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pixelfun20 · 4 years ago

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Flower Fields, Ch 1

Summary: Season 7 of Hermitcraft has begun, and their newest and youngest member, Tubbo, is more than ready to prove himself in the eyes of his friends. New memories are made and friendships are forged, but old ghosts from the past still linger, and Tubbo will soon discover that fate has a way of letting things come full circle.

Notes: This an fic idea I legitimately came up with yesterday, based off of @give-grian-rights ‘s Watcher!Tubbo and Watcher!Tommy AU (I hope you don’t mind! I just loved this idea). I wrote this a single evening, let it sit for the night, and decided to publish it today. I hope you guys like it! Just to note, I haven’t finalized a title (or plot, besides some major points) yet, so if y’all have any ideas, let me know!

Chapter 1:

I'm not yours, and you're not mine

But we can sit and pass the time

For a moment, he floated in darkness.

Then in the next, he was falling through the air.

He didn’t fall far, thankfully, and his impact was cushioned by another body right underneath him.

Tubbo groaned, blinking against the bright rays of the sun as he tried to adjust from the darkness that had just encompassed him. He shifted, feeling rough cloth underneath him, and realized he was lying on someone.

“Oh! Sorry!” He exclaimed, swiftly moving off the other. He looked down as he saw a man with dark brown hair, a beard, and a leather jacket sit up, rolling his shoulders with a wince. “I think I spawned right on top of you, xB.”

xBCrafted just chuckled, pulling himself up to his feet. Tubbo followed him, cracking his back as he went, and looked around, trying to discern where he was.

Ah, man. It seemed like they had spawned on a small, sandy island, that was, worst of all, completely devoid of trees. Already it was crowding with the arrival of the other Hermits, with a few more pairs repeating the same situation as he and xB, spawning one on top of the other in the enclosed space. In the distance, he could see a large mooshroom island looming above the waves, but besides that there was nothing in sight.

“Looks like we’ll be going for a swim today!” xB chirped as Iskall spawned a foot or so away from them, landing face-first in the sand. “X wasn’t lying when he said we’d have a tricky time starting the Season.”

“And here I was hoping to stay dry,” Tubbo sighed as Iskall shot up, spluttering sand in the air. The two of them laughed at his sorry state.

“Very funny, you two,” the elder man grumbled. Iskall85, or Iskall as he was commonly known, looked considerably older than the two friends, perhaps in his early thirties. He had semi-long, scraggly brown hair and a cybernetic eye, as well as a green sweatshirt and brown vest.

“Oho, is that Scar?” xB exclaimed. Tubbo followed his gaze, and sure enough, a man in a purple bathrobe and dyed-white hair had just spawned, half in the water. Ah, GoodTimesWithScar was an odd one, alright, he thought with a laugh.

“What did he do?” Tubbo giggled. Scar turned towards them, seeming to hear his comment, and put his hands on his hips.

“I’m sorry, Tubbo,” he announced semi-solemnly. “The wizard life has chosen me.”

Iskall nearly cackled at that, throwing his head back, and xB and Tubbo joined him. Trust Scar to find new and creative ways to start the season! Tubbo made a mental note to drop by in a few weeks and see where this new bit got him.

“Looking good, Scar!” Stress said, coming up behind him. The shortest of the Hermits, she wore a pink jacket and kept her straight brown hair short and to the chin. “How’re you doing, Tub?”

“Great!” Tubbo chirped back. “Excited to start the Season right.”

“Let me know if you need anything, love,” she added, clapping her hands together. “That goes for all of you! I’d chat for longer, but Mumbo and I have some plans we need to discuss. See you all in a bit!” And with that she was gone, hopping over to the other side of the island. Scar went right on her heels, jogging over to Cubfan135 (a balding man in a lab coat around Iskall’s age), who was standing next to Mumbo Jumbo.

Tubbo scanned over the rapidly growing group of people, grinning once he caught sight of a flash of black-striped yellow armor in the crowd.

“Hey! X!” He called out, waving. A man fully covered in armor, painted to resemble a bee, looked over to them. Through his vizor, Tubbo could see the corners of his brown eyes crinkle in the tell-tale sign of a smile, and he approached the trio. “Love the outfit!”

“Thank you, Tubbo,” XisumaVoid replied, patting him on the shoulder. “I’m quite liking your new design, too.”

Tubbo fought back a blush, looking down at himself. Like the elder man, he’d changed up his usual outfit to celebrate the newest mob addition to Season 6, the bees. He’d changed into a yellow jacket with black stripes on the sleeves over a gray shirt, as well as black pants with a yellow stripe down the sides.

“Alrighty, I’ll be leaving you two to your father-son bonding,” Iskall cut in, waving a hand as he walked off. “I’m going to go catch up with Keralis.”

“Oh, will you stop with that!” Xisuma said good-naturedly as Tubbo really did his best not to blush. xB laughed again. Iskall just whistled, walking over to where Keralis, a man in his late thirties in a blue shirt and jeans, had just spawned. The server’s admin turned back to Tubbo. “Sorry about that. You know how he can be.”

Tubbo just shook his head a bit, trying to suppress a smile. Ah, it’d been far too long since the Hermits had all been in one place like this. He’d missed the action of it all.

He, Xisuma, and xB chatted together for a few minutes as everyone spawned in and caught their bearings. It seemed everyone had big plans for the Season. While he and Xisuma had gone with a bee theme, xB was apparently planning to really Hermit out the season, far away from spawn. Scar was certainly embracing the wizard part of himself, and rumor had it BDubs and Doc were going to be neighbors, which was a recipe for disaster and, more importantly, funny stories.

“Okay, everyone!” It was Keralis’ shout that drew the twenty-some players out of their respective conversations. Almost unconsciously, they’d formed an oval around the perimeter of their tiny spawn island. “Intro time! Let’s go, X!”

“What? Why me?” Xisuma protested, but Keralis just laughed and took his place back in the circle.

“C’mon, admin,” Tubbo teased him with an elbow to the side. Xisuma sighed, rolling his shoulders, then stepped out into the center of the island.

“Alright everyone. Welcome to Hermitcraft Season 7! Go!” He clapped his hands together and dashed back towards the shore, the circle immediately breaking up as the Hermits split into their groups and dove into the ocean. Tubbo laughed as he waved goodbye to xB, who took off in a different direction as he went to follow X.

The water was nice and lukewarm, and soon enough Tubbo was backstroking over the ocean. He looked up at the bright blue sky, and smiled.

~~~~~~~~~

They spent most of the first day collecting supplies.

As it turned out, both FalseSymmetry, Hypnotizd, and ZombieCleo had decided to go in the same direction as he and Xisuma, so they ended up gathering their first bits of wood and stone together. Then there was some issue with the server that caused Xisuma to have to dive deep into the server code, in the open, at midnight, so their first night went without much sleep and with a lot of mob fighting instead.

“Well,” Cleo said the next morning, twirling her axe as Tubbo set to cooking some meat for breakfast. “That could have gone better.”

“I think the first night went just fine, thank you very much,” False shot back, sharpening her newly-minted stone sword. “I’m going to be honest, though, I’m not used to going out at night without an elytra. Or armor. Or a decent sword.”

“Hey, but did you see how many mobs I killed?” Tubbo put in, pulling out some pork chops and tossing one to Cleo. “I’m a god, I tell you.”

“Yes,” Xisuma replied. He was still sitting on one of the beds they’d made, and was double checking some of the code. “God of giving me heart attacks.”

“Not my fault you messed up part of the code! I saved your life!”

“I’d suggest you remember who bandaged that arrow wound, kid.”

Tubbo’s hand flew to his shoulder, where his jacket was torn slightly, and he blushed. “I’m not a kid!”

Everyone turned and gave him a flat look, and Tubbo blushed harder, looking down. It was no secret that he was, by far, the youngest person on the server. Most players were in their late twenties, like False and Impulse, to their late thirties, like Scar and Doc. Even the youngest before he’d arrived had been Mumbo and xB, at 24 and 19 respectively. At just barely 16, Tubbo was, well, a child compared to them.

Loathe as he was to admit it. It had been hard enough in the beginning, when he’d arrived unexpectedly at the beginning of Season 6. No one had been expecting any new players to join that Season, much less a mentally scarred 14-year-old, and he’d ended up being coddled for the first six months or so. Heck, he’d lived with Xisuma until he’d grown so tired of it he’d had to run off and make his own base without asking him, because the answer would have been no.

He was perfectly capable of living on his own! It was just… well, Tubbo knew he wasn’t as good as the others. He couldn’t make the huge, rolling complexes or over complicated redstone machines that did everything for you like the other hermits did. Of course, it made sense; he had a lot less experience and was still learning these things. But it didn’t help the fact that the others, well, they didn’t look down on him, per se, but they were always a little too willing to help, a little too protective.

“Sure,” Cleo was drawling teasingly, drawing him out of his thoughts. Tubbo snorted and looked down at his breakfast with a shake of his head, starting to eat.

“Oh, let him be,” Hypno put in, grabbing some food for himself. “I remember being that age. Young and ready to take on the world. At least he doesn't have any creaky old bones. I’m already feeling my back in the mornings.”

“Alrighty then!” Xisuma announced after a moment of silence, rising from his bed and closing the admin screens. “Looks like all the post-spawn bugs have been taken care of. I’m ready to head out for the day.”

“I guess this is where we all say goodbye, then,” False replied, twirling her sword. “I have the best idea for my base this season, but I gotta go north from here.”

“Tubbo and I are heading east.”

“West for me,” Cleo put in.

Hypno just shrugged. “I figured I’d wander for a bit before settling down.”

“No planning?” Tubbo asked, then grinned, glad for the change of subject. “I like your style, Hypno.”

The bandana-ed man inclined his head at him with a smile. He wasn’t a new player to the server, not at all, but from what Tubbo knew he hadn’t been around for a few years. Prior to the last few days as they’d prepared to jump Seasons, he’d hardly even heard of the man before, and thus didn’t know him too well.

Xisuma clapped Tubbo’s shoulder, eyes crinkling from that helmet-obscured smile of his.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

Tubbo whooped. “Bees, here we come!”

~~~~~~~~~

Perfect.

That was the only way Tubbo could describe the place he’d come across. He sat in the branches of one of the tallest trees in the area, looking out to where the forest he’d been traversing ended and the plains biome, scattered with flowers in small patches around, with gentle hills rolling even further in the distance.

It was an idyllic location, and perfect for his plans for the Season.

Another day had passed, marking it Day 3 of Season 7. After that first somewhat disastrous night, he and Xisuma had separated from their initial group and travelled to find a base together. Xisuma had decided, for some reason, that he was going to build his base in the middle of the jungle, so they had set up camp there for the night. Come dawn, however, Tubbo was ready to go and scout for a place of his own, and with a promise to check in with Xisuma every day or so, he’d set off that morning.

It was early afternoon, now, and honestly, Tubbo was pleased with how quickly he’d found his spot. It was only a half-day’s journey, while walking, from Xisuma, so once he’d gotten elytra he’d be able to visit whenever he wanted. Besides that, news had it that Keralis and Beef were only a little ways out, which would be fun since Tubbo didn’t know them too well.

Humming quietly, Tubbo reached into his inventory and took out the only belonging he’d taken with him from Season 6－a medium-sized notebook, filled with sketches and notes on what he wanted to build and how to do it. Last Season he hadn’t been ambitious enough; Tubbo had started late thanks to living with Xisuma and then had focused on just having a base of his own that by the end of the season it had looked puny compared to the many buildings his friends/guardians had made.

He wasn’t making that mistake again. Tubbo had grand plans for this Season’s megabase, and he was going to make sure it blew everyone else out of the water.

Okay, maybe that was an over exaggeration. But Tommy had always said to aim high.

His heart twisted a bit, as it always did when he thought of his old friends. Back then, he’d known people his own age, and Wilbur and Techno had rarely held back against him when they’d interacted with him, whether through words or PvP.

He wondered how they were doing; it’d been almost two years since he’d last seen or heard from them. He wondered if they’d moved on.

He wondered if they knew he was still alive.

Tubbo shook his head, chasing the depressing thoughts out of his mind. He’d found himself thinking of his old friends less and less over the last year and half, as he’d settled into life in Hermitcraft and begun to heal from what had happened to him. Not to say he didn’t miss them, that he wasn’t missing something in his life, but, well. Even though he thought of them every once in a while, the numerous letters he’d written to Tommy, unable to be sent, had been left behind with Season 6, in a way of really starting anew.

Doc had explained it best. Life moved on, and sometimes it was best to just hold onto the old memories and work on making new ones.

He’d taken that advice to heart. Tubbo flipped open his notebook to one of the middle pages, holding it out and comparing his sketch to the open plains before him.

Yes. This biome would do quite nicely.

Season 7 was going to be something great.

#tubbo #tubbo_#xisuma #xisumavoid #xbcrafted #iskall85 #hermitcraft #hermitcraft season 7 #watcher tubbo #watcher au #fanfiction #fanfic #hermitcraft fanfic #Hermit!Tubbo AU #I have no self control #And no idea how long I'll roll with this #but I"m quite liking it so far

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brooklynislandgirl · 4 years ago

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For the headcanon{s}, can you talk about Beth's mental illness? How it does and does not impact her daily life, if things trigger it, how she handled this after losing Riley {in verses that are sans Riley, obviously}, and what some of her experiences have been? I feel like it's something people determinedly overlook about her, and I'd like to know!

This.

“You can’t be fuckin’ serious!”

“You keep a civil tongue in that head of yours, boy. I think I know what’s best for your sister.”

“With all due respect, sir... you haven’t known what’s best in-”

Beth is an oyster.

Vague lines and curves that are nothing remarkable perhaps to the point of being unappealing. She can only burrow into the Sand....sandy...Andy. Andy and the Admiral are outside of the room, arguing about the proper course of treatment. She can’t hear every word because she’s underwater and all the sounds are so far away as to be indistinct from the beeping of the monitor that is keeping track of her vital signs. The bandages on her pseudo-pods ~arms, they’re arms, Beth~ are too heavy. They keep her trapped to this bed where she can’t really move and she doesn’t know why. It’s all wriggling around inside of her. A parasite. One she has to wrap in smooth layers of aragonite and conchiolin. Layer after microscopic crystalline layer. Maybe if it’s smooth enough and round enough, maybe if it has enough lustre, then they will set her free. She’s so very tired but she doesn’t have her turtle, and the thin cotton gown isn’t warm enough, worn thin in places. The blankets are too scratchy and the air smells funny, too many chemicals that it’s making her feel nauseous.

But that’s all wrong. Oysters don’t have blankets and they aren’t tied down to beds and they don’t... they don’t...

“Electroshock! How can you? Look at her. She’s just a kid!”

“And your sister nearly killed herself tonight, Andrew. I am done discussing this with you. I’m your father, and a neurosurgeon. If anyone is capable of choosing a treatment plan, it isn’t a teen age boy.”

~*~

Beth was fourteen years old when she was diagnosed however wrongly with Depression mood disorder with features of psychosis, after she smashed her bedroom mirror with her fists, deeply slashing her arms from wrists to elbows. The symptoms leading up to this moment certainly were red-flags for what was wrong with her, all of them classic to the specific diagnosis: the trouble concentrating or making decisions, chronic fatigue, feelings of guilt and worthlessness, insomnia, restlessness, loss of appetite, phantom aches and pains that didn’t seem to go away, persistent sadness and anxiety. It isn’t uncommon for girls and young women diagnosed with Turner Syndrome to also develop depression. And her father felt the matter was cut and dry, despite strenuous objections from her brother.

She spent three miserable weeks in an in-patient psychiatric facility receiving less than pleasant electroconvulsive therapy, psychotherapy and was prescribed citalopram {Celexa}. Which made Beth absolutely nauseous to the point that she had trouble keeping water down, only worsened her sleeping troubles, and made her jittery. As soon as the Admiral shipped out again for a year long deployment aboard the USNS Comfort, Andy took her back to the doctor to get a second opinion.

It was then, at fifteen, that she was re-diagnosed correctly with Rapid Cycling Bi-Polar Disorder. Andy nursed her through the withdrawal of the citalopram and taking over her care regiment seemed to do his sister wonders, as she started to be the sweet and gentle girl he’d always known her to be. He’d sort out her medication by days of the week, would make sure she took the right ones at the right times with her meals, going out of his way to cook things she could stomach, letting her sleep in his bed when she wanted to, and for years after, she seemed to improve. She went months without crippling depression and her manic and hypomanic states were few and far between as well.

Then everything changed.

Beth was accepted into several universities and chose Columbia, knowing that their pre-med program was top-notch and their medical school was even better, and wouldn’t require her to change schools for the duration of her education. Having just turned sixteen in June she was starting a new life perhaps far younger than she ought to have.

There was major upheaval, stress and abject terror at leaving Hawai’i behind, going almost as far away as possible. She was not prepared for the cross-continent move. Neither was she prepared for living on her own. Perhaps she simply expected to live with Andy the whole of her life, or at the very least through her under-grad years. But after the initial first two months that it took to move into their grandparents’ apartment in Brooklyn, and Andy setting up all of her bills, hiring a cook and house keeper, making sure she got settled in as a freshman, he enlisted in the US Air-Force. She saw very little of her brother for the next two years, and the only thing that kept Beth from failing out of school was the idea that she would be sent home to live with the Admiral.

She began to notice that her medication {bupropion aka Wellbutrin} seemed less effective during this time. She was barely getting more than three hours of sleep at night, and maybe half that during day time naps. She experiences bouts of nausea that once again made eating difficult to prioritise, a feature that would last her entire life thus far, with Beth being at least twenty pounds consistently underweight. She also began to experience chronic sore throats, what she describes as her bladder shrinking down to the size of a pea, and worse...tinnitus that became co-morbid with her audio processing disorder.

The few times during the year that she was able to see Andy, things seemed to get better....until she crashed immediately after he left again.

Beth decided she no longer wanted to take her medication.

~*~

“C’mon Beth, I’m getting married, it’s not like I’m dying!”

“GET OUT! GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT!” She’s throwing things at him. She’s destroyed seven plates,six coffee mugs and at least one irreplaceable vase. There are so many tears, so much snot, it’s hard to believe his sister is almost eighteen and not eight. But thankfully, she’s still so short she can’t reach the stemware and is forced to come out from behind the island kitchen.

Which means he manages to get his arms around her, a bear hug from behind that locks her stick-figure arms to her chest. She fusses and has a fit, kicking and trying to bite him, but his training in Pararescue has taught him how to hold someone without hurting them.

“I’m not gonna leave you, jelly bean, I promise. And you’ll like Lana. She’s a real nice girl, her family’s from Jersey, and she’ll be moving in with us. You won’t have to-” “LA LA LA! NO CAN HEAR YOU!”

Beth is a hermit crab.

She can just shrink back into her shell and keep everyone out. She can hide down in the bottom of the sea and let the water of her Mother’s arms wash over her and if anything gets close, she’ll pinch them to bits.

But she really isn’t. She isn’t a hermit crab, she’s just a girl and there’s nothing that can keep everything inside of her from dying a slow and painful death. Because now Andy is not only not going to be around, but he’s getting married. To a stranger no less. But like a hermit crab, her house is too small and this woman is never setting foot inside of it. And it’s his stupid fault, because that’s what her brother is...stupid.

Doesn’t he know that no one will love him like she does? That no one depends on and needs him as much? Doesn’t he know they’re supposed to be together, forever and always? Doesn’t he know he’s the only person who truly loves her? The person who said he’d never leave her? Why does he need a wife anyway? She can do everything this Lana person can, and better. If he’d just let her prove it, he’d see!

~*~

But he didn’t. Andy ended up getting married.

Beth dropped out of medical school before completing her residency, but applied her credits to nursing. She was absolutely certain the Admiral was going to have a stroke that she had decided not to become a neurosurgeon like him, or his second choice, a cardiologist. Emergency room nursing suits her needs. She is indoors and on her feet throughout the darkness of the night when home is ever so lonely. It feeds the excessive energy that floods her system and lets her literally crash, semi-conscious during the sometimes three, sometimes four consecutive days she has off.

Life settles into a medication-less routine. Beth finally grows her final inch in height, puts on a few more pounds so she doesn’t seem nearly as cadaverous as she did before. She can blame late occurring puberty for that and for just the most brief moments of time, things seemed to have found their balance. There were no great highs. There were no life-threatening lows. Beth could finally breath.

At least until....the sun burned out and destroyed everything in a single knock on the door.

Perfunctory words that echo in her dreams.

~*~

“Miss Riley, on behalf of the Chief of Staff, United States Air Force, I regret to inform you of the untimely death of your brother, Second Lieutenant Andrew M. Riley-”

Beth Riley...isn’t anything any more. All of everything that was bright and best within her is now a single leg and some bone fragments in a beautiful koa wood casket. It is a folded flag put into her hands. It’s the reception in the Admiral’s house and an incredibly long line of people talking and talkingandtalkingandtalkingandtalking and saying nothing at all. She can’t breath. She can’t feel. Nothing makes sense and it never will because what do you say when half of you is ripped away and gone forever? What do you do when the world stops turning and the sun has burnt out of the sky?

Beth slips out of the house without being noticed. She manages to get in her brother’s Mustang and heads into the city proper, and ends up at the bar he used to like to frequent when he was on leave. She sits at the bar and orders scotch, 25 year Macallan.

She buys the bottle. She buys the entire bar drink after drink until last call.

She lets someone take her home. Gets into his apartment. Doesn’t really feel his mouth and his hands pawing at her. Doesn’t feel anything really at all until she shoves him away. Things become blurry after that and she only really vaguely remembers calling Jay from a payphone some blocks away.

She can’t find her shoes. But that doesn’t matter.

Nothing does.

Three months later ~one hundred days, to be precise~ Beth quits her job. She turns her utilities off. Throws a few things including her wallet, her passport, and her rosary into a sea bag that she’s had forever.

Darfur. The Democratic Republic of Congo. Amsterdam. Uruguay. Wherever Médecins Sans Frontières will let her go, to treat people living in the worst conditions. Ironic, isn’t it...that no matter where she goes, Beth always manages to make it back. That all those fears Andy had of her killing herself from neglect or inattention, or even possibly through deliberate action, and she can’t get so much as a life-threatening paper cut? It isn’t fair.

And maybe...maybe it doesn’t matter. There’s a lot of ways you can die in Louisiana.

She hears the coffee in New Orleans is really wonderful.

#mynameisanakin #She's Talking To Angels {Bethisms}#Making Wishes on Passing Cars|Answered Asks #mental health tw #medication tw #suicidal ideation tw

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orthodoxydaily · 4 years ago

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Icon,Saints& Reading: Wed., Nov, 25, 2020

Commemorated on November 12_ Julian Calendar

Saint John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria (620)

Saint John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria, was born on Cyprus in the VII Century into the family of the illustrious dignitary Epiphanios. At the wish of his parents he entered into marriage and had children. When the wife and the children of the saint died, he became a monk: strict at fasting, prayer and love for brother. His spiritual exploits gain him reknown, and when the Patriarchal cathedra-seat at Alexandria fell vacant, the emperor Heraclius and all the clergy besought Saint John to occupy the Patriarchal throne. The saint worthily assumed his archpastoral service, concerning himself over the moral and dogmatic welfare of his flock. During his time as patriarch he denounced and drove out from Alexandria the heresy of the Antioch Monophysite Phyllonos. But his chief task he considered to be charity and beneficence towards all those in need. At the beginning of his patriarchal service he ordered an accounting of all the poor and downtrodden in Alexandria, which turned out to be over seven thousand men. To all these unfortunates the saint daily distributed food, gratis and for free. Twice during the week, on Wednesdays and Fridays, he emerged from the doors of the Patriarchal cathedral, and sitting on the church portico, he received everyone in need: he settled quarrels, aided the wronged, and distributed alms. Three times a week he visited in the sick-houses, and rendered help to the suffering. It was during this period that the emperor Heraclius led a tremendous army against the Persian emperor Chosroes II. It resulted with the Persians ravaging and burning Jerusalem, and taking a multitude of captives. The holy Patriarch John gave over a large portion of the church treasury for their ransom. The saint never refused suppliants. One time along the road to the sick-house he encountered a beggar and commanded that he be given 6 silver coins. The beggar, having made a change of clothes, ran on ahead of the Patriarch and again began to entreat alms. Saint John again gave him 6 silver coins. When however the beggar a third time besought charity, and the servants began to thrust away the obtrusive fellow, the Patriarch ordered that he be given 12 pieces of silver, saying: "Is Christ not indeed putting me to the test?" Twice the saint gave money to a merchant that had suffered shipwreck, and a third time gave him a ship belonging to the Patriarchate and filled with grain, with which the merchant had a successful journey and repaid his obligations. Saint John the Merciful was known for his gentle attitude towards people. One time the saint was compelled because of some offense to remove from the Church a certain clergyman. This fellow was angry at the Patriarch, and so the saint wanted to summon him and talk it out, but it slipped his mind. But when he was celebrating the Divine Liturgy, the saint was suddenly reminded by the words of the Gospel: when thou bringest forth thine gift to the altar and do recollect, that thine brother hath something against thee, leave hold thine gift and first make peace with thine brother (Mt. 5: 23-24). The saint came out of the altar, called over the offending clergyman to him, and falling down on his knees before him, in front of all the people he asked forgiveness. The clergyman, shaken with surprise, repented his doings and afterwards became a pious priest. Likewise there was a time when a certain citizen insulted George, a nephew of the Patriarch. George asked the saint to avenge the wrong. The saint promised to reward the offender, in a manner that all Alexandria would see. This calmed George down, and Saint John began to instruct him, speaking about the necessity of meekness and humility, and then, having summoned the insulter, he declared, that he would release him from payment of a church tax on his land. Alexandria indeed was amazed by such a "revenge", and George learned the lesson in the teaching of his uncle. Saint John, a strict ascetic and man of prayer, was always mindful of his soul, and of death. He commissioned for himself a crypt-coffin, but he did not bid the master-craftsmen to finish it off, instead each feastday he would have them come and ask, if it was time to finish the work. Shortly before his death, Saint John through illness was compelled to resign his cathedra and set off to the island of Cyprus. On the ship-journey the saint in his illness had a sign: in a sleep-vision a resplendent man appeared to him and said: "The King of kings doth summon thee unto Himself". The vision announced the impending death of the Patriarch. Having arrived at Cyprus, in his native city of Amaphunteia, the saint in peace expired to the Lord (616-620).

The Holy Monk Nilos the Faster

The Holy Monk Nilos the Faster, a native of Constantinople. He lived during the V Century and was a student of Saint John Chrysostom. Having received a fine education, the saint while still a young man was appointed to the important post of prefect of the capital. During this period, Nilos was married and had children. But the pomp of courtly life bothered the couple. Saint John Chrysostom exerted a tremendous influence upon their lives and their strivings. The spouses decided to separate and devote themself to monastic life. The wife and daughter of Nilos set out to one of the women's monasteries in Egypt, and the Monk Nilos and his son Theodoulos went to Sinai, where they settled in a cave dug out by their own hands. For forty years this cave served as the dwelling of the Monk Nilos. By fasting, prayer and works, the monk attained to an high degree of spiritual perfection. People began to come to him from every occupation and social rank – from the emperor down to the farmer, and each found counsel and comfort from the saint. In solitude the Monk Nilos wrote much. A letter of his is known of – in which there is an angry denunciation of the emperor Arcadius, who had exiled Saint John Chrysostom. And widely known are the ascetic works of the Monk Nilos: they are perfectly executed in form, profoundly Orthodox, and filled with sincere sense and clear thought. The Monk Nilos suffered many a misfortune in the wilderness. Thus, for example, Saracens captured his son Theodoulos, whom they intended to offer as a sacrifice to their pagan gods. Through the prayers of the saint the Lord saved Theodoulos, and the monk found him with the bishop of Emessa, who had ransomed the young man from the barbarians. And this bishop ordained both of them as presbyters. After ordination they returned to Sinai, where they asceticised together until the death of the Monk Nilos.

Icon: the "Merciful" ("Kykkiotisa", "Milostivaya")

Commemorated on November 12, December 26_ Julian calendar

The Icon of the Mother of God, named the "Merciful" ("Kykkiotisa", "Milostivaya"): This icon was written, according to tradition, by the holy Evangelist Luke. It received its name "Kykkiotisa" from Mount Kykkos, on the Island of Cyprus. Here it was situated in an imperial monastery, in a church named after it. Before its coming to the Island of Cyprus, the wonderworking image of the Mother of God long wandered about through the will of God: at first it was situated in one the earliest Christian communities in Egypt, and then it was taken to Constantinople, where it remained during the time of Alexius Comnenius (end-XI to early-XII Century). During these years it was revealed to the hermit-elder Isaiah through a miraculous sign, that by his efforts the wonderworking image written by the Evangelist Luke would come to reside on the Island of Cyprus. The elder exerted much toil into fulfilling the Divine revelation. When the icon of the Mother of God arrived on the island, many a miracle was worked by it. From of old through the present to the monastery of the Mother of God the Merciful there throng those from every side afflicted by every sort of infirmity, and they receive healing through faith. In the miraculous power of the holy icon believe not only Christians, but also those of other faith who hearken to it in misfortune and illness. Inexhaustible is the mercy of the MostHoly Mother of God, Mediatrix for all the suffering, and Her image accurately bears the name, the "Merciful". The wonderworking "Kykkiotisa" Icon of the Mother of God possesses a remarkable peculiarity: from what time-period is unknown, but it is covered by an half shroud from the upper left corner to the lower right, such that the faces of the Mother of God and the Divine Infant no one is able to make bold to see. The depiction of the Mother of God appears to be of the Hodegetria type, as is also the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God. The head of the Mother of God is adorned with a crown. At present a copy of this icon is particularly venerated at the women's Nikol'sk monastery in the city of Mukachev.

Luke 13:1-9

1There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2��And Jesus answered and said to them, "Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? 3 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. 6 He also spoke this parable: "A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, 'Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?' 8 But he answered and said to him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. 9 'And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.'

Thessalonians 2:13-3:5

13But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth,14 to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our LordJesus Christ.15 Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. 16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.

1Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may run swiftly and be glorified, just as it is with you, 2 and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men; for not all have faith. 3 But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one. 4 And we have confidence in the Lord concerning you, both that you do and will do the things we command you. 5 Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.

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mobius-prime · 4 years ago

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255. Sonic the Hedgehog #186

Mogul Rising (Part Two: Devil's Due)

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! and Matt Herms Colors: Josh Ray

Sonic struggles to fight against Mina, Mighty, and Tails at once, as Mogul speaks to him through them. He angrily tells Mogul to let them go, and when Mogul mocks him for not listening earlier that day Sonic rightfully points out that Mogul didn't even begin to explain his own position in any amount of detail, instead just basically saying "haha, surrender." Ash, alerted by the noise and the empty bed, appears in the doorway of Freedom HQ and seeing the chaos, leaps in to grab Mina, not realizing she's being controlled.

Abruptly, all three mind-controlled friends break off the fight and run away in opposite directions. Ash is upset and confused as to why Mina would act so strange, so Sonic explains what's going on and then offers to bring him along to interrogate Mogul, something which Ash immediately accepts if it will let him save Mina. Once they get back to New Mobotropolis Sonic furiously orders Mogul to tell him where his friends are, and Mogul happily obliges.

Both Ash and Sonic are horrified, especially with the knowledge that Sonic wouldn't be fast enough to save all of them in time, something Mogul gloats over before offering them a deal - he'll bring them all back unharmed, if Sonic brings him the Chaos Emerald currently being kept within the city. Sonic, seeing no other choice, grimly agrees, before rushing away with Ash to sneak into the castle, into the chamber where the emerald is. Nicole, realizing they're trying to steal the emerald but not knowing why, starts putting up barriers trying to stop them, but they dodge without breaking stride and nab the emerald, rushing it back to Mogul as a montage shows the three puppets coming closer and closer to their deaths…

Nicole hysterically asks Sonic why he would do such a thing, and Sonic and Ash explain why they didn't really have much choice. Mogul, tiring of their conversation, uses his magic to force Nicole's hologram to dissipate before knocking Ash aside and telekinetically grabbing Sonic. To Sonic's shock, Mogul immediately announces that he has no further need of his new Fearsome Foursome and "releases" him from his service. Why? Well, apparently, he's realized one key rule of this universe - Sonic always wins.

With that, Mogul teleports himself and the other prisoners away, and Sonic and Ash return to Freedom HQ, which the three formerly-enslaved individuals have returned to. Ash comforts Mina while Sonic talks to Tails and Mighty. They're both embarrassed at what happened, Mighty even admitting he now knows how Knuckles must feel, but Sonic reassures them both, saying that while the villain may have won this time, they're going to get their chance to strike back sooner or later.

Honor-Bound

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Josh Ray

Hey, speaking of Knuckles! He's having a pretty bad time of it as he flies over Albion in secret, watching the last of his people work to rebuild the city while blaming himself for everything. He's glad that at the very least Remington has been returned to normal, but can't bear to face his own family or anyone else, believing that for now they'll be better off without a Guardian looking after them. He uses a warp ring to leave, but Kneecaps notices him and babbles, and Lara-Le barely manages to catch a glimpse of him before the warp ring disappears. Man, poor Lara-Le. I miss when she was a much more major character, to be honest. She's so sweet, and doesn't deserve any of the terrible things that have happened to her. Knuckles warps himself to the oasis in the Sandopolis desert, where the entire dingo army has set up camp. With General Kage gone, General Helmut von Stryker, who has apparently been hanging out here all this time, has once again taken control of his people, and upon seeing Knuckles curtly informs him that his people are thriving here, and expect to make their way back into the heart of Angel Island before long.

Knuckles, I'm sorry, but what the hell are you thinking?! Look, I agree that the dingoes have been wronged by the echidnas over time, but have you forgotten that not long ago these guys turned into literal Nazis as soon as Eggman gave them a chance to? Did you completely miss the fact that they are the ones that ran the concentration camps that killed off ninety percent of your people?! I would think that that alone has completely robbed them of any chance at redemption. Like, Knuckles seriously seems to think here that Kage is the sole mastermind behind the echidna concentration camps, but meanwhile here in the real world we kind of all agreed that "I was just following orders" wasn't a good enough excuse for all of the grunts who served in the Nazi regime, and I would think the same should hold here. Do you really want to welcome an entire army of people back into the heart of the island who not two months ago were gleefully torturing and slaughtering your people? Again, we are talking about a literal Nazi allegory here, this isn't me projecting, these guys were literally modeled after the Nazis. I think forgiveness and "live and let live" is not the right choice here, especially if Knuckles is already feeling so guilty about hurting his people, because the dingo regime hurt his people far more than he ever did during his single day as Enerjak.

Jesus Christ. Anyway, Knuckles returns to the main part of Angel Island, hiding in the bushes near "Shrine Isle," which is apparently what we're calling the tiny floating island that houses the Master Emerald shrine. I guess everyone just decided that keeping it blatantly out in the open is the best plan now, so the Chaotix have worked together to build a bridge over to it for easy access. Ray had spotted Knuckles using a warp ring earlier but was unable to follow him, and Julie-Su says sadly that if he doesn't want to be found, he won't be. Knuckles, watching from within the bushes, hopes they'll go away now that the bridge is finished, but Rouge's voice from behind him interrupts his brooding, asking if he plans to just go back to being a hermit once again. He's irritated, not wanting to talk to her right now and insisting that everything bad that's happened on the island only happened because he left, but she presses on, reminding him that with Eggman's sheer power and Finitevus' unpredictability, the island likely would have been attacked and decimated anyway and it's not solely his fault. Knuckles gets angry at this, yelling that the Brotherhood's methods protected the island successfully for hundreds of years and he's the only one (besides Athair) who's really broken tradition.

Well, good on you, Rouge! Knuckles thinks on it for a moment, watching his friends play around next to the shrine, and then concedes the point, deciding that he should protect everyone he can after all. He walks out to greet everyone, who are overjoyed to see him… and then Rouge smirks from her hiding place, murmuring to herself about how gullible Knuckles is and how she can't wait to "wrap him around her little finger." Oh come on, Ian, really? Look, if there's one character I think Ian has not at all figured out yet, it's Rouge. He seems to see her as this scheming, callous, manipulative bitch who's only interested in treasure and breaking up relationships for fun. Hell, Penders wrote her better than Ian currently does, and that's saying something. In the games, yes, Rouge is manipulative and a bit shady, but she's not at all a bad person. After her experiences with Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2, she explicitly mentions how she's been influenced to become less materialistic and to search for "something better" in life, and by the time of '06, she's nothing but a positive influence on those around her. Sure, she's still not above using shady or illegal means to get her way - she is part of Team Dark, after all - but in general her morals always end up lining up with those of the heroes, and she's intensely loyal to those she considers her friends. There's hints here and there within the games that she may have a thing for Knuckles, but to be fair, there're just as many if not more hints that she's not into anybody and only flirts at all to get an edge over others. Adding in this little bit at the end where she's acting all scheme-y while watching Knuckles just makes her seem like this terrible and insincere person when that's not what her character is supposed to be like at all. To be fair, Ian does get better at writing her later on, particularly when she finally starts being paired up with Shadow as a team, but for now, I'm definitely pretty salty at how she's being treated here, considering she's one of my all-time favorite Sonic characters across all canons.

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 186 #writer: ian flynn #pencils: tracy yardley #pencils: matt herms #colors: joshua d ray

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readbythestarlight · 5 years ago

Text

c2e84

Wow, that was a surpassingly normal ad!

Oh boy here we go lore drop!

Therizdune the chained oblivion who is chained at the bottom of the abyss

"He’s basically the boogeyman" if the boogeyman was a HORRIBLE ELDRITCH MONSTER

...IS the boogeyman a horrible eldritch monster?! Oh god.

[[MORE]]

This is great and awful like terrible abyssal eldritch things that can creep into the world through gaps and rifts encourages people to be violent and awful

Also I’m so satisfied that the chains actually ended up being significant

Okay so Yussah knows a guy who we know knows Trent, so... that’s not cool. I mean o totally trust Yussah now it’s not that, it’s just can we trust Ormid?

So not all the Cerberus assembly is bad re: Yussah. But like he’s basically a hermit living in his tower, yeah? Who doesn’t go into the Empire? So like how out of touch is he?

"Trent seems just creepy" that’s putting it mildly

Money? Ball bearings? xD

Oh nice some of the Halas money

Oh Nott honey

Fjord being like "Nott? Caleb please talk to your goblin."

And they’re just all discussing it in the background

NOTT DO NOT

oh boy don’t like that

Oh dear...

"Your FACE is stupid" oh Nott

Lock the gem away somewhere

"You’ll still work at it and try?" Oh honey of course he will

I like how they handled that. They didn’t put Nott down, they gently reminded her that Halas can’t be trusted.

Oh I hope that doesn’t trigger Caleb

And I hope that didn’t just fuck them over with Halas maybe

Cad’s like "can we not?" and then just silencing everyone who keeps trying to talk to him

Y’all need to call your OTHER wizard friend (aka HOTT BOI) to let him know you’re fine and not dead or anything cause this is probably the longest he’s gone without hearing from you

"Everything’s been smoothed over" I wonder if Dairon had anything to do with that

I wonder where she is...

Also this is late cause he said it like ages ago but I love Cad’s little bits of homely wisdom, like the whole holes in a bucket metaphor.

PLATINUMMMMMMM

A WHOLE SATCHEL

TIME TO BUY A KEEP Y’ALL

Kidding I like the xhorhaus

Holy SHIT

21,000 gold??

That puts them at 350 platinum which is like 3,500 apiece NICE

Please def check in with Orli I miss him

I’m gonna insist they all get either matching M9 tattoos or Captain tusktooth tattooes

ORLIIIII

Oh my

Yeah a charisma bump is a good choice Nott xD

YOU ALL BETTER GET MATCHING TATTOOS

"chaos crew" lol

Imagine the stories those "new faces" have heard of the M9 from the older crew

1312 gold not bad!

Fuck y’all I love Orli! I missed him. I hope Fjord retires and goes back to sailing with Orli and the crew someday.

F: "Can I ask, how painful is this... procedure?"

O: "oh-ho-ho! Quite."

Oh lord

B: "Is that infected? Is that infected?!"

O: "No, he’s just a.....................Pansy."

Girls day!

Ohhh I like that idea Nott! Can’t wait to see the new art of that.

I like the start of the idea but the "like the Traveler’s hugging me" is slightly creepy to me. Idk.

BeauJester shippers just got a gift xD

Oh... Molly’s all seeing eye tattoo. My heart. Taliesin looks really touched.

Omg a nat1

Ouch fuck Matt you didn’t have to describe that

Matt’s like "here’s your pretty tattoo Nott, here’s your very lovely tattoo Jester, here’s your TOTALLY BOMBASS tattoo that goes all the way up the BACK OF YOUR SKULL Beau"

like I’m not saying Matt plays favorites but his wife’s character definitely got the coolest tattoo

Boy talk over fish and chips heck yeah

Mmm gonna get some deep talk from Caleb?

Caleb expressing that he feels like maybe they’ve been brought together for a purpose <3

Cad telling him he’s believed Caleb was meant for something important since the beginning

Caleb the green bean farmer

"The god’s plant us, plant their will and their desire, and we move towards the fruit we’re meant for bear for them." Aw that’s... sweet, Cad.

Fjord being like "idk man I’m still figuring it out" what a mood

Caleb admitting he feels like he should run away

"I have started to forget what it was like not being with you people. And we are missing one, I am stuck on the fact that we are still missing one."

I wish I was fast enough to transcribe word for word this conversation because it’s excellent

I like Fjord’s question of "when you know, do you run away or do the right thing knowing it could kill you"

C: "You two are alright."

Cad: "We’re getting better."

F: "So are you, you know, you should give yourself credit."

C: "Mm..."

Cad: "I know... just think about it."

(Wow my old Widofjord feelings just came back with a vengeance.)

Cad adding in his own encouraging words about how Caleb is growing and becoming better made me happy too

C: "I hate tattoos."

Nott in the distance: AHHHH

C: "they’re just not for me."

Cad: "they’re frowned upon in my family."

And then they go see the girls

"We brought fish and chips—what they fuck"

All the Jester ships are eating well tonight

I’m so glad Jester finally got her cool tattoo

Y’all don’t want to see mom and Yeza and Luc?

lol Jester "I didn’t tell my mom about the tattoo"

"I’ve seen parents find out their kids had tattoos literally at the funeral"

I literally could not tell if that was Cad or Taliesin sharing

You guys didn’t even say bye to Orli! YOU MONSTERS

Boy that talks blurb with Brian talk about Caleb is GOOD SHIT MAN

No Brian don’t stop please go on and on about Caleb

lol Matt getting himself in the face with the paper

I knew Dairon was the one who got them out of trouble <3

EXPOSITOR OUTFIT AYYYY

just got new official art and now Beau gets a new outfit and the girls get tattoos xD

B: "I apologize"

M9: "wwwwwoooooaaaaahhh"

And library access again yay!

HEYYYY DAIRON

Beau gets to be a role model now lol

Oh yikes... selling out the Kryn to the King... don’t like that

Vence... NewTHEYLESS??

I don’t like that

Everyone: *excited freaking about Beau’s expositor room*

Cad, a good 10 seconds behind: "You had a monk bunk."

Dairon admitting she realized her prejudices against the Kryn were wrong. You know what that is? Growth.

They’re all so proud of Expositor Beau

Caleb trying to do "normal" accents is amazing lol

I don’t want him to be split from the group but I definitely understand his concern

Scary world ending lore oh boy

Oh god I forgot about the gentleman being here...

YES NO DO NOT GO ALONE that’s a dumb idea honey Jester please

N about J: "well she convides in everybody. Just says whatever she wants to say all the time."

This whole Beau and Nott conversation is amazing xD

Fjord and Jester: talking

Beau and Nott: talking

Caduceus walking along and enjoying the group communicating and sharing their feelings

Is he an earth genasi?

That’s the second time another wizard has called Yussah a fool, poor guy

I like how Ormid’s like "who the fuck are these people" but he also trusts Yussah enough to listen to them that’s nice

Hmmm I don’t like that’s awfully suspicious

WHISPERSSSSS

He keeps coming back to the beacon and I don’t like it

So like.. what if he is in on the whole thing and is trying to steer them away from looking deeper into the beacon?

Jester honey why you go and name drop Trent?? Like fuck.

Also interesting that both the King and his council have been more aggressive and pro-war lately, and the Bright Queen is also bent on the conflict in a way that I’ve personally felt doesn’t seem to quite mesh with her character, it definitely lends towards the idea that they’re being manipulated

Ormid’s a bit of a dick, although I guess I can understand, they’re not explaining themselves super well

Hng idk how I feel about Ormid and I’m not sure that I like that he now knows Dairon is working to get an audience with the king

But then again I’m bad about telling which NPCs are trustworthy and which aren’t.

Ormid’s face when they mentioned the cat OH MY GOD

okay fine god now I have to trust him

"I know we are talking about very important things but" I’m dying

Y’all fixing to get a symbol of the Cerberus Assembly damn

I don’t necessarily LIKE Ormid not entirely trust him but he’s already

Insight check on Sprinkles to see if he wants to go back with Jester aw

lol getting pet advice from him maybe I like him a little bit

PUMAT SOOOOL

it’s been so long!

PUMAAAAT SOL

Guys I have missed Pumat so much he just brings me so much joy

Fetch quest for Pumat DO IT PLZ

Wait

Basilisk oil that’s maybe not a great idea

GO SAILING TO THE ISLANDS

They gotta go to islands for Traveler Con right is that close?

"Let me get it from CritRole stats" lol

Oh thank god health potions

Armor boost oil is neat (plus 1 to AC isn’t bad) but ouch it’s pricy

I love that they CANNOT keep money they get it and then they spend it. It’s #relatable

Uh.... what’s happening to my boy?!

Caduceus?!

MATT WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY BOY??

45 pats slashing??

WHAT IS HAPPENING

CADUCEUS

oh NO

fuck no

Is there a rift near?!

WHAT THE FUCK

The Inevitable End?

WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Evil assassin person??

45 points of damage fuck

This is bad

Sam: “WE’RE SHOPPING MATT” MOOD

23 doesn’t hit?!

Oh they’re in trouble

God DAMN I’m freaked out omg

Does he have The Invulnerable Vangrent as a map??

God what a cliffhanger

#a day late but OH MY GOD #Critical Role #cr spoilers #emi watches critical role

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emperorren · 6 years ago

Note

(1) I haven't been involved in the Rey discourse so maybe I'm not interpreting this correctly, so please bear with me - but it's always been clear to me that while Rey *is* morally right, her impulsiveness did get the better of her. And I don't think she's a bitch for it: it was a stressful situation, she had just gone through a lot of adrenaline, and it makes perfect sense with her background and her characterization. She wants Ben to stop the shooting on the Resistance - which again, I get,

(2) but the problem (for me at least) is that even if the narrative wants me to believe the morally right thing for Kylo would have been to do that, he can’t - for the simple and good reason that he’s just committed high treason, and ironically enough, to save Rey, not to mention that she got herself in that situation thanks to a poorly thought plan where she almost lost her life. Calling that off is signing his death warrant, for real this time. After that, it’s joining the Resistance (or what’s left of it) on Crait for a long, painful death, because neither of them has a way of knowing that Holdo is going to ram into the Supremacy. Kylo is aware of the chase and in what state the Resistance is - Rey is not. But for the sake of the argument, let’s say Rey and Kylo could have done something… with, um, the Force, to help the Resistance, and that Kylo says no just for the evulz and still tries to get Rey to be with him, I still think Rey handled the situation poorly?Not even in a sense “she should have said yes”, because again, I don’t blame her for saying no. I guess what makes me uncomfortable is that her reaction is very similar to how Luke reacted a few years ago, and Kylo sure interprets it that way. A scene where the two of them start screaming at each other and that ends with the same outcome would have been better - mainly because the way I perceive it is that Rey basically strikes straight into Kylo’s PTSD - involuntarily, but it does leavea bitter taste in my mouth, especially that the argument seems to be that “Rey did nothing wrong”, while the movie is all about failure, so I don’t see why Rey should be exempt of it. And I don’t want to see Rey on her knees, tbh - just thinking of that makes me gag - just a little acknowledgement that while impulsiveness might have worked on Jakku in order to survive, it’s not going to work all the time. And that’s Rey’s fatal flaw, in my opinion - and it almost was fatal in TLJ.

I dunno. Rey’s impulsiveness served Reylo well when she dumped Luke’s ass to run to Kylo, didn’t it?

My problem with this reading is that it basically validates Luke’s “this is not going to go the way you think” stance, and frames Rey’s urgency to show compassion to Kylo as a “fatal” flaw she needs to fix, which imo is all kinds of thematically wrong and messes up the subtext. Rey was NOT wrong to be impulsive, to want to act immediately to rescue the lost boy from his lifelong captor. Her instincts were not wrong—the circumstances were. If anything her impulsiveness, optimist thinking and even, allow me the term, ignorance of the complete ramifications of Ben’s fall (she only knows the tl;dr version of all the parties involved minus Leia) are what allowed her to discard all her preconceptions and open herself to Kylo so fully and earnestly in the first place. She saw a glimpse of Ben Solo and immediately ran with it—despite having NO idea of what it was like to live with Ben Solo and his growing darkness for 20+ years. Was she supposed to think this through, ponder the pros and cons of trying to redeem Ben carefully, consider the fact that maybe he wasn’t just *stolen away*, but also had ideological reasons to side with the FO, and that she needed to bring better arguments to the table to actually convince him? Probably. But I bet this would have paralyzed her just as it paralyzed Luke. Sometimes knowing all the facts and the nuances of a problem, being too deeply and personally involved with it, can prevent you from seeing a solution. And imo Rey was able to see it precisely because she’s essentially an outsider, unrelated to all this skywalker drama until two weeks ago.

Rey’s failure can be seen as the failure of the hero in the face of bigger circumstances than what she could handle at the moment. The fact that Kylo wasn’t wrong in not wanting to immediately run to the Resistance either adds nuance to their current conflict:

I guess what makes me uncomfortable is that her reaction is very similar to how Luke reacted a few years ago, and Kylo sure interprets it that way. A scene where the two of them start screaming at each other and that ends with the same outcome would have been better - mainly because the way I perceive it is that Rey basically strikes straight into Kylo’s PTSD

and that’s the tragedy of it, isn’t it? Rey does this because she was basically cornered into an either/or choice, and the result is that Kylo sees another person he loves raising a weapon against him.But judging from her face when the tug-of-war starts, she is perfectly aware of how this would look to Kylo, and it kills her.Still, she has to—Kylo was cornering her with an impossible choice, he had two sabers and she had none. Both Rey and Kylo’s actions contributed to the way the events precipitated, but neither was able to foresee it. The thing is—from a storytelling perspective, their personal conflict needs to be genuine and believable, and both have a right to perceive the other’s behavior as a betrayal.If you had it any other way, there would be no Crait, and it would be extremely difficult to set them up as “complicated enemies” for IX. But at the same time, both need to be able to eventually acknowledge—and forgive—each other’s motivations for acting the way they did.

But most importantly, for all you can see Rey’s impulsiveness as a mistake, she really did better than anyone else who still loves him: Luke didn’t try at all—didn’t even bother offering a clear explanation of what happened at the academy, just packed and left to go sulk on his hermit island; Leia keeps on holding hope but from a distance, in secret, while officially leading military attacks on Kylo; Han did reach out to him but it was too little and too late, and he didn’t think it through, either (did he consider Ben’s realistic possibilities to go home with him, when “home” is the Resistance?). Rey, at least, formed a connection with him, gave him a reason to believe in a possible bright future, and didn’t simply go in the lion’s den to plead with him—she offered her physical help to get rid of Snoke. She got one thing right that nobody else did: that Kylo didn’t just need an escape plan, he needed to destroy the voice in his head for good. And she went there to help him do exactly that.

#anon #asks #rey meta #the throne room #rey vs kylo #anti rey bs #compassion #kylo and snoke #rey #rey discourse

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stone-goddess-writing · 6 years ago

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🌊War of the Water Character Habits/Characteristics🌊

This post is for Machiavelli, a small siren who was locked up in a lobster trap and left to die by the rest of the sirens. She was found by Biff and John, my gay sons, and now she's they're child. These are some cute things she does 😄

Machiavelli is much like a cat, in that she's kinda useless at hunting. She likes to go after fish that are too slow to get away from her, dead fish, bits of seaweed or shells.

Machiavelli will bring whatever she's hunted to John to make him happy, even though that mainly includes dead fish and hermit crabs

At night, Machiavelli gets a certain amount of time to swim before the tide goes out/moon comes up. In this time, she will collect as many shells as possible and give them to John, but under no circumstances is he to discard of any, because that'd break her little heart

Machiavelli has a piece of driftwood she used to teethe, but now has an emotional attachment to it. It's kinda like her equivalent of a favourite teddy bear of stuffed toy, only it's a bit of wood

Though she was abandoned by the other sirens, she can still hear them sing sometimes. Because they never taught her to sing, she'll sit on a rock and just yell, because that's good enough

Machiavelli can't talk John and Biff's language, but has learned words that they say the most. With this, she's built up her own language but tends to just babble nonsencially until her point is made

Hates crabs and big fish, they're mean and fast and she can't catch them

Hates when seaweed touches her just like anyone else, and will throw the biggest of tantrums because John let that happen

Because Biff is significantly bigger than John muscle-wise, Machiavelli likes to use him as a climbing frame though Biff's not keen on that

Machiavelli views John as her mum, and is very confused as to why he doesn't have a tail when he's in the water with her. To make things better, and to help him swim better, she'll hold his hand if they go too far out

Let me know if you'd want to see more of these, I might just do them anyway 😄 also, if you want to be tagged in anything The City of Water/War of the Water related, let me know!

@jade-island-lives @concerningwolves @marigoldwritesthings

#the city of water #the war of the water #original wips #mermaids #sirens #character lists #lgbtq

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scifigeneration · 7 years ago

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Nikola Tesla: The extraordinary life of a modern Prometheus

by Richard Gunderman

The inventor at rest, with a Tesla coil (thanks to a double exposure). Dickenson V. Alley, Wellcome Collection, CC BY

Match the following figures – Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi, Alfred Nobel and Nikola Tesla – with these biographical facts:

Spoke eight languages

Produced the first motor that ran on AC current

Developed the underlying technology for wireless communication over long distances

Held approximately 300 patents

Claimed to have developed a “superweapon” that would end all war

The match for each, of course, is Tesla. Surprised? Most people have heard his name, but few know much about his place in modern science and technology.

The 75th anniversary of Tesla’s death on Jan. 7 provides a timely opportunity to review the life of a man who came from nowhere yet became world famous; claimed to be devoted solely to discovery but relished the role of a showman; attracted the attention of many women but never married; and generated ideas that transformed daily life and created multiple fortunes but died nearly penniless.

Early years

Tesla was born in what is now Croatia on a summer night in 1856, during what he claimed was a lightning storm – which led the midwife to say, “He will be a child of the storm,” and his mother to counter prophetically, “No, of the light.” As a student, Tesla displayed such remarkable abilities to calculate mathematical problems that teachers accused him of cheating. During his teen years, he fell seriously ill, recovering once his father abandoned his demand that Nikola become a priest and agreed he could attend engineering school instead.

Nikola Tesla, electrical entrepreneur, circa 1893. Napoleon Sarony

Although an outstanding student, Tesla eventually withdrew from polytechnic school and ended up working for the Continental Edison Company, where he focused on electrical lighting and motors. Wishing to meet Edison himself, Tesla immigrated to the U.S. in 1884, and he later claimed he was offered the sum of US$50,000 if he could solve a series of engineering problems Edison’s company faced. Having achieved the feat, Tesla said he was then told that the offer had just been a joke, and he left the company after six months.

Tesla then developed a relationship with two businessmen that led to the founding of Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing. He filed a number of electrical patents, which he assigned to the company. When his partners decided that they wanted to focus strictly on supplying electricity, they took the company’s intellectual property and founded another firm, leaving Tesla with nothing.

Tesla reported that he then worked as a ditch digger for $2 a day, tortured by the sense that his great talent and education were going to waste.

Success as an inventor

In 1887, Tesla met two investors who agreed to back the formation of the Tesla Electric Company. He set up a laboratory in Manhattan, where he developed the alternating current induction motor, which solved a number of technical problems that had bedeviled other designs. When Tesla demonstrated his device at an engineering meeting, the Westinghouse Company made arrangements to license the technology, providing an upfront payment and royalties on each horsepower generated.

The so-called “War of the Currents” was raging in the late 1880s. Thomas Edison promoted direct current, asserting that it was safer than AC. George Westinghouse backed AC, since it could transmit power over long distances. Because the two were undercutting each other’s prices, Westinghouse lacked capital. He explained the difficulty and asked Tesla to sell his patents to him for a single lump sum, to which Tesla agreed, forgoing what would have been a vast fortune had he held on to them.

AC electric lights lit up the night at the Chicago World’s Fair.

With the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 looming in Chicago, Westinghouse asked Tesla to help supply power; they’d have a huge platform for demonstrating the merits of AC. Tesla helped the fair illuminate more light bulbs than could be found in the entire city of Chicago, and wowed audiences with a variety of wonders, including an electric light that required no wires. Later Tesla also helped Westinghouse win a contract to generate electrical power at Niagara Falls, helping to build the first large-scale AC power plant in the world.

Challenges along the way

Tesla encountered many obstacles. In 1895, his Manhattan laboratory was devastated by a fire, which destroyed his notes and prototypes. At Madison Square Garden in 1898, he demonstrated wireless control of a boat, a stunt that many branded a hoax. Soon after he turned his attention to the wireless transmission of electric power. He believed that his system could not only distribute electricity around the globe but also provide for worldwide wireless communication.

Seeking to test his ideas, Tesla built a laboratory in Colorado Springs. There he once drew so much power that he caused a regional power outage. He also detected signals that he claimed emanated from an extraterrestrial source. In 1901 Tesla persuaded J.P. Morgan to invest in the construction of a tower on Long Island that he believed would vindicate his plan to electrify the world. Yet Tesla’s dream did not materialize, and Morgan soon withdrew funding.

In 1909, Marconi received the Nobel Prize for the development of radio. In 1915, Tesla unsuccessfully sued Marconi, claiming infringement on his patents. That same year, it was rumored that Edison and Tesla would share the Nobel Prize, but it didn’t happen. Unsubstantiated speculation suggested their mutual animosity was the cause. However, Tesla did receive numerous honors and awards over his life, including, ironically, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers Edison Medal.

A singular man

Tesla was a remarkable person. He said that he had a photographic memory, which helped him memorize whole books and speak eight languages. He also claimed that many of his best ideas came to him in a flash, and that he saw detailed pictures of many of his inventions in his mind before he ever set about constructing prototypes. As a result, he didn’t initially prepare drawings and plans for many of his devices.

The 6-foot-2-inch Tesla cut a dashing figure and was popular with women, though he never married, claiming that his celibacy played an important role in his creativity. Perhaps because of his nearly fatal illness as a teenager, he feared germs and practiced very strict hygiene, likely a barrier to the development of interpersonal relationships. He also exhibited unusual phobias, such as an aversion to pearls, which led him to refuse to speak to any woman wearing them.

Mark Twain holding Tesla’s experimental vacuum lamp, 1894.

Tesla held that his greatest ideas came to him in solitude. Yet he was no hermit, socializing with many of the most famous people of his day at elegant dinner parties he hosted. Mark Twain frequented his laboratory and promoted some of his inventions. Tesla enjoyed a reputation as not only a great engineer and inventor but also a philosopher, poet and connoisseur. On his 75th birthday he received a congratulatory letter from Einstein and was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Tesla’s last years

A renaissance man of sorts, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Time

In the popular imagination, Tesla played the part of a mad scientist. He claimed that he had developed a motor that ran on cosmic rays; that he was working on a new non-Einsteinian physics that would supply a new form of energy; that he had discovered a new technique for photographing thoughts; and that he had developed a new ray, alternately labeled the death ray and the peace ray, with vastly greater military potential than Nobel’s munitions.

His money long gone, Tesla spent his later years moving from place to place, leaving behind unpaid bills. Eventually, he settled in at a New York hotel, where his rent was paid by Westinghouse. Always living alone, he frequented the local park, where he was regularly seen feeding and tending to the pigeons, with which he claimed to share a special affinity. On the morning of Jan. 7, 1943, he was found dead in his room by a hotel maid at age 86.

Today

the name Tesla

is still very much in circulation. The airport in Belgrade bears his name, as does the world’s best-known electric car, and the magnetic field strength of MRI scanners is measured in Teslas. Tesla was a real-life Prometheus: the mythical Greek titan who raided heaven to bring fire to mankind, yet in punishment was chained to a rock where each day an eagle ate his liver. Tesla scaled great heights to bring lightning down to earth, yet his rare cast of mind and uncommon habits eventually led to his downfall, leaving him nearly penniless and alone.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to correct Tesla’s birthplace. Though he was of Serbian ethnicity, he was born in present day Croatia.

Richard Gunderman is the Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy at Indiana University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

#science #history #history of science #Nikola Tesla #scientists #innovation

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adambenkyloren · 7 years ago

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THE LAST JEDI: A MIRROR, SLOWLY CRACKING by Chuck Wendig

(This is from Wendig’s NSFW blog, and it’s spot-on in many ways. I disagree with some of his opinions about TLJ and its characters, but I like what he focuses on—the subversion of expectations. Plus, his true joy about the film comes through loud and clear.)

[Warning: deeper into this review, you will be walking onto the muddy streets of lawless SPOILERTOWN. Ye have been warned.]

This will be less a review of The Last Jedi (Episode VIII) than it will be… my thoughts? An analysis? Me opening my head like a flip-top Pac-Men and seeing what globs of brain-goo I can grab and hastily smack into the screen?

If you want my review, it’s this:

WOOOOOO

YAAAAAAY

OH WHOA

WAIT

WOW

AHHHHHH

*pant pant pant*

NO WAY DID THEY JUST

THEY DID

AND NOW

BUT THEN

OH HOLY SHIT

WAIT BUT THAT MEANS

*gesticulates wildly*

And, close.

I fucking loved it.

That’s it. That’s my review. It’s mostly just a series of excitable sounds with the occasional twirling around until I’m dizzy. But I’d rather look past my gibbon-like hoots and my strange, erotic dances and see what lies within. What lurks deeper. What do I see when I enter the DARK SIDE CAVE to have the truth revealed to me?

YOUR EXPECTATIONS WILL NOT BE MET

Fandom is a tricky bear to wrestle. We love a thing so deeply, we entwine ourselves within it. We thread a little bit — sometimes a lot — of our identity into the thing. And we come to believe we own that thing, and further, we join a tribe of fellow owners who all have threaded themselves into it both intellectually and emotionally. We feel excited by what this thing can bring us. We develop pet theories. We craft and conjure the path we would take if we were ever handed the keys to the Thing We Love. We become excited and obsessive, a little bit. Sometimes a lotta bit.

But here’s the thing:

Stories can never be written for the fans.

Fan service isn’t a bad thing, per se, but it is sometimes a fairly lazy thing — it’s a comfortable signal, a soft chair, it’s Norm from Cheers where everybody knows his name. It’s to say, “You’re lost here, but look, here is a familiar friend to help you through. It’s to let you know that despite all the strange flora and the eyes glowing in the dark, you’re still a known quantity in a known land. This is a safe place.” When done overmuch, fan service does more than just introduce a few friendly faces. It burns down the trees. It lights up the dark. It slides a jukebox over and slams the top of it like it’s fucking Fonzie and suddenly, the Greatest Hits begin to play, just as you love them. Maybe in an order you don’t know, but still the songs you know and you adore.

The Last Jedi is not without its fan service moments, but they are few and far-between, and even when they exist, they exist to challenge you more than they do to bring you succor.

The Last Jedi will not meet your expectations.

Oh, it knows them.

It is well-aware of them, in fact, and is well-aware that you have them. And it willfully… I don’t want to say disregards them, precisely, but in a sense, it has weaponized them against you. It knows you’ve seen all the movies. It knows you know the narrative beats, the tropes, the rhyming couplets of George Lucas, and then it gently puts them all in a magician’s hat, and then it reaches into the hat, and instead of pulling them back out, it pulls out a porg.

And then the movie hits you with the porg.

Whap.

That metaphor may have gotten a little out of hand, but I think you grok me.

The Last Jedi cares very much about your expectations.

It’s just not going to meet them.

You, a fan, have explicit ideas about what a Star Wars movie can and should do, and it’s going to use that against you. And it’s going to play for a larger audience, as it must. It can’t work just for you, dear fan — never mind the fact that fandom is not a singular, globular entity, like a giant amoeba with one set of desires to be met. It has to go bigger. It has to please a wide variety of viewers while trying to make new fans along the way.

This message is clear within the first 20 minutes of the movie.

[Once again, turn back, for HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.]

We expect Luke to take his old lightsaber — really, Anakin’s old lightsaber — and regard it as the way one should regard something that was last seen in your pre-severed hand. I mean, if last time I saw a Hummel figurine was in my hand that got lopped off, and then decades later you traipsed up to me on my creepy hermit island and handed me that very Hummel figurine, I’d look at you like you were Jesus Christ Himself, because, what the fuck. But that’s not what Luke does. He regards the lightsaber and instead, chucks it behind him, where a couple of porgs try to murder each other with it.

We expect Poe’s half-wit fly-boy hero plan to work, because in these movies, the dimwit hero plan always works — Han Solo always gets them out of a scrape by doing something very Han Solo, for instance, and so we trust that Poe is living by his instincts, and those will save the day. Except that’s not what happens. His efforts fuck it all up. Arguably, much of the film is based on his gigantic fuck-up. Lives are lost because of Poe Dameron.

We expect Vice Admiral Holdo doesn’t know what she’s doing, and that the snappy man who demands the plan is in the right. But he’s not. We expect incorrectly. She’s right. He’s wrong. She doesn’t owe him shit. And yet he, the demanding man, is assured that he is right and must be told the plan, and his Sexist Hero Man routine gets people killed.

We expect Rey to turn. Or Kylo to turn. They don’t.

We expect Snoke to be a grand puppetmaster, the Emperor Palpatine of the trilogy, and that he’ll — ooh, oops, he’s now cut in half? Or more than half? Was that a hand still sitting on the arm of his throne room chair? Somebody get some antibacterial ointment in that joint, post-haste.

We expect that our heroes must be chosen ones, that they come from special families, that they have been born of destiny — not that they are the children of drunken junkers, not that they once mopped a star destroyer, not that they are a lone mechanic weeping over the loss of a sister.

Often, our expectations are based on what we know of the former films — we know that the big AT-AT battle means a scrappy band will take some of those AT-ATs down and they’ll escape, but this escape is not so plucky, nor does it begin the film. It ends it. And it nearly ends the resistance. The heroic sacrifice of Finn — an expected moment — is thwarted by Rose, who kisses him. (We expected that to be Rey, didn’t we?)

In the throne room, we expect it will go like it did in Return of the Jedi — and it does, a little. Snoke is ultimately the Emperor, in that he’s a Sinister Puppetmaster with a lot of buildup but not a lot of meat on those bones. (Remember: Palpatine/Sidious only gets those deeper character beats much, much later, long after ROTJ left theaters.) The dark apprentice does turn on his master to save another, but Kylo’s turn is not the sacrifice of Vader but rather, a Sith-like move to eradicate the master and take on a new apprentice: Rey. Kylo does not turn to the light-side. He simply turns against Snoke. He fulfills the Dark Side’s wishes. (And then promptly begs and negs Rey when she won’t take his hand. “You’re nobody,” he tells her. “Please.”) And all of this happens in the second film of the trilogy, not the third — another subversion.

And that’s the word to note.

Subversion.

Another word:

Mutation.

Chaos theory.

Butterfly effect.

Ripples from thrown stones.

Or —

A MIRROR, SLOWLY CRACKING

It goes like this:

The Force Awakens was a little bit comfort food. It needed to be. It needed to play off our nostalgia. It needed to have the cut of A New Hope’s jib. We needed a reminder that we know this thing, that we love this thing.

But to go back to the jukebox metaphor, it didn’t play The Greatest Hits only. Or rather, it played them, but they were played by a new band, or performed live, or remixed, or played in a different key. The Force Awakens was comfort food, but with a few odd ingredients thrown in — “Wait, what the fuck is shiso? Is this bison? Are persimmons a real thing? Is this a persimmon or are those fruits you get in Narnia?”

The Force Awakens birthed mutations into the narrative code of Star Wars. It threw rocks into water. It chipped the mirror into which we were all staring — introducing just a few small cracks in the reflective glass. When Kylo Ren faces down Finn and Rey at the end of that film, he tells them, “It’s just us, now.” He’s telling us that the baton has been passed. “It’s not their story anymore. It’s our story.”

And then, The Last Jedi continues that.

The mutations are passed down, and the monster evolves.

The rocks in water created ripples, and now we’re seeing those ripples move toward the shoreline, some of them becoming waves.

The cracks in the mirror are growing bigger, distorting the image we expect to see reflected back at us, ruining the comfort of a mirrored image and breaking our assumptions into shards and islands of glass.

Every time we, as viewers, reach out to touch the mirror — as Rey does, in the cave — we only make more cracks. We don’t resolve the image. We don’t save the mirror. We further the breaking of the glass through our clumsy, monkey-handed expectations.

The comfort food of the Episode VII has become the molecular gastronomy of Episode VIII — ingredients we thought we knew, resolved into new forms: foams and suspensions, gelees and pancakes and cocktails, a thing we expect to be sweet is suddenly sour and salty, another thing is disassembled and deconstructed, a third thing isn’t supposed to be edible but somehow, it is.

The Last Jedi is not our comfort food.

It is not going to let your nostalgia be enough.

IT’S A FUCKING MESS, THIS MOVIE

The movie’s a mess.

And it needs to be.

I love that it’s a mess.

It’s not a formless mess. It’s not without purpose or shape.

But it’s a mess.

Let’s switch gears for a second.

Go to this link and watch the video — no, it’s not porn, it’s a brief clip from A Chef’s Table, featuring chef Grant Achatz talking about — well, you’ll see.

I, as a writer, take a lot of inspiration from this show, A Chef’s Table, not just because I like to watch pretentious chefs plate pretentious food pretentiously (though my word, I do love it!), but rather because I really appreciate seeing how each chef comes to the kitchen and to the plate and to the very idea of food differently. They are each singularly obsessed with their craft, but each in a wildly different direction — how they do it, why they do it, their ethos behind doing it, how they treat their staff, how they frame a plate, how they invent and reinvent themselves and their work? It fascinates me. And it inspires me.

Achatz in that clip says, to paraphrase, that he doesn’t want to be defined by the traditional margins of… well, preparing and serving food. He takes inspiration from modern art and for a dessert, removes the plate from the equation and lets the tablecloth serve as canvas:

That, an image of said dessert at Alinea, his restaurant.

That dish is a mess, in the literal sense of the word.

A wonderful mess. An elegant, articulate mess.

But a mess, just the same.

Now, I don’t want to give the wrong impression that The Last Jedi is quite so avant-garde — it’s not a shattering of the mold, it’s not giving us some David Lynchian view of the Star Warsfranchise, but it is giving us a Rian Johnson view. And I’d argue, without knowing Rian Johnson’s precious and weird and wonderful heart, that he — like Achatz — did not want to be bound by the rigors of the plate. Because he did not make a film that followed the bouncing ball. It does not follow the classic narrative Hollywood blockbuster beats. (Nor, for the record, does Empire Strikes Back, by the way. I talk about how that film subverts the pattern in my book — plug alert— Damn Fine Story.) Johnson does not make a film pinned to the corkboard by the tropes of the Star Wars universe. It sees them. It uses them. And then it willfully discards them, locking eyes with you so you see that it’s doing it. And it results in a messy, bumpy, strange film.

One that needs to be messy, bumpy, and strange.

Because then, only then, are we truly free from the pattern.

I explained to my wife that The Last Jedi is like The Matrix Reloaded, if The Matrix Reloaded was actually good. That second film of the Matrix trilogy is a fucking mess, and it tries very hard to look into its own heart and challenge the assumptions you have about it — but it was too soon, and it too easily betrayed what the first film was without understanding why it was doing it. And it did it all in a haughty, nose-in-the-air, intellectually-elite way. (As with all things here and everywhere, YMMV.)

This film tries and messily succeeds.

And the resultant mess — the splatters, the ripples, the broken glass, the unfolding mutations — changes our understanding. It frees Episode IX from fitting a known pattern. It frees us from knowing what’s to come — we are gloriously, wonderfully lost. Just as the characters are themselves lost. I pondered that this film could’ve just as easily been called The Lost Jedi, because that’s how it feels. Luke is wayward. Rey is lost to her own powers and place in the world. Kylo is lost in his rage, fallen into the chasm of his heart and spirit. Poe is unmoored from his heroism. Finn is pinballing between his cowardice and his own heroism. Rose is lost without her sister. Leia is lost without Han and the Republic. The Resistance is lost under the might of the First Order. Everyone is lost. Everyone is failing. The entire movie presents us with failure after failure: characters trying to do the right thing and missing a step, every damn time.

But it presents failure in the way that the dessert table of Grant Achatz is a failure: it’s broken, yes, but into new shapes, new tastes. It’s failure in the way a mirror is broken: one image becomes many, distorted and new and beautiful in its way. It’s failure as the butterfly effect. It’s failure as Yoda tells it: the greatest teacher, failure is.

This failure of Luke, of Rey, of the Resistance, of all the characters, leads to a resurrection — the Phoenix Firebird of the Rebellion — rising anew.

This failure of these characters is a success for the film.

It’s a mess in the best way. Because in that mess, the patterns are lost, the expectations are destroyed, the tropes are broken and bent. For the first time in a long time, I had literally no idea what was going to happen, and that felt like madness in the best way.

This is a mythic remix. A resetting of the game board.

In being lost, we have become found.

THAT CODA, AT THE ENDING

At the end of the film, we see the fathier stable-boy gently summon a broom to his hand and look to the night sky, a Resistance ring on his finger, the music of Luke Skywalker rising. It’s an odd coda in that none of the Star Wars films give us anything like that — but it’s beautiful to me in several ways. It’s beautiful because:

a) It continues the theme of Rey, Finn, Rose, where power and rebellion and heroism needn’t come from special bloodlines — it’s in all of us, all the way down to this one stable-boy.

b) It serves as a refutation, in fact, of the wealth and spectacle of Canto Bight, full of people who think they’re special but who are decidedly not.

c) It continues what for me is one of the chief themes of Star Wars, in that the actions of a small group can change the galaxy — Rose and Finn meet a boy who one day may become the face of the new Resistance; they have inspired him, they were the spark.

d) It makes me think of our own time, and the need for resistance against a rising autocratic regime, and it tells me that there’s a whole other take waiting on The Last Jedi, showing how it (and Episode VII) are telling us a lot more about our current political climate than we’d like. The film flirts for a while with an angle of Whataboutism, with Bothsidesism, where Kylo tells us that he wants to kill the past, where DJ the slicer tells us that all sides are bad, Luke hates the Jedi — but the movie concertedly, decidedly tells us that’s not true by the end. Rey picks her side, as does Kylo. Finn refutes DJ’s assertion. No Grey Jedi exist. Evil is evil, oppression is oppression, and the light will rise to meet it — here, now, with this young boy and his FORCE-BROOM.

and finally

e) Because my son loved that part. My son is six years old and responded to that kid by wanting to be that kid. HE HAS THE FORCE, my son said immediately after leaving the theater, DID YOU SEE THE BROOM OMG THE BROOM. This storyworld has long been generational: each generation now getting a trilogy for them, unique to them, and this is that, here. I love that. I love that this trilogy is more for him than it is for me. It doesn’t kill all the old stuff, it doesn’t shutter the past entirely, but it does break it apart, and remake it for kids my son’s age — and kids who aren’t just my son, either, kids who don’t look like him, kids who don’t have to look like Luke Skywalker but can instead look like Rose or Finn or Poe or Rey.

THE CHALLENGE

The challenge comes for the viewer is this:

Do you need need your Star Wars to be comfort food? No harm, no foul if you do. Some look to Star Wars and need it to be the perfect mirror it has been — they don’t want that mirror broken so that other stories can be told, so that other people can see themselves in the shared shards. Some want the tropes. They want the familiarity. They need nostalgia.

And this movie burns it all down.

A lightning strike setting fire to a sacred tree.

It’s okay if you didn’t like it.

But it’s worth appreciating what it did, and why, even if you don’t.

Me, I loved it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to return to my wild gesticulations of joy.

See you around, kid.

(A few complaints and concerns about the film will be in the comments.)

#chuck wendig #tlj review #tlj spoilers #one guys opinion #rian johnson

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scapegrace74-blog · 7 years ago

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Fictober Day 13, 1013 Words

This seemed like such a good idea at the time. I have a new appreciation for joining words. And halfway through I went back and took all of the hyphens out of the compound words. I had plans to re-arrange these into something closer to a poem, but you’re going to get them a la stream of consciousness, because it’s been a long day. Happy birthday, Fox Mulder! Tagging @fictober @today-in-fic and @txf-prompt-box.

Sloe eyed. Insomniac. Whippet hipped. Loyal. Irreverent. Iconoclast. Ever questing. Brutish. Gentle. Anchored by tragedy. Incisive. Blunt. Trenchcoat wearing. Squinty. Empathetic. Bull headed. Empty handed. Chestnut haired. Chisel jawed. Verbose. Mute. Explosive. Imploding. Battle weary. Inquiring. Patrician. Mythic. Doomed. Icarus and Daedalus. Childless father. Orphaned son. Wry. Cleft chinned. Mole cheeked. Mossy eyed. Arrogant. Gentlemanly. Starry eyed. Star searching. Star crossed. Sarcastic. Sincere. Sister bereft. Clotheshorse. Bruno Magli loafer shod. Lapsed Jew. Worshipful. Basement hermit. Porn aficionado. Supple limbed. Atlasian. Byronic. Jungian. Dual fathered. Single minded. Absent minded. Plangent. Notorious. Slob. Meticulous. Curious. Questioning. Travel weary. Relentless. Sleepy blink giver. Dreamer. Loner. Divorcee. Masculine. Donnish. Recalcitrant. Fleet footed. Soft handed. Basketball enthusiast. Point guard. Cerebral. Banal. Distracted. Myopic. Long lashed. Plush lipped. Sculpted. Sartorial. Pedantic. Open minded. Seeker of truth. Myth believer. Ghost hunter. Monster chaser. Mutant mirandizer. Cher dancer. Downy haired. Bronze skinned. Outcast. Alpha male. Intuitive. Spooky. Magdalen college attendee. Boston Brahmin. Magnanimous. Long boned. Short fused. Atheist. Believer. Defiant. Well read. Well versed. Butter fingered. Cancer defying. Courtly. Charming. Crush inducing. Impervious. Huge hearted. Vulnerable. Outreaching. Defensive. Green eyed. Blue eyed. Grey eyed. Hazel eyed. Alien apostle. Apostate. Abductee defender. Abductee. Apocalypse prognosticator. Overbite. Sharp tongued. Promise-keeper. Victim. Prosecutor. Wire tapper. Unexplained light chaser. Forever to the heavens drawn. Teena’s favourite. Bill’s choice. Skinner’s bane. Sofa sleeper. Desk jockey. Pencil launcher. Driver. Passenger. Mutineer. Compass true. Doubt defier. Expectation defier. Death defier. Handsome. Puckish. Elven eared. Hedgehog haired. Broad shouldered. Runners’ knee. Gunshot scar. Iliac crest. Vengeance driven. Forgiving. Kind. Socially stunted. Id dominant. Narcissistic. Scholarly. Prodigal son. Apollo. Zarathustra. Agrippa. Penitent. Old soul. Grief weary. Alarm tripper. Yarn unraveller. Convention abstainer. Can’t leave well enough alone. Confidante. Late-night caller. Ramparts defender. Wide net caster. Hither and yon-er. Navigator. Lost. Lost Boy. Persistant. Alarmist. Defeatist. Nomad. Comfort spurner. Journeyman. Stargazer. Holder of the scales of justice. Libra. Bay Stater. Island-born. Civil servant. Per diem claimer. Leash yanker. Foolhardy. Sensual. Hedonistic. Ascetic. Self-deprived. Orpheus in the Underworld. High browed. Obscure. Shadowed by tragedy. Priapic. Apologist. Burden ridden. Weighted down by his past. Future fighting. Abstinent. Uxorious. Lean flanked. Navel gazing. Profiler. Impatient. Hospital patient. Institutionalized. Committed. Devoted. Stolen childhood. Arrested adolescence. Brave. Gambler. Betting against the house. Quixotic. Romantic. Impulsive. Guitar riffing. Pun loving. Filial. Solitary. Self-abnegating. Daring the hounds of hell to bite. Soulful. Poetic. Mystic. Gnostic. Apocryphal. God denying. Forsaking. Forsook. Forward charging. Backward glancing. Target sighting. Co-worker. Colleague. Muscular. Intellectual. Reliably unreliable. Perpetually late. Up early. Literate. Fish caretaker. Dog disliker. White whale chaser. Pole star navigating. Aesthete. Perpetually injured. Tall tale teller. End time foreteller. Extra-terrestrial stalwart. Conspiracy theorist. Led around by his past. Hopeless quest upholder. Genie releaser. Delusional. Visionary. Oracle of doom. Occultist. Traditionalist. Vatic. Psychologist. Partner. Lover. Beloved. Right-handed. Heavy-handed. Heart on his sleeve. Monotone. Laconic. Faustian. Equivocal. Explicit. Dirty-minded. Bearing a cross. Holding a grudge. Holding a torch. Brain surgery survivor. Pinpoint focussed. Middle-aged. Sensualist. Risk taker. Undercover agent. Undercover boyfriend. Supplicant. Empath. Crisis survivor. Depressive. Mr. Potato Head imitator. Childish. Childlike. Ageless. Agnostic. Senior agent. Prophet. Fearless. Soulmate. Endorphin chaser. SSRI prescription filler. Danger magnet. Brooder. Pouter. Casual disregard for personal harm. Hare-chaser. Reformed skirt-chaser. Monogamous. Dream analyzer. Lamaze class partner. Zombie guardian. Cautious Millennium celebrator. Talks a good game. Trips over his tongue. Trips over his feet. White man trash talker. Anarchist. Calamity inviter. Gazer. Gazee. Eye candy. Ass model. Honourable. Dutiful. Playing the long game. Self-mockery expert. Suffering no fools. Garbage can tantrum thrower. Hallway pacer. Elevator rider. Highway voyager. Co-pilot. Co-conspirator. Friend. Protector. Unrequited admirer. Requited suitor. Abandoned husband. Angel and devil all at once. Elegant. Fit. UFO pursuer. Singular pursuit. Undissuadable. Barreling forward without thought of ramifications. Forever weighing the cost of consequences in the aftermath. Owner of an empty fridge. Keeper of an empty bed. Custodian of a gold necklace. Throwing effort after foolishness. Noble. Rat trap connoisseur. Monograph author. Peering into the abyss. Walking the tightrope of lunacy. Masochist. Diffident courter. Passionate significant other. Fragile mental health. Held together by Spackle and faith. Falling apart in slow motion. Giver of unsolicited kindness. Ouster of the Syndicate. Weekend scruff. Cellphone addictee. One-liner fan. Mutato correspondent. Compassionate. Long memoried. Bombastic. Can read you like a large print book. Disdains self-analysis. Is his own blind spot. Fanciful. Internet casualty. Grey t-shirts. Low-riding pants. Well-cut suits. Exile from happiness. Sacrificial lamb. Perfectly imperfect. Freckles over his shoulders. Heroic quest. Martyr. Gulag escapee. Red Speedo. The loneliness of the long distance runner. Paracelsus. Platonic ideal. Socratic method. Sagacity. Auto-erotic asphyxiation. Sinful. Black leather couch. Late model Ford. Sees his sister in starlight. Full of ruth. Opposer of a living will. Scornful. Truthful. Confrontational. Contemptuous. Fighter against chauvinism, cronyism and reductionism. Approachable to women, children and oddballs. Expert in alien abduction lore. Volunteer for a hopeless war. Restless sleeper. Nightmare sufferer. Super Soldier punching bag. Accepter of his fate. Junk food consumer. Pizza delivery man. Occupant of Apartment 42. Fugitive from justice. Fugitive from romantic entanglement. Provider of an IVF donation. Keeping the light on for a miracle. Speechless entrant into Scully’s bed one lonely night. Has only one one in five billion. Comes back from the dead for her sake. Walks away from her without a second thought to protect their son. Can’t believe he is someone’s constant or touchstone. Uncooperative. Audacious. Smug. Aloof. Mad swagger. Can doubtless back it up. Thoughtful. Weird. Geeky. Awkward like a half-grown puppy. Makes an end run around propriety. Rankine’s law of potential energy in the flesh. Gifter of rare smiles and frequent grins. Has a 40,000 word vocabulary and an Oxford degree. Still is speechless in the face of his love for Scully and their son. Holds himself to a higher standard than anyone else. Has never been disappointed in only one person. Expected to spend his adult life alone. Managed to make his expectations come to pass. Can’t find the strength to stand up and fight without Scully in his corner. If asked to name the most important moments of his life, would answer Scully, William, Scully, Scully, Scully. Happy birthday, Fox Mulder.

#fictober #my writing #x-files

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alienor-woods · 7 years ago

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"fresh pressed tears" 😂 I'm crying, and dying.

The fantasy that Certain People have built up about how Jon x Sansa is gonna be endgame is like…………………………….fucking insane. We have four (4) episodes, right? And we have to:

have the ENTIRE FUCKING WAR FOR THE DAWN

dethrone cersei

kill cersei in a time-consuming and narratively-satisfying way

kill jaime in a time-consuming and narratively-satisfying way

Follow Theon as he seeks out Yara and saves her and they retake the Iron Islands together in a time-consuming and narratively-satisfying way

follow Euron on his damn circumnavigation of the globe??? tho i would bet that they’re just gonna time-jump him and he’s gonna ~appear from the void with his army of mercernaries

dorne? dorne? doooooorne?

get dany pregnant (i mean, it’s happening. i rewatched the last two episodes and THERE’S A BABY COMING.)(God just — finally reaping the rewards of the “when your womb quickens and you bear a living child” prophecy LET ME LIVEEEE i’m so READY)

have Jon become Azor Ahai in a time-consuming and narratively-satisfying way.

watch Bran roll his eyes back in his head for whatever magical Merlin shenanigans he’s going to be up to

Arya is gonna kill some people and then probably cry over it, if D&D wanna bring any complexity to her character (so this bullet is a ~soft maybe tbh)

idk are we even going to see Essos again? I would guess not but they’re going to have to TALK about it at some point.

have lots of conversations about the nature of leadership and how we’re going to alter/change the transfer of power (basically the point of the entire series)(plus the whole point of tyrion’s character)(also the whole point of the angst over Dany’s barrenness + the convo she had with Tyrion about who her successor was going to be)(DO IT LIKE THE ROMANS JUST PICK SOMEONE RANDOM AND ADOPT THEM)(lol omg what if this is one big trick for Dany to adopt Jon I WOULD DIE)

Deal with The Long Night coming and how the small folk are going to handle that shit in a time-consuming and narratively-satisfying way

Watch Sam start writing A Song of Ice and Fire for a solid few minutes as the ultimate finale scene (THEY’RE SUCH FAN BOYS THEY WON’T BE ABLE TO NOT FRODO THE SHIT OUT OF SAMWELL TARLY)

So yeah like —————- all of this is going on and has to be accomplished in four or five hours and yet?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Jon is supposed to realize he actually wants to be banging Sansa over Dany and he’s going to betray Dany and fight her after all the OTHER fighting he’s done and already is canonically fuckin’ sick and tired of?

The “best” outcome for that crowd is Jon and Dany agreeing that they’re just star-crossed lovers, ships passing in the night, brought together for some epic Age of Heroes shit but not meant to be married, and Jon fucks off back to Winterfell while Dany fucks off back to Essos/to rule a few kingdoms in the South and they exchange angsty, awkward love letters and bang a few more times during diplomatic exchanges while Jon stays in Winterfell and probably stays a hermit at this point. (Honestly I just want him to have a year-long zen retreat once this is all done just like COMMUNE WITH NATURE DUDE U FUCKIN’ DESERVE IT.)

Much more likely that Jon and Dany both die in the War for the Dawn, all the dragons die, and the remaining Starks raise the new bb!Targ in Winterfell and work towards getting Westeros on some sort of proto-democracy track. Which, again, is THE POINT OF THE SERIES.

So yeah, I’m ready for the tears, because honestly? THEY WILL HAVE BROUGHT IT UPON THEMSELVES.

#anyway here's wonderwall #fandom wank #lunaplath

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exileseverafter · 7 years ago

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Chapter 5

Strawberry Pie and the Winter Prince

“He’s got legs like tree trunks! Big yellow eyes! I imagine he could throw a boulder the length of the forest. I KNEW that maiden was in trouble!”

Ezra did not go with Marjorie to her ‘Moonflower Market’ that night, or the next. It wasn’t out of lack of curiosity or laziness. He already felt restless and ill at ease knowing he had no steady income, as while servitude under Hamilton Tooth had been unbearable at times he at least didn’t live in fear of missing a meal. Rather, his pride simply wouldn’t allow him to show up at a bazaar selling only a single pie, even if that pie could be sliced up to feed a good 20 humans according to Marjorie. “It’s preposterous,” he’d insisted at the time. “If this is to be my ‘debut’ as a baker here in the Center of the Universe, and if I’m to attract customers as you seem to think I can, I won’t do it with subpar work! Certainly not with cold cheese and mushroom pie.” (He’d already eaten a slice of the other pie for supper.) “At least let me prepare a decent strawberry pie. As soon as I can find strawberries…” It took a week, in fact, to gather the ingredients and prepare for his ‘debut’ at the Market. During that time he made several discoveries about life on the surface. Forests in particular were absolutely teeming with life. On the Sky Islands, the plants that grew there did so in organized ways, sending their roots down into the translucent surface of the cloud and blooming to produce brightly colored fruits or perfumed flowers. Here the plant life seemed determined to spread across every inch of land available, vines choking trees and lichens feasting on their fallen corpses. Where the enormous fir trees didn’t choke out the sunlight, patches of grass formed carpets studded with toadstools and weeds. Insects buzzed about, many too tiny to see until they’d landed on his nose or left his wrists with itchy bites. In the Sky there had been birds, and only birds; no other animal seemed to thrive on the Islands unless it was a pampered pet, and even Enlightened land animals showed no interest in trying. The priests of the Sun theorized that this was because birds were the favored of the Sun, the ones among the animals who hadn’t turned their backs on Her and thus could still fly far higher than the insects could. The scientists thought it had something to do with the kinds of plants grown in the Sky, pointing out that even flightless birds like chickens did just fine. Whatever the reason, it led to birds being enormously popular with the Sky Folk as livestock or pets. The massive Capital Island of Vox, hovering perpetually over the ocean, was said to hold a glorious menagerie with one inhabitant: a phoenix, one of the last in the world. Yet even in Mielle, Ezra could not recall the flocks of birds which woke him every morning with gentle chattering and warning calls. Swarms of them sat on the branches of a dying tree until they gave it the illusion of leaves. Birds lived in the Islands, but they thrived on the ground. What he was to make of that, he didn’t know. Marjorie, for her part, went about her business privately as she promised she would, answering questions only with some needling. She cheerfully told him where to find wild strawberries and edible mushrooms, possibly just happy to have the place to herself while he went out gathering. It took pressing her a bit more to find out that they were currently on the outskirts of the Ever Empire, a human-ruled nation that was in her words, “of no concern to us as they don’t send tax collectors out here.” He also learned there weren’t any terrestrial villages within a week’s travel, leaving Ezra to conclude that this Market was the only way he could continue living as a baker instead of inevitably going mad as a hermit with a chatty freeloader. He found himself wondering what exactly G. Chulainn did to cause so much terror if he was so far away from anyone at all. He also learned from her how sacks of flour and sugar, bottles of milk and eggs would show up every other morning without explanation. “A little birdie brings them,” she said with a coy look. “And I may have told that little birdie that I have an ailing grandmother. But he wouldn’t bring it if he couldn’t spare it, right?” One afternoon he sat gathering strawberries in the meadow, kneeling next to the plant and plucking them with his chubby fingers as delicately as he could. He’d discovered that blueberries were a lost cause; tiny as they were, they’d end up squashed and smeared on his hands no matter how careful he was. “I suppose I’ll have to learn how to shape dough more delicately as well,” he muttered to himself as he wiped sweat off his brow, the sun beating down on him. “No wonder humans think they’re the default for everything. It’s all sized perfectly for them down here. Well, except for the trees, and the bears…” He thought he heard a rustling in the surrounding woods, freezing on instinct and wishing he’d brought his cooking pot. Had merely mentioning bears jinxed him in some way, bringing them down on him? Didn’t they love sweet things like fruit? Certainly he was larger than a bear or a wolf, but that didn’t mean he wanted to run into one. For a brief second he thought he saw two sets of eyes peering out at him, one bestial and one more human. Then he saw a flash of movement and both disappeared, leaving him standing and staring in the heat and feeling a little foolish. # “The giant has returned!” Basil burst into his cabin with so much energy he could have torn the door right off if he weren’t careful. “I knew it!” Lavender paused in her sweeping and looked up at the young prince, smiling gently. “That’s wonderful, Dear. You can bring him a housewarming gift later. Help me get the corners here, won’t you?” Basil took the broom without even thinking about it, too distracted to be of much help sweeping. “He’s got legs like tree trunks! Big yellow eyes! I imagine he could throw a boulder the length of the forest. I KNEW that maiden was in trouble!” “Maiden?” Lavender raised an eyebrow, setting herself down on a wooden chair as Basil rushed past her, imitating the battle he dreamed of in broom-handle pantomime. “You mean that girl with the sick grandmother in the old giants’ cottage?” “And a fishy story it is, right? Why would a girl with high-class manners be out in the woods with her grandmother for no reason at all?” “Oh, I don’t know. Why would a prince be out in the woods with his fairy godmothers? One of whom he did not kiss when he came in, might I add.” “Ah…” Basil rubbed the back of his neck with a gloved hand and bowed his head. “Sorry, Grandmother!” He gave her a kiss on the wrinkled cheek she presented and set the broom aside, still too excited to notice how his booted feet were already starting to warm up. “Just got a little excited. And I see your point, but I mean…I have a reason. Which is why I thought she had to have reason, too. And now I know what it is! She’s actually a prisoner of that giant, and she can’t say or he’ll crush her bones to make his bread! Or whatever giants do. Didn’t one of them kidnap maidens some time ago?” Lavender just pursed her thin lips together and made a ‘hmm’ sound. “You don’t believe me? I-hooo.” The cold was creeping through Basil’s limbs again, and he quickly sat himself in front of the fireplace, burning perpetually thanks to fairy magic. The same magic kept the inside of the cabin warm as a steam bath for his sake, something the godmothers insisted they didn’t mind in the least. He wrapped his heavy coat and cloak around him, letting the warmth surround him until the terrible chill had passed. But he forced a smile and shook his head, letting his long brown hair fall loose from its braid. “I’m fine now. Honest! Toasty warm. And I’ll feel warmer once I save that maiden.” Lavender pressed a bowl of hot chicken soup into his hands, the heat from the clay bowl soothing instead of burning. “Do you fancy that maiden?” “What? No!” Basil wrinkled his nose, and then remembered that a Prince Charming never spoke that way about a young lady. “I mean, she seems nice enough but I don’t ‘fancy’ her in that way. Why do you keep asking that whenever I want to help someone?” “A fairy godmother just wants to see her boy settled and happy, that’s all.” “And a prince has a marriage arranged for him, right? I mean, eventually. After de-cursing.” He found the idea a little relaxing. Without having to worry about his eventual marriage, he could concentrate on becoming Prince Charming and fighting dragons. Surely he could still do that after his parents married him off to some foreign princess, right? “I just want to save someone. I mean, that’s what princes…do.” “The princes in the stories do, sure.” Lavender started brushing his hair, a habit he couldn’t convince her to stop doing even if it left him feeling like a little kid again. “Now you’re really convinced this is a wicked giant we’re dealing with, or do you just want a wicked giant to fight?” How did Lavender manage to make Basil feel like a chastened child even now that he was a young man? “I want a problem to solve. I want to help people, like my brother and sister do. When I get to play that role, the person who swoops in and saves the helpless, it makes me feel, I don’t know. Useful. Important.” He looked down at his hands, the fingertips still cool despite the crackling fireplace and hot soup. “It warms me, I guess.” After another ‘hmm,’ Lavender went back to brushing his hair. “I think if you go out tonight and keep an eye on the Moonflower Gate, you’ll find someone in distress. Fairy intuition. Just remember, the situation might not be what you think it is. You can’t always trust your eyes, because your mind lies to them.” “And how could my own mind possibly lie to myself? But-thank you, Grandmother.” Basil turned around and smiled. “I’m going to brush the burrs out of Aurora’s fur. You don’t think she’ll be too tired to go out tonight?” The old fairy woman chuckled. “Aurora’s been sleeping and eating quite enough. I think the exercise will do her good.” “And if the giant isn’t wicked but is a great warrior, you think he’ll let me challenge his strength?” Basil couldn’t hide the eager smile on his face, ignoring how Lavender rolled her eyes. “Go check on your bear.” # That evening, Ezra followed Marjorie down what seemed to be the most meandering forest path possible. She was wheeling a rickety wooden cart with her carved miniatures and glass baubles, he a larger but equally unstable one stacked with freshly baked strawberry and custard pies. She seemed to be in a particularly good mood, chatting the entire way; Ezra didn’t mind, as it distracted from the distant howls and hoots of the dark woods. “I swear it, dear Mr. Kettle, those pies smell heavenly! I still think that cheese and mushroom bit was good enough to sell on its own, but I see you have a nose for quality. A nose for it!” “Well,” Ezra murmured, “fragrance is important. It interacts with taste, you know. And the crust is a family recipe…!” “And if I live long enough with you I’ll be too round to fit in that house for certain. I’m glad you’re selling those things and keeping them out of my way!” Marjorie hummed as she toted along her cart. The road was worn smooth with footsteps, provided one avoided the occasional jagged rock or puddle. “But yes, Moonflower Market. Oh, what a glorious place, Moonflower Market! There’s simply no fairy market like it. It’s where you go to get something unusual. Say you want to cast a spell? Well, some witches use miniatures for that purpose, though I don’t know the true process. Say you want a tiny recreation of the throne of King Theodore the Warlord? I have no idea why you’d desire such a thing, but I sold one I made with enough to buy myself a new dress.” “Art collectors, I’d imagine.” Ezra held his head a bit higher. “It’s good to know even people down here appreciate the hard work of an artisan.” Marjorie just shrugged at that. “Whatever you mean by that. You know we’re not all luddites down here, right? We manage just fine without fancy blue apples and rocs.” Realizing he might have said the wrong thing, Ezra colored in his cheeks. “And it’s wonderful work you do down here,” he added hastily, eager to change the subject. “What sort of things do they sell?” “Rarities. I know, you’re about to point out that a pie is not a rarity, but Sky cuisine is not exactly common down here! Just emphasize your family’s legendary baking prowess and people will buy it just for the experience, even if a strawberry pie is just a strawberry pie in the end. Then they can brag that they’ve tasted the sorts of foods only royalty get to try. And giants of course, but maybe that’s part of the novelty.” “I don’t know how I feel about being a ‘novelty,’” Ezra said. He had an odd feeling in his stomach about this whole affair. What if one of his kin was there, recognizing him as a criminal exile? What if his presence really did scare off humans who weren’t as odd as Marjorie? He already felt big and out of place outside of the cabin, his makeshift cart dwarfing hers and still feeling like a child’s toy. Would his customers just gawk at him, or worry he’d be a violent lout like other Sky exiles? Marjorie hadn’t heard him, or pretended she hadn’t. “The best thing to do is to flatter your customers just a little bit. ‘You look like you have a healthy sweet tooth!’ I’d say. Or perhaps, ‘the redness of the strawberries suits the blue of your eyes.’ Or perhaps you can’t sell pies the way you can jewelry…” “The blue of your…what?” Ezra stared at Marjorie. “Eyes.” She pointed at her own. “People like when you compliment their eyes. Windows to the soul and all that.” Ezra scoffed. “Eyes are gold. …Right?” “Well, yours are! Quite unusual; human eyes usually don’t come in that color. Or, wait.” She pondered for a second, tapping her lips with her finger. “Let me guess. Your kind all have gold eyes, right?” “Yes, because that’s the color eyes are!” Ezra fumed, sensing she was making a fool of him again, until he realized what he was arguing about. “Wait, humans don’t have…excuse me for a second.” He knelt down to examine her face a little closer, squinting until he could make out the irises. It wasn’t easy in the dark. “You have green eyes,” he finally concluded, marveling. Marjorie stared up at him and then laughed. “Of course! Our eyes are small compared to yours, so even when you’re making eye contact you don’t always register the iris color. No offense, but your kind does seem to have trouble seeing past your own noses, metaphorically speaking.” Feeling rather humiliated and at the same time frustrated with humans for being as small and complex as they apparently were, he turned away and continued on the path. “Eye color doesn’t matter.” “Not unless you’re complimenting a lover, no. I agree.” Marjorie chuckled again and moved on. “Oh, but the things they sell there. Enchanted soups, love potions, spell artifacts, magic plants. Once I saw a cauldron that produced noodles with one word-oh, mind that branch!” She’d been a little late with the warning, as the tree branch had already smacked Ezra in the face, but he was too stunned to notice the stinging nosebleed that resulted. “Did-did you say magic plants?” The human stood still for a moment, as if thinking, and then cleared her throat. “Sorry, just lost my train of thought! Yes, you get those from time to time.” “Say…anything like magic beans?” “Beans? Hmm. Perhaps? Maybe? I see so many things, it’s hard to recall. What’s a baker want with beans, anyway? You know how to make a cassoulet? I do adore cassoulet…” “Uh, nothing. I mean, yes. Sort of.” Ezra was hardly in the mood to explain the whole story to Marjorie now of all times, but already his mind was racing. He’d thought he could use any success he gained at the Market to spread word of his talent around among the humans, finding himself prestige in the Center of the Universe. Were he well-known and beloved enough down here, perhaps he’d have more success appealing his unfair sentence. But if there was someone selling magic beans, like the ones which had created the monstrous beanstalk, maybe they could lead him to Jack. And if he could find the real culprit, be it that seemingly innocent human boy or the one who had sent him… “We’re here, Ezra!” Marjorie snapped him out of his own thoughts. They’d arrived at a perfectly circular clearing, the grass well-worn and flat in places. It was completely deserted and lit only by the light of the full moon. He glanced around, rubbing his chin in concern. “Are we very early? I thought you said it started at midnight, and I’m sure it’s nearly that time.” “It is! And we’re not but a few minutes early. And yes, this is the place.” Marjorie pouted up at him, patting him on the thigh. “Have a little bit of faith in me, my large friend! Just give it a few minutes…” The rustling around them would seem to confirm Marjorie’s words. “Oh! That must be them now. I guess they’re all arriving at the same ti-” Ezra felt a tug on his shirt and looked down at Marjorie, whose smile had vanished and been replaced with a wide-eyed stare. She was holding her finger in front of her mouth to shush him, pointing outward. There were no merchants emerging from the woods. Instead, dozens of gold eyes emerged, dark shapes shuffling out with lowered heads and hunched forms. Wolves, Ezra knew from pictures; though the wolves he’d seen had been far less menacing and hungry-looking than these. He also imagined them being much smaller, like large dogs. These were at least a head taller than Marjorie, and she was a tall human. “Marjorie,” he whispered down to her. “Get a bit closer. I could probably take one or two of them just fine…” One or two he might be able to handle, but there were at least nine. “Is this normal?” “No it’s not normal!” she snapped, reaching for a dagger she’d apparently hidden in her dress. “I’ve never seen wolves like this before. This is supposed to be an enchanted glen. You know, protected.” He swallowed, clenching his hands into fists and mustering up willpower. He had to have some courage in there somewhere, didn’t he? “You can probably make a run for it while they go after me. I’m sure between the two of us, the fat giant is the more tempting target.” “Oh, I will not! I said I’d get you to the Market and I’m going to do that! Somehow, yes…” The wolves hunched and then growled, the largest one with an enormous, shaggy mane and blood red eyes. It was big enough to reach Ezra’s chest, and he could already imagine it tearing into his throat. He’d die in total obscurity after all, without any surviving ancestors to even return his body to the sky… The wolf growled and lunged, jaws out. Acting on instinct, he swung a fist and miraculously connected, nailing the beast right beneath the chin. It stumbled back, yelping and snarling, as Ezra stared at his own arms. “I…how did I do that?!” “You’re a giant, silly! However you were up there, you’re quite strong in comparison down here!” Marjorie had somehow managed to climb onto his shoulders, and he couldn’t blame her under the circumstances. “Think you could do that, oh, about 40 more times? Because there’s more coming…” “N-no, I don’t,” Ezra admitted, backing up against the carts as the wolves closed in on them. The big one was uttering strange noises, almost as if it was passing on orders to its hungry brethren. One after another they lunged, leaped… And were flung yelping away. Ezra opened his eyes. He was sure he hadn’t done that. Instead there was a great bulky form, fur white as the moon itself, swatting the beasts away with long black claws. A bear, Ezra recognized from the shape, though he’d never seen one that color in the paintings. Riding atop it was a figure in a thick, fur-lined cloak over an equally heavy coat, face wrapped in a scarf and long black braid trailing behind him. He had a sword hanging in a scabbard at his side and pulled it out to fight off the rest of the wolves, sending them running back into the woods in a matter of minutes. The bear rider turned to face Ezra in particular, silhouetted by the moonlight. He dressed for far colder weather than the warm night necessitated, a golden amulet hanging from his neck. The young warrior pulled the scarf down so he could speak. “And now, Giant…” “You saved me,” Ezra blurted out before feeling incredibly foolish for even speaking to such a person. But no one had ever saved him before. Not when his family was sinking into debt, not when his parents were dying, not when he was on trial for something everyone knew he hadn’t done. It was an indescribable feeling. “Ohhh, thank goodness you’re here,” Marjorie added as she appeared from behind Ezra. She wiped blood off the tip of her dagger; apparently she’d gotten a few blows on a wolf herself. “You always are helpful, my little birdie. Basil, this is Ezra Kettle, the new owner of the cottage. He’s helping me take care of my sick grandmother.” Ezra would only later realize she’d mentioned a nonexistent grandmother; he was too busy staring at the bear rider, apparently named Basil. “Ezra, this is Basil, Prince of…um, hello?” She poked at him. “Hello?” Basil looked down at Marjorie, then up at Ezra, dismounting from his bear and giving the latter a baffled look. “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound quite sincere. Had Ezra committed some kind of offense? Was he expected to offer something in recompense? What was the etiquette regarding being saved by a handsome prince? Marjorie gave Ezra a strange look and then shrugged. “Mr. Prince of the Blue Forest, could you stick around and escort us to the Market once the gate is open? You know, in case more weird wolves show up.” That seemed to excite the prince, whose eyes lit up like the stars. “Escort you? Of course, my lady! My large…sir.” He bowed to both of them, tipping his wide-brimmed hat with fur gloved hands. “The gate should open any moment now, and I shall ensure your safety from all ills.” “You can have some pie,” Ezra interjected, and then wondered why he’d been so insistent about it. “Uh, thank you.” Basil gave Ezra another awkward look up, confirming it in Ezra’s mind that he’d already made several major social fumbles with the prince. “Though we’ve never seen wolves like that in the forest before either. Strange! I wonder if that means something terrible’s afoot…” “You’re a little too excited about something terrible being afoot, Highness,” Marjorie mock-whispered at him. Ezra would have agreed, but he was distracted by the dizziness he felt when he looked at Basil. A gentle, warm breeze blew into the clearing. The grass turned from dark green to a bright blue, lit by a circle of periwinkle-blue, bell-shaped flowers glowing like morning stars. The glow increased in intensity until it bathed them in blue light, the surrounding woods warping and rippling out of view. Ezra reached to steady his cart by instinct, even though nothing was actually moving, thanking the Sun that he’d only lost one pie in the fracas and the wolves had mostly ignored the cart. That was strange, he’d realize later; why would wolves be picky? In the storm of light and the strange, static sensation it brought on his skin, Ezra couldn’t help but notice something that was of great importance to him at that moment. Basil had brown eyes.

(Author’s Note: Since I forgot to do a post last night, there’ll be another chapter up tomorrow. Hope you’re enjoying so far! If you are, let me know and give me a reblog. You can learn more about the series on the main page.)

#The Exiles Ever After #Chapter posting #serial fiction #fairy tales #giants

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thecontentedreader · 7 years ago

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It’s time for another Book Mail post! Since starting this blog, I never imagined that I would be given the opportunity by publishers to read and review their books. I am so grateful to my followers and to book publishers who choose to support me! Let’s take a look at some of the books I’ve been sent this month!

I received a number of books from Penguin Random House Canada this past month and am incredibly grateful for their support in my blog! Here are the books they sent me:

Book: Lost in September | Author: Kathleen Winter | Publisher: Knopf Canada | Format: Paperback | Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis:

Enter the world of Jimmy - a tall, red-haired, homeless thirty something ex-soldier, battered by PTSD - as he camps out on the streets of modern-day Montreal, trying to remember and reclaim his youth. While his past is something of an enigma, even to himself, the young man bears a striking resemblance to General James Wolfe, “Conqueror of Canada” and “Hero of Quebec,” who died on the Plains of Abraham in 1759.

As a young soldier in his twenties, the historical James Wolfe (1727-1759) was granted a short and much longed-for leave to travel to Paris to study poetry, music and dance - three of his passions. But in that very year, 1752, the British Empire abandoned the Julian calendar for the Gregorian, and every citizen of England lost eleven days: September 2nd was followed by September 14th. These lost eleven days happened to occur during the period that Wolfe had been granted for his leave. Despondent and bitter, he never got the chance to explore his artistic bent, and seven short years later, on the anniversary of this foreshortened leave, he died on the Plains of Abraham.

Now, James is getting his eleven days back ... but instead of the salons of 18th century Paris, he’s wandering the streets of present-day Montreal and Quebec City, not as “the Hero of Quebec” but as a damaged war veteran wracked with anguish.

Synopsis:

It is World War II, and Franny and her parents, Sina and Old Tom, enjoy a quiet life on a farm on Vancouver Island. Franny writes, Sina sculpts, and Old Tom tends to their many gardens - including the ancient, mysterious night garden. Their peaceful life is interrupted when their neighbour, Crying Alice, begs Sina to watch her children while she goes to visit her husband at the military base because she suspects he’s up to no good. Soon after the children move in, letters arrive from their father that suggest he’s about to do something to change their lives; and appearances from a stubborn young cook, UFOs, hermits, and ghosts only make life stranger. Can the forbidden night garden that supposedly grants everyone one wish help them all out of trouble? And if so, at what cost?

Synopsis:

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richarsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town - and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Synopsis:

For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game - it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. Needing to make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships - only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.

Convinced she’s going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem ... and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika’s whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she’s only freamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire.

I also received a book this month from Harper Collins Canada! Here is what I received:

Synopsis:

Ryan McCullough and Gabby Hart are the unlikeliest of friends. Introverted, anxious Gabby would rather do literally anything than go to a party. Ryan is a star hockey player who can get any girl he wants - and does, frequently. But against all odds, they became not only friends, but each other’s favourite person. Now as they face high school graduation, they can’t help but take a moment to reminisce and, in their signature tradition, make a top ten list - counting down the top ten moments of their friendship:

10. Where to begin? Maybe the night we met.

9. Then there was our awkward phase.

8. When you were in love with me but never told me ...

7. Those five months we stopped talking were the hardest of my life.

6. Through terrible fights ...

5. And emotional makeups.

4. You were there for me when I got my heart broken.

3. ... But at times you were also the one breaking it.

2. Above all, you helped me make sense of the world.

1. Now, as we head off to college - how am I possibly going to live without you?

Thank you once again to Penguin Random House Canada and Harper Collins Canada for sending me these books. I cannot wait to read and review them all! Happy reading everyone!

#booklr #bookblr #bookish #book mail #book blog #book blogger #ya #ya books

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