#anyway. enough talking. go my scarab (my post)

[eggtomatosoup]

chicory a colorful tale is so good

[twipsai]

^this is me when someone respectfully disagrees with me btw

ANYWAYS! pls dont take this as me arguing in a mean way or anything, i love Sonic a lot!!! and i like talking about it and i think you bring up a lot of interesting points!!!! so im gonna go over it all in maybe a not super cohesive way???

i wanna start by acknowledging what you said at the start, "the wording of the second bolded point echoes IDW Sonic's wording of his principles in IDW #2 that Amy swoons over" and clarifying that i was referencing It Doesn't Matter from sa1 and sa2,,, (the full lyric is "Don't ask me why; I don't need a reason / I got my way, my own way!), and the reason why i alluded to it is because i was trying to make that connection that Sonic still has the same basic principals that he did during the adventure era, but i guess i wasnt clear enough oops ^^; i honestly completely forgot that theres a reference to that lyric in idw #2 but,, uh, happy accident i guess?

ok now onto my actual thoughts

i actually wanna agree with you on that first part, cuz as i think about it its something that makes a lot of sense and i havent really been able to fully wrap my head around it -- Sonic being reactive to whats in front of him is exactly how he is!!! idk how i didnt realize that before lol

as to what you said to my first point, i think that theres a level of dissonance between the games and comics with the threats theyre dealing with, and it kinda prevents me from explaining myself with examples. this MIGHT be a reach!!!! im sorry if it is BUT im gonna compare satbk and frontiers for a sec, since we're talking about satbk a lot here (as we should. its such a good game)

(and im not sure if youre lumping in Sonic in IDW with Sonic in Frontiers? a lot of people do but. idk maybe you dont lol. for the purposes of my point i will)

i think that there are parallels to be drawn between how Sonic treats Merlina and Sage, vs how he treats King Arthur and The End. he has a lot of patience for Merlina and Sage as he realizes theres a lot more to them besides just wanting to kill him, but he'll still take what they throw at him like he takes anything else. then you compare that to Arthur and The End, and Sonic is like. ready to destroy those guys. and i think that, while Sonic is first and foremost just living in the moment and reacting to what people throw at him, i also think that theres a huge difference between when Sonic is fighting a person and when Sonic is fighting a powerful entity. granted, he didnt know that King Arthur was an illusion, but he did know he was an immortal tyrant associated with hell. i mean. the underworld

i would love to use an example from the comics showing how he does treat similar scaled threats the same way but i. cant! because he doesnt face threats like that in IDW! hes dealing with things like "the dragon is back" and "that girl has psychological issues". the only thing that comes close to the world-ending threat that we see in the games is the metal virus, and it was both a lot more complicated than typical "defeat the bad guy, save the world" that we see in the games. now, that does NOT mean i dont think the games have complex stories but if i delved into every situation Sonic has been put in then we would be here for so long. and i dont wanna do that. so yeag.

basically to sum up my points above, im saying that the reason IDW Sonic has been pretty lax with his enemies, and even tries to help some of them, is because theyre not really the same level of threats as most of the villains he faces in the games. he can deal with them fine without ending them outright, so he doesnt really have an issue with letting them live. hes just kind of easy-going and chill like that. at least thats how i see it, maybe im missing something?

also, to your point that "Sonic doesnt fight for freedom, he fights against oppression" i just. do not agree lol. i mean, hes been associated with the Freedom Fighters since 1993, but theres also some more direct reference to it in reference to specifically Sonic

the Sonic Adventure Stylebook, page 9 (translated) - "He loves freedom and hates crookedness. He is impulsive and short-tempered, but also has a kindness that can't be ignored when someone is in trouble."

Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia, page 13 - "Sonic is usually laid back and cool, but he's driven to fight injustice - not in the name of the law, but for the ideal of freedom."

and then i WAS going to add more examples, but the wayback machine is down right now so. can i just say source: trust me? sorry i wish i could add more examples :( i dont wanna dwell on this "for freedom or against oppression" point too much though, cuz i honestly think its just kinda arguing semantics. as well as the fact that i feel like both things are true, i just kinda didnt phrase it well in my original post

um. and now i kinda wanna go completely off the rails so please be nice to me but im gonna say something that may be controversial,,, i am of the mind that, because IDW is canon material, then it shouldnt be seen as a different character than how Sonic was written in some earlier games, even if it seems like it. because its just as much as source material as anything else! i really just think that most "out of character" things are more akin to different facets of a character. i think that writing off all of Sonic in IDW because some things he does contradicts what he does in the games is just kinda. idk. i dont like how quick people are to do that. i mean like, i got into Sonic because of IDW, and then i went and played the games and it never really felt any different to me -- just Sonic responding different to different situations. maybe i need to do another read through of IDW! but i really dont think that writing off an entire canon comic series is a good thing to do when looking at the facets of a character's personality. that could just be me

anyways ummmmm yeah i dont really have anything else to say? i dont disagree with everything you said, but there are some things that i dont think are quite right,,, hopefully this all makes more sense than my original post cuz i dont think i did a good job articulating my points

um. idk what else to add. bye bye i hope you at least liked my drawing of a super sad alien

"sonic just wants to be best friends with his enemies"

WRONG thats only in the idw comics. extremely loud incorrect buzzer.

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

WHAT TERRIBLE THINGS ARE YOU DOING TO MY BUG [mallrad] [i saw ur repost of nhw mal lmao]

I NEEEEED INFROMATION RN PLEASE FEEL FREE TO INFODUMP AS MUCH AS YOU WANT PLEASE

HI KOI!!!!!!!!!! sorry this has taken me forever to answer ive had a busy work week ouagh. but its MAL TIME NOW. well. technically amity time bc im gonna talk about the setting in general because i love it. whatever go my scarab!

IM GOING TO ANSWER THIS ASSUMING U KNOW WHAT NHW IS. IF YOU DONT IM SO SORRY but also the masterpost is HERE which has basically all the context u need i think.

awesome place to start is reading This Post because it basically lays out the essentials for amity in general and gives you a good idea of their whole deal (theres also this one. which is a joke. but its my favorite ever and i think you will appreciate the clarence)

since i mostly ran thru the basics of their plot timeline super quick in that post i can get into details in this one :] putting a lot of it under the cut so its not 12 miles long hehe

i really like leaving a lot of the amity stuff to be mystery partially because it will literally NEVER come up in the "canon timeline" or whatever since it all happened x number of years ago and partially because giving it an air of mystery makes it seem more myth/legend than anything concrete. which!! since its supposed to be the nhw equivalent of the spirit world i love the idea that its vague and mysterious and hard to comprehend that the Chaos Zone (colloquial name for the quarantine area around the city where they keep the trickster trapped) used to be like. a relatively peaceful idyllic city with only a small handful of capes and not a lot of action. that being said i do in fact have clam flavored brain worms which means i cannot help thinking about clarence and mal in so much detail that is SO unnecessary to the rest of the story other than serving to make what happened to them more tragic.

ANYWAY. all that being said that is my excuse for not having any solid ideas on mals trigger event. ive kind of played around with the idea that he's a case 53 (cauldron dropped him into the city mid-ghoul transformation and full of amnesia so he had. basically no identity before then and no idea where or who or what he was so he just kind of started breaking things) but honestly i havent thought abt it all that much bc its just not that important. either way. he started out as an unaffiliated rogue/villain. as ghoul, he was in his brute form like 90% of the time and behaved pretty much like a less cannibalistic venom. just kind of like. causing damage just because he can. really the ONLY two capes in amity at the time were Whisperer (clarence) and Afterlife (duck) (<< first duck mention btw!). Afterlife is a lot more apathetic to things like this (hes old. hes tired. hes survived WELL past the cape life expectancy but theres no real protocol for capes retiring because usually they just. die. so hes still here) and he really only responds to things he deems an emergency, and some rando causing property damage isnt enough to put ghoul on his radar. so that left Whisperer to deal with him. his powers are very nonviolent non-confrontational so his way of dealing with villains is to use his. basically tranquilizer powers to get them to stop doing whatever theyre doing (its a good thing amity is peaceful. this is NOT a. super great awesome offensive power and he can get very easily overwhelmed against more than one target). so he does this to Ghoul and since his he's a new cape and is not fully under control of his changer powers yet, his brute form drops as soon as hes calm and hes just. some sad disheveled looking guy.

so clarence sees this guy who is just. so incredibly lost. whether thats because of case 53 amnesia or like. post-trigger, post-changer state disorientation, hes just. like. pathetic. hes not being a villain because hes evil hes just doing things because he doesnt know what else to do. so clarence, who is way too kindhearted for his own good, offers to help him. and mal, who has probably never given this sort of softness in his life. just immediately fucking melts into it. of course he accepts that offer he has nothing else to do! he doesnt really care about being a hero or a villain or anything like that (having a morality crisis is boring and a waste of time) but this man is literally glowing and offering him a hand to hold and a purpose and something other than just mindless destruction

so mal drops the name Ghoul and gets his changer powers better under control and properly develops his master powers instead of his brute powers and becomes what essentially ends up being Whisperer's sidekick under the new name Purgatory (which. i really made on a whim at the time but now that i have had time to think about it really has a lot of significance to his character and state of mind and it makes me SICK)

mal has a sort of hero worship crush on clarence like. thats His Hero. thats the guy who picked him up off the ground and helped him stand out of the kindness of his heart and they know each other out of costume now and even in his civilian life clarence is funny and laid back and so easy to talk to and. mal is not those things. god he is so down bad. relationship wise i will point to this convo which i still stand by

but i think like. both in and out of costume theyre kind of inseparable. mal is like. suuuper super protective over clarence to the point where its kind of an intimidation factor to other people. scary dog privilege or whatever. i like to refer to it as like... if clarence was a prince mal would be his loyal knight. if mal was an animal he would be a falcon (fast, sharp, dangerous, always returns to its master etc etc etc).

its also really important to me that clarence DOES NOT see their relationship like this at all he is so. oblivious. or if hes not oblivious he just doesnt do anything about it or puts it out of his mind or whatever. i think one of clarences big flaws is that hes almost too laid back about certain things that he maybe should care about a little more? big "itll be fine" in situations where things . PROBABLY will not be fine if he doesnt do something about it. so while he doesnt really purposefully encourage mals weird hero worship with him he also doesnt really do anything to dissuade it either. so thats how we get to. where we get to. with them. ouhghhh boy.

i already talked abt this pretty in depth in the other post but trickster appears, kills clarence in front of mal, and it just BREAKS something fundamental in him. once the trickster throws him out of the city i think the prt has to drag him away kicking and screaming because theres NO way he would willingly walk away from that (ESPECIALLY because... clarence's body is still there. he never got a proper funeral or burial or anything hes just.... there on the street or on the roof of a building like hes nothing). they probably put him in some kind of custody which he inevitably breaks out of and goes out on his own. i think he tries to go back to the city only to find the walls already in place and no way to get in without fighting a LOT of soldiers and ripping through a lot of anti-cape measures. which he is emotionally willing to do, but hes not stupid. he knows he needs backup. so he seeks out the worlds most dangerous most awful notorious capes ever. and thats how he ends up with the slaughterhouse 9! his eventual goal with them is to manipulate them into helping him get back into amity and kill the trickster. which is OBVIOUSLY not how things turn out, but thats his motivation at least.

when wraith ends up in the public eye with the new haven wards and his costume is sooooo so eerily close to the whisperer, mal kind of Leaves the s9 for a bit? hes still a member and everything, he doesnt actively quit or betray them or anything bc thats like asking to get killed, but he stops travelling with them in order to. whats the nicest way i can say this. research? the wards. specifically wraith. that little unhinged piece of his mind that snapped when clarence was killed gives him this horrible idea that wraith is just.. clarence reincarnated. its probably been close to 20ish years since the amity incident at this point, so the timing even lines up close enough for him to be convinced. so that starts his weird obsession with william, which eventually involves him nominating william as a potential candidate to join the s9 in the trials (william has a Complex about this) and other fucked up things like the tide fridge (<< our loving name for when mal kidnaps tide and keeps him in jars or whatever in the spirit world in canon etc)

hes my favorite fucked up little guy!!!!!!! i hate him so much i want to hit him with hammers but also ive had a specific stained glass art piece depicting the biblical purgatory that i really want to draw as him and clarence so like. take that as you will. im obsessed with them i think abt them so much even though clarence has like no bearing on the actual plot of nhw since the whole "william is the next whisperer" thing is nonexistent. i got distracted writing this a FEW times so i maybe forgot some things so if theres anything else u want to know about them... hmu. i love 2 talk abt them so much <3

[illegal-fruit]

i literally just finished these messy ass sketches of my FIRST AND ONLY SCARAB SONA

(im posting it as fast as possible bc i dont want someone else to pop out a wasp sona BECAUSE UGHH DAMNIT, I LOVE WASPS SO MUCH THEY'RE SO ELEGANT AND BEAUTIFUL AND UNAPPRECIATED)

ik they're defensive af and love attacking ppl just for looking at them the wrong way, BUT I SHOULD HAVE YOU KNOW THAT SOME SPECIES OF WASPS, such as sphecids, are very docile and I KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE BECAUSE I HANDLED ONE OF THESE SUCKERS BEFORE and it was literally so sweet

ENOUGH TALK, I TALK TOO MUCH

here is my mud dauber God auditor sona NAMED APOIDAE HEHE

im not sure if im settling for this as his official design, so im completely open to suggestions and criticism

i also really like the headcanons that Scarab's wings are all jacked up, so i decided id torture my sona, too BY RIPPING OFF THAT MFS LITTLE WINGS, because ik that if i were a bug with delicate, little paper thin wings, I WOULD BREAK THEM OFF IN TWO SECONDS WITH MY CLUMSY ASS, UNCARING ASS

anyways TW: if ur afraid of bug, GO AWAY

BUG DOWN HERE↓↓↓

hehe this was my little waspy buddy, i let him go back outside shortly after this, but i had to make sure to feed him some honey first

[yjwhatif]

Hey!! I'm the anon who sent the thing about Jaime and Bart + added on to the other post! Don't worry, it was just a mistake! I put two separate asks cause my ask was getting pretty long if that's okay with you. Again, I was just rambling so I'm so sorry this is so long.

I was thinking that they have more of a sibling relationship because Bart was thirteen and Jaime was sixteen when they met (cause I do like the idea of bluepulse but I feel like everyone was trying to make it the next birdflash. which just didn’t work with Jaime and Bart) Like they give off annoying little brother and tired older brother energy. I love the idea of Bart getting into all these shenanigans with cassie and gar and Jamie's like “Bart, no." Jaime would lowkey be overprotective of him (he has a little sister, ofc he would be overprotective)

If Jaime would ever be upset over something, Bart would instantly cheer him up (like Jaime was doing college apps while being a superhero and he didn't leave the life like Wally and Artemis. so during rejection letters and stuff, you know Bart would be trying to cheer him up) They always make each other laugh and I saw this headcanon floating around that because of the trauma from the reach, Bart has such fucked up humor and it kinda rubs off Jaime (I think @kidflashimpulse talked about it in one of their fanfics) Bart gave Traci the shovel talk and Jaime did the same thing to Ed. If Bart ever has a nightmare and he knows Ed is stressed with the center or on vacation, he’ll run to texas to see Jaime. If Traci's not around then he’ll go to Bart's place after a nightmare. Anyway, those are just my thoughts, I would love to hear yours!!

First off, thank you for resending this Anon - I really appreciate it, your thoughts are so cool and I don't care how long the post gets, I always love reading them! Second, sorry for the delay in responding - I’m having serious WiFi trouble at the moment that seems to just keep getting worse… it's been an absolute nightmare!

Anyway, I am totally with you in feeling Bart and Jaime have a younger/older siblings vibe - Bart has that chaotic kid bother energy while Jaime is definitely the reluctant authoritative figure who never asks for the responsibility but always winds up with it. In no way am I saying Jaime is like Bart’s babysitter/keeper or anything - dude is definitely capable of getting into his own shenanigans that require a little (or a lot) of assistance from Bart at times - but I think Jaime is just better at exercising caution and considering the consequences of doing something totally reckless… plus he has scarab in his ear who is either listing all the facts on how things could go very wrong for them, or just straight up suggesting the most destructive and life-threatening action possible… With that sort of ‘guidance’, Jaime has to have some major responsibility and good judgment skills in order to ensure things don't end in absolute disaster. Bart, on the other hand, is either too impulsive to ever even consider caution, or, he does consider it, but once he factors in his accelerated healing he just disregards it and whatever consequences he thinks of in favour of doing the thing he wants to do… Jaime has to activate his overprotective older sibling mode sometimes - for Bart’s literal safety and his own sanity… just because you can heal fast is not a valid enough reason to do stupid shit Bart! 

Another thing I like about the two is that Bart is usually found front and center when in group situations - eager to get straight to business - whereas, Jaime will usually be found towards the back, just taking in the information and situation in front of him - he's a listener who’s always ready to act when needed. It's when they're not found in these positions that you know there's trouble… 

Like, if Jaime is front and center it's because he means business and isn't taking no nonsense from anyone… off the top of my head, i feel like we don't see him do this too often in the show - though as i said before, I haven't had internet, so I haven't been able to refresh my memory on stuff (specifically s2) the way I wanted to… so he might not do this - but I like to think he does… he's always ready for action. i now have the image of Jaime being absolutely pissed about something that's happened - maybe someone's been seriously hurt or captured on a mission or anything and he is just totally set on whatever needs to be done, taking charge and not stopping for anything until the job is done. Jaime and the scarab are such a formidable force of power that we really haven't seen much of since s2 and it would be so cool to see him use that power in a full-on fight against an enemy - especially now he's older with more experience and control over what he's capable of… it would be really great!

And finally, I made a post back when s3 ended which went into how Bart seemed to retreat into the background more after the xpit fiasco as a means of isolating himself from others, I imagine he does this a lot when he's struggling with something, or when he's just not in the mood for socialising with others but doesn't want to worry people with his absence. He's there but he's not really there there. Not too many are aware he does this - or specifically why he does this when he does - but for those who do, namely Jaime and ed, they know it's best to just give him the space he wants and keep an eye on him until they can talk about it later when it's just them… Sometimes they will talk about it, sometimes they won't and will just play video games or watch a movie or do something of a distraction instead. Bart and Jaime have gotten really good at knowing how to be there for each other without pushing beyond their comfort levels when they really don't want to go into things. 

They have such a strong bond and I’d really love it if we could see more of that again. I think there's a great opportunity to see some non-outsiders/mission-based interactions between them after Bart's little s4 escapade with the legion - I really want to see Bart face some genuine consequences after what he did and to see Jaime be there to help him through it… we've seen Bart help Jaime through his troubles - it's time to see Jaime help Bart through his.

Wow… this response got way too long… oops. Anyway, those are some of the thoughts I currently have on the bluepulse boys, thanks again for (re)sending me yours anon - I love them! (And I will apologise again because I still feel bad for having lost your original message. So sorry.) Also, you have reminded me that I still really really need to read @kidflashimpulse‘s yj fics - it's been on my to-do list for ages… along with all the other Ed/Bart fics i have still yet to read on AO3… I'm just constantly behind on everything I tell myself I need to do…

Ok... now I'm definitely gonna stop talking. 👍

LB

[dateamonster]

continued below

cleo in the kitchen

cleo is soo cute in this ep she strikes such a fun balance of like the spoiled princess type and a genuinely caring friend

vampires in staten island? wwdits reference spotted?? 🤨

lol abt the cookbook gag i love when theyre willing to get a lil dark w it

the recipe blogger website struggle..

case of the missing squeak

i always find it kinda strange lagoonas whole arc is like the conflict between her ferocity and her softer side just bc i feel like outside of this one thing she is p open about being an Absolute Cutie Pie

oo i rly want more of neferas lowkey bitchy side. she has such a toxic positivity girlboss aura id love to see them lean into that.

i know i say this abt all mh characters but lagoona is so autistic coded to me

actually all these kids are stimming fr fr

"you can be horrible and adorable" SO TRUE

i love spectras voice btw....

love it or hate it frankie talking abt their pronouns at every opportunity is sososo real to me

main takeaway here is that monster high is way more normal abt accommodations for neurodiverse students than any school irl

pet problems

cleo fulfilling my need to know what the monsters are like on social media once again

nefera is so good at memes :)

be nice to the scarabs :((((

kind of a dilf situation going on over here ngl

LENORE THE RAVEN SO CUTE

bitch you expect me to believe that is a shelter animal. points for hisette being the only mainline pet who doesnt look kinda uggo.

ohh the sweetie snakes line.. ive made a whole separate post abt this but i love the decision to make cleo and deuce exes in this gen. i like how casual and fond he is abt the whole thing. him and frankie have such a cute friendship btw.

deuce bakes! deuce bakes!

dont listen to the haters frankie ur a rockstar

gorgeous gorgeous girls have secret entrances to the catacombs under their beds

frankie/cleo winner of cutest motherfuckin thing 10000000 yrs running

license to rock

love it when clawdeen Scampers

finnegan ep yes!!!!!!!! also love the confirmation that apparently everyone at mh operates on a nocturnal schedule. i wonder if that was sort of an adjustment period for clawdeen or any non nocturnal monsters

ohhh ok yea meeting finnegans parents for real now. i wanna say rly do love how many different body types and overall character designs are utilized in the side characters of this show, i just reallllllly wish that extended to like protagonists and characters that might potentially get dolls. ANYWAY finnegan and his parents are adorable <3

i knowww frankie would love rhythm games i just know it

i love that the school just lets lagoona kill indiscriminately as long as whatever she kills is dumb enough to enter her territory first. makes sense to me.

TORALEI CUTIEPIE MOMENT

catching up on monster high notes!

spell the beans

looooove clawdeens dad joining the parents association he is involved in his childrens education :3 he is making cookies and making friends :3

momdusa is so milfy i could die the gays stay winning once again

dracula is soooo silly hes winning me over i fear

!! momdusa never moved on from high school and falls over so much and loves her wife wow she is the perfect woman actually

its not my dream dad its YOURS

obsessed w everyone wanting to eat clawdeens dad

THANK YOU for explaining the camera/mirror thing with vampires i was wondering abt that

mr wolf and dracula friendship moment 🥺

EXPELBEAST!! i love when they do something fun and goofy with the mh lore

idk if those were lagoonas parents in the mpa but i wish we got more of them there looked so cute

growing up ghoulia

mothman!!!!!!!!!!!

some of these side characters have such interesting designs the purple dragon girl sitting in front of ghoulia was soo cute

MONSTER GSA LETS GOOO

i loove when mh does some classic monster movie stuff. ghoulia clone zombie attack rules.

not to be a broken record but i feel like ghoulias ep here would be more meaningful if she was still more noticeably zombie-like. like she says she moves slower than other monsters but i dont like. see that. let her lurch!

casketball jinx

im so happy to see howleen!!

kaiju girlie is such a queen we love to see it

tbqh i think howleen was right for this one

clawdeen both being on the team and being a cheerleader seems like soo much take a rest bestie 😭

do u think clawdeen had a wolf fursona before she found out she was a werewolf? i think so.

[belphegor1982]

…it’s done. Finished. My monster Mummy fic, the one I started in 2003, started publishing in 2004, and left dormant since 2008 – I finally completed it o.O Weirdly (or not), this is the chapter which gave me the most trouble, if you don’t count chapters 16 and 17 (which took me 2 and 16 years to write, respectively). It was hard to say goodbye to this story and these characters, even though I knew I literally just had to get an idea for another story :-/

FAIRY TALES AND HOKUM

Summary: 1937: Two years after the events of Ahm Shere, the O’Connells are “required” by the British Government to bring the Diamond taken there from Egypt to England. In Cairo, while Evelyn deals with the negotiations and Rick waits for doom to strike again, Jonathan bumps into an old friend of his from university, Tom Ferguson. Things start to go awry when the Diamond is stolen from the Museum and old loyalties are tested… (story on AO3; on FFnet)

(Chapters on Tumblr: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23)

Chapter 24: Departure (on AO3 here; on FFnet here)

London, September 1937

A little off Paddington Station, almost in Marylebone, was a small pub called the Stars and Crown, its red brick façade almost exactly similar to the others along the street. It was an unassuming little affair Jonathan liked to patronise every now and then, and not just because it happened to be situated not too far from his flat.

It was a balmy mid-September late afternoon and one of the double doors was wide open on the quiet street. Jonathan and Tom were seated by one of the stained-glass windows, drinking – G&T and a ginger beer, respectively – and talking. Jonathan, remembering the promise he’d made after blowing up Hamilton’s lorry, had bought the rounds.

But for small details like the mostly healed-over scratches on Tom’s hands, the old scar in Jonathan’s left palm, and all the subtler little ways the past two decades had changed them, they might as well have been twenty year old students again.

Well, apart from the subject of their conversation.

“I got off easy, if you ask me.”

“Nonsense. You were the only one who tried to fix this bloody disaster. It’s only fair that you didn’t… You know.”

“…Pay for my mistakes?”

“That is not what I meant and you know it.”

Tom gulped a mouthful of ginger beer, still looking glum.

“I suppose – I know – I should be grateful I didn’t end up like Hamilton, at least.”

Jonathan winced.

Charles Hamilton had made it back to England in a slightly better state than he had made it out of the pyramid, but that wasn’t saying much. From what they had heard, he was lucid for about an hour a day, and that was it – and not very coherent at that. Which made the fact that he allegedly hung himself in his cell a week before his highly sensitive trial very suspicious indeed. The man didn’t appear capable of putting on his trousers on his own, let alone do anything as complex as a slipknot.

The Lord Chancellor’s Department had issued a statement half-heartedly lamenting Hamilton’s demise, the newspapers had stayed surprisingly quiet about it, and Evy had fumed for an entire fortnight. And that had been it. Hamilton had taken the gentleman’s way out. Case closed.

At least Gabriel Baine had been tried, convicted, and sent behind bars for a lengthy period of time. Jonathan didn’t particularly care where he was, as long as he could be elsewhere.

Baine had stated a few times that there hadn’t been anything personal about shooting and ordering his men to shoot Jonathan, Rick, and Tom. Jonathan had silently begged to differ. Baine’s shouts of “Kill them” followed by the sudden excruciating pain in his back, not to mention the confusion and terror as he fought not to die and lost, had felt pretty damn personal.

Tom stared into his glass for a while, then looked up with a brighter expression.

“But enough about this fiasco. How’s your family? I seem to remember your sister’s birthday was coming up, you were lookin��� for a present when we bumped into each other at that bazaar. Did you find one, in the end?”

Jonathan perked up. “I did, actually. Got her a signet ring. She seemed to like it.”

Now that memory he would treasure as long as he lived.

An inventory of his pockets had revealed a hodgepodge of small trinkets which he was still trying to trace. The little medallion with the amethyst cameo must be early Regency, stolen by the pygmy mummies from some unfortunate Napoleon soldier’s corpse; the lapis earring was probably from the Ramesside period (a few Rameses had sent their armies to find or reclaim Ahm Shere, Jonathan had found); the couple of gold and silver rings bearing the Roman SPQR were a little incongruous but easy to chalk up to Julius Caesar’s expedition. There were also some 4th Century Persian coins, proving Alexander the Great’s men had also reached Ahm Shere – the Oasis, anyway – and a number of little amulets from various Egyptian expeditions, mostly heart scarabs made of red and green jasper, copper, quartz, bronze, or gold. He hadn’t determined the nature of the green gemstone yet, saving it for last.

Jonathan had been so excited by his find that he hadn’t gambled a single object. Tracing their origins took time, but he had not even told Evy about it yet. Instead he had not only called on every scrap of expertise he had concerning treasure, but also on every book he could lay his hands on. Evy would have been very surprised – not to mention highly suspicious – if she learned how much time he had been spending at the British Library lately.

He had always enjoyed a good riddle. For some reason this one looked promising enough to justify doing some actual work for. Besides, having the artefacts authenticated meant he would be able to get a much better price selling them.

The only thing he had parted with was the (probable) Napoleon coin, the soft gold nibbled almost beyond recognition by the pygmy mummies’ teeth. Another look at it the morning after his resurrection had given him an idea.

Before they left the Medjai camp, Jonathan had obtained from Ardeth a sketch of Nefertiri’s personal cartouche and the address of a talented goldsmith in Cairo; once back in the city, he had wandered down to Kerdasa, the coin and the folded paper safe in the inside pocket of his (whole and clean) jacket.

Just before he reached the little shop, however, he heard a yelp and a startled cry, and was knocked off his feet by something large and hairy. His vision was filled by long camel’s lashes and lips drawn back on long yellow teeth in what Jonathan might have taken as a smile if he hadn’t known better.

Why did every single camel have to have such foul breath, he wondered.

“ʾAhlan1, Djem,” muttered Jonathan with a sigh that was half annoyance, and half amused resignation.

And was astonished when the camel immediately disappeared from view, replaced with a familiar face. Satiah’s big brown eyes went wide when she saw him.

“Oh, it’s you, bāša2. Hello,” she said with a smile.

Jonathan got up and dusted himself off, irritation quickly fading away. The jacket could survive a little dirt; besides, Satiah’s smile as she hung on to Djem’s bit had lost some of its previous shyness. Considering how fearful she had been the last time – and who could fault her for that, really – it almost made getting knocked over by a foul-smelling bag of hair and wind worth it.

“Good morning, Miss Satiah,” he said in Arabic, picking up his hat from the ground so he could salute her with a flourish. Her hand flew to her mouth to hide a giggle. “It’s a stroke of luck finding you, really. I wanted to thank you for your help the other day, and for, er…”

He reached his limits of the language, and finished in English, “I mean, thank you for returning my wallet to my sister. That was very kind of you.”

“You’re welcome,” Satiah said in Arabic, her cheekbones a little pink. “I’m glad you and your friends got away from those men.”

Jonathan’s smile slipped a notch or two, but he rallied quickly enough.

“Yes,” he said just a little wryly, “we did, at that. In the end.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, I’ve just reached my destination,” he added, pointing to a door above which hung a sign saying something about gold in painted Arabic script, “so I’m going to wish you a—”

“You’re going to see Cousin Ashar?” Satiah interrupted, her eyes shining. Immediately afterwards she clamped both hands on her mouth and cringed. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. Small world, eh?”

She gave a small smile and led the way into the shop, stopping only to tie Djem to a post.

Ashar – the goldsmith Ardeth had recommended – was a tall, wiry man with a long face, his hair going grey at the temples. He welcomed Satiah warmly and sent her to the backroom to get what she came for. Before she closed the door, she gave Jonathan a little friendly wave, which he returned with a smile. Ashar gave him an odd but not hostile look, eyebrows raised.

Jonathan placed his order, left the coin, and was about to leave, when Ashar called him back, frowning slightly.

“You’re one of the O’Connells, aren’t you.”

Jonathan’s mouth opened and closed as though of its own accord.

“You could say that, yes,” he said finally. “Why?”

“Because word of the second raising of Anubis’ Army made it to Cairo recently.”

This time Jonathan’s mouth dropped open and remained like that for a handful of seconds. Ashar gave something that was almost a smile.

“Not all of us wear the ritual tattoos, you know.”

“I do know,” Jonathan articulated with only the slightest difficulty. Dr Hakim was a Medjai, and his face was devoid of any tattoo as well. Dr Bey had been the same, now that he thought of it. His gaze went to the door that led to the backroom. “Satiah, too…?”

“Yes. But her mother’s family has lived in Cairo for fifty years. The girl has never seen the desert. She will get good schooling and find a trade, inshallah3. The time for living legends is coming to an end.” Ashar looked at the cartouche Ardeth had drawn for reference. “I know what this says. Who the name belonged to. Your commission is either a hollow trinket or a great gift.”

Jonathan drew himself up and said, as dignified as he could, “I’m rather hoping for the latter.”

His own signet ring had been gambled and lost in some card game or another, years ago. His parents would have been so disappointed had they still been alive. The least he could do was make sure his sister had a ring of her own, one that paid tribute to the woman she was and the woman she had been, three millennia ago.

Evy’s reaction when she opened his present proved him right, and even surprised him.

She stared into the box long enough for Jonathan’s brain to go into overdrive. Her silence made him panic ever so slightly. Then she looked up at him, her eyes very bright, lower lip trembling.

Jonathan barely suppressed the need to shuffle like a schoolboy and buried his hands into his pockets, hoping his face didn’t give too much away.

“I know I wasn’t… there – or, you know – then,” he said, almost sheepishly. “But I thought… Well. I hoped you’d like it. The cartouche must be right, I got it from Ardeth, and the goldsmith was a bloody good artist, as it turned out, but—”

Evy cut him off by launching herself at him and flinging her arms around his neck, throwing him off balance. As usual, Jonathan stumbled, but managed to catch her in the end.

“It’s perfect,” she whispered into his neck. “Thank you, Jon.”

If his smile was a little wobbly, his eyes a little moist, nobody seemed to notice. Rick and Alex had picked up the little box; Rick’s face lit up in strange recognition, while Alex deciphered the cartouche slowly and grinned.

“Nice one, Uncle Jon. That’s a pretty good present.”

“Yes, about that,” said Jonathan irrepressibly while Evy broke away and wiped her eyes, “I hope you realise that this is the last birthday present you’ll ever get from me, old mum. Since – judging by your reaction – nothing I could give to you could ever top this, I have decided to simply refrain from trying.”

Evy had slapped his arm and called him an idiot with a big smile, then hugged him again. And he had hugged her back, just because he was alive and able to.

The ring hadn’t left her finger since.

“Jon?”

Jonathan was abruptly pulled back to the present, the Stars and Crown, and Tom’s curious smile across the table.

“Hm?”

“You were a thousand miles away.”

“Sorry about that. What about you and Lizzie? Dorset been treating you well, I hope?”

Tom shook his head with a smile.

“It has, sort of, but we’re moving to Oxford. Did Liz tell you she’d been replaced while she was gone?”

Jonathan nodded. Lizzie disappearing for two weeks had not gone unnoticed in her little town, but since the police didn’t have the beginning of a clue and nobody was able to reach Tom, they had moved on to other things and her boss at the telephone exchange had hired someone else. There had been a subtle but definite irony in Lizzie’s letter as she described her and Tom’s return and the scrutiny they’d had to stand up to in order to prove her husband hadn’t killed her and stashed her body away – or vice versa – before his former Chamber of Horus hierarchy stepped in to explain things.

“Well, they needed an operator at the exchange on Pembroke Street. And you know the interview I had this morning at Whitehall? I won’t be too far, as it turns out.” Tom took a deep breath, then said with one of the goofiest smiles Jonathan had ever seen on his face, “I’ll be workin’ from the Bodleian.”

This could only mean one thing. Jonathan grinned.

“The British Antique Research Department accepted your application, didn’t they? Congratulations, old chap. That’s fantastic.”

He downed a mouthful of his G&T and laid an elbow on the table, his chin in his hand.

“Haven’t been to Oxford in almost fifteen years,” he said thoughtfully. “Not since Evy finished her degree. I wonder if the city’s changed.”

“It’s Oxford,” said Tom quietly, looking like his mind was straying down the same path Jonathan’s thoughts were. “I can’t imagine it’ll ever change that much.”

Jonathan smiled quickly into his palm. Then he raised his glass.

“To the two of you, then. And to publicans hopefully not holding grudges, otherwise we’re still banned from half the pubs in Oxfordshire.”

Tom snorted and raised his own glass, now almost empty. “To the three of us, and testing that theory sometime. And let’s not wait two decades this time,” he added with a twinkle in his eyes.

The two glasses clinked.

For just a second, the decades fell away, and Jonathan was twenty years younger.

Lizzie was already waiting for them on the platform by the time they finished their drinks and walked back to Paddington. She carried a shopping bag that looked entirely too small compared to what should be expected of a woman who’d just spent a few hours in the old metropolis. Tom raised an eyebrow.

“Didn’t you say you planned to go to Harrods while we were in London?”

“I also said I only needed a new suit and the latest Agatha Christie novel,” she said, light teasing in her tone. “The next one will be out sometime in November, I think. Have you heard what the title will be? Death on the Nile, of all things.”

Jonathan gave a mock shudder. “I might just give this one a miss, then.”

The train’s whistle pierced the air, cutting the rest of the conversation short. Tom picked up his wife’s bag and Lizzie turned to Jonathan with a smile.

“Goodbye, Jonathan,” she said softly.

The use of his first name had always been a signal that the game was paused and the masks were off, as clear as a referee blowing halftime. Jonathan answered in kind, his throat just a little tight.

“Goodbye, Elizabeth.”

They hadn’t even actually said ‘goodbye’ last time. They had just stood there, she leaning out the train window in her brand-new nurse’s uniform, he and Tommy on the platform amidst the soot, the steam, and the throng of people, until the train departed. The memory was an old hurt that still twinged sometimes, like his left shoulder when the weather was bad.

He cleared his throat and smiled.

“See you on the next Christie novel, then?”

What Lizzie did next might have shocked twenty year old Jonathan, who thought he knew her well, and as such very much surprised his current self, who had a little too much experience of the world to truly get shocked anymore. She took his hands in hers, flying in the face of propriety and what had been her rules of conduct in public, and kissed him on the cheek near the corner of his mouth with an aching sweetness. The old Lizzie, so shy and unsure of her self-worth that she was terrified of what people may think, would have been appalled.

It had taken a while for Jonathan to truly grasp how much the years had changed Tommy and start thinking of him as ‘Tom’ to account for that change. Through this apparently simple gesture – simple only to someone who didn’t know Elizabeth Ferguson, née McAllister – Lizzie became ‘Liz’ in an instant.

“I can’t bear to think you died,” she said, her voice shaking ever so slightly. “When I think… Without that – that book…”

She took a deep breath. Tom caught Jonathan’s eye and gave a small nod. Of course he had told her. Knowing Liz, she’d take the secret to her grave anyway.

“Take care of yourself, Jonathan, please. The world would be so dreadfully dull without you in it,” she added with a tentative smile, to which he replied with a smile of his own, one that hopefully looked steadier.

“Likewise.”

Her hands tightened around his. Just for a second or two, he softly ran his thumb on the back of her hand, an echo of the old intimacy that used to bind them; then their gazes fell away, their hands separated, and the moment was over.

Tom held out his hand with a smile, and Jonathan’s mind was whisked back to that sunny afternoon in Cairo, almost two months ago, and a chance encounter that had reshuffled the cards in a major way. Tom’s handshake was slower this time, steadier, warmer.

“Bye, Jon.”

“Cheers, Tom,” said Jonathan, determined but failing to swallow the lump in his throat. “Have a pint at the Oxford Arms for me.”

Tom nodded, and added his left hand to the handshake, not saying anything. He didn’t need to. As usual – almost – everything he meant to say was on his face and in his eyes for the world to see.

The train let out a burst of steam. Tom hastily let go and made for the train door, stopping only to help Liz aboard. Jonathan looked wistfully at the train for a minute and was about to turn around and go home when he heard his name being called over the din of the locomotive and the running gears chugging into motion.

Tom and Liz were leaning out of a window, wearing identical wide smiles. Liz was waving, her other arm wrapped tightly around her husband. The light in her eyes and her curly hair whipping around her face made her look like the girl from Jonathan’s memories.

“Send my love to Evelyn!” she called. “And say hello to your brother-in-law for me! You’re all welcome anytime for tea!”

“I’ll make sure they know!” shouted Jonathan as the train gathered speed.

The blatant disregard of platform etiquette made several passers-by turn and stare at him with a touch of glower. Jonathan ignored them and kept his eyes on the departing train. Tom’s and Liz’s beaming smiles remained in his head a long time after they had gone back inside the carriage.

He would see them again. This time he was determined not to leave the possibility of a reunion to chance and the vagaries of life. They had been through too much – both twenty years and two months ago – to just go their separate ways.

Besides, Jonathan mused as he left Paddington behind to wade through the bustling streets, he still had some research to do before he set out to sell the objects he had found at Ahm Shere. The Bodleian Library was as good as the British Library; at least he didn’t risk meeting Evy there and being subjected to her prodding curiosity, which he wasn’t ready to face yet. At least not before he unravelled the mystery of the little gemstone. It looked like an emerald and felt vaguely familiar, as though he had seen it somewhere or heard a story about it.

This required some investigation, if only to be prudent.

After all, he was particularly well placed to know that you can only go so far on fairy tales and hokum alone.

THE END

.⅋.

1(أَهْلًا): informal “hello”, “hi”.

2باشا (bāša): “sir”, “mister” in Egyptian Arabic.

3ʾin šāʾa llāhu, (إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللَّٰهُ‎) – literally “if God has willed it”, “God willing”

Don’t look for the Stars and Crown in Paddington, or the Oxford Arms in Oxford. Unlike the Turf Tavern they’re entirely fictional.

Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile was indeed published on 1st November 1937. I couldn’t resist, I mean, come on ;o)

The Bodleian Library is the main research library in Oxford and one of the oldest in Europe.

If you’re wondering, yes, that little gemstone might be the basis for a sequel of sorts, but I haven’t really started to plot it. Considering my track record for these things you might see that story sometime in the next decade and a half :P

Writing and publishing Fairy Tales and Hokum has been such an adventure. I was 21 when I started writing it; now I’ll be 38 in four days. Much as I miss the old crowd of 2003-2006, reposting and updating the story here on AO3 allowed me to know some awesome people. I’m so glad these characters somehow – FINALLY – sneaked back into my head and my heart again with their quirks, their (updated) backstories, and their voices and allowed me to finish this story the way I wanted to. Like I’ve said before, whenever you started reading this, I hope you had a good time now that you’ve reached the end. If you’ve read and left a signed comment – if you’ve read and left an anonymous comment – if you’ve read and left no comment at all – know that I wrote this for you and I hope some of it made you smile.

Take care of yourselves, love you all, and see you on the next fic? :o)

[kylo-ren-jepsen]

I'm going through my whole movie collection in more or less alphabetical order. (More or less because some of the kids movies my daughter wants me to wait & watch with her and series will be watched chronologically.) Ima post a pic of my copy, where/why I got it, & a little review.

(I'm skipping around to "spooky" movies for October: horror, sci-fi, thriller, fantasy, etc)

Back in ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Seti I discovers his mistress Anck-su-namun & favorite priest Imhotep are having an affair. Anck-su-namun commits suicide with the plan that Imhotep will resurrect her. However, Imhotep is captured & punished by being cursed to live forever, entombed in a sarcophagus living off scarabs that in turn eat his flesh in a vicious cycle. Fast forward to 1923 & American Rick O'Connell accidentally stumbles upon the city of the dead Hamunaptra while serving in the French Foreign Legion. 3 years later, a conman steals an artifact & map from O'Connell & gives it to his Egyptologist sister Evy. Evy bargains for O'Connell's pardon from the death penalty so he can take her to Hamunaptra. Accompanied by the warden who wants 25% of the treasure and a team of American treasure hunters, they embark on the expedition & are met with danger as the Medjai, sworn to prevent Imhotep's return, try to stop them. The group makes it anyway, and discovers the Book of the Dead and canopic jars. Evy accidentally awakens Imhotep, who brings on the Ten Plagues & feeds on the energy of the Americans to return to power. The explorers battle an army of undead as they try to find the Book of Amun-Ra to defeat Imhotep.

A remake of the original 1930s monster movie was in talks since the 90s & went through a few possible directors and premises, including a George Romero zombie flick, before settling on the swashbuckling action movie with horror elements we got. It's part Indiana Jones, part monster of the week, with tons of action and enough humor to keep it light but not goofy. Brendan Fraser & Rachel Weisz play off each other incredibly well. Its success spawned a franchise with 2 sequels, a spin-off, an animated series, video games, rides, and a reboot.

[hyper-archives]

Aladdin(2019) Review

I had so much fun watching the Aladdin remake that I was inspired to write a review, comparing and contrasting it with the original! It’s under the cut so I don’t clutter dashes and tags:

Recently I watched the Aladdin reboot in theaters. I might not have given it a chance if a friend of mine hadn’t insisted to take us to the movies for a fun time. Usually I’m highly against Disney remakes, and I still am, but this one actually surprised me, again, for a Disney remake. There were some aspects that fell flat with me, yet some I actually liked better than the original. I was inspired to write a review for this, comparing and contrasting the two to see how they stand up against one another. Also, this contains spoilers! STORY: More often than not, when a Disney remake tries to “fix” plot holes and nitpicks of the original, as so beautifully demonstrated by the remakes of Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella, they end up making their nitpicks even more prevalent and even worse. I was surprised to see that, with this movie, they added in aspects that I actually liked better than the original, which I honestly didn’t think was possible. Unfortunately, it gave off the impression that they felt like they had to speed through many of the original iconic scenes in order to get to those plot lines. Instead of the original’s beginning, starting with Arabian Nights and continuing with the merchant, very subtly being the Genie in disguise, this starts out with a character, very obviously played by Will Smith, beginning to tell a couple of children the story of Aladdin, followed by him singing the song. Though I didn’t like the the twist of the Genie actually being the narrator being so obvious this time around, as a lot of other aspects were far less subtle as well, the anticipation and slight build up to the Arabian nights song was rather exciting, and the song was extended as they took us on a tour of Agrabah. However, as I was talking about previously, the first Cave of Wonders scene is sandwiched in-between this introduction scene. This is where things take a different turn. A turn that I’m not all too crazy for. This time around, the One Jump Ahead sequence shares a scene with Aladdin and Jasmine’s escape from the guards, with the scene where she rejects the suitor playing after she returns to the palace from Aladdin's home, without the escort of the guards this time. She’s never told that Aladdin is to be executed. There’s no reason why they had to switch around these scenes, as, in the previous movie, the rejection of the suitor and the talk with her father was a better introduction to Jasmine’s character. However I’m wondering if they did this in order to feature more interaction between the two. In this movie, after Jasmine has to return to the palace, she asks where her bracelet is, believing Aladdin stole it, when it was actually Abu. Aladdin sneaks into the palace to return it to her, after which he’s captured and that’s where taken to the cave of wonders this time. Though I understand why they made this change, the flow of it is a little questionable. Nevertheless, the escape scene was fun to watch, and Jasmine’s reluctance to jump across the rooftops felt more realistic than a sheltered girl just suddenly getting the hang of doing so. Thankfully, the talk between Jasmine and her father feels a lot more meaningful. Instead of simply talking about wanting to be free and marrying for love, she wants the best for her kingdom, and expresses her sorrow for how poorly some of the peasants were living. I really like this addition, as it gives more compassion and responsibility to Jasmine without ruining her character. I also like the mention of their interaction with other kingdoms, as it feels less like Agrabah is a post-apocalyptic kingdom in the middle of nowhere. The Cave of Wonders scene is pretty underwhelming. Instead of disguising as a grizzly prisoner, Jafar is very direct with Aladdin, playing on the fact that he too was a peasant. I question what the change for this was others than the film doing something different, or perhaps it was the fact that the actor for Jafar wasn’t versatile enough to do that. The cave itself doesn’t come from a golden scarab, nor does it materialize from the sand, which is honestly greatly disappointing. The journey through the cave, the attempted escape, as well as Jafar’s immense devastation at the loss of the lamp, were all very mediocre. Thankfully, things pick up from here, quite obviously, with the Genie. His introduction, I’ll admit, is a little jarring at first, because this is where we really start to see the computer graphics at work, but regardless, it was well acted, lots of fun, and it’s clear to see that the crew did the best with the graphics they had. One little nitpick that I like that they fixed here is that they removed the scene of him attempting to kiss that exotic dancer, because, after he hit it off with Jasmine so well, I’m not sure why he’d do that if he’d want her as much as to make himself a prince entirely for her. After this, the humor really starts showing in the scene where Aladdin and the Genie get to know one another, and Aladdin reveals his feelings for Jasmine. What they don’t do with cartoonish gags, they make up for with witty dialogue and the actors’ execution of it. Then, comes perhaps my absolute favorite part, the Prince Ali scene. Again, they’re not able to pull off as many cartoon gags, so they compensate by spilling out as much color and character as a Disneyland parade. This scene is without a doubt on par with the original. The parade is followed by a scene that wasn’t in the movie, but I’m glad they added in. In this movie, the Genie is now disguised as a human accompanying him as what I’m assuming is his advisor as he aids in introducing Aladdin to Jasmine. Aladdin’s introduction is, to say the least, awkward. Hilariously awkward. Honestly, my insides were hurting from laughter. I suppose this is a good time to mention the addition of a new character, Dahlia, Jasmine’s handmaiden. She serves to ease a bit of the tension, as well as be a good friend of Jasmine’s, because honestly, one gripe I have with a lot of the original Disney movies is the lead characters’ saddening lack of companions. She accompanies Jasmine to a party, as the Genie accompanies Aladdin. With Aladdin and Jasmine wanting to be with each other, and their friends of the same gender as Aladdin and Jasmine respectively accompanying them, you can probably pick up on a romantic subplot by now. Anyway, the Genie’s attempt to make Aladdin look cool in front of the princess only turns her away more, so the Genie creates a diversion, wooing the handmaiden, so Aladdin can sneak in and give way to the A Whole New World sequence. I thought I’d be disappointed, but considering they couldn’t make it shine with the beauty of 2D animation, I thought it was rather beautiful for what they had to work with. Admittedly, I do miss them swirling through the clouds and interacting with birds and horses. They still keep in the kiss after this number, only it’s not really as passionate as the original one, which I suppose I understand, since it is their first kiss. Instead of being captured right afterwards, Aladdin is given time to reflect on his experience alongside the Genie. I like what they did here, jumping back and forth between Aladdin’s conversation with the Genie, and Jasmine’s conversation with Dahlia. Jafar and his guards waste no time capturing Aladdin the next morning, where he personally pushes him into the water, in a scene which is very awkwardly slowed down. I’m not sure how I feel about this change, but it adds an actual threat to this bland adaption of Jafar, who I’ll rip into after I’m done covering the story. The Genie saves Aladdin as usual, though the scene where Aladdin thanks him is actually a little more emotional here. You can really see where they’re starting to befriend one another. Aladdin later rats out Jafar as usual, only this time, Jafar escapes AFTER he’s sent to prison, which was a very underwhelming scene for an already underwhelming villain. It’s Iago who aids him in his escape this time, because I guess you had to make the bird useful? Though, he could have made him a useful character by involving him in the stealing of the lamp like the original, which I’ll get to. Meanwhile, Aladdin and the Genie begin having a dispute like they did in the ‘92 version. Instead of mentioning his wish to be free, the Genie is more concerned with Aladdin not telling the truth, being seduced by riches and power, like every other master he’s had. Again, it gets a little more emotional with the line “I’ve never called a master ‘friend’”. Conflicted, Aladdin goes back to his original home, and sings yet another reprise of One Jump Ahead. I do like the emotion and glimpse into an inner battle within Aladdin, but I don’t exactly see why he had to go all the way back to his home to do so. Jafar steals the lamp from him while he’s wandering through the streets instead of Iago sneaking it from him, which there really wasn’t any reason why they had to change that. Now that Jafar has the lamp, he wishes to be sultan. His rise to power is unfortunately much less climactic, removing the Prince Ali reprise alltogether. I suppose you could say that it’s replaced by new song “Speechless”, sung by Jasmine. As beautiful as it is, I’m not sure it has much  a place, as she appears to be singing this in her imagination. This pep talk she gives to herself empowers her to speak against Jafar and plead that her father’s most trusted guard side with her instead of Jafar. I like this bold moment for Jasmine, but the addition of the guard’s backstory feels like they’re trying to develop a character at the last minute. This doesn’t stop Jafar, as he wishes, finally, to become the most powerful sorcerer, casting Aladdin to the arctic. Instead of Jafar keeping Jasmine as a slave, he begins to marry her, which I’m honestly glad they changed, as marriage is slightly less uncomfortable of an outcome to watch than marriage to a character who’s supposed to be under 18. Aladdin saves her very directly instead of sneaking around, and I’m assuming the fight with a giant sorcerer snake is replaced by a mad scramble to keep the lamp from a giant Iago. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed at the lack of giant limbless reptiles. When Aladdin tricks Jafar into wishing to becoming a genie, the Genie seems to be in on the idea instead of oblivious like the original. I think the Genie believing that that was a bad idea in the ‘92 version added to the suspense though. Things end happily, but also pretty differently. Firstly, instead of Aladdin wishing to abolish the marriage law, he wishes the Genie free, which turns him HUMAN! I’m not exactly sure why they did this, but it doesn’t really bum me out, as it probably rules out the possibility of a sequel, thank goodness. He and Dahlia immediately decide to be together. Instead of the Sultan getting rid of the marriage law, he simply gives the throne to Jasmine so she can abolish it herself. I really like this change for Jasmine, after having expressed her desire to help her kingdom. One might argue that it’s historically inaccurate, but it’s a fairytale ending along the lines of a peasant marrying royalty. Aladdin is prepared to return home when Jasmine catches up to him, where they express their love for one another and deliver...another bland kiss. Eh, I guess that’s a small nitpick. After the ending, the credits play out on top of a scene where the cast starts dancing to an instrumental of Friend Like Me. Say what you will about this trope, but I love when the characters start dancing at the end of a movie. It does seem like a lazy way to end a movie, but when done right, it’s a lot of fun. And, all things considered, this movie was just that. CHARACTERS: Aladdin: If anything was perfectly recreated from the original, it was the casting of the actor for Aladdin. Not only did he look the part, but he sounded like both the talking and speaking voice from the original. He acted more unsure and awkward in his newfound Prince Ali role, but it felt more endearing and believable than him getting used to it right away. Abu: Not much changed from this version, though I find him cuter, as he looks like a real monkey. But get this, both he and the Cave of wonders keep their original voice actor, being Frank Welker! Jasmine: In this day and age, the media has been more focused on creating stronger female protagonists. Sometimes they come out genuinely lovable and responsible, like Moana, but their execution can be easily botched by making them come off as entitled and uncaring, valuing only outward strength. I was incredibly pleased at this version of Jasmine, because she rose to strength and confidence through the kindness of her heart. She was more believable too, being a little more sweet and naive, as I'd believe from a girl who's spent her whole life in a castle. Her romance with Aladdin felt more like innocent young love, which I rather enjoyed. However, it sometimes felt like she was stealing the spotlight from Aladdin just a bit. The movie still is about him, after all. The Genie: I'll admit, when I first heard Will Smith was being cast as the Genie, I thought this movie was instantly doomed. Boy was I wrong. I actually never cared for Will Smith or any of his roles in the past, but for me he actually succeeded in what Robin Williams did in driving the movie forward. Granted(pardon the pun) nobody will ever really match up with the rapid-fire entertainment of Williams' Genie, but I'm glad that Smith did his own thing. He and Aladdin had great chemistry, bouncing off one another, making for hilarious moments, and I was surprised to find that he was also able to deliver an emotional performance where it was needed. Dahlia: I was always rather sad at the fact that Jasmine had, perhaps less people to talk to than Belle did in her little town, so I'm glad they added in at least a handmaiden to keep her company. A character like this can easily be done wrong(take Darcy in Thor: the Dark World), but she turned out pretty hilarious. Her romance with the Genie might have felt shoehorned in if it wasn't as adorably executed as it was. It might have been a little fast for the both of them, but to me that just means that they were careful not to let it overpower the main romance. Jafar: Oh boy. If there's any main complaint I have with the movie, anything that would ultimately banish it from having any competition with the original, it would be this Flat-Sprite-Emmet Brickowski-bland "portrayal" of Jafar. Disney clearly had their priorities set on casting someone attractive, like they did for Maleficent, rather than someone who actually fit the part. He delivered everything with the finesse of a paper towel, and when he showed his more insane side, it simply looked like the domestic, meddling next door neighbor kind of insane. Okay, I'm sure many people will be hating on the actor for this, but honestly I'm not sure it's his fault. He'd probably be much better suited for a different kind of role. His lackluster performance only has me questioning Disney's creative decisions. Iago: Though I missed the grumpy, abrasive Iago, this new one, portrayed by Disney's new golden boy, Alan Tudyk, was amusing in his own way, with more subtle, in-the-background kind of humor. With so much going on already, a more vocal Iago might have complicated things. The Sultan: In all honesty, I like this new sultan drastically better than the old one. The '92 version being an easily manipulated childish little man got tiresome after a while, as well as him seeming aloof to what Jasmine really needed. In this movie, he's still bound by tradition but now with an immense love for his daughter, and it shows. I'm also happy with the mention of their late mother. It was a kind acknowledgement without looking overly sentimental in the way that previous remakes did. SONGS: Since I already talked about their sequences, I'm mostly going to be talking about the songs themselves. I'd just like to say right off the bat that Alan Menken once again outdid his past self with this score. I'm in love with the more ethnic feel of this score, as it makes the tale much more immersive. Arabian Nights: Though I wonder why they changed the lyrics as much as they did, this version of the song is actually better than the original. It's longer, more intense, and Will Smith performs this, along with his other songs, better than I thought he would. One Jump Ahead: From the beginning, it started out to sound like it'd be a more ethnic, yet as energized as the first, but something about this version didn't hit it off with me. This song in particular felt like they were all too aware of the fact that they were recreating a popular Disney song in a movie that wasn't a cartoon. One Jump Ahead(Reprise): Nothing much really changes from this one, but now you really get to hear how well Mena Massoud sounds as Aladdin. Friend Like Me: Considering that this is the first impression we get of the remake of the Disney character with one of the biggest pair of shoes to fill, they did pretty spectacular. Again, I'm very surprised with how much character Will Smith gave to this performance with his own flavor. That being said, it sounds like a great, classic song with a modern spin. Prince Ali: The scene was spectacular. The song was spectacular. I can't rave about this one enough. It's everything I could ask for in a remake of my favorite song in Aladdin. It has a modern spin, with newly added Middle-Eastern instruments, with as much energy as the original version. When prevented with both versions of the song, I'd honestly have a hard time deciding which one I'd listen to first! A Whole New World: I have mixed feelings about this one. It does have a beautiful build up, the singers carry it beautifully, but it doesn't flow as well to me as the original. One Jump Ahead(Reprise 2): Even though I still question the destination of this scene, I do really like this addition. Speechless(parts 1 and 2): I suppose I was always sort of disappointed that Jasmine was one of the only princesses without her own individual song, despite the movie not starring her. It's a beautiful song with a beautiful melody, but after a while I feel like Naomi Scott is overselling it a tad. I kind of like the album version better, where it's a key lower. But that's not the first time I liked it when a Disney princess power ballad was taken a key lower. MISC ASPECTS I'd mostly like to talk about the execution here. The original far outweighs the remake here. It's not just that it's hard to stand up against Disney 2D animation of the 90s, but the editing of this movie was just bad. And by bad I mean overkill. The Friend Like Me scene was particularly off-putting for me, as the realistic, dramatic lighting only made it look like the mood was set for a horror movie. Aladdin falling into the ocean is inexplicably slowed down. The scene where Jafar steals the lamp from Aladdin looks more like a perfume commercial. Sometimes it felt like a character couldn't drop a handkerchief without getting a 360-degree spin of the camera, and other times it felt like an over-dramatic commercial for a Disney park.....oh. The final aspect I'd like to get past really quick is the humor. As I mentioned before, a live action movie isn't able to carry on the same kind of humor as a cartoon, so they substituted that for more witty dialogue and clever acting, and honestly, I like it just as much as the cartoonish humor of the first. With all things said and done, and certainly, after all this praise, I bet you're wondering which one I liked better. It's a bit of a toss up actually. On terms of overall execution, theatrics, and especially villain, I prefer the original, but on terms of story and character development(excluding Jafar), I think I actually prefer this one. This probably means that the original is still better, as I expected, but this movie was a refreshing surprise of a Disney remake. I honestly didn't expect to have so much fun that my face would hurt from smiling. As fun as it is though, if asked if these remakes would never happen in favor of more original ideas, I'd still have to take that deal. Still, that doesn't take away that I had quite an enjoyable experience at the movies.

[tamlins-stories-and-poems]

Ok so this is a fic I’ve been writing for a while and is currently over like 60k words I think, but I’m only posting about 2k here as a sort of teaser. Basically this came about because @fire-fira and I were chatting about Bart and La'gaan and I ended wondering about if La'gaan had known and or helped raise Bart in the lost future. Lots of angst and fluff mixed together in this. If I get more than ten notes from people other than Fira and myself(preferably including reblogs) then I’ll post the next few sections! :D

Edit: Part two is [Here] if I did this right!

Uncle Laga was said to be the last Atlantean. He never joined the battles, he just watched the children of the rebellion. He loved kids, despite his gruff manner, they reminded him of his short time on some team. Some of the older folks called him Kraken, with awe in their voice. He’d snort in contempt when then did, and glance down at his peg leg before saying “Not anymore.” When Don and Melonie had their first two kids, Laga watched them too. When they had their second set of twins, Laga withheld a scream. He knew the face of the boy, and when the boy was named Bartholomew Allen the Second, Laga nicknamed him Bart. He started telling stories of the time before the Reach when Bart and his twin were old enough to understand them, a lot of them focusing on his friend Jaime. Bart somehow ended up in Laga’s lap a lot, or huddled against his side as one of the few younger kids got his favorite spot. When the kids hit twelve, they’d stop spending their time in uncle Laga’s care and move into mission training instead. Bart didn’t want that to happen. He looked up to his parents a lot, but they were never really around. Because they were both speedsters, they ran all over the planet to find people and resources, along with fighting the Bugs. He hated the Bugs. The Bugs destroyed Uncle Laga’s life, and Uncle Laga’s homes. They’d destroyed the Watch Tower. They’d poisoned Atlantis. They’d smashed the zeta ports. Now all Laga had left was hope that he’d find the second Kid Flash, who apparently went back in time. “You know, Bart,” Laga said one night, when the Allen kids were all huddled around him again, due to both their parents being on a mission, like most of the time. “If Kid hadn’t thought that killing the old host was the way to go, we might’ve had a Beetle on our side.” “What do you mean?” The five year old Bart asked. “The old Blue Beetle, he was my friend. We’d call him Blue, and tease him when he talked to his Scarab, and he saved my life a few times. But then Kid explained to the League how Blue was going to betray us, how he knew it would happen soon, and begged for permission to keep that from happening, in any way possible. We thought that he meant just sticking as close to Blue as possible. We agreed to let him. Blue’s body was found in Mongolia about a month later, but a new, giant Beetle had long since shown up and B-Kid blamed himself. He’d really liked Blue.” Laga explained. “Wait, but, if he killed Blue Beetle, why is there still Blue Beetle?” Bart asked, quietly. “Because the Bugs had technology that they were able to reset when our Blue died. Kid was convinced that they used it to control our Blue. Neptune’s beard, I miss those two.” Laga sighed. “Never you mind, Bart. The past is the past, and we don’t have the time travel to change it.” “But if we had time travel, you could go back and see your friends again, right, uncle Laga?” Bart guessed, putting his tiny elbows on La’gaan’s chest and resting his face on his hands. “I’m too old to save the world. I’m fifty, Bart. Even before the Bugs, even with people making sure I had healthy bones and joints that didn’t scrape every time they bent, I’d still be starting to push it with heroing.” Laga murmured. “They’ve been here almost forty years.” “So, who would you send to save your friends for you?” Bart asked. “Maybe one of you four. Would you like to go to the past?” Laga teased. “Is there food in the past?” Bart sighed longingly at the thought of food. “Yes, lots of it. Now go to sleep.” Laga said. He started singing in the Atlantean language, “Sweet water child…” he murmured, rubbing Bart’s back. Bart sang along to the lullaby until he fell asleep. Laga stared at the roof of the cave, as adults sobbed and screamed in the distance. The base wasn’t under attack again, but everyone here was traumatized. “Stay safe, my little electric eel. Don’t let your fear hurt our friends when you go.” He sighed, hoping that this time Bart would get to know Jaime well enough to try to save him from the Reach. “Please break this ekstassa time loop. Please save the world.” Laga had long since figured out that they had to be in a time loop of a sort. Future boy comes back to the past to stop what caused him to come back? Please, anyone who’d read any science fiction could tell you that that alone would be a time loop, and Kaldur had sent him a lot of science fiction when they were kids. Science fiction he and Lori and Bubbler would stay up far too late to finish reading on the computer they’d all built together. Laga sighed again, so much knowledge had been lost. Even if they could get rid of the Reach, nothing would be the same. Were his people truly lost? Had they really been poisoned or did they just lock themselves away like the amazons had? He hadn’t seen Cassie or Donna since the fall. Diana would look younger than him now. He wondered if she missed the Team as much as he did, or had she even made it back to earth after the incident with the trial? He’d seen Batman, but the head the Reach had claimed was Batman’s head was in truth Nightwing’s. Jason, the scum who had died, then never told anyone that he’d come back to life, had taken up the cowl after that. Now he’d passed it on the the Demon’s son, Damian, who had passed it off yet again to someone younger. Laga sighed again and closed his eyes. It was never good to think of the past.

.*.°.*.°.*.

Laga smiled as the children ran and played in the sun. “Why don’t you four ever join them?” He asked the Allen four. “I’m too hungry.” Yajri said, pitifully. “Same.” Her twin, Kuri agreed. “I have to save my energy. I use it so quickly.” Bart muttered, drawing his bony legs close to his stomach. Bart’s twin, Belle, said nothing. Her stomached was slightly bloated from hunger, but the rest of her was pure bones, as if her muscle had been eaten away in hopes of energy. She never spoke much anymore. She just stared, eyes hollow and longing, at where the other kids played. The Allen’s weren’t the thinnest kids. They got a lot of food, due to being speedsters, and being the children of the children of the two most important members of the rebellion. But Laga remembered how the speedsters had needed to eat before the fall, and sighed, supposing the kids were right not to play with the others. “Just be sure to talk with them when you can.” Laga said. “Social skills can save your life, and you can’t get proper social skills if you don’t hang out with people your age.” “Okay.” Yajri agreed for all of them. They wouldn’t. Everyone knew they wouldn’t. They’d sit together at story time, and be silent supports when Laga was needed, but they never talked to the other children alone.

.*.°.*.°.*.

The base had been attacked again. Laga had gotten most of the kids out. Belle had looked at them solemnly as he tried to get the kids out, and said, actually said, “I’ll die soon anyways. I need too much food. Give my portion to the others.” Then she ran off to the fight. Laga managed to get all the kids somewhere where they’d be safe and hidden, and convinced one of their attackers that they were hidden in a different spot, before the attack was eventually called off due to too many casualties on the Bugs’ side. Laga picked up the tooth that had been punched out of his mouth, and a scrap of cloth he’d ripped off a Bugslave’s shirt, and made it into a necklace, before digging the kids out of their hiding spot. Wally’s daughter had dropped by recently, and put her son, Raiku, into Laga’s care. She also dropped off a lot of nutrient tablets that had had the trackers and meta detectors removed. Laga wasn’t sure he believed that, especially after the last attack, but uncovering kids who didn’t look like they were about to starve to death was worth it, in his opinion. Even if they weren’t nearly enough for the speedsters. Even five a day hadn’t been enough to make Belle feel better. Laga knew she would’ve been the fastest if she’d had the energy to run. “Everyone okay?” He asked. Fred, named for peace by his Norwegian mother, took the tooth neckless and put it on Bart’s neck. “Yes, uncle Laga.” He said. “We’re fine. This time.” “Where’s Belle?” Bart asked. “Why can’t I feel her using the thing?” Laga winced. “She went to meet your good grandpa.” He said. “She’s dead?” Kuri shrieked, she was almost old enough to go into training now, Laga would have to see the back of her soon. “I’m sorry.” Laga said, and put a hand on her shoulder. She was slow for a Speedster, slower even than Wally, by a long shot, but she was still one of them. “She was too fast for me to stop. She said to give you all what would’ve been her share.” Bart hung his head. It was the first death that was real to him. Even his mother’s death hadn’t been fully real to him, since she was gone so often anyways. His dad had shown all the young speedsters some moves after that, but he still was rarely around. Almost like he couldn’t bare to se them. Laga picked him up, cradling the boy. “Let’s get back to the adults.” He said. The group trudged back to the wrecked base. They’d almost had buildings before this last attack. Yajri carried Raiku, who was only three, and cried with her twin. “Uncle Laga!” A twenty year old, the newest Longshadow, called. “They destroyed the food stores, bring the kids over and have them all eat something before everything spoils!” The non-Speedster kids rushed past him, everyone was always excited at the chance of more food. “Aren’t you hungry?” Laga asked the speedsters. “Belle’s dead. It’s not right to eat without her.” Yajri said. “She sacrificed herself so you all could live. Go eat.” Laga frowned. “If you don’t eat willingly, I will force feed you.” The three he wasn’t carrying trudged to the food, and Laga carried Bart over. Bart couldn’t stop crying. He was able to eat around his tears, but only food that was placed in his hands, and he cried harder whenever Laga tried to set him down. Laga started to sing a song he learned in the conservatory, “Stay strong, my sea child, stay strong, and fight. Stay strong, my sea child, and live through the night. Stay strong, my sea child, stay strong today, stay strong my sea child, ‘till the pain goes away. Stand strong, little sea child, stand strong for me, stand strong, little sea child, and kind please ye be. Stay strong, my sea child, though all seems but wrong, stay strong, my sea child, don’t pass along.” Bart had stopped crying, and was staring at Laga with wide, confused eyes. He hadn’t heard this lullaby since the night his mother died, when Laga had sung it to Don. Others, who had lost more, had heard it more often, and many people had begun to join in. “Yes, stay strong, my sea child, don’t let pain scar, stay strong my sea child, I know it be hard. Stay strong, my sea child, know I love you still, stay strong my sea child, don’t let pain kill. Stay strong, my sea child. Stand strong, little sea child. Stay strong, my sea child, and always come home to me.” The whole rebellion was singing by the last line, a few people had started crying, and many were hugging each other. “The death song?” Don asked, having just arrived back. “Who- how many this time?” “Flash.” Laga looked up at the man, guilt pulling his face taught. “I’m sorry. I tried to convince her to stay with the others. She was sure it was the only way.” “She took out nearly fifty Bugs!” Someone said. “She shredded them from the inside before they knew what was happening! We only lost three of ours today!” Don’s gaze swept over the kids, as his eyebrows drew together and his eyes grew wide. “No.” He said. “Belle? My baby Belle?” “She would’ve starved within the week if she hadn’t.” Laga said. “She wanted her death to mean something.” He gave another piece of food to Bart. “I tried to stop her, but she buzzed out from under my hand. I couldn’t think of her above the all of the others.” “How did she die?” Don asked, turning to the larger group. “She tackled me out of the way of Blue Beetle’s plasma cannon.” A woman said. Red Robin’s daughter, six months pregnant, a meta with healing powers. “I tried to save her, but my powers have been on the fritz since I conceived. All I could do was take away her pain.” “Did she say anything?” Don asked. “To apologize to Bart for her. To tell him she wished him life, and that she hoped he and their sisters would be well. Sweet water children.” Bart started crying again, and flung his arms around Laga’s neck. Laga held him close, rubbing his back soothingly. “Don.” Laga said. “The food stores have been destroyed. Eat, rebuild, and find us more food, please.” “My daughter’s dying words said nothing about me?” Don looked heartbroken. “Don, please don’t do anything too rash.” Jason said, frowning at the younger man. “Don’t leave us just because a child who saw you more as an idol than a family member didn’t mention you.” “You never did have any tact, Jason.” Laga sighed. “Don, sit down, now.” One good thing about raising the children in the rebellion, nearly everyone listened to everything Laga said, half on instinct. Several people sat, including Don. “Flash, listen to me, you are going to eat, you are going to help us rebuild, and you are going to find us more food, because you still have three children and a responsibility to the rebellion. And you are not going to do any of that recklessly, because no one here can afford to lose you. Do you understand?” Laga demanded. “Yes, uncle Laga.” Don looked down, tears dripping down his ash stained face. “She was my youngest.” “I know.” Laga put a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder. “Live for her. She wanted us all to be able to live. Now, eat.”

To be continued…

[paul-tudor-owen]

The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen - New York book launch

Lyndsey Rodrigues interviews Paul Tudor Owen at the Clover Club

On 12 August 2019, I launched my novel The Weighing of the Heart in the US with a party at the Clover Club in Brooklyn. It was fantastic to see so many old friends from my time in New York. 

TV host and writer Lyndsey Rodrigues interviewed me. You can watch a video of the launch below, and I’ve also posted a rough transcript.

Full details on the book from Obliterati Press here - or buy a copy from:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Foyles 

Waterstones 

The Weighing of the Heart is set in New York - but the timeframe is before you moved here in 2015. How did you go about researching a New York that ‘pre-dates’ you, so to speak? The book starts in 2011, right? What made you decide to set the book in that timeframe?

So for those who don't know, The Weighing of the Heart is about a young British guy living in New York called Nick Braeburn, who moves in with a couple of rich older ladies as a lodger in their opulent apartment on the Upper East Side. He gets together with their other tenant, Lydia, who lives next door, and the two of them steal a priceless work of art from the study wall.

The work of art that Nick and Lydia take is an Ancient Egyptian scene, and as the stress of the theft starts to work on them, the imagery of Ancient Egypt, the imagery in the painting, starts to come to life around them, and it’s intended to be unclear whether this is something that is really happening or whether it’s all in Nick’s head.

And as most of you know my wife Eleanor and I have just come back from living in New York, where I was working for the Guardian newspaper.

But actually I started this book a long time before we moved here.

I’d had this longtime fantasy about living in New York, and in some ways the book was a way of living out that fantasy in fiction. I’d loved New York since I was a teenager reading The Great Gatsby and watching Mean Streets, and I’d first visited when I was 20 and studying at the University of Pittsburgh.

It just so happened that towards the end of writing the book I got the chance to move over here and life imitated art.

Suddenly I was walking the same streets my characters walked and especially in the first few weeks I did sometimes wonder if this was really happening. I don’t know if anyone remembers the 90s British sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf, but there’s one episode where the main character, Lister, gets hooked on this computer game called Better Than Life, it’s like a fully immersive VR game, almost like The Matrix, and in the game he thinks he is living in Bedford Falls, the town from It’s a Wonderful Life, and he is loving it, he doesn’t want to leave – it’s better than life.

And sometimes when I first got here I got a bit worried that I was in Better Than Life, that I’d wake up and I’d be still a teenager in Manchester reading The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby, fantasising about living in New York.

In terms of depicting the city before I got here, I visited New York many times after first coming here in 2000, but there were definitely things that I got wrong.

I think generally before I moved here to me New York was Manhattan. And the earlier drafts of the book don't really mention the other boroughs at all.

And one thing I realised straight away when I moved here was that the cultural centre of gravity had quite a while ago moved to Brooklyn.

So the main location in the book is on the Upper East Side, and I didn’t change that. I thought that was still right for an apartment owned by a couple of wealthy sisters.

But a lot of the other Manhattan locations – like people’s apartments, artists’ studios, art galleries – in a lot of cases I just realised that the characters in the book wouldn’t be able to afford those places, so I moved them further afield, often across the river to Brooklyn.

Another example was the Peacocks’ second home. In the book the Peacocks, the elderly ladies Nick moves in with, have another home on Long Island that they live in most of the week. For ages I had it that this place was in Montauk, but eventually we actually went to visit Montauk, and it just didn’t seem suitable… As we were driving in, I had this old guide book that was about 10 or 15 years old, and Eleanor was reading it as we drove in, and it said something like: ‘Montauk is a quiet, deserted spot that receives few visitors,’ and we were just driving past all these 40-storey hotels and golf resorts, and it just didn’t feel right at all. On top of all the tourism, it was just too weatherbeaten and remote for the Peacocks.

And then some friends of ours bought a place in Water Mill and I looked the town up and it just seemed like a great fit for the Peacocks, great location, perfect distance from Manhattan, so I moved them from Montauk to Water Mill, and they seemed much happier there immediately.

One of the first lines of the book is: ‘Sooner or later, everybody comes to New York...’ How important are the themes of reinvention and redemption to the book? Did reinvention play a part for you in your decision to move to NYC?

I like that first line of Nick’s narration because at first glance it sounds like he’s saying something reasonable and unremarkable but actually it sort of establishes his solipsism and self-obsession early on. Nick is obsessed with reinventing himself and using New York as a vehicle for that and he assumes everybody else feels the same way.

I’ve moved to the US twice – the first time was when I was 20 and I came over to study for a year at the University of Pittsburgh. Moving over then, at that age, I definitely felt like this was a place where I could reinvent myself. That was a big part of the attraction. And I met people who wanted to be writers and actors and musicians and I definitely felt that instead of those things seeming somewhat out of reach, as they had back home in the UK, these were actually real and achievable goals here, and I found that really inspiring. It had a big impact on me. And a lot of those people did go on to achieve those goals.

And when I moved back to the US in 2015 I definitely felt excited again about this prospect of reinventing myself. But I think there’s a real difference doing that at age 35 to doing it at age 20. At age 20 you’re still something of a blank slate. At 35, to a certain extent you’ve reached a point where you’re more confident about who you want to be and how you want other people to see you. And over a process of years you’ve reached a point where you know how to project that – to a certain extent anyway. And I think something I underestimated was that it’s quite a tough job to start from scratch with all new people in a new country and start to try to create that impression again.

With Nick, in the book, this is an example of me taking one of my own characteristics and really taking it to an extreme with Nick. Nick has a much more extreme attitude towards reinvention than me. He’s taken it to an unhealthy degree. He hasn’t just left England – he’s completely abandoned it and never goes back. He says at one point it’s hard to imagine England even still exists. He never speaks to his parents. And when he gets the chance to live in this opulent apartment on the Upper East Side and gets together with Lydia, he very quickly abandons his old life in Greenpoint, and the friends that he mentions in the first couple of chapters gradually drop out of the story. He takes it to a real extreme.

Let's talk about the Ancient Egyptian theme that runs through the book and particularly the actual ceremony of the weighing of the heart – what drew you to this as the perfect anchoring point of the book?

So, yeah, the other big theme of the book, as well as New York, is Ancient Egypt. The work of art that Nick and Lydia steal is an Ancient Egyptian scene, and this imagery comes to life around them.

But originally the artwork wasn’t an Ancient Egyptian scene at all; it was a 1960s pop art work. But not long after I had started the book I went to a fascinating exhibition at the British Museum called The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, which told the story of what the Ancient Egyptians believed happened to you when you die.

As I learnt from the exhibition, the Ancient Egyptians believed in a ceremony called ‘the weighing of the heart’, something in some ways similar to the Christian idea of St Peter standing at the gates of Heaven, deciding whether or not you have lived a worthy enough life to come in.

In the Ancient Egyptian version, Anubis, the god of embalming, presides over a set of weighing scales, with the heart of the dead person on one side and a feather on the other.

If the heart is in balance with the feather, you get to go to Heaven, which they called the Field of Reeds.

But if your heart is heavier than the feather, you get eaten by an appalling monster called the Devourer, who has the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion, and the back legs of a hippopotamus – three of the most dangerous creatures that Ancient Egyptians could encounter.

To the Ancient Egyptians, the heart, rather than the brain, was the home of a person’s mind and conscience and memory, which was why it was the heart they were weighing.

The Ancient Egyptian ceremony of the weighing of the heart

And, intriguingly, one thing they were afraid of was that the heart would actually try to rat you out during this ceremony – sometimes the heart would speak up and reveal your worst sins to Anubis at this crucial moment. You could prevent this from happening by keeping hold of a little ‘heart scarab’.

And I suddenly realised that the painting Nick and Lydia should steal should be an image of this ceremony, the weighing of the heart. It was so fitting, because the book is essentially about guilt and innocence; it’s about you weighing up as a reader how much you trust Nick as a narrator, and it’s about Nick himself and the people around him weighing up how much they trust him, what they think of him, what they know about him and his character. And without spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t read it, I hope that I found a way to knit all that imagery into the book effectively, especially towards the end.

Once I’d settled on this, there was another strange example of life imitating art.

At one point in The Weighing of the Heart Nick recalls a school trip to the British Museum, and it is suggested he might have stolen one of these heart scarabs that could protect you during the ceremony. I had written this scene but I wanted to get the details right, so I looked through the British Museum’s collection of scarabs on their website and identified the one that best fit the bill, and then I went down to the museum to take a look at it in person.

But when I got there and found the case where this scarab was supposed to be, the space for this scarab was empty. Instead of the object itself there was just a note on the wall that said: ‘Heart scarab (lost).’ It was gone.

Paul Tudor Owen reading from his novel The Weighing of the Heart

There is a reference in the book about 9/11 and that being what Nick can pinpoint as transition from a Brit to a New Yorker – what was that moment for you?

I think one of the things London and New York have in common is that you can become a Londoner and you can become a New Yorker. I’m from Manchester – I don’t think you can really become a Mancunian. My parents have lived there for over 40 years but neither of them were born there and I don’t think they would say they were Mancunians.

But I think London and New York, because they are these melting-pot cities that people come to from all over the world, and all over the country, I feel like you can become a Londoner and you can become a New Yorker.

When I moved to London in the early 2000s I immediately felt very much at home there and excited by it for some of the same reasons I love New York – this mix of ambitious, exciting creative people, the feeling that you are right at the heart of things. And I felt like I quickly became a Londoner as well as a Mancunian. I was both.

And I thought when we moved to New York that might happen here – that I might start to become a New Yorker. But it didn’t really happen. And I was thinking about that and about my obsession with New York and wanting to write about it and depict it. And maybe what I want from New York is really to be an observer of it, rather than to truly become part of it.  

I want to touch on a particular paragraph from the book that really spoke to me. Nick says: ‘If I carried on reaching out to this city, if I carried on giving so much, eventually it would give something back. But it never did.’ How much of your own feelings about NYC are reflected in these words?

I think I wrote that line before moving here, but it does ring true. I had an amazing few years here personally and professionally but I definitely felt like I didn’t break America, you know. You can count the number of people who do on one hand – it’s like the Beatles, One Direction and James Corden. Ed Sheeran.

I think moving to New York and living and working in New York for three years – from a British perspective that’s a very interesting thing to do. But from a New York perspective, it’s like: so what, who cares, big whoop. So you came to New York – who didn’t?

One of the first things that happened when I moved here was a building actually blew up on my block – it was completely levelled. I could see the fire burning from my fire escape. It was like: “Welcome to New York.”

There’s an artwork I really like by Raymond Pettibon that shows a silhouette of the New York skyline, and underneath it Pettibon has written: “Gotham City – the city that does not care.” There’s something in that. It’s a tough city. But that’s why we like it. It’s as hard as nails.

Tell us about the process of getting this book published. How many places did you pitch it to before Obliterati picked it up?

I had been writing fiction and trying to get published since my early 20s, when I managed to get an agent and finished a draft of a novel. He was very encouraging and sent it out to publishers, but none of them took it up.  

So I kept on writing and working on ideas, and eventually around 2011 I started what was going to eventually become The Weighing of the Heart.

I think once I’d written the first couple of chapters I quickly felt quite confident that what I was writing now was much better than anything that I’d written before. I was particularly pleased with the set-up, which I thought was quite gripping immediately.

So I went back to my agent with what I’d written, but by this time, because of the unenthusiastic previous responses, he had more or less lost interest.

So I was faced with a choice. You’re usually told as an author – especially when you’re starting out – that you will never get anywhere without an agent, and that if you have managed to get one you should do everything you can to keep them.

I’m sure there is a lot of truth in that. But I felt that if I stayed with this agent, that was not going to result in this book getting published.

So I amicably cut ties with him and set about trying to find someone new. And luckily that turned out to be a much easier process than it had been in my early 20s. In those days agents had all expected manuscripts to be delivered by post, and I remember every weekend printing out page after page of my chapters, stapling these bundles together, taking them to the post office... It was so time-consuming.

But by the time I came to find a new agent, email had vastly simplified the whole system. I finished work one day and went to a secluded spot in the office, and started working my way from A to Z through The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, which lists all the agents in the UK, sending out my first two chapters to as many agents as I could. I think that first night I got about half way through the alphabet, to about M, and by the next morning, or the morning after that, I was already getting some interest, which was really heartening.

And I eventually started working with a brilliant agent called Maggie Hanbury, who I’m still working with now, and I finished a workable draft of The Weighing of the Heart and we started sending it out.

But at that point I had a stroke of bad luck. Another book about art theft in New York – The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – had just come out, and it was a massive hit. It was everywhere. Again and again I heard from publishers: “We really like your book, but it’s just too similar to The Goldfinch.”

And shortly after that I moved to New York and started a new job and life had become extremely busy and complicated, and I don’t think I did any work on the novel or on trying to get it published for the next year or so.

When things started to settle down a bit, I went back to my agent, but she said she didn’t feel that she could send it out to anyone else because a number of publishers had turned it down already.

So again I was faced with a choice. I could just leave the manuscript in my metaphorical desk drawer and get on with something else. But I knew that it was a good book and it felt frustrating that it was sitting there, unread.

So I decided to send it out to small publishers myself. And again I went through The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and the US equivalent, Writers’ Market, starting at A and sending out the first two chapters to as many publishers as I could.

And the response was very positive. The received wisdom in the literary world is that publishers will only talk to you if you’ve gone through an agent, and that may well be true for the big publishing houses. But many smaller presses seemed happy to consider my book without an agent being involved.

I had a really productive discussion with Obliterati Press, a small publishing house in the UK set up by two writers whose whole purpose is to get books out there that they feel enthusiastic about, which otherwise might not see the light of day. They agreed to publish it, and it was a great process working with them.

My publication date ended up roughly coinciding with our return to London from New York – and it felt very exciting to be coming back to the UK ready to achieve this ambition that I had been working towards for so long.

What is your process for overcoming the dreaded writers’ block?

I think because of my journalistic background I find that if I get stuck on a plot point or a bit of the writing I’m not sure about, I am usually able to just get on with it and get from A to B in a pretty straightforward, basic fashion, and then go back and return to it and finesse it at a later date. I think that comes from working to constant deadlines and strict deadlines in my day job. I can sort of get on with it.

My usual way of working is, I usually work at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a glass of squash… This isn’t a Charles Bukowski-type situation where I’m downing shots of whiskey and then furiously tapping out whatever drunken visions come to me.

But I am very easily distracted and it’s not always great trying to work at home. I’ll go and water the plants or tidy something up or sort my books out… There’s a cliché about writers’ homes, that they are very tidy because the writer who claims that they were spending the day writing has actually been pottering about tidying everything up. I’m sure Charles Bukowski had that problem too.

When we were in New York I couldn’t really work at home because we only had a small apartment, so I needed to find somewhere else to go.

The Guardian’s office was in a WeWork co-working space, so that meant I could book rooms in any WeWork around the city and I used to do that on a Saturday or a Sunday and go and write there.  

And I would go to a different WeWork each time, which was great because I really got to explore the city and work in lots of different places, and it was brilliant to feel immersed in New York and to be seeing the sights of the city out of the window as I was working. I would try to find WeWorks that were as high up as possible with the best views. There was one office in Midtown that I really liked with a great view right down into the forest of skyscrapers. At another one in Tribeca, I came downstairs once at about 5pm and the other WeWorkers were having a rave on the ground floor, all like scooting around on hoverboards or those one-wheel motorised unicycles – you know what they’re like. Drinking beer from red plastic cups. And like a couple of guys would be asleep on the sofas, snoring. Whenever you go to a WeWork there’s always some guy asleep. He’s paying like $400 a month for his membership and he’s fast asleep.

The view from one of the WeWorks where Paul would go to write 

What are you planning to write next?

I’ve just finished the first draft of my next book but it still needs a lot of work. It’s set in New York again but it’s going to be set in the 1970s when New York was a sort of crime-plagued hellhole. And I think that that was the kind of New York that I first fell in love with through films like Taxi Driver and Mean Streets.

To me that was a time when New York felt so exciting but also so gritty and I really wanted to sort of conjure up that New York in my writing. It’s about a failing newspaper journalist in New York who starts looking into conspiracy theories about the moon landings and he starts meeting these conspiracy theorists who believe the moon landings were faked and as he gets drawn into deeper into the world he sort of finds himself against his better judgment starting to believe some of their paranoia.

[fire-fira]

I'm on the verge of a panic attack and I know you have a way with stories, if you could would you please write either DamiColin or BluePulse??

I’ve got you fam. Breathe slowly, try to listen to something that helps you calm down, and I hope this helps.EDIT: Tumblr is being really freaking weird and posted this before I was ready to. Consider this a brief preview before I get the complete thing posted.And done. Sorry it took me longer than intended to complete this fic. Oh well, I squeezed in mention of my Reach OC. I hope you find this entertaining. n.n

Snapshot: Shuttle Theft (Ao3 version)

“I’m bored,” Bart announced for probably the tenth time.

“I know you’re bored, but we have to wait,” Jaime answered with his eyes closed.

The two (actually three) of them were on a shuttle in a spaceport, hiding from ‘anthropologists’ who they had rather successfully pissed off. (Of course ‘anthropologist’ was a loose translation; they were more like a group of unscrupulous monsters with no regard for harm inflicted just so long as it furthered their ‘science’. The actual untranslated word for the ‘anthropologists’ was something like kliud’ata, though Bart had deliberately been mocking and butchering the term for a while now.) Apparently those so-called ‘anthropologists’ didn’t take kindly to having a rogue infiltrator and a metahuman speedster from Earth spring all of their ‘subjects’. Who knew? Which, after having freed the unfortunate individuals who had been under ‘study’, had led to Bart, Jaime, and Khaji Da to acting as a distraction and then spending entirely too long trying to lose their pursuers before finally ducking into an empty shuttle. Which Khaji Da was currently hacking into in order to get away.

Jaime never would have imagined that he’d ever approve of the equivalent of stealing a car.

“And the reason we can’t just bolt is…?”

Jaime didn’t even bother cracking an eye open. Sure, Khaji Da was more than capable of focusing on the task at hand on his own, but since they were in a bit of a hurry Jaime really didn’t want to distract him. “Because if Khaji Da isn’t careful about getting us clearance to get out and if we just take off without knowing where we’re going, then we’re going to attract a lot of attention. And I’d rather not run into those jerks again or get the attention of any Green Lanterns who would shoot me and Khaji Da first and ask questions later.”

Bart made a face, knowing neither of them could see it at that moment. “Sure, talk sense. I see how it is. Meanwhile I’ll die of boredom.”

A grinding chitter erupted from the scarab on Jaime’s back before a distinctly un-Jaime-like frown flitted across their face. “We cannot risk capture skaeyl skir’rkiis. Tsriik’k-miihksh told us what the kliud’ata are capable of. I will not take that chance,” Khaji Da said evenly before fading back to focus his careful attention on hacking the spaceport systems. Mention of the hiveless reachling wasn’t unexpected considering the circumstances.

The last time Jaime and Khaji Da had ended up this far out in space for a mission they’d had the good fortune to run into Tsriik’k-miihksh, otherwise known as Tserii, and Tserii had been kind enough to pull strings with various contacts in order to get them home. Tserii had also gone with Jaime and Khaji Da back to Earth and had slowly been finding themself adopted by Jaime, Khaji Da, and Jaime’s family, but that was neither here nor there.

“Speaking of, it would’ve been nice if Tserii was here. At least then they would be able to tell us what we’re dealing with and probably pull some strings,” Bart groused. The fact that they couldn’t even risk kicking on the shuttle lights until they were ready to take off was starting to grate on him.

“You and me both,” Jaime agreed. “Though if Tserii was here, then we’d have to deal with them possibly picking fights.”

“With who? Khaji Da? Me?” Bart said jokingly.

“More like one of the Green Lanterns, mi corazón.In case you haven’t noticed, Tserii’s a lot like Khaji Da.”

Bart snorted and shifted positions so he was laying on his stomach on the shuttle’s padded bench, his chin resting on his hands. “Nah. Tserii’s not murderously adorable and isn’t anywhere near as stabby.”

That drew a snort from Jaime. “You didn’t hear the way Tserii talks about the kliud’ata or the Hive. Tserii’s just as stabby.”

Bart shrugged and let his eyes drop to the glowing lights dotting Jaime and Khaji Da’s armored legs and hips. It was a beautiful detail honestly, and better to focus on than what might be in store if they got caught. “Tserii’s still not murderously adorable. Khaji Da though? Completely murderously adorable. And hot. Really hot. So are you– well, not murderously adorable anyway, though you’re kind of adorable in your own right. But both of you are reeeeaallly hot. In fact-”

“Later amor,” Jaime laughed. “You can flirt at us all you want when we don’t have to worry about the kliud’ata finding us.”

“What can I say? Stress-flirting is better than me panicking over the idea of those jerks skinning me alive.”

Their eyes slid open and Khaji Da’s amused smirk flitted across their face. “Then it is a good thing we will be on our way. Recommendation-”

The lights of the shuttle flared to life and the body language shifted away from Khaji Da’s coiled steel as Jaime said, “You might want to hold on tight. We’re getting out of here.”

“HECK YES!”