#ada and evered

[litcest]

The Innocents, by Michael Crummey

There was I, one fine afternoon, reading Henry James' The Turn of the Screw and started wondering if anyone had ever done an incestuous re-write of the novel. I found none, but what I did find was that there was a movie adaptation (by Truman Capote) in 1961 with the title of The Innocents. This movie shares the title with a 2019 novel by Michael Crummey, which DOES have brother-sister incest.

I went to check the book on Goodreads and found out that @shipcestuous had it on her shelf, and from this I found an ask she got just a month ago with some book recs. Everything is connected.

The book, narrated in the third person, follow the lives of Ada and Evered Best, siblings who lose their parents at an young age and have to take control of the family's fishing enterprise in a remote beach. The novel is set around the 19th century and so the siblings have little contact with the outside world other than the ship that visits them twice an year to collect their goods.

In a secluded cove on the shores of Newfoundland, in a recent past, lived a family. One winter, in quick succesion, the newborn dies, followed by the mother and then the father. And so, siblings Ada and Evered are left to fend for themselves.

"And he to bawling with her then, the two helpless youngsters holding on to one another in the pitch."

"For weeks after their father died the youngsters did little but sleep, lying in bed all hours for the warmth, for the comfort of the other's breathing beside them."

Evered hunts and fishes, while Ada takes care of the house and cooks. Winter turns to spring, and The Hope,cargo boat, comes to the cove, as it did every year. The siblings tell the Captain their parents have died, and the Captain tries to explain how the enterprise works: Evered's father caught fish and gave to the Captain, who in turn gave them supplies. The Captain wasn't sure that the two kids could deliver the amount of fish necessary to cover the costs of the supplies, and tries to convince the kids to go to the town and look for a job there. Ada, however, doesn't want to leave the grave of their dead baby sister (who she insists that she can talk to) and refuses to go.

Evered menages to persuade the Captain into giving them one season to try it out. The season is not much of a success, but it's good enough that Evered and Ada decide to keep trying to make it work, even though they are getting into debt.

"'You managed fine, Brother', she said. 'You done good.' 'Don't you ever leave me,' he said out of nowhere' 'Why would I do the like of that?' 'Just don't.'"

Two years go by, and a storm blows a shipwreck into the cove. The siblings explore and collect material, and Ada gets new shoes. They are two right feet, but she's happy anyway.

"She threw her arms around Evered's neck and they jumped up and down in each other's arms."

Another event of this year was Ada getting her first period. She gets grumpy about it, ignoring Evered and lashing out at him (PMS is a bitch). What I found particularly interesting about this chapters is that, to hide the bleeding, "they slept in separate beds for the next five nights". Which means that, despite they having a spare bed (the one that their parents slept in), they were still choosing to sleep together for the past two years. And, when Ada's bad mood (and blood) has passed, they go back to sleeping together.

"They talked through the black or looked to the other's warmth for comfort, gravitating to the familiar body beside them. One night, half-asleep and adrift in that liminal space, Ada hooked a leg across Evered's hip and they nudged into one another."

Also worth mentioning is Evered's masturbatory habits. He doesn't quite know what he's doing, but he knows he feels pleasure from touching himself, and that it results in a "hot spill pumping across his hand and stomach". And yes, he does it in the bed he shared with Ada, until one night, still half asleep, Ada turns towards him and wraps her legs around his torso.

"They tucked into the heat of her, Ada lifting her leg across his hips and rocking against him. And he was suddenly, vibrantly awake. He leaned into the heat of her, barely moving, letting Ada work against him, moving his hand to the small of her back to add weight to that drowsy agitation. The didn't speak or acknowledge one another at any point and Evered thought it was possible she was dreaming, that she was insensible to the waking world the entire time they were engaged."

Are they dry humping? I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to lie, the book is sometimes hard to understand. It's very poetic and I struggled to get the meaning behind the vomit of words that were on the pages. It made me feel very stupid and like my reading comprehension had gone to shit. Whatever that was, the event goes by unmentioned, as neither sibling wants to talk about it.

"It was the one intimacy that everything between the siblings seemed a prelude to. But some hesitation had always stopped them short, a shared vertigo that stayed them at the edge."

In the summer, Ada goes to bath herself in a clear water pool in the hills around the house, and Evered spies on her, admiring how her body had developed.

"A woman's body he was looking at and he was embarrassed to be watching as if it was a stranger standing in the brook below him."

Ada sees him watching and he goes away, but as she cleans herself, she thinks of "sleeping beside Evered [...] as if her body was a having a thought all on its wordless lonesome."

Their routine comes to a halt when Evered gets sick after making a delivery to the ship. He passes the sickness onto Ada, who becomes gravely ill.

In a struck of good luck, sea Captain Truss and Mrs. Brace happen upon the cove. They nurse the siblings back to full health, and when Ada first wakes up from her feverish dreams, her first word is "Brother".

Truss also teaches Evered how to hunt with a firearm, so the siblings can have more supplies in the winter. When inquired on whether he feels lonely in the cove, Evered says that he has Ada and so he isn't alone.

During this time, Evered and Ada listen as Truss and Mrs. Brace have sex and Ada recognizes the sounds as similar to the ones Evered makes when he thinks she's asleep.

"Something in it reminded her of the hitch in Evered's breathing during the solitary ministrations she pretended to sleep through. Of her brother ferreting through her small clothes to find the place she was the warmed and wet, her hips rising to his hand as he figured the works of her."

After Truss goes back to his ship, Evered begins to plan an expedition to further explore the hills around the cove, as they had never gone too far from the shore, and also so he hunt bigger animals. Ada wants to go along, but Evered tells her it's better for her to stay and take care of the house. Ada is not stupid and knows that her brother is being distant, he has been since before Truss' arrival.

"She missed her brother, missed the easy physical affection that had been the only constant source of comfort in her life."

The night before Evered leaves for his expedition, Ada waits for him to lay in bed beside her and then begins to touch him, jerking him off. Evered later comments that the gesture seemed like punishment of short, for him not taking her along.

"She placed her hand on Evered’s hip behind her and then down between them, finding her way to bare skin. He put an arm around her waist and moved to reach under her shift but she grabbed it with her free hand. She did not want to be touched. Or to turn toward him or to speak. She moved against the rigid bit of gristle in her hand, working toward that hitch in his breath, that spastic release."

Hunting turns out to be a good deal for the siblings and when The Hope comes to deliver their goods, they gain extra by selling pelts of the animals they had killed.

The next strange event is the arrival of John Warren onto the cove. He comes knocking in the sibling's door, having heard of the so called "Orphan Cove" and wanting to lumber there. At first, Warren mistake Ada and Evered for a couple, asking if they are wedded, which leaved Ada "mortified".

Warren lates asks Ada whether she feels alone, and her answer is similar to the one Evered had given Truss.

"She shook her head. 'I got Evered,' she said. 'He been good to me.'"

Warren and his crew leave, with Evered and Ada once again returning to their routine. The text time The Hope comes around, the Captain asks if Ada has ever considered marrying, as the men in town are lacking women. Evered asks Ada whether she has ever considered marrying and she says that she doesn't want to do that.

That winter, a terrible storm blows in while Evered is out fishing, and for a moment, Ada assumes he has drowned. He does make it back to shore, completely soaked through, and she takes him to the house, stripping him off the wet clothes and setting him by the fire. Then Ada removes her own clothes, as she too got wet from searching for him and straddles him for ~warmth~. This obviously leads to them having sex.

The next morning, there's an awkwardness in the air, with neither sibling knowing quite how to deal with the intimacy they had shared.

"And she couldn’t settle with any satisfaction how to feel about what happened between she and Evered, about how it unfolded or if it was all her doing somehow."

Even though they had only had penetrative PiV sex once, Ada finds herself pregnant, in a strike of bad luck akin to Cathy Dollanganger's. I know it's possible to get pregnant from just one unprotected encounter, but god, are this incestuousr girlies unlucky.

Ada realises she is pregnant when she stops getting her "monthly visitor", but isn't quite sure how she got that way. At first, she hides it from Evered, but when her belly gets big enough, he starts to suspect that Ada got pregnant because Warran had made her his wife. Ada and Warren never had sex, by the way, the just apent a lot of time alone because Warren thought of her as a surrogate daughter and wanted to keep are away from his sailors.

As the distance between the siblings grows bigger, Evered suggests that they should leave the cove and go to the town, where he can find a job and Ada can get married.

Just as The Hope appears on the horizon, Ada enters in labor and Evered helps her deliver the child.

"He nodded though his expression didn’t change. "I don’t know what to do," he said. "What do I do?" "Just don’t leave me," she said."

The child is named Martha, after they deceased baby sister, whom Ada believed might have reincarnated into her daughter. Then, in one of the most anticlimactic endings ever, the books ends, as Evered places the new-born on Ada's chest and the ship approaches at distance.

[tamanegi-san]

Happy birthday to the ADA's full-time mother ✨

[shininas-ideals]

Dazai's birthday throughout the years

Everyone deserves a happy birthday

[unicornpopcorn14]

Remember when Dazai being honest for 0.00001 sec had him tweaking so bad he needed to lie about lying?

[okaykois]

i’m waiting so patiently for separate ways dlc :-)

[vagabondart]

Resident Evil color wheel because Capcom really does love to color-code their characters.

[luneariann]

[kurooscopy]

BABY TETSU BABY TETSU BABY TETSU BABY TETSU BABY TETSU BABY TETSU

[cookiescr]

Needed a dose of them

[allthoughts-headgay]

still not over this

[hazelnutnebula]

and what if. .. more lil thangs :)

[allmoshnobrain]

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

How would dating early 80's James Hetfield be like?

A headcanon list by yours truly

☆ When you two first crossed paths, you were convinced he didn’t like you because he had this super serious vibe whenever you were around, but then you'd catch him being all chill with his friends. Little did you know, he was just super shy and totally into you.

☆ You started noticing these adorable little hints and signs he dropped. There'd be a sneaky touch on the arm that sent shivers down your spine, or those hugs that lasted just a teensy bit longer than the norm. He was head over heels for you, and those tiny gestures were his way of showing it because he was too insecure to be direct about it.

☆ Even when you two officially started dating, he wasn't exactly a poet with words in public. He preferred the language of touch; his hand holding yours, casually resting on your waist, or draping an arm around your shoulders. His silent declarations of love were all about physical touch.

☆ He also loves cuddling so much 😭 He's got an insatiable appetite for affection, especially when it comes to snuggling up. You'd catch him burying his nose in your hair, taking in that sweet scent of yours while wrapped up in each other's arms. He just loves your smell and the warm feel of your skin against his.

☆ From the moment you became his girlfriend, he made it his personal mission to make you giggle with the most absurd, random antics ever. He's a one-man circus of silliness, just to see that beautiful smile light up your face. All of that because your laughter is his absolute favorite soundtrack in the world.

☆ He's all about sharing interests. It's like he's on a quest to become your personal expert in all the things you adore. And he's not just stopping there; he's all about roping you into his world too! You're practically a VIP guest at the band's rehearsals because he's got to share how much he loves it with you.

☆ He's totally smitten when you sneakily snag his t-shirts. It's like a secret turn-on for him when you wake up in the morning, rocking just his oversized tee and nothing else after a night together.

☆ In bed, you both started a bit shy and inexperienced, but soon found out that you enjoy trying all sorts of positions, toys, etc. Because of that, you imagined he'd be more submissive, but he gradually discovers how much he enjoys dominating you 💖

[k3yboi]

the zoop zarps (i’ll post actual art soon i promise)

[inamagicalhallucination]

anytime atsushi gets excited his tail pops out and wags but no one tells him becuz they think its funny to see atsushi try and pretend he's not excited and act nonchalant

atsushi is genuinely surprised and confused how everyone always knows what he wants or wants to do

dazai, kunikida, and atsushi coming back from a mission

kunikida, noticing atsushi looking at an ice cream stall: atsushi do u want ice cream

atsushi: oh i dont care either way! if u and dazai san want to then...

dazai: i dont re-

kunikida and dazai staring at atsushi's wagging tail:

dazai: ooh~ kunikida-kun~ how kind~ to offer us ice cream~

kunikida: as if bastard! i'll buy it for atsushi but ur a grown ass man

dazai: if only i had a tail :(

atsushi: what

dazai: what

atsushi:

//

like that

yosano: how did u choose a gift for atsushi? theres so many things i could get... since he's not used to owning much

ranpo: my genius deductive skills obviously

yosano:

ranpo: okay fine i chose like 10 and mentioned them to him subtly and bought the one he wagged his tail for the most

yosano:

yosano: oh shit u are a genius

ranpo: why r u acting surprised

//

atsushi: cant believe i have to work with you again,,, why do we always have to see each other ugh

akutagawa, staring (like wan staring) at atsushi's wagging tail:

//

bet atsushi never takes time off becuz idk he doesn't think he can - like he knows he can but he also doesn't think he can

that doesn't make sense but i hope u get it

anyway he never requests time off - he's only not there if he's sick (and was bullied into resting) or something like he personally never puts in the request

if there's some festival or event or anything that anyone thinks atsushi would want to go and would go if not for work they let the boss man know

fukuzawa: atsushi, you haven't taken much time off, but it's good to take a break now and then. if you want, you can have monday and tuesday off. (which weirdly is the exact time that that one event u wanted to go to is on but obviously thats just a coincidence)

atsushi, tail wagging: oh that's alright

fukuzawa: i insist.

//

what else hmmmmmmmm

kyouka: atsushi, do you want me to make that dish again? you liked it right?

atsushi: oh i did! but you dont have to if you dont want to! i mean if you do you totally can

kyouka, staring at his tail: i'll make it

//

junichiro, after coming back from a longer mission:

atsushi: heyyy we didn't see each other all day!

junichiro, trying not to show how touched he is becuz atsushi's tail is wagging, showing how happy he is:

and so on

[theabigailthorn]

Love your work! I was wondering (because you book recs are always amazing), what are your favourite books of all time?

Ada by Vladimir Nabokov

[monarchamos]

pov the new hire at your detective agency turns out to be the infamous gravity-manipulator and mafia executive who went missing two years ago wwyd

remember this post I made a few days ago about ADA!Chuuya wearing Dazai's coat? yeah well i went ahead and drew the loser and his oversized coat

(i may or may not have added the ring impulsively only bc i was inspired by this lovely fanfic i read last night)