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vonnyphant · 4 years ago

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To Blog or Not to Blog?

“You should start a diary and write about your experiences. It may help people going through the same thing.”

Honestly? If there’s one thing I discovered about this diagnosis, it’s that it makes me pretty damn selfish. I don’t want to help other people (not just yet, anyway). But putting some thoughts down about this time in my life may be of some sort of therapeutic value, and I do want to help myself.

(Maybe for once, saving the world can wait. Do you remember how, soon after the pandemic hit, people stopped avoiding plastic and single-use items? When your health is at risk, suddenly rainforests and polar bears and the planet are deprioritised- not that anyone will admit to this. But this is my diary and I can say what I want!* Writing for myself it is.)

Having established my less-than-Mother-Theresa-like reasons for this blog, my conscience cleared, it’s time to start. This is where the Lifetime movie shows me, in a half daze, mellowed out on drugs while they sew a mediport into my chest to start administering chemicals. A fast lane to my bloodstream. A docking station. The soundtrack? Hopefully ‘Across The Universe’ by the Beatles (possibly Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. If I get a say in it, I veto The Walrus) Time to pump this body full of drugs that’ll make my hair fall out.

Wait, what?

Voice Over: “Yep. That’s me. You’re probably wondering what I am doing here…” //record scratch - freeze frame - fast rewind to the psychedelic outtro of A Day In The Life//

Two months ago, during rub-a-dub-in-the-tub (less naughty than it sounds, was just washing myself), my mind inexplicably went to an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, s1 (aired in 1992- yes, I am that old), where Brenda Walsh has a breast cancer scare. I say inexplicably, because my usual shower fantasies do not include Ms Shannon Doherty - if I was going to pick a shower lady, I’d opt for Charlize Theron, Kiera Knightly or Winona Ryder in their short-hair phases, but that is neither here nor there.

Say what you want for 90s television- weird outfits and ponytails notwithstanding, in their AfterSchoolSpecial PSA way, they dedicated a whole scene to the girls giving themselves a breast exam, including how-to instructions**, and eventhough I was only 11 years old when I saw it, I remembered what to do, and for the last 30 years, every now and then I have randomly carried it out while wondering how I always preferred Brandon over Dylan and how my tastes have changed over time.

But this time - my hand actually found something.

I took a deep breath and calmed myself down the same way I did after finding spots on my skin, lumps on my head and every time I sneezed since covid-19; by telling myself to fucking snap out of my hypochondria tendencies. One cannot go to the doctor every damn day after all. Breast tissue is pretty lumpy and I assumed it was just imaginary. I made an appointment to see a therapist, and put it out of my mind until a few weeks later, when one of the kids came crashing down on me (literally) and faceplanted in my boob (as they do).

Now this always hurts af, but it just hurt that little more that day, so that I grabbed the appendage in question and went “WHAT THE--!” And I felt it again- the lump, more defined than a few weeks before.

Cue a lot more freaking out than the first time, and after a sleepless night, imagining what my funeral would look like (as one does), I decided to go to the gynocologist the same day or risk never to sleep again.

After a long wait and an ultrasound, my doctor assured me that while there really was a mass, it had every indication of being benign. We should keep an eye on it. If I was worried, I could schedule a second screening, but would not likely get an appointment before April. I scheduled one and tried to focus on preparing our first lockdown Christmas.

But over the holidays, the lump started hurting, even when I wasn’t poking it or having a kid catapult themselves into my chest. I’d be Netflix and Chilling, and suddenly - ZAP - like someone stuck a hot needle into it. Repeatedly. My nipple would go numb or start tingling like a bodypart that fell asleep. It freaked me out, and in the new year, I realised I couldn’t wait until April - I had to get it checked out again or I may worry myself to death.

My gynocologist did another ultrasound and again, told me not to worry. I told her it was way too late for that as I had been worried for weeks, and I wanted the thing biopsied (they gave Brenda Walsh one too, after all! It’s the only way to be 100% sure). She referred me to the hospital. At the description of my symptoms, I could come directly, and the radiologist told me in no unclear terms: “I will not let you leave this room until we draw blood and take several biopsies.” Okay- not exactly what one wants to hear at that point, but at the same time, I figured knowing would be better than guessing by the shape of it.

Test results took a week. I went in, being prepared to be told (like Brenda) it was a harmless clump of random cells or a cyst we could have removed like a wart. Only it wasn’t. It was breast cancer, an aggressive, fast-growing kind, and had I waited until April, that could have had disastrous consequences.

While the doctor explained we now needed to determine the scope of the spread and take more tissue to determine what kind of chemo (if any) could be applied, all my 2020-PTSD brain could think was:

“.............of course”.

Didn’t hear much of what she said afterwards.

Another harrowing 4 days went by, with a CT screening with contrast solutions that gave me an intense stomach ache as well as a migraine, and finally, a fully rounded diagnosis and treatment advice could be made.

Thankfully, all my organs as well as lymphnodes were clear, so it appears to be a localised tumor. And here we are - to fight this thing with chemicals and then cut out whatever is left. Genetics testing to see about the likelihood of a recurrency (and a possible double mastectomy if so - ‘pulling an Angelina Jolie’, ‘not saving the tatas’, insert ‘Think About It meme’...can’t have breast cancer if you don’t have breasts! THINK ABOUT IT***).

Chances are good. I need to cling to that while I wait for this port and treatment to start. I have accepted the inevitable hair loss, have scheduled a ritual ‘crazy hair cutting party’ with my kids for this weekend (as I would rather shave it off in one go than clean up clumps and strands over the course of weeks and look like Gollum), and I have sewn several funny little hats for inside wear and ‘going out’ (though where will I be going in pandemic, idk).

I was going to end this post on a light and happy note - but I must admit my confidence just took a really big hit in real time, as I googled how to spell Shannon’s last name for this blog entry and found out that she was treated for breast cancer in 2015, initially succesfully, but it reappeared metastasized in 2020 (again: ‘of course...when else’) and she is now in stage IV. Fuck 2020.

What are the odds that the woman whose character made me discover my own breast cancer is now, in fact, dying of the same disease? This will surely haunt me for a long time to come.

More tomorrow? Or soon? It may take a while. Until then: outro to It’s Getting Better.

*also for the record I would like to state that I’ve sewn my own masks from upcycled pillowcases and continued using fruit- and vegetable nets to avoid plastic; maybe that makes up for me being utterly selfish at the moment. Karma +1?

** https://youtu.be/pkgYXITkrfw (the scene from BH 90210)

***cis men / trans women without breasts can also get breast cancer (even though it’s rare) so this meme doesn’t really hold up, but that’s the whole point of the meme ;)

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real-jaune-isms · 4 years ago

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RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 8 Review/Remix

RWBY finally comes back from a 2 month break, and what does it do? It scares us all half to death and then obliterates the other half with insane new story concepts and body horror imagery. Gods I missed this show~...

We return to this chaotic mess with the scene you might be expecting the least, Qrow and Robyn in their prison cells. Qrow is awoken by the sound of ships and explosions outside, and find that his three block mates are similarly left sleepless. Jacques is particularly nervous, probably because he assumed Whitley would be here to bail him out by now. Qrow picks up on an incoming sound that sounds... different, and indeed a wall is blown down in a fiery explosions that starts sending down rubble. One section of the Hard Light cell walls have been taken down, but before anyone has time to act Robyn notices a crow vehemently cawing at her before some rubble comes down above her. And... that’s the last we see of Robyn or Qrow this episode. He transformed to be a smaller target for debris and she might not have made it out quickly enough even with his disguised possible warnings.

Back to more pressing matters, we take the perspective of... the Dragonborn in the opening of Skyrim?? Wait, no, it’s just Nora regaining consciousness to see Klein has given her an IV and is saying she’ll be on the mend real quick. So that’s some good news after a few months of worry, and hey! The fan theory was wrong, she didn’t go blind from the lightning! Before we can even dwell on her wellbeing for too long, Blake opens the door for Ruby Weiss and Whitley to carry in Penny’s unconscious body. As Blake points out, Penny is leaking a green fluid most likely comparable to blood. They set her down on a cot near Nora, and Whitley is pissed about getting his clothes stained again in the span of 48 hours. But I think robot fuel/blood is at least easier to wash out than red wine. Ruby of course wants to know if Klein can help Penny as well as he has Nora, but his wheelhouse of expertise does not cover advanced robotics. The saving grace is that Pietro made her so close to human so Klein has some idea what can actually be fixed, starting with sewing up the gash in her abdomen. A thunderous rumble is heard in the distance, and suddenly the lights go out. Whitely complains about this too, but it is rather valid. Nothing quite seems to be going right, even Atlas’ power grid is against them... Ruby gets a call from May, and we learn they parted ways so May could go regroup with the Happy Huntresses and save her city. They compare notes and it’s made clear a bombing run took out part of the city’s power, though less clear is who was doing that bombing, Atlas or the Grimm? Ruby apologizes for their current inaction while they tend to Penny, but May reassures her that this may end up being more productive than trying to find something worth doing outside the city. Great googly moogly, it’s all gone to shit, and there’s very little difference a few more huntresses can make to the Mantle efforts. Ruby is left in overwhelmed despair, there’s so many problems and she doesn’t know how to solve all of them. Klein butts in with a sneeze to say she should take it one problem at a time, focus on the most immediate and possible to achieve and work outwards. For one thing, it’d help a lot of they had lights and power.

Willow surprises everyone by showing up in the doorway to let them know about a backup generator on the edge of the estate property. She’s still the lady of this house, and she has enough self respect to not lie around getting drunk in the dark. Whitley greets her with a mix of disinterest and distain, and she notices Klein has returned to the manor and offers an off guard greeting. Weiss backs up her mom’s info drop with the fact that SDC executive members indeed have access to backup power sources if the city ever suffered a power outage like this. She doesn’t like that they have that kind of privilege while other folks suffer, but it’s for the greater good this time. This gets Whitley thinking, and my boy has a full Jimmy Neutron BRAIN BLAST! Since Jacques made him heir to the company, and the man himself is possibly dead under rubble, Whitely has full access to the Schnee Dust Company and all its resources. Since Ironwood put down the Dust embargo in Volume 4, their fleet of cargo ships are sitting empty and ready for use in a hangar. As we saw earlier this very chapter, there are automated drones that answer to the SDC rather than the Atlas military. They can use those ships and drone soldiers to give all the people stuck in Mantle a way out to fly away safely. Fantastic work, young man! You make your family proud... well, the family members who don’t commit war crimes for profit. But to do that they need the power back on so he can use Jacques’ computer, so that’s what Ruby and Blake set out to do. Getting inside the small building outside of the mansion is easy enough, and its just the flip of a switch to get the generator booting back up. In the meantime, the two share a genuinely sweet conversation. Blake reassures Ruby that the fact she’s trying to make things happen is all the world could ask of her, and an optimistic attitude like that is hard to stick with for long in this harsh world. Life in the White Fang and with Adam robbed Blake of her own similar mindset, but she truly admires and looks up to Ruby for how great a woman she is. Sadly, like most things, this moment is ruined by a Grimm. While all the lights are coming back on and Whitley gets to work, a bolt of lightning reveals that the Hound is just outside the window behind Ruby... Willow and Klein are casually sitting around waiting I guess, when they hear the loud crash of glass breaking and Willow reflexively reaches for her bottle of vodka. Weiss checks in on her teammates over comms and they tell her they need some help so she makes sure Whitley will have the business handled before she rushes out to save her friends. Ruby is getting tossed through a fresh hole in the wall, and Blake’s attempt to attack it while she regains her footing is just batted away. Blake assures Ruby that it’s just a Grimm, they can handle it as long as she can stay focused. Blake goes on the offensive again while Ruby tries to get her Silver Eyes going, but the Hound swats the Faunus girl away and tackles Ruby before sprouting its wings again with her in its clutches Blake uses the ribbon on her weapon to do what Ren had earlier in the Volume, though she anchors the other end in the ground as a tether rather than ride along as it leaves.

Weiss finally arrives at the scene of this chaos and reports the Grimm sighting back to Klein. Hearing the news of this beastly intruder leaves Willow so shaken she drops the bottle and glass she was pouring herself. Klein tries to reassure and calm her, but she’s too overwhelmed and runs out of the room... just as Penny reactivates with red eyes. Full on hacked now, and Klein gets shoved to the floor for all his concerns about her being on her feet again. But she barely takes two steps before the real Penny resurfaces and tries to fight back for control of her own body. The struggle is deep enough to summon a whirling wind around her much like Fria had last Volume, but this one is green because Penny. Back outside, Weiss is about to summon something when a couple Centinels burrow up behind her and tear through it. From the looks of it, I think it was going to be the Nevermore from all the way back in Volume 1, so that’s a pretty cool callback to how important that fight was, and the imagery of glowing wings behind her was beautiful while it lasted. The Hound breaks free of Blake’s tether and is about to soar away, much to her dismay, when it sees a bright green glow coming from in the manor, clearly Penny going through her identity crisis. Ruby puts two and two together and realizes why the Hound has been saying “Take the Girl.” The girl is Penny, whose blood is still on Ruby’s clothes so it got a little confused while tracking. She warns her teammates, but the Hound chooses that time to drop her like a sack of potatoes and there goes the last of her Aura. Blake tells Weiss to go back inside and stop the Hound while she handles the Centinels out here, and they split up, but before Blake can reach her leader a new creature erupts from the ground and it’s bigger and more gross than the last bugs. It spits acid that comes up through a tube along its belly, and I’m confident in calling it an Alpha Centinel. Back in the eye of the storm, Klein tries to reassure Penny that she’s okay, which is phrased a little but I assume he means as “you’re in a safe place and your injuries have been treated, you don’t need to defend yourself like this”. The man is just a butler, he doesn’t know what we do about her internal struggle against antagonistic programming and her wrestling with her sense of self. Whatever new orders Watts has given her, she really doesn’t want to follow them. Luckily, there’s someone at her side to comfort her and hold her hand, and that’s Nora. Passing along the comforting words she got from Blake earlier this Volume, she tells Penny she doesn’t have to just be and do what other people expect of her. She may feel like a part of her is making her do what she doesn’t want to, but don’t forget about the rest. She’s more than just that one part of her mind or persona. It’s nowhere near the same situation as Nora’s own identity crisis earlier, but the words have the same positive effect. Penny gains control again and the wind barrier subsides. Weiss reports in that the Hound is heading inside and she’s on her way to intercept, and gets the bad news that Willow fled the room to go who knows where. Well, we know now cuz we see it, she went to what I assume is her own bedroom (god forbid she and Jacques still share a bed after 8 years of the most sour their marriage has been). On her vanity there’s another bottle or two of booze, and her Scroll. She wants to retreat to what she knows best, but hesitates and then gets spooked by the shattering sound of the Hound breaking in through the window above the front door.

It picks up on Penny’s scent from the blood stained on the floor, but by the time Weiss charges in through the front door it’s gone. The next five minutes of the episode have major horror movie vibes, and I love it. Weiss slowly looks around the foyer for any sign of the beast, when Willow screams over her Scroll to look out above her and indeed the Hound drops down to backhand her into a piano. Instead of staying to attack her, it goes to follow Penny’s scent again and leaves Weiss to check in with her mom after that sudden warning. Biggest triumph thus far, Willow threw her bottle against a wall and instead pulled up the feed from her series of surveillance cameras around the manor on her Scroll to track the Hound. It’s near Winter’s old bedroom, and Willow doesn’t seem to understand that it’s tracking a scent like a bloodhound. Maybe she just doesn’t encounter Grimm a lot or they’re just usually not this competent and singularly focused. She recognizes the direction it’s heading next with great horror, and what we see next gives us that same dread. Whitley still has blood on his clothes, and he dismisses Willow’s warning cuz he probably doesn’t think she has anything to say worth hearing after his years of dealing with her drunken state. He’s almost done setting up the automated orders, when he hears the door starting to open and angrily snaps at what he assumes is Willow coming to check on him since he didn’t answer the call. But he is dead wrong and hides behind the desk immediately, because it is indeed the Hound come to potentially kill him. He’s doing his best to hide, but it expands its vocabulary to tell him it knows he’s here. Just as it’s about to round the corner, an Alpha Boarbatusk charges in and pins it to the wall. Weiss isn’t the only Schnee in the house who can summon, and Willow will not let her son die this day. He’s about to bolt out of the room while it’s preoccupied with the summon, but turns back to hit Yes on the computer and get the evacuation plans started. Good job kid, you did more to save Mantle than your father and Ironwood combined. The two sprint down the hall with the Hound in hot pursuit, but get some respite from an ice wall forming between them and the Grimm thanks to Weiss arriving from the opposite direction. She’s out of breath, but assures them she didn’t forget about either of them, most likely as a callback to the conversation she and Willow had last Volume about Whitley being left behind when Weiss and Winter sought independence. The unarmed Schnees express their gratitude and retreat from that wing of the house, and Weiss prepares her summons for combat with the beast breaking through the ice.

Back outside, Blake is struggling with the Alpha Centinel and complains about how gross it is. She avoids its scythe blade-like arms with some clever use of elementally charged shadow clones and begs for Ruby to wake up and give her some backup. But that can’t last forever and eventually it holds her by the neck ready to slice. Before it can, though, Ruby wakes up and bisects it first. She laughs weakly and tells Blake she heard what she was saying. They hear a scream coming from inside the mansion and head inside to meet up with the others. Weiss and the Hound hear it too, and the Hound stops doing its best “Here’s Johnny” impression through the hole in the ice to go chase down this new sound. We see the source of it, and it is in fact Penny losing control of herself again to the new programming. The red eyes stay this time, and she shoves Klein aside once again to stiffly and mechanically walk out to the foyer. As fate would have it, Willow and Whitely are there too, and they naturally question the fact that she’s emotionlessly walking past them when last they saw she was bleeding and unconscious. She responds that she’s going to open the vault, and then apparently self destruct. Not to state the obvious, but we really can’t let that happen so lets hope the power of love will break through to her. Before Penny can even get down the stairs, the Hound arrives to try and grab her and she catches his hand effortlessly, and then the other, so they’re stuck in a shoving match stalemate. The Hound solves this problem by growing a new arm out of its back and using it to grab Penny by the head. It slams her around like a ragdoll, still repeating “Take the Girl”, and holds a claw up to her throat when RWB arrive at the bottom of the stairs. Blake and Weiss are unsure how to intervene, but Ruby goes stone cold serious telling it that’s enough. In the literal blink of her eye, a Silver Eyed blast blinds it and sends it falling out the window behind it leaving Penny to tumble down the stairs unconscious again. They hope and pray the threat is over as they check her body, but the real horror starts now.

The Hound claws his way back up through the window, and part of his head has been blasted away to reveal a dog faunus with one intact silver eye. In a voice likely not used in a long time, he continues to repeat his orders to “Take the Girl...” Ruby is mortified and shell shocked to see a living person within the frame of this beast unlike any she’s known prior, and I’m sure the wheels in her mind are turning to wonder if Summer Rose suffered a similar undying fate at Salem’s hands... and if that’s what will happen to her if she is captured? He begins shambling towards them and they try to carry Penny away from him but end up cornered. Whitley gets an idea and he and Willow start pushing on the knight statue nearest to them. Just as the Hound, whose human portion I have been inspired by a podcast to call Johnny, is about to grab the girls the statue falls down and crushes him to death. A choir chants in Latin as the Grimm fades away... and for the first time leaves behind a skeleton. Ruby seems shaken to her core as she confirms to the others that that was in fact a person they saw in there.

Ending that side of the story entirely for the week, we go back to the rubble in the jail cell to see Cinder has found Watts and the two make a flying get away. So that’s fun, we’ll have to see if they make it back in time to intercept JRY trying to sneak through Monstra. Until then, I’m gonna sleep like the dead. Ciao!

#rwby reviews #qrow branwen #robyn hill #arthur watts #jacques schnee #nora valkyrie #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake belladonna #penny polendina #klein sieben #whitley schnee #willow schnee #the hound #tw: body horror #horror elements

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thesorrowoflizards · 4 years ago

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yall we deserve more fairy tale aus. more maiaphael and/or magnus fairy tale aus

the beautiful princess maia, strong in her own right but so soft and kind and she just wants to help even though she’s not in a great position to do so

brave young hero raphael questing not for the princess’s hand but to help his community, his family, his sister (but he falls in love with her anyway)

“fairy godfather” magnus, a kind wizard who helps them out and indeed helps anyone he can… and perhaps dragon alec

but like the point is—oh my god

oh no

oh no mid post

mid post the idea it hit me

literally while i was in the middle of typing trying to figure out where i was going with this

ive been, metaphorically speaking, shot blank

with the idea

maiaphael

shrek au

oh I hate this

does this make maia fiona, raphael shrek, and magnus—DONKEY?! AND ALEC THE DRAGO—ok ok so this is happening now. amazing. i just wanted a soft fairy tale au with princess maia and hero raphael and kindly wizard magnus but now here we are. shrek au. fine. if this is how it’s gonna be, fine

i guess rather than ogre he’s a vampire which is a little more subtle—perhaps instead of becoming a vampire at night she’s a werewolf? so downworlders in general rather than specifically a vampire? not quite loyal to the original story (as she became an ogre rather than just “a fairy tale creature” for a reason) but not bad—although the implication she’d like become a wolf forever isn’t great. I mean I’m sure you can play with that so it’s more like at night she becomes a werewolf—ability to transform into a wolf, eyes flash green sometimes, can do feats of supernatural strength and so on, but like. still. hm

but like ok look the point is maia is in this tower and it’s not that she’s weak, but she can’t fight a dragon on her own and she’s been taught her whole life she was supposed to be saved, get a prince charming, etc. she’s quite well read and also very isolated and probably claustrophobic as fuck now. i’m not sure how to combine her characterization with fiona’s in a way that stays loyal to her character but still makes sense in the au tbh.... [thinking emoji im too lazy to google and paste here]

and like raphael, rather than wanting everyone out of his home, perhaps is specifically trying to help his community and get more structure? obviously magnus wants to help—still can’t believe I’m making him donkey but the dragon thing is too good to pass up, although I’m basically going to completely change his role as donkey because I physically can’t handle making him the comic relief literal ass, but like, he’s had his own issues and also wants to help get the land to set up a home for everyone and help people, so he’s travelling with raphael and is like “smol angery vampire who is willing to slap a dragon to death to save his community and specifically take care of his sister? im adopting him immediately”

perhaps for shenanigans and I have. oh my god this is ridiculous but any shrek au is inherently ridiculous so I’m making this twi malec now. consider this: twi magnus on the road literally just getting the hang of his magic after an encounter with a rogue crazy princess who’s stab-happy and needed some magical help, so it’s waking up and he’s just getting in all these crazy hijinks with raphael where hypothetically he’s powerful enough to just zap them there, zoink out the dragon and win, but he can’t fucking control it so sure he can turn all the knights’ armor pink or sneeze and make it start to rain (which is a LITTLE SCARY) but like, other than randomly floating or random bursts of managing to control it in high pressure situations, it’s like. not that useful. again i can’t be clear enough he isn’t really donkey it’s just an excuse to have him travelling with raphael. i guess simon would be donkey if i were going for serious but then they’d both be in love with maia so--

also, twi magnus and raphael? fun interaction time. especially since I’m still basically doing canon maiaphael and not trying to mess with twi, there, so like. he’s kind of trying to get out of his shell more but he cares deeply about raphael (and. well. everyone) already and he juts wants to help

and then he meets the dragon guarding maia’s tower and is immediately like….. damn……… no not getting distracted by this

but the dragon, twi alec, is just like HEY THERE PRETTY BOY ;D and like. they don’t even have to fight the dragon raphael just. walks past while they make heart eyes at each other and when alec realizes they’re walking away with maia he’s just like “ok whatever but magnus you better come back and visit sweetheart I’m gonna make you the prettiest necklace and I can find you some old books on magic, I’m sure I’ve got some in my hoard somewhere—”

meanwhile on the way back magnus is kind of pining after alec but also getting a stronger handle on his magic

and raphael is getting to know the princess

and maia is getting to know raphael (she was NOT expecting a vampire and a warlock, but they’re both incredibly nice and she was REALLY REALLY BORED in that tower) and just like…. you know,,,,,,, romance begins to bloom mayhaps

now I don’t know how to like really get across that one of their main commonalities is community, because in this scenario maia wouldn’t have a pack—unless we change canon even more and I’m just not going to rn, but put a pin in that

so like, maybe she really does care about her people and she super is a people person, but she hasn’t had many chances to show that because she’s been fucking locked up and that’s kind of messed with her you know

god you know I want to include jordan and camille here but I wouldn’t even know how to—I imagine jordan could be prince charming but he doesn’t come in until later and ehhh

so like raphael (and also magnus) are really helping her with that

and she’s also helping him be less closed off and… angry isn’t quite right, but like. she kind of helps both of them open up tbh. not to erase magnus’s friends but also I love a good magnus and maia friendship? but like she’s not afraid to start conversations or ask them questions or listen to their stories (and they listen to hers which is nice because she’s been talking mostly to walls and stuffed animals for a while now and books are great but it’s not the same)

and like she’s free not to have to act like a perfect delicate princess, but she’s also free to be vulnerable and soft too you know

so like okay also lord farquaad or however you spell it I don’t care is jace. I mean obviously annoying lord tiny penis is jace. duh. (oh my god does this mean alec eats jace--?)

and like idk this is a very scattered concept—I’m not sure these communication kings would really do the main plot of shrek where an overheard misunderstood snippet of conversation leads to such a huge conflict but I mean if he was really just beginning to open up to her and then he thought she thought downworlders were disgusting or whatever (wait no that wouldn’t work because she can’t say vampires but she can’t be saying that to magnus, either—fuck I don’t know like I said it needs reworking to fit) he could be devastated enough to just be like well fuck it

AND LIKE AGAIN. DRAGON ALEC. EATS JACE. amazing. everyones like “raphael is your friend... fucking a dragon” and raphael is like “please never say those words to me again” and alec’s like (in human form, they don’t realize he’s the dragon even tho raphael does) “actually a dragon is fucking raphael’s friend” and raphael is like shut the fuck up right now

idk I feel like a lot of details make it not work but the overall concept could be fun as hell, probably mostly as a crack au

god I just wanted a fairy tale au. soft princess maia, young hero raphael, kindly wizard magnus. goin’ on a quest. savin’ people. is that too much to ask for???

my brain says yes.

#maiaphael #maia roberts #raphael santiago #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #shadowhunters #im so sorry #i just wanted to do a maiaphael post for ur maiaphael blog but i made this abomination and i would not blame you if you didn't reblog it

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aurelacs · 4 years ago

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Ten of Wands

An Ezra/F!OC Red Dead Redemption AU

WORD COUNT: 3k

CONTENT: mentions of spousal abuse, drinking,

A/N: Thanks y’all for your patience! There’s only a chapter and an epilogue after this one! Hope you enjoy! Also next chapter will have smut I promise.

This is set in the Red Dead Redemption universe, however there’s no spoilers for either game, and you don’t need to have prior knowledge of the games to understand the fic. I’m just using RDR for the setting and the time period (1899). Hope you enjoy!

chapter list | masterlist | read on AO3

IV. The Hanged Man

West Elizabeth was far more frightening at night.

The way the moonlight bore through the trees cast long, ominous shadows along the worn path the two bounty hunters chose to take. Annie was tempted to talk, to ask the man where he was taking her, but she didn’t want to push her luck. The dignity he provided her by letting her ride with him was more than likely the only kindness he would afford. So she rode in silence. The sound of the horses hooves beating against the soil the only sound that late at night. It crushed her spine with the weight of the implication and dried up her throat. This was her death march, paraded through the state so far into the evening there would be no one to mourn her, to ask for her final statement, or write down her last words. The bounty hunters, referring to each other only as ‘Morgan’ and ‘Smith,’ talked idly, like she wasn’t there.

About halfway through the ride, Annie began to recognize her surroundings a little more. Panic began to set in. Even as she was being tied up, the concept of imprisonment and death was so foreign it did little to scare her. To be so close, to have the knowledge that it was, in fact, guaranteed, made her bottom lip tremble. In that moment Annie realized that she didn’t want to die. It wasn’t because of Ezra. Without him, she could live, and she knew that, but she wanted to feel his lips on hers. She wanted to make it to the end of her life fully experiencing what it was like to not have to look over her shoulder. It had been so long that she forgot the feeling. She wanted to reach Armadillo and feel the sand crunch under her boots. She needed to breathe long enough to forget her husband’s face, to make it to the point in her life where she could call him her late husband.

Her heart sank, low, further than the pit of her stomach, as they rode under the ‘Strawberry’ sign. She thought the river that ran through the town looked better in the moonlight. The sheriff’s office was located next to the hill that housed the hotel. The dark wood of the building blended in with the hill and made it look like the office and jail was built into the soil. It gave the building a foreboding presence, as though the hill and the office and the hotel were a solitary castle looming over her.

The porch light next to the door was the only light on across the whole town as the two men hitched their horses. Morgan grumbled a faint apology as he hoisted Annie over his shoulder to help her down off his horse. The three of them all stood by the door. Morgan knocked, hammering on the door until the sheriff hollered at them for waking him up. The transaction was nearly wordless. Morgan handed the sheriff Annie’s bounty poster, who then directed Morgan to lead Annie to the cell across from his desk before handing the men their bounty payment.

“D’you know anything about a bounty for the man she was with? Blonde patch of hair, looks like an outlaw,” Morgan asked.

“Nothing here, but you can always try Valentine. If you’re heading that way, can you let Sheriff Molloy know I got her here?”

Morgan grunted in response and left.

“Valentine is full up, so you’re gonna be with us for the time being. Sheriff up there’s supposed to come talk to you at some point, but he likes to take his time and who knows if those boys will actually let Curtis know you’re here.”

“What good will talking to me do?”

The sheriff shrugged before lumbering back to his cot and falling asleep.

Days and nights passed in near silence. Sheriff Farley, as Annie came to observe, wasn’t much of a talker. He snored, loud enough to occasionally shake the floorboards of the office. She learned that Strawberry’s jail had five cells, one upstairs where she was, and four more downstairs, out of sight. Annie overheard Farley one night, as he conversed with the mayor, mention that the downstairs cells were for the more ‘worrisome’ offenders. The statement gave her a spark of hope. She knew it wasn’t often that bounties were put out on women. Maybe he could read between the lines of a woman killing her husband. Or perhaps he merely saw her as less of a threat because she was a woman. Either way, Annie still felt mildly appreciative. If she craned her head hard enough, she could look outside and see wagons passing through the town. The same position gave her the opportunity to feel the sun on her face right before dusk. Her situation was already hard enough, she was grateful to not have to experience it with the ones she heard screaming below her.

A week into her stay, or what she believed to be a week, Annie gave up all hope in Ezra coming for her. It was a child’s fantasy, to think that he would risk his life and freedom just to save her. She couldn’t find it in herself to blame him, either, even though when she asked herself if she would have come to save him, her answer was a resounding ‘yes.’ What a fool she was to have waited. If she told him, then and there, as he waded out of the lake, how she felt about him, he might’ve been here. Or he would’ve left her. Either way her chest would have been stinging a little less.

More time passed with no word from Farley on the whereabouts of Valentine’s sheriff, or her life. As a nervous habit, Annie would undo and redo her braids constantly until her fingers ached. She paced around her cell. There was no clock in the office, so she measured the time by the sheriff’s actions. Everyday he followed the same routine: breakfast at the butcher’s stall, sit in his office and read the newspaper, smoke his pipe, taunt the downstairs prisoners, if the sun had yet to go down when he was finished, he would invite the mayor for a drink, where the mayor would talk about his grandiose plans for the sleepy, yet beautiful, town. His talk reminded her of Ezra: weaving tales of splendor, swearing up and down that Strawberry’s beauty could not be contained. The mayor echoed Ezra’s sentiments, convinced that the work he was putting into it would make a difference. Annie was sure that Farley was going to kill Mayor Timmins because he no longer wanted bounties to be advertised in Strawberry. It figured that she would be the last, she thought.

One morning, maybe three weeks since the bounty hunters had found her, sheriff Farley woke her by knocking on the bars of her cell. A man stood next to him, a handlebar mustache doing nothing to contain the permanent scowl on his face. Farley introduced him as sheriff Molloy, the one from Valentine and Annie’s blood ran cold. The one who would decide her fate stood there, looking unimpressed at the supposed cold-blooded killer before him, half-asleep and half paralyzed from fear.

“I hope you didn’t pay those boys the full bounty for this,” he gestured over at her, looking sullen and beaten.

“They didn’t seem to be the most innocent of sorts either. Didn’t wanna cause a fuss.”

Molloy laughed. Farley grabbed his pipe from his desk and made his way outside to give the two some privacy. He stood there silently with his arms crossed for what felt like an hour before speaking.

“Why’d you do it?”

“That’s it?” He nodded. Annie was confused. Weeks of waiting and that’s all he asks? No hint of a greeting, an apology. She was hoping that maybe the sheriff would tell her how her husband’s family was doing. They would probably be in the front row the day she hangs, but in an odd way her life had felt so sheltered in the months since she killed him that hearing something was preferred to this. To the brusque ire of a man that she knew had already decided that she was going to die for what she did.

“He hurt me,” she answered.

Molloy scoffed. “I was hoping for a more interesting answer. Not many lady killers ‘round these parts, but they all have the same reasoning.” “Maybe because they’re all telling the truth.”

“Maybe they’re all lying to try and gain some sympathy before they get hanged,” he said as he leaned in closer to the bars. The scowl on his face grew deeper. She started to wonder how many other women in her situation had the misfortune of seeing his face right before a hood was placed over their heads.

“My husband beat me. He would scream at me if there was a speck of dust on the floor when he came home from hunting. Chased me around the house with a knife if he didn’t like the way I sneezed or walked or spoke, when I did. I let him hurt me for over ten years. I had it.” Annie didn’t realize she had started crying until her voice broke. “It’s been months and I still call him my husband. I still love him, but I’d do it again. If you’re gonna hang me for that, then so be it.”

“I’m going to hang you for killing your husband, Mrs. Gray. I don’t care whether or not you regret it.”

Hearing her name felt like a whip cracking. She had gone so long without the sound of it that it was foreign in her ears, like the sheriff was addressing a stranger. For so long she referred to herself internally as Annie Cobb that it didn’t register. It was her trying to move on, trying to turn back into the woman she was before she married her husband, but it didn’t have the same spark. Her identity had always been ‘Mrs. Gray,’ her maiden name taken from her too soon, before she could form herself outside of her husband. But Cobb never resonated. Maybe in her next life she’ll have a name that fits her better, like Michaels, or Robinson. Or Bird.

The dread that churned in her stomach kept her from sleeping more than an hour at a time. It would jolt her awake with the sudden urge to run, and her heart wouldn’t stop racing until her brain finally managed to process that there was nowhere to run. At the third bout, Annie awoke to find Farley fast asleep, his snores once again bouncing off the wooden walls. Night had fallen, deep and heavily, on the town. It mirrored the night she was first brought back to Strawberry; the lantern once again the only thing illuminating the entire town. It was never intentional. Every morning he forgot, Malloy would grumble on for the rest of the day about the waste of oil. This night, this mistake, however, cost him more than a nickel’s worth of lantern oil.

Someone entered, not with a knock, but with a bang, stirring the sheriff from his slumber so harshly he wasn’t able to collect his bearings in time to demand an explanation. The glow of the lantern backlit the visitor and made it impossible for Annie to make him out until he spoke, and even then it was only a hunch. Sheriff Farley stumbled over towards the voice, eyes still crusted with sleep and legs uneasy. He managed his way over to his desk, propping himself up with an arm before asking who had the nerve to bother him so late at night. The man closed the door gently, opposite to his grand entrance. Out of the porch lantern light, the office was enshrouded in darkness until the sheriff lit another lantern at the corner of his desk. It wasn’t until the light illuminated the rest of the office that Annie realized.

“I do apologize for intruding so late into the evening, but I saw the lantern still on, and where I come from that means a gentleman is open for business.”

Ezra looked different from when she last saw him. He looked a little more ragged and worn down. The bags under his eyes had grown darker. His hair was unkempt and she didn’t see his hat anywhere on him. The blonde patch of hair caught the light just right. Ezra made no attempt to speak to Annie; he didn’t even look her way as he adjusted the heavy-looking satchel that hung upon his shoulder. His kept his deep, brown eyes focused entirely on the sheriff.

“I recently purchased myself a new abode in this beautiful little town here and my father always told me to start a new journey with alcohol. And who better among the locale to embark on that sojourn with than the sheriff himself?” Ezra reached into the satchel and forcefully placed two bottles of Kentucky bourbon on the sheriff’s desk. He pulled up a chair, not waiting for permission or refusal and sat down, eagerly awaiting his next move. Sheriff Farley eyed Ezra curiously. Nevertheless, he walked over to the cabinet by his cot and dug out two glasses. He smiled up at the sheriff. Not once did the two men take their eyes off one another.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“When I said ‘recently,’ it was not an exaggeration.” He leaned back in the chair. Ezra’s body language gave off a kind of confidence she had only seen from him once before: in Blackwater, towering over his debtor. Annie grew worried that he might try the same stunt again.

“I have always heard the people of Strawberry are of a hospitable color. At least, that is what they say in Saint Denis. It is possible that they simply meant poor,” the sheriff shot him an angered glance, “but hospitality is taught, never bought, wouldn’t you agree, sheriff?” Farley grunted in response. Ezra poured the bourbon halfway into both glasses before drinking his in one go, and encouraging the sheriff to do the same. Sheriff Farley’s eyes shot up to the blonde in Ezra’s hair. The coolness of Ezra’s composure broke for a second, not enough for the sheriff to notice, but enough for Annie to start worrying. She recalled the question the one bounty hunter had asked him when she first arrived and wondered if he made the same connection.

“Sheriff, please, I insist, drink! There is more than enough for the both of us and I want to make sure your graciousness is equally matched.”

“Is there no way to do this tomorrow,” Farley asked, choosing to match Ezra’s drink.

“Not according to my father’s superstitions, no,” Ezra chuckled. “It has to be as soon as you sign the deed, and the gentleman I was dealing with for this parcel was quite a character. He absolutely insisted we negotiate until the very last second of the day” He took another swig of the bourbon, this time directly from the bottle.

“Was it Mr. Rose by chance?”

“The one and the same!”

Ezra opened the second bottle of bourbon and passed it to the sheriff as he began to tell Ezra stories about the man. Farley eagerly grabbed the bottle by the neck. Engrossed in his tales, he continued to absentmindedly sip on the alcohol, his slowly inebriated mind searching for threads to connect his thoughts. On occasion, Ezra would take a swig from his bottle to encourage him. It was a lengthy plan, but one that seemed to be working. Every time the sheriff tried to stop, Ezra would bring up something else to try and get him talking again.

‘I have heard that your mayor is a curious one.”

“He’s trying to run me out of a job, is what he’s tryin’ to do!” He slammed the bottle onto his desk, and Ezra laughed as some of the liquid came sloshing out of the neck and on the sheriff’s hand. Annie’s worry grew again as she peered over to the window and saw daybreak trying to make its way over the horizon.

“I’m sure the mayor is only doing what he deems best.”

“The mayor is- he’s- the sonuvabitch-” the floorboards shook as the sheriff’s head slammed against his desk, just nearly missing the bottle. Annie wasn’t sure if he was dead or merely sleeping.

The first time Ezra acknowledged her was as the first snore ripped through Farley’s body. He looked over at her and held a finger up to his lips. As quietly as he could, he toed over to the sheriff’s slumped over body. He gently fiddled with the key ring that hung from his gun belt. Annie could see his hands shaking as he tried every key on Annie’s cell before finally reaching the correct one. She hadn’t realized how long she had been holding her breath until the cell door finally popped open, and the only thing standing between her and Ezra was a couple feet of empty, unfettered air.

“Missed you, little bird,” he smiled, breaking the heavy silence.

Tears fell freely from Annie’s eyes, the mix of emotions overwhelming her senses almost to the point of collapse, and she nearly jumped from where she was sat and into Ezra’s arms. Free not only was she of Strawberry jail, but also of any hesitation she might’ve been holding onto with regard to how she felt about him. She buried her face in his neck and took in his scent, something she didn’t realize she missed. His arms gripped onto her something fierce like she would float away and out of his grasp if he didn’t hold on. It was as though the time apart wore away any inhibitions they might have had. The sheer elation of their reunion being the only thing that was on their minds. Ezra came back for her.

That’s what mattered.

Tag List: @immundusspiritu @borderlinedindjarin @aforces

#ezra prospect #pedro pascal #prospect #ezra x oc #my fic

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someone-always-cares · 5 years ago

Photo

[image description: a q&a for the webcomic someone always cares. full desc under the cut because its long and wordy sorry]

post chapter 3 Q&A

first - previous - next

thanks for yalls questions!! it was fun to answer! if anyone still has questions feel free to ask whenever i am always 100% down to ramble. even if i did go slightly off topic in some answers

additional: went off topic with the hair question a bit. their bright hair is all part of the transformations. regular hair dye does exist though. best way to tell is that if the eyebrow matches the hair its probably not dyed. also, quartz’s hair is naturally ginger.

also for more on ages, check out the character bios here

also was gonna keep this in the tags but thought i might as well actually try to answer it: the question i found it hardest to answer was someone the song one. my taste in music is. a mess really. ive been listening to like the same 5 songs on repeat all day. more under the cut because i was rambling again and now its uhhh half 1am

if it helps at the time of answering that specific question i had home by cavetown on repeat, and that song reminds me of both rami and lewis. but that may be because i project onto those two a lot, and as a aro trans dude. who sucks with people skills, yeah of course i love that song.

specifically the vibes of like not knowing how to communicate (rami is fine with his friends but other people are different), the lines “ Turn off your porcelain face, I can't really think right now and this place, Has too many colors, enough to drive all of us insane” idk what the porcelain face line is supposed to mean but im picturing it as like. a mask. that you need to take off and stop hiding and rami does tend to hide when hes feeling upset, and the next two lines kinda could tie into that, like the feeling of when youre overwhelemed and just want the world to stop so you just hide somewhere. also the colours could go with chapter 3 with the chromatic abberation.

also the bit with “ my eyes went dark, I don't know where, my pupils are, But I'll figure out a way to get us out of here” just kinda sums up ramis whole hero thing with his powers and all. anyway this has turned into less what songs rami would like and why this particular song reminds me of him and lewis (lewis specifically has the hair cutting/chest hiding, [big transmasc mood], and also messy haired trainwreck who doesnt know who he is yet. also the ghosts bit)

i did end up picking upbeat songs because ramis a dude who like to try and be upbeat even if things arent. even if hes not really feeling it he will pretend to.

[full description: Anonymous said to someone-always-cares: “hi ily!!! do characters like quartz who have colored hair have that naturally or did they dye it?”

“its both natural and not! while most supers can do a magical girl ish transformation, including a change in hair colour, there are some exceptions.”

theres two small full body drawings of rami, one in civilian clothes, one fully transformed.

“if a superhero were to have a biological child, the child will inherit the powers of the parent(s). however, the child will not inherit the full transfromation. they do inherit any physical transformations, but not the outfit.”

theres a drawing of a woman in blue, quartz’s mother, fully transformed, holding her mask in her hand, smiling down at a much younger quartz as a child. hes smiling back up at her with the same blue eyes, pointy ears, and blue hair, but hes still in normal clothes.

“in the case of quartz, both of hisparents had superpowers, and he inherited those powers and the physical transformations.he can also pick and mix whatphysical traits to change.“

next is a headshot of adult quartz, his face split down the middle with one side having hair and eye like his mother, the other like his father. theres a list of traits from each parents, blue hair and eyes and pointy ears from his mum, and purple hair and eyes and pointy teeth from their dad.

“Anonymous said to someone-always-cares: Are all the characters the same age? If not, how old are they? Are they irl friends or just superhero friends?”

theres some headshots of rami and his team lined up with ages labelled: cam is 15, rami himself is 17, lin, mateo, and dante, are all 18, and cap is 20.

“rami and xandra were somewhat friends before she got superpowers, so when, after the incident with her old team, she found rami had developed powers, xandra stuck close to him. their other teamates started off as superhero friends but soon turned into irl friends too”

theres a headshot of lewis and jade. theyre both 17

“when lewis first decided to start being a vigilante,jade quickly found him and decided to help train himand offered to be a mentor of sorts, as they both have similar powers. that quickly derailed.”

“ cinder5555 said to someone-always-cares: How long does it usually take to make a comic page? I'm curious because they're so freaking good that they must take FOREVER”

theres a drawing of myself, a fluffy hair tired bastard in a hoodie, smiling

“Thanks! Ive been doing this shit since like 2017 and i still have no idea how long it takes me. i can get a page done in a day if i have nothing else to do or if its a simple page, but if i have work then maybe 2-3 days? i spend like, most of my free time doing this.“

another drawing of me, now looking frustrated muttering “how the FUCK does time work”

“but i can never do it all on one sitting.i will inevitably get distracted and zone out daydreaming mid drawing so its very hard to get an accurate read on how long it takes. so however long a piece of string is i guess“

the only qustion not from tumblr is a discord message from RuneStone Cabin:

“Q: Can you talk about the incidence of superpowers in this world? Like many people are supers, which powers are more or less common, how long they've been a thing for, stuff like that. Also does Omen know I'd die for them “

theres a drawing of omen pointing at a date circled on a calender marked “decembuary”, theyre saying “i know. i already wrote your death in my calender.”

then a giant wall of text reading: “Supers have only existed for a relativly short time, since the early 1940s. momento mori was the second person to have ever gained powers.

Only a small number of the population are supers! the chances are higher in more populated cities, but unusally london has oneof the higher percentages of supers. while nobody in universe has any idea of the origins of superpowers, it does seem that powers are more likely to occur in people who would actually use their powers.

as for what powers are most common, after making a badly catagorized spreadsheet of every superpowered character ive made for this world (70% of which will probably never even be seen), turns out that elemental powers are the most common. although not all elemental powers manifest as the straight up 'controling this element' as seen in characters like lin or tsunami. for example, iris's powers would fall under shadow elemntal powers, but theyre a lot more weird that just controlling shadows.there are some abilities that have never been seen before,such as ressurection or full on time travel (aka anything that could bring a character back to life), but powers are certainly allowed to toe the line eg healing, powers involving undeath, immortality, pausing or manipulating time.

aside from that, anything goes. you could get plain old superstrength, but you could also get the ability to create dogs with your mind. other not quite rules, more guidelines are that supers are immune to their own powers hurting them (unless they were pushing themselves too hard), although the way the imminuties occur may be inconvinient to the super.

while some powers may be 'more powerful' than others, powers dont really get to be way underpowered or overpowered in comparision to others. sure being able to talk to animals may feel a bit useless compared to someone who can lift 4 tanks at once, but nobodys going to end up with a power like 'can turn into a goose but only once' or 'can grow toenails twice as fast' or 'if i sneeze i can change my hair colour'. at the same time, youre not going to get someone with the power to snap their fingers and level a city, or instantly blow up the moon or whatever.

“Anonymous said to someone-always-cares: I love rami PLEASE tell me his favorite song(s) and why. I will die for you”

a drawing of rami saying out loud “i dont really have any specific favourite song, really? i just listen to whatever sounds catchy and then listen to that on repeat for hours until i hate it. i guess i do like upbeat songs? ones that make you feel happy even if the lyrics are sad”

“ un1c0rnhh said to someone-always-cares: tell me,,, please,, cam,,, are they a cat person or a dog person?? ily"

theres a drawing of cam a metre away from a cat lying down. she has her arm out and is making ‘psspsspss’ noises at it. end id]

FUCK i am so glad i didnt hand write all of that, it would have been a major pain in the ass to write it all and then have to transcribe all that next. but nope i could directly copy paste the asks and word answers. cheers if anyone made it this far down. if anyone wonders why this is uploaded late, you know now.

#sac #someone always cares #sorry to my friends i rambled to about the previosly mentioned attempt at catagorizing powers #i made a fucking spreadsheet and everything #it was awful #also it probably obvious but i still have yet to download the font i use to this computer #did i ever mention what i named the font when i made it #because its called 'dicks out for the void' or something #it was funny back in mid/late 2017 ok

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bigsnzstanacct · 5 years ago

Text

Kn/ives Out - R/ansom Fic

Inspired by these posts, although I went a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle overboard with it, as is my wont. This may or may not be the first of a five-or-six part series, a sort of “Five Times Ransom Pissed Off Everybody By Sneezing, and One Time He Didn’t.” Or it might just be the one little story. You know the drill, over-the-top sneezing ahoy lmao.

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“Do we have to talk politics?” Joni asked, her fingers tensed, her eyes rolling as she walked rather briskly to the drink cart. “It’s not that I’m not willing it’s just it’s so contentious and I’m a little concerned about that kind of energy—”

“No, no, no Joni,”—Richard cutting in now, his words stretching longer in the way all of him seemed to extend and elongate when he was drunk, as though he forgot Linda and Harlan were watching and expecting—”No, Joni, you don’t get to throw stones and then hide your hand, if you say something about our President, I’m gonna say something back.”

“Now, now, Richard,”—The aforementioned Harlan—”I think we can all agree the President—”

“Our President, Harlan, our President, I’m not saying I like him but I’m saying he’s our—”

“N-now… now come on Richard”—Walt, briefly, before being steamrolled by—

“Richard, I think I’d like a change of subject now—” Linda, ordinarily authoritative enough to end the line of inquiry altogether, but apparently not tonight.

“Well I wouldn’t, Linda. I wouldn’t like a change of subject, and for that matter...” (Richard, elongated as though he forgot Linda and Harlan…)

“How boring,” Ransom said in an aside. Marta happened to be walking by, picking up Richard’s emptied drink, and Joni’s recently downed one. It wasn’t actually her job to provide maid service for these people but they seemed to expect it and Harlan encouraged it and they really were so generous.

So it was to Marta that Ransom delivered his aside, though it wasn’t really to her—it might as well have been to the drink cart, or the grandfather clock, or the nonexistent camera over his shoulder. Ransom was the sort of man who walked around as though there could always be a camera over his shoulder. In fairness, Ransom was also the sort of man cameras commonly followed around. He’d very nearly committed to at least two reality tv shows, mostly to annoy his family. He’d gotten his current sports car upon backing out of a reality tv show. It was too bad he was too old to start a YouTube channel. He was still waiting to see what he could get out of revealing Jacob’s channel to the family, whether it would be better to threaten Jacob with its reveal to his parents, his parents with its reveal to to the family, or perhaps the family as a whole with a leak to… whatever random book-related website might find that gossip interesting. Maybe just Reddit.

Marta was just about to respond, to perhaps engage Ransom in conversation. She had it on good authority--Harlan’s--that she could be good company to a Thrombey or a Drysdale. Everyone seemed rather wary of Ransom, but aside from his aversion to the dogs, Marta had no reason to think ill of him, and so tried to assume the best of him. And---she could admit somewhat blushingly---he certainly wasn’t unattractive. She could see how, in her younger, sillier days how she might nurse a bit of crush on him, the wealthy prince charming and the maid---although she was not a maid, no matter how they treated her, she was a well-trained professional, dammit---

But before she could speak, Ransom’s face suddenly underwent some sort squishing, snorting motion. His long nose scrunched up short as he took in a sharp sniff, nearly a snort. His eyes closed for a moment, and a smile played on his lips. “This’ll be fuhh-hun,” he said in half a whisper, airy breathing infusing and interrupting his murmur.

Marta tilted her head to the side, curious what Ransom could be referring to, until she saw his nose, which was twitching: once, then twice. A heavy sniff, then another, then two in a row, then a long one, for all the world like fanning a flame (a flame, as she would come to realize, to light a fuse, to burn down to an explosion...)

It was around this moment that Ransom abruptly stood, and she could not help but notice how broad his shoulders were, as his eyes fluttered, and his chest began to swell. His nose was starting to pinken around the nostrils, the flaring and scrunching continuing, his arms falling slack. The creak of his chair as he stood brought everyone’s attention towards him, and as they noticed the bizarre ritual Ransom was performing or enduring.

“Oh, god, Ransom, not this again…” (Linda, eyes rolling)

“Ransom, Ransom buddy, Ransom please...” (Richard, hands waving)

“Is he going to do that screaming thing again, I’m leaving the room---” (Joni, hands raising towards her ears)

“Leaving the room won’t do her much good.” (Harlan, with a bit of a snicker in his voice)

Ransom was starting to vocalize now, little “hehhhH… hEHHHhh…” sounds that sounded as though they were either being dragged out of him or as though he was dragging them out himself, perhaps both. His head was tilting back, that chest looking larger than ever as it stretched and air flowed in and his long nose scrunched and his mouth hung open in a tall O and his back arched and hands went over ears and then one last voiceless gasp in… “huuuUUHH!”

“HHHHEEYYY-SSHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”

Ransom sprang forward, giving vent to what was plainly a titanic sneeze to begin with, let alone his leaning into it, relishing it, and then on top of that, as the sneeze went on it seemed to turn into a pure, guttural yell, his voice roughening in an obviously voluntary way. It sounded as though the sort of scream one might hear on a hardcore metal record was riding the rails of an involuntary, massive rush of air, and Marta couldn’t help but frown as a visible spray was ejected from Ransom’s face along with the helter skelter noise, but she could hardly notice the spray since, standing closest to the blast, her ears were assaulted worst with Ransom’s screaming sneeze or sneeze-flavored scream, whatever it was, and she dearly wished she’d followed the family’s example and plugged her ears.

The sneeze tapered off at last, and Ransom--who’d doubled over with the blast--bounced back up, face reddened from exertion, practically beaming. Or at least he would have been beaming, were his nose not already scrunching…

“Whew! Big wuhh-hunn…” He was presumably celebrating his sneeze, congratulating himself on a “big one” although the urge had not yet left him entirely, and it seemed another sneeze was one its way. Joni was just walking back into the room as he went into his sniffing routine again.

“Jesus! Ransom you’re gonna give your grandfather a heart attack…” she huffed, before seeing him building towards another sneeze, spinning on her heel and promptly marching out of the room again.

(Harlan, for his part, was chuckling.)

“S-suhh… sorry guys, think I gotta sn-sneeze again…” he warned, breath catching as he actively tilted his head back, presumably seeking some sort of light to look into. His eyes were tearing slightly as he fanned one hand in the general direction of his nose, perhaps… attempting to spark another sneeze by fanning dust at himself? He smiled as he could the whole way, clearly enjoying this performance.

“What the hell, kiddo, didn’t we tell you about your whole yelling routine…” Richard grumbled, making a move to walk towards Ransom but clearly thinking better of it as Ransom’s breath caught yet again.

“Ransom!” His mother interjected.

“You’re not a kid, you get allergy shots, I don’t know why you put on this whole production…” (Richard again)

“Ransom stop that this instant, you know the neighbors called the police last time they thought someone was in here being murdered.” (Linda)

“Shh, shh, shh, you’ll make it go away… ooh, I can feel it…” (Ransom, giggling)

The rest of them were rolling their eyes, plugging their ears, shuffling away from the scene---Marta heard a door slam, clearly Joni wasn’t risking being within the house for Ransom’s next explosion.

Meanwhile Ransom seemed to have clinched the sneeze, no longer trying to coax it out but surrendering to it, preparing for it, getting ready to ride the wave and rattle the rafters… he held up his hand, and put his fingers down one by one, his giggling nearly putting him off his sneeze again as he counted down to the sneeze: five fingers, four, three, two... and just as he had one finger left up, he gave another of those great airy voiceless pulls with his flared nostrils and slack mouth and…

“EEEYYYYYYYYAAAA-SSSHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

This one was less a heavy metal growl and more a pure scream, perhaps inspired by his mother’s mention of murder, as it bent higher pitched towards the end, and Marta couldn’t help but think she wouldn’t have imagined such a large man could reach such a high pitch.

Once again Ransom pitched forward, staying bent over, hands over his face this time as he pushed out the sneeze, dragging it out beyond all necessity, but clearly enjoying it. He popped up again, “whew! Think I got the itch out that time!” He said, beaming like a child pleased to have gotten away with something naughty, before he screwed his face up again, “W-well, I think I got it…”

“Ransom, stop it, I know you’re just putting it on this time, I can tell.” Linda said, although this time she was chuckling a bit. Harlan was outright laughing, although he rolled his eyes as he said “you’ve outdone yourself.”

Marta had prepared adequately for this one, fingers plugging her ears, but she was still rather distracted by the whole affair. She’d never seen anyone sneeze quite so dramatically. Still, he seemed to have some measure of control over the whole affair; standing behind him, she couldn’t help but notice the sheen of his hands, practically glistening with the moisture from the sneeze, before he wiped them roughly on his pants. Clearly this sneeze had been much… juicier, she thought with an alarmed frown. Ransom must have anticipated that, ergo the hands tented around his nose as he’d howled out that last sneeze.

“You done yelling at us, buddy?” Richard asked, clearly irritated. His son had managed to take up even more space than he did, after all. Practically took up all the space in the house; certainly there wasn’t a room in the house (or on the grounds altogether, practically) that Ransom’s sneezes couldn’t be heard.

“Yeah Dad, sorry.” Ransom said, his childish grin replaced with a more adolescent smirk, his eyes cutting over towards the couch where his father sat. “Just had a tickle in my nose.” His voice grew brighter, though no less mocking, as he looked over at Marta, who once again could have been a drink cart, a grandfather clock, a camera for all it mattered. He tilted his head at her, and adopted what might have been a boyish pout (if his face weren’t so smug) to say:

“Allergies, you know. I can’t help it.”

#snz fic #snz fanfic #loud sneeze #dramatic sneeze #little shit over the top sneezes #snz story

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d3-iseefire · 5 years ago

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Belated Writing Wednesday

Really Belated Writing Wednesday! SO this was a story I started months ago and hadn’t finished. It’s finished now, and is long enough to be about a four chapter long fic SO I’m gonna post a chapter a day til the fic goes away. :D :D

Little Warning: This fic gets pretty intense later on so please keep in mind that it’s still me writing it which means it’s still T Rated, No Archive Warnings and a Happy Ending. :)

For those who watch the show Supernatural, Sam and Dean make a cameo but the story is mainly about Bilba and Fili.

Anyhoo, I hope you all enjoy! Chapter 2 will be up tomorrow (on AO3). I’m not going to post each chapter on here, I don’t think, but I’ll post something letting you all know it’s up.

In the meantime, here’s the link what will eventually be the full story on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21702031/chapters/51764428

Bilba met Fili on a rainy January evening when she was six and he was eight. The rain had left her stuck inside, and she'd been slowly going stir crazy. Her foster mother had turned the lights down to put a movie on and, while the other children were engrossed, Bilba took the opportunity to sneak out to go exploring.

She headed straight to the basement.

None of the kids were allowed down there and she could just imagine the looks of awe she would receive from the others when she regaled them with tales of her adventure.

Tragically, what she found were boxes, and dust. Lots and lots of dust that tickled her nose and sent her into a violent sneezing fit.

When she'd finally recovered, she’d looked up to see a young boy staring at her suspiciously from the other side of the room.

Fili, as he’d introduced himself, had snuck in to look for monsters. The way he said it, all serious and solemn, nearly made Bilba laugh but she managed to control herself and simply nod back with what, she hoped, was an equal level of gravity.

She could understand where he'd gotten the idea. The home she had been placed in was in an apartment building, five stories with a stone exterior stained dark in places by the passing of years. In wintertime the leaves died off which left the trees spindly and creepy and, at night cheap lightbulbs caused an otherworldly orange light to shine from the windows.

Bilba thought the place had a ghost, and she lived there.

She’d ended up helping Fili look because it sounded like fun (even though he continued to insist it was very serious) and, together, the two hunted through boxes and searched shadowy corners for any evidence of ghosts, ghouls or other assorted monstrosities.

It had been nearly an hour later that her foster mother found them, along with a tall, dark haired intimidating man that turned out to be Fili’s uncle. Fili had been dragged off, while Bilba had been sent to her room for the evening for sneaking away and making everyone worry.

That might well have been the end of it, if it hadn’t been for Fili showing up a few days later to see if she wanted to play. This time he’d been dropped off by a different, just as intimidating, man Fili had introduced as Dwalin.

Dwalin had left and she and Fili had spent the entire afternoon running about playing. This had been followed by a similar afternoon the next day, as well as the one after that and the one after that. It was nearly five days later, in fact, before Dwalin had arrived to take Fili away again.

Bilba had cried for hours.

Two weeks later and he was suddenly back again, this time with a younger brother named Kili in tow. They'd stayed for only two days this time; and then it was another week before they arrived again.

It became a normal, if irregular, occurrence after that for both of them to be dropped off. Her foster mother explained that she and Fili's uncle were old friends, and she watched his nephews while he was away on business trips.

Fili insisted that his family was off fighting monsters, and they knew her foster mother because they'd once saved her from one.

Bilba didn't really believe him but had to admit his story was more interesting than the one her foster mother told.

As they grew older she grew closer to both of them, but her bond with Fili was always a little bit deeper than it was with Kili. When they were gone, Bilba spent most of her time sitting at her bedroom window waiting for him -- them to come back.

Fili began to visit more often, not always with Kili, and not always times where he had to stay. His family lived in a small, rundown house on the edge of town, and he’d ride an old battered bike in to spend the day with her.

On Bilba’s eight birthday, Fili and his family showed up to take her out for dinner. It was the first time she'd felt like part of a family, just like any other kid out with their parents and siblings to celebrate. The restaurant staff had given her a free cupcake with a cheap, plastic eight that she'd carefully preserved and hidden away for safety.

Later, Bilba got permission to go with Fili and his uncle on outings, sometimes to that rundown house on the edge of town, other times to the movies or the park or mall. Once, they all went to the beach and she got to see the ocean for the very first time.

She got to know them all. Fili of course, and his uncle, and then Kili. There was also Dwalin and a host of other people who came in and out at various times. Many of them were quite serious and had a tendency to brood, but they were always very kind to her.

She never met Fili and Kili's parents. The one time she'd asked, Fili had gotten sad and simply told her they were gone.

Fili's family seemed to get hurt a lot, often sporting bandages or favoring arms or legs, but she was always waved off when she tried to ask what had happened. Fili and Kili never got hurt. He said it was because he wasn’t old enough to hunt monsters yet and, as always, Bilba simply nodded and accepted it. She’d learned long ago not to be a bother. When you were a bother, people didn’t want you. She didn’t ask silly questions or raise her voice and she certainly didn’t go anywhere near the many weapons they told her to stay away from.

In addition to them, Bilba also got to meet Tauriel. She was a friend of Kili's and, when she visited, she spent a lot of time sharpening her own weapons. She was Fili’s age but, as he always complained, her family let her hunt. She rarely ever got hurt. When Bilba asked why, Tauriel said it was because she knew when to duck.

Fili got his first knife when she was eleven and he was thirteen. Soon after, Bilba stopped seeing him as often. Instead of being left behind while his uncle and Dwalin went on their trips (to hunt monsters as Fili always insisted) he went with them. Kili still came to stay sometimes, but it wasn't the same for either of them and he soon stopped.

It was around this time that the doubt first started to creep in.

She supposed it came from watching the other kids around her come and go. Mostly go. There always seemed to be people looking for a little boy or girl to come and complete their family.

No one ever asked to meet her.

She didn’t know why. Maybe she wasn't pretty enough or smart enough or a thousand different things. In the end, all that mattered was she simply wasn't enough. No one wanted her. As time passed, a small voice inside her head began trying to convince her that Fili and his family didn't want her either.

Sure, they took her out, but they always brought her back. Always turned and drove away. Off on their business trips for days, or even weeks, at a time. Without her.

They never offered to adopt her, never even seemed to consider it.

Some of the other kids taunted her for it.

Sometimes that voice inside her head taunted her too.

Maybe, it would say, she’d never been anything more than a built-in playmate to keep Fili and his brother busy and out of his uncle's hair.

Maybe they thought she was annoying even though she tried her hardest not to be. Maybe they only tolerated her. Maybe Fili thought she was annoying but was too nice to get rid of her or maybe they thought of her as nothing more than an irritating little girl who couldn’t take a hint.

Maybe they were just waiting for her to go away.

The thoughts got louder as she got older, particularly once her eighteenth birthday started to become less of a far-off concept and more of a rapidly approaching reality. She couldn’t stay in the home once she turned eighteen. She’d have to move out, find a job and place to stay.

She'd be all on her own.

When she was three months from her eighteenth birthday and he was well into his twentieth year, Fili got hurt for the first time. Really hurt. He'd been hurt before, ever since he started going away on those business trips with his uncle, but it had never been more than a few cuts and bruises or, once, a broken arm.

This time he came home unconscious and pale, with blood still staining his neck and soaking through his shirt in a bigger pool than she’d ever seen. His breathing had been shallow, and his pulse been so slow she almost couldn’t feel it.

His entire chest had been wrapped in heavy bandages and she knew he should be in the hospital, hooked up to all manner of machines and tubes, but instead they put him in his bed and set up a crappy old IV pump that they’d stolen at the same time they’d snuck him out of the hospital he should have been in.

It was the first time Bilba had gotten mad at them.

It was the first time she’d yelled.

It was the first time they’d yelled back.

She’d threatened to call the police, and they’d threatened to take Fili and leave...and never come back.

Bilba would always remember the cutting pain as those words had lanced right through her. She'd reeled back as if they'd physically struck her and, in many ways, they had.

Kili had shouted at his uncle, while Dwalin had ordered them all to shut up and, through it all, Bilba had simply...stood there.

She hadn't moved until their uncle had stalked from the room and slammed the door behind him. Kili had tried to talk to her but Bilba had simply shaken her head. She’d gone and stretched out on the bed next to Fili...and stayed there.

For days.

For weeks.

No one from her foster home came looking for her.

It had taken three days for Kili to convince her to eat, and then only because he’d threatened to have Dwalin drag her from the room if she didn’t. After that, Bilba had made sure to eat, and shower and do what she was supposed to do.

She did it by rote.

She did it in silence because if there was one thing she now knew with utter certainty it was that while she couldn't live without Fili and his family, they could certainly live without her.

Life could be unfair that way sometimes.

Fili took two and a half weeks to wake up, and it would be weeks more before every moment of that waking wasn’t spent in agony.

Bilba stayed with him the entire time, even later when he was mostly healed, and the rest of the family started their business trips again.

She finally asked Fili what happened.

He told her it was monsters.

Something inside her had snapped. She'd screamed at him and, for the first time since they'd met, Fili had realized she'd never believed him about the monsters.

The fight that followed was the biggest they’d ever had, mostly on her end. All of it suddenly came pouring out. The horrible voice in her head, her anxiety over her eighteenth birthday, the gut churning terror she’d felt as she’d watched over him and begged him not to leave her.

At some point he’d stopped and simply listened to her, eyes wide. Bilba had wanted to stop, had told herself to stop, to just simply shut up, please shut up, for the love of god, just shut up.

Don’t be a problem.

Don’t make his life harder.

Don’t get in the way.

He won’t want you anymore.

None of them will.

They'll leave and then where will you be?

Alone.

That's where.

She couldn’t seem to stop, however, and by the end of it her voice was hoarse, and her eyes were swollen and puffy, and she was shaking so hard it was a wonder she didn’t collapse.

She’d run from the house before he could tell her that he hated her. When he'd tried to visit she'd refused to see him, and when her phone had rung with the ringtone she'd set for him she'd turned it off.

Eventually he'd stopped trying, and she’d finally learned the answer to the question she’d always been too afraid to ask.

It had been an illusion.

A myth.

A pleasant dream she’d used to pass the time until she was forced to face reality.

No one wanted her, and no one ever would.

Read the Rest Here As It’s Posted: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21702031/chapters/51764428

#Writing Wednesday #Belated #Writing #My Writing #Fanfic #Fanfiction #Supernatural #LOTR #The Hobbit #Hobbit #Fili #Female Bilbo Baggins #Sam Winchester Cameo #Dean Winchester Cameo

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dailydoseofshizaya · 6 years ago

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Shizaya WWII AU

After I read and saw the movie Atonement by Ian McEwan in school I got inspired to write a Shizaya Nurse-Soldier WWII au ficlet by Briony’s nurse scene. It’s not a romantic scene, at all, but the setting gave me the idea. I have big finals these next two weeks, but maybe I’ll continue this : )

The air reeked of fresh blood, burnt skin, and morphine, among other unpleasant things, and it climbed up their nostrils aggressively. No one wanted to sneeze less they might suck in more of the death-filled air, so they scrunched their faces instead. The orchestra of cries and moans of pain seemed to line up in sync with the barking commands of chief-medics and the constant squeak of rolling carts and the pitter patter of scurrying shoes over the grimy floors. Izaya was among this crowd right now, his eyes red from exhaustion and shock, but his body moved on its own with practiced certainty as he attended to the fresh battle wounds of soldiers coming. As he nursed wounds, administered medicine and IV’s, he tried to distract his mind and put up a barrier between his actions and his emotions, anything to make this easier, although he was no stranger to these kinds of emergencies at the hospital. He pictured in his mind a sack of rice. Sturdy, thick, and firm. Funny, how just a needle prick in one of these sacks could cause the entire mass to deflate like a child’s balloon. A large sack of rice, that could feed families or kill a man with its weight, useless with a snap.

A hand with dry, crusty skin seized his own, and he snapped his head up to the weary eyes of a soldier who was written down with a severe concussion. Izaya offered a soft smile and eased the soldier’s hand off his wrist. He pulled the blankets up the man’s body and told him to continue to rest. The soldier had a sharp, haggard face, and for a brief terrifying second Izaya thought it could have been Shiki. Shiki, his old friend, who was a soldier in this platoon, and whose last letter a few weeks ago wrapped up in an optimistic note.

“Nurse Orihara, get me more wrapping gauze. Then clean the chest wound for patient number sixty-five.” Commanded the head-nurse.

“Yes, Sister.”

Sister Naomi came into the warden around the same time as Izaya joined the hospital, and even though there was no difference in their rank since they both did the same job, Naomi always seemed to think otherwise. It was the tang of smugness in her tone and her tendency to not even look at you when she addressed you which made Izaya love to mess with her in any way that he could.

However, that would have to wait for much later. As he marched away to do his bidding, Izaya failed to notice a stretcher carrying a terrible head injury that two petite nurses were struggling to lift up. In effect, they clashed. Badly. At least the wounded soldier was so unconscious from the morphine given to him that he wasn’t aware of the violent shaking to his state.

“Nurse Izaya!” Naomi shrieked in her annoying high-pitched voice.

But Izaya didn’t feel like turning around at the moment. He lazily glanced down condescendingly at the girls scrambling to lift the stretcher back up again and continued walking forward.

The location of the medicine storage that was usually the most supplied was thankfully packed behind a quieter corner on the building’s floor level. There would be no breaks today for the medics, and it was nice to step away from the noisy quarters for a moment. The shelves were located at the end of a long stretch of the room that was narrower than the main quarters where all the nurses and doctors were attending to the patients. There were beds spread evenly on both sides across the whole expanse of the passage, even up to a couple of feet away from the shelves and cabinets with the supplies. The storage was inside an alcove that was created from a narrow “T” dip further down the corridor. There were doors on both sides of the walls of that formed the storage “gap” which opened to stairs leading to more building levels. Due to the massive and unexpected influx of soldiers that morning, every single bed was taken, and many dollies were positioned between the hospital beds to accommodate more patients. The patients here were sleeping or quietly resting. Most of them had already been treated and the others had less demanding injuries that needed attention while the soldiers in the main quarters all needed the most urgent medical care.

At the storage shelves, Izaya picked up a stray cart and started to pile up the needed materials. Dakin solution, cocaine hydrochloride, chloroform, he muttered to himself. Where is the sodium salicylate? Scanning the wide furniture packed with multiple cupboards, drawers, and shelves all ranging different sizes, Izaya’s eyes finally rested upon the very top shelf where there rested fully filled and untouched bottles of the desired aesthetic. Izaya was 5’9’’ and the shelf was 6’5’’ feet tall. How convenient. He stretched up on his tiptoes and grabbed the left edge of the furniture for support. He managed to grab a couple of bottles but the rest were pushed far too back for it. He pushed his body weight up and towards the back crannies and tried poking his fingers on either side of the bottles to nudge them closer, but his fruitless endeavors resulted in shaking the old furniture and knocking a glass bottle of gauze balls instead.

“Shit…!”, he cursed.

“Do you need help with that?”, a deep voice suddenly spoke up.

Startled, Izaya whipped his head around, unaware that his comical failures were being watched, but then turned back around again to pick up the gauze balls.

“I’m sorry if I woke you. Please go back to bed, soldier.” The other man chuckled and Izaya heard the bed creaking as he adjusted himself and sat upright.

“I think I’m taller than you. Let me help?”

“I’m fine,” Izaya said curtly. “Thanks,” he added, “Go back to bed.”

After a moment of picking up the rest of the balls, Izaya got up and turned around to finally address the soldier. He was a broad-shouldered with dyed blonde hair with evident muscles but slim. His face was stained with soot but his eyes sparkled with interest nonetheless, and his left-arm was cradled in a sling. His chest and right arm were wrapped in bandages with blots of dark red peaking through.

“Is there anything I can get you, soldier?”

The blonde man looked caught off guard and hesitated for a bit.

“No, I’m fine I guess.”

“You don’t look very ‘fine’ though,” Izaya said, referring to the man’s wounds. Izaya stood there, both men looking at each other and neither one knowing what to say. Realizing the awkwardness that he created, Izaya’s face turned a little red and he walked away, pushing his cart with him. When he was farther away from the blonde man’s bed, he let out a breath, not having realized that he was holding it in.

#shizaya #fanfic #shizaya fanfic #ficlet #my fanfic #my writing #izaya x shizuo #shizuo x izaya #shizaya au #au #fanfic au

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snowe-zolynn-rogers · 6 years ago

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Nomu!Hero Course Basics

Shinsou is the first to be taken, right after the Sports Festival because his Quirk is ‘villainous’ so AFO sends Kurogiri to collect him.

It’s honestly pretty easy given that Shinsou isn’t able to fight back well (Aizawa hasn’t offered to train him yet so he’s unskilled as a fighter and he can’t rely on his Quirk because Kurogiri won’t respond to him)

He tried that once and it was not pleasant afterwards

He brainwashed Shigaraki and AFO broke his left leg to keep him from getting further.

He refuses to become a villain so they make him into a Nomu.

He gets pretty useless Quirks because AFO is saving the better ones for the others.

“Sorry you get the useless ones. I’m saving the good ones for a friend of yours. You might remember him. Midoriya Izuku.“

Shinsou manages to stay lucid for few hours even with the three new Quirks eating away at him.

He does slip into a catatonic state eventually though, because he figures nobody’s coming. He figures he’s just a Gen Ed student, who lives in an orphanage no less, so nobody cares.

Boy is he wrong. Midoriya is an anxious puppy about his friend and even Bakugo gets worried when he hears that Shinsou hasn’t showed up, both to school, work, and at the orphanage he lives at, for a week.

It doesn’t help that, when Hosu happens, Midoriya, Iida, and Todoroki are also kidnapped and forced to become Nomu as well.

It’s at this point that Shinsou ‘wakes up’ from his catanonia because he finally sees something familiar that isn’t these four walls and a man who keeps hurting him.

Unfortunately, Midoriya, Iida, and Todoroki aren’t that lucky.

Since Shinsou can barely keep keep himself calm when he first ‘wakes up’, he really can’t do anything without falling over so he really can’t just play prison break, even if he wants to.

He’s especially unable to be calm when he sees AFO using his Forcible Quirk Activation stolen Quirk on Todoroki with his new Porcelain Quirk (keeps shattering pieces of Todoroki to test it), Iida with his Blood Knives Quirk (forcing Iida to make weaponry to train him), and Midoriya with his new Fire Breath Quirk (it keeps hurting Midoriya’s throat after prolonged use)

Shinsou is in terrible condition by the way. He can’t eat so he’s got a feeding tube in his nose, he’s routinely got an IV in his arm because he’s always dehydrated because because ‘no, you can’t take the mask off’ even to eat.

Shinsou isn’t really expecting to be saved. And having brainless Midoriya, Todoroki, and Iida around really isn’t giving him any optimistic vibes.

But now he’s ‘awake’ so he can’t go back to ‘sleep’.

To pass time he tests his new wings and masters autonomy of them.

Eventually he gains up the nerve to tug on AFO’s sleeve and points at his wings and flaps them like ‘hey bitch, I wanna train these, you’ve got me stuck here I may as well pass time.’

AFO is ecstatic that he wants to be a ‘useful Nomu’ and agrees, although he basically puts him on a leash and hands him to Dabi.

Cue Hitoshi’s new Memory Read kicking in and he sees Dabi’s memories and just how much Dabi is hurting and in pain and sad and doesn’t want to do this anymore.

He manages to fly pretty damn well for someone who hasn’t had wings his whole life.

Dabi is highly impressed with him.

Shinsou knows JSL, because he grew up wearing a muzzle for his ‘villain Quirk’.

Shinsou uses JSL to talk to Dabi.

‘I know you’re Todoroki Touya‘ “how?“ ‘new quirk.‘ “ah, and?“ ‘your little brother is a Nomu now too.‘

Cue pissed Dabi but he’s thankfully containable or else AFO would have killed Shinsou and Dabi both.

Dabi visits Shoto when his hair grows out with the original red and it ‘wakes him up’ from his catatonia from seeing something familiar.

Sadly Iida and Midoriya aren’t ‘waking up’ yet because they don’t know who the hell Todoroki Touya is.

Dabi, unwillingly, goes through with the Forest Training Arc hoping to any god that will listen that the other students just go with becoming villains.

Damn, did he give himself false hope thinking that.

Mr. Compress captures the entire rest of class 1a just to go overboard like the showman he is.

Almost immediately the students deemed ‘useless villains’ get turned into Nomu. (Aoyama, Ashido, Asui, Uraraka, Ojiro, Koda, Sato, Shoji, Jirou, Sero, and Hagakure)

The others are with the League, where Shigaraki and the others are trying to convince them to become evil.

Haha, bitch you fail. They don’t want to be villains so off to become Nomus do they go too.

Dabi has managed to steal a few things from the kids’ houses that he hopes has meaning to them and he ‘wakes up’ Iida with an old picture of his brother and Midoriya with an AllMight action figure.

The others all wake up to varying degrees when they see AllMight and the other heroes.

So now Aizawa has twenty Nomufied students that are at varying states of their catatonia and the only way to ‘wake them up’ is to give them something from their childhood as a way of cognitive recalibration.

Once all the kids are safe (thank you Mt. Lady and the whole damn Vanguard).

The Vanguard helps save the hero course kids from being in the way. They did not sign up to this to hurt kids. They all thought the kids would just be like…left in a random place for the pro heroes to find.

They’re blaming themselves for kids being hurt like this so they all decide to save them from getting hurt and get them out of the way with Mt. Lady.

Most of the pros are shocked seeing the villains carrying/dragging the students to safety. But hey the kids are safe, help them.

All of their parents are asked to bring something from their childhood of great emotional value to the hospital in Kamino they’re being checked at.

It ‘wakes’ them all up.

And now Aizawa has twenty students with brand new Quirks they can’t control well.

So what does he do? Starts training the simpler Quirks in the hospital so they can get a handle on them and actually focus on something so they can all calm down.

First it’s Kaminari because he’s actually terrified. He’s phasing through everything and crying and Aizawa brings Mirio in to help him allow Kaminari to get a good handle on his new Quirk.

His panics are solved with putting special gloves on from Mirio’s first year prototype outfit that stay tangible even when your body goes through things (provides something stable to use as a grip).

Next is Ashido. She can’t stop using Glitch and she can’t use her Suppression on herself so she’s basically crying on Aizawa, since she can’t use Glitch if she’s touching someone.

Hatsume Mei is a goddess to 1A now. She makes them all suppressors and gadgets to help them with their new Quirks.

Mei gives Mina an inhibitor so her Quirks are lowered to a containable level while Aizawa teaches her that she can grab onto something if she feels a glitch coming on.

Poor Mina glitches when she sneezes and sadly she’s sick with a cold when she’s at AFO’s warehouse.

Aizawa pairs Uraraka with Midnight to try to contain her Laughing Gas Quirk and thankfully, together, they manage it in just over an hour.

Next is Todoroki. The poor boy was manhandled too much getting out of Kamino and now he’s got fractures and cracks in several places and the doctors are scared to touch him.

Thankfully, Sero’s new Mend Quirk is unable to be turned off and so he puts them together so Sero can heal Shoto just as fast as he cracks.

It doesn’t help that Shoto is blind now thanks to the Quirk transfer being too much for his body to handle with his already powerful mixed Quirk and his right eye froze over and was too damaged to repair, even with Sero now healing him constantly.

Bakugo is all sorts of out of it. He’s still partially brainless because, his childhood was just pain and abuse from his mother, he has seemingly nothing he’s emotionally attached to.

That is, until Masaru lets Aizawa send Yamada into Katsuki’s room and Hizashi finds an old worn teddy bear he presents to Bakugo that finally recalibrates his memories.

The Quirk transfer also made Bakugo fully deaf so now he can’t hear, but he can thankfully see peoples Auras and kind of know what their intentions are. Don’t worry if he’s scared he’ll let you know. His hair turns bright fricking purple when he’s scared.

Midoriya has trouble controlling his Light Body Quirk and he keeps accidentally activating it. Aizawa brings in Ashido and tells her to touch his hand and it’s long enough for him to get the inhibitor on him.

He also does this for Iida with his Darkness Body Quirk.

Shinsou has the most mastery of his new Quirks because he actually trained them with Dabi, much to Aizawa’s surprise and horror yet also his pride.

Like, he’s a pro at this, he’s been training these new Quirks.

He knows how to fold his Wings to get through small doorways or just to let people past him, he can turn into energy via his Energy Body and float around the doctors so that he doesn’t get in the way while they’re going past him, he can translate information to the doctors of what’s wrong with the others through his Memory Read.

Someone give him a medal, he deserves it.

Eventually he gets exhausted though and he passes out against Kaminari (who’s exhausted from crying so much), Bakugo (who just doesn’t want to be alone), and Kirishima (who’s been worried about his friends the whole time he’s been ‘awake’).

Dabi is busy with Shoto, catching up, mostly they’re both crying and hugging and Sero is so happy he gets to witness this beautiful brotherly interaction.

Midoriya is with Iida and they’re calming each other down. Uraraka and Asui join them later because their optical Quirks make it hard to look at people without fearing they might hurt them so they opt to wear blindfolds.

Yaoyorozu has determined she will test her new Will O Wisp Quirk and is using it to set small pieces of paper on fire with her fingertips (using the bare minimum to test it) to see the end result of each color.

Aoyama and Tokoyami are basically playing day and night to drive off each other’s loneliness while Shoji makes sure the shadow kid and sunshine kid are okay. Thank god, because he balances the situation a lot.

Once she’s got a handle on her new Quirks, Mina is hanging out with Jirou and Hagakure just so she doesn’t have to be alone. She’s just scared of possibly glitching out of existence and having them hug her is very comforting.

Sato, Ojiro, and Koda made a blanket fort in their hospital room and have fallen asleep there.

It was originally to make something for Sato because he wanted to bake but couldn’t, do something to calm down Ojiro, and provide comfort for Koda.

It worked.

Eventually they all end up in a giant cuddle pile in Ojiro, Koda, and Sato’s room, even those who had already fallen asleep.

Everyone came and they all brought their blankets and made it a giant blanket castle and Aizawa just sits at the door and guards them (and also to alert then when the doctors will be coming in.)

Sadly the four there the longest have eating problems, they can’t chew food because they haven’t in so long so they’ve lost both fat and muscle and are very underweight.

Todoroki is the worst, surprisingly. Since he’s now made of porcelain, his digestion is super fast compared to before so he just burns thought whatever he’s given too quickly (it just makes it worse that he can’t have solid food anymore too).

Thankfully big bro Dabi to the rescue getting all the students tons of food from a Peace Cafe in Kamino Ward, named Heiwa To Chōwa, where the owner of it has basically all but adopted him.

The cafe makes a lot of specialty foods since they’re both

a) close to the hospital so people pick up food for their loved ones there and

b) surprisingly a lot of villains and heroes have eating problems and/or food problems whether from battle, genetic, self-inflicted, or otherwise.

Shinsou and Dabi both work at Heiwa To Chōwa and he and Dabi are like bros when they find out they work opposite shifts (Dabi works day shift aka 8am to 4pm and Shinsou works evening shift aka 5pm to 12pm).

The rest of the Vanguard isn’t just forgiven immediately, even Dabi. The others are in very intense interrogations while Aizawa and the other teachers are helping the students.

The police officers aren’t about to rip Dabi away from his little brother just for questioning until they’re sure Shoto is stable and won’t go back into a catatonic state if Dabi leaves.

Though he does have Hawks following him around as protection for the students.

After two weeks, they move to the dorms and their parents all agree because there’s like limited other ways for the students to learn to control their new Quirks.

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steve0discusses · 6 years ago

Text

Yugioh S2 Ep 41: It’s Mai’s Turn to Get Electrocuted

Hey guys, welcome to the Christmas Break.

It’s TV watching season, so lets watch some TV and over-analyze a 20 yo kid’s show, you in?

Odion, after suffering from a lightning strike and getting impaled by many pieces of that fake millennium rod he was holding gets dropped off in the only room on this blimp that has sheets. He also had the added shock of witnessing his brother morph into a somewhat evil-er dude with saiyan hair, which I dunno, I’d want to take a nap too, that’s a lot to deal with.

(And thanks to some reader input, turns out this Marik isn’t so much a ghost situation so much. I mean, I guess it’s more of a Season Zero --this is your deep down scary personality taking over-- type thing but it’s not like I really finished Season Zero so...We’re just rolling with it.)

Glad we have an actual hospital wing--confused as to why Bakura isn’t here.

But I guess lightning strike is slightly worse than having a bleeding stab wound for 12 hours. I mean I’m no doctor, maybe it is? Anyway, Odion is hooked up to all sorts of computers and life support although there aren’t any cords attached to him anywhere on his body. Not even one piss-yellow IV bag.

Check out the size of that IBM. This is what a widescreen used to look like.

The rest of the Yuge Crew are here although I’m pretty sure that’s not how hospitals work. Pretty sure you have to be related to drop on in directly after being put in intensive care but like, they are on a blimp so I guess it’s different up there. But also, this guy has abducted them once already and just tried to kill Joey for the second time, and now they are like “We’re basically on BFF family terms with this Odion guy, lets visit that bedside.”

Although, mind you, his real family is Marik and Ishizu, both of which have never said aloud that Odion is their brother. This family is sort of bad at life, TBH.

Since we’re barrelling right into a Mai arc we have to confront one of her 2 big Mai character conflicts--which is either “this is why I don’t get married” or “OMG I am going to die forever alone.” Which is interesting, because last time we hung out with her, we did whatever we could to keep her independent, while in this episode Mai mourns that being independent is the ultimate curse. Girl wants whatever she doesn’t have, pretty much.

Ah, Miss independent, never thought I’d get that song stuck in my head again. Thanks, Mai. Except in this version, instead of falling in love, Mai just makes weird friendships with jail bait teenagers. Why can’t she make friends with like, Roland? He’s her age. Or maybe this nice doctor? But whatever, age is meaningless on this show.

(read more under the cut)

Anyway, Joey has decided to tell us all about that dream he had but leaves out the parts where he dropped everything he owns, and then knocked himself over a desk onto his face, and then in the same dream Kaiba kinda walked in from off screen, dunked on him, and then walked directly off screen again.

Mai is deeply touched.

And then, because she is Mai, gets extremely offended immediately afterward.

I can keep hoping it’ll be Duke Devlin but like...as much as I want him to do more on this show, I really think the only people who remember Duke Devlin at this point are all the animators who were like “HOW many people are in this shot?! Why did we make a season where every scene is a freakin crowd scene!?”

*I know the shading on her ass was supposed to be attractive but it looks like nasty sweat stains*

(Also what the hell computer-machinery is supposed to be behind them in this scene?)

This one time where Joey doth protest too much is the first time we have ever, ever on this show seen Joey act less than vague towards Mai. During the dream episode he blushed, but I thought that was because of Serenity being there for her brother in his dream. I didn’t at all think that was over Mai at the time.

But I guess this is happening now? I mean people kept saying “yes, Joey and Mai will be a thing” and I was like “they better start building up to that because like...nothing is happening.” but this show’s version of building up to that was by just not being vague one single time.

Which in this show is a big deal, I guess. Because shortly after this event, Tea remembers that her character description sheet says “Is bossy AF” with red underline and was like “OMG I totally forgot and it’s been like 20 episodes since I did anything, I gotta hurry” and she just lost her lid.

I’m regretting more and more that joke I made that TeaxKaiba was way more reasonable than TeaxYugi, because sometimes when Tea goes ham she may as well be wearing a long spiky coat with boots leggings. Tea had two very different personalities way before she ever got possessed by Bakura. Like, Tea is kind of a monster actually, but we rarely get to see it because she gets completely distracted and cries a lot when it just feels like...the other half of her, the half that bit a guy once--like she legit bit a guy on this show--that side of Tea would just never cry over cards. Or cry, period. She sure wasn’t crying when she bit that guy!

This is mostly because I think the writers didn’t know how to write a girl like Tea since she’s a mix of a Season Zero Tea and this more old fashioned-’feminine’ version I think they were trying to turn her into for this series. It’s weird. It’s weird that this group of friends have nothing to say about these very abrupt changes in her behavior. Then again, it took them a while to notice the abrupt changes in Yugi.

Anyway, Joey isn’t done getting harassed by everyone he knows yet.

We have Marik trapped in a blimp in the sky and the entire Kaiba security force, why are we dueling him anymore? I mean I know why, we are contractually obligated to show lots of card content in this show to sell cards, but at this point I feel like maybe they should drive the blimp over international waters and resort to maritime law. Give Kaiba a gun.

Actually don’t do that, it would be bad. Don’t give Kaiba a gun. Give it to Duke or something, he seems stable enough. He seems like he’d be able to shoot somebody but not everybody, if you know what I mean.

And because it’s the Mai arc, we gotta have Mai duel next. There’s only 3 people left to go against: Ishizu, Kaiba, and Marik. I think. There’s so many people on this show. Tea isn’t playing, right? I mean I really do feel like like I’ve forgotten someone--maybe Shadi? Miho? So many people are on this blimp.

Whatever, I’ll just roll with it, if I forgot someone I’m sure they’ll show up at some point.

Mai sure is that girlfriend.

Anyway, lets see what Marik’s up to. Ah, he really is visiting his older brother after all.

That’s right--Marik has to play twice. I mean obvi the first Marik was Odion, but still, it just feels like it’s Marik playing twice.

Also can we please talk about Marik’s cargo pants obsession for a little bit? This arch villain is in CARGO PANTS. Like, they have puffy pockets. He figured out that the hoodie was a bad look, but then he was like “I’ll just cover my tum-tum, and then put on my khaki cargo pants with a sensible belt.”

It just sort of insinuates that Marik only owns cultist robes and cargo pants. Just those two things. Imagine if every pant in your closet was cargo pants. Just imagine with me. You’d go mad, too. Imagine you packed for a trip, a nice vacay on a blimp, and then you opened your luggage and you were like “oops! all cargo pants!” you’d fly home.

Marik looks like he’s going to Casual Khaki’s Friday at the office from about the stomach down, and then stomach up up he’s ready to join piccolo and fuse brains or whatever the hell goes on in Dragonball Z.

And Yugi and his friends are late to Mai’s duel because they are teenagers and also of course they would. This whole season was introduced with Yugi being chronically late to stuff.

The bathroom joke in this episode is canon, PS. I skipped a Season Zero episode where Tristan went to the loo and so Yugi held his spot in line and it took like 30 minutes before Tristan finally got back. Tristan’s epic poops have apparently been Yugioh canon since the very beginning.

I’m learning so much about the lore.

Now that Marik no longer has to hide who he is, he has decided that he’ll just use the Shadow Realm willy-nilly now. Although Marik did this without playing any cards at all, it doesn’t seem to register to Seto Kaiba that this is not a hologram. Maybe Kaiba sneezed when Marik summoned it and just assumed he missed a card play or something.

So now, for our gimmick!

Every time we fight in the Shadow Realm it feels like the rules are a little bit different, and Marik decided to make this duel a memory fight.

The Shadow Realm seems to eat on your greatest insecurities, and for Mai it’s feeling all alone. Not sure how that works once the duel is over--her friends will still be there, so like...she can just get a heads up on the one day they went camping that one time and then boom, friendship rekindled, I think. But for now, this is very scary for everyone involved.

But I mean at least she isn’t a playing card, or being thrown into a graveyard by being played as a card, or being devoured by gloopy blobs, or rapidly dying because of the exposure to the shadow zone. As far as Shadow Realms go this one seems kind of tame.

But I guess we shall see if somehow losing Tea will effect her story in any way.

Depends on which Tea, in my opinion, but if we’re going for the normal boring one that only cries wellllllll I wouldn’t notice if she were gone, just saying. Now, if it’s the fun Tea that bites people and yanks their ears off their face, well being forced to lose my memories of her is what the writers do to me basically every episode of this show. Let Tea bite more people in the arm. Let that girl rage.

But all that will be for another recap where we can all watch Mai get Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-ed as if a memory wipe hasn’t happened at least once to every single person on this show with the exception of Mokuba. And Mokuba was a paper card for like I want to say about 10 episodes, so...

Anyways, if you just got here I do have these in chrono order from s1 ep1, here is a link.

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eastergrass · 6 years ago

Text

Fowl

I drove up to a familiar scene. Wooden chairs in the yard, flowers, American flags and silver cloudcover. My cousin is in one of these chairs, poking at a dying laptop. An orange extension cord snaked into the house, connecting back to the charger dangling over her fleshy, flattened thigh.

The house is three stories, not including the basement. The family uses official titles for different branches: the addition, the breezeway, the master bedroom, the patio, the entertainment room. The master bedroom. I’m in the guest room, or the basement, depending on who you ask. It’s the one name they don’t agree on.

My uncle takes pride in the house because he built it himself. When I was younger I imagined him doing everything alone from the ground up. Pouring concrete. Planting the hidden machinery of wires and pipes. Up on the roof, sweating on sunny days, hammering shingles.

It took me time to realize he needed help. He had hired people, and mostly just oversaw the project. It took time to realize he had more money, time, and energy than my father.

“Somebody try to shoot you?” My cousin points to the windshield.

“Of course.”

“Nobody’s home,” she sighs. “And there’s really nothing to do about it.” The clouds move, and the sun finds us for a moment.

II.

The sun was out all day after that. We’re drinking High Life on the porch. My cousin’s wearing a two-piece and I wondered what I’d look like in it. She isn’t thin but she’s healthy and dark. She has thick hips and round arms. She inhabits her body in a way that I, something like a grown woman, envy. She’s the youngest.

“Look,” she says, pointing to the yard. She’s always seeing things I don’t.

“What?”

“A turkey. A hen. Don’t you see it?”

“No, I don’t.” She leans over the railing, looking out over the grass.

“Oh. It’s gone.”

I swallow some beer and take off my dark glasses. I’ve been feeling a certain way.

III.

My aunt and I have the same name, and she left after her fourth son was born. Before this, the joke was that I’d grow up to be like her. Nobody talks about her much anymore, but the boys have when we’re alone. They use the past tense like she’s dead, but we all think she’s in Cincinnati.

My aunt used to write stories and she probably still does. There are copies and notes and drafts on a drive in the office. I read one the other night.

Two foragers are out picking mushrooms. One of them has a growth he’s been ignoring. The other is worried about ticks. They’re stopping at every rotten stump and talking about their lives. The one with the tumor isn’t talking about his medical worries. The one with the ticks isn’t mentioning the crawling in his socks, the tickle in his armpits. They crush through the leaves, snap twigs. They find one that isn’t in the book. It’s a false morel, said the man with cancer. The one with lyme disease shakes his head no: It looks like an ear, he tells his friend. It might be poison, it might be nothing. Unsure why, they pick it and carry on. But it does look like an ear, they both think. Hair even grows out the lobes. Within an hour they have found another ear, lips, a nose. Within another hour they’ve scavenged a whole head.

They divide it down the middle and eat it in a clearing lit by the setting sun, and walk home cured.

Just like her.

IV.

I got sick by June even though it was warming up. I was the one who was cold after all. In my sweatshirt laying on a deck chair I squinted at the sun through my tinted glasses. My cousin was with me, and she wore a gold cross that lay flat against her skin. She looked through a bright flyer from the grocer. I hadn’t gone to her graduation ceremony and she hadn’t gone to mine.

Her brothers and her father were all out working, driving, sitting in trucks in parking lots. She’s asking me about college.

“Do you still have friends? Like, did you lose them?”

“What do you mean?”

She was sitting cross-legged on the porch. Her dark hair was twisted up in a thick fist on top of her skull. The paper was flitting in the wind. Out in the yard, birds were picking at the grass and the mud. But they were quiet.

“I don’t know. Did you really learn anything? People say you don’t need to learn the things you do. I know a lot of people don’t think it’s worth it. I don’t see what’s wrong with learning something you can’t use.”

“You’re right.”

“But what did you learn? Do you remember it? You’d have to.”

“I guess.” I started to wonder if I did learn anything. I thought about a course on Disney. I thought about Cather, Conrad, Dante. I remembered watching Fellini instead of reading The Satyricon. Something about algebra. “Yeah, I read a lot. I know things, now.”

“Oh.”

“I took things in, you know? Honestly, I didn’t do all of the work. Nobody does. But I know some things that I liked. I might have been … a different person. That is, if I didn’t go. I wouldn’t know what I know now. Not that I can do anything with it.”

I thought of a friend I had who had fallen in the snow two years ago. She was alone crossing campus, and it was midday. A lot of people were around, but she was alone, and she fell. Someone told me she bled a little into the snow, out of her ear. Was I losing friends?

“So, you probably aren’t interested,” she began. “But do you want to go to a party? It’s a bonfire. People your age will be there.”

“How big is the fire?”

“What?”

“How tall? How wide?”

“Well, we do it in a field. So, it goes up high, and as wide as we want.”

Okay. What time?”

“Oh, later. Like Friday.”

It is Sunday. My cousin always plans ahead.

I had started coughing. Neon dust is coating the cars, the deck chairs, every unmoving thing. Kids in the neighborhood drew on the car windows. A cock. A frown, a smile. Wash me. Pollen blew in through the window over the sink and coated the dirty dishes. I coughed up something a little less bright.

I was up late, reading one of her stories.

The husband of an accused witch – an owner of two cows and a father of seven – provides the court with evidence against her, in exchange for another cow. He says she sat on his chest in the nude throughout the night, her face cratered and rotting. There was a peacock. It scratched and screeched at his cows. It clawed him and the children. The Devil is in the woods, he says. He cries on the stand while his wife sits in silence.

I minimized the draft and went upstairs. I turned on the light and turned it off and took a beer out of the fridge. Do ghosts lived in new houses? Do they inhabit bodies and not homes, and follow you wherever you went? Do you have to die to haunt someplace?

VI.

Before I moved in for the summer, their dog choked in the yard. She was a golden retriever with a patrician attitude and a name I forget. The dog loved bones and rawhide and marrow. She always slept with my uncle. He would grill steaks and give her half. One afternoon toward the end of winter, she tried to swallow a bone. (They’ve told me this story over and over.) They came home and found her sprawled in the puddles, eyes at the sky. She’s buried in the woods.

I walked into the yard and the security light flicked on. There are still bones. They are big and hollow and tall grass has started to grow into and around them. My uncle doesn’t pick them up and when he mows the lawn he rides around them. I grabbed one and threw it beyond the light. I drank the last of my beer and placed it in the pale nest of grass where the bone was. All across the yard I picked dogbones out of the grass, tossing them into the woods, counting. There were fourteen I could find, and one chewed up tennis ball.

I picked up the ball and threw it. The light went off. I waved my arms, but it didn’t notice me. I jumped, and it ignored me. I stood in the dark. I heard a woman cough in the woods. I took a step forward and waited. This is what hunters must feel when an animal freezes up. They can hear a stillness. There is a restrained movement. I sneezed.

Nothing.

I went back inside, and the light turned on as I went up the porch. As I took another beer from the fridge and my uncle came down the stairs in his boxers.

“What the hell were you doing out there?”

“Fresh air.”

VII.

On Thursday afternoon, I went to finish the story about the witch. I looked for the flashdrive, and I couldn’t find it. I thought I had left it on the ping pong table in my room, but it wasn’t there anymore. I asked my cousin about it but she just shrugged. Again, she was cutting coupons she’d never use.

“Look at these deals.”

A stack on the glass table next to her shivered in the wind. She was wearing a thick flannel over her two-piece and a Red Sox hat.

“Watch out.”

She turned just as a gust picked up her clippings and blew them out across the lawn; she chased them to the railing. The sun was shining off her glasses and she blocked the light with her forearm.

“Where did the bones go?” she wondered, frowning.

I told her about the noise I heard the other night in the trees. Without looking back at me, she said it was just the turkeys.

“They sleep in the treetops, you know.”

VIII.

On Friday night we drove out to the party and I told her I wouldn’t drink too much. I could drive us home, I said. The fire was huge. There were cars parked around it with their doors open, bugs drifting in and out. Kids were laughing the dark. The car almost bottomed out as we climbed the hill. She had opened a beer and we sat there, watching everyone through the window.

“It’s been nice having you around.”

“Thanks. I haven’t done much since I got here. But it’s been cool.”

“I know.”

“When was the last time you talked to your mom?” This question had been stuck in my mind. It almost came out in other conversations, while we baked french fries, or talked about the weather.

“I’m not sure. It’s funny.”

“Is it?”

“I guess like, four years. Maybe more.”

“Is she okay, you think?”

“Why would I care?”

“Aren’t you interested?

“No,” she said. “Nope.”

“What if she were dead?”

The windows were rolled down and she reached out, playing with the mirror. “I wouldn’t care. I mean, I don’t think I would.”

“Do you think she’d haunt you?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why?”

“Ghosts don’t haunt people. They haunt houses or castles. Or forests and stuff. Or lighthouses. Not bodies. Bodies are already ghosts. Or spirits. Like a caterpillar, you know?”

“Do ghosts haunt guest rooms?”

“They haunt basements.”

IX.

She introduced me to some of her friends. A lot of them were older than her. One of them knew a guy from my school, and asked if I knew him.

“Eric? He’s super tall.”

The music got louder, the voices got bolder. I threw my cans into the fire and watched them twist and turn black. The flames were twenty, maybe thirty feet tall. I sat closer to the fire than anyone else and turned back from the heat.

I looked for things in the flames but didn’t see anything. I hoped to see faces, or numbers and letters. There wasn’t anything, though.

One of my cousin’s friends came over and sat next to me in the grass. She had thick eyebrows and short hair, I could see the makeup painting her cheeks in the firelight. She looked nice. We didn’t talk. I breathed in smoke. Over our heads, ashes floated off into the sky. When I looked around for the moon I didn’t find it.

Having some trouble, I walked into the woods to pee. With a hand against a thick tree, I squatted. On the way down my knees cracked. Nothing came out. I heard my cousin laugh and yell out I’m dead.

Finally, it came. When I was done I took a crumpled tissue from my pocket. My pants around my ankles, I heard a cough in the woods. I fell back, ass in the leaves. In my piss. This time I yelled but nobody heard me. The cough came again. A woman coughing, I knew. I pulled up my pants, and rolled over onto my side.

I watched as the thin legs of a hen stalked through the black leaves. Bird feet, something I’ve never felt. Over me, the turkey was gliding toward the field. A cough.

On my back, I looked up as she bent over me, a hood of bright hair dangling in the dark. A bare foot on either side of my head. She looked away, tilted up in the direction of the fire and coughed once more. Her nails are pale green. She wears bracelets that shake and smells like good laundry detergent. I know her from somewhere, I thought.

“You’re okay,” she told me. “It’s fine, it’s fine.”

And I thought I was cured.

#myfiction #fiction #fowl #turkey #mushrooms #witchcraft #family #writers on tumblr #short fiction

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notfittoprint-blog1 · 7 years ago

Text

Fowl

Summer started cold. Driving up north for the season in mid-May, a pebble flew at my windshield. Right in the center: a pock mark. So that’s how it’s going to be.

It took me time to realize he needed help. He had hired people, and mostly just oversaw the project. It took time to realize he had more money, time, and energy than my father.

“Somebody try to shoot you?” My cousin points to the windshield.

“Of course.”

“Nobody’s home,” she sighs. “And there’s really nothing to do about it.” The clouds move, and the sun finds us for a moment.

II.

“Look,” she says, pointing to the yard. She’s always seeing things I don’t.

“What?”

“A turkey. A hen. Don’t you see it?”

“No, I don’t.” She leans over the railing, looking out over the grass.

“Oh. It’s gone.”

I swallow some beer and take off my dark glasses. I’ve been feeling a certain way.

III.

My aunt used to write stories and she probably still does. There are copies and notes and drafts on a drive in the office. I read one the other night.

They divide it down the middle and eat it in a clearing lit by the setting sun, and walk home cured.

Just like her.

IV.

Her brothers and her father were all out working, driving, sitting in trucks in parking lots. She’s asking me about college.

“Do you still have friends? Like, did you lose them?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re right.”

“But what did you learn? Do you remember it? You’d have to.”

“Oh.”

“I took things in, you know? Honestly, I didn’t do all of the work. Nobody does. But I know some things that I liked. I might have been . . . a different person. That is, if I didn’t go. I wouldn’t know what I know now. Not that I can do anything with it.”

“So, you probably aren’t interested,” she began. “But do you want to go to a party? It’s a bonfire. People your age will be there.”

“How big is the fire?”

“What?”

“How tall? How wide?”

“Well, we do it in a field. So, it goes up high, and as wide as we want.”

Okay. What time?”

“Oh, later. Like Friday.”

It is Sunday. My cousin always plans ahead.

I was up late, reading one of her stories.

VI.

Nothing.

I went back inside, and the light turned on as I went up the porch. As I took another beer from the fridge and my uncle came down the stairs in his boxers.

“What the hell were you doing out there?”

“Fresh air.”

VII.

“Look at these deals.”

A stack on the glass table next to her shivered in the wind. She was wearing a thick flannel over her two-piece and a Red Sox hat.

“Watch out.”

She turned just as a gust picked up her clippings and blew them out across the lawn; she chased them to the railing. The sun was shining off her glasses and she blocked the light with her forearm.

“Where did the bones go?” she wondered, frowning.

I told her about the noise I heard the other night in the trees. Without looking back at me, she said it was just the turkeys.

“They sleep in the treetops, you know.”

VIII.

“It’s been nice having you around.”

“Thanks. I haven’t done much since I got here. But it’s been cool.”

“I know.”

“When was the last time you talked to your mom?” This question had been stuck in my mind. It almost came out in other conversations, while we baked french fries, or talked about the weather.

“I’m not sure. It’s funny.”

“Is it?”

“I guess like, four years. Maybe more.”

“Is she okay, you think?”

“Why would I care?”

“Aren’t you interested?

“No,” she said. “Nope.”

“What if she were dead?”

The windows were rolled down and she reached out, playing with the mirror. “I wouldn’t care. I mean, I don’t think I would.”

“Do you think she’d haunt you?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why?”

“Ghosts don’t haunt people. They haunt houses or castles. Or forests and stuff. Or lighthouses. Not bodies. Bodies are already ghosts. Or spirits. Like a caterpillar, you know?”

“Do ghosts haunt guest rooms?”

“They haunt basements.”

IX.

She introduced me to some of her friends. A lot of them were older than her. One of them knew a guy from my school, and asked if I knew him.

“Eric? He’s super tall.”

I looked for things in the flames but didn’t see anything. I hoped to see faces, or numbers and letters. There wasn’t anything, though.

Having some trouble, I walked into the woods to pee. With a hand against a thick tree, I squatted. On the way down my knees cracked. Nothing came out. I heard my cousin laugh and yell out I’m dead.

I watched as the thin legs of a hen stalked through the black leaves. Bird feet, something I’ve never felt. Over me, the turkey was gliding toward the field. A cough.

“You’re okay,” she told me. “It’s fine, it’s fine.”

And I thought I was cured.

#writers on tumblr #short fiction #short story #witchcraft #writing #workshop

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drferox · 8 years ago

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20 Questions with Dr Ferox #10

200 questions in these bundled posts! Unfortunately nothing extra special for you, just more answers.

@loveprose said: hey doc! ive been following you for a while and i absolutely love your blog, your humor, and your intelligence! i just wanted to say that im very thankful to have learned so much from your blog, and im glad that your patients benefit from having you as their doctor! youre amazing :D QT: my headcanon for you is that you absolutely love dino nuggets, and you like to eat them as if youre a predatory dinosaur

I did not actually know that dino nuggets were a thing. So I researched.

And I have decided I need to become more familiar with them. Rawr.

Anonymous said: Do you have a list of pets you wish weren't inbred to a point where they are just a walking mess? Or, I guess my question is what are your thoughts on those types of pets, like pugs for example(pugs are the only ones I can think of at the moment)? I am perfectly fine if you don't want to answer this at all. I'm certain there are better questions to answer in your inbox.

Kind of... all of them.

The difficulty with this question is that the list doesn’t end, and sort of can’t so long as we cling to an idea of ‘purebred’ being better. Purebreds are predictable, sure, but not inherently superior.

There are inbreeding problems not just in domestic pets, but other domestic species too. Fresian and Angus cattle are heading that way too

@glassslippers-and-tinywhiskers said: Hi! So I might be getting a Papillon soon!! She's a retired show dog and seems perfect except that she needs to have a few of her top front teeth removed. She's only 3 and her breeder takes very good care of her dogs, brushing their teeth regularly. Having those few teeth out doesn't make me want her less but it does make me concerned for the future of the rest of her teeth. I guess my question is why many small dogs are so prone to teeth issues even when they're being cared for?

Some dogs appear to have a genetic predisposition to dental disease, and this isn’t just limited to small dogs (*cough* greyhounds *cough*). Some teeth are easier to clean than others within an individual dog too, and the incisors and molars tend to be the most difficult. Brushing reduce their risk factors, but can’t even eliminate them.

@knikna said: Hi Dr Ferox! Love your blog, learning lots from it :) I've heard that if chihuahuas lose too many teeth, their jaw can start to disintegrate. Have you heard this/is there any truth to this? I don't really trust google haha

If they lose too many teeth from the front of their lower jaw then the bone can recede and atrophy, but if you leave too many infected teeth in there for too long then you can get oteomyelitis, and that will ‘disintegrate’ the jaw and leave it prone to spontaneous fractures.

@ warpedellipsis said: I forget if it was you, but someone said horses can't heal broken legs because they can't not put weight on the leg. Is there such a thing as a three legged horse? Or no, for the same reason--they need all four legs to put weight on?

The bones can certainly heal, but keeping the horse alive and free of laminitis is a significant challenge in the post operative period and often fails. That said, there are some 3-legged equines out there in the world, but they tend to be on the smaller side and not every equine has a suitable temperament for surviving as a 3 legged creature.

(Image source)

3D printing might make this more common in the future.

Anonymous said: Is it possible for cats to have pollen allergies because one of our cats is kind of Sneezy on high pollen count days but like he has no other symptoms of a respiratory infection and it's not constant it's just more than usual you'd expect from a cat

It’s entirely possible, and they can be allergic to more than one kind of pollen too.

Another Anonymous said: (1/2) honestly yeah youre a vet but if youre the owner; youre going to know very intimately your animal and their behavior; if something they do changes it never hurts to check! one of my cats would cough for like a second, but it happened sooo intermittently (maybe once every.....4 months) that i didnt know whether or not if it was anything,`but after a year. turns out after an xray his lungs were super inflamed and hes an asthmatic! and since i now knew i hadnt been overreacting, when 2/2 i rescued my second cat off the streets i noticed him sneezing, took him in MUCH quicker, and hes an asthmatic as well (i think im the unluckiest person in the world lol). at one point w/ that same cat i woke up and he was wheezing a little and hiding under my bed (if your normally social cat starts hiding under things theres probably something wrong) ran him into my vet straight away and he was in the throes a terrible life threatening asthma attack. it really never hurts to check!

This highlights the difficulty in giving advice over the internet. I have no way of knowing what’s normal for that animal and whether a description is accurate. I always tell people if they’re worried enough to seek advice they’re worried enough to contact a vet.

Anonymous said: So I have two questions. 1. What are hot spots? And 2. What is your opinion on golden retrievers? Like what should I look out for?

Hot Spots are a severe, moist skin infection that rapidly spreads, associated with moisture being trapped against the skin and allergies.

I just so happen to have written about Golden Retrievers here.

Anonymous said: A previous question asked about a lapse of time between jobs. Do employers / Vets that are hiring consider schooling during that time without working a bad thing (until internships)? I've also had two shoulder surgeries that aren't fully healed after 2 years, they're still healing.... Would they frown highly on that? They're functional and all, just some days they hurt more and cause migraines. Trying to look ahead of the game.

If you’re schooling between jobs you’re still doing something, same applies to recovering from an injury or parental leave. It’s large periods of apparently nothing that tend to raise questions.

I don’t think anyone can ask you what’s happened to your shoulders, just whether they would prevent you from doing the job you’re applying for.

Anonymous asked: I was wondering if you could tell me about the availability of work for vet nurses/techs where you live? Where I am currently, despite the fact that the education for vet nurses is very in-depth and extensive, the opportunity for a sustainable job is not exactly available. Salaries are so low that most nurses are forced to change occupation after just 5-7 years of working in practice. I'm about to graduate from my final (4th) year of university and am looking for better career options abroad!

There is an over-supply of training vet nurses because various educational institutions opened up courses because they could, accepted students, then required students to have X hours work in a clinic per week for their course, but didn’t provide these positions for them.

So there are lots of cheap, inexperienced vet nurses and we also suffer from the same issue of lack of career progression, so nurses 5-10 years out start looking elsewhere for a better wage.

@ dixiethumbelina asked: Hi! I was wondering if its possible to tell if a female cat is desexed. We inherited a cat with our farm and were told by a neighbour that shes the old owner's ex wife's, and was desexed and 'chipped. If she is, her chip won't scan with our scanners, and she has no tattoo, nicked ear, etc to indicate that she's desexed. We also found a approx 6 wk old kitten with her prior to moving her into the house. Our vet said not to worry about it now as she's too old to breed but I'm curious! :)

There might be an abdominal scar in the ventral abdomen, or possibly in the flank depending on how she was speyed. Unfortunately without a tattoo, nick or microchip it’s very hard to tell. Ultrasound might detect the uterus and ovaries if they’re there, but just because you can’t find them doesn’t mean you didn’t miss them. Cats don’t really go through menopause like we do, they can still get pregnant at an advanced age.

Anonymous said: I volunteer at a vet clinic, and often observe the surgeries that the vet performs to get a better idea of what I'm going to be dealing with as a future vet myself. We recently had a young Corgi come in for a neuter, but after the surgery, the vet wanted to remove the dew claws while he was still out because she said that they tend to get caught on carpet. Is that reason enough to remove a puppy's dew claws?

Front dew claws do not tend to ‘get caught on the carpet’ they usually don’t touch the ground.

Hind dewclaws are more of an issue if they’re attached only by skin and no bone. They flop all over the place and are prone to injury, the dog doesn’t use them, and owners often forget to keep them trimmed to prevent ingrown, painful nails. Desexing is a convenient time to remove them, with pain relief.

@ thumpertrevelyan asked: What do you think of Catios (cat patios)? Are they good enrichment for a strictly indoor cat? Or would it up their risks since the could still be bit by fleas and ticks? Or?

I’m not familiar with that specific brand, but outdoor cat enclosures are great enrichment. Yes they can still get parasites, but their odds of injury, theft and poisoning are still greatly reduced.

@horsejunkie asked: Hi there! My family currently has 3 cats and we have always fed them free-range (food available all the time) Our 17 yr old is diabetic and receives insulin 2x per day. Our almost 8 yr old ragdoll is overweight, but otherwise healthy. My mom argues that the diabetic cat needs access to food all the time, but I want to limit the ragdoll's food intake to help him lose weight. Is it true that diabetic cats need constant food access? also, where do you keep pickles the stegosaurus?

Not all diabetic cats need constant food, though it helps prevent hypoglycaemia, especially if they like to graze. If your cat’s glucose is currently well controlled, don’t mess with it.

You could consider a microchip feeder for your cats.

Anonymous said: What do you think of people that makes their pets fat because they look cuter? I am a second year vet student

I would tell them that their pet is going to be just as cute at a healthy weight and is going to have less issues with arthritis, pancreatitis and brachycephalic airway syndrome (if relevant) at a leaner weight. I also remind people that being a big heavier than perfect can be fine, but if they’re deliberately feeding their pet to batter and fatter for their own amusement then that’s not fair.

Anonymous said: I saw that last submission and now I'm interested in doggy-vitiligo. My pupper is a schnauzer(?) yorkie(?) mystery-mix. He's nearly 10 years old now but we got him when he was a baby, just old enough to have left his mom. He was dark-haired then with a dark nose but he immediately began losing pigmentation, including on his nose. By the time he was 5 he looked nothing like he had at 1 and lost all the schnauzer-style patterning. Thoughts?

It might be normal. Lots of breeds have coat colours that change in the first few years of life. If it’s not associated with any skin pathology then it’s probably no big deal.

Anonymous said: (I'm sorry if I break any ask rules, I'm new) I'm in my junior year of high school and I really want to be a vet. I'm taking vet science my senior year and I'm excited but my grades in math are bad. I'm retaking geometry currently. My counselor advises against a 4th year but that means not taking Algebra 2. I dont want to but is it going to look bad on my transcripts? Should I take it anyway? QT: Do you believe in anything supernatural?

You need to talk to someone at your intended tertiary institution, because I honestly don’t know what they’re looking for. It’s a long time since I was applying for vet school.

I have a bunch of superstitions but I don’t think I really believe in anything supernatural.

@mari5701 asked: Hi I saw the vaccine post and was wondering about vet external labs. Are they private labs or part of the veterinary practice? You may not know the answer to this question but: do the lab technicians need to go through vet school? Thanks so much! I came for the humor and stayed for all the interesting stories.

The external laboratories are private companies that are not part of the veterinary practice. They may be associated with human medical labs, or vet only. Some of their employees are vets, but I’m sure not all of them are.

Anonymous said: I'd like to thank you for changing my opinions on euthanasia. I used to be insistent on euthanasia only being used after having tried everything, but this blog, and becoming a fish keeper, have helped me realize that euthanasia is overly demonized and is sometimes a better option than continuing to attempt to treat, sometimes

It’s normal human behavior to demonize death. We tend to shut it away, to try to pretend it’s not there for as long as possible, but we need to talk about it sometimes to minimize suffering.

Anonymous said: Do you have any hobbies you like to do to chill out after work? Or other skills you just happen to have and like using, like drawing or writing?

Nah, I’d been going around calling myself an Author for no reason at all.

#dr ferox #20 questions

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ahouseoflies · 8 years ago

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The Best Films of 2016, Part V

Here is Part I. Here is Part II. Here is Part III. Here is Part IV. And this is finally the end. I wrote about some of these films already in quarterly reports, and I copied-and-pasted the same blurb in this space. GREAT MOVIES 23. Oasis: Supersonic (Mat Whitecross) It's a good sign if any music documentary makes you go, "Wait, should [subject of this documentary] be my favorite band? Have I been completely wrong this whole time?" For purely musical reasons, one being the band playing "All Around the World" perfectly after being together for three weeks, Supersonic is a must-see. Mat Whitecross's control over the pacing is maybe the star here: The film wisely speeds through Oasis's (admittedly short) rise and elides the fade out of relevance altogether. If most bands fall in the same way, if Oasis had a uniquely tumultuous period of fame and fortune, let that be the main thrust of the narrative. There are no rules here. It helps that, besides recording almost everything that happened to them, Liam and Noel Gallagher have the self-awareness, honesty, and insight into their own abilities and reputations that I wish every rock star had. Supersonic is, after all, a story about brothers in a family way more than it is about brothers in a band. 22. Indignation (James Schamus) Indignation, which is surprisingly James Schamus's feature debut, seems theatrical. In the sense that every single scene matters, especially the ten-minute show-stopper between Logan Lerman and Tracy Letts, in the overlit design that makes everything look like the half-remembered dream that it is. But also in the sense that the events are only scratching the surface of what they're supposed to represent. It has proper resolution, but you also get the sense that it could go on and on, circling its own tail of sexual repression and generation gap and Judaism as religion and culture. It's a pensive, personal monument of an artist who is only nominally involved with the film. 21. Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (Jonathan Demme) During the final leg of the final song of the final show of his two-year tour, Justin Timberlake gets overwhelmed. He's leading the crowd in a clap during the breakdown of "Mirrors," and he stops the overhead motion for two beats to cover his mouth. He looks as if he's appreciative and triumphant enough to cry. It's the type of honest moment that Demme specializes in capturing--something too natural to fake. Unless Timberlake is faking. Unless he's so studied in performance that even that breakdown is part of the act. What we're witnessing is either the most genuine performer possible or the most calculating, but if he's hitting the marks so exactly...does it matter? Even when he's trying to defer, ("Do you want something to drink? Eat?") Timberlake is front and center, and the spotlight suits him. He's happy to be the goof, the guide, the leader, but most of all, the professional. I don't know how you'd take this movie if you weren't already a fan of his, but I don't think anyone can deny how much he wants you to enjoy yourself.

20. Aquarius (Kleber Mendonca Filho) Aquarius is a shaggy dog, and it would be easy to quibble about the prologue or a scene here or there that could be trimmed. But as characters do with the film's irascible protagonist, you have to give in to its routine in order to appreciate it. The cumulative effect is definitely worth it. Aquarius isn't in the business of declaring Clara's emotions, but those emotions are always clear, either from Sonia Braga's performance or from the consistency of writing. Even when Clara appears selfish--which is often--Filho makes you grapple with her rather than softening her. At the same time, Braga, who is in almost every scene, walks a fine line that keeps the character from being crusty. In the character's breakfast nook, there hangs an original, folded, oversized poster of Barry Lyndon. Who knows where it came from or who tracked it down. Besides automatically making me like the character, the poster reveals how much thought and effort went into crafting the space around Clara, the fully-realized world that she refuses to leave without a fight. So much of the character is built from unspoken details that build and build, and that importance of environment is exactly what the whole thing's about. 19. Captain Fantastic (Matt Ross) Captain Fantastic splits the difference between a specific portrait of a family and a more allegorical take on parenting without sacrificing either of the two approaches. For the first forty-five minutes or so, we're just getting acclimated to the family's ecosystem, and it's so fascinating that I would have been happy if that were the whole movie. But plot does intrude, and some of the expected things happen. (I'm fine without any more scenes of someone faking a heart attack so that his confederates can steal.) That zanier stuff is always grounded by each character's individual arc though, and the movie is in love with so many of the lessons and books and philosophies that the patriarch teaches. If someone were to update those Syd Field books on classical screenwriting structure, I might include this script, which has not only perfect inciting incident and act breaks but also a determined, driving resolution. There's a version of this movie that ends on the flush at the airport (and a version that combines one or two of the child characters), but the one we have should put writer/director Matt Ross on the map. 18. Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson) This documentary is a bit demure at first about the type of statement it's making. While capturing the landscape shot that frames the opening credits, Kirsten Johnson sneezes, making her camera shake. It's cute, but it seemed like the most crude description of this piece: one of a series of outtakes. A celebration of humanity is what it really was. Purely visual, Cameraperson seduces the viewer with a full portrait of one of those terms that is difficult to define but that you know when you see: a citizen of the world. Although we barely hear her or see her face, we get a sum of Johnson's sacrifice and empathy through the disparate parts of what she has filmed. I gravitated more toward the elliptical scenes--a montage of execution sites didn't work for me at all--but I was grateful to see such a unique type of memoir. 17. Arrival (Denis Villeneuve) The first hour is almost perfect: A gut-wrenching prologue gives way to the arrival of the UFOs, which is eerily patterned after the confusing experience of piecing together 9/11 on the day of. After Adams and Renner meet in a vintage Spielberg scene, since Villeneuve is inspired by people you've never heard of and people everyone has heard of, there's a lot of empathetic, you-are-there walking down hallways. The dividing line seems to be a montage narrated by #RennerSeason that is as hackneyed as it is necessary. At a certain point, this has to be a movie, not just a mood piece. Forest Whitaker, doing some kind of Baltimore pirate accent, and Michael Stuhlbarg, fondling his phone clip, are almost a literal reminder of that as the impatient military presence. That little bit of cartoon doesn't subtract from the emotional punch that the film packs in its bookends though. Apparently, now that I'm a father, I'm going to be emotional mush for anything involving a child from now on. If I'm lucky, I'll keep having an artist as authentic as Villeneuve conducting those feels. 16. The Witch (Robert Eggers) An assured debut from writer/director Robert Eggers, The Witch is an absorbing creepfest that also serves as a bit of a Rorsach Test for its viewers. Is it about the dangers of isolationism? That's there. Is it a warning about denying the expression of sexuality? That's there too. But what makes the engine run, besides the quiet claustrophobia of the setting (a handful of locations, closed in even more by the 1.66:1 frame), is commitment. There's another version of this movie that isn't as grave, that gives the audience an opportunity to relieve the tension. But the film works because it takes place in a world that very much believes in witchcraft, and none of the actors are winking. The viewer doesn't have a chance to opt out. This is a very scary film, and it's because Eggers grounded it in every detail of the period that he could.

15. Hail, Caesar! (Joel and Ethan Coen) These two capitalist Jews are so good that they make you want to be a Communist Christian. Hail, Caesar! is less emotionally rich than some of the other post-No Country work, but it's still the brothers working in top form, with sincerity, affection, and invention. Being this committed means that the filmmakers are also committed to the bad ideas: the inconsistent narrator, half of the characters. The whole doesn't add up to Inside Llewyn Davis or Fargo, but there are individual scenes here that are better constructed and funnier than anything in those masterpieces. Capitol Pictures, the name of Christ figure Eddie Mannix's studio, recalls Das Kapital, the Karl Marx book, and these crossing streams would be too cute if Capitol Pictures weren't already the studio Barton Fink worked for twenty-six years ago. They've always been this good. 14. Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke) I didn't know anything about this enigmatic moodpiece when I turned it on, and I'm glad I didn't. When the film shifts after the opening credits (which show up at a record forty-five minutes in), I was surprised, and when it shifts again for the final half-hour, I was really ready to embrace the way each piece echoed the previous one thematically. I'm still trying to work out some of the elements--the gun symbolism, for example--but I'm starting to appreciate how the episodic nature of Jia's films can actually make them more cohesive, not less. Mountains May Depart gets literally wider as it goes to show the growing isolation of modern life, and it's partly a treatise on the complications of personal wealth in 21st century China. But really it's about the tormenting complexity of communication in all of its forms. 13. American Honey (Andrea Arnold) This is another one that I’m still digesting, but American Honey is a good example of the difference between story and plot. There's a lot of the former even without much of the latter. It's sprawling, with an adagio tempo that recalls the shifts of the road, and it's unclear how much of the film was written to begin with--I don't know how someone could write something that feels so lived in and spontaneous. It's of-a-piece with Andrea Arnold's other work, (We get a face-to-face intrusion from a bear this time instead of Fish Tank's wild horse.) but it's also much more free-form. I'm not even sure how successful American Honey is in its own goals--I kind of wish things didn't boil down to "jealous boyfriend" tropes--but it accrues so many correct choices along the way that I don't care. Witness, for example, the realistic, complex way people interact with music. When the magazine crew blares trap music in their van, it's aspirational and ritualized. They pump themselves up for the grind by listening to the same songs over and over. (And, presumably because of their poverty, they might only have a few songs.) When an upper-class teenager dances to a similar song later, she's literally using it, mimicking the transgression that our crew authentically owns. And Arnold isn't depicting that relationship caustically: It's a fact. The privileged have that "trying-on" fluidity, and the people who embody the themes of the song don't. They aren't even allowed to have that. And yo, how many times have you seen a movie in which people listen to a song more than once in the first place? Finally, full stop, whether he wants to be or not: Shia Labeouf is a Movie Star. 12. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater) Sometimes appreciation of Richard Linklater lies in imagining the horrible movies that other people would have made with his idea or even with his script. In lesser hands, every dumb character blends together here, and as funny as the dialogue is, it amounts to nothing more than misogynistic grabass. I guarantee Hollywood is in no shortage of sports movies about a bunch of teammates who bust one another's chops. Kudos to Linklater then for making such a funny movie (especially Raw Dog and anything at all that the Plummer character says), and it's interesting to see something in 2016 that doesn't sanitize 1980 language. But he has much more on his mind here, specifically rituals, tribalism, and male competition. He seems to be interpreting the question of whether your identity is who you are when no one else is looking or who you are when everyone else is looking. Particularly when Jake's high school friend is introduced--he has become a punk overnight--that question deepens. Is Jake's willingness to hide his letter jacket in order to fit in with the team a small defeat, a hand covering his bright light? Or does that readiness to mold himself to their collective identity confirm who he is? In other words, is that his identity, and is that brand of identity what one needs to be a successful athlete? Even when there's something I don't like about his work--obvious 1980 needle drops here--I later realize that Linklater was right and I was wrong. That period of time was maybe the last opportunity for mainstream culture to be popular culture in general, and the splintering of genre that was about to occur is form matching execution, the exact conflict the characters are encountering.The film feels long, which comes with the territory of something this purposefully wandering. It's that rambling presentation, more than anything else, that makes Everybody Wants Some!! a semi-sequel to Dazed and Confused. But even though the two films end on a similar note of possibility, this one feels less deterministic. In Dazed and Confused, the characters are living in the moment because Mitch knows that "working for the city" is an eventual kiss of death. Pink knows that authority will keep creeping in on him. Though there's a literal countdown to encroaching classes in Everybody Wants Some!!, we find out that might not be so bad. Even class is an inviting possibility and new frontier. 11. Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie) This is the type of movie in which, at a crucial moment, a character's engine stalls, then, after a flash of suspense, turns over. The car isn't dead--that would be a cliche. But it doesn't fire up immediately either. Hell or High Water acknowledges its own genre trappings (and its indebtedness to No Country for Old Men), then trots past them to prove its own points about what gets passed down and what doesn't. Yeah, this film lines up with a lot of my interests; I would have been surprised if I hadn't liked southern bank-robbin' brothers and grizzled Texas Rangers. But the generation gap being analyzed by the filmmakers is more satisfying than any of those superficial interests. The Bridges character is being pushed into retirement, in part because his composition book brand of policework is outmoded. (He stakes out a bank because he reckons it's going to get robbed, and he falls asleep overnight--half out of dedication, half out of old age.) He doesn't recognize the world that has taken shape during his tenure, one that he sees as disrespecting or disregarding masculine authority. For their part, the brothers recognize authority all too well as crooked and arbitrary. The world promised to them, if they were properly masculine and abiding and respectful of their land--if they were properly Texan--has not come to pass. They rebel against the banks foreclosing on them, but the film isn't simple enough to let that be the only angle. The Chris Pine character is trying to bequeath his land to the next generation, even though the gesture offers little hope, even though the kids don't want it, because he doesn't know how else to be. You can't forge your identity with specific values, then dispense with that identity as soon as the values ring hollow. The characters reveal different degrees of fatalism, but all of the degrees seem reasonable in a West that is lawless in a different way than we've seen before. The Ben Foster role is juicier, but Pine's work as Toby is vulnerable and specific here. While eating at a diner, he does this thing in which he cuts a piece of meat, then takes a bite from the fork, then takes a bite from the knife itself. It's a weird but thoughtful character touch, the type of thing he would get more credit for if he weren't so pretty. 10. The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook) Late in the film there's a two-second insert shot of a watch, and the object's contrast of dull texture and shine fills the screen overwhelmingly, even after an entire film of more obviously sumptuous imagery. Even if it had no substance, if it were empty sensuality, The Handmaiden would be an aesthete's dream. But it does have substance, and it's super fun. In some ways it's a high watermark, the film that Park was born to make. As one of those "same events from different perspectives" movies that gets progressively nasty, it could have been tedious, but Park digs more deeply into his bag of advances and zooms as it goes. Many of those films are manipulative, but each of these parts is individually satisfying. And when it is manipulative, all it's doing is reinforcing its thesis: Some things are so beguiling that we want them to consume us. 9. The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos) The descriptor "visionary" gets thrown around a lot--yesterday I watched two trailers that advertised movies by "visionary" directors. But Yorgos Lanthimos actually is a visionary, a creative dreamer who shows you something you've never seen before, and he reminds you of how rare visionaries actually are. This setting is fully fleshed out, but Lanthimos is intriguingly selective about what he's willing to explain. It's tempting to believe that anyone can go, "What if there were a place that forces you to find a romantic partner, and if you don't, you turn into an animal?" But people who aren't visionaries wouldn't also think of the way people would talk in that setting (unaffected, deadpan) or the way people would dress in that setting (utilitarian, gender-conforming). I thought Lanthimos was funny in Dogtooth and Alps, but I wasn't sure if he knew he was funny. It's official: He knows he's funny. Farrell is in almost every scene, and he continues to challenge us to define what a Colin Farrell performance is. This character, though more optimistic and caring, reminded me of his role in True Detective season two: Both men are laconic, always surveying a situation with respect to every experience they've ever had. The world isn't on their shoulders, but they sure feel that way. Movie Star parts are decisive, heroic men, so it's not Colin Farrell's fault that we had him all wrong at first. In his best performances--this one and In Bruges obvi--he plays men who are endearingly helpless. Who could have ever known that when he was cast in S.W.A.T.? I'm still wrestling with this film's ideas, specifically what Lanthimos actually believes and what he's satirizing. (Is common ground as innocuous as "nosebleeds" something people can base a relationship on, as arbitrary as anything else? Or is that supposed to be false and shallow?) I liked the film less once it left the hotel that the first hour centers on. Lea Seydoux's Loner Leader is supposed to have the same glib authority as the Hotel Manager, but that corollary seems too easy for me. Here's the thing though: I want to wrestle with The Lobster. I know there's a lot of meat on the bone. I don't want Lanthimos to stay so far ahead of me.

8. 20th Century Women (Mike Mills) A dude in my row left for a few minutes to go to the bathroom, and when he got back, had he asked, I wouldn't have been able to tell him what he missed. In the traditional sense, not much. The plot of this movie is, like, teenage boy gets some feminist ideas. But, moment-to-moment, there's such bittersweet warmth suffused into each scene. I can't wait until the film--as busy as Mike Mills's others but not as precious--is chopped up into Youtube clips so that I can autoplay "Abbie Dances 1" into "Abbie Dances 2." Mills's screenplay is obsessed with the 1979 moment it's depicting. When a character quotes from a work--or when MIlls blends something in, like Koyaanisqatsi clips--the details of the piece are superimposed onto the screen. "Jimmy Carter- "Crisis of Confidence Speech, 1979," for example. But that focus on the present is balanced by the rich backstories of the characters (There isn't a less-than-great performance in the bunch.) and even dips into the future. From narration, we find out what happens years later, even how characters die. The device adds a tinge of melancholy to a piece that's, on the whole, funny and jaunty. The climax is a bit of a shrug, more invented than earned, but this is played in my key and tempo exactly. 7. Louder Than Bombs (Joachim Trier) Joachim Trier's English language debut retains the delicate restraint and warm guidance of his Norwegian films. Like many of my favorite recent works, Louder Than Bombs toggles between the past and present as part of a desperate search for truth, but that inquiry isn't much of a mystery in the traditional sense. The film is too realistic for all of that, and when important revelations do come, they're delivered with a "that's the way of the world" weariness that keeps the film centered. Likewise, the film is remarkably balanced as an ensemble, depicting adolescence, young adulthood, and retirement age with the same fairness and insight. All of that talk of balance makes the film sound sleepy, but it has moments of unique energy as well, particularly the diary collage, which reminded me of something like Roger Avary's European vacation in the middle of Rules of Attraction. My big complaint is that I think, as unkind as this might be to say about a young performer, Devin Druid is kind of a zero in his role--and not in the way the film intends. Still, this is a reflective work that manages to be objective without ever being cold. 6. Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick) To me, this film is about transgressing over lines real and imaginary. There's a scene in which Christian Bale and Natalie Portman are flirting over the do-not-touch line near a sculpture in a museum, and they're playing not just with the physical space but also with their relationship toward each other.That location crystallized all of the paths we had seen before--roads, shores, pools, power lines, tunnels--that lead but also restrict or bound. (The roads in particular, shot from a camera mounted onto the car's fender it seems, are strikingly tactile in a way I haven't seen.) And those physical frontiers prepare us for the abstract lines that the film is really interested in blurring. For example, Bale's Rick is cavorting with two women, and one presses on the ceiling while standing on a bed: It's a moment both adult, because of the necessary height, and child-like, because of the impulse itself. Going deeper, the GoPro shots that seem like a beach memory of childhood are a visual rhyme for the GoPro shots of Cate Blanchett on the beach, tying the two moments together to suggest her purity. To quote the film, which quotes Plato: "The soul remembers the beauty it used to know in heaven." (The two moments exist on the same plane if you want me to extend the geometry language.) The structural tools of the film sometimes contradict that matching, however. It's disorienting when Wes Bentley's dialogue literally interrupts Bale's narration. The interior life is important, but it isn't sacred. What is sacred? Suffering, in a way that a post-Christian world does not understand but that Malick knows. That's the last threat space or border holding people back from transcendence: being grateful for suffering. The Internet wrote about this film with the typical tone of our times: "Poor White man with all of his money and women. Why should we feel sorry for him?" Well, because the line between pleasure and pain is often imperceptible. "Malick doesn't develop the female characters." Well, because the female characters are deliberately mysterious, a more tangible version of the theological faith that eludes Rick. Tellingly, a woman at a party has "faith" tattooed on her shoulderblades. Keep not reading Dante, film writers. Look, Malick's films aren't going to start requiring less of a viewer. They're allusive, elusive, and illusive. I'm not sure he even knows what he's trying to say. If you haven't liked the other post-Days of Heaven works, you won't like this. But aesthetically, he and Emmanuel Lubezki take Los Angeles, the most photographed place on Earth, and make it look new. Philosophically, he's trying to prove, with an ultimately pro-family sentiment, that "to suffer binds you to something higher than yourself, higher than your own will." Get on his level. 5. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins) When the screening ended, three or four people in my vicinity exhaled "Wow." As urgent and rapturous as it is delicate, Moonlight never gives you what you think it's going to give you. I don't mean that only in the sense of "Oh, it subverts cliches of Black American masculinity." (Though, of course, that's true.) I mean that you'll think that you have a handle on something like a symbol until it flourishes into something else. One character wants to make green tea, fills a pot with water, and plants the pot on the stove. (A shaky burner, since this movie understands all of the details of people who are struggling.) So you think that the rolling water on the stove represents the tension of the scene: As the characters dig into each other and reveal the "heat" between them, the water starts to bubble, right? But then you remember a scene from an hour and a half earlier, in which the youngest version of our protagonist poured boiling water into a bubble bath that wouldn't have had hot water otherwise. (Since this movie understands all of the details of people who are struggling.) So then you connect that both of these pots are nourishing the character, guiding him back to his most naked self. That's how rich this film is. And that reminds you of the way the protagonist has consumed aspects of his drug dealer father figure: the way they lick their lips or the crown sitting on their dashboards. Each moment is meaningful, but there's even more heart in what is left unsaid. The heartbreakingly repressed sexuality of the film is a continuum, but so is life. There probably wasn’t a more tender film this year. 4. La La Land (Damien Chazelle) Musicals are, at once, the most artificial genre of cinema and the most pure genre of cinema. Artificial because, yeah, in real life people don't burst into song and dance when they feel intense emotion. If film is about representation, then musicals are dumb. But if film is about serendipity, if its purpose is to conjure a magic that is not a part of our daily lives, then it's all there in the musical. As a marriage of music, dance, theater, and photography, musicals are the most concrete proof that cinema is its own art form, not just a spin on any one of those other mediums. And, on a more theoretical level, the musical acknowledges itself, which is where La La Land comes in. Performers in a musical make extra-diegetic what was only inter-diegetic: They are performing to what should be a wall. The bargain we make with movies is that the performers are pretending they're not being observed, but in a musical, they're performing for only our pleasure. Those two ideas are being held at the same time, and La La Land takes it a step further by adding the layer of ambitious dreams colliding with unforgiving reality. What we want, the dream world in which anything can happen, is often in conflict (but also in strange harmony with) what we accept. When Gosling and Stone are at their happiest together, I caught myself wanting the rest of the film to continue with their being in love. Let's just have an hour of them being cute. But THAT'S NOT HOW MOVIES WORK. I knew that they would have to get into a fight and break up, but the real genius of Chazelle's screenplay is that the fight is as effective as the meet-cute or the first kiss. The former is effective because it's uniquely real; the latter is effective because it's as relatably unreal as being swept off your feet by love. So, especially when it gets to the ending that many people don't get, the film is able to hold two ideas at once. So what I'm saying is: If you don't like La La Land, then it's because you want only representation or only magic, and you will not be pleased by something capable of doing both. You do not like movies. INSTANT CLASSICS

3. Silence (Martin Scorsese) Judging from the box office performance of Silence, there were not many people jacked up about stories of 17th century Jesuits facing the dilemma of apostatizing or being tortured. As a Jesuit-educated Jesuit educator (as a person whose favorite filmmaker is Martin Scorsese, in part because of a shared compulsion toward sacrificial violence), maybe I was always in the tank for this one. Part of a retreat for someone in the Society of Jesus, the holy order of the priests in the film, is St. Ignatius's spiritual exercises, a graduated order of meditations for which the retreatant places himself in Gospel scenes, trying his best to witness Christ with his own senses. This type of immersion can be powerful but also dangerous. It can, if sharply felt, introduce the vague notion that a person actually was there, can speak of Jesus first-hand. It could even conflate the idea of being Christ's disciple with the idea of being Christ. And, of course, that's the paradox of Christianity: The person we're supposed to imitate was not technically a person. He was something more pure than we can ever be. We're praying toward an impossible goal. Andrew Garfield's Rodriguez is given to this type of enthrallment--Scorsese's way of visualizing it is the occasional insert shot of El Greco's The Veil of St. Veronica, which Rodriguez would have prayed through. When he says, "My mouth tastes of vinegar," placing himself as the crucified Jesus, the film goes a step further in posing the conflict between devotion and vanity. Rodriguez and his compatriot Garrpe get captured by the Japanese, and they expect to be executed quickly and made martyrs. But like most formidable opponents of Catholicism, the inquisitors understand the theology completely. They instead keep the men alive to watch the torture of other Christians, and they make it clear that only deference and denunciation from the big fish priests will stop the brutality. (In the process, the priests take on much more of a Judas role than a Jesus one, as Scorsese points out in his foreword to the book.) So we're faced with the idea of service to God being selfish, the idea of humility being perverted to pride. And if something that fundamental about the religion can be turned on its head, then what are we left with? Silence doesn't provide answers--because there aren't any; a decent Catholic acknowledges mysteries beyond his own understanding. But on a minute-to-minute basis, Scorsese presents a dizzying amount of questions. Can anyone, even the most devout, form a reliable conscience? If God is silent, what is the function of prayer? Can faith ever be more public than private? Is private faith without demonstration or good works valuable? In merely asking these questions, Scorsese, not only as a director but as a screenwriter for the first time since 1995, presents the totality of the faith in a way that hasn't been done since Diary of a Country Priest or The Passion of Joan of Arc. A popular reading might be that Silence is the culmination of a career in formalism only. The left-to-right repurposing of a descent down the stairs as an echo of a similar shot in Bringing Out the Dead, let's say. You can take that approach. More forcefully, however, the film feels like a final exhibit in Scorsese's argument for cinema as expiation. The one time Rodriguez feels God's presence is when he is at his most secure. And in that way--I may be talking to the people who escaped to Monster Trucks in January instead of seeing Silence--Scorsese argues that deliverance is too easy. It's more than human beings deserve. Suffering though...you might have something there.

2. Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan) You can tell when a movie really matters because, when you're talking about it with someone else who saw it, even the tiniest moments are indelible. Sure, we all know "You talkin' to me," but we also know that shot of Travis in the movie theater looking through his fingers. "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship," sure. But you remember that guy in the prologue who gets shot in the back as he runs away from his forged papers? When it comes to Manchester by the Sea, there are devastating moments that will be referenced by even people who haven't seen the movie--and the moments, which are often free of dialogue, deserve that reputation. But I can just as easily make a joke about Otto or Godspell. The movie hits on the big swings, but it also knows how Lee would fold his picture frames in a towel while packing them. Good movies get the important stuff right; great movies get everything right. Can you believe that, right now, as I write this, someone paid money to see Rogue One or The Lego Batman Movie or anything else that is just okay? Can you believe that people would skip this because it's "too sad," ignoring not only how funny the film is, but also how enriching sadness itself can be? Manchester by the Sea is about the temptation to choose sadness for yourself, to wallow in suffering, and I guess I didn't learn anything because, if it means that I get more art like this, count me as a member of team sad.

1. O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman) O.J.: Made in America is a house of cards built on spinning plates--if you'll allow me a metaphor as convoluted as O.J. Simpson taking down an American flag in his backyard as his friend tapes it to sell to a tabloid. At first, the breadth of the piece feels daunting, and the unraveling strands of the narrative threaten to overwhelm it. Most of the points are ambitious (Has race been class all along? Is the Trial of the Century a seed that germinated into our current culture of victimhood? Is it possible to transcend race?) and some of the points are obvious. (People who deal memorabilia are scum.) But there are a lot of points. They all pay off so powerfully though. When someone recounts a juror's giving Simpson the Black Power fist--footage we don't have--Edelman slots in the Tommie Smith and John Carlos picture we saw four hours earlier, and now, yeah, it makes sense. Similarly, Danny Bakewell's talking head is first introduced as "Louisiana native," commenting on how African-Americans moved west in the '50s. Five hours later, with the title changed to "civil rights activist," he explains, "I used O.J. for our cause." The film prefers to delve deeper when it could have stayed on the surface. In fact, one of the documentary's greatest challenges is deciding what to explain. In what was already one of the most documented odysseys of recent history, what do we need to be reminded of? What did we never know? For the most part, Edelman handles that judiciously, even if I wanted more on Marcus Allen. What we get is definitive with all of the corners painted in. Sometimes in the middle portion, the sheer level of access took my breath away. How did Edelman get the VHS of Nicole's private memorial service? How did he get the videos of O.J. yelling at the TV (like a White person) on his first day home? The truest test of the balance, however, is that the film runs 7 1/2 hours, and I still didn't want it to end. Some people have complained that Part V feels indulgent, but it's the natural outcome of O.J.'s need to be loved and it's just as good as everything else--even the music, which was negligible otherwise, worked well in the stranger-than-fiction conclusion. Part V shows justice as injustice, the final thread for Edelman to tie. The civil trial and the Vegas trial prove which chickens actually came home to roost.

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