book.”

My mother’s “book” was a calendar from Stewart’s Funeral Home that she kept in her pocketbook. The cover of the calendar showed a gray-and-white spotted colt and a small boy in blue overalls. They were in a meadow, both of them jumping off the ground in an expression of unrestrained bliss. Above the picture were the words “Jump for Joy,” and below, “Happy thoughts to you and yours from Stewart’s Funeral Home.” Whenever Mama ran into something that she felt was remarkable enough to merit celebration, she wrote a note on that day’s date so she’d never forget it.

Mama’s book first appeared on a Sunday afternoon about ten years before she passed. We’d just walked out of our church, Holy Family Baptist, and Reverend Brown stood at the bottom of the front steps saying good-bye to his flock. Mama strode up to him and said, “Reverend, you’re the best preacher I’ve ever heard. I’ve been thinkin’ about your Easter sermon all spring. It was truly a wonder; really opened my eyes. I want you to know that you can consider this here soul a hundred percent saved.”

Reverend Brown, who was more than a foot taller than Mama, bent over and took her hand. “That’s so kind of you, Dora,” he said. “I’m just doing what I can for the Kingdom.”

“I mean it,” Mama said. “You’ve won this battle for the Lord. And I wanted to make sure to thank you, since I won’t be comin’ back.”

Reverend Brown hung on to Mama’s hand and waited for her to deliver the punch line to what he assumed was one of the peculiar jokes she was known to tell. But Mama wasn’t kidding. She explained, “Remember how you preached that if we really wanted to be closer to God, we should look at the world around us and write down a little thank-you to Him for all the things He gave us? Well, I took your words to heart and I’ve been doin’ that ever since.”

( Continued… )

Copyright © 2017 by Edward Kelsey Moore. All rights reserved. Book excerpt reprinted by permission of the author and publisher, Henry Holt and Co. Do not reproduce, copy or use without the author’s written permission. This excerpt is used for promotional purposes only.

Purchase books by Edward Kelsey Moore https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250107946 http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250107947?aff=henryholt1

      Intimate Conversation with Edward Kelsey Moore

Edward Kelsey Moore is the author of THE SUPREMES SING THE HAPPY HEARTACHE BLUES and the New York Times and international bestseller THE SUPREMES AT EARL’S ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT.

Edward’s award-winning essays and short fiction have appeared in the New York Times and a number of literary magazines, including Ninth Letter, Indiana Review, African American Review, and Inkwell. He currently writes a series of essays for Minnesota Public Radio.

In addition to his writing, Edward maintains a career as a professional cellist. Edward Kelsey Moore makes his home in Chicago, Illinois. His web address is http://www.edwardkelseymoore.com.

BPM: What made you want to become a writer? How long have you been writing? I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was very young. From the moment I got my first library card, I loved fantasizing that my name was on the books on the library’s shelves. I started writing stories as soon as I could hold a pen and I never stopped. But I was sidetracked by a career in music and I didn’t get around to actually finishing any of my many writing projects until I was forty years old. That was when I gave myself a kick in the rear and started taking writing seriously.

BPM: How do you think you’ve evolved creatively? I ask considerably more of myself now than I used to. Earlier in my writing career I thought it was enough to be funny, or sad, or just to get my point across. Now I want to challenge myself with everything that I write. In addition to producing good work, I want to be proud of the effect my writing has on the lives of the people who read it. As I try to become a better writer, I want to become a more responsible one.

BPM: Do you view writing as a kind of spiritual practice? I wouldn’t describe writing as a spiritual practice for me, but I would say that writing fits into a broader belief that all the things in my life must be in harmony with my personal spirituality. That’s one of the nice things about having begun my literary career in middle age. Experience has taught me not to waste my time on anything that brings disharmony and negativity into my life. If writing weren’t the right thing for me, I wouldn’t do it.

BPM: How has writing impacted your life? Writing has had such a powerful impact on me that it’s hard for me to think of an area of my life that it has not affected. On the day-by-day level, since writing replaced music as my primary focus, I see my surroundings differently. It’s natural for me now to immediately set about translating the things that I see and experience into words. I used to do that after a long period of reflection. These days, it’s my first reaction to the world around me.

Also, because of the success of my first novel, people react differently to me than they used to. I was shocked to discover that having “bestselling author” attached to my name meant that people were far more inclined to actually listen to the things I said. I have to think more carefully before I open my big mouth now and that has taken some getting used to. But, as problems go, having people pay attention to you is a high-class problem to have.

BPM: What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books? I’ve been surprised to discover how little my view of the world has changed over the decades. Because I saved so many of the unfinished stories and essays that I gave up on during my younger days, I occasionally go back to them for ideas. When I do, I find that I laughed at the same things forty years ago that I laugh at now and that the same topics frighten or move me. There’s not a lot of difference between me in my fifties and me at fifteen.

BPM: Tell us about your most recent work. Available on Nook and Kindle? My latest novel, The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues, continues the story of the friendship of three women from a fictional small town in southern Indiana that began with my first novel, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. At the start of The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues, Odette Henry and her two best friends, Barbara Jean and Clarice, the Supremes of the title, are in a church, listening to a song that is very much out of place there. Within days, that song, “The Happy Heartache Blues,” and its singer, El Walker, will impact the lives of Odette and her friends in distinctly different, but very powerful, ways. Soon fearless Odette is frightened to find that she no longer understands her beloved husband. Beautiful, wealthy Barbara Jean is forced to relive memories of her painful and humiliating childhood.

And Clarice, a former musical prodigy, finds herself on the verge of a career breakthrough. But her panic over possibly achieving everything she ever dreamed of can only be soothed by hopping into bed with her husband, whom she can otherwise barely stand to be around. Now the Supremes have to rely upon their friendship more than ever as each of them is forced to re-examine her most intimate relationships and to wrestle with the importance and the meaning of forgiveness.

Along the way, they also encounter a wisecracking, gender-fluid nightclub performer, some pesky old adversaries, and the ugliest baby in the world.

BPM: Give us some insight into your main characters. What makes each one so special? The novel is told primarily from the points of view of Odette and her friends, Barbara Jean and Clarice. Odette is funny and fearless, but as the novel progresses, she sees a side of her beloved husband that she can’t joke away, and it terrifies her. After a life shaped by loss, Barbara Jean is happy for the first time in her life, but her difficult past hasn’t prepared her to accept happiness. Clarice finds herself with the perfect husband for the woman she used to be. But the woman Clarice is now can’t stand the man she spent decades hoping her husband would become. Each of the Supremes has a special connection to El Walker, an elderly blues man whose talent for composing a sad song is only surpassed by his knack for making a mess of his life and the lives of others.

BPM: What was your hardest scene to write, the opening or the close? The opening scene was considerably more difficult to write than the final scene. Asking a reader to step into a world you’ve created is tricky. There are so many ways to mess it up and cause the reader to turn away. The ending, on the other hand, felt natural as I was writing it. If the preceding chapters accomplish what they’re supposed to, the ending should have a feeling of inevitability. I hadn’t planned on the novel ending exactly as it did, but when I got to the closing scene, it felt like the only way for the book to end.

BPM: Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? I won’t go so far as to say that I would never write about any subject. But I will say that there are subjects that I’m not currently interested in adding my voice to. I feel that literature about African Americans is too often about oppressors and the degradation and injustices they perpetrate, instead of being about the Black characters who are ostensibly at the center of the books. I understand why writers return so often to these topics, but I also feel that having this as the default mode of writing about African Americans limits the variety of ways in which Black people are portrayed. I don’t see the need for my words to be added to that particular pool.

BPM: What projects are you working on at the present? I’m working on a novel about a family trying to cope with two tragic losses. I believe that no one truly survives a catastrophe without humor, so it’s a funny novel about people dealing with horrible circumstances.

I’m also tinkering with a play that I started a long time ago. Right now it’s mostly an excuse to procrastinate while I’m supposed to be writing the new novel. But I’m having so much fun with the play that I just might finish it.

BPM: How can readers discover more about you and your work? Readers can find the most up-to-date information about me at http://www.edwardkelseymoore.com. I’m on Twitter at @edkmoore. Readers can connect with me on Facebook at Edward Kelsey Moore, author.

Connect with Edward Kelsey Moore: Twitter: https://twitter.com/edkmoore Website: http://www.edwardkelseymoore.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EdwardKelseyMooreauthor

    The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues: A Novel by Edward Kelsey Moore When a late life love affair blooms between Mr. Forrest Payne, the owner of the Pink Slipper Gentleman’s Club, and Miss Beatrice Jordan, famous for stationing herself at the edge of the club’s parking lot and yelling warnings of eternal damnation at the departing patrons, their wedding summons a legend to town.