#almost makes me miss how unhinged the bond books were

[mulansaucey]

Bat Wives Wine Night

AZRIEL X READER

This is my first thing I’ve put out to public eyes...ever. So please be nice. I had this idea for awhile and this is mostly a teaser to what I truly want to write. I want to make this a full imagine with smut. If you like this idea and want to see a spicier version to how this night ends please let me know. I’m always open to criticism and always looking for advice so as long as we are nice about it let me know what you think. Im gonna start writing more stuff and will be open to requests. Thank you and I hope you like this little teaser. 

PART 2:

WARNINGS: drugs and alch used responsibly, dirty thoughts by the bat boys

CONCEPT: The bat boys finally realize what their mates are up to on their top secret Wine Nights 

“Oh my gods…you’re right” Feyre softly said. 

     Feyre, Nesta, and I were sitting at the River House sipping on wine and enjoying what we call Bat Wives Wine Night when I had the realization that our husbands have had 500 plus years of experience and fun while us wives are in our 20’s being depressed and stressed for majority of our lives. This was unacceptable and not fair at all. We deserve to let loose and live a little. Go drink til we throw up, smoke mirthroot and tobacco as we pleased. To just be stupid, reckless teens. A night where we didn’t have to be perfect, just ourselves. We all looked at each other with understanding that our simple little wine nights just became a lot more fun. 

    “Okay ladies, once a month like we do now we keep letting our mates think we have wine, eat cheese on a platter and gossip. But let’s just go crazy, do whatever we want because we feel like it. Because we can. We’re young, hot, and rich. Let’s just be stupid, not enough to be dangerous but enough to have some memories to laugh fondly at just like our darling husbands. We are Bat Wives, I say we give them a run for their money.” I declare loudly watching my High Lady’s eyes light up with mischief (just like her mate). Nesta’s feline grin gave me the approval I needed from her. Thank the Mother our mates were not here to hear us declare our secret fun. 

    “Our mates will find out though, eventually. Cass is nosey, drills me on what happens on our Wine Nights. Such a gossip…” Nesta whispers the last part. 

    “Plus your mate is the Spymaster…” Feyre concludes by taking a sip of her wine. Yes he is, my beautiful, sweet, loving mate. Azriel. We’ve been married and mated for over a year now. I met him at a time when I swore off love at the nice age of 19 years old. But he was so kind and patient, building up our friendship first and making me feel seen as a person. He is a wonderful male and he had to fight many battles to get where he is today. But I am not Azriel, I’ve barely traveled out of my own court. Our perspectives can be quite different which I love but I want to create my own experiences as well. After the war, after almost dying I realized life can be taken from me at any moment and I want to spend those moments knowing I made good memories. That I lived. Even if it’s once a month with my sister in laws doing something as silly as smoking mirthroot. It’s something to ease the soul, bonding between just us girls. 

    “So what? Let’s see how long we can go til they figure it out. Make it a game, see how far we can go before they find out just how unhinged we are.” I giggle just a bit tipsy. The girls and I burst out laughing and start planning what we should do next month. 

*TWO YEARS LATER*

   Two years and counting. Our darling husbands STILL think we have a quiet night in with some books and snacks. It’s truly comical. It’s also nice to know something they don’t. 

“I’ll miss you.” Az murmurs in my hair, holding me til I walk into the River House front door. I tighten my arms around his waist and breathe him in. He takes a step back looking at me, love and adoration flowing through the bond between us. Az looks heart eyed, as if seeing me for the first time. I can’t tease him because I know for a fact I’m looking at him with the very same look. 

    “Can you guys just make out already so we can start drinking?” Nesta says unamused. I jumped back from Azriel, startled. When did she open the door? Nesta walks further away from us into a deeper part of the house. I turn back to find Az already looking at me. Something about Azriel is he is absolutely clingy in the best way possible. Physical touch and quality time are his love languages, any time we have to part it’s a bit dramatic because we simply hate saying goodbye. It’s the love I’ve always wanted. I love the Wine Nights as he has nights with his brothers to get away but nothings better than coming home and finding my place within his arms. 

    “If you ever wanna leave early just let me know and we can cuddle and I can go down on you.” Az’s cheeky grin showed proudly. I laugh while pushing him, he grabs my wrist playfully holding me to him. He brushes some hair from my cheek and presses his smooth lips to mine. We stand there for what feels like hours just feeling each other's breath mingle, when he glides his naughty tongue against my lips I pull away. Both us panting I say, “Go Az, before I actually ditch them for you.” I giggle. He very reluctantly peels his hands off my body and shoots up the sky with a wink, surely a promise of great fun when he picks me up tomorrow morning. 

        With the mating haze slowly leaving my brain a new found giddiness found its way in. We’ve started doing full on sleepovers instead of a few hours of mingling. That way we can return to the River House and clean up before our mates return to us. Truthfully it started after Feyre had way too many tequila shots and threw up for two hours begging us not to call for Rhys as our “cover” would be blown. I skip into the River House and take a look at my girls. 

    “Ready to fuck shit up?” I ask. “We’ve been ready, we were betting if you two would actually fuck on my front door.” Feyre says as fill her cups with wine, pregaming for later. Nesta laughs while grabbing my hand leading me into Feyre’s room. She has the biggest bathroom and closet for these occasions. We all start getting ready putting on our preferred style of makeup and clothing. Laughing loudly as we gossip about Beron’s hairline that keeps going further back as each year passes. We truly don’t know if it is but we all love roasting that horrible man. Once we are satisfied with our looks for the night we get ready to winnow to Veela, a club the IC doesn’t frequent too often. It’s newer and doesn’t have the huge crowd Rita’s does. It’s perfect, truly. We won’t run into anyone we know, not too crowded, but fun and rowdy. We pack the leftover mirthroot and tobacco from last month and winnow to the club saving us some time. We walk right in finding our usual table free in the corner. 

    “Let’s start with some shots ladies.” Nesta yells out heading to the bar, I’m a bit scared because Nesta’s choices in liquor are questionable at times. Feyre and I start people watching and laughing as we see the funny things the already drunk patrons are doing. I start rolling a blunt and a few j’s also a few cigarettes as I tend to want to smoke one after a good drink or two. Nesta comes back with the shots and our preferred mixed drinks in hand. We raise our glasses cheering for another successful Bat Wives Wine Night. 

    About an hour or so later we are tipsy, Nesta not so as she prefers to smoke mirthroot. Her struggles with drinking have lessened, she has a drink or two while she watches Feyre and I dance on tables. Nesta nursing a joint between her fingers swaying to the music she loved. Nesta says the plant helps her feel connected to it. Whatever, I don't care as long as we do what we want and feel safe doing it. I am a fan of both, I hop off the table and take the joint between my lips taking a long drag before exhaling into her mouth as we both giggle uncontrollably. Her red eyes meet mine, seeing Nesta relaxed and having fun is a privilege and I’m glad she feels safe enough to do so. We all love our mates but I think being with each other brings a new peace to our hearts. Sisters and friends, we are loved. For the first time in a long time we are loved. Her eyes widen, face slack as I laugh and turn I start coughing inhaling sharply as I see them. 

Our husbands. 

Our mates. 

Staring. 

    I gently pull Feyre off the table where she was dancing with two other fae, gently pushing her head to make her see what we see. Feyre chokes on her breath. 

“Shit…” Feyre mutters. Shit, indeed. 

*BOYS POV*

    Flying to the House of Wind, Azriel thought of his sweet mate. Years they’ve indulged their wives in their one night of secrecy. They deserved it, for being selfless and caring. Their mates have sacrificed a lot for them, for the Night Court. But they are busy bodies at heart, they can’t help but be curious. They love their wives, they just want to be included. Azriel lands on the balcony to see Cass and Rhys nursing a glass of whiskey. He walks in and pours himself a glass. 

    “Az, what do you think they do all night?” Cass says looking into his glass, pouting. Rhys looks unamused, Nesta probably told him off for being nosy. “Cass, they’re women. They drink their wine and dish about the new love interest in the books they read. Don’t think too hard you’ll hurt yourself.” Rhys chuckles as Cass throws a pillow at him. Rhys ducking slightly missing the pillow. 

    “I’m not but you know what I’m talking about. They smell like tequila and there’s traces of makeup and good perfume on them. Think about it, what do our mates truly get up to?” Cass says. Azriel sits and starts to think while Rhys and Cass get into it. Azriel the ever observant once couldn't have missed this right? He trusted his mate, knew she wouldn’t do anything stupid. Right? 

    Rhys stands after an hour or two of them not so obsessively tracking back to all the times they’ve had their Wine Nights. “Let’s go to the house now, we’ll say we forgot something. Catch them off guard.” He looks at the boys in confirmation. All their eyes light up in glee of possibly catching their mates doing something scandalous. But how they underestimate their wives is truly amusing. How they didn’t catch on after two years, even more so. 

    They set off for the River House when they landed there was silence. No giggling or tinking of wine glasses. Nothing. At first panic rushed in thinking someone hurt their mates but once they reached the master bedroom they saw clothes strung across the place, makeup and hair products messily sitting on the counter. The girls usual PJ’s on the floor. They went out.

     Cass scoffs, “I knew it! I KNEW THEY WENT OUT WITHOUT US! HA RHYS, I TOLD YOU!” he booms loudly, happy to be right and Rhys to be wrong. Azriel immediately makes a plan to find them, sending his shadows out. Once he gathered they were in the city they set their sights there. They went to Rita’s, not a trace. They searched restaurants and pleasure halls, Azriel questioning the staff there. They learned not only did they go out tonight but have frequented these places multiple times, without them. They were smart, Az gave them that. The girls used cash wherever they went instead of billing them, going as far as to use fake names and backstories when they would stop by the herb shop to purchase mirthroot and tobacco. Something they did not know their mates indulged in. For a second they questioned their mates, if they truly knew them. Now they for sure were set to find out answers. Azriel’s shadow reported to him they were across the city in a new club. 

    The music was pounding, drunk and high fae dancing or sitting and laughing. Azriel first spotted his High Lady and mate dancing on a table top, Feyre pouring tequila down his mate’s throat. Azriel couldn't lie, the sight made his pants tighten, seeing the hard liquor pouring down his wife’s very low top trickling onto her breasts. Watching her throat bob up and down, very similar sight to when she has him in her mout- “WHAT THE FUCK!” Rhys exclaims though it sounds more like a whisper compared to the very raunchy music booming in the background. Az notes that though Feyre lets loose at Rita’s and has fun, Feyre looks unhinged. As if she wasn’t the High Lady of Night but a 20 something year old who was having fun. Azriel laughed as he watched with his brothers, they stayed in the corner out of the way but still in eye sight of their girls. He watched his mate get off the table and steal the joint Nesta was nursing, blowing it in her mouth. Cass watches just as intently, in fascination and horniness. “I didn’t know they did THIS on their wine nights, I didn’t even know Nes smoked at all.” Cass says. He’s starting to wonder just how nice it would be to get Nesta this relaxed then fuck her for hours under smoke induced love making. Rhys is no better, watching Feyre swing her hips against the strangers around her. Wanting so badly to take her in the bathroom. But first it’s business. 

“Alright, brothers. They’ve had their fun now let’s crash.” Rhys said with a smirk. All together they marched towards their mates and stood waiting for them to realize. All had a mask of indifference though they really wanted to burst out laughing. One by one each girl’s head turned and paled. 

[africanotaku92]

Schrodinger's Boy

I missed Phan Phic Phight but now I'm here for Dannymay! Not really going along with the prompts, just wanted to write something for the month.

I dedicate this to @five-rivers because i love their stuff so much!

Please, enjoy!

***

Schrödinger’s Boy

It was dead when she saw it.

Oh so very dead, but walking. Talking. Living.

That really doesn’t make sense, so let’s start from the beginning;

Nelia Ugochi d’Bandinello was not a normal child. Ever since she was young, she could see death. And no, not like the walking skeleton clad in black robes and a scythe most people assume, but real death; the dead, the dying, the undead, all. No one, not even her closest family members knew, and she intended to keep it that way. As long as she kept to her own and didn’t cross the line for the rules, she was safe.

Ever since her family moved to this country, she knew the small, sleepy town was a little dead. The essence was in every nook and cranny, even the air had a thin yet distinctive layer of it. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

That is, until now.

The air’s death suddenly sharpened the moment before it walked in.

At first glance, it looked like a boy. A cute boy in fact. Short compared to her tall. Pale skin in contrast to her deep dark, straight black hair opposed to curly blond. Baby blue opposing forest green. But then, the closer she looked, the more she noticed what was off. Skin was a little too pale to be considered healthy, and became slightly transparent as she saw more. Hair was wispy and floaty, almost defying gravity, almost flowing like it was under water as its head bounced. Eyes a bit more, sunken, a bit more tired. Worst of all, its heartbeat sounded so, so slow.

And now, it was sitting two tables across from her.

She swallowed the milkshake that threatened to spill out of her mouth. She tried to turn back to her food, tried to ignore its presence. But she kept glancing its way, turning back to the most terrifying yet fascinating creature she had ever seen.

And she just. Kept. Staring.

One of its cohorts – the black one with glasses – pointed at her direction, and it suddenly looked over. Their eyes made contact. She gasped and looked away.

‘Such haunting eyes.’ She thought.

“Nelia? What’s wrong?” She looked up to see her brother Irnerio, who had previously been trying to unhinge his jaw to fit an absolutely massive burger, was now looking at her in concern.

“Nothing.” She forced out. She glanced back at them. Her brother’s concerned face was already contorting into a smug grin.

“Oh? Falling in love already?” He chuckled “It’s the pale boy, right?” Her cheeks heated. Definitely not what was happening.

“Shut up.”

“Well, you did say that one of the advantages of moving was ‘Date cute Americans’. Though I must say, I always thought that the goth girl would be more your type. You could both indulge in your weird fascination with death.”

She hit her brother in the ribs.

“Stolto*.” She hissed. “I said shut up.”

Her brother laughed.

***

“Dude, the new girl is totally checking you out.”

Danny swallowed his bite of a burger. “What?”

He, Sam and Tucker had gone to Nasty Burger for lunch that Saturday, and had noticed the two newest additions to the town residence. The girl had been looking at them ever since they walked in.

“She’s probably not into me. Probably looking at Sam. They look foreign, so for all we know, she may be their first goth.”

“An honour I am willing to have with pride.”

“She’s looking over here right now!”

Danny turned to where Tucker was pointing and sure enough, she was looking at them. They made eye contact, and hers widened and she looked away.

“See? Totally into you.” Danny rolled his eyes.

“Whatever, Tuck.” He continued eating his burger. But somehow, he couldn’t shake the stare off of him. As if she was looking past his flesh and staring at the very ghost that made his soul.

He shivered at the thought.

***

Oh God above, it went to her school.

The creepy thing goes to her school.

She wondered how it got into her school. She wondered why, of all things, it had to attend as a student.

Mondays where truly the worst days of the week.

She had learned the creatures name was Danny Fenton, official school weirdo, son of the two most successful ghost hunters (oh the irony), and all-round loser she shouldn’t interact with (according to the Mexican girl that approached her). She didn’t really care though, as much as she was weary, she still wanted to know what it was. And she was determined to find out.

The bell rang, pulling her out of her thoughts. She sighed and pulled her books from her locker. She didn’t want to be late.

***

Hours later, school was long over, and Nelia was busy at work in the kitchen, kneading dough for her second batch of strawberry calzones, the first already in the oven. Her mother stood at in front of the doorway, watching her.

“That’s a lot of dessert calzones for 4 people.”

She finished kneading and started rolling out the dough. “Oh no, ours are part of the last batch. Most of these are offerings.” She turned to her mother. “I’m going to the Cemetery after dinner. To pay some respects.”

Her mother sighed. There was no talking her out of this. Every time they go someplace new, she always paid her respects at a local gravesite. She stopped trying to prevent her a long time ago.

“Well, just be back before midnight. But in the meantime, let me help you close the ones you’ve already filled. We could talk, use some mother daughter bonding time.” She smiled and nodded at her mum, handing her a spare apron. She gladly took it and set to work beside her daughter.

“Have you heard? There’s a story I heard. They say this town has some kind of ghost hero…”

***

It was late in the evening, and she had paid her respects at the last grave when she saw him.

And he was oh so very much Alive.

Silver white hair adorned his head like a glowing crown. Striking, electric green eyes, a black jumpsuit with white boots and gloves. Veins, across his skin, visible with the implication of pure green death flowing in them, the sound of each breath he takes. A pulsating buzz emitting from his chest, almost sounding like a beating heart. These where the features of Amity Park’s local hero and (dead) celebrity, Danny Phantom.

And he had just landed in front of her.

“Um, are you ok? It’s pretty late out.”

She blinked at first, startled to hear him talk, but composed herself enough to speak.

“Ah, yes I’m fine. Just, paying my respects.” She gestured to the grave and the basket of food.

“Oh, really? That’s nice of you! Apart from family, hardly anyone pays respect these days.”

“Yes, it’s something I try to do everywhere I go. Speaking of respect, where’s yours?”

Danny blinked. “My what?”.

“Your grave. I have to pay my respects to you. This is the only cemetery in town, but I didn’t see your grave.”

Danny froze in shock. He hadn’t really thought about it.

“Oh. I kind of, uhm, don’t have one?” Because I’m not really dead.

It was Nelia’s turn to be shocked. And then she was angry. Was this town really so ungrateful that they didn’t have a grave for their hero? That wouldn’t do.

“Where do you want one?”

“What?”

“Where would you want your grave? I’m going to make you one.”

Danny’s eyes widened.

“Your… going to make a grave for me?” “Of course? It’s only common decency, a basic right to the dead. I might not have your body, but if I have a photo to at least mark your image, it would do.”

Danny was stunned by this gesture. No one had offered him a grave before. So, he told her about his ideal spot.

Weeks later, in a secluded spot in the woods, he stands with her above a freshly dug grave, underneath a willow tree, facing directly at the night sky marked with a picture of him in his ghost form. She drops a plate of calzones and lights some lavender incense. She pays her respects and stands back letting him trace over the picture and admire the grave. It’s not the best grave, but it’s also the only one he’s received. He couldn’t help it, as a few tears dripped from his eyes. It was a sweet gift.

He turns to her, clasps his hand in hers. He manages to choke out between tears.

“Thank you.”

She stares back at him. This action, it’s so… human. She senses familiarity, like she could almost imagine him when he was alive……

Oh.

Oh.

The connection between the dead boy and alive ghost hits her like a train, all the similarities adding up. She smiles at him.

“It’s your grave. You should bring your friends to see it.”

His eyes widen in panic, wondering how she found out. She shakes her head.

“I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

He relaxes and nods, let’s go of her hands and they stare back at his very own grave. Sam and Tucker are going to flip when they see it.

That night, she’s back in her room, wide awake, thinking of everything that happened. His hands were cold, but not like death cold. Like he had stuck his hands in the freezer. His tears were so real.

This boy, who was dead yet alive. Walking perfectly on the line between life and death, tittering to neither side.

Schrödinger’s boy indeed.

[rainydayhogwartsimagines]

If you died instead of Cedric (Draco x reader)

I am so sorry for the angst but I cannot get this out of my mind.

Warnings: This gets so fucking sad. Death is mentioned obviously, crying, swearing

You were a champion instead of Cedric, making you automatically feel guilty

Cedric though, was basically training you, walking you through what to do

Draco hated seeing you so drained as you trained

But the look on your face when you got your first victory was amazing

You held that damn egg so high almost to say "LOOK AT WHAT I JUST DID!"

Draco was proud, being like "Guys, that's my girlfriend."

You trained even harder, working as best as you could to make it to the end

Course you were pissed when you discovered that your second trial was Draco basically chained to a lake

He assured you afterwards he was fine but you still were pissed.

Draco kissed your head, telling you that he was glad you helped him

You helped Harry along the way if you had information he didn't

After all, he wasn't supposed to be in that competition but he was.

You and Harry were friends for years but this brought you closer

The Yule ball was weird, certain adults congratulating you on your triumphs saying that you'd probably win

You absolutely hated Rita Skeeter

She would always try to catch you and Draco off guard but usually fail

She's the epitome of that one meme: "YOU TWO ARE HAVING SEX" "Damn Draco why didn't you say anything I would've put my book down"

The final trial came and you had this bad feeling.

You wanted to drop out the second you saw that maze.

"Draco, something is wrong, I can feel it." You murmured.

He frowned. "If you don't want to do this, it's okay." He assured.

You looked at him and then the maze.

You didn't realize this would be a fatal mistake.

You got to the end, discovering with Harry that the cup was a portkey.

You landed on your stomach and you grunted.

"What the fuck?" You mumbled.

Harry frowned looking at something.

It all happened so quickly, the flashes of light and then this feeling of electricity pulsing through you.

You were knocked to the ground and you just... You died

Harry couldn't believe it. Not you... No please not you.

He was crying the entire duel and carried you back with him when he got out of there

He was crying so hard as everyone was cheering, unaware of the situation

It wasn't until Draco sprinted down there that they realized something was wrong.

He let out this broken scream after seeing you and Cedric just stood there in shock

Fred and George both stood there shocked to see their best friend just... Gone.

Harry had to be pulled away from you and when Draco finally saw that face...

Oh God it was bad

Snape even had to turn away

Yes, you could be bothersome but damn it you were a kid.

You made those around you laugh and never left anyone truly alone.

Draco spent most of his time now in the hufflepuff common room

Cedric couldn't look at the common room the same, he always expected to see you sitting on the couch with a book saying hello

Fred and George towards the end of the year told Draco that he was welcome to come to their home for summer so he didn't have to deal with everything at home

To their surprise he actually came

Molly hated seeing everyone so drained

Fred and George would make people smile yes, but damn it it wasn't the same.

But Molly will never forget seeing Draco drinking a glass of water at the table in the middle of the night

She sat down with him and he just...

He could see Molly really wear off on you and the traits just... It matched up to a point he was crying.

She hugged him and told him that even though you're gone he still had family who loved him and would be there for him

But he just... He started talking to Molly about why it hurt him so much

"She told me Molly. She looked me in the eyes and told me that something felt wrong." He sobbed.

She hugged him tighter.

"If I just would've stopped her."

Fred and George the next year absolutely dreaded this bitch Umbridge

Draco hated her the most.

She even pretended to know what he was going through

"I understand you lost your friend last year but--"

"She was the love of my life. Do not dare bring her into this." Draco snapped.

Harry hated her even more, hearing her say things like "Look, your friend is just gone okay, she's not coming back"

Mcgonagall was not having that shit though and basically told her to shut the fuck up.

Hermione never thought that libraries could be so sad

But damn it every time she sat down she expected to see you next to her doodling or doing origami

Instead it was empty.

Arthur and Molly felt like they lost a child

Draco flat out refused to return home after discovering the alliance killed his GIRLFRIEND.

He joined the order and Sirius assured him that the rest of the order was taking your death hard

Remus was shocked and really upset. He never expected to lose a student like this.

Sirius remembered you, always trying to keep Harry from getting into trouble.

Tonks remembered you, you seemed so bubbly and cool

She also bonded with you for sharing the same house.

Everyone fought twice as hard because they lost their friend

Draco was more of a healer though, helping the crew after the battle.

When Sirius died he was there helping Harry because he felt like if he didn't you'd be pissed

Draco wore a ring of yours on a chain, never taking it off

As more deaths began to happen Draco just converted that pain into absolute anger

That was unleashed in the battle.

When Ginny wad nearly attacked he defended her, killing Bellatrix himself.

But it was what he said that caught everyone off guard.

"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY SISTER!"

Draco also ended up saving Fred too.

The amount of power and pain that Draco inflicted during the battle was so concerning.

He actually almost died.

He took a hit and passed out.

He could see you.

My God it was you. He missed you.

"Draco? No no. Hell no, it's way too soon for you." You said.

"Love... I just want to see you again." He said.

"... Draco I'm always with you. But this is not your time." You said softly.

He remembered your hand on his cheek and kissing it.

He woke up with Fred sighing in relief. "He's alive!" George said.

He swore as he looked towards the great hall's doors he could see you walking away.

When Harry died he was so angry. How many more people were they going to lose!?

Draco became absolutely unhinged and uhm

Killed Nagini.

And basically said "FUCK ALL OF THIS" when Harry came back as he punched a death eater, took back the wand and booked it.

The battle ended and the amount of lives saved by Draco was through the roof

He somehow saved remus and tonks dude.

This man really said "NOT TODAY MOTHER FUCKERS!"

He would come over every holiday to the Weasley's.

Draco would have a couple of moments where he could almost hear you laughing at a joke that Fred or George would make.

He was apart of this little family and they loved him

He would stand outside sometimes and just listen to the breeze.

Sometimes he could hear you if he listened hard enough

He had hard days where he just didn't want to function.

But his family had his back if anything went wrong.

Draco would work (willingly!) With Fred and George sometimes in the shop

But in the end he became a healer.

Mcgonagall would never forget the dent you left.

But something made draco's days a bit more bearable

You see: in the dungeon near the Hufflepuff common room there was a portrait of a kind girl who would talk to students.

It was you.

[jerichomere]

MBS EPISODE EIGHHHHT

weak. I hate to say it but I could feel it in my heart from the start. It had good moments but this episode just didn’t bring it home. I’m going to break this up into my usual notes and then some general evaluation. Notes: What is the deal with curtain and food? He has so many weird scenes with meals.. there’s probably some hidden meaning here but I don’t know what it is And they didn’t get to chuck-root the school :((((( Constance? Wants to pour acid on curtain’s feet Haha I liked Kate’s little “Nyoope” when the recruiters found her Martina redemption and the fighting tetherball team, sure Jackson and Jillson get even more unhinged. they terrify me We got Kate yeeting Constance up the tower, but her bucket had a built in rope motor somehow WE GOT KATIE-KAT but we didn’t get Sorry it took me so long And Milligan’s still moody instead of joyous Go Constance, break the thing, yay Number Two and Rhonda had some real shippy energy in this episode and PLEASE they are SISTERS Two more close profile shots of curtain in this episode, one where he is physically shorter than Milligan but dominating the interaction, and one where he’s physically looking down at Reynie but Reynie’s getting to him. Reynie has a heart to heart and curtain passes out. That’s different. Sticky even said, “it’s anger” and he was like “no, it’s vulnerability” oooooookay then. The whisperer is not an intercom/loudspeaker. sheesh. So the kiddos leave and the twins talk, resolving nothing, then curtain escapes REYNIE AND MISS PERUMAL NO COMPLAINTS HERE *sobs* Kate and Madge at the end <3 Constance refuses adoption!?!?!?!??! And no age reveal obviously rip Sticky’s family redemption he’s going to the totally not made up Boatwright Academy now Mr Benedict is like, I love you all, no snowball fight, the end. SIKE Curtain, SQ, and a totally real engineer lady are on a BOAT. You know, I felt bad for the engineer this whole series, as she is portrayed as kind of doing the technical work hoping it’ll be used for good, while curtain abuses its practical application, but her mood really shifted in that last scene. She was like heheh hey guy that I know is definitely is evil, howabout this mysterious blueprint... are they really trying to set up the sequel. Some tree branches will have to get pretttty bent.

Evaluation: keep reading! (sorry it gets long)

To recap what I’ve said from the start, I think the casting is fantastic but the tone is wrong. The darker, more saturated filter, the isolating camera shots, and very understated music make things colder and stilted. This is a constant throughout the whole series. The book was warm, messy, and full of charm, which I didn’t feel watching the show.

characters were.. compromised? Mr B starts off with a LIE about test winners going to Boatwright Academy. That undermines EVERYTHING he does from then on. “Regrettable but necessary” DOESN’T cut it. He’s also just so anxious and jittery instead of his gentile, kind, strong book self. Just from the show, they didn’t frame his genius very well. He seems more like a fool. Not really confidence-inspiring. In the same way, Being directed to cheat is one thing, but Reynie should NOT have lied to SQ to manipulate him into seeing the forest or whatever. Yeah reynie felt bad about it and SQ called him on it, but this is like the core values of our protagonist team, the strong love for truth. Also, I feel like in the show Reynie’s leadership isn’t highlighted. Like, everyone else has their thing but you almost wonder why he’s framed as the main character. The girls got bonding and the boys got bonding but there was hardly opportunity for him to really bring the team together into a cohesive unit Also, as much as I love Number Two’s life of crime (because it’s funny), she too should have that love of truth, but instead regularly does unlawful things. AND they never explained her eating, and even stopped having yellow clothes :( Additionally, the side story of her and Rhonda’s friction (entertaining I suppose) also really changed the character dynamic. In the book, the adult team was unwavering and wise, a sturdy basis for the perilous missions of the children. But their internal strife, while adding drama, makes them seem unreliable and less absolutely good and trustworthy. And I think trust and integrity are key parts of the book’s solid narrative. Constance’s refusal of the adoption felt wrong too. She was like, “Respectfully decline, but. I’ll stick around here.” I think they were trying to keep going with her contrariness, but it just comes across as foolish pride? Constance is a LITTLE GIRL. She DESERVES a FAMILY. SHE DESERVES A LOVING PARENT (and two wonderful sisters). Yeah family doesn’t have to be by blood OR lawful paperwork, but her actions in this scene really just. cuts off the feels at the knees. We KNOW she’s strong and independent but that doesn’t mean she HAS TO BE or even necessarily WANTS to be all the time. Over the course of the series we see her warming up to people, a kind word here, a little smile there, but this adoption refusal is.. harsh. Then we’ve got Sticky. Yes, he struggles with the comfort of the whisperer. And he overcomes it. BUT in one of the earlier episodes, they had him fighting with the team, defending the whisperer, dismissing his friends... and I count this as betrayal. It may be extreme on my part, but I think he went too far. The Society is the Society. In the book he bested his fears for them and with their support. Yeah he desperately wanted to just give in but he had PRINCIPLES and knew why he couldn’t. His honor, his responsibility to stop curtain, and his loyalty to his friends got him though. But in the show he just dumped them. And then was like, oh oops jk I’m back. (I knowwwwww the book has the privilege of being able to explain characters’ thought processes and emotional states, while shows have to work with more tangible actions and words but stilll I did not Like That) And finally, curtain wasn’t smart. He had hired people doing all the work. He just used it to his ends. Less evil genius and more manipulating creep. But this? I’m more ok with. As an villain, he got the job done. But this makes him less of a foil for Mr Benedict and more of an antagonist, if that makes sense. In the book they never knew each other, but were both alone in the world and greatly smart, and they chose verrry different paths. Whereas in the show he and B were always kind of opposites, warring in motivation and method from the start.

Let’s talk about the boss battle (such as it was). I said it was weak and I meant it. The book is heart pounding. There is so much going on, and so many people in play, the narration jumping all over the place in real time, all culminating in that clash at the top of the tower. Now, the show... the highs weren’t the highs. It felt more like checking off story points. Kate and constance outside - check. Resist the whisperer to stall for time - check. Milligan reveal - check. Reynie starting to figure out narcolepsy triggers - check. Constance shouting then you are the greatest fool of all - um, no, that didn’t happen. Constance defeating the whisperer - check. Curtain escapes - check. We got zero action. No good fights. I know Emmy Deoliveira is a kid and I’m not mad at her for not being able to do action sequences or run with Constance piggyback. But there was almost no physical conflict on-screen, and that’s Kate’s real time to shine. Also they had Number two and Rhonda in the tower ready to fight and then they just didn’t. All this build up for nothing. Furthermore, and I think this is the biggest problem, there was no momentum. Yeah they cut from scene to scene, but the music and tone cut scene-to-scene too. So there was like, dramatic music, Kate’s ready to fight! Get hyped! and then cut to absolutely silent, mr curtain staring at someone. feel mildly disturbed. and then cut to Rhonda and Number two being friends and ready to fight! Aww! And yay! Get hyped! And then cut back to Sticky sitting in a chair, dead silent. It goes on like this. The music, the urgency, should have carried throughout, building in intensity and desperation as the kids come together and curtain unravels more and more and then BAM! curtain down and OH NO! the whisperer and finally Constance’s “I... DON”T.... CARE!!!” and then the madcap escape from the island. Watching, I just couldn’t get swept away. Storywise, they tied it all up and logically it made sense but the emotional culmination just wasn’t there. It was over and done too quick. It fell flat. I didn’t feel the struggle, the suspense. And then they gave us a fabricated Mr B and Curtain conversation that didn’t really help anything. And then the falling action had some nice moments but as I mentioned, the things with constance and sticky kind of made it feel less relieving, joyful, and sweet. I know a snowball fight is elaborate to set and film but I would have loved to see it.

Final thoughts I can’t help but love the kids. I’ll say it again, I sure liked this casting. And for all the changes they had to make, the original central plot was there, and most of the characters were recognizable even with all the alterations. So I did have problems with some of that underlying integrity, as well as the overall tone and execution, but I also laughed at the little funny things, jammed to the title theme, and was excited to see this, my favorite book in the world, get more recognition. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to adapt a work of prose into an audiovisual medium, and considering how outlandish the book sometimes got, they gave it their best shot. I didn’t love it but I can recognize the accomplishment. In terms of faithful and well-made adaptations, on a scale of Percy Jackson to Harry Potter, I’d give The Mysterious Benedict Society a 6.5/10.

[downwiththeficness]

In the Bond-Chapter 13

Summary: Lilah often wished she’d never said yes to working with the Gecko brothers—usually while dodging gunfire. At no time was she regretting that decision more than when she’s hanging upside down from the ceiling, staring down a group of hungry culebras and one (1) extremely powerful sun god.

Word Count: ~2,600

Warnings: None

A/N: This is an AU of my Story In the Blood, which can be read here. Basically, this fic explores what would have happened if Lilah had met up with Geckos before she met Brasa.

Taglist: @symbiont13

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Lilah swung the shopping bag in one hand, the other shoving the keys into her pocket. She’d ended out keeping the SUV Brasa had lent her the week previous, claiming that she liked the ‘rental’ so much that she’d made an offer to buy it outright. It was a believable lie, Lilah had a habit of picking up and dropping off cars on a whim. Easier to keep under the radar when no one knew what make and model she drove.

The air conditioning in the bar hit her hard, goosebumps rising along her arms. It was nearly empty, as it usually was mid-afternoon. Too late for the morning crowd to stay, too early for the night crowd to meander in. The room smelled vaguely of liquor and the sun streaming in through the windows cast unfamiliar shadows over the floor.

She noticed that Kate was sitting at the bar, nursing a soda. For once, Richie was nowhere to be seen. Lilah sidled on up to her, dropped the bag on the floor as she took a seat, and signaled to bartender.

“Bourbon and coke.”

Kate smiled at her, “Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?”

This was said with a smile that could potentially be described as sly. Lilah, like Seth, didn’t exactly adhere to a strict schedule when it came to alcohol. Too many nights that turned into days that turned into diving into a bottle to forget.

“It’ll be five o’ clock in...three hours,” Lilah quipped as she took the glass from the bartender, “Close enough.”

Lilah sat with her drink for a while, enjoying the fact that there was little to no activity going on in the bar. Aside from Kate and the bartender, the room was pretty much empty. She realized that she had spent almost all of her awake hours the last few days either catching up on what had happened while she was gone or in some kind of meeting.

Seth had taken a more active role in managing the staff, and he consulted with Lilah daily about one thing or another—usually some sort of internal conflict. She’d taken to writing down some basic policies and procedures for him to reference so that he wasn’t knocking on her door in the middle of the night with questions. Despite having just come back from a three month vacation, Lilah still needed to sleep.

A question floated across that train of thought, “What’s Richie been up to?”

Kate gave a little shrug, “The usual, trying to maintain some sort of order with our nocturnal friends.”

“Oh?”

Nodding, Kate added, “Its not just Brasa’s people that are struggling to adjust. We’ve had some kickback here, too.”

To give herself a moment to think, Lilah took a slow pull from her glass, “And how is that going?”

“Well,” her voice had a soft tone of uncertainty, “They aren’t super happy that we’ve done some population control. Kind of kills the mood when we’re trying to get them to buy in to the new way of doing things.”

“I can imagine.”

Given what Lilah had seen in the cave not a few days before, she had a good idea of what Seth and Richie were facing on the other side of the fence. They offered work and beds to those who could staff the bar, but didn’t have the organization or power that Brasa seemed to have. It was lucky that Richie had such a mind that he could predict attacks with an uncanny accuracy. Otherwise, or both brothers would be dead by now.

Rolling her neck, Kate offered, “But, there are a surprising number that want to assimilate—they miss their old lives, you know?”

Lilah did know. There was still a part of her, slowly dwindling, that wanted to go back to the night she met Seth and tell him to fuck off. Everything would have been a whole lot simpler now, if she had. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have met Brasa. He’d become so critically ingrained in her everyday life that the thought of him not being there felt too strange to contemplate.

“Are you gonna talk about it now?” Kate asked without provocation. She had pushed her soda away and was fixing Lilah with a narrowed look.

Lilah blinked, “What?”

With a sigh borne out of frustration, Kate turned on her stool and faced Lilah head on, “The bond. Are you going to talk about it?”

Stunned, Lilah felt her jaw unhinge as she stared at Kate in shock. She went over her recent memories to double check that she hadn’t given it away. Lilah had kept it hidden, she was sure of it.

Kate laughed, a high, clear sound that made Lilah flinch, “Richie told me about it months ago. You can’t hide that kind of thing from other culebras. Its supposed to be obvious, for safety’s sake. Keeps them from crossing boundaries accidentally.”

Lilah continued to stare, her chest tightening as she slowly began to panic. She’d ask Brasa about how it was ‘obvious’ later, when her mind had stopped spinning. For now, she had no lie to put things to right again.

Kate noted her stricken expression and laid a gentle hand on her arm, “Its okay. I won’t tell. I just thought you might need someone to talk to. I know I did.”

Dear holy fuck, but Lilah really needed someone to talk to. All of these months and months of keeping her mouth shut had built up in a way that took an immense effort to subsume.

After another moment’s pause, Lilah blurted, “I don’t know how to handle it. Its everywhere, all the time. And… the worst part is that I don’t care. I’m still struggling to accept it, but I want to keep it.”

The dichotomy of being both ashamed and deeply satisfied by her relationship with Brasa was the thing that kept her chest tight, her shoulders hunched. It sat next to her as she tried to sleep at night. It needled her in the quiet moments between tasks. Lilah rubbed at her forehead, feeling a headache coming on.

Kate’s smile was serene, “That’s good, because if Richie’s anything to go by, Brasa wouldn’t allow you to break the bond, even if you wanted to. He’d die to keep it intact.”

Lilah’s brows came together, “What does that mean?”

“Exactly what I said. He’d do anything to keep you with him. He kind of has to, anyways.”

“What does that mean?”

Kate lifted her hand to signal the bartender, “Two of what she’s having.” Then, she turned back to Lilah, “Listen, I don’t know if its matches up exactly with how my bond with Richie is, but Brasa is the one bonded to you, not the other way around.”

Lilah looked at her blank faced. The book had definitely not put it that way. Brasa had said he was the elder, he had said that he would be expected to lead.

The bartender brought their drinks and Kate fiddled with the little straw, stirring the ice around, “You’re weaker than he is.”

Lilah sneered, “Is it that obvious?”

Kate rolled her eyes, pushing Lilah’s glass at her, “Its always the strong party’s responsibility to protect and serve the weaker. Evens the playing field when—is it fate? Whenever whatever that decides these things steps in.”

“I don’t get it,” Lilah said blandly.

Honestly, she was getting tired of feeling confused. All these shifting realities were difficult enough to track and follow. She didn’t need to feel stupid on top of it.

Giving another little shrug, Kate took their drinks from the bartender, setting one in front of Lilah, “He’s like a billion years old and a literal demigod. The bond would weaken him long term, if he didn’t build you up, if he didn’t lend you some of his power.”

This rang of familiarity, and it made Lilah’s skin tighten with awareness of how she had never put two and two together. Still, the pieces weren’t locking into place cleanly enough for her to feel like she was on steady ground.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Swirling the amber liquid in her glass, Kate fixed her with a coy smile, “It means that a large part of his life will be spent listening to and anticipating your needs. In return, your blood will make him stronger than he ever was, or ever could be without it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Welcome to supernatural mating practices,” Kate deadpanned. “None of it really makes any sense.”

Lilah turned the whole thing around in her mind, “So, he has to do what I say?”

“He is inclined to do as you ask, but your safety and protection is his priority, above all.”

There was something in the statement that didn’t sit well with Lilah. She was used to commanding some sense of obedience during jobs, but this was far more intimate. It felt wrong to know that she could just...ask for something, and he would do it without question.

“But,” Lilah continued, “I don’t want to order him around.”

Kate set her glass down, “I don’t doubt it. I’ve had to learn to watch my words around Richie. If I even look at something in store for more than five seconds, It’ll be waiting for me when we get home.”

Lilah thought about it. Brasa hadn’t bought her anything, that she could tell, but he had given in to her will on numerous occasions. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t figured it out yet.

“Have you had the dreams yet?”

Lilah snapped back to attention, “Dreams?”

“Yeah,” Kate prompted, her expression taking on a little excitement, “Where you’re sharing them?”

“Uh,” Lilah drawled, embarrassed, “A little.”

Kate nodded sagely, “If the bond is stressed, you’ll have more of them.”

“Why?”

“No idea,” Kate said as she fiddled with her glass.

There was a long silence, both of them lost in their thoughts. Lilah considered how far she’d come in her bond with Brasa, and how far she still needed to go. There were so many unknowns, and she feared that her reticence would eventually lead to him leaving her. And yet...Kate had said that he couldn’t—that would lead to worse things. Lilah could handle rejection, but eternal resentment was not something she was prepared to deal with.

“What’s he like?”

Lilah looked up at the question, her brows rising, “Who?”

Kate shot her a knowing look, “Brasa.”

Lilah considered the question, her breath flowing out of her lungs in a soft sigh, “He’s accommodating.”

“And?”

Lilah felt another little wave of embarrassment well up. She wasn’t used to disclosing this kind of information, and the thought of gushing to a girlfriend about a lover made her cringe. Still, this was likely the only person in the world who could really understand what she was going through, who could put things into perspective and help her make good decisions.

“He’s...smart. So smart. Every time we talk about the business, I feel like I’m taking a master class. And, he really listens to me, wants to know my opinion on things.”

“And?”

She thought further, “He’s attractive. Sometimes I look at him and I just…”

As she trailed off, Kate nudged her, “Have you had sex yet?”

“No,” Lilah admitted, “Although we’ve made out a few times—fuck, that makes me sound like a teenager.”

Kate chuckled, lifting her glass to her mouth, “That’s what I felt like, too. Although, I was actually, like, seventeen when Richie and I met.”

This was a story that Lilah had been waiting to hear. The two of them were so diametrically opposed in personality that the match seemed unlikely. She had asked Richie just the one time about how they got together, before Kate had been rescued from Amaru. His only answer was that he ‘kidnapped her.’

“Yeah?” Lilah prodded lightly.

“Yep,” she sat the glass down, “I don’t think either of us knew what was going on. Not until much later.”

“When did you finally figure it out?”

Kate pushed her dark hair from her face, her gaze contemplative, “After Amaru—in Xibalba, actually. We had a little time to talk when we were traveling between worlds. Richie had learned a lot while we were separated.” She paused, a smile forming on her lips, “He had to do a lot of convincing, but what Amaru knew, I knew. And, she knew about bonding. Even though I put it off for a bit, I knew eventually I would have to come to terms with it.”

Lilah felt the question she wanted to ask rise, and she almost tamped it down, but her lesser instincts kicked in, “Do you regret it?”

Kate shook her head, “Richie can be a real asshole, but he loves me. And all the other things that he is, all the things that make up our relationship, they satisfy me in ways I can’t describe.”

And that was exactly how Lilah felt, when she took the time to examine the bond more closely. All the restlessness of her life settled into a soothing, temperate pace when she was with him. Her eager ideas gained focus and precision, her impulsivity checked.

“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” Lilah said as she slumped in her chair.

Kate gave her sympathetic look, “I was trying to help you unload a bit of what you’ve been carrying around.”

To be fair, Lilah did feel lighter. There was still the issue of dealing with Seth and his temper when he found out, but she found that she liked having a secret ally in all of this. It lent her a small bit of safety that she appreciated.

Lilah glanced at her, “Does anyone else know?”

Shaking her head, Kate put her finger to her lips, “Its our secret, for now. But, it’ll come out eventually. Like I said, you can’t hide this kind of thing for long.”

“I know,” Lilah admitted, “Brasa is willing to keep this under wraps for the moment, but I can tell he’s frustrated by it.”

Kate watched her absorb that for a moment, then added, “Pro tip: Sleep with him.”

Lilah said her name in almost a yelp, shocked by the directive.

“I’m not kidding,” Kate said on a laugh, “Sex and blood are cornerstones of their relationships. They’re what bind them together, like it or not. Give him those things, and he’ll settle down enough so that you can figure this out.”

Lilah thought about it, then said the thing that had kept her hiding this secret for longer than she would like, “Seth is going to hate me.”

Kate acknowledged the statement with a salute of her drink, “He might not like it. He might mope around for a few months—hell, he might take off entirely. But, he’ll be back. He just has to have his tantrum first.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“How?”

Kate lifted a shoulder, “He did the same thing with Richie when he was turned. Ran off for a bit. He’ll come around. Once he realizes that being a big baby about it means that you won’t be in his life anymore.” She paused a second, then, “We’re a family, you know? All of us. And, the most important thing to Seth is family.”

“You think so?” Lilah echoed.

Kate smiled warmly, “I know so.”

[aros001]

Read through light novel vol. 14. Random thoughts.

I haven't read/watch a lot of harem stories. My exposure is mainly from Rosario+Vampire, Negima, UQ Holder, and maybe Code Geass and Overlord (I'm not sure if I should count Konosuba). So my perspectives on how harems typically work in stories is a bit limited. That said, I do like how Naofumi's "harem" differs from the norm I'm aware of.

Most harem MCs: Has many girls after his heart/wang and is either oblivious to it, can't make up his mind as to who he actually likes, or doesn't have the time for love/booty.

Naofumi: "Will you people f**king leave me alone?!"

I just love the concept of Naofumi's "harem", where a second person who likes him romantically isn't even introduced until volume 10 and Naofumi is absolutely annoyed with every member who joins his "harem", save for Raphtalia.

I tend to forget Naofumi has a brother because it isn't brought up that much, even though I did like that backstory for Naofumi we got in vol. 1 regarding him. It does make me wonder how much time is passing in his old world vs. this new one. With the other three heroes, they died, so they don't really have lives they can go back to. But for Naofumi's parents and brother he could theoretically be missing for months or years by the time if or when he goes back. But back on topic, I do like him drawing parallels to his family and Sadeena's, how his brother compares and contrasts with her and her sister when it came to the pressure from the parents. I already like Sadeena but it was nice to see her and Naofumi actually getting to bond a little over something that was very personal to one of them, without romance or attraction being the main drive of their interaction like it usually is. Honestly, there were some nice parallels drawn between characters throughout. Naofumi's brother with Sadeena and her sister. Sadeena and Raphtalia's father with Shildina and the child emperor. Even a little bit with Raphtalia's status in Q'ten Lo with Naofumi's in Siltvelt. It's a good thing she's not staying too long or she might end up in a harem bath like he did (even though, given the difference between male and female biology, there wouldn't be much point in that. She'd get her selection of guys but can only get pregnant with one at a time).

I'll admit, most of this book I was waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me, mainly because of Naofumi's comments throughout of how well the invasion was going and how stupid the enemy was being. I was waiting for it all to be some kind of trap or manipulation but...nope, their government really was just that bad and the victory was just that easy. On the one hand, it does make it feel like less of an earned victory, since they didn't have to fight too much to achieve it until the very end (and in that case it was mostly Sadeena and Raphtalia against technically the same single opponent), but on the other hand, in regards to the overall story, a comment from Naofumi does make an argument for why it works, comparing Q'ten Lo and its ruling class to Queen Melromarc. A respected ruler whom is very skilled at diplomacy and manages to work with or at least create truces with other countries, even those hostile to hers like Siltvelt, vs. the child emperor of a completely isolated country (save for some imports from Siltvelt) whom is placed on the throne far before he's ready and puppeted from behind the scenes by a very self-serving individual. There is certainly a very (unfortunately) real argument to be made as to why the latter would be already be on the verge of falling apart from such greed and sort-sighted actions. Wisdom and long-term planning vs. greed and short-term gains.

This is going to sound weird but Motoyasu #2 reminds me a little of Bakugo from My Hero Academia, in regards that they both fill a similar trope, where the character (a non-villain) is very unpleasant and easy to hate but you, the audience, do have to acknowledge, even begrudgingly, how good and skilled they are at what they do. He's a horrific perv and womanizer but his blacksmithing abilities are genuinely impressive, especially with how he handled that cursed blade from the Hydra and his explanation of life force applied to smithing. I don't think we've had another character quite like that yet in this story. The other three heroes were also unpleasant and easy to hate but after the first wave battle they never really showed anything the audience is forced to give them props for, at least in comparison to what Naofumi and party could already do. They were unpleasant and were useful only in what they could potentially be once they got their heads out of their asses, not for what they were currently. I imagine we'll get something similar to the trope with Trash at some point, as even the Queen herself talked about how brilliant a strategist he once was. Though Bakugo grew as a character as time went on and the unpleasant parts of his character slowly winded down. I'm not sure we'll see that with Motoyasu #2 and Trash. Trash is maybe more likely but he'll have more of a journey he'll have to go through after how unpleasant (and kind of unhinged) he's been.

The parts about Naofumi's character that I like the most have almost nothing to do with him being a hero. I love that he's a really good businessman, both of the good and shady parts of it, and that he's a really good cook, even when he's not adding life force to the dishes. For as much as he wants to go home, of the four heroes he'd be the one who'd have the easiest time settling down in the new world once the waves are gone, since being the Shield Hero just makes what he does a little easier and it's not absolutely essential to do it. He can use his shield to improve the quality of medicines or compound it for him but he still can make good medicine on his own.

Also that he can't stop basically adopting kids despite flatly denying that he is any sort of parental figure or that he should be seen as such.

"I'm not your mother!" He says as he wears an apron and cooks and dishes up delicious hot meals every day.

"I'm not your father!" He says as he teaches them confidence and toughens them up against those who'd ever try and hurt them again.

"I'm your owner! I'm a tyrant! A dictator! I'll make you work off every penny I've spent on you!" He says as he keeps them safely protected from the dangers of the world they can't yet handle and offers them a place of peace and security like they've never had before, taking the time out of his day to play with and entertain them when they ask him enough.

Naofumi collects son and daughter figures like Lilo and Steven Universe collect father and mother figures. No wonder Raphtalia and so many women like him. He's a business owner, can cook, never gets drunk, and is good with kids and animals (and threatened to feed a kid to an animal! That's double points right there).

That reminds me. I'm not sure how much time passes between when each group/generation of Holy Heroes is summoned but I'm curious when we'll meet (or if we've already met) a child/decedent of one of the previous heroes. A previous Shield Hero apparently really like his harems so I'm sure he must have sired at least a few children (unless the shield also offers protection against pregnancy (Condom Shield!)).

So...Makina. Bitch #3 or Kyo #2? I think either would fit, though I suppose Bitch #2 is just my nickname for Kyo and not one Naofumi ever gave him. Honestly, from just the short bit she was in the story, she kind of feels like if Kyo and Bitch had a baby.

...I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

I kind of love Ren and Rishia being exposition buddies, just exclaiming aloud all the techniques and magics that are happening during a fight.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/shieldbro/comments/fm85q5/read_through_light_novel_vol_14_random_thoughts/

[nekoabiwrites]

Battle Bonds

Ahhh! It feels so good to be back and writing again! Panto was great fun and I’m kinda missing it but also, I’m so happy to not have to watch the same show 60 times anymore...

Anyway, this fic was inspired by a freaking adorable piece of art by @artistictaurean with Roman and a lil cute Swablu: https://artistictaurean.tumblr.com/post/190329454010/holy-crap-i-actually-finished-something-just-a  Mega thanks to them for not only being super talented at making such darn cute art, but also for being chill with me writing this (even tho I was on anon asking but mehhhhhh details)

AU: None Pairing: None Words: 2644 Warnings: Remus and Deceit are in here. Anything else, please let me know!

Summary: Thomas has been on a bit of a pokemon kick recently and it has affected his imagination more than he would ever think of...

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Due to the recent release and information about new titles in the Pokemon franchise, Thomas had been thinking about and playing a lot of the series – much to Logan’s dismay. It had just been something he was doing, not once did Thomas even give a thought to how his gaming habit would affect his sides.

Roman lightly chewed on the end of his pencil as he tried to work out the perspective of the next detail to his sketch. It was rare to have all of the sides in the imagination with him after all, even more so that it was for social reasons rather than important ones. He dropped his head and added detail to the figure of Logan in his artwork, doing everything to capture the bewildered expression that was currently resting on the logical side’s features and the open book in his hands.

The prince couldn’t fault Logan for this, as he could hear the excited squeals of Patton off to his left as he discovered yet another new species that he didn’t realise existed.

“IT’S A PUPPY!” The paternal side yelled, holding Rockruff high above his head in order to show it off to the others. An amused snort and swishing of grass told Roman that Virgil was heading towards Patton to get a closer look at the small animal.

Time passed leisurely as the cycle of Patton finding new species, calling out that he found a new one and then being told which pokemon it was continued to repeat itself, all while Roman continued sketching. Eventually, Patton and Virgil settled down in view of Roman, allowing him to finally add them to his piece. Then there was an odd breeze that ruffled his hair and a weight was added to the top of his head.

Roman dropped his sketchpad and held his arms up, yelping loudly in surprise. He knew deep down it was fruitless to try, but his instinct was to attempt to look up and see what was perched upon his head.

Another Patton squeal had Roman freezing in place. The moral side jogged on up to Roman and coo’d at the creature on his head, “It’s so fluffy and – Oh! – It’s just like a cloud, and its so soft! Virgil, Logan! What’s this one?!”

“If memory serves, it is a swablu, Patton.” Logan approached, flipping the pages. It took seconds for him to find what he was looking for and he began to read aloud, “It is a primary normal type with a secondary flying type that was introduced in the third generation. Its category is the cotton bird pokemon. According to several entries in the pokedex of various games, swablus are very concerned with cleanliness and enjoy perching upon the heads of people.”

“I thought you didn’t care about this stuff?” Virgil asked slyly, gently brushing a finger along the tops of the swablu’s fluffy wings.

Logan flushed slightly and cleared his throat, “I do not recall saying that I didn’t care about it. I was simply attempting to get Thomas to understand that playing such a game for long periods of time is unproductive and-”

“I was just messing with ya, Logan. It’s okay.” Virgil snorted and rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

Roman was remaining fairly motionless as the others fawned over the pokemon perched upon his head. After getting confirmation on what pokemon it was, he’d regained his composure, sure that there was little to no threat. The prince reached up to pet the extremely friendly pokemon, feeling the cloud-like wings for the first time while also bringing the attention back down to himself with an exaggerated clearing of his throat. “Not that I mind being surrounded by attention, but my art was almost completed and now you have all moved from your positions. I place the blame upon you all if this turns out absolutely horrendous.” He gestured to the forgotten sketchbook resting in the grass.

Shortly after Roman had begun yet another round of bantering back and forth with Virgil and Logan, Patton saw a new pokemon that excited him, and he ran off. Virgil trailed behind, watching with amusement. Logan eventually moved in the same direction once Patton called for him yet again. Roman was now alone with the creature atop his head.

He summoned a floating mirror before himself and saw the blue bird for the first time. It looked to be starting to dose off, clearly comfortable in its position. The royal reached up again and gently stroked the bird, who seemed pleased with the gentle attention as it chirped in response. “How do you like the name Alto?” Roman asked rhetorically. The swablu perked up and flew in a small circle, just above Roman’s head, before seating itself again and almost nuzzling into the creative side’s hair. “I’ll have to take that as a yes.”

It wasn’t long until the hype died down and Thomas went back to his usual level of enjoyment of the series. This meant that if the sides wanted to keep all the random pokemon, Roman would have had to start working extremely hard to keep them all around. Thankfully, Patton wasn’t going to push his fellow side like that, and they all compromised on only keeping certain pokemon that they’d all become attached to – mostly due to the fact that their attachments would take some of the strain off of the creative side.

Out in the dirt courtyard of the castle located near the entrance to the imagination, Roman had placed a battling area for the pokemon, giving all of them a place to battle in a regulated, enclosed space.

“Servine is unable to battle.” Patton called out, “All three of Deceit’s pokemon have fainted! Roman wins! Yay Roman!” The moral side applauded, causing the Lillipup currently resting in his lap to yap alongside.

Roman laughed heartily, “Of course I won. What were you thinking, putting your grass type out against my superior flying type?” Alto soared over to rest upon Roman’s head, allowing her trainer to give her well earned scritches.

Deceit rolled his eyes, “It was because I have no knowledge of typing and most definitely had nothing to do with the fact I only had one pokemon left and therefore had no other options.” As he spoke, he returned the pokemon to its pokeball

“Now Deceit, be nice…” Patton chastised.

“Apologies.” Deceit sarcastically responded before stalking off to who knew where.

Patton went to say something to Roman, but was cut off by the creative side, “It’s quite alright, Patton. Not even the attitude from a slippery snake can dampen my mood!”

“Well, good! Let’s heal everyone up before the final match!” Patton hopped up from his cross-legged position on the ground and took Roman off to the side. Instead of battling on his own, Patton had taken the role of judge and healer. He found it was far more rewarding to help the fainted and injured pokemon than be the reason why they were hurt in the first place. Due to the fairly decisive victory, Roman’s pokemon took very little time to heal.

“There you go! All better now!” Patton handed the pokeballs back over to Roman, who replaced them back into their places on his belt. The moral side then looked around and bit his lip a little in worry, “I’m sorry, kiddo… but I need to go and find out where Dee went. Are you alright to wait just a little longer?”

“Of course he is!” came a third excited voice, who made both sides jump with his sudden presence and arms over their shoulders.

Roman’s smile fell and he sighed heavily, “I hate to admit this… but, for once, my brother is right… It’s more than fine for you to attend to business, Patton.”

“If you require a moderator, I am free to fulfil that role in Patton’s absence.” Logan cut in.

“Ooo! Yes! Let’s murder both of these birds with the stone!” Remus gleefully clapped his hands and hopped in place, whilst the other sides simply agreed to Logan’s proposition.

The two sides of creativity took a spot at each end of the field, staring each other down; Roman with a hardened glare that aimed to strike fear in his brother, Remus with his signature unhinged grin and twitching fingers hovering just over the balls resting against his side.

“The usual format and rules apply. Three pokemon per user, first to have all three faint is the loser. Are we agreed on this?” Logan called out. Both of the participants nodded. “Let the battle commence!”

Roman tossed out his first ball, summoning his precious swablu onto the field. Both looked as determined as the other. Remus, on the opposite side, released his first pokemon and everyone in attendance immediately grimaced.

“What in the heck is that thing?!” Roman yelled.

“It’s an Arctozolt! Isn’t he just a precious little monster?” Remus coo’d, making kissy faces at the abomination before him.

Logan’s eyes darted between the two for a moment, clearly having knowledge that Roman did not. The prince was going to ask what had the logical side looking as though he was nervous for him but decided against it. Instead, he steeled his resolve.

“Alto, Cotton Guard!”

Using her wings, Alto managed to surround her entire body in layers of almost invisible cotton, using it almost as a shield against anything that would attack her. She then seemed to brace herself, watching the pokemon before her carefully.

“Thundershock!”

Time seemed to stop for a second as Roman heard the command. He hadn’t even considered the fact that Arctozolt had the type advantage, especially since he’d never seen it before. Now that he was helpless to do much other than stare, Roman managed to notice the thunderbolt-like growths on the pokemon’s top half and that it was shivering, which may indicate that it was also partially ice type. His thoughts were cut short as Alto screeched in pain as the electric attack hit her square on.

“Alto!” Roman cried out. He watched as the swablu dropped in the air slightly but managed to catch herself before hitting the floor. He let out a soft sigh of relief, “Shake it off and use Round!”

Alto did just that, physically shaking her body to clear herself of the shock before soaring in circles for a few seconds, ending up heading directly for Arctozolt, hitting it square in the chest. The odd pokemon recoiled slightly after the hit, but still seemed to be feeling alright. The same could not be said for Roman as he saw the smile on his brother’s face grow even larger.

“Arctie, use Avalanche!”

Once again, Roman cursed himself internally. “Alto, avoid as much as you can!” He called out, trying his best to get his beloved swablu to not take as much damage as humanly possible.

It was effective somewhat as Alto did avoid several hits, but it always put her in the path of another part of the attack. Overall, it was a severe hit and Alto’s energy seemed to be waning as she was taking far more effort in order to keep herself in the air. Thankfully, the cotton that surrounded her body did help in staving off some of the damage.

Racking his brain, Roman tried to think of the best way to win the battle that seemed almost completely impossible.

“What’s wrong, brother?” Remus jeered from the opposite side of the field, “Having problems?”

Roman glared harshly at Remus before issuing another command, “Alto, sing!”

Alto responded immediately. She swooped in to hang in the air just a short distance from Arctozolt and began to sing a soft melody, attempting to put the creature to sleep. However, before it could really take effect, Remus called out for Arctozolt to use another move.

“Use Echoed Voice!”

The abomination began to screech loudly, the sound causing most everyone in the surrounding area to cover their ears. Alto drifted backwards, clearly in pain from the hit to her senses, her song being cut short. She began to float downwards towards the ground, looking as though she were about to admit defeat. She turned slightly and was able to notice Roman staring at her, worry coursing through him. Her eyes started to shut as she fell closer and closer to the ground.

“Alto, no!”

Her body touched the ground for a brief second before erupting in a flash of light. Yet again, everyone in attendance flinched and avoided using one of their senses until the light died down.

Remus’ grin dropped completely off of his face as his mouth fell open once he’d caught sight of where Alto had once been.

In place of the small round fluffy-winged bird was a far larger version. Its neck extended upwards, causing her to look far more intimidating as she could look down upon him and its cloud like wings curled around its lower body, looking as though the wings were what made up the creature instead. Just behind, his brother was also as shocked.

“Uh Logan. Information please!”

“Alto evolved into her final stage, that being an Altaria. Her typing has now changed, becoming a primary dragon type with the same secondary flying type as its pre-evolved state.” Logan offered.

“That has to be cheating! That’s his second pokemon now, right?!” Remus pouted, stamping his foot like an angry child.

“Not at all. Evolution is a natural process of the pokemon species as a whole and it cannot be timed, at least in the case of the majority of evolutions. In terms of our ruleset, it is the amount of fainted pokemon that provide us with the final result. As Alto has only evolved and is, in fact, still very much present and aware, it still counts as Roman’s first pokemon.” Logan side-eyed the moustached side as he explained.

Roman was still a little surprised but was more than ready to fight back with his now larger cloud bird. Something in him just knew that Alto had learned something new, so he acted without much thought, “Alto! Dragon Breath!”

Alto reared back as she took in a large breath, physically puffing herself up in preparation. She stared straight ahead at the Arctozolt before letting the blue flames pour from her beak, engulfing the odd creature entirely. Remus also yelped and attempted to shield himself as the edges of the attack came close to reaching his position. The flames dissipated after a moment and Arctozolt seemed to be wobbling back and forth slightly before it fell over and was removed from the competition.

After two more quick battles, Roman was declared the victor of the small tournament and Remus went off to lick his wounds – everyone was sure that wasn’t just a turn of phrase when it came to the intrusive side. Patton returned shortly after the match and was more than a little enamoured with the giant cloud bird. Shortly after, the sides returned to their jobs and things went back to normal.

Later in the evening, Patton headed back into the imagination to call Roman for dinner, since he was nowhere to be found in the regular mindscape.

“Roman? Where are you? Dinner’s ready!” Patton called out into the distance as he wandered around the edge of the castle. He rounded a corner and had to clamp a hand over his mouth in order to muffle a happy squeal.

Alto was sleeping soundly, resting at the base of a tree on the edges of the forest. Curled up in her cloud-like wings was the figure of Roman. Evidently, he’d tired himself out and Alto had offered her soft wings as a base for him to nap. Patton quietly headed back, making a mental note to put Roman’s plate in the fridge for when he woke up.

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[violent-ham]

The Artemis Fowl Movie

I wrote musings as I watched the movie. Here they are without much context but I’m hating the movie so much that I don’t care to go through and write a comprehensive review. Maybe later.

Also note that it’s been a WHILE since I’ve read the books. So. I’m aware that some of my nitpicking may be off.

Needless to say, spoilers for the movie.

Less than five minutes in. Artemis Fowl II… is surfing.

….maybe that wasn’t Artemis?

 They killed Angeline???

 Psychologist scene was almost spot on. Almost. ….maybe this won’t be as bad as the trailers made it look.

 They had me believing for a moment with his interactions with the psychologist. BUT THE VERY NEXT SCENE. Artemis riding a hover board IN JEANS. Artemis wouldn’t be caught dead in jeans.  The one time he wore them in the books he complained extensively about them.

 Fowl Sr.

 Movie Artemis to have a great relationship with his father who is TEACHING HIM ABOUT FAIRIES.

 Cliched rich absentee father.

 Oh sweet jesus Butler

 SAID BUTLER’S FIRST NAME IN HIS INTRODUCTION.

 So… they’re just gonna completely reinvent Butler. Alright.

 Tantrum over his father’s criminal empire. Book Artemis KNOWS THIS and is actively trying to rebuild his family’s fortune after the disappearance of his father YEARS AGO.

 Is that Koboi.

 Yer a wizard, Arty

 Let Artemis be smart and find out about fairies on his own instead of force-feeding us and him expositional dialogue. Let him be the clever genius he’s supposed to be.

 Really hamfisting the whole “THIS FAMILY IS SO IRISH” thing, aren’t they?

 I can only hear Olaf when Mulch speaks.

 I don’t like that they switched it to Mulch stealing Holly’s wallet from Mulch stealing the badge (?) off another officer and Holly retrieving it. Might just be nitpicky at this point though.

 Briar Cudgeon already in prison??

 Holly… other female LEP… Root… Holly’s whole story arch. Yeah.

 Holly gets a “Missing Father” plot too

 STOP SAYING DOMOVOI.

 NIECE. I can overlook the age down (unless they’re planning to try and romance them in the future. If there is a future). But… NIECE?? Juliet is his SISTER. Not his niece. Why was this a necessary change??

 Short hair… no jade ring…

 Already having the groundwork for The Book and finding fairies laid out for him…

 Explaining shuttles to THE experienced flyboy. Gotta get that exposition in somehow, I guess.

 Holly’s father is a thief too, just like Arty’s! Wonder where they’re gonna go with that… =.=

 Yeah forget keeping the civilization a secret and having underground docking stations for the shuttles, lets just shoot Holly out of a fucking volcano in full view of a major city and fly away unshielded.

 Arty’s gonna sit comfy while Butler, sorry DOMOVOI stakes out the tree to kidnap a fairy instead of wanting to see and make sure in person.

 “Pick on someone your own size!”

 Time freeze capsule.

 Time freeze for the rogue troll in Italy.

 Holly going rogue instead of just to refill her magic…

 Holly and Arty’s dads working together.

 Opal Fucking Koboi.

 Oh good, Arty decided to join DOMOVOI after all.

 Gah, those contacts

  “Not happy!” …my sentiments exactly, Holly.

 In a box, not a cell. Guess they’re not gonna go the route of “Holly breaks the floor of her cell to find dirt to restore her magic and WRECK Artemis’s day.”

 Arty sr. teaching Arty jr. about the dangers of fairies.

 The jeans are back!

 Very, very brief glimpse of Artemis in Arty. This movie needs more of that.

 “There are humans that are afraid of gluten, how do you think they’d handle goblins?” Ok that got me…

 Flannel and jeans. WHERE IS HIS SUIT.

 “I’m going to need the suit.” Oh. There it is.

 Arty firing a fairy gun and actively partaking in the fight.

 …………disabling the time freeze WITH AN ARROW. He’s not even allowed to be clever in escaping the time freeze/blue rinse combo at the end??? Will there even be a blue rinse?

 Also, why did the time freeze act as described in the book for Fowl Manor, but LITERALLY freeze time for the incident with the troll? What are the movie rules?

 Well at least they included the “While I’m alive” stipulation but… they’ve gone so off the rails so far I’m not sure it makes a difference anymore. There’s been no build up, no struggle between the fairies and Arty until he captured Holly five minutes ago. The reveal isn’t going to feel earned if they even go that route.

 Well they kept Mulch jamming his thumbs up a goblin’s nose to fry him in jail. So there’s that.

 Nope. No. Arty should be mesmered and Holly out of there.

 Portals between worlds. What movie are we in again?

 David Bowie is a Fairy.

 The scene between Root and Mulch got a laugh out of me. Small laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. Which is more than this movie deserves.

 Mulch unhinging his jaw was actually horrifying.

 But, they had to go for the comedic “pop out of a painting” instead of coming up through the floor. How did he even get into the wall if he was tunnelling through the ground? Comedy of sensibility, I guess.

 So much for “Dwarves can’t burp”

 Arty should be mesmered. AGAIN.

 Arty unlocking Holly instead of Holly escaping. They’re really pushing this forced bond between them.

 What was that reaction to getting punched! And not even a jab about lollipops from Holly.

 That’s not how allergies work

 “D’arvit.” My sentiments exactly, Commander.

 Mulch having pickpocketed Holly’s gun off of DOMOVOI gave me a chuckle. And the fact that not one of them said “How did you pickpocket that off of DOMMOVOI?” is surprising, but welcome. Seems like they forgot about “show don’t tell” up until this point. And something tells me that after this gag, it will be forgotten again.

 Was there a reason for jamming magic in the house when Holly is the ONLY magic user in there? Unless Cudgeon is actively trying to kill Holly. Which. ….yeah alright maybe. Guess that means Holly isn’t going to almost get pummeled to death by the troll if she can’t heal.

 Holly is consistently a damsel in distress instead of a badass LEP captain.

 How did Holly get the momentum to swing that chandelier thing across the room and through the glass?

 A lot of running, jumping, and dangling precariously off of things. Too many cut jumps, not enough troll fighting. What about medieval suit of armor Butler squaring off with the troll? Did they cut that too??

 Arty losing the gun due to recoil. That should have happened the very first time he fired it if it has recoil. Do neutrinos have recoil?

 Ah, so they blocked the magic as a plot device to make us believe DOMOVOI isn’t going to make it.

 “Buddy.” That shouldn’t be in Arty’s vocabulary. Especially when referring to DOMOVOI. Can’t even work in an “Old Friend.” Nope. Gotta go with “Buddy.”

 Magic unblocked, DOMOVOI saved. Wow, did NOT see that coming……. =.=

 Healing fatal wounds is supposed to be tricky even for trained medics to deal with, much less for a LEP officer to do in two seconds.

 Oh, they’re suggesting that he actually DIED. There was a whole scene about this in the third (?) book and being brought back from the dead had some serious repercussions for Butler. But nah, two seconds and he’s fine. Admittedly he was frozen for some time in the book. But still!

 Sooo… the time freeze exploding did nothing and everyone in the house is fine?

 Why does Holly trust Arty? They’ve really done nothing to earn each other’s trust

 Oh good, they’re friends.

 Forever friends.

 Ok, using the first lines of The Book as a spell… is the ocularis or whatever supposed to be the movie version of The Book?

 Ocularis ex machina, Dad is saved!

 “I’m Artemis fowl. I’m a criminal mastermind.” No, you’re Arty and lucky as fuck that the plot of this movie loves you so much.

 A FEW of the plot points are there. SOME of the scenes are there. It’s like they started to make an actual Artemis Fowl movie, scrapped it, wrote in some unrelated story and mashed the two together. This wasn’t an Artemis Fowl movie. This wasn’t even a GOOD movie if you take away the relation to Artemis Fowl. The acting is phoned in and just plain bad at times, like they just wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. The effects are pretty good in places but my god that does not make up for shredded scrap of a story it has. Artemis wasn’t allowed to be clever or in any way villainous, Holly wasn’t allowed to be a badass LEP recon Captain, Mulch… would have been fine if it were an actual Artemis Fowl movie, even if I could only hear Olaf when he spoke. Arty didn’t earn his “Criminal Mastermind” badge in this, not by a long shot. Waited so long for this movie and every apprehension I had after viewing the trailer was warranted. Just awful.

 They didn’t even include the sprite from the trailers in the movie.

[captainswan-asyouwish]

This Is Us star Jennifer Morrison on why she joined the show, what to expect from Cassidy

Once upon a time — actually, about two weeks ago — This Is Us uncorked a rather unconventional season 4 premiere. This extended episode introduced a parade of new characters with no discernible tether to the Pearson universe… until the final stretch of the episode, when their connections became (more) evident. Among these new faces: Once Upon A Time and House alum Jennifer Morrison playing Cassidy, an accomplished military officer who suffers from PTSD and returns home to her husband, Ryan (Nick Wechsler), and 9-year-old son, detached and alienated from her old life and clearly suffering. One day she comes home drunk, and in a fit of frustration she winds up accidentally striking her son. Ryan orders her to leave the house, and she winds up seeking help via a support group for veterans. While she’s opening up about her experiences during a session, the moment is interrupted by a chair being thrown through the window. Through its shattered remains, we see our link to a broken Pearson and the perpetrator of the act: Nicky (Griffin Dunne), who’s clutching a bottle of booze.

Tuesday’s episode of the family drama, “Unhinged,” saw Cassidy cross paths with another Pearson, Kevin (Justin Hartley), as he played video games with her son in the waiting room of the veterans’ center (and later single-handedly pushed him into therapy). After meeting Kevin, Cassidy was more formally introduced the disruptor himself, Nicky, and the three of them would share an odd moment of connection — and an unexpected laugh — later in the hour. Elsewhere in the episode: Toby (Chris Sullivan) reluctantly revealed his secret abs to wife Kate (Chrissy Metz), she would bond with a brusque neighbor (welcome back to TV, Timothy Omundson!), Randall (Sterling K. Brown) was forced to make some tough decisions at the office (don’t let the lack of door hit you on the way out, Bernice!), and Miguel (Jon Huertas) continued his mission to win you over by saving Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) from job termination.

Let’s remove the cucumber slices from our eyes and the fish sticks from the microwave, rock a suit like Arsenio Hall, crush some Mario Kart, take the door off the hinges, and welcome Jennifer Morrison into the group.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Your agent tells you there’s a role for you on This Is Us. Your first reaction is…? JENNIFER MORRISON: Oh, I absolutely want to do it. By the way, this was not something that was just like offered to me. I had to fight for this. I love the show. I’m a fan of the show, and I’ve heard that there was a great guest arc coming for a strong female and [creator] Dan Fogelman auditions everybody. Everybody auditions for the show. My team came to me and they were like, “Is this something that you would want enough that you’d be willing to read for?” And I said, “Uhhh, yeah!”

You’re playing a veteran who’s been in the thick of war. How much did Dan and the producers tell you so you could accurately play this character — and what kind of research did you do? It’s a combination of their research and my research. They’re so incredibly thorough over there, which has been wonderful. Dan and I spoke quite a bit about the research the writers have done and the way that they were coming up with this character. Even every department had a lot of research, which was super-helpful. I’m not used to having that many resources in one place. The props department brought a ton of research about some of the tactical gear and the logistics, and the wardrobe brought more research about exactly what uniforms you can wear, when, how, why.

I had played a soldier years ago in an independent film [2013’s Alpha Alert], so I had done some previous research that definitely bled over into this research. I went back to some of the memoirs that I read for that and went online and looked through some of the research about veterans who come home and are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. I re-read a couple books about war. It was a lot of going back to my notes for that [film,] and that character was also struggling with PTSD…. I also started following some veterans online on Instagram and following their everyday lives. I felt like that was another texture to the research — not just knowing what it was like to be in Afghanistan, and not just what it’s like to face the horrors of everything that you’re facing when you’re over there, but also see what people’s everyday lives look like when they came home.

We’ve seen how the horrors of war have ravaged Nicky, and how Jack was able to somewhat successfully compartmentalize them and raise his family. We’ve seen the beginnings of how Cassidy is having trouble readjusting to civilian life. What does her path forward look like? There’s not a ton I can say about it, but Dan and all the writers had been really careful to be incredibly accurate about how delicate that journey is and how unique it is for each person facing it. I don’t think any one person comes home from facing those kind of horrors and has the same exact reaction to it, you know? So I think that’s something that they’ve done a great job with the writing, is really paying attention to the nuance of exactly what this particular woman is doing to try to unwind some of the damage that’s been done.

What adjectives would you use to describe her path forward? I mean, it’s complicated. I know that that’s super-vague, but it is complicated. There’s no clear path to healing, so there’s definitely steps forward and then there’s steps backwards.

From the get-go, what intrigued you about Cassidy? What was it about her that made you say, “I really want to explore this woman in the military?” Just getting that first script that showed the beginning of who Cassidy was going to be and setting up her backstory was just wildly complicated in a way that is just so intriguing to an actor. To see every corner of her in the sense that you start by seeing her super-vulnerable and missing her family and almost resistant to call her family because she knows how vulnerable it’s going to make her when she’s in a place where she needs to stay strong all the time. And then going from that level of vulnerability to questioning this woman in the hospital and almost threatening her and how strong and aggressive she has to be in that moment. And then turned around with so much regret, hoping that what she promised she could follow through on. And then finding out what she promised she couldn’t follow through on. And then the military ended up just bombing them anyway. The levels of humanity that were there just even in that first script — and it continues. you start seeing more and more corners of her as you see more episodes. There was such a full person on the page and such a complete person on the page, which was so exciting. So often when we write a strong, smart woman, she has to always be tough. They leave very little room for somebody to be vulnerable. And the truth is really strong, smart women are vulnerable and delicate in other ways as well. There’s a real wholeness to that. That was already in the writing, which was so exciting because instead of having me try to find that, I could build from that.

Speaking of Cassidy’s time overseas, are there more war experiences for us to uncover through her eyes? Will we learn more about what made her join the military and how quickly she moved through the ranks as a woman? She’s clearly very good at what she does. She is very good at what she does. I don’t think I can talk about that. But I can say she’s someone who really has worked her way up. That’s something that we definitely talked about it. She didn’t come in at some sort of advantage. She was not in a certain position because she had gone to the right school. She really has earned her way out because of her ability.

In the season premiere, Cassidy’s husband, Ryan, orders her out of the house after she accidentally strikes their son. In this episode, Cassidy tells Kevin that her husband wants her to get help. How fragile is their marriage at this point? From the point at which she hurts her son accidentally — and obviously very accidentally — I think that it’s incredibly fractured. Not only is her husband concerned and afraid of the circumstances, but she is. The last thing in the world she would ever want to do is hurt her child, yet that moment felt completely out of her control, and I don’t think there’s anything more terrifying for a parent to feel like their child might not be safe with them. It’s definitely what scares her into trying to figure out what would be the best way forward to get help.

A lot of fans have been speculating that Cassidy would be a romantic interest for Kevin, especially after a who-is-the-mother-of-Kevin’s-son mystery was introduced in the season 3 finale. What can you say to those fans speculating heavily in that direction? [Laughs] They’re speculating about any woman who could possibly have logistically had his child. So I feel like I’m in good company with all the people being speculated about…. They can speculate. There’s nothing more I can say.

Does that question also feel a little reductive considering the story you’re telling here about this woman who’s dealing with PTSD from war? Besides, she’s got this complex family situation with a young son to attend to and maybe even salvage. So that may not even be the fifth most important thing going on here. That’s what I have to say is so impressive about Dan Fogelman and Isaac [Aptaker, co-showrunner] and Liz [Berger, co-showrunner], and the whole writing team over there, is that there is such depth and so many layers and so much honesty to what they’ve written for this character. No matter where things go in terms of how she ends up fitting into who she knows and how she relates to anyone from the Pearson family, they’ve really gone the distance to write something that is really honoring the truth of someone who would’ve gone over to Afghanistan and dealt with what she’s dealing with. And I think that that is just so beautiful. It’s rare as a guest star — I feel like I’m being written for the way a series regular would be written for. There’s no holding back in terms of what they’ve brought to the page in such an amazing way, which I so appreciate it, and it makes me better. It makes me stretch, it gives me an opportunity to grow every time I’m on that set, which I really love. It’s really exciting.

But at the same time, I don’t blame anyone for wondering how she fits into the world. They’ve cared about these characters for three years and they’ve gone through a lot with them. And they’re connected to that family in such a powerful way, I think it’s only natural that when you bring someone with this much story into the mix, you want to know, “Well, how do they fit into this puzzle?” I don’t blame anyone for asking that question, but I do appreciate the delicacy and attention with which the writers have handled her story line.

Small characters don’t get $1,200 water heater scenes. You don’t just throw away a moment like that on a small character. Yeah, it was beautiful. And there’s more to come. Every script always pleasantly surprises me with a new layer that is revealing about Cassidy.

Nicky did not get off on the right foot with her by throwing a chair through the window while she was in the middle of a group share. As we saw in that final scene with them, nowhere to go from there but up? Clearly they share that bond of having experienced and been traumatized by war… Yeah. There’s a lot I can’t say, but what I can say is that moment when he throws the chair through the window — and this is such a tribute to where wonderful actor Griffin is; he just brings so much to every single little look and thought and everything he says and does — but she so sees herself in him immediately. Someone could be kind of pissed or off-put, like she was in being interrupted, or the level of anxiety that she’s facing in her life based on all those things are falling apart and to have this thing kind of interrupt it. And it’s not what happens for her. What happens is she turns at the shock of the noise and then looks in his eyes and sees herself. There’s something so powerful about that because what’s broken in him is broken in her. And even though there are two unique beings who’ve never met before that moment, there’s no doubt that there’s something parallel about what they’re going through.

She does seem taken in by him in the aftermath of the shattering, which by the way was totally jarring. It’s like a jump-scare! I mean, I shot the scene and when I watched it back, I forgot it was about to happen. [Laughs] What a brave move it was for Dan and the writers to decide to introduce you to these new characters, knowing that they have three more years on the show, if not more, and in order to be able to reveal more and more about their [main] characters, they needed to have more people for them to bounce off of. But for that to mean anything, you have to really know the new people to care about the way they interact with the Pearsons. So it was a really bold move to go the distance to really set up these new back stories.… There’s metaphor on top of metaphor in terms of the way that they’re really layering this idea of how strangers impact our future and how at some point everyone in our lives was a stranger, and eventually they either pass through or they become family. There’s just such a beautiful theme that they’ve laid through all of the episodes that lean into that idea.

At the end of this episode, when Kevin makes a ridiculous comment, it breaks down the walls of not only Cassidy but Nicky, and the three of them share an inappropriate laugh. How would you describe the dynamic between this trio? They’re all broken in very particular ways, some of which are similar and some of which are very different. So in a sense they’re a triangle that makes one whole. All three of them are a corner of the triangle that is holding each one of them up. And any one of them missing from that triangle would be a problem at this moment in their life.

Rounding off to the nearest dozen, how many This Is Us secrets are you keeping right now? Well, here’s what I can say: I have purposely not read stuff that I’m not in to be able to enjoy it as an audience member. I’ve been very diligent about giving myself the opportunity to stay an audience member for what I don’t participate in. So I have luckily eliminated a certain number of secrets by doing that. [Laughs] But gosh, I don’t know, maybe a couple dozen? Depending on how detailed you want to get with what you consider a secret.

Fair to say that Cassidy will be sticking around for a while? I guess the way that Dan has put it is that she’s a significant part of this season. So that’s the way I will reiterate it.

Can you give viewers one cryptic hint — a word, a phrase — about what awaits with Cassidy this season? Hmm… paperwork.

(X)

[starslung]

my brain is all over the place today, i think i’ve blog hopped like 12 times but i don’t know where to be ?? i’m gonna go clean the kitchen and listen to an audiobook but i’m on disco ( csi celeste#2491 ) if u wanna vibe or order me to actually write on one of my 8000 kids

[emospritelet]

HC prompt 40 - "I dont think he/she would want that for Christmas." Feel good Sprite!

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4]

AO3 link

Ogilvy took a sip of his brandy, letting it spread over his tongue with mellow, fragrant heat and traces of caramel and nutmeg.  He glanced towards the door through which Belle had disappeared, and held the image of her in his mind, head turned slightly, eyes flicking across to catch his briefly as she left.  He smiled to himself, his heart slowly shedding itself of grief and anguish as it swelled with his love for her. She seemed a little taken aback by her welcome; he supposed that he and Doc had been somewhat effusive in their greetings, and Alice was - well, Alice - but he hoped that she would soon settle in, that she would feel part of the family.  Doc picked up his own glass, swirling the liquid in it as he stared off into space.

“It’s almost as though no time at all has passed,” he said quietly.  “She looks very well, at least.”

“She’s perfect,” said Ogilvy softly.  “Perfect. Just as she always was.”

“I suspect she thinks we’re all unhinged.”

“Yes.”  He took another sip of brandy.  “We should try to be a little calmer in her presence.  I find I can’t help myself.”

“Indeed,” agreed Doc.  “She’s every bit as intelligent and brave as she ever was.  I was almost bursting with pride when she told me about her experiences at Girton.  I must write to Professor Magus about her; I know the man a little.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”  Doc took another drink.  “Considered something of an outsider by the elite due to his background, unfortunately, but an excellent fellow.  Very knowledgeable.”

“Good.”

There was silence for a moment.  Ogilvy swirled the brandy in his glass, the bowl cradled in the palm of his hand, inhaling the fragrant scent of it before he took a sip.

“Pity about the stone,” mused Doc.  “It’s clear she doesn’t have it herself, so that’s another dead end we didn’t need.”

“We got her back,” said Ogilvy.  “She’s home. That’s what matters.”

Doc put down his glass and pushed his glasses up his nose with a sigh.

“I’ll try and See something,” he said.  “Perhaps tomorrow.”

“It’s Christmas Eve.” Ogilvy’s tone was dry.  “The children won’t let you have a moment’s peace.”

“Well, that’s true.”  Doc took another drink.  “You’ll have to entertain them, then.”

“Leave it a day or two.  Now she’s back with us, perhaps something will turn up.”  He turned the glass in his hands absently, a faint whiff of brandy reaching his nose.  “Perhaps things will be as they ought to from now on.”

“Perhaps,” said Doc, and licked his lips, eyeing him shrewdly.  “And if not? What if we can’t find the stone?”

Ogilvy hesitated, thumb rubbing over the well-worn gold band of his moonstone ring.

“I - I don’t know,” he admitted.  “Perhaps there’s another way to wake her.  We never had to try before.”

Doc took a sip of brandy, smacking his lips, his expression speculative.

“You could try kissing her,” he suggested, and Ogilvy gave him a flat look.

“When I’m a stranger to her?  Emphasis on strange? She’d slap my face, and rightly so.”

“I didn’t mean right away…”

He sighed wearily, letting his head roll back.

“Let’s get her settled in first, let her grow comfortable here,” he said.  “Perhaps she’ll feel the bond, as you say. Perhaps not.”

It hurt to think that their bond might be broken, but in his heart he didn’t believe it.  He could feel the pull towards her, the physical tug of her soul on his, the overwhelming urge to wrap his arms around her and feel the warmth of her against him.  He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the last time he had held her. The memory led to less pleasant recollections, and he shoved the images away before his mind could bring them into sharp focus, make them real, give them life.  He took a swallow of brandy, the heat in it making his eyes water.

“You should try to talk to her as much as you can,” added Doc.  “If anyone can restore her memories, it’s you. I have a feeling we’re going to need her sooner rather than later.  We only just managed to deal with that fire wraith, remember?”

Ogilvy winced, rubbing at his thigh at the mention of it.  The burn had been excruciating, and the scar would always be with him.

“I don’t want to alarm her by being over-familiar,” he said.  “I think I may already have done so.”

“I’m not suggesting that you confess your eternal love and ask her to marry you immediately,” said Doc dryly.  “Just get her - accustomed - to talking with you about everyday things. You have the excuse of checking on the children’s progress, after all.  And I’m sure she’ll want to explore the library.”

“Yes.”  Ogilvy put down his glass, sitting back in his chair.  “We can certainly talk of books. She has an interest in science, so I could show her the telescope.”

“Good.  Good plan.”  Doc ran his hands over his face.  “And on that note, I think we’ve left Alice playing hostess long enough.  Shall we go through?”

x

Belle had finished her tea, listening as Alice chattered away about the house, the servants and the surrounding area.

“Of course, you’re probably used to dramatic sweeping driveways and enormous gardens,” said Alice, having finished talking about the hothouse in which she was attempting to grow flowers. “I’m afraid we’re far less grand here.”

“Oh, I think it’s a beautiful house,” said Belle hastily.  "And the park outside is very lovely.  You must show me the hothouse, I’d love to see your flowers.“

Alice beamed, evidently pleased with her praise.

“Well, I certainly hope you’ll be happy here,” she said.  "It’s so nice to have another woman in the house. The servants are dear things, but they tend to treat me like I’m a proper lady, not a guttersnipe in a silk dress.“

Belle smiled, and set down her cup.

“Forgive my inquisitive nature, but you must have felt a little out of your depth when you first arrived,” she said carefully.  "I was wondering if there was any advice you could give me when it comes to dealing with the children.  I suspect they’re in a similar frame of mind.“

"Well, they’ve been here a couple of months now,” said Alice.  "But yes, they still have some way to go before they settle down completely. I should think they probably know things you wouldn’t expect, and yet won’t have the knowledge that children born to this life would have, if you take my point.  I know how that’s how things were for me, anyway.“

"Yes, I can imagine so,” said Belle thoughtfully.  "I’ll bear that in mind.“

"Nicholas told me very earnestly that he intended to give Doc the old cat that lives down by the river as a Christmas present,” said Alice, shaking her head.  "Covered in fleas it is, and half wild, but it lets Nicholas pet it, so he thinks it’s the best cat in the world.  Doubt that Doc would agree - it would probably tear up the couches in the library within a day.  I don’t think he would want that for Christmas.“

"I imagine not.”

“Try to talk Nicholas out of getting the cat, if he mentions it again,” she added. “I think I managed to push his attention onto peppermint creams, but you never know.”

Belle bit her lip in amusement, and looked around as the door opened and Ogilvy and the Professor entered. Alice straightened up with a smile.

“Here they are,” she announced.  “Right on time, just as we’ve had the last of the tea.  I could ring for more, if you like.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”  Ogilvy sat in the chair opposite, fingers hitching the knees of his trousers as he lowered himself into the seat.  “I trust you’ve been making Miss Marchland welcome?”

“Of course,” said Alice pertly.  “I’ve been telling her all about your excursions and how you promised to take me with you next time you go.”

Ogilvy sighed a little, sitting back.

“I’m not sure we’ll be going away anytime soon,” he said, and Alice huffed.

“See?” she said, turning to Belle.  “I knew they’d say that!”

“Perhaps in a few months,” added Ogilvy.  “If we’re called away, that is.”

Alice grumbled into her cup, and he turned his head towards Belle.  There was something in his gaze, something that warmed her and made her feel at ease, despite the lingering, wistful sadness in his eyes.  She recalled Ivy saying that he looked as though he had lost someone, and wondered who it had been.

“Miss Marchland, you expressed an interest in seeing my telescope,” he said.  “There’s a little cloud tonight, but not so much that we couldn’t see some of the constellations, I think.  If - if you wanted to look, of course.”

“Oh, I’d be delighted!” she said at once, putting down her cup.

“Alice, would you come too?”

“Yes, alright,” she said, setting her empty cup on the tray and getting to her feet.  “I suppose that would be proper, wouldn’t it?”

Ogilvy’s mouth flattened a little, but he stood, tugging restlessly at the cuffs of his shirt.

“I’ll go to bed, I think,” announced the Professor.  “Bit of a headache.”

“That’ll be the brandy,” said Alice, and swooped in to kiss his cheek as he tutted at her.  “Goodnight!”

Belle said goodnight to the Professor, following Ogilvy and Alice from the room and up the staircase.  They went along the corridor and up another, smaller flight of stairs to where the hallway was narrower, the decor not quite so fine and the gas lamps dimmed.  Ogilvy didn’t seem to mind, leading them along the corridor to yet another set of stairs. The hallway at the top was narrower still, a thin strip of carpet cutting some of the noise of their feet, the floor creaking a little as they walked to the heavy door at the end.  The room beyond was tall and long, with deep red walls and a shining wooden floor. Belle thought they were at the end of the house; the windows opposite jutted out from the rest of the room, forming a crescent. A single lamp on a nearby table gave out a faint glow, and skylights in the ceiling either side of the tall windows let in the pale light of the moon, shining on the largest telescope that Belle had ever seen.  It was a beautiful thing in polished wood and brass, mounted on a heavy stand and pointed upwards at the glass panel of the skylight, and she sucked in a breath.

“Oh!” she whispered.  “Oh my goodness!  It’s - it’s enormous!”

She rushed forwards excitedly, gazing up the broad, polished length of it, but Alice hesitated.

“Actually, Papa, I think I’ll go to bed,” she said.  “I’m a little tired, but you should show Miss Marchland the stars, since you’re here.”

“Ah.”  Ogilvy glanced at Belle.  “Well. I’m not sure Miss Marchland would be comfortable with that.”

“Oh no, I’d love to,” said Belle, at once.

“See?” said Alice lightly, and kissed Ogilvy on the cheek.  “Goodnight.”

She smiled and ducked her head, walking swiftly from the room, and Belle turned back to the telescope, hearing Ogilvy approach behind her.

“Would you - ah - would you like to take a look?” he asked, and she spun on her toes to face him, clapping her hands together.

“Oh, please!”

He smiled, lifting a hand.

“Allow me.”

Belle stepped out of the way, and he bent to look through the eyepiece, adjusting the angle of the scope with careful fingers.  She watched curiously, noting how precise he was, how measured. She wondered what his interests were beyond astronomy, and made a mental note to ask him.  Alice had told her of his supernatural investigations, and while she retained a high degree of scepticism on such matters, she was intrigued to find out how he viewed such things, given his interest in the sciences.  Perhaps the contents of the library would contain some clues.  She cast her gaze up the length of the telescope again.

“Is it a reflector?” she asked.  “I heard they were using silvered mirrors now that give a much clearer image than the old refractors.”

He straightened up with a tiny smile on his face, and what she thought was a gleam of admiration in his eyes.  It made her belly tighten pleasantly.

“Yes, it is,” he said.  “I used to have one of the old refractor models, but this is much better for viewing distant objects.  Take a look; you should be able to see Orion.”

Belle bent to look through the eyepiece, gasping as the night sky appeared to jump into her vision.  The stars of Orion’s belt made up a bright line, and she could see other points of light scattered around.

“I think that’s Gemini,” she observed, eyeing a constellation to the north east. “They seem so much closer than I’m used to!  I’ve never seen them like this before.  It must make stargazing such a pleasure.”

“Certainly better than the naked eye,” he agreed, from behind her.

Belle tried to identify some of the other stars that she could see, but was finding it difficult.

“I need to brush up on my constellations,” she said, with a sigh.  “It’s been some time since I read about the stars, and I appear to have forgotten much of what I did read.”

“The library has some excellent resources,” he said.  “I’d be delighted to show you.”

“Thank you.”

There was a moment of silence, and Belle let her gaze roam over the portion of the heavens that the telescope had opened up for her.  The stars gleamed, points of bright bluish-white against the velvet black of the night sky.

“I always felt, when looking at the stars, how insignificant life can be,” she said softly.  “Imagine if the stars could tell what they have seen.  Our lives must seem so short to them.  Like mayflies.  A fragment of time from birth to death, leaving nothing of note behind.”

She heard Ogilvy shift behind her, as though he had moved a little closer.

“I was once told that mortal life was meaningless,” he said.  “That it’s merely a time to suffer through, in the hope of what comes after.  But I don’t believe that.”

Belle straightened up from the telescope, glancing over her shoulder at him.

“Sounds a rather medieval outlook,” she remarked.  “I don’t think I believe it either.  If you’ll pardon the comparison, it sounds very like what Lady Ella told me of marriage.”

Ogilvy smiled at that.

“I believe Lady Ella didn’t have the happiest of marriages,” he said.  “I can understand her bitterness towards the forces that trapped her there.”

“The life of a woman in today’s world seems nothing but duty and forbearance,” she sighed.  “I can’t help wondering if that will ever change.  Or if it was ever different.”

“Long ago, perhaps,” he said.  “And I hope things will change in the future.  In the meantime, we must do what we can to make the best of it.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she said thoughtfully.

“A life filled with love is never wasted,” he added.  “Never meaningless.  Yes, life can be short, and brutal and painful, but it can also be a thing of beauty.  Given the right experiences.”

“You’re a philosopher, Mr Ogilvy,” she teased, and he rolled his eyes a little.

“That’s a complicated way of saying ‘world-weary’,” he said dryly.

“Hmm.”  She pursed her lips, amused.  “A philosopher and a cynic.”

Ogilvy barked a laugh, looking away for a moment.

“Well, I’m certainly cynical, I’ll admit that,” he said.  “And you, Miss Marchland?  No doubt you are eager to see the best in everyone you meet.”

“Well, I try to,” she acknowledged.  “I suspect that makes me naive. You must despise me!”

She grinned at him, and he returned the smile.

“On the contrary, I envy you,” he said.  “I wish I had such faith in my fellow man.  There is nothing poetic about the death of innocence.”

“Change is necessary for growth,” she countered, and his smile grew wistful.

“Perhaps you’re right.”

She turned back to the telescope, bending to look through the eyepiece again, but the clouds had rolled in, hiding the stars from view, and she made a noise of vexation.

“Undone by the weather, it seems,” she remarked.

“There’ll be other nights,” he said.  “May I escort you downstairs?”

She straightened up, turning to him with a smile.

“I suspect I’ll need all my wits to deal with my first day tomorrow,” she said lightly.

“Well, it’ll be Christmas Eve,” he said.  “I suggest you use an hour or two in the morning to get to know the children, then take the rest of the day off.  They’ll be too excited by the thought of decorating the tree to be of much use in the classroom. They can start their schooling in a few days.”

“Hmm,” said Belle, clasping her hands at her waist.  “Perhaps you should have asked me to start in January. You won’t get much of a bargain by taking me on before Christmas.”

Ogilvy smiled, the light glinting on the lenses of his glasses.

“Not at all,” he said.  “I believe I’m getting everything I could possibly want.”

He gestured to the door, and Belle took a last, long look at the telescope before heading back to the hallway and down the stairs.  Their feet echoed a little on the treads until they reached the first floor, where thick carpet muffled their steps. Belle glanced to the side as they walked, but Ogilvy had his head bent a little, as though he was lost in thought, and they almost passed her room before she realised where she was.

“I’ll bid you goodnight then, sir,” she said.

He glanced up, blinking rapidly before seeming to realise she had stopped a pace or two back from him. Turning slowly on the toes of his shoes, he faced her, fingers unconsciously turning the moonstone ring again.

“There’s no need for such formality,” he said.  “You don’t need to call me ‘sir’.”

Belle swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.

“Then - then what should I call you?” she asked, her heart thumping a little. “It’s - it’s not as though I’m one of the family.  Sir.”

Ogilvy gazed at her for a moment, then shook his head.

“No,” he said abruptly.  “No, of course not.  Forgive me, I have no desire to make you uncomfortable.  I find - I find some of the rules we have to follow in this age somewhat stifling, at times.”

Belle smiled a little.

“I think Miss Alice would agree,” she said.  “She’s asked me to teach her, nonetheless.”

His mouth twitched, his eyes crinkling a little at the corners.

“Well, I wish you the best of luck with her,” he said, and gestured towards her door.  “Please do ring the bell in your room, and someone will come to help you dress.  Goodnight, Miss Marchland.”

He bowed his head again, and turned sharply on his heel, walking swiftly away.  She watched him go, and he disappeared through a door further along, a sliver of golden light spreading into the hallway before being cut of abruptly by the closing door.  Belle shook her head, reaching for the handle of her own door.  A very odd family.

[mermaidsirennikita]

July 2017 Book Roundup

In July, I read eight books--most of which were unfortunately mediocre to poor.  However, there were a couple of standouts, and one of them was fantastic.  My favorite book of the month was Riley Sager’s Final Girls, a thinky thriller that deconstructs the concept of a final girl, while at the same time embracing the best parts of slasher movies.  If you love Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, you have to try this book.  

So--below is the good and the (unfortunately, moreso) bad or fair to middling.

Dividing Eden by Joelle Charbonneau.  2/5.  After the assassination of the king and crown prince, the kingdom of Eden is left in turmoil.  The crown would go to the king’s widow, but after she goes mad, that’s not an option anymore.  That means that twins Andreus and Carys are left to battle each other for the throne--or else give up their family’s rights to the kingdom and endanger their own lives.  Aaaand that’s pretty much it.  There are romances thrown in, but the book moves incredibly slow for its length.  The assassinations--events that we know occur because that’s the plot--take forever to actually happen, and for that matter once it does happen it’s really fucking nothing.  It’s super predictable, the villain can be spotted from a mile away, and that makes Carys and Andreus seem super stupid.  Also, Andreus is cursed or something and Carys has a magical drug addiction.  The other issue I have with the book is that so much is made of how close the twins are--and a brother-sister twin relationship is such a cool topic to write about--but the fact is that they aren’t close.  If they were, they wouldn’t be ready to stab each other in the back at a moment’s notice.  Not the smartest book.

The Shark Club by Ann Kidd Taylor.  3/5.  As a young girl, Maeve was bitten by a shark.  The event sparked a lifelong passion for the creatures, and at thirty she’s returning home to her grandmother’s hotel as a successful shark researcher.  Recently, she’s sparked the beginnings of a romance with fellow researcher Nicholas--but back home, she runs into former fiance and childhood love Daniel, now the chef at the hotel and the single father of a young girl.  Maeve’s feelings for Daniel return as she bonds with his daughter, the situation further complicated by an illegal shark finning operation nearby.  This book is well-written, and while it didn’t thrill me in any way, it was pleasant.  It’s very much a “finding yourself” story, and I think that a lot of people would like it--you could call it a thinking beach read.  At the same time, however, I found certain plot points to be rather predictable.  But I appreciated the focus on sharks, animals that I love, and the ongoing threat of finning.  

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid.  3/5.  Emma married her high school sweetheart, Jesse, with whom she was madly in love.  The day before their first wedding anniversary, he went missing, and was presumed dead.  Three and a half years later, Emma is engaged to her new love, Sam, when she receives the news that Jesse has been found alive.  Now--who does she really want to be with?  I gave this three stars because I read it over the course of a day and it was certainly engaging, and Reid writes romance in a really lovely way and many people have and will love this.  But this was no Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.  It actually kind of infuriated me.  It’s painfully obvious what Emma’s choice will be, the first half of the book breezes through each romance in a way that makes it difficult to get attached to either one, and the latter half is largely Emma dithering and treating each guy like shit.  The thing that irritated me most is that--well, look, I felt condescended to.  The old Emma loved to travel and see the world, and it’s implied that this was all a part of her youth and now she’s more mature and values the Real Things.  She’s Mature.  And I’m like, bitch you’re just kinda boring now.  There’s a scene where she’s basically like “I don’t like to fuck on kitchen counters anymore, I’m not in my twenties anymore I’m in my thirties”.  BITCH YOU ARE THIRTY-ONE HE HAS BEEN MISSING FOR 3.5 YEARS NOT TWENTY.  Like I respect her moving on and have no issue with that time frame, but Emma acted as if Jesse had been away for decades when he just hadn’t.  Sigh.

The Incarnations by Susan Barker.  4/5.  Beijing taxi driver Wang begins receiving mysterious letters from a stranger that claims to be connected to him through their past lives.  Detailing their different lives together, the stranger clearly also knows a lot about Wang’s current life, including his troubled marriage and his young daughter.  Desperate to find out who his “stalker” is, Wang becomes obsessed with the letters, and in the process confronts his own troubled past.  This is a dark fucking book, and it isn’t for the faint of heart because it honestly has a little bit of everything--to the point that I couldn’t give it a 5/5 because I did find some points a bit too disturbing.  Not in a gratuitous sense--it was the right choice for the book, just not always for me the reader.  But it is so well-written, and really original, and interesting in a way that so many reincarnation books aren’t.  It goes to some very interesting places, and was incredibly gripping.  For that matter, you get to see a number of different periods of Chinese history, which is always fun to read about.  Highly recommend if you’re looking for something really different.

Because You Love to Hate Me, edited by Ameriie.  3/5.  This anthology--featuring authors like Renee Ahdieh, Marissa Meyer, Susan Dennard, and more--focuses on villains.  Each story is actually a response from the author to a challenge given by a different writer; the challenger follows up the story with an essay, reacting to the story and discussing villainy.  Many of the stories are takes on classic villains--Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes series, The Little Mermaid’s sea witch, the Erl-King/Queen--while a few others are completely original.  As with almost any anthology, this was a bit of a mixed bag.  A few of the stories were really excellent.  “Marigold” was the first thing I’d read from Samantha Shannon, and now I’d really like to see something else from her.  “Jack” was one of the few stories I found actively gruesome, and “Gwen and Art and Lance” was a pleasant, different surprise.  “Indigo and Shade” and “The Sea Witch” were also interesting.  However, a few of the stories weren’t for me just because of their style or content, and a few more seemed to fail at really being... well, about villains.  I felt like I was reading a bit too much about sympathetic villains, you know?  And the essays weren’t really for me--they felt like Tumblr posts.  But with that being said, it was enjoyable, and I think a lot of people would love it.

Final Girls by Riley Sager.  5/5.  At nineteen, Quincy Carpenter survived a massacre at Pine Cottage, during which all of her friends was killed.  As the only survivor, Quincy was immortalized by the press as one of the “Final Girls”, the other two being Lisa Milner and Samantha Boyd, who survived similar such massacres.  Ten years later, Quincy is shocked when Lisa commits suicide, and the mysterious Samantha shows up on her doorstep immediately after.  If you’re a fan of slasher movies, I highly recommend this book, which not only deconstructs the “final girl” archetype but tells a hell of a story.  It shifts between the present and what happened to Quincy on the night she survived, and both stories are equally compelling.  Quincy is a remarkably complex and flawed character, as is Sam--I was enthralled by both.  While I had an inkling about one of the twists, I certainly didn’t predict all of them.  It’s not only a great story, but an important one--while few of us experience traumas as horrible as Quincy’s (thankfully) the way she dealt with hers was very familiar to me, and the Sager does an excellent job of examining the difference between being fine on the surface and being fine in reality.  A must-read.

Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica.  2/5.  Clara, mother to a four-year-old daughter and a newborn boy, has her world shattered when her husband is killed in a car wreck.  What is written off as a tragic accident becomes more complicated when their daughter, Maisie--who was in the car with Nick when he died--insists that her father was being chased by a “bad man”.  Becoming obsessed with what happened to Nick, Clara begins to trace the last few months of her husband’s life--while, in alternating chapters, we see the truth unveiled from Nick’s perspective.  I gave this book two stars instead of one because I do think it portrays grief well--Clara is irrational to the point where she becomes unhinged and obsessive, and this does ring true to me, especially since she’s probably suffering from postpartum depression as well.  But the ending.  UGH.  THE FUCKING ENDING.  It ruined the book for me, as did the fact that we were clearly supposed to sympathize with Nick when he was a complete dirtbag.  Spoiler alert: Nick wasn’t cheating on Clara like you might initially think (he keeps going on and on about her pregnant body, and I was like wait are you into this or are you resentful of it idek) but he was keeping a million things from her.  An ex-girlfriend showing up in his life again, a kid that was possibly fathered by Nick before he met Clara, a malpractice suit, the fact that he’s apparently the worst dentist on Earth and deserved the malpractice suit...  God.  I should have known that I would hate Nick as soon as I realized he was a dentist.  Clara isn’t much better.  She idolizes Nick, jumps from one conclusion to the other over the course of a couple pages, and honestly doesn’t seem to have any kind of life outside her husband and kids.  Drop this, read Final Girls.

Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo.  3/5.  In 1916, the Jersey Shore experienced a series of shark attacks that would really be the first attacks in American history to capture the public’s imagination.  They remain pretty distinct, as they occurred in a short period (from July 1 to July 12) across both the ocean and a nearby creek, and four people were killed and one injured by what seemed to be a single shark.  I read this in honor of Shark Week and because I’ve always been seriously fascinated by these attacks, ever since I was very young.  Capuzzo does a good job of describing the shark’s potential life and the attacks themselves.  But he also spent a lot of time fleshing out the lives of people who often weren’t even the attack victims themselves but their loved ones, which like.. fine, I’m sure that worked for a lot of people, but I’m here for the attacks.  I also feel like more time should have been spent on discussing theories regarding shark behaviors and what made these attacks so unique--and were they really unique at all?  Capuzzo seemed to be very set on the idea that this was a juvenile great white, that it was attacking for these reasons, etc.  And not all scientists, at least from what I’ve read, agree with him--even a discussion of outlying, unlikely theories would have been nice.  Capuzzo also didn’t seem to explain why he was so set on the great white theory, when a bull shark would be another likely candidate--some would say more likely than a great white, especially during the creek attacks.  With that being said, if you’re interested in the topic it’s a quick read and nicely informative.  To paraphrase Jon Snow, I like the shark bits.

[iamwhelmed]

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Chapter 8

We’re officially halfway through Book One, ladies and gents! Thanks to everyone reading so far! This story has, once again, been outlined for quite some time in my documents, and it’s so, so good to actually get it written out now. I hope everyone is enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it ;D

Also on AO3 and Fanfiction.net!

Summary: When monsters start to invade Mayview, the morality of the connection between a medium and their spirit comes into question. Is killing a spirit any different from taking the life of another human? Relationships between club members become strained, and if Max thought the club was coming apart before, it certainly is now.

Monday

He hadn’t been able to sleep that entire weekend; it escaped him all hours of the night, and even in the day he found his mind plagued by the papers Suzy stowed away in the clubroom filing cabinet. Dimitri wandered the darker halls of the school, all he could do to avoid direct sunlight. His head was throbbing, and he found himself stashing his headphones into his backpack-- it was starting to feel like they’d been strangling him.

Not me. Not today.

No.

That was a fate that awaited the cause of all of this, the center of every misgiving he’d had in the last two years. He’d strangle him with his own two hands if he had to-- and he might have to. Dimitri stood and waited in the South hallway, ducking to the dark side so he could watch traffic pass him by, be the silent observer everyone knew him to be. But now wasn’t the time for passiveness, and he had no plans to hold himself back. His awaited company could take whatever heat landed on him for what he’d done-- what he was about to do.

A shot of orange passed the corner.

Dimitri lunged out and gripped the collar of his shirt, dragged him into the hallway. He threw him against the wall and held him there, tossing him so hard against the lockers that his body would leave an indent in the metal. The light peeked in from the windows of the hall, and then Dimitri could look up and see Isaac’s wide blue eyes peering back at him.

He looks scared. Good. He should be.

Isaac’s went to scream, but Dimitri dragged his back down the lockers, watching as his face contorted with pain. “If you scream, I will end you right here and now.” Isaac’s eyes parted slowly, each movement careful, not that any amount of caution was going to help him. Dimitri jabbed a finger into his chest. “Meet up with Suzy today and tell her you were lying.”

“Or what?”

He dug a hole in the wall with his bare hand, an inch from Isaac’s head. He flinched, and Dimitri pushed him even further against the wall, hoping he could smell the waste of the locker he’d cracked open. “That’s what.”

Isaac watched him, blue eyes trembling, scared like the fool Dimitri knew him to be-- and he should have been. What he was doing was stupid, something he could never take back, and all for the sake of what? There was nothing that came to mind. He’d been awake too long, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t even begin to wonder why Isaac might make such an utter mistake of himself, or why’d he voluntarily cause so much pain.

Then something happened, and suddenly Dimitri wasn’t holding Isaac O’Connor against a wall anymore. No, the boy he held by the collar, his blue eyes faded and became cloudy like the storm he was, and the teeth he’d been baring came to hide behind thin lips. His shoulders squared, and Dimitri could finally see the dark circles forming under his dagger-like eyes. The boy he was threatening was cold, malicious, unpredictable, unafraid. Dimitri held the eye of the hurricane in his hands, but now he was standing in the dead center of a freezing tornado. “So? Go ahead. Do it. You’ll get away with it.” Dimitri faltered, body freezing in the change of weather, resolve collapsing. He was sure Isaac could see it in his face. “Won’t stop Suzy from publishing the paper, will it?”

Two hands, equally as cold as the scowl, set upon Dimitri’s fist. Against his will, he let go.

Isaac landed on his feet and pushed Dimitri to the side. Without so much as a glance, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and carried himself to second period.

Sparring had been more difficult than usual, and Ed could tell that Master Hashimoto knew something was bugging him. He never said a word, just like Spender said he wouldn’t, but he could feel the irritation coming off the man in waves.

Or maybe he was just being self conscious.

Ed sighed and reached up to the Guerra dojo, briefly forgetting that it was a twist-and-push door and not a grab-and-pull-to-the-side door. He’d noticed recently that it stood a few feet taller, probably more than that. It towered over him, much like Old Man Guerra himself did. He had no idea how he hadn’t noticed it before. Ed huffed and raised both sore arms to shove the door open, pressing inside even though his legs were screaming at him.

The first thing he saw was Isabel, pounding spectral shot after spectral shot at the dummies, standing beside the regular row of students. She didn’t miss a single one. Master Guerra seemed impressed; he was stroking his beard and glowering in a not-so-terrifying way-- the complacent way. Ed could feel something familiar watching her, raven hair falling from the bun in her hair, posture perfect, concentration in her eyes and her lips and her rigid shoulders.

Pride.

Ed frowned and reminded himself: she wasn’t his to be proud of anymore.

He’d resigned himself to thinking encouraging thoughts. Though unrealistic, he found comfort in thinking about a future that could be. Maybe they’d meet again somewhere down the road. Maybe he’d be more of a man, and she’d be the woman he always knew she’d become. He could see them reconnecting already, bonding over shared memories, trading stories about the years they’d missed, and he’d get to hear how she’d done without him there. Maybe they could be friends again, somewhere in the very distant future.

But for the moment, for the years it would take to get him there, he’d be thankful he’d ever had her in his life to begin with.

It was by chance that Isabel caught Ed in her peripheral, but she’d noticed him. She spun to watch him just as he turned to climb up the stairs, head hanging lower than his sagging shoulders. She huffed. Just got home from whatever he’s been doing, huh?

She turned back to the dummies and readjusted her finger for a better shot. “Where’s Ed been going?”

Her grandfather raised his head, humming probably more to himself than in acknowledgement. “He hasn’t told you?”

“No.” She bit the words out. “We’ve both been busy.”

He laughed to himself, under his breath like he didn’t want her to hear him. It irked her, and semi-ruined her concentration, but she was used to his flippant personality, and it wouldn’t deter her when she was having a good training session. She had a lot of steam to let off from the last two weeks-- nobody was gonna get between her and the dummy that all but had her name on it.

Master Guerra spoke with a smirk to each word. “Master Hashimoto will be taking over for me as his teacher.”

“WHAT?!”

Her voice boomed through the dojo, loud enough for people in the distant neighborhood a mile over to hear, and maybe then some. Isabel whipped around, eyes as wide as they could be, jaw unhinged, bun unraveling. Master Guerra looked her over with inexpressive eyes. “He’s been visiting Master Hashimoto’s dojo on the other side of town. I was impressed he agreed to begin his training early.” Guerra’s chapped lips inched into a grin, and she almost felt as though he was mocking her intentionally. “I hear he’s been improving, if I can hold Hashimoto to his word. Perhaps the freeloader is better fit to be his student, after all.”

“What’s he going to do about school?” He’d still have to go to class, right?

“My foolish pupil brought that up as well. Hashimoto intends to teach him from home.” Guerra grunted. “That man has always been lenient with his coin.”

Isabel’s heart sank, and she looked at her hands, back and forth, watching Ed slip right out of her fingers. She felt them tremble. “Why- why would h-he not tell me?”

Her grandfather shrugged, gaze falling back to the rest of the students, who had since begun firing off spectral shots again. “Who am I to say? You did say you’ve both been busy.”

Isabel blinked and looked to him, head bobbing back and forth, hands balling and clamming up.

Then she was off, sprinting up the stairs, no hands on the railing. “Ed!” When she reached the second floor, she all but slid to his bedroom door, reaching up and pounding as fast and as loudly as she could. “Ed! Open up!” When there was no response, she turned the handle and slammed the door wide open, expecting to see him playing video games on mute or something equally as Ed-like. Her eyes drew to the floor where he usually sat. “Is Grandpa telling the truth? Are you really leaving the dojo?”

He wasn’t there. Isabel faltered. Where…?

Ed snored, and she jumped to find him splayed out across his bed, mouth hanging open as his head tilted over the side, pillow long forgotten.

[scarffile0-blog]

Stephen Markley's Playlist for His Novel "Ohio"

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Stephen Markley's Playlist for His Novel "Ohio"

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.

Stephen Markley's novel Ohio is a powerful and timely debut.

NPR Books wrote of the book:

"Ohio isn't just a remarkable debut novel, it's a wild, angry and devastating masterpiece of a book. Markley's debut is a sprawling, beautiful novel that explores the aftermath of the Great Recession and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a powerful look at the tenuous bonds that hold people together at their best and at their worst. [Ohio] is intricately constructed, with gorgeous, fiery writing that pulls the reader in and never lets go."

In his own words, here is Stephen Markley's Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel Ohio:

If I had to accuse myself of something it would be scattershot musical tastes over the course of a scattershot life. I forget how I encounter any given song or artist other than generally standing mid-stream of pop culture and trying to occasionally wade over to the fringes; I'm now almost always at the mercy of Spotify's algorithms because I don't take the time to seek anything out; I still have my entire massive book of CDs from high school, which is mostly 90s rap (Drag-On's Opposite of H20 anyone?). I can't really recall what I was listening to while writing the novel Ohio, but here's a list of what seems to have crept through my subconscious, possibly eking into the text in unexpected ways.

"The Stable Song" Gregory Alan Isakov

I've occasionally described Ohio as a ghost story where the ghost never appears (a designation I'm pretty sure I stole from Stephen King), but the novel is about being haunted--by people you've lost, decisions you've made, friendships you've forsaken. The characters each return to their hometown on the same night, and they all have on their minds and in their hearts something they've lost. This song, for me, always captured the essence of what I was trying to bring to the page, a sense of having drifted your whole life, but also having never truly left this one person, place, or moment.

"All Things To All Men" The Cinematic Orchestra, Roots Manuva

I stumbled across this due to the aforementioned Spotify algorithm, and I always pictured one character in particular, Bill Ashcraft, this drug-addled, alcoholic political activist cruising along to this song as he trips out of his head on LSD. It's a long, dense song that makes you feel like you're stumbling down a street corner at night, half-drunk, but with sudden vivid insight into the absurd joke of the political, social, and economic quagmire that is the American experience.

"Same Drugs" Chance the Rapper

I've heard people accuse this song of being schmaltzy, but if that's the case I gladly embrace it. I taught this to my students when we did a class on narratives in pop music because it's such a lovely, compressed, and efficient story about growing past another person and the nostalgia you feel for the bond that once existed between you. It has these little whimsical phrases evoking Peter Pan: "You must have lost your marbles"; "when did you start to forget how to fly"; "don't forget the happy thoughts;" "When everything we read was real and everything we said rhymed." It casts this whimsical note over our collective substance abuse, that you can only ever make it with someone if your tastes in self-medication align, and once that moment passes it can change everything between two people.

"Carry Me Ohio" Mark Kozelek

This one for obvious reasons, plus it namechecks rivers and landmarks I'm all too aware of from growing up in the area. Actually, I went through a number of titles for the novel before settling on simplicity for simplicity's sake, but this song sort of wakes you up to the poetry of that single word. It has something to do with the way your mouth moves when you say it, your lips going vertical, horizontal, vertical in rapid succession, and each sound is its own lost spirit.

"Darkness On the Edge of Town" Bruce Springsteen

A young woman once said to me, "I don't believe anyone can truly be a bad person if they love Bruce." That seems extreme, but I've never seen it proved wrong. People who only know Bruce from the big hits are missing a religious conversion in their lives. It's his darker stuff I've always been drawn to, and as a teenager dealing with the death of one of my closest friends, I found the most surprising respite in his music, which I basically listened to nonstop from 2000 until 2005. I love that he's this short story writer in a rock star's body and so many people across so many different classes, age groups, races, genders, and life paths see themselves in the tales dreamed up by this ratty-bearded kid from industrial New Jersey. "Darkness" was the first song of his I heard that made me sit up like, "What in the fuck is this?" Like many of Springsteen narrators, the guy in the song is wandering through his place in post-industrial America. He's keeping secrets, he's lost the woman he loves through some fault of his own, he remains defiant. Just play this and "Promised Land" at my funeral, please.

"All That You Have Is Your Soul" Tracy Chapman

During the gestation period of this novel I was hanging out with a young woman in my apartment and this song came on. She said something like, "Were you also a teenage girl crying with her friends at sleepaway camp in the early Nineties?" All I know is that as a guy trying to start for his high school basketball team in rural Ohio, I had to keep somewhat secret my abject love for Tracy Chapman and her brazenly unironic, head-melting tunes on justice, race, love, and loss. When writing the character of Stacey Moore, I had Chapman and that young woman in mind, because that night she said something else I really liked: "Sure, all you have is your soul, but we should all take at least a little bite of that shiny apple every now and then."

"Shelter From the Storm" Bob Dylan

This song has been sort of wrecked by its overuse as an anthem of the Baby Boomers' (see Cameron Crowe stuffing it into the end of Jerry McGuire), but Dylan remains, IMHO, simply one of the most mesmerizing writers of the Twentieth Century. I laughed and laughed at the literary world's hand-wringing after his Nobel win, and I laughed twice as hard when he plagiarized parts of his Nobel acceptance speech from Cliff's Notes, but it was nevertheless one of the most beautiful explications of what the journey of art, of literature, of creation actually feels like in the most tactile, heart-rending sense. Dylan is this utterly irascible, trickster figure, who will always defy and mystify his fans and critics. "Shelter From the Storm" describes the ramble we're all one, this bizarre, unhinged journey that never ends where you think it will, and maybe the one or two or seven people you meet along the way who are like, "All right, get in here. We'll make love and then go throw rocks at the trains passing in the night."

"Chonkyfire" Outkast

This is the final song on Aquemini, and it probably wouldn't make the top fifty in most fans' estimation of Outkast songs, but there's something inexplicable about the sound it creates. It's epic, it's full-throated, it's apocalyptic. My affinity for Nineties hip-hop mostly rests on the fact that that was the age I discovered this wild, uninhibited act of rebellion in musical form. I tended more towards the political or the lyrically interesting, but discovering Outkast, particularly Aquemini with Rosa Parks, SpottieOttieDopaliscious, and this final mind-blowing track--it felt like Indiana Jones figuring out the Grail was just these two guys from Atlanta.

"I Do My Father's Drugs" Joe Pug

Joe Pug's music served as something of a basis for the career of the character Ben Harrington, and I think he's one of the most underrated singer-songwriters alive. "My Father's Drugs" is one of his masterpieces, and though careful readers may be questioning my affinity for songs about drugs, this is really more about the cyclical nature of generations attempting to upend the status quo, of trying and failing, desperately, to change the conditions that have isolated, weakened, and demoralized us. It reminds me of protesting Dick Cheney's appearance at a Cleveland church in 2004.

"City of Refuge" Abigail Washburn

Abigail Washburn is one of those musicians you're almost afraid to tell anyone about because you want to selfishly hoard her honey and cigarettes voice for yourself. I don't even recall how I stumbled across 2011's City of Refuge, but it's one of my favorite albums of the decade. The title song and "Last Train" in particular always call to mind, for whatever reason, all the errant, directionless wandering of my mid-twenties, and that wanderlust definitely found its place within several characters of the novel.

"Youngstown" Bruce Springsteen

The original version on The Ghost of Tom Joad is, without a doubt, a masterpiece, but you really haven't heard "Youngstown" until you've heard him perform it live, say in Cleveland, Ohio, circa 2004 (same weekend as when I went to protest Cheney; sometimes the stars just align). When it's born into the world as a true rock song, it has a power and anger that the album version doesn't. It's not just that it's a story set in my corner of the world or that it so bitterly and accurately describes the sense of having the floorboards of your life and livelihood ripped out from beneath you a plank at a time by powers you don't control and men you'll never meet, but it bears a truly radical message. The narrator sings, "My daddy come on the Ohio Works when he come home from World War II/ Now the yard's just scrap and rubble/ He said, 'Them big boys did what Hitler couldn't do.'" I mean, Jesus Christ, talk about taking a full swing at the skull of the neoliberal order. What I love most about the song is its scope, traversing the history of a place from 1803 to the modern moment, watching the smokestacks rise and billow and then go clear. You can smell the coke and limestone, you can feel the rain coming down as the characters wander the scrapyard. It's a remarkable piece of literature and speaks to a universal story of exploitation that keeps repeating itself over and over again. How the story's always the same. It was that sense of history and fury and defiance that I always wanted to imbue this book with.

"Elevation" Hildur Guonadottir

The first civilian I gave the book to (someone outside of the long editorial process) claimed she read it in three days and was listening to this song as she blew through the final pages. It produced, she said, a pretty fantastic effect. Once I listened to the song, I honestly couldn't agree with her more. Very spooky.

Stephen Markley and Ohio links:

the author's website

Minneapolis Star Tribune review NPR Books review Wall Street Journal review Washington Post review

Ohio Magazine interview with the author Publishers Weekly profile of the author

also at Largehearted Boy:

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Book Notes (2015 - ) (authors create music playlists for their book) Book Notes (2012 - 2014) (authors create music playlists for their book) Book Notes (2005 - 2011) (authors create music playlists for their book) my 11 favorite Book Notes playlist essays

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