#also he writes all his letters to siblings in forms of fairy tales

[blood-orange-juice]

He's back!

[thehanwen]

Quarantine Netflix Recs

Since were all at home watching Netflix I thought I would give my fav show/movie for every letter so everyone has something new to watch. Please send me your own recommendations or make your own alphabet list and tag me! Here goes:

A: Anne with an E- This modern take on Ann of Green Gables is quirky, fun, and dramatic. It has good music, writing and is all around a good watch. It deviates from the books a bit, but keeps the spirit.

B: Broadchurch- If you like crime dramas, this is for you. With one crime spanning the complete first season it delves deep into motive and emotions. David Tennet stars in this tense British mystery. 

C: Cargo- A dystopian zombie apocalypse film set in Australia with a focus on human connection, and sacrifice. This is honestly so different than any other zombie movie I have seen in the best way. 

D: Daybreak- Sticking with the apocalypse theme, daybreak is a humorous view on what happens when a nuke kills all the adults and leaves all the teenagers. Its like if high school was the whole world, but the world had also ended. Strong characters and ‘Ferris Bueller’ esc fourth wall breaks give this show something special. 

E: The Worlds Most Extrodiary Homes- For a change of pace this mindlessly beautiful home reality show shows off architecture that could be classified as art and makes me wonder how anyone can actually live here. If you just want something with no stakes what so ever, this is the eye candy for you.

F: Frontier- A gritty, and dark period piece starring Jason Momoa as the badass outlaw working against the British in the Canadian wilderness. Half political, half survival drama this show focus on the fur trade during the 1700s as well as themes like revenge, family history and love.

I have to do two for F: Feel Good- This emotional comedy is about Mae, a gay, ex-addict comic and her previously straight girlfriend. It is real and emotional and hilarious. It’s filled with amazing characters and amazing writing and explores hard to talk about subjects, including addiction, love, coming out, and family and romanitc relationships. 

G: Godless- A refreshing addition to the western genre. An injuryed outlaw, a headstrong widow, the whole of the wild west. Gritty and dramatic, this mini series is a must watch

H: How it Ends- Another apocalypse film, can you guys see a pattern? This one is less about the event however and more about family. A young man and his future father-in-law travel across the desolate wasteland of the USA to save his fiance. 

I: I am Not Okay with This- A sci-fi coming of age story, based on a comic book, about a young girl who develops mysterious superpowers and is not okay with it. Also shes gay and in love with her best friend, its great.

J: John Mulaney- I assume everyone has already seen all of his specials, but if you haven’t go check them out! They are hilarious and relatable on a deep level. 

K: Klaus- This is my new favorite Christmas movie. Its got wit, charm, great character development and beautiful animation. It’s the first original Christmas movie that I've liked. It gives a new spin to all your favorite Christmas traditions while holding on to the essence of the Christmas spirit.

L: Let it Snow- Based of the book co-written by Maureen Johnson, John Green, and Lauren Myracle this film is a feel good romance with quicky characters that have thier lives changed forever by a snowstorm in their small hometown. Friendships and romances are formed and tested as these teens figure out how to deal with what life throws at them. 

M: Maniac: In an unlikely pair Emma Stone and Jonah Hill work amazingly well together in a drug trial that is supposed to cure all mental illness, of course not everything goes as planned. Our heroes go through multiple stages of the trial and discover their brains are miraculously linked. This series merges multiple genres into something surprisingly cohesive. 

N: National Treasure- “I’m gonna steal the declaration of Independence”

O: The OA- A psychological sci-fi thiller about a blind girl who gets kidnapped and held prisoner by a mad scientist looking for other dimensions. The friends she makes along the way mean everything, but when she gets found not only are they missing, but she can see again.

P: Princess and the Frog- A cute Disney twist of the classic fairy tale. A young woman working hard to buy her own restaurant meets a prince that has been turned into a frog by a shady magic man. But when she kisses him he doesn’t turn human, she turns frog. Together they have to figure out how to get back to being human and along the way they learn what they really need.

Q: apparently I have never watched a single thing on Netflix that starts with Q. So Queer Eye I guess. I’ve never watched it, but I've heard good things.

R: The Rain- After a deadly virus is discovered in the rain, sister and brother, Simone and Rasmus are separted from thier family and hide in a bunker for 6 years. Once they are forced to emerge they discover the world is much different than how they left it and their family wasnt all they thought it was.

S: Sense 8- This sci-fi drama focuses on 8 people from all over the world connected by some kind of psychic link. As they discover the extent of thier new abilities they also find out they aren’t the only ones and some others aren’t so friendly. This series was made with so much love and divotion and it shows throughout. The character development and backstories are rich, the writing is witty and thoughtful and the representation and focus on love above all else is so refreshing. 

T: Tallulah- This drama is dark and witty, while simultaneously being bright and uplifting. When a young drifter kidnaps a baby from a neglectful mother and pretends the baby is hers, her boyfriends mother takes them in. The story is about family and doing the right thing, even when you can’t find the right choice in the grey area.

U: The Umbrella Academy- This series based on a comic book written by Gerard Way is about superheroes with out being about superheroes. They don’t save the day. They can barely save themselves, oh and also the world. Numbered 1-7 these siblings all have their own issues and getting them to work together was the dying wish of their asshole of a father.

V: None? Anyone have any ideas?

W: The Witcher- This series, based on a video game based on a book, is about a mysterious monster hunter and the bard he meets a long the way. Somehow full of action and also full of humor this series delves deep into the history and culture of this fantasy world. 

X, Y, Z: I got nothing guys, but thanks for reading all the way down here. I hope you watch some of these shows and that you send some of your own recs to me! 

Also None of these photos or shows or anything are mine and all belong to their rightful owners

[lostinthewinterwood]

AU Exchange 2020

Hey friend!

Looks like this letter’ll be going out on time, for once in my life.  This one’s very long; there’ll be a list of fandoms after the general info so you can hop around and not get bogged down in the details that don’t matter for what you’re going to be writing.

Treats in any medium are welcome, my other exchange letters are here, and at the bottom there’ll be tags for each fandom I’ve requested, if you want to see whether I’ve requested them before and what I’ve said about them.  Good luck, have fun, and thanks for writing for me!

 General DNW non/dub-con; non-canonical major character death; heavy angst; hurt no comfort; graphic depictions of deliberate and methodical self-harm*; graphic depictions of suicide; smut; gore; grimdark; complete downer endings; character bashing; incest; cringe comedy; a/b/o; mpreg; graphic eye trauma; graphic and/or permanent hand trauma; issuefic; unrequested identity headcanons; a focus on unrequested romantic relationships**. *I don’t include things like, say, punching a wall in a fit of emotion under this. however, something like cutting would not be appreciated. **canonical levels of canonical ships are perfectly fine; background non-canon ships that I haven’t dnw’d are okay too (unless otherwise specified—see below for fandom-specific notes).

  General Likes

– I really like plotty fics

– Secret identity and disguise shenanigans, the more layers to them and more absurdity the better.

– Crossdressing for whatever reason and gender disguises, also for whatever reason.

– A focus on family and/or friendship, especially characters realizing they’re not nearly as alone as they think they are, and just generally characters who like each other and enjoy spending time together

– Found family; families of choice

– Character studies

– Worldbuilding

- explorations of how whatever AU you pick to write affects the characters and/or plot, and the ways in which it doesn’t

  Other General Notes:

If there’s an AU I’d especially like to see on its own, without any other AU in combination with it, I’ll mention it—outside of that, feel free to combine the AUs as you see fit.

All the times that the Dragon Rider au is one I asked for, I’ve framed it in my prompts as a sports story thing—while that would definitely be great, don’t feel pressured to make it be like that; it’s just where my prompting muse is at right now, so if you want to take it in another direction go right ahead.

  Fandoms in Order of Appearance:

Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl

Harry Potter

Mother of Learning (x2)

Day Break Illusion (x2)

  Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl (Manga)  

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Terazaki Kaoru (HOwaGG)

·        Ousaka Nanami (HOwaGG)

·        Group: Terazaki Kaoru & Ousaka Shouko (HOwaGG)

·        Group: Terazaki Kaoru & Ousaka Nanami (HOwaGG)

 Fandom-specific dnw: sexualization of Kaoru’s crossdressing, romance between Kaoru and Nanami beyond light shiptease à la canon (unless the AU chosen is a romantic fairytale, in which case go right ahead), full justification of Kaoru’s fears re: Nanami’s dad, heavy gender dysphoria.

 Overall I love these kids and their friendship, and I also love how much Shouko feels like a mom to Kaoru even though he isn’t hers, even though he’s keeping secrets from her—he doesn’t seem to have that much parental support overall.

Whatever AU you pick, I’d appreciate that being preserved.

  ·        ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

·        All: East of the Sun and West of the Moon Fusion

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        ALL: Magic is a part of everyday life

·        ALL: Magical Girl Fusion

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

 For this set of tags, I’d love to see something that fuses the AU elements to canon, or replaces canon elements with them—maybe instead of gamers, the kids are magical girls!  Or maybe there’s just magical elements wound seamlessly into their lives, or they instead live in a fairytale world, or…

Basically, this is my more generic magic!au set.

  ·        ALL: Characters met as children

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

·        ALL: Mute Canon Characters

·        HOwaGG: trans girl Terazaki Kaoru

 These are the generally mundane AUs—if one or both of the kids is disabled in some way, how does that affect them?  If they’ve known each other longer than they have in canon, or used to know each other—how does that affect them?  If Kaoru is a trans girl, is that something that she knows before their canon meeting, and maybe that’s a point at which she’s already begun transitioning?  Or does the crossdressing give her a revelation?

  ·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

 I like daemon!aus a lot, though I’m not very good at writing them myself—if this world has daemons, what are the kids’?  Are they fully settled yet, or not quite?  Most people have daemons opposite to their sex—is it obvious that Kaoru’s daemon is female, and if so, does that pique Shouko’s interest?  Does his daemon get him recognized by people who know Kaoru-the-boy even when he’s out looking like a girl?

  ·        ALL: Dragon Rider AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

 Sports aus!  One mundane, one distinctly less so… what’s it like, if they’re dragon riders? Is it a whole other world, or just our world +dragons?  If it’s figure skating, what kind of skating do they do?  Singles?  Pairs? Ice dance?  Are they just casual about it or competitive?

  ·        ALL: Platonic Soulmate AU

·        ALL: Soulmates - Soulmate Mark Appears At First Touch

·        ALL: Soulmates Share Scars

 These are probably my three favorite kinds of soulmate AUs—run with them!  Tell me about the kids and their dynamic and the world they inhabit, with soulmates thrown into the mix!

     Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Percy Weasley (HP - JKR)

 Fandom-specific dnw: non-canon ships.

 I’ve phrased this so broadly because it’s generally better safe than sorry on these things—essentially what I especially don’t want is non-canon ships between people on opposite sides of the war, e.g. drarry, harry/Voldemort, etc. If you want to toss in background, idk, Pansy/Daphne or something, or relationships between various Ministry people, that I don’t mind.

 ·        ALL: Underground Resistance

·        HP: Percy Weasley is a spy for the Order of the Phoenix during the war

·        ALL: Character Is a Secretly a Spy for the Other Side

 There’s really one thing I want here—spy!Percy!  He spends so much of the war in the Ministry, surrounded by Death Eaters and their accomplices and enablers, to all appearances the black sheep of the Weasley family and not much of a threat.  Now, this could be genuine… but it could also be him playing them; I want to see a world where he, at some point—maybe after he chooses to stay with the ministry instead of his family, maybe before—decides to be a spy for the Order et al.

What are the risks?  What can he accomplish?  Can he help people beyond simply passing out information, perhaps with seemingly-inconsequential little acts?

     Mother of Learning - nobody103   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Kirielle Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

 request-specific dnw: physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family, significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction, romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian.

 ·        All: Character has a secret identity

·        All: Identity Porn

·        ALL: Possessed by time travelling future self

·        MoL: Kirielle as a Branded One

 I’m fascinated by the idea of Kirielle somehow getting wrapped up in the time loop—what’s it like to live years and years of your life while your body stays nine?  What does she do, what does she learn?  Are Zach and Zorian still Branded Ones, or is she taking one or both of their places?

If you go with this, I’d rather not have her gate!soul erased—either let her escape, or don’t go far enough to need to address it, please.

The identity bits here are mostly leaning on the idea that, with her only being nine, Kiri would need some kind of identity obfuscation to do half of what Zach and Zorian do in canon, so…

  ·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

 Nothing particularly profound here—but! Daemons! How does this affect things? Is Kiri happier with someone to talk to who isn’t her siblings or parents or village children that her parents mightn’t approve of?  I’d imagine her daemon hasn’t settled yet—what forms does it like?

  ·        All: Changeling AU

·        ALL: Fairy Tale AU

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        All: Historical Fantasy AU

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Nature Magic

 The setting and/or mood change AUs—give me Kirielle-the-faerie child, or Kiri in a fairytale, or shift the setting more historical and into our world, or change the nature of the magic—the canonical magic system is fairly hard as magic systems go, which works well for the story as it is, but I also really like softer magics.  What about a world where there’s simply small everyday magics present, or where Kiri has an affinity for green growing things quite beyond the natural?

  ·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

 How does Kiri’s life change, if she’s born deaf or becomes deaf?  How does her role as Cikan Kazinski’s only daughter change?  Does Eldemar have a Deaf community?

This could play into her desire to go to Cyoria, too—I wouldn’t expect Cirin to have much in the way of resources or community, but maybe Cyoria does; maybe that’s why she wants so badly to go.

  ·        ALL: Finding Peace/An End to the War

·        ALL: Legal Drama

·        ALL: Magical environment/species conservation scientist au

·        ALL: Magical horticulturists

 This set is more likely future!fic than anything else—Kirielle’s growing up into a country on the brink of war; what’s she going to do when she gets older?  Maybe she’ll be involved in that, or with the law—or maybe she goes to school and learns to be a mage, and then goes on to a career as a conservationist or horticulturist.

    Mother of Learning - nobody103   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Zorian Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

·        Zach Noveda (Mother of Learning)

 request-specific dnw: physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family, significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction, romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian (unless in a romantic fairytale au).

 ·        All: Changeling AU

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        ALL: High Fantasy AU

·        All: Historical Fantasy AU

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Nature Magic

 Again, setting and/or mood changes—turn one or both of these two into a changeling child, or push them into a different setting, or change their world to feel a little more magical than it does in canon.

  ·        All: Character has a secret identity

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Legal Drama

·        ALL: Magical environment/species conservation scientist au

·        ALL: Magical horticulturists

·        ALL: Role Swap AU

 This set is a combination of probably-post-canon things and things that could slide into the canon timeline—what if one or both of them went to more effort to construct a second identity, either in the loop or out of it, for anyone’s benefit?  What if one or both of them was deaf—if you go here, it’d be interesting if you combined it with deaf!Kirielle too.  A role swap—what if Zorian got there earlier and the angels didn’t think him unworthy, and Zach wound up his tagalong instead?

And the other three are basically what-ifs for the post-canon world—there’s Zach’s court case to be dealt with, and these two are both skilled enough to do basically whatever they want to, if it’s to do with magic.  Why not become a conservationist or horticulturist?

  ·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

·        ALL: Regency AU

·        All: Robin Hood Fusion

·        ALL: Spies & Secret Agents

·        ALL: University AU

 This is a whole grab bag of different AUs—they’re all fairly self-explanatory I think, though I will say that you shouldn’t feel pressured to keep the overtly mundane-seeming AUs mundane, if you don’t want too—I’d like the mundane versions of course!  But there’s plenty of interesting things you could explore with, e.g., magic!figure skating, so.  Go wild.

  ·        All: Tam Lin Fusion

 In a weird way, MoL already has its characters in the roles they need to be in for a Tam Lin fusion, though the structure is of course very different–what is Zach if not a sacrifice against Panaxeth’s release? What is Zorian if not the one who fights nigh-impossible odds to save him from that fate?  I’d love to see a fic that goes into this.

    幻影ヲ駆ケル太陽 il sole penetra le illusioni | Day Break Illusion   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Tsukuyomi Luna (Day Break Illusion)

·        Taiyou Akari (Day Break Illusion)

·        Shirokane Ginka (Day Break Illusion)

·        Hoshikawa Seira (Day Break Illusion)

·        Group: Tsukuyomi Luna & Tsukuyomi Serena (Day Break Illusion)

·        Group: Hoshikawa Seira & Shirokane Ginka & Taiyou Akari & Tsukuyomi Luna

 fandom-specific dnw: heavy gender dysphoria.

 ·        All: a character is transgender (binary)

·        ALL: Alternate First Meetings

·        All: Character has a secret identity

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

·        ALL: Street Rats

 This is basically the AUs of mundane level things; the broad strokes of canon are perfectly compliant with any of these, or at least they could be. What changes, if you go for any of the AUs listed above? What stays the same?

  ·        All: Changeling AU

·        ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

·        All: with the right postage you can send letters anywhere anywhen

 Different flavors of fantasy—for the changelings, is the character we know from canon the stolen child, or their faerie replacement?  Are their daemons affected by them fighting the daemonia; what happens to a daemon when the human is consumed by a daemonia?  How do their powers and battles work in a world that’s more overtly magical? For the last—who/where/when would they send letters to?  Would Akari send one back in time to Fuyuna, Luna to her sister, Seira to her friend? Forward to their future selves? How does this affect the timeline; do you have to be careful, lest you irrevocably change things, or are future-letters already set and immutable?  Is this common or rare—what’s the price to send a letter through time?

  ·        ALL: Character Journeys To The Underworld to Rescue Their Dead Friend

·        All: Journey to the Underworld to Resurrect Loved One

 Who are they rescuing?  How are they going about the rescue?  Are they bringing back Fuyuna?  Seira’s friend?  Luna’s sister, if it turns out she’s dead not just vanished some other way?  Ginka herself, if we suppose that she died in the annihilation rather than going to battle elsewhere?

If a Daemonia’s victim is resurrected, does everyone remember them again? Either way, what are the consequences of bringing back a person who’d been erased?

  ·        ALL: Dragon Rider AU

·        ALL: Fencing AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

 Sports aus!  Two mundane, one not.  I’d love to see the kids in some kind of competitive something—are they teammates? Competitors? Is Sefiro Fiore a sports organization in this world, or are they both athletes and tarot users?

  ·        DBI: Daemonia hosts aren't erased from the timeline when killed

 So, one of the generally convenient things in this world—even if it’s not a particularly nice thing—is that none of the characters ever have to deal with the fallout of the deaths they cause; the daemonia’s victims are erased.  Ret-gone, if you will.  But what if they weren’t?  What would the effect of that be; how would that change things?

    幻影ヲ駆ケル太陽 il sole penetra le illusioni | Day Break Illusion   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Group: Hanayume & Lymro & Mama Nagataki & Taiyou Akari (Day Break Illusion)

·        Group: Hanayume & Lymro & Mama Nagataki (Day Break Illusion)

 fandom-specific dnw: heavy gender dysphoria.

 ·        All: a character is transgender (binary)

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

·        ALL: Found Family

 So, again, this is the more mundane aus—add these in!! tell me how they affect things, or how they don’t affect them!

Found family is… kinda canon? But there isn’t really much focus on that aspect in canon so I’d love some more here.

  ·        All: Changeling AU

·        ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        All: Historical Fantasy AU

·        ALL: Magic is a part of everyday life

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Regency AU (no homophobia)

·        ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

·        All: with the right postage you can send letters anywhere anywhen

 And these are the magic and/or setting AUs!  How do these elements change their lives; what stays the same regardless?

See my previous set of Day Break Illusion requests for my thoughts on the letters tag.

  ·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

 Just—daemons!  What are theirs?  For Hanayume—what gender is her daemon?  I’m sorry I’m running out of things to say at this point…

  ·        ALL: Dragon Rider AU

·        ALL: Fencing AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

 So, in canon, Hanayume, Lymro, and Mama Nagataki are kind of Akari’s fortune-teller aunts/mentors; if we change it so that Akari’s thing is fencing or figure skating or dragon-riding, why not bring her aunts along for the ride as her mentors in that sport, or, if we’re not including Akari—competitors themselves, perhaps, or maybe generally teachers?

   If you made it all the way down here—first of all, wow, this letter was way too long so good on you for making it—second of all—thank you again for writing for me!! Good luck!!

[belphegor1982]

Thought I’d make a the Mummy/Returns fic recs posts for @counterwiddershins (EDIT: whom I can tag now!) because they asked for recs. So here are my favourite (complete) Mummy stories under the cut in alphabetical order, title-summary-why it’s on my list style. A few are Old, because I discovered this fandom in 2003 and there’s some great oldies. Hope you - and anyone else looking for great fics - enjoy them!

As Sweet as This / Coming Clean, by robot-iconography

Summary:  Evelyn reflects on the changes Ahm Shere has wrought upon her brother, husband, and son. /  Rick takes his life in his hands as he faces his greatest challenge ever: fatherhood.

Comments: I put these two in the same bag because they’re basically a diptych. They’re like two sides of the same coin. On one hand, you have a lovely story in Evy’s voice, on the other, a hilarious one in Rick’s. Both stories are sweet and more touching than they sound.

Circumstantial Evidence, by robot-iconography

Summary: “She could be damnably silly at times; she dressed like a spinster and carried herself like bloody royalty; but she was my baby sister, the only one I’d ever have. I’d been through hell to get her back, and now I was going to lose her anyway.”

Comments: Probably my favourite Mummy story ever. I love it so much I translated it into French in 2004, and even more so now I’ve read PG Wodehouse. Basically, there is canoodling, funny misunderstandings, and the closing scene is adorable (and made me discover Ella Fitzgerald’s “Always”, which is perfect as Ella Fitzgerald always is). Peak Carnahan siblings shenanigans and a great Rick.

Deeper Within Darkness, by Laurie M

Summary: It is a truth universally acknowledged that wherever Rick O'Connell and Evelyn Carnahan are, trouble is not far away. What begins as an innocent night out soon leads to danger that threatens all of Egypt.

Comments: a great follow-up on the 1st film, with still-developing relationships, a mysterious medallion, and ghostly (sort of) crocodiles. The main four are very well written. 3rd person limited POVs alternate with 1st person POVs in a very natural way, allowing us glimpses into the characters’ heads. Sometimes a little bit sombre, but a lovely story.

A Favour for a Friend, by queueingtrilobite [orphan account]

Summary: Roped into doing a favour for a friend, Jonathan finds himself in charge of an antiques shop in Cairo. This is honestly the very last favour he's going to do for anyone. Ever.

If you ship Ardeth and Jonathan, there’s plenty of fun and/or feelsy stories for you! Like this fun little romp, which features a hilarious style, a Jonathan who is equally good at thinking on his toes as he is as making disasters happen (being a bit of a disaster himself).

Finding Ma’at, by exchequered [orphan account]

Summary: “Hamunaptra Cruises.” Ardeth’s tone was thoughtful. “Do you not fear a curse upon your enterprise, for naming it thus?”

Another Ardeth/Jonathan fic - and boy, this one is *chef’s kiss* I mean, the only three tags are Tourism, Pining, and denial is a river in Egypt :D

Hereafter, by Marxbros

Summary: After TMR. Imhotep has raised Ancksunamun and conquered the earth. Rick, Evy, Ardeth, Jonathan, and some new characters must find each other to defeat Imhotep once more.

Comments: ooh, this one’s a monster to tackle (134k words), and it gets pretty epic - and is worth every second of reading. The OCs are great, necessary, and everyone gets their chance to shine.

Never Spellbound by a Starry Sky, by robot-iconography

Summary: Strange goings-on mar Rick and Evelyn's wedding preparations. Can they and Jonathan solve the mystery?

Comments: another follow-up on TM, as Evy and Rick navigate their relationship and how much they should wait before any sort of hanky-panky. Life interferes in the form of a mysterious object (though NOT the obvious one) and the three are thrust into adventure again. There are battles with the mosquito netting, someone getting a few stitches on their arse (again, not the obvious choice), and all the chapter titles come from dialogue from Elizabeth Peters’ Crocodile on the Sandbank. It’s often hilarious and the dialogue is to die for.

The Mummy: Curse of the Seven Scorpions, by Jac Danvers

Summary: Libby O’Connell hasn’t heard from her brother in years. The word ‘mummy’ meant nothing to her. But when a tiny gold scorpion is revealed to have much greater value, she is thrust back into her family’s life, and the life of a man she once hated.

Comments: back in the day, the “Rick’s sister tags along and falls in love with [usually Ardeth]” trope was a staple of Mummy fanfic, and one I didn’t have much interest in. This little story, mostly set after TMR, is a fun romp; Libby is a good character, well handled, and the little developing romance with Jonathan is fun to watch.

Sidekick, by madsthenerdy girl (on FFnet here)

Summary: Jonathan honestly tries to be a big brother. No, really.

Comments: Fantastic portrait of Jonathan through the years, warts and all, and his relationship with Evy (and later Alex). It’s heartfelt, often funny, and honest (sometimes painfully).

Take That, Bembridge Scholars!, by seren-ccd

Summary: The world has been saved and there's really only one thing left to do. Evy writes a strongly worded letter to the Bembridge Scholars. Oh, she gets married, too. 

It’s a great look at Evelyn, Rick and Jonathan in a few scenes, from the night after Hamunaptra to the start of Rick’s and Evy’s life as a married couple, interspersed by extracts from the aforementioned strongly-worded letter (and it’s great).

The Tenth Plague, by Khedi (on FFnet here)

Summary: Did anyone while watching The Mummy wonder about what would have happened if the tenth of the Biblical plagues had come to pass?

Not a death fic (well, not quite) but a great little look at (again, I’m nothing if not predictable) the Carnahan siblings just after they get back to Cairo after The Mummy. It’s a punch in the feels and a hug. I love it.

Travelers by Night, by 20thcenturyvole

Summary: Very quickly, Jonathan weighed the odds. On one hand, potential death, whether by armed bandits, a mummy’s curse, or people who looked like bandits and who were very angry about someone unleashing a mummy’s curse. On the other hand, potential riches, home ground, and topics of conversation other than what happened at school fifteen years ago and who got it in the neck where.

A great look at Jonathan post-first film and a great take on Ardeth, too. Can be shippy if you tilt your head and squint, or not. Your call.

We Three Together series, by Tinydooms

Basically a series that can act as a novelisation for The Mummy, mostly “missing scenes” and character studies. A joy to read if you like Evy, Rick, and Jonathan.

The Witches’ Library, by jones2000 (on FFnet here)

Summary: He would like to state emphatically for the record that none of this was his fault, thank you very much. It was all entirely coincidental. He should know by now that these things have a tendency to snowball. Or, Jonathan doesn't need the O’Connells to find trouble.

Comments: I read this last year and it immediately made my shortlist of favourites, on top of hitting me in the heart and over the head with the subtlety of a freight train. I even made a rec post about it. The writing is so sharp it might as well be written with a bloody scalpel, the OCs are fascinating, and Jonathan is somewhat jaded but still wonderfully entertaining. It’s the only post-WW2 Mummy story I’ve ever loved (read?), and certainly the only one that incorporates Tomb of the Dragon Emperor elements I’ve ever loved. Give it plenty of reviews, it deserves them.

Edited to add a few and make it more dash-friendly :o)

Also, I wrote a few things if you’re interested:

After the Sunset: What’s left to do, after saving the world and riding triumphantly into the setting sun? A lot, as it turns out. Our Heroes ride camels, negotiate the shift from acquaintances and allies to something like a family, and encounter a couple of surprises good and bad on the way back from Hamunaptra. (Or, the one where Evelyn and Rick discover the contents of their saddlebag, Jonathan finds out that whiskey doesn’t quite cut it when a scarab has burrowed its way into your hand and arm and out your shoulder, and Ardeth gives his name and saves the day. Well, night.)

Long one-shot set just after “the end” of The Mummy.

Fairy Tales and Hokum: 1937: Two years after the events of Ahm Shere, the O’Connells are “required” by the British Government to bring the Diamond taken there from Egypt to England. In Cairo, while Evelyn deals with the negotiations and Rick waits for doom to strike again, Jonathan bumps into an old friend of his from university, Tom Ferguson. Things start to go awry when the Diamond is stolen from the Museum and old loyalties are tested...

This one is looong. It’s 160k+ words. (also took me 16 years to finish but shhh)

Carnahan-O’Connells musings and snapshots: Headcanons and one-shots about the disaster family.

Like it says on the tin - mostly headcanons with a few actual stories with dialogue.

I know, there’s not a lot of them, but they’re my very favourites. If you have other recs, feel free to add them!

[magicalwardrobe-mw]

Magic at your fingertips.

Summary: Emma Swan was a strange child. The dozens of families she’d been into could attest to that. Lights would twinkle when she was scared and glasses would break when she was angry.

Then a woman dressed in blue found her sleeping behind a dumpster and decided to tell her she was a witch.

(Or the Hogwarts AU nobody had asked for).

Find it in AO3.

Chapter One: Just the beginning.

When Emma was little she used to imagine her parents loved her very much. She used to believe they would have taken care of her if they could, but something happened that made them leave her alone in the middle of the road. She used to hope they would appear someday, take her away from the foster families that didn’t care for her and they would love her like she never had been.

After all, if they didn’t care for her would they have left her with a handmade woollen blanket with her name stitched on?

But the years on the foster system, jumping from family to family, made her childish beliefs disappear like smoke.

Emma Swan was a strange child. The dozens of families she’d been into could attest to that. Lights would twinkle when she was scared and glasses would break when she was angry. Sometimes objects would move around the room of their own accord and there was that one time Mr. Thompson’s skin had turned blue when he was trying to hurt her.

That was probably why nobody wanted her.

Emma was a freak.

So she ran away, until the police caught her and then she waited some weeks, a part of her still hoping that family would be the one, and then she would run again.

That’s it, until a woman dressed in blue found her sleeping behind a dumpster and decided to tell her she was a witch.

Because of course.

Emma, just turned eleven, hadn’t believed her. She had outgrown fairy tales long ago. But then the woman (“I’m Professor Blue”) had offered to take her to a coffee shop and pay for lunch if only Emma heard her out.

And Emma, cold, hungry and tired, followed her.

“I teach at Hogwarts,” Professor Blue said while they were making their way through the busy London streets. “Charms,” she added. “It’s a powerful kind of magic.”

Emma nodded though she kept looking around. The street was full of people and she really didn’t want anyone to see her walking with that madwoman.

“Where are we going?” Emma asked. “We’ve passed like a dozen coffee shops by now.”

Professor Blue blinked down at her. “Oh! We aren’t going to a coffee shop! We are going to a pub. The Leaky Cauldron. Is one of the most famous pubs in wizarding London, you’ll see. It’s also the entrance to Diagon Alley, which is part of our visit.”

The Leaky Cauldron, Emma could see, wasn’t all that great. It was dark and smelled of alcohol, there weren’t any electric lights and the only illumination came from the candles and through the dirty windows.

“Come on,” Professor Blue said. “Why don’t you go find a table? I’ll get us something to eat.”

‘Something to eat’ was enough food to feed an army, not that Emma was complaining. She hadn’t eaten in two days and free food was free food.

“Now, why don’t you let me tell you about Hogwarts, huh?” and Professor Blue got out a long, thin stick and waved in the air. In the table suddenly appeared the same strange letter Emma had been throwing in the trash for weeks (sensibly thinking it was some kind of prank) and Professor Blue cleared her throat.

“How did you…?”

The answer was simple. “Magic.”

Diagon Alley was something else. The shops were close together and street was very crowded for a Tuesday at noon in late October. But as Professor Blue had explained over lunch, it was the heart of the British wizarding community.

Their first stop was Gringotts, the bank. Instead of humans behind the counter, there were small creatures with pointy teeth and ears. Goblins, Professor Blue had said.

There they got out some money form a vault put aside for orphans like her, with no family to pay for their supplies and no money of their own. It made Emma feel like charity and she didn’t like that feeling. At all.

Professor Blue took her to the second-hand stores where they got her books and some equipment (“you will have until next September to read these books. I expect you to be prepared”). The robes she was supposed to get them some weeks before she left for school (“girls your age are always growing”) as did the Potions kit.

And then they stopped for a wand (cedar, phoenix feather core, ten inches, springy), which took a surprisingly long amount of time, and Professor Blue declared their shopping trip over. She handed her a train ticket and explained how she had to get into the Platform once the time came.

Then she asked her the directions for her current foster home. And that’s where things got interesting.

Ingrid Fisher seemed like a nice woman. But Emma had been around enough seemingly nice people to know it didn’t always match.

When Emma had told Professor Blue of her current living situation (had she really thought Emma was behind a dumpster for fun?) the woman had gotten them to the Ministry to fix it.

Since Emma know knew of her true nature it would be inadvisable to send her back to live with muggles. So the young girl had been sent to waiting room in the Ministry while they looked for a magical foster family to take her in.

At least the food from the Ministry cafeteria was good, not what Emma had been expecting. And they gave it to her for free, which made it even better.

It had taken them almost four days until they found Ingrid Fisher. Emma was just happy to finally leave the big Ministry she had already explored from top to bottom and sleep on a real bed.

Ingrid lived on Horizont Alley over her ice-cream shop. It was pretty popular with the families and she even let Emma help her paying her with ice-cream and some pocket money.

Emma had to admit Ingrid was pretty great.

She didn’t ask for Emma to see her as a mother («Mother sounds so old, I’d like better to be an older sister») and didn’t seem to mind her sky-high walls. She was smart, almost always knowing what was going on through Emma’s mind. After half a year, the girl started regarding the older woman as her somewhat family.

Maybe magic wouldn’t be so bad after all.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O

“Are you excited?”

Emma looked up from the book she was pretending to read. “What?”

Ingrid smiled warmly at her from the other side of the kitchen table. “For Hogwarts,” she said. “Are you excited?”

“I guess,” Emma made a grimace that tried to be a smile. “Mostly nervous,” she said.

“I was the same,” confessed Ingrid. “I woke up at five in the morning,” Emma grunted at that. “and couldn’t eat a thing. I regretted it later,” she admitted. “It’s a long trip to Hogwarts to go without eating almost anything. And the trolley lady’s sweets are good but they don’t make much of a meal.”

The «that’s why I made you lunch» was left hanging in the air.

Ingrid cleared her throat. “But still, I don’t get why you’re so nervous. You already know a couple of your classmates.”

Emma’s face deadpanned. “I know Jasmine and that’s it,” she said.

Emma had been attending a sort-of-magic-primary-school, though it wasn’t very different than a muggle one, in Horizont Alley with the rest of kids from the entire magical shopping district. There weren’t a lot of kids in Emma’s class, and most of them would keep going to that school (to help their parents on the shops or because the just didn’t have enough magical ability for Hogwarts) or go to other magical schools aside from Hogwarts.

Jasmine was the only one of her classmates to join her in Scotland. Her father owned a branch of successful, and expensive, luxury goods and they certainty could afford losing her most of the year.

“She’s nice and all but she’s kinda stuck up,” Emma said.

Ingrid laughed. “Well, with her family as rich as it is I can’t blame her. She even seems more down-to-earth than I expected.”

Emma just grimaced again and forced herself to eat some of the scrambled eggs in front of her. Ingrid’s face softened and the knot on Emma’s throat tightened.

“Don’t worry,” Ingrid said. “You’ll be fine,” she promised.

Emma managed to gulp down the bite. “Will you write to me?” she asked trying not to sound vulnerable and failing spectacularly.

“You don’t even have to ask,” she assured.

Emma had ended up in a compartment with Jasmine, who had been all too happy to see a familiar face, two enthusiastic redheads named Ariel and Merida and a moody boy who had been on the compartment when they’d arrived and refused to look out the window to even introduce himself.

«Rude» Emma had thought with a scowl.

“Oh, I’m a muggleborn,” Merida had said when the conversation had, inevitably, switched to their families. “Mah family was verra surprised when mah letter came.”

At first Emma hadn’t understood a word that came from Merida’s mouth due to her thick accent, but she was getting better.

“Well I’ve got a big family and all my sisters have already gone to Hogwarts so it wasn’t a big surprise. I think most of our teachers won’t be happy when they see another Waters around,” Ariel explained.

The three girls bit back a smile and Jasmine sighed wishfully. “I wish I had siblings,” she said. “My father does his best but it can get lonely. He’s the owner of the Agrabah line so he was a lot of work.”

Ariel’s eyes went wide. “Your father owns Agrabah?” she gaped at Jasmine. “Holy Morgana!”

Emma could see Jasmine starting to regret ever saying anything about Agrabah so she decided to help her out (also stopping the questions about her family before they could even start). “Where do you think you’re gonna end up?” she asked. “Which house, I mean.”

That distracted Ariel enough and Jasmine sent her a grateful look across the compartment.

“Oh, I don’t know!” Ariel beamed excited. “I guess Gryffindor would be great, because bravery and stuff, you know? But the other houses could be awesome, too. I wouldn’t say no to Ravenclaw but I don’t think I’m smart enough to go there. And all that studying…” she shivered.

Merida smiled. “Me too,” she said. “As long as isnae Slytherin…”

That broke the silent guy out from his brooding. “What’s wrong with Slytherin?” he snapped at Merida.

“Well… everybody says is th’ hoose where all th’ evil wizards go,” she said.

The kids blue eyes flashed. “My brother is in Slytherin and he’s the best wizard in the world!” he said. “Besides, you shouldn’t judge a whole house just by some people.”

“Isnae just some people,” Merida muttered.

The guy glared at her but Merida remained silent, even if Emma could see she was dying to burst out in a screaming match with him. The fiery redhead looked at the other girls, probably seeking their support.

“My father is in Slytherin,” Jasmine said almost like an excuse. “Most of the greatest businesses are owned by Slytherins, in fact.”

Ariel also looked sheepishly at Merida. “A couple of my sisters are in Slytherin,” she admitted. “Though we are so many it would have been really weird if all of us ended up in the same house.”

And then they all looked at Emma, as if daring her to pick a side. “From what I’ve heard, there’s a lot of bad people who came out of Slytherin,” she started. “But I don’t think that means all of them are bad? Maybe it’s just that Slytherins have more potential to become bad?”

That didn’t seem to satisfy the boy, for he scowled at her and stormed off the compartment with a huff.

“Geez! I wonder what crawled up his arse and died!”

The three girls gaped at Emma and her crass language.

Even if Emma had become used to magic there were some things that would still surprise her from time to time.

Like a singing hat.

It was raining when the train had dropped them at Hogsmeade, the town right next to Hogwarts. Instead of taking the carriages, the first years had to follow a stern looking woman (named Maleficent of all things) through a dark path to the shore where some boats awaited them. And while the view of the castle was amazing from the water, Emma would have preferred a less wet and cold route.

Professor Blue had greeted them on the doors of the castle and guided them to a small room and then gave a speech about the Hogwarts houses, and the House Cup and the Sorting that Emma, truthfully, didn’t pay much attention to.

But Ingrid had already explained it all to her, and even Professor Blue had, too, on their trip to Diagon Alley.

Everybody started muttering nervously once she left and Emma had to admit the Sorting thing sounded a little painful. But Ingrid would have told her if it was something of that kind, right?

Professor Blue wasn’t gone for long and they followed her to a huge hall with a ceiling that looked to the night sky. And that was pretty cool.

And then the hat started to sing.

And everybody stared at it like it was the most normal thing ever.

When the hat finished its song, Professor Blue walked to stand next to the stool the hat was sitting on and unrolled a long parchment. “When I read your name you will come up here, I will put the hat over your head and, after it sorts you, you shall go to your House table. Now… Agrabah, Jasmine!”

Jasmine tried to mask her nervousness but she looked pale and her wide eyes denoted her fear. She walked up the stairs and remained some long moments under the hat, which tilted from side to side as if musing, until it shouted:

“RAVENCLAW!”

The Ravenclaw table burst into a warm applause for their newest recruit, and they did it again when the next kid, Arendelle, Elsa, also belonged to their house.

Baker, Celia, a short blind witch that confidently walked to the stool, was next. The hat sorted her in Slytherin after some seconds and the house cheered for her. One of the older kids jumped from the table to help her get to a free seat.

“Beasley, Adam!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

“Bell, Tina!” Professor Blue called.

Bell was a short blond girl who, as it seemed, gave the hat some problems, for it spend almost two full minutes thinking before placing her in Hufflepuff.

Blanchard, Mary Margaret was next, and she seemed excited more than scared. “HUFFLEPUF!” the hat proclaimed just barely touching her head.

Then there was Booth, August, another Ravenclaw, and a guy unfortunate enough to be named Fulbert Deforest, who was the first Gryffindor. De Vil, Cruella also had it bad in the name department and Emma wasn’t even really surprised to see her going into Slytherin.

“Dunbroch, Merida!”

The Scottish girl had just sat down on the stool, the hat barely grazing her head, when she was proclaimed a Gryffindor. For her satisfied smile, she was pretty happy with her new house.

After that Emma sort of spaced out, already nervous enough to pay any more attention to the sorting. She stared at the stool without seeing, her palms started to sweat and blood pounded on her ears.

(The Slytherin guy from the compartment turned out to be a Hufflepuff. Emma didn’t think he was nice enough to be a badger and she had hoped he would end in his loved house just so that Emma wouldn’t have any chance to end up with him).

(Because Emma knew herself and she knew Slytherin was not for her. Or Ravenclaw for that matter).

They got to the S’s and Emma thought she was going to throw up. One guy went to Gryffindor and another to Slytherin. And then she knew she was close.

“Svensson, Kristoff!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Swan, Emma!”

Her heart stopped. Emma took a deep breath and forced herself to go sit on the stool. She could do it, she could do it.

Professor Blue nodded at her in recognition and she lowered the hat.

«Ugh» she heard a voice say. Was that the hat?

“GRYFFINDOR!” it announced right after.

«Well,» Emma thought to herself as she stood up, her knees shaking with relief. «That wasn’t so bad».

The Gryffindor table was cheering for her and Emma sat down between a blond boy and a happy brunette.

“Hi!” she said. “Great house, isn’t it?”

Emma smiled. “I’m just happy to be in a house, you know?”

The blond boy snorted. “I also was worried that I would somehow fail the Sorting.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” one of the oldest girls with a shiny badge on her tunic smiled at them. “There’s always a house for everybody,” she assured. “I’m Milah, by the way. Milah Gold. I’m the Head Girl.”

They all turned their attentions to the sorting after that. The hat called Hufflepuff for the girl under the hat and she scurried to her house, clearly relieved.

“Waters, Ariel!” Professor Blue read.

Ariel hadn’t even sat in the stool for more than a second when the hat put her in Gryffindor. Then came the last kid, Whale Victor, who ended up in Ravenclaw.

Professor Blue dispatched the hat and the stool while the Headmaster, Merlin Knight (it was rumoured he was a descendant for the Merlin) stood up to say some words.

“I know you all must be starving, I know I am,” he joked. “So all I’m going to say is «Let’s eat»!”

And suddenly all the empty plates filled with all kinds of food. Emma dug in, far too hungry to care for the people around her and ate in silence while Merida drilled poor Milah into all there was to know about Hogwarts. Some of the older kids also joined and soon they were explaining the secrets of the school to a bunch of very nervous eleven-years-old.

Around the time of deserts, things had calmed down enough. Emma was listening to Ruby Lucas, the girl sitting next to her, talk about her Grandmother when she spotted the Rocky Road half-hidden between a bowl of strawberries and some pudding.

She launched herself towards it at the same time her other neighbour did. They both stopped to look at each other with one hand on the platter each.

Emma blinked and the guy copied her. She narrowed her eyes, readying for a quick snatch when she realized the absurdity of the situation.

The guy’s lips twitched with amusement and he helped her lift the ice-cream over the strawberries towards them. Emma handed him a spoon and they shared a knowing look, then they both dug in directly from the platter.

“So…” he said. “You like Rocky Road, huh?”

Emma smiled at him. “It’s my favourite.”

“Mine too,” he beamed. “I’m David Nolan,” he introduced himself.

She grinned, her mouth full of chocolate. “Emma Swan.”

[thefairybookhoarder]

Because You Love To Hate Me [Part 1]

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📖/5 - It very quickly became one of my favourite books (so much so that I bought a physical copy after having already read it on my Kobo!) and even though I enjoyed some stories less they were still all fun to read!

Summary [from Goodreads]: Leave it to the heroes to save the world--villains just want to rule the world.

In this unique YA anthology, thirteen acclaimed, bestselling authors team up with thirteen influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view.

Review with spoilers below the cut. Proceed at your own risk!

The Blood of Imuriv by Renee Ahdieh

📚📚📚📚/5

Fun read. Great story to start the book. Have never read anything by Renee Ahdieh but I now love her writing and definitely plan to read more (have "The Wrath and the Dawn" in my TBR). Love the world building and society where women rule (hell yeah) but also still felt for Rhone - which I guess is the point :P. I almost forgot that he was the villain until the end when he accidentally kills his sister and he feels this incredible guilt but also relief. Which from his point of view the relief is understandable but from the reader's point of view is quite worrisome? Scary? Both?  But all in all awesome future villain backstory, wish there was more. And that game of chess was also hella dope. Shows everything about both the siblings' characters and how they interact. And when he wipes the game controls -  HUGE foreshadowing of what was gonna happen to his sister!

Also PolandbananasBOOKS evil vaccine short story was so creative and such a fun read.

 Jack by Ameriie

📚📚📚📚📚/5

 Oh me gosh this is probably my favorite story of the book. I could ramble on for ages but I'll try to limit myself. Retelling of Jack and The Beanstalk from the giant's point of view (so cool!).

 The giant (villain)? Super-relatable. Which is saying something :P. Jack was also a very interesting character. And the way the story goes full circle? So. Freaking. Smart! It's right there in the beginning: "The thing is getting them to trust you. The animals". And how you think the giant and Jack are becoming friends and how he pushes her to face her fears which then totally bites him in the butt as she ends up eating him. And her going to the edge of the clouds and looking over is a metaphor for her having to accept herself and what she has to do (kill Jack). And the chair at the end was really cool. Like how Jack believed his friend had gone to explore the world (and how the giant pretended to have no idea what happened to the friend) but nope! The friend just ended up as giant chow. Boom! So. Good.

 Gwen and Art and Lance by Soman Chainani

📚📚📚/5

Gotta say: love this book but I was not a huge fan of this story. The story is the retelling of King Arthur if the story was set in a modern high school. The idea of doing it through texts what quite cool. I enjoyed that. But I also didn't know the story of King Arthur that well so I was a bit confused at time. Didn't really like Gwen (and isn't this book about making villains relatable?): she just seemed superficial and didn't seem to be able to decide between Lance and Art. I really didn't like this back and forth between Lance and Art. And I did NOT get the vibe that Lance and Art were best friends even through the texts they sent each other. And so predictable!! Even if you don't know the story. Like OBVIOUSLY at the end she was gonna choose Art. Like caring guy vs. popular guy who only cares about his looks….hmm I wonder who she's gonna choose.

The Bad Girl Hall of Fame was a cool exploring, in blog form (super cool!) of the different types of villains there are in stories. Fun look at all the popular, typical villains and how/why they became villains.

  Shirley & Jim by Susan Dennard

📚📚📚📚📖/5

Disclaimer: I LOVE Sherlock Holmes so when I figured out that this short story was about Sherlock I was so ready for it. I was not. 

The story is an apology letter from Shirley Holmes to Jean Watson. It a story of what would have happened if Holmes and Moriarty had met at school when they were younger. It is a story about friendship. It's a story about love. And it’s a story about betrayal. And it was amazing. Again, loved the full circle. It starts and ends with a kiss so we should now what's coming. But also the chess. Because their relationship starts with chess but it by the end of their relationship was cemented by chess - since the obvious "Checkmate" ending. But the way this story is told is beautiful. The meeting, the getting to know each other, and the falling in love (at least for Shirley) between games of chess was so natural. The talks about justice was also a nice touch, very in character. (Also they discussed "Chronicles of a Death Foretold" which I had to read for Uni and it is very much a subjective and vague take on justice. It fit perfectly. It messed with Shirley's black and white look on justice.) And then the betrayal at the end! And Shirley finding out that Moriarty was only using her to get to Jean's mom.  That is the moment the rivalry starts. That is the moment Sherlock and Moriarty stop being friends and start being enemies.

The Dear Sasha advice column for villains by Sasha Alsberg was really well done. And the last post from Moriarty and then Sasha signing off was really smart and v cool.

 The Blessings of Little Wants by Sarah Enni

📚📚📚/5

This story was okay. I have mixed feelings about this. The villain was quite cool but it left me with so many questions at the end and not in a good way. I wish there was more world building in this story. More background info of why exactly Sigrid has to go Eynhallow. Like if magic is dwindling what is she gonna do once she gets there. Restore it? But if she does then she's not a villain. Use it all up? Then how it that helpful for her? I don't know, this story was confusing. I did like though that she had to hide the amount of magic power she has and loved the reveal that Thomas wasn't real and just a manifestation of her powers. But then if at the end she kills Thomas (which is a representation of her powers) does she kill her powers? That doesn't make sense! Also she has to prove herself by killing someone/making a sacrifice but she never actually does because Thomas technically doesn't exist? Also "I didn't come here to save magic…I came here to prove that I could" sooooo she's not a villain? If she saves magic does it mean she get to keep all the mafic for herself? Is that it? I need answers!

The Sea Witch by Marissa Meyer

📚📚📚📚/5

This is a story about - yes you guessed it, the Sea Witch!! This story was very well written, I really enjoyed it. I ended up really rooting and feeling bad for the Sea Witch. Alienated by her peers because she was - in their opinion - weird (woo alienation always leads to villain-ism!). Although, to be fair, I didn’t really like her at the start of this story either. TBH I didn't really like any of the characters at the start of this story. Nerit's (the Sea Witch) decision to become human is totally understandable though: she doesn't feel like she belongs in the sea (case her peers are jerks) and hopes that on land she will find her place. Turns out that the land is just as bad as the sea (poor Nerit!). She meets a handsome stranger who ends up betraying her so she kills him and finally goes back to sea. Finally as herself. She changed herself for him and he betrayed her (see kids, always be yourself). Also the fact that Samuel (Mr. Handsome stranger) didn't recognize her was brutal (even though I guessed some years passed? But also it showed that Samuel didn't really love Nerit). I really enjoyed this story and especially at the end when Nerit tells Lorindel that his people will go look for her desperate for help and will fall to misery because they won't heed her warnings about magic. It's haunting really. This story really did the Sea Witch justice.

Zoe Herdt's Villain Quiz was also really cool and I think I ended up being slightly villainous. (Although I felt that it was a little too black and white with the answers).

The other 7 stories will be in Part 2 because this review is becoming way too long.  

[ask-white-fatalis]

every odd number for the OC questions

HOO BOY.

1. What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything?Shiro’s full name is Shironus AkumaWraths full name is Wrathanula AkumaKaze’s name is simply Kaze AkumaQuins (my hunter OC’s) name is Quintor Zenerith 

3. Did they have a good childhood? What are fond memories they have of it? What’s a bad memory?Shiros childhood was horrid. for the first 100 years, wrath made his life a living hell in order to toughen him up, only to abandon him by exiling Shiro from his ancestral homeland for Shiro’s pacifistic beliefs.Wrath didn’t start as an asshole. he was a fairly average dragon and even at one point interacted with human beings. however, a turn of betrayal with the humans turn wrath cold and unfeeling.Kaze so far has had a good childhood, then again he is only 2 years old.Quin’s childhood was one of poverty and homelessness, as his parents were killed by a rogue Gore Magala when he was still very young.

5. Do they have any siblings? What’s their names? What is their relationship with them? Has their relationship changed since they were kids to adults? Shiro Has a brother and a sister. His brother, Kuro, Is a black fatalis and is his fathers favorite, often belittling Shiro about how little their father cares about him. Kuro has grown arrogant and crass, often womanizing with many female fatalis’s. Shiros sister is a creature even wrath fears because of how far he pushed her violent nature. given she is a crimson fatalis, the most violent of the 3 species, wrath had her trapped within an abandoned castle when she started to kill her own kind for sport. Kaze, Wrath, and Quin are only Child’s. 

7. Did they have lots of friends as a child? Did they keep any of their childhood friends into adulthood? ((most of my Main OC’s do not have many childhood friends, whether being unpopular, an outcast or generally displeasing in general (wrath…). however, I’m glad to say both quin and shiro are making friends in their adult life.))

9. Do animals like them? Do they get on well with animals? Shiro, although a predator by nature, does his best to respect all living creatures, even befriending some that most fatalis’s would just see as a meal.Wrath has a stern belief that fatalis kind are gods among mortals, that every creature is below that of his species, some of which need to be eradicated from existence.Kaze is learning shiros more pacifistic ways.Quin, even as a hunter, has many monster friends, including a zinogre he raised from a lost pup.

11. Do they have any special diet requirements? Are they a vegetarian? Vegan? Have any allergies?Shiro, Wrath and Kaze are carnivores, and require meat to feed them. however, to keep up kaze’s metal coat, he must ingest ores, like iron and dragonite.

13. What is their least favourite food?Shiro: Rhenoplos, their hide is too hard to chew and their meat is stringy and tough…Wrath: of all of earths creatures, humans by far taste the most foul. and believe me, I have experience to back that up… -growls-Kaze: STONES TASTE YUCKY, BLEEEEECH!!! >:cQuin: Grilled cheese. …. I’M NOT WEIRD, YOU ARE!

15. Are they good at cooking? Do they enjoy it? What do others think of their cooking?((Shiro,Wrath and kaze cannot cook cuz they are dragons, and even in gjinka form they eat food raw.))Quin is an average cook, and likes to surprise his wife with many dishes. his specialty is pizza.

17. Do they like to take photos? What do they like to take photos of? Selfies? What do they do with their photos?all: … what are photos?

19. What’s their least favourite genres?Shiro: I don’t care much for those horror books… they really seem unnecessarily Gorey… and i care not for what the young dragons call “Wrap music”. Wrath: Human arts are a waste of time. if i want entertainment fromthem, I’ll just burn their beloved libraries!! HAHAHA! STUPID PINK MONKEYS!Kaze: ROMANCE IS GROSS, BLEEEEECHQuin: I hate anything with adam sandler :I

21. Do they have a temper? Are they patient? What are they like when they do lose their temper?Shiro has a lot of patients, but LORD HELP YOU IF THAT FUSE GOES OUT. Wrath simply kills you if you bug him slightly so…Kaze, as a kid and thus doesn’t have an abundance of patients, and often complains if he doesn’t get his way.Quins temper is fairly level, but has none for people he thinks are rude.

23. Do they have a good memory? Short term or long term? Are they good with names? Or faces?Shiro and Wrath remember everything that has ever happened in their 100,000′s of years they’ve been alive.Kaze has very bad short term memory and has a bad attention span.Quin has a decent memory but has trouble with names.

 25. What do they find funny? Do they have a good sense of humour? Are they funny themselves?(( @monsterhunterayame asked this as well!))Shiro: what did the buffalo say to his kid when he went to school? -snorts- BISON!!! PFFFFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, OH YOU HUMANS MAKE THE FUNNIEST JOKES!!! HAHAHAHA!!!Wrath: the screams of torment of my victims the second before i rip their heads off! humans make the most pitifully funny squeaks~Kaze: POTATO! :DQuin: My friends have named me the pun deputy~

27. What makes them sad? Do they cry regularly? Do they cry openly or hide it? What are they like they are sad?If he ever gets into an bad argument with a friend, shiro will feel very depressed, and often think that he ruined the friendship he worked hard to build. he does cry, but not openly.Wrath believes showing sadness is a weakness unbefiting of a dragon, and will never show anyone the sadness in his stone cold heart.Kaze often gets sad if he squishes a bug, and will cry openly, asking shiro if he can save the poor insect.Quins sadness comes from the thought of the gore magala ripping his new life out of his grip, and the parents he lost to the beast. 

29. What do they do when they find out someone else’s fear? Do they tease them? Or get very over protective?Shiro gets very protective of his friends,doing his best never to mention their fears.Wrath brutally abuses the knowledge of ones fear, often using it to torment his victims. Kaze is generally fearless,so he doesnt quite grasp why others would be afraid.Quin, if only for a harmless park would jokingly tease about the fear, but will immediately stop if he thinks he’s gone too far.

31. Do they drink? What are they like drunk? What are they like hungover? How do they act when other people are drunk or hungover? Kind or teasing?((Shiro, Kaze and Wrath do not consume alcohol))Quin does drink, but only the drinks that taste “fruity”. and if he gets drunk, he becomes very flirtatious, to the point where he bets he could shove a wine bottle up his… ehm…y-you get the point…

33. What underwear do they wear? Boxers or briefs? Lacey? Comfy granny panties?((for this purpose,monsters will be in gjinka form))Boxers: Wrath, KazeBriefs: Shiro, Quin

35. What’s their guilty pleasure? What is their totally unguilty pleasure?Shiro’s guilty pleasure: making purring noises when happy, and getting chin scritches.Shiros unguilty pleasure: Making friends!Wraths Guilty Pleasure: expressing joy.Wraths unguilty pleasure: killing.Quins guilty pleasure: SingingQuins unguilty pleasure: Raving about his wife, Naomi.

37. Do they like to read? Are they a fast or slow reader? Do they like poetry? Fictional or non fiction?Shiro,Kaze and Quin all enjoy reading fiction books, Quins fave being kaiju novels, whereas shiro and kaze like fairy tale fantasy books. Quin and shiro are fast readers,but kaze is still learning howto read.Wrath thinks books are a waste of time and prefers to just burn them.

39. Do they like letters? Or prefer emails/messaging?-All characters live in a technologically inept age in terms of writing, so all must stick to letters,-

41. What’s their sexuality? What do they find attractive? Physically and mentally? What do they like/need in a relationship?Shiro would most likely be Heterosexual however a certain fish gets him all hot and bothered so i guess its a bit ambiguous. in a relationship,shiro likes mutual respect and lots of small signs of physical affection, like cuddling. Wrath is Unfeeling, although he would only have relations with an opposite gender.Kaze is too young to determine.Quin is Bi-Sexual, and likes a lady with confidence and curves, and a man with a cute face and muscle, but not too much! Quin also likes physical signs of affection and someone he can have a laugh with and relate to.

43. Are they religious? What do they think of religion? What do they think of religious people? What do they think of non religious people?…. uh

45. How do other people see them? Is it similar to how they see themselves?Shiro: I HAVE ZERO REDEEMING QUALITIES! ;U;Wrath: all fear me,and all SHOULD fear me…Kaze: they think i’m a cute! owoQuin: I’m not sure really…i guess just some guy??? i dunno…

47. How do they act in a formal occasion? What do they think of black tie wear? ((Monster OC’s will again be refered to in their gjinka forms))Shiro is ALWAYS the fanciest and classiest dressed mother fucker in the room.Wrath doesnt care. Kaze is often told by shiro to dress fancy but often just likes to wear hoodies and shorts cuz they’re comfy.Quin dresses his best on formal occasions, and would buy a tux if it were necessary.

49. What is their most valued object? Are they sentimental? Is there something they have to take everywhere with them?For shiro, Four obsidian spires in a long forgotten valley are very close to his heart. every year he goes to see them for hours on end on one particular day.Wrath has a scar on his chest thats important to him, however, its to remind him to NEVER show weakness.Kaze has a scale from Shiro that he carries everywhere, to make him feel like shiro will always protect him. Quin’s only thing from his parents are his fathers Critical Brachydios dual blades. he takes them on every serious hunt he’s been on.

[how2to18]

CRABAPPLE, PRICKLY GOOSEBERRY, bittersweet, and devil’s walking stick — are these the names of thorny old monsters in some dark children’s fairy tale? Nope. They are simply the flora that vine the paths of the forests and hollers of the Smoky Mountains. A brave five-year-old girl named Ernestine must journey through these persnickety snatchers in the early morning shadows in order to deliver mason jars full of fresh milk to the neighbors who live far away. It is 1942, and the husbands are away at war. The wives and mothers run the farms, raise the children, milk the cows. These country neighbors take care of one another in their time of need.

This is the framework for Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s Ernestine’s Milky Way, an achingly poignant tale of independence, resourcefulness, and good old-fashioned neighboring as seen through the eyes of a strong-willed little girl in the wartime South. The illustrations, by Emily Sutton, brush the pages like the powdered wings of butterflies. There are sturdy rock houses and old wooden fences, hand-sewn blankets and dusty banjos, everything surrounded by watercolor bursts of soft country colors — trees, leaves, grass, and plants. Flowers and vines are like their own characters. The facial expressions of the people make you ache for home. Any city-dwelling child is bound to look up at the parent, or teacher, or sibling, or babysitter reading them this story and ask, “Can we please go the woods tomorrow?”

I met Kerry Madden-Lunsford during my first MFA in Creative Writing Residency at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I was immediately drawn to her; she emanates a warm and welcoming vibe, with sparkling blue eyes and a wide, down-home smile. She dresses like a hippie teenager from the ’60s who has met her future self, an older, wiser earth-mother. Currently she directs the Creative Writing program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she covers the desks and tables of her classrooms with books �� dozens of picture books and chapter books, and middle-grade and YA, and, sprinkled in between, weathered copies of classics, like cherished relics from a magical library. Reminiscent of your favorite elementary school teacher, she actually writes out the lessons — infused with words of wisdom and anecdotes — in a comforting cursive on the board. She connects with everyone. She connects with their work. She was my first workshop leader, and her editorial letter about the 20 pages I had submitted told me everything I needed to know about her — namely, that she was a very old soul with a very young heart. You can sense this about her. You can feel it flowing from the pages of her books.

I recently visited Kerry at her home in the hills of Echo Park. We sat together over bagels and coffee with her husband Kiffen and their dazzling little dachshund, Olive, to talk about her latest release, the aforementioned Ernestine’s Milky Way, as well as her prior work. 

She is the author of eight books, including the lauded Maggie Valley Trilogy set in the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia. The first in that series, Gentle’s Holler (2005), was a PEN USA finalist in Children’s Literature, and it’s easy to see why. The book shares some strands of Ernestine’s world as it explores the life of a 12-year-old girl and her adventures, with her eight brothers and sisters, in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1960s. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking at once. Imagine a mash-up between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Coal Miner’s Daughter, and you’re nearly there. Mountain country folk ridden with worries about money and bellies swollen from hunger are the characters that anchor Madden-Lunsford’s work. But the families in her stories rely on mutual affection and a resourcefulness that flows like pure mountain spring water to get them through the rough times.

Her December 2018 essay in the Los Angeles Times, “The Christmas Suit,” is a blistering meditation on family addiction — a deeply caring mother’s despairing attempt to stave off the crippling inertia of frustrated emotion. It’s a different side of Kerry, a flip of the coin. It reveals something tender and truthful about a majority of authors who write picture books, middle-grade, and YA: that they are seasoned individuals whose brave flights of fancy trying to survive adult life are the pearls of wisdom hidden in the sealed-shut shells of books that celebrate innocence, or the end of it.

¤

TIM CUMMINGS: Where did you grow up?

KERRY MADDEN-LUNSFORD: That is a complicated question, though it shouldn’t be. The short answer is that I grew up the daughter of a college football coach, and we moved all the time. For years I said that I lived in 12 states, but my daughter, Norah, reminded me that it’s actually been 13 states. Alabama is lucky number 13. I used to remember all the states by mascots and teams rather than towns. My father’s first coaching job was for Father Lopez’s Green Wave (High School). He married my mother in between football and basketball season.

He was both the coach for both outfits, so he had the basketball season printed on the wedding napkins to build up team support. “Follow Janis and Joe on the Green Wave.” Always the coach, he informed the principal, Sister Annunciata, that the school dance should be held in the library, so the students wouldn’t mess up his gymnasium floor in fancy shoes. He only told me this story a few weeks ago or it would have been in Offsides, my first novel about growing up the daughter of a football coach. Sister Annunciata shut that suggestion down flat, and the dance was held in the gym. I asked him if he chaperoned, and he said, “Hell, no.”

Because some people are going to think that I am the daughter of John Madden, which I am most definitely not, I finally had to write an essay called “I Am Not John Madden’s Daughter.” My father has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia and he sometimes wakes up from naps, talking old football plays or what defense he ran at the Sugar Bowl in 1977 as the defensive coordinator. He did this while we were in Rome a year ago, and my mother said, “Snap out of it! You’re in Rome!”

How did you come to writing?

I’ve told this story once or twice, but I really do credit my fourth-grade teacher, who told me I was a good writer. It was the first time a teacher ever said any such thing. They usually said, “Aren’t you a nice tall girl who listens well?” They said this because I was shy. So it was a relief when a teacher noticed more than height or shyness. That day, I walked around my neighborhood of Ames, Iowa (Iowa State Cyclones), noticing everything, and wrote a story called “The Five Cents,” thinking it was about the “the five senses.” I never was a good speller. I remained a shy kid, and later some of the nuns began to suggest I might have a vocation to join the convent. I wrote about everything, but mostly I read — I read all the time and that absolutely formed me as a writer.

Who are your greatest influences?

My parents were great influences for humor and resilience, but I rebelled quietly because I was not a girly-girl or an athlete (unless field hockey in ninth grade counts, along with golfing on the boys’ team in high school), so I set out to find ways where I could create my own identity away from the gridiron.

I was definitely influenced (terrified) by Helen Keller and facing her fate when I had to get glasses in third grade. The doctor told my mother, “she’s blind without them,” to make a point. When I sobbed in my father’s arms about my horror of going blind (I think I also threw up in the bathroom), he shouted, “By God, nobody is going blind in this house!” I cried, “But how do you know?” “Because I said so!” It made no sense whatsoever, but I believed him.

I adored my babysitter, Ann Kramer, who was a wild tomboy in Ames, Iowa. I loved the coaches’ wives because they were such good storytellers. I was incredibly influenced by my first best friend, Pattie Murphy, in high school because she was so funny and irreverent, presenting a good girl persona to the powers-that-be and then whispering to me filthy things that were horrible and hilarious. We got caught cracking up laughing in the worst places — in class, at midnight Mass, on stage in Ten Little Indians. She was the first friend to make me laugh. We were miraculously “the new girls” at almost the same time in a school, Knox Catholic, where the kids had been together forever; even their parents and some grandparents had attended Knox Catholic.

I was very influenced by my Aunt Jeanne, who gave me books, and my Uncle Michael, who taught me about art. I lost them both to suicide when I was very young, and I wrote about them in Offsides as a way of atoning for not paying more attention. I wrote an essay about that this past summer.

I do think I was most influenced by getting to study abroad at Manchester University my junior year in college. A group of British drama students adopted me and showed me a whole world of art and theater, and I worshipped them for their hilarity and brilliance. I also had wonderful professors in England, who paid attention to me in ways I had never experienced during my first two years at the University of Tennessee. Plus, nobody in England cared if I went to church or watched football. They wanted me to write plays and “drop the grotty trade school occupation of journalism,” and I was very happy to oblige. I’m now writing a novel inspired by that time called Hop the Pond, which also has themes of addiction and features the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.

When I returned to the University of Tennessee from Manchester, I often pretended to be a British exchange student (yes, I was insufferable because I couldn’t bear leaving England for Tennessee). I changed my major to theater, and I came to know my professors in Tennessee who taught us theater history, acting, directing. I was grateful for the encouragement and attention they gave me as a student (and a girl in the South) who wanted to write plays. The only contemporary playwright I knew of at that time was Beth Henley, and I hadn’t yet heard of Wendy Wasserstein.

Our theater department was still cranking out suggested scene study pairings of mostly Inge, Albee, and Williams, and maybe, once in a while, Lillian Hellman. I wanted to write plays, so I stayed in Knoxville after graduation and began an MFA in playwriting. I was the only student in the course at the time, but it gave me two years to learn to teach “Voice and Diction” and to write plays while working at a bookstore. Those two years in Knoxville influenced me because that is when I fell in love with Southern literature. I dropped the faux British accent, and my patient friends were grateful.

Finally, I think my greatest influence just happened this year. She is my cousin, Maureen Madden O’Sullivan — or, simply, Mo. We met for the very first time last May; her grandfather and my great-grandfather — Patrick and Joseph Madden — were brothers in Roscommon, Ireland. Mo and I have lived parallel lives in Los Angeles for 30 years, with many friends in common. She has been sober since 1982, and I have a family member who suffers from addiction, so she has taught me how to really let go — to breathe, to meditate, to eat better, to make gazpacho, to take walks by the sea. She also has stage-four cancer and is doing everything to live and take care of herself, from chemo to acupuncture to meditation to plant medicine to sound therapy to massage to simply taking joy in everything. She is the light of my life, and when I complain about us not meeting sooner, she says, “We met at the perfect time.” She is more evolved than I am.

I have gathered all the letters and texts we have written to each other since May in a compilation, and it’s currently 440 pages. It’s ridiculous, I know, and I don’t know what the project will be, but I am so grateful for Mo. I know I’m a mother, and I love being a mother, but around her I am not a mother. I’m just me again. A friend said I should call the book or whatever it’s going to be: 23 and Me and Mo.

Could you talk about your dual life as director of Creative Writing in Birmingham as well as a working author, teacher, and mother in Los Angeles? 

I’ve been living this unplanned dual two-state life since 2009. I wrote an essay about making the decision to accept a tenure track teaching job in Birmingham, Alabama, and living on an air mattress for a while. I came alone the first year; the second year, my sixth-grade daughter, Norah, joined me and she was like a little cultural anthropologist. She came home from school the first day and said, “We played the name game and we had to say what we liked. And all the kids said they liked only Auburn or Alabama. I know they like their state and ‘auburn’ is a very pretty color, but what I am supposed to choose? When it was my turn, I said, ‘I’m Norah and I like books.’” I realized I had given the child no information about Alabama, so we had a crash course in football so she could catch up. Whenever I hinted at wanting to return to Los Angeles, she would say, “You can go be with Daddy. I like it here. I love it here. All my friends are here. Alabama is great!”

When I realized we were in it for the long haul, we got a rescue dog, Olive, who flies back and forth with me to Los Angeles. I had a terrible flight before we got Olive, awful soul-sucking turbulence, and Norah thought I was crying out “Hell Mary’s” instead of “Hail Mary’s.” After the trip, I vowed to drive or take the train, but it only took a four-day train ride from Los Angeles to Birmingham sitting up in coach class to get me back in the air. Then I got Olive. She has rescued me in countless ways every single day. And she truly is my emotional support animal on planes, along with the occasional emotional support Bloody Mary or glass of red wine.

I love my job as the director of Creative Writing at UAB. I love my students. I learn from them all the time. They come from all walks of life and many of them are first-generation college or they are returning to college later in life. I do miss living with my husband, who has four more years until he retires from LAUSD, but we get to spend summers and holidays together. We also cook and watch movies together. We do this by saying, “One-Two-Three — Go!” and then we hit play at the same time and mostly we’re in sync on Netflix. And because he is a wonderful man, he also goes to visit Mo, and we all have dinner and Skype together.

Our son is in Los Angeles, our middle daughter is in Chicago, and our youngest lives in the dorm at UAB. During the academic year, I live with Olive in what I call my “Alabama Retreat House.” Lots of sweet students and kind faculty drop by from time to time and other friends, too. Birmingham is such a cool city — a bright blue dot in a big red state. One of my L.A. friends visited, and she looked around the house and said, “You’ve created a little Echo Park in Birmingham.” I have filled the place with books and art from mostly “Studio by the Tracks,” where adults on the autism spectrum make art. Started by Ila Faye Miller in what used to be an old gas station, it’s a fantastic studio located in Fannie Flagg’s old neighborhood of Irondale.

I’m currently working on three novels — two are children’s books and one is for adults. I’ve adapted Offsides into a play, and I’m writing a little poetry and always picture books. I am thrilled that Ernestine’s Milky Way, written in this Alabama Retreat House and edited in a 1910 bungalow in Echo Park, has found a home at Schwartz & Wade.

What are your thoughts about the MFA Creative Writing programs these days?

I think they’re valuable because they allow students to find their people. I didn’t find my people in an MFA program, because I was the only student in my program at the time. However, I kind of made my own MFA with a writing group in Los Angeles — we met for 15 years, regularly. Those writers are still some of my dearest friends. I’ve also joined an online group of children’s picture book authors, who are brilliant, and a wonderful local group here of smart women writers. I find I need the feedback and connection with other writers — a kind of forest-for-the-trees thing with all the teaching I do. We also show up and support each other when our books come out.

That is the most valuable aspect to me of the MFA program — finding our people and getting to teach upon graduation. I feel incredibly fortunate to have taught in both a traditional BA and MA program here at UAB and a low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

What’s the most important thing you relay to your students?

I hope I encourage my students to trust themselves — to know that they do have a story to tell. I use play in the classroom (storyboarding and making book dummies) and I get them to take risks or chances with writing sparks, exploring narratives. I also talk about the importance of showing up for each other when success comes along. In other words, go to the reading, buy the book, go to the play — it’s such a long and lonely road to go alone, so I encourage them to cheer each other along the way and offer a hand. It’s so much better than being competitive and harboring jealousy.

Of course, it’s natural to feel envy, but I have been so fortunate to have friends who show up and are genuinely pleased, and I hope I do the same for them. I encourage my students to be good literary citizens and also to spend less time online. I offer the advice I need to listen to myself, especially when I fall into the online rabbit hole.

Can you tell us about your love of picture books and children’s literature?

I read to our three kids all the time. My son’s favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are. I even read that book last year to a group of incarcerated men at Donaldson Maximum Security Prison who had never been read aloud to before. I wrote an essay about that experience.

Anyway, I loved reading to our children when they were small, and my husband was a fantastic reader, too. I used to seek out books with great writing and stories. I hid the Berenstain Bears from the kids because I hated books where we had to learn a lesson. I never really thought of writing for kids because I was writing plays and novels for grown-ups. But I began falling in love with stories like Swamp Angel by Anne Isaacs, and anything by William Steig. The kids loved Chris Van Allsburg, as did I, and of course we loved Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Roald Dahl, Ann Whitford Paul, Cynthia Voigt, Eve Bunting, Jacqueline Woodson, and Lane Smith’s The Happy Hocky Family. There are too many to begin to even name. One of their favorites was “What Luck A Duck” by Amy Goldman Koss, who later became a friend.

We read stacks of books, and as they grew older, they began to tell me what books to read. My son, Flannery, begged me to read The Giver and The Phantom Tollbooth. My daughter, Lucy, fell in love Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak. She wasn’t a huge reader at the time, but she liked that book a lot and said after school one day, “Mom, I felt like reading it at the lunch-table with all my friends around. What it is up with that?”

I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn out loud to them and we watched the movie together. Norah used to have a little shelf of books in the minivan, because she was terrified of finishing one and not having another at hand. She used to ask me, “Can I bring three books?” and I would say, “You may bring them, but I am not carrying them.” When we moved to a different house a few years ago, we donated 20 boxes of books and it still has not made a dent in all the books we have.

¤

Tim Cummings holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. His recent work has appeared in F(r)iction, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Critical Read, and LARB.

The post Echo Park in Birmingham: An Interview with Kerry Madden-Lunsford appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

CRABAPPLE, PRICKLY GOOSEBERRY, bittersweet, and devil’s walking stick — are these the names of thorny old monsters in some dark children’s fairy tale? Nope. They are simply the flora that vine the paths of the forests and hollers of the Smoky Mountains. A brave five-year-old girl named Ernestine must journey through these persnickety snatchers in the early morning shadows in order to deliver mason jars full of fresh milk to the neighbors who live far away. It is 1942, and the husbands are away at war. The wives and mothers run the farms, raise the children, milk the cows. These country neighbors take care of one another in their time of need.

This is the framework for Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s Ernestine’s Milky Way, an achingly poignant tale of independence, resourcefulness, and good old-fashioned neighboring as seen through the eyes of a strong-willed little girl in the wartime South. The illustrations, by Emily Sutton, brush the pages like the powdered wings of butterflies. There are sturdy rock houses and old wooden fences, hand-sewn blankets and dusty banjos, everything surrounded by watercolor bursts of soft country colors — trees, leaves, grass, and plants. Flowers and vines are like their own characters. The facial expressions of the people make you ache for home. Any city-dwelling child is bound to look up at the parent, or teacher, or sibling, or babysitter reading them this story and ask, “Can we please go the woods tomorrow?”

I met Kerry Madden-Lunsford during my first MFA in Creative Writing Residency at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I was immediately drawn to her; she emanates a warm and welcoming vibe, with sparkling blue eyes and a wide, down-home smile. She dresses like a hippie teenager from the ’60s who has met her future self, an older, wiser earth-mother. Currently she directs the Creative Writing program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she covers the desks and tables of her classrooms with books — dozens of picture books and chapter books, and middle-grade and YA, and, sprinkled in between, weathered copies of classics, like cherished relics from a magical library. Reminiscent of your favorite elementary school teacher, she actually writes out the lessons — infused with words of wisdom and anecdotes — in a comforting cursive on the board. She connects with everyone. She connects with their work. She was my first workshop leader, and her editorial letter about the 20 pages I had submitted told me everything I needed to know about her — namely, that she was a very old soul with a very young heart. You can sense this about her. You can feel it flowing from the pages of her books.

I recently visited Kerry at her home in the hills of Echo Park. We sat together over bagels and coffee with her husband Kiffen and their dazzling little dachshund, Olive, to talk about her latest release, the aforementioned Ernestine’s Milky Way, as well as her prior work. 

She is the author of eight books, including the lauded Maggie Valley Trilogy set in the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia. The first in that series, Gentle’s Holler (2005), was a PEN USA finalist in Children’s Literature, and it’s easy to see why. The book shares some strands of Ernestine’s world as it explores the life of a 12-year-old girl and her adventures, with her eight brothers and sisters, in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1960s. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking at once. Imagine a mash-up between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Coal Miner’s Daughter, and you’re nearly there. Mountain country folk ridden with worries about money and bellies swollen from hunger are the characters that anchor Madden-Lunsford’s work. But the families in her stories rely on mutual affection and a resourcefulness that flows like pure mountain spring water to get them through the rough times.

Her December 2018 essay in the Los Angeles Times, “The Christmas Suit,” is a blistering meditation on family addiction — a deeply caring mother’s despairing attempt to stave off the crippling inertia of frustrated emotion. It’s a different side of Kerry, a flip of the coin. It reveals something tender and truthful about a majority of authors who write picture books, middle-grade, and YA: that they are seasoned individuals whose brave flights of fancy trying to survive adult life are the pearls of wisdom hidden in the sealed-shut shells of books that celebrate innocence, or the end of it.

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TIM CUMMINGS: Where did you grow up?

KERRY MADDEN-LUNSFORD: That is a complicated question, though it shouldn’t be. The short answer is that I grew up the daughter of a college football coach, and we moved all the time. For years I said that I lived in 12 states, but my daughter, Norah, reminded me that it’s actually been 13 states. Alabama is lucky number 13. I used to remember all the states by mascots and teams rather than towns. My father’s first coaching job was for Father Lopez’s Green Wave (High School). He married my mother in between football and basketball season.

He was both the coach for both outfits, so he had the basketball season printed on the wedding napkins to build up team support. “Follow Janis and Joe on the Green Wave.” Always the coach, he informed the principal, Sister Annunciata, that the school dance should be held in the library, so the students wouldn’t mess up his gymnasium floor in fancy shoes. He only told me this story a few weeks ago or it would have been in Offsides, my first novel about growing up the daughter of a football coach. Sister Annunciata shut that suggestion down flat, and the dance was held in the gym. I asked him if he chaperoned, and he said, “Hell, no.”

Because some people are going to think that I am the daughter of John Madden, which I am most definitely not, I finally had to write an essay called “I Am Not John Madden’s Daughter.” My father has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia and he sometimes wakes up from naps, talking old football plays or what defense he ran at the Sugar Bowl in 1977 as the defensive coordinator. He did this while we were in Rome a year ago, and my mother said, “Snap out of it! You’re in Rome!”

How did you come to writing?

I’ve told this story once or twice, but I really do credit my fourth-grade teacher, who told me I was a good writer. It was the first time a teacher ever said any such thing. They usually said, “Aren’t you a nice tall girl who listens well?” They said this because I was shy. So it was a relief when a teacher noticed more than height or shyness. That day, I walked around my neighborhood of Ames, Iowa (Iowa State Cyclones), noticing everything, and wrote a story called “The Five Cents,” thinking it was about the “the five senses.” I never was a good speller. I remained a shy kid, and later some of the nuns began to suggest I might have a vocation to join the convent. I wrote about everything, but mostly I read — I read all the time and that absolutely formed me as a writer.

Who are your greatest influences?

My parents were great influences for humor and resilience, but I rebelled quietly because I was not a girly-girl or an athlete (unless field hockey in ninth grade counts, along with golfing on the boys’ team in high school), so I set out to find ways where I could create my own identity away from the gridiron.

I was definitely influenced (terrified) by Helen Keller and facing her fate when I had to get glasses in third grade. The doctor told my mother, “she’s blind without them,” to make a point. When I sobbed in my father’s arms about my horror of going blind (I think I also threw up in the bathroom), he shouted, “By God, nobody is going blind in this house!” I cried, “But how do you know?” “Because I said so!” It made no sense whatsoever, but I believed him.

I adored my babysitter, Ann Kramer, who was a wild tomboy in Ames, Iowa. I loved the coaches’ wives because they were such good storytellers. I was incredibly influenced by my first best friend, Pattie Murphy, in high school because she was so funny and irreverent, presenting a good girl persona to the powers-that-be and then whispering to me filthy things that were horrible and hilarious. We got caught cracking up laughing in the worst places — in class, at midnight Mass, on stage in Ten Little Indians. She was the first friend to make me laugh. We were miraculously “the new girls” at almost the same time in a school, Knox Catholic, where the kids had been together forever; even their parents and some grandparents had attended Knox Catholic.

I was very influenced by my Aunt Jeanne, who gave me books, and my Uncle Michael, who taught me about art. I lost them both to suicide when I was very young, and I wrote about them in Offsides as a way of atoning for not paying more attention. I wrote an essay about that this past summer.

I do think I was most influenced by getting to study abroad at Manchester University my junior year in college. A group of British drama students adopted me and showed me a whole world of art and theater, and I worshipped them for their hilarity and brilliance. I also had wonderful professors in England, who paid attention to me in ways I had never experienced during my first two years at the University of Tennessee. Plus, nobody in England cared if I went to church or watched football. They wanted me to write plays and “drop the grotty trade school occupation of journalism,” and I was very happy to oblige. I’m now writing a novel inspired by that time called Hop the Pond, which also has themes of addiction and features the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.

When I returned to the University of Tennessee from Manchester, I often pretended to be a British exchange student (yes, I was insufferable because I couldn’t bear leaving England for Tennessee). I changed my major to theater, and I came to know my professors in Tennessee who taught us theater history, acting, directing. I was grateful for the encouragement and attention they gave me as a student (and a girl in the South) who wanted to write plays. The only contemporary playwright I knew of at that time was Beth Henley, and I hadn’t yet heard of Wendy Wasserstein.

Our theater department was still cranking out suggested scene study pairings of mostly Inge, Albee, and Williams, and maybe, once in a while, Lillian Hellman. I wanted to write plays, so I stayed in Knoxville after graduation and began an MFA in playwriting. I was the only student in the course at the time, but it gave me two years to learn to teach “Voice and Diction” and to write plays while working at a bookstore. Those two years in Knoxville influenced me because that is when I fell in love with Southern literature. I dropped the faux British accent, and my patient friends were grateful.

Finally, I think my greatest influence just happened this year. She is my cousin, Maureen Madden O’Sullivan — or, simply, Mo. We met for the very first time last May; her grandfather and my great-grandfather — Patrick and Joseph Madden — were brothers in Roscommon, Ireland. Mo and I have lived parallel lives in Los Angeles for 30 years, with many friends in common. She has been sober since 1982, and I have a family member who suffers from addiction, so she has taught me how to really let go — to breathe, to meditate, to eat better, to make gazpacho, to take walks by the sea. She also has stage-four cancer and is doing everything to live and take care of herself, from chemo to acupuncture to meditation to plant medicine to sound therapy to massage to simply taking joy in everything. She is the light of my life, and when I complain about us not meeting sooner, she says, “We met at the perfect time.” She is more evolved than I am.

I have gathered all the letters and texts we have written to each other since May in a compilation, and it’s currently 440 pages. It’s ridiculous, I know, and I don’t know what the project will be, but I am so grateful for Mo. I know I’m a mother, and I love being a mother, but around her I am not a mother. I’m just me again. A friend said I should call the book or whatever it’s going to be: 23 and Me and Mo.

Could you talk about your dual life as director of Creative Writing in Birmingham as well as a working author, teacher, and mother in Los Angeles? 

I’ve been living this unplanned dual two-state life since 2009. I wrote an essay about making the decision to accept a tenure track teaching job in Birmingham, Alabama, and living on an air mattress for a while. I came alone the first year; the second year, my sixth-grade daughter, Norah, joined me and she was like a little cultural anthropologist. She came home from school the first day and said, “We played the name game and we had to say what we liked. And all the kids said they liked only Auburn or Alabama. I know they like their state and ‘auburn’ is a very pretty color, but what I am supposed to choose? When it was my turn, I said, ‘I’m Norah and I like books.’” I realized I had given the child no information about Alabama, so we had a crash course in football so she could catch up. Whenever I hinted at wanting to return to Los Angeles, she would say, “You can go be with Daddy. I like it here. I love it here. All my friends are here. Alabama is great!”

When I realized we were in it for the long haul, we got a rescue dog, Olive, who flies back and forth with me to Los Angeles. I had a terrible flight before we got Olive, awful soul-sucking turbulence, and Norah thought I was crying out “Hell Mary’s” instead of “Hail Mary’s.” After the trip, I vowed to drive or take the train, but it only took a four-day train ride from Los Angeles to Birmingham sitting up in coach class to get me back in the air. Then I got Olive. She has rescued me in countless ways every single day. And she truly is my emotional support animal on planes, along with the occasional emotional support Bloody Mary or glass of red wine.

I love my job as the director of Creative Writing at UAB. I love my students. I learn from them all the time. They come from all walks of life and many of them are first-generation college or they are returning to college later in life. I do miss living with my husband, who has four more years until he retires from LAUSD, but we get to spend summers and holidays together. We also cook and watch movies together. We do this by saying, “One-Two-Three — Go!” and then we hit play at the same time and mostly we’re in sync on Netflix. And because he is a wonderful man, he also goes to visit Mo, and we all have dinner and Skype together.

Our son is in Los Angeles, our middle daughter is in Chicago, and our youngest lives in the dorm at UAB. During the academic year, I live with Olive in what I call my “Alabama Retreat House.” Lots of sweet students and kind faculty drop by from time to time and other friends, too. Birmingham is such a cool city — a bright blue dot in a big red state. One of my L.A. friends visited, and she looked around the house and said, “You’ve created a little Echo Park in Birmingham.” I have filled the place with books and art from mostly “Studio by the Tracks,” where adults on the autism spectrum make art. Started by Ila Faye Miller in what used to be an old gas station, it’s a fantastic studio located in Fannie Flagg’s old neighborhood of Irondale.

I’m currently working on three novels — two are children’s books and one is for adults. I’ve adapted Offsides into a play, and I’m writing a little poetry and always picture books. I am thrilled that Ernestine’s Milky Way, written in this Alabama Retreat House and edited in a 1910 bungalow in Echo Park, has found a home at Schwartz & Wade.

What are your thoughts about the MFA Creative Writing programs these days?

I think they’re valuable because they allow students to find their people. I didn’t find my people in an MFA program, because I was the only student in my program at the time. However, I kind of made my own MFA with a writing group in Los Angeles — we met for 15 years, regularly. Those writers are still some of my dearest friends. I’ve also joined an online group of children’s picture book authors, who are brilliant, and a wonderful local group here of smart women writers. I find I need the feedback and connection with other writers — a kind of forest-for-the-trees thing with all the teaching I do. We also show up and support each other when our books come out.

That is the most valuable aspect to me of the MFA program — finding our people and getting to teach upon graduation. I feel incredibly fortunate to have taught in both a traditional BA and MA program here at UAB and a low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

What’s the most important thing you relay to your students?

I hope I encourage my students to trust themselves — to know that they do have a story to tell. I use play in the classroom (storyboarding and making book dummies) and I get them to take risks or chances with writing sparks, exploring narratives. I also talk about the importance of showing up for each other when success comes along. In other words, go to the reading, buy the book, go to the play — it’s such a long and lonely road to go alone, so I encourage them to cheer each other along the way and offer a hand. It’s so much better than being competitive and harboring jealousy.

Of course, it’s natural to feel envy, but I have been so fortunate to have friends who show up and are genuinely pleased, and I hope I do the same for them. I encourage my students to be good literary citizens and also to spend less time online. I offer the advice I need to listen to myself, especially when I fall into the online rabbit hole.

Can you tell us about your love of picture books and children’s literature?

I read to our three kids all the time. My son’s favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are. I even read that book last year to a group of incarcerated men at Donaldson Maximum Security Prison who had never been read aloud to before. I wrote an essay about that experience.

Anyway, I loved reading to our children when they were small, and my husband was a fantastic reader, too. I used to seek out books with great writing and stories. I hid the Berenstain Bears from the kids because I hated books where we had to learn a lesson. I never really thought of writing for kids because I was writing plays and novels for grown-ups. But I began falling in love with stories like Swamp Angel by Anne Isaacs, and anything by William Steig. The kids loved Chris Van Allsburg, as did I, and of course we loved Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Roald Dahl, Ann Whitford Paul, Cynthia Voigt, Eve Bunting, Jacqueline Woodson, and Lane Smith’s The Happy Hocky Family. There are too many to begin to even name. One of their favorites was “What Luck A Duck” by Amy Goldman Koss, who later became a friend.

We read stacks of books, and as they grew older, they began to tell me what books to read. My son, Flannery, begged me to read The Giver and The Phantom Tollbooth. My daughter, Lucy, fell in love Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak. She wasn’t a huge reader at the time, but she liked that book a lot and said after school one day, “Mom, I felt like reading it at the lunch-table with all my friends around. What it is up with that?”

I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn out loud to them and we watched the movie together. Norah used to have a little shelf of books in the minivan, because she was terrified of finishing one and not having another at hand. She used to ask me, “Can I bring three books?” and I would say, “You may bring them, but I am not carrying them.” When we moved to a different house a few years ago, we donated 20 boxes of books and it still has not made a dent in all the books we have.

¤

Tim Cummings holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. His recent work has appeared in F(r)iction, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Critical Read, and LARB.

The post Echo Park in Birmingham: An Interview with Kerry Madden-Lunsford appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[cozzaink]

Joseph Campbell’s The Heroes Journey

“Hey Mr. Bilbo! Where are you off to?”

“Can’t stop, I’m already late!”

“Late for what?”

“I’m going on an adventure!”

    — The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey

         Any and all Hobbit fans are tickled and delighted when we watch Bilbo Baggins run through The Shire and giddily shout that he’s going on an adventure, because we all know an adventure in a fictional realm like Middle Earth is going to be worth the watch or the read. A simple line like that or; “Yer a wizard, Harry.” makes you want to turn the page and find out what more there is to those charismatic lines. As we turn those pages we follow the hero of the story through trial and error, love and loss, mistakes made and lessons learned. Each story may be unique to the hero you’ve chosen to follow, but they all have one thing in common.    American writer Joseph Campbell called this “The Heroes Journey”.          The theory of this common pattern in story telling was developed by anthropologist Edward Taylor in 1871. Scholars like Otto Rank, Lord Raglan and Carl Jung since added to the theory with their own observations of studying myths. Campbell was the one to write the book “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” in 1949.  

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”— Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces. 1949.

         In Campbell’s theory, there are as many as seventeen stages in a monomyth, but not all stages occur in every single story. Some writers focus on only one or a select few, depending on how far there imagination takes them.

         Although this seems like a formula authors must follow to write a good story, it is not. The continuing pattern tends to happen on a more accidental circumstance and the heroes journey can be organized in different ways, especially not in any particular order.

         One way is dividing the plot into three acts. All stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. So you typically start with the “Departure”. When the tornado rips up Dorothy’s house and sweeps her away from Kansas to Oz or when Alice falls down the rabbit hole from the English countryside to Wonderland are both perfect examples. Second is “Initiation”, which usually contains a road of trials. Commonly the hero faces three obstacles to complete his or her journey, but again that is only a suggestion. Remember, Hercules had twelve labors. And lastly, the third and final act is “The Return”. Overall, conquering the evils of the story and winning the day. Let’s go through Campbell’s steps, shall we?

Departure

The Call to Adventure

         This step is pretty self-explanatory to anyone who has seen or read an adventure story. The call to adventure is that knock on your door by company you didn’t expect, your letter to Hogwarts or the difficult choice of keeping your mouth shut or volunteering as tribute to spare your younger sibling. It can happen in any form at any time, but it is the action that gives the hero motivation to start their quest.

         The setting always begins in a very mundane and ordinary world or at least whatever is ordinary to the hero. Living in a castle under the sea may be fantastical to us, but to the little mermaid it’s normal everyday life and our world, the human world, is strange and otherworldly. From that world, the hero is taken or chooses to leave and embarks on a journey into the unknown. Without the call to adventure, whether if it’s the heroes choice to leave and get into trouble or they get taken away against their will, we wouldn’t have a story.

Refusal of the Call          Sometimes, our hero is not so keen on going out into the world and asking for what they don’t want so-to-speak. “It’s a dangerous business, walking out one’s front door.” — Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit. Come on, let’s face it, given the opportunity to slay Smaug the Terrible and steal the Arken Stone from him, would you risk your life against a fire-breathing dragon? I love dragons (especially Smaug), but I know better than to go into a dragon’s den and wake the beast. Even in fiction we have to be a little realistic. Of course most heroes are going to be unwilling to give up the happy, quiet life they have.

         Refusal of the call can also be in the form of someone or something preventing the hero from embarking on the journey. The Dursley’s went so far as to camp out on this remote island in the middle of nowhere, hoping the wizarding world would never find Harry and he would never become the great wizard we all know him to be. Be honest Potter fans, who wouldn’t want to go to Hogwarts and learn magic?

         It is shortly after the refusal of the call that something happens that either puts the heroes home, family or the hero themselves in danger . . . or all of the above. When your whole world is crumbling around you, something has to be done. The hero can’t refuse anymore and the crossing of the threshold begins. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.

Supernatural Aid

        First we must rally the troops. The hero is going to need help, no matter how special or powerful they are. This is where the sidekicks usually come in.

The new friend that acts as the hero’s conscience, the voice of reason, the glue that holds the hero together when he or she is falling apart. Most importantly, these characters remind the hero of something important, whether it’s “some people are worth melting for” or “just keep swimming”, sidekicks are surprisingly wise.

         Now that we have our trusty and lovable friends we can actually cross the threshold into adventure.

Crossing the Threshold          Cue Bilbo Baggins again! “I’m going on an adventure!” as he leaves his Hobbit-hole, quite literally crossing the threshold of his home and running after the dwarves. This is another one that is pretty self-explanatory and as i’ve built up in the previous steps, you get the idea. Time to grab what you can, get out and save the world! Belly of the Whale          As Campbell explains, “The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died.” This stage is the metamorphosis of the main character. A rebirth if you will.

         The hero is meant to be a dynamic character. Adventure tales typically have morals and its creators are trying to teach readers a valuable lesson. In order to convey such messages, the hero must change. Princess Tiana was once a workaholic with no sense of what was really important in life. Yes, it’s good to be a hard worker, but it’s bad to get so busy making a living, that you forget to make a life. Initiation The Road of Trials

         Here is the meat and potatoes of the heroes journey! The trials! As I said before, there are typically three trials a hero must face in order to complete his or her journey, but they are not limited to only three. The twelve labors of Hercules.

         These trials can be anything! They can be a test of strength or power, they can be a series of a battle of wits, they can be trials of the heart. Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone is a perfect example. When Harry and his friends go looking for the stone, trying to stop whoever is trying to steal it, they split their strengths as they make their way through magic security.

         Hermione uses her knowledge to help them escape the Devil’s-Snare, by remembering from herbology class that Devil’s-Snare hates sunlight and produces light from her wand to release them from the deadly plant. Harry uses his Quidditch skills to capture the correct flying key to unlock the door. If you didn’t understand that sentence, you’re either too young or too old or you’re on the wrong blog. Ron uses his exceptional chess skills to help them cross the chessboard guarding the door to the room where the stone is hidden. Ultimately, he helps Harry reach the goal of their small quest.

         Now consider your favorite story, franchise, book series, whatever has a story to follow and think of all the shenanigans the hero has to go through to reach their goal. That is the road of trials. It’s the learning process of the main character before they complete their metamorphosis. Meeting with the Goddess

         The Goddess is the ultimate prize of the hero. It can be his or her intended love-interest, but it doesn’t have to be. Take Disney’s “Moana” for example. She doesn’t have a love-interest. Her love is for the sea and to have the freedom to explore it. After her quest is accomplished and she more or less saves the world from dying, her father finally grants her the freedom she’s always desired and we see her teaching him how to sail and voyage just before the credits start to roll.

         Everyone loves a good love story and every story is a love story, but remember guys; NOT ALL LOVE IS ABOUT BEING FOR ANOTHER PERSON! We are finally coming into an age where we realize that marriage is not everyone’s happily-ever-after and those people deserve to have fairy tales too. The Temptress

         This is more of an archetype than a step, which I will discuss archetypes in a separate post. Overall, this could be categorized under the Road of Trials because the Temptress is the embodiment of “temptation” for the hero. It’s meant to lure him or her away from their path. The big bad wolf of “Little Red Riding Hood” is an example of The Temptress, as silly as that sounds. Again, The Temptress doesn’t have to be a woman (or a man) that’s just the title. The big bad wolf uses charm and persuasion to convince Red to stray from her intended path and right into the hands of danger. A good hero will be terribly tempted, but their willpower should always overcome the temptation. Atonement With the Father

Ah! The most famous scene in all of “Star Wars”. Note that if you ever take a class on the heroes journey, “Star Wars” is the first thing the teacher will talk about. Why? Because George Lucas had Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” open while he was writing the franchise. He may have followed it step for step for step.           

This is the climax of the story. You’re in the middle of the chaos now. At this point the hero is facing an entity or thing with the power of life and death. It’s the most important confrontation in the plot because it is the moment when the hero will determine the fate of the world.         

The hero is not only here to defeat the villain or the great oppression that is condemning everyone and everything. The hero is here to find out the truth of this enemy’s motives. He or she makes themselves vulnerable to the horror and tragedy of the antagonist and ultimately comes to understand the validations for such evil. Apotheosis           

This step is simply just the ending of atonement with the father. Now the hero is armed with knowledge they didn’t have before and is prepared for the most difficult part of the quest. This step is a bridge-crossing to the next step. The Ultimate Boon

Success! Congratulations! You’ve made it through the heroes journey! You’ve accomplished the goal you intended to achieve at the beginning of your quest! Yes, the ultimate boon is the achievement of the journey. My little Arthurian knights, you have found the holy grail. Return Refusal of the Return          

But wait there’s more! Don’t go just yet. There’s still just a little bit more to the story. After all, you’ve got to tie up some loose ends right? It starts with the refusal of the return.           

If you discovered a place like Oz or Hogwarts, would you want to leave? No! Of course not! So why should the hero want to leave? Especially after they may or may not have met a few new friends along the way that they might not want to let go of. And maybe they find they truly belong in the world that they just excavated.            

Just before boarding the Hogwarts Express, Harry turns and looks up at the castle and says, “I’m not going home. Not really.”

The Magic Flight          

This may happen before or during the Refusal of the Return. Once the hero has won their prize there’s a possibility they’re going to have to escape the place it’s been kept and guarded.            

Remember when Shrek forgot to slay the dragon? Yeah, this is that kind of mess. The way it collaborates with the Refusal of the Return is that it can also act as a force upon the hero to make them leave the world they don’t want to leave. Rescue from Without          

This step is the Hogwarts express, coming from the outside world, basically beckoning Harry saying, “come on, it’s time to go back to reality, until you’re needed here again.” Whether the hero wants to leave the magical world or not and whether the hero has trouble escaping the guards or not, in either situation they will need help and the only help they can get now is from the outside. The Crossing of the Return Threshold           

The same threshold the hero crossed to begin their adventure is the one they will cross when they return from it. The hero must maintain the knowledge and change they earned on their journey after this threshold is crossed and they settle back into their mundane world. Master of Two Worlds          

Characters like Harry Potter and the Pevensies from “The Chronicles of Narnia” have the opportunity to live two different lives. One in the supernatural world and one in the normal world. Comic book superheroes often conclude their origin stories with this step. Freedom to Live          

At last, the “happily ever after” page. The final step of the heroes journey. After having mastered all the trials, and in some cases facing death itself, the hero is forever changed. This grants them the freedom to live. Hence the “living” happily ever after part.          This all may seem like some formula for writing books, but it’s not. These aren’t rules to follow when writing fiction. This is all just an observation of the ritual of storytelling. So remember you don’t have to write your story in this particular order. It can be written in any order that you choose and you don’t have to use every single step. Some of these steps may not be necessary for your story. And more likely than not you subconsciously have these steps already written into your plot. Now you know where it all comes from! Keep reading writing or doing both and have fun with it!

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

WHORE. IT WAS the word that triggered a million tweets, the closing line of Kristen Roupenian’s short story sensation “Cat Person.” The accusation was singular, sent via fictional text from Robert to Margot, but it seemed to have come from a misogynist Muse. Robert became a symbol for how coercion can masquerade as benign loneliness; Margot, for how a reluctant “yes” is not allowed to become a “no.” In a different year, these archetypes might not have secured the story second place in The New Yorker most-read rankings, but this was 2017 and the dawn of #MeToo. Landing first on that list was Ronan Farrow’s chilling reportage on the women sexually assaulted and harassed by Harvey Weinstein; a second article on the case came in at number four. “Cat Person” was close but not too close to the other stories affiliated with #MeToo. Neither personal history nor polemic nor news exposé, it was a fiction laced with ambiguity, even pathos, and its pithy ending hit just the right note — Whore.

That epigram helped secure Roupenian her $1.2 million book deal, but the resultant collection, You Know You Want This: “Cat Person” and Other Stories has little in common with the tale advertised in its subtitle. In terms of genre, aesthetics, and even gender politics, “Cat Person” is the exception, not the rule. Indeed, the collection’s first story, “Bad Boy,” announces its distance with aplomb. In a grim first-person plural, a deviant couple recounts how their bum-of-a-friend starts crashing on their couch after a bad breakup. Realizing he can overhear their nightly escapades, the couple starts fantasizing, then teasing, then after a deluge of alcohol, goading him to watch. “Friend” soon becomes a euphemism for sex-slave, as the narratorial “we” imposes elaborate rules and punishments, then loses “our fucking shit” (and sex-drive) when he flees. Finding him back with the girlfriend, they ruthlessly collect themselves and order she be stopped. Read: Strangled. Clearly, we’ve left the psychological realism of “Cat Person” far behind, as well as its well-bounded, hashtag-able ethics of consent. We’ve entered a murkier realm of libertinism and pseudo-horror, one where the eponymous “Bad Boy” comes off as both predator and prey. Sex remains Roupenian’s preferred site to explore human villainy, but the evil has grown more Manichaean — and it’s distributed across gender lines.

The subsequent 11 stories stay near, if never quite reaching, that high watermark of relational violence. They swerve across genres, from the grimmer-than-Grimm fairy tale “The Mirror, the Bucket, and the Old Thigh Bone” to the medical case history “The Matchbox Sign.” Their literary influences are eclectic — traces of Stephen King, Carmen Maria Machado, and Ray Bradbury have been noted — and the results will confound many readers. Some lambaste its “desire to seem shocking,” but they are missing the game being played. For shock is not simply a by-product of horror or fantasy; it’s a device used to signal these storytelling modes. Judgment, be it aesthetic or ethical, can only begin in a second stage, after that genre is established, its internal logic clearly defined. If “Cat Person” lays claim to realism and “Bad Boy” to the Sadean libertine, “Sardines” wanders into magical realism, recounting how a singing birthday candle helps an adolescent retaliate against her frenemies and father’s new girlfriend. “Scarred,” meanwhile, plunges into fantasy, with a grimoire that demands the protagonist draw blood, then tears, then an organ from her spell-shackled man-slave.

The villains, you’ll notice, are quite often women, and this is where murky aesthetics starts to make for murky gender politics. Without epigrams like Whore to clearly vindicate or condemn these characters’ machinations, the line between victim and perpetrator starts to blur. And without the framework of realism, a strange power imbalance crops up: more often than not, men are assigned the role of pathetic mortal, while women receive that of the supernatural femme fatale. In those cases, unlike in “Cat Person,” readers could find a discomfiting dose of sympathy elicited for the Roberts of the world.

Take the collection’s concluding story, “Biter.” Its eponymous heroine Ellie spends the tale equivocating on whether to chomp or not on her elfin co-worker Corey Allen. When he makes a sexual pass, Ellie sees an opening and pounces. Her overeager jaws accidentally maul him, but since he’s been groping the other women in the office, Ellie unexpectedly ends up a hero. Instead of staying put to reap the glory, however, she quickly moves onto her next job and next assailant/assailee. “There was one in every office,” writes Roupenian — one man ready to grope, and thus ready for Ellie’s teeth to strike without fear of repercussion. In recalling the way the “Cat Person” reaction split along gender lines, Roupenian quipped “the story threatened to become the blue-dress/white-dress moment of the #MeToo era.” With “Biter,” the litmus test could give more unsettling results. Some will see Ellie as literary scaffolding to unveil the ubiquitous nature of workplace harassment. Others will find warning of how disfiguring deviance can get an ethical free pass. Roupenian’s tone throws a wrench in the whole ordeal: the ending to “Biter,” that image of a vampiric Ellie nonchalantly rotating through office jobs, is crisp enough to be funny. It stands in stark contrast to that final word of “Cat Person”; there, the range of reactions did not include laughter.

Some readers will forgo these more finicky cases by focusing on the collection’s longest tale, “The Good Guy,” which shares the clear-cut aesthetics and gender politics of “Cat Person.” Here too, we have a man, Ted, for whom sex is violence: at 35, his only way to stay stimulated is “to pretend that his dick was a knife, and the woman he was fucking was stabbing herself with it.” The rest of the story is told in retrospect, after his ex-girlfriend qua fantasy-stabbing-victim Angela cracks his head open with a glass tumbler. We learn, through a tale of two women, Rachel and Anna, about Ted’s gradual realization that his sheen of meek “goodness” can be wielded to entrap women. This is sentimental education at its most despicable — and thus most welcome to readers seeking more variants of “Cat Person.” They’ll find refuge also in “Death Wish,” another strictly realist story, and notably the other one Roupenian penned after her 2017 rise to fame.

Isolating these “Cat Person” derivations, however, doesn’t quite do justice to a collection so committed to scampering across genres, and to showcasing evil in both male and female forms. In its more fantastical moments, You Know You Want This reminded me of a similarly daring experiment penned over a century before: Vernon Lee’s collection Hauntings. Most famous for her art criticism and travel writing, Lee was long maligned as the shrill sister to fin-de-siècle male aesthetes like Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and Henry James. Virginia Woolf compared her to a “garrulous baby”; Bernard Berenson claimed she “showed a lack of self-control.” The same will perhaps be said of Roupenian. But Lee’s example shows how excess can be an asset in the supernatural domain.

Because for all its eccentricities, You Know You Want This remains tethered to recognizable lands, to text messages and New Year’s champagne and westward moves to San Francisco. It opens a space for readers to sympathize with the “scarred” as well as the scarrer, the bitten as well as the “biter.” Hauntings, on the other hand, takes cognitive estrangement as its premise. In “Amour Dure,” a Polish scholar becomes obsessed with a 16th-century femme fatale; in “A Wicked Voice,” a Norwegian composer can’t stop hearing the trillings of an 18th-century castrato. Lee’s images can be just as gruesome as Roupenian’s, her characters just as diabolical, but her worlds are so self-contained, and so unorthodox, that they evade our affective intrusions and ethical scalpels.

Henry James pinpointed the power of such world-building in a letter to Lee: “[T]he ingenious tales […] are there,” he wrote, “diffused through my intellectual being and within reach of my introspective — or introactive — hand. (My organism will strike you as mixed, as well as my metaphor — and what I mainly mean is that I possess the eminently psychical stories as well as the material volume.)”

For me, Roupenian’s best stories are the ones capable of total diffusion, those like “Sardines” and “The Mirror, the Bucket, and the Old Thigh Bone,” which define their own outlandish worlds, then lie there, waiting coyly for our act of possession.

Yet it was identification, that close sibling of possession, that drove “Cat Person” to stardom, and at points You Know You Want This seems crafted to repeat the effect. By eschewing explicit references to race, class, and even sometimes sexuality, the stories seem aimed to encourage as much reader-recognition as possible. It’s a technique that can backfire. Though the genders of the “We” in “Bad Boy” are technically ambiguous, the collection feature just a single explicitly queer character: Kath in “The Boy in the Pool.” The story is woven with her latent attraction to childhood friend and bride-to-be Taylor, and it culminates with both a boy and a girl in a pool: Kath pushes Taylor in. But those details are swathed in the most hetero of hetero plots: a bachelorette party struggling to compete with the bachelors’ Vegas debauchery. I couldn’t help but think how the last New Yorker story to create such a sensation was Annie Proulx’s 1997 “Brokeback Mountain.” In 2019, queer desire might merit more than one poolside shove.

So, while the collection’s title may be tonally appropriate — flippant and flirting with danger — many readers may find themselves wanting something else. Those who sought Cat People, a set of realist tales whose feminism can be hash-tagged and tweeted with ease, will find it both aesthetically and ethically disappointing. So too will those who crave more engagement with the diverse forms cruelty takes when refracted through the prisms of identity.

Roupenian is undoubtedly capable of tackling intersectional issues head-on. After graduating from Barnard College, she spent two years with the Peace Corps in Kenya, an experience that informs the story “The Night Runner.” While teaching Public Health, she learned Swahili and discovered the literary magazine Kwani? that would become the topic of her English PhD dissertation at Harvard. That background has remained oddly absent in the discussion around her fiction, but it seems relevant that Roupenian once taught tutorials entitled “How to Write About Africa” and “The New Global Novel.” Engaging more fully with those questions would be a worthwhile direction for her fiction: a zone still ethically daring but requiring more circumspection, and more craft. Such work might not have the same self-evident market-value as Roupenian’s upcoming HBO series, but sometimes, as she knows only too well, readers might need to be told what they want.

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Colton Valentine (Harvard ’16, ENS ’18) is an Ertegun Scholar in Oxford’s Faculty of English.

The post But Are You Sure?: On Kristen Roupenian’s “You Know You Want This: ‘Cat Person’ and Other Stories” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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