#but I just wanted to say one provincial boi

[a-book-of-creatures]

[gallusrostromegalus]

AEIWAM : what are the divisions specialities actually ? Like obviously the 4th heal and the 11h fight but like. The 9th? Do crosswords?

BOY AM I GLAD YOU ASKED BECAUSE THIS IS SOME OF THE BEST RETROACTIVE WORLD BUILDING I HAD TO DO AND I'M PROUD OF IT.

So in canon, almost none of the guard squads have "specialist" jobs, mostly because it's not terribly important to the plot, and because the court guards were essentially formed as an ad-hoc mercenary gang to protect one city specifically, but since Yamamoto didn't have to remain loyal to any noble family specifically, he kept getting pulled in as an arbiter and more and more responsibilities heaped upon him until the Court guard squads were acting as a De-Facto government, until the old man got pissed off with being involved in everybody else's business and rounded up a gang of nerds to do that for him so he could go do sword stuff. Seriously, everything about the administrative Bullshit in Soul Society makes sense when viewed through the lens of 'this shit was made ad-hoc out of what was available by people who only kind of knew what they were doing.

So the main government of Soul Society functions approximately like so:

Royal Guard:

Only technically part of the government, the Royal guard consists of The Monk who is responsible for making sure nobody steals any more of the soul king's body parts, and the four people he chose to help/didn't want left unattended in the Spirit World: The Guy who makes Zanpaktou, the Guy who can (theoretically) heal the Soul King, the lady who can literally mess with the fabric of reality and the lady who can create new souls. They spend nearly all their time in the Royal Realm trying to prevent the universe from unrevealing further, and don't really have administrative power so much as if any one of them decided to, they could wreck house of anyone in the spirit world, so if they say something, the central 46 listens and obeys.

Central 46:

The Highest Administrative level, sets society-wide policies, mediates disputes between provinces, wrangles the noble houses, assigns aid and designs social programs. It's comprised of 46 sages and other wise people appointed by the 46 as they die off. IN THEORY "Let a bunch of academics and philosophers who presumably know what they're doing make policy" isn't *that* bad an idea by itself, but it got coupled with "Also, to make sure these guys aren't being bribed or politically pressured, let's keep them in near-total isolation :)" and that's when things got weird.

The Central 46 does try it's best to maintain a peaceful and prosperous society, but it's got to strike a weird balance and the isolation sure does not fucking help maintain a cognizant worldview.

Noble Houses:

So the soul society, by the way they measure time*, only JUST got out of a major warring states period because magical Germany invaded and the guy that lead the army also managed to get The Mandate Of Heaven, but a lot of those formerly-warring states are still around, especially the ones that stole pieces of the soul king. They're not governmental bodies, but the families have shitloads of money, private armed forces and political influence. Think of the worst possible combination of magacorporation, mercenary army and royal dynasty. The are, unfortunately, still a political force to be reckoned with.

*Badly.

Provincial Governors:

So the Soul Society is divided up into Districts like so:

(Embiggen to actually see the damn thing)

The Seireitei is in the center, with the districts counting out until the central 46 got to the outer edge they could theoretically get forces and/or emergency food to in under a month and declared everything after that "District 80" AKA "You're on your own" No taxes are collected in the 80th district and people who don't want to deal with the soul society government often try to strike it on their own out there.

Each of those little rectangles is a district, and each of them has approximately the same number of people living in it- the lower districts are densely populated and, due to their proximity to the Seireitei, well-developed. The districts generally get less developed and less densely populated as you get farter from the center, but this varies wildly by the competence of that district's Daimyo or Governor. West 51 is a much more developed district than it's position would dictate, because it's Daimyo is canny and made good use of it's mineral resources and position in inter-mountain shipping. South 14 Should be one of the nicest districts, but their Governor is a moron who keeps picking fights with the neighboring districts like he's allowed to annex them, and the district has been sanctioned from hell to breakfast over it.

Gotei-13 / Court Guard Squads:

Sort of the executive branch of the Central 46, founded out of Yamamoto's gang of criminals he rounded up to deal with the Quincy invasion back when Rome was collapsing. So the court guard acts out the orders of the Central 46, and *theoretically* has authority over the noble houses and provincial governors, but they are pretty much constantly dancing on the edge of another warring states period, so things can get... tricky.

ALSO DID NOT HELP that The Monk who guards what's left of the Soul King came down from the Royal Realm and foisted a bunch of trans-dimensional responsibilities onto them but the Specific duties of the 13 court guards in AEIWAM are as follows:

(It's worth noting that the order of the court guard squads was determined literally by the order that the 12 criminals signed the agreement with Yamamoto to protect the seireitei, not the order of importance)

Division 1: ADMINISTRATION Oh god there is so much coordination to do between the central 46, the running of internal affairs, recruitment, training new shinigami, coordinating assignments that take more than one division's input. securing and distributing funding, etc. It's main jobs are: assigning work based on policy from the central 46, running the Shinigami Academy, and actually running the Gotei-13.

Division 2: SPY SHIT Gotei-13 is a shady-ass organization with a lot of enemies and that's not about to change. The second division is responsible for keeping an eye on the provinces and noble houses and anything else of interest, "Handling things quietly" for the Gotei-13, and preventing the Central 46 from being corrupted or assassinated. The Shihon Clan has historically held the captainacy of the 2nd division as part of the compromise Yamamoto struck with the noble houses at the founding of the court guard squads to end the civil wars- that each of the 4 noble houses would hold a captain's position, until the noble houses fell apart or the court guard did. This gave the Shihon clan a GREAT incentive to undermine the shit out of other noble houses, and Yamamoto gave them his blessing to do so. Ironically, the Shihon clan was one of the first to collapse.

Division 3: INTERNAL AFFAIRS Law Enforcement, but specifically the Seireitei and shinigami/martial court/jail. The court guard kind of lives and dies by how much it's respected* and it's essential the Gotei-13 follow strict ethical standards and also a tight adherence to authority lest one of the squads break off and start a civil war. Accepting Bribes and Defying Orders are much more severe crimes than say, excessive collateral damage. The 3rd division is responsible for investigating complaints, mediating disputes between divisions, and generally making sure everyone is behaving properly. *By the noble houses, Daimyos and central 46. The average civilian? not so much.

Division 4 Medical This division was actually the FIRST established, even before the court guard really became Squads. It was Chigiri and her pack of field surgeons that commanded Yamamoto's respect and gave him the idea of letting the other criminals have minions too. 4th divison is responsible for maintaining the health of the court guard- not just emergency medicine, but vaccinations, post-service medical care, and civil sanitation- keeping the streets clean and water safe is the #1 way to prevent deaths. Until recently, this meant a lot of trained medics were doing a lot of grunt work, until Zaraki, a guy from districts where Dysentery is still the #1 killer, successful argued a proposal to Unohana that her medics should be managing other, less-in-demand squads doing the labor, which would get the jobs done a hell of a lot faster, and not back up triage as much. Unohana, who had previously not *trusted* other squads to do the work reliably, finally relented and accepted some damn help.

Division 5: Rukongai Affairs The 5th division is responsible for coordinating efforts between the Gotei-13 and the Provincial Governors- Hollow Eradication, Disaster Relief, additional armed forces to help local police, Helping distribute grain to mitigate famine, etc.

Division 6: External Affairs Responsible for representing the Gotei-13 to other groups and dealing with Noble House Bullshit specifically. While Noble House Bullshit is 95% of what they do, but technically, they're also responsible for handling diplomatic relations with the Beastfolk in the eastern districts, Las Noches after the winter war in the west, Any Kami that might come through, and Hell, if they ever get a line open. The Kuchiki family has held the 6th Division captaincy for generations as a peacekeeping measure between the gotei-13 and the noble houses.

Division 7: Incoming Souls The reason the soul society doesn't reunite people with their families when they die is that they do not actually have control over who reincarnates as themselves (and if they retain their memories), who is reborn as a baby in the spirit world, and what district they get assigned to- that's all decided at the moment of a Soul's death by Hell, using a Metric the Shinigami can only guess at. That said, the 7th still can do a lot- Souls that had to be cleansed with Konsho go through the 7th division and are escorted to their assigned districts. Other, non-hollowfied but odd case souls will end up in the pocket dimension that serves as the queue into the afterlife- people with high spiritual power, animals that achieved personhood in the world of the living and other nonhuman persons, and somtimes spirits who were almost certainly supposed to go to a different afterlife all come through. The 7th division is also charged with keeping a running tally on important statistics like the relative balance between souls, who got hollowfied and why, collecting data on who goes to hell when konsho is prefromed on them and why, and other data to try and work out Hell's metric backwards.

Division 8: Income and Funding The court guard squads are... kind of taxpayer funded. The Daimyos collect taxes from civilians, they pay those taxes to the central 46, and the central 46 disburses some of that money to the Gotei-13, but the truth is, for all the duties they're expected to preform, they're wildly underfunded. So the court guard has had to get... inventive to make sure everyone gets paid and they can do what they need to. Investments in industries, ownership of weird land grants, taking out loans, selling merchandise and straight-up schmooze have all been used by the 8th division to make sure the bills get paid. Shunsui is, by that measure, the best captain the division has ever had- he's shrewd and had astonishingly good luck when it comes to finances so there hasn't been a pay strike since he took over. Probably his best idea was handing the branding and product design of the Gikon to the Shinigami Women's Association- that one paid mad dividends.

Division 9: Information Services The ninth division is most famously home to the Seireitei's first and most largely-ciculated newspaper, but it's also the records office, PAYROLL, library, document archives, data collection and data analytics. Also, tech support. Also also: manage all the arts programs, propaganda and festivals. This is why Kaname was load-bearing to Aizen's plan.

Division 10: Living World Affairs The 10th division was responsible for monitoring the living world- mostly keeping track of hollow appearances, but also: what the remaining Quincies are up to, reporting back on useful technological advancements, any other weird shit that turns up there, and keeping track of all the Shinigami on deployment to the living world (mostly 10th division but the post-war population boom means every division's having to chip in now.

Division 11: Emergency/Heavy Deployment Every time the Gotei-13 had to do some heavy lifting, it's the 11th division's job. Mass outbreak of hollows? 11th's job. Emergency Dam repair to prevent a flood? 11th division muscle time. Daimyo got funny ideas about conquering a neighboring district? 11th division. Funcking Quincies again? 11th division. Rampaging Kami afflicted by a terrible curse? you know who to call. This was the SECOND Division to be founded, because the actual sentence that came out of Yamamoto's mouth was "Chigiri, you and your gremlins put my guts back in, Yachiru, round up some assholes and DEAL WITH THAT FUCKING THING." and the 11th's prerogative and hiring practices have not changed since. Since the 11th's work is more intermittent, there are long periods between jobs for them, and it's only recently they've been allowed to pitch in on regular maintenance and rehabilitate their reputation as a bunch of lazy degenerates.

Divison 12: Supplies (more recently, Research and Development) Prior to Kisuke Urahara's weird science boner, the 12th Division's primary job was the manufacture and supply of everything the Shinigami would need to do their jobs. Uniforms, Gigai, medical supplies, communicators, rations, Gikon, the actual buildings in the Seireitei, bedding, Protective gear- if a Shinigami received it for their job, it was made by the 12th division. Despite previous captain Kirio Hikifune being the most accomplished chef in the history of Soul Society, it's Mayuri that has made the most profound mark on Soul Society Cuisine with the fast-prepared, acceptable-tasting and surprisingly nutritious meals he developed to deal with the mass influx of souls after WW2, and the franchise distribution centers combined with his attempts at children's educational programming mean that Mayuri occupies a cultural niche in Soul Society not unlike Krusty The Clown.

Division 13: Magical Research, Kido Corps Until recently, the Kido Corps was a seperate division governed under the purview of the central 46, and the 13th division was doing it's research into Hado, Bakudo and Haikido independently, but as the two organizations worked increasingly closely together, they began to share more until the catastrophic events of Turn Back The Pendulum left the Kido Corps severely depleted and without leadership, at which point Yamamoto persuaded the central 46 to let the 13th division absorb the rest of the Kido corps and take on their work.

So that's how the government in Soul Society is SUPPOSESD to work.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 君子盟/A League of Nobleman

A League of Nobleman is the unfortunately translated English title of a 2023 historical drama about an idealistic country boy/genius detective/noodle seller, and a wealthy minister on a mission to exonerate his late father from charges of treason, even if he himself has to commit some treason in the process.

I watched this one not too long after it came out, and I was expecting there would be a lot of buzz as soon as fandom got hold of it. There wasn't, but I can understand why. The show is a lovely, ethereal drama that has some genuinely moving moments, stunning visuals, and charming character interactions.

It is, however, kiiiiiiiind of a hot mess.

What follows is an incredibly qualified rec. Unlike most of the previous shows I've recommended, this show is not something you could just throw at your Average American Television Enjoyer. Censorship got its claws into this one, and what's left is ... okay, imagine fliming all of Hannibal just like you want it, and then right before it airs, NBC comes in and says, okay, now we're just going to take out all the parts that are gay and violent and gory! You know what you'd have left? You'd have a League of Nobleman, is what.

(If you want a little more explanation of what's awkward about it, here's a take based on the first ten episodes. Note that not everything that bothers AvenueX bothers me, but they're fair critiques.)

Therefore, I'd have a tough time recommending this to someone who hasn't already built up a tolerance for the experience of seeing a scene end nearly mid-sentence, or hearing described something that happened just offscreen (while seeing no one's lips move). You need to be prepared to look through the jank to see the show we could have had beneath the show that actually arrived.

Even so, I have five reasons I think you should at least give it a shot!

1. That precious baby boy

Look at him. Look at his precious face. Don't you just want to stuff him down the front of your shirt and take him home with you?

That is Zhang Ping. He is the hero and he is a good boy.

He is a darling dumpling who grows up reading novels about how members of the judiciary nobly solve crimes and punish the unjust, so he decides that he wants to move to the big city and become a member of the judiciary to nobly solve crimes and punish the unjust! ...Until he gets there and realizes, no, baby, that was fiction. But gosh darn it, he's going to try anyway.

I have seen people say they read Zhang Ping as autistic. While I'm not sure that's specifically what the show itself was going for, that's kind of the effect -- which, I think, is why I've also seen a lot of people say they don't like Song Weilong's performance. I don't think he's wooden or unemotional; I think he just made a choice to play the character as not always real good about understanding why the people around him are having the emotions they're having. Similarly, I think what makes him read as anachronistic is mostly how he doesn't engage well with the rules of social convention that are such important parts of this historical setting.

Like, you see that picture above, with him and Lan Jue whispering at one another? Zhang Ping is doing this because he is absolutely convinced that this is appropriate subterfuge behavior. Lan Jue is matching him because he thinks Zhang Ping is adorable.

Just the goodest boy. A baby. Please care him.

2. the aesthetic

The show is beautiful. It looks and sounds amazing. For some reason I can't find a clip of just the opening credits, but here's a (strangely bloody) trailer that gives a sense of its general vibe:

As you can see a couple times in there, the show makes great use of tilt-shift photography -- you know, the thing where you change the focal length until everything starts to look fake? It creates a weird, dreamlike effect where parts of the frame are out of focus for no reason, or actual locations start to look like model-train miniatures. Many of the shots are framed like this, giving the entire thing a very pretty, very uncanny look.

And speaking of the dreamlike: If there's one thing I've come to expect from C-dramas, it's bad CGI. That is not the case here! The CG is used so sparingly that it's unobtrusive and actually quite nice. Much more of the weight of the show's look relies on practical effects that are supported and amplified by CG, which is the optimal combo. When it does go all in on CG, it's in the service of dreamscapes that are supposed to look unreal anyway.

The show does admittedly have a mild problem of using a cool effect and then largely forgetting that effect exists. For example, the first episode has a really neat "freeze time and walk through a crime scene" bit! And then we barely ever see that ability again. But the show's doing so many other lovely things that you don't really feel the absence until you stop to think about it all later. So don't stop to think about things! That's my motto! (It really isn't.)

The directors also just have a lovely eye for things -- which is extra-surprising considering that both of them are first-time directors. That can be fun, though, when you get people who haven't gotten stuck in their ways get, so they're still being new and weird with it. ...Of course, I bet that's also some of why so much of the show quite obviously got cut to ribbons, if you're also working with directors who also haven't figured out how to get away with things just yet.

Overall, the production values are very high. This show clearly had a fairly solid amount of funding behind it, but it also used its resources smartly. Most costumes are elegant but not extravagant. Detailed sets are small and beautiful locations are contained. While I have great respect for productions that try to create epics on a shoestring budget, there's something to be said for a project that sets its sights on the achievable, then puts its effort into doing what it can, well.

3. A ship for everyone!

There are so many potential ways to pair up them boys. The show's main pair dynamic is between country mouse Zhang Ping and city mouse Lan Jue, but it surely does not stop there. In fact, I've made a helpful chart that shows you all the potential flavors of gay you can enjoy at this particular danmei buffet:

(And yes, if you've seen the show, you know there's at least one more line that I could've drawn here, but I don't want to spoil anything.)

Now, whether you do read any of these dynamics as sexual/romantic is up to you. The point is that you could. For example, I personally am not that into Lan Jue/Xu Dong, but if you lose your shit when a competent sword guy owes a life debt to the defenseless noble he works for? You could have a lot of fun with what the show gives you.

Obviously, because this is a censored c-drama, there are no canon gay romances. However, a couple of them are more textual than others, especially the ones that center Lan Jue, because everyone clearly wants a piece of that fancy flat ass.

One of AvenueX's comments from the video I linked earlier is that the main couple has less sparkle together than each of them has individually with the man that's supposed to be his bestie. While that changes as the show goes on, these two side pairs never cease to be enjoyable. Whether you read them as sexual or not is up to you! Romantically or platonically, they're still a delight to watch bounce off of one another.

And Lan Jue/Gu Qingzhang (that one terrible ex from the chart) is, uh, basically textual? It's miles into "there is no straight explanation for this" territory. Again, avoiding spoilers here, but trust me. You get to see their secluded love nest and everything. Shit's real gay.

Then, of course, there's the main pair:

This is clearly the one that got hit real hard by cuts to the material. It's a damn shame, because this is clearly meant to be the core of the whole narrative. Despite that, the two of them have a fascinating dynamic that changes over the series from outright suspicion to cautious care to absolute trust. It's a great combo of someone who is too honest for his own good and someone so used to court politics that he lies as easily as breathing.

Ironically, the source material is Not Gay, to the point where the author has basically disowned this series as being so different from her original work as to be unrecognizable. You sort of have to wonder about the creative thought processes that led to taking a gen work and deciding to BL it up for the live-action adatation. I'm not complaining, mind you, but it is a little bit of an unforced error.

So whatever flavor of gay it is you're into, the odds are very good that this drama will have at least enough of it to keep you interested!

4. A very charming cast

I got to gush about Song Weilong's Zhang Ping earlier, but honestly I think everybody's pretty enjoyable, from the main cast to the recurring side characters to the one-off extras who show up for a single episode. Everybody's playing it weird and theatrical, so I get it if that's not your cup of tea. However, I feel all the performances are well-suited to the slightly surreal style of the production.

Here's just a couple of the real gems:

Jing Boran's Lan Jue has the perfect regal bearing of a fussy gentleman, but with a very endearing softness underneath. He spends half his time with eyes brimming with unshed tears, and the other half making heart-eyes at his boyfriends. You understand why everybody in the empire wants to ride him like they stole him, and that's even before he lets his hair down and starts dressing in slutty sheer robes. (I'm not entirely sure either he or the show knew how to play the character in the first few episodes, but he gets way better once he stops being so sinister and mysterious and gets to be cute and/or unhinged.)

There is one female character who shows up in more than one arc, and she is the Empress Dowager, and she is such a wonderful awful bitch. What a monster. Shi Yueling eats up every scene she's in by being the perfect mix of reprehensible and fascinating.

I was already primed to like Wang Duo because I liked watching him be a pretty snake boy in Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity. Well, now he gets to be a pretty metaphorical snake boy here. I'm not spoiling anything by telling you he's bad news. He shows up damn near the end of the show and you know immediately he's bad news. But you don't know what kind of bad news he is, and that's fun to find out.

And speaking of actors I already liked from other places! Guo Cheng has mastered the art of acting with his mouth full. His Chen Chou is a sweet, earnest anchor in a world of tricksy boys.

There is something about Hong Yao's handsome face that makes Wang Yan perpetually look a little red-eyed, like he's trying hard to pretend that he wasn't just crying in his office. It's the perfect soft touch to his incredibly wonderful chad of a character. I'm usually not into the cocky jocks, but I will make such an exception for him.

I love you, fortune-telling gremlin grandpa.

5. Raw materials

Look, I assume if you've made it this far in the rec and you're still hanging on, you're interested for one of two reasons. The more normie reason is that you're into c-dramas in general (and probably period dramas in particular), and gay stuff is a selling point, so you see the appeal of turning on a drama where cute boys have emotions at other cute boys. That is a perfectly good reason to watch this drama, and if this is you, I hope you have fun!

The other reason is that you like making fan stuff, and you need some new blorbos to blorb in new and exciting combinations. Friend, I have that stuff for you right here.

A League of Nobleman has problems -- but they are problems that may be appealing to people who enjoy fixing things. There are literal holes in the series where actual, planned, filmed scenes were deleted! If you're looking for source material that's just begging you to fill in the gaps, look no further.

Of course I'm partial to the number of queer DIY romance options there are (see point 3), but that's not the extent of it. The setting is fascinating: an unspecified premodern Chinese dynasty magical enough to have a Bureau of Incantations, where the emperor is (for once) a cool dude, secluded village people live in semi-communal families, and one of the main characters can play Inception with people's heads. I'll say it plainly: If you are into kinky dream sex, this is the drama for you.

I should note that one of the things that doesn't need fixing is the overall shape of the series. The individual little case incidents seem disconnected, but they all weave together at the end as part of a (let's be real, ridiculously complicated) plot, giving the whole thing a pretty satisfying wrap-up. The show does not just fall off a cliff like Moriarty; it resolves in a way that's more than a little convoluted, but still overall satisfying. Also, a lot of those ships from the chart above, when it's all over, are still together. Some days that's all you need from an ending.

Maybe I sound like a broken record at this point, but to give you a sense of how heavy the hand of censorship clearly was, understand several of these episodes don't even break the 35-minute mark, and only four are even over 40 minutes long, when ~45 minutes is about the episode standard for this genre. (For comparison, every Untamed episode at least 42 minutes long.) I think it's important to realize just how much actual connective tissue got removed, way more than just individual censored shots or single redubbed lines.

And speaking of redubbed lines, the last episode of this show contains possibly the funniest NO HOMO in BL history. You have to see it to believe it -- or, rather, to not believe it, because the first time I watched, I didn't even understand what the hell the show was implying. I'll say no more.

Where to watch it!

I hope I've convinced you to at least give it a try! It's not a perfect show by any means, but it's a show with many good elements, and if you can embrace what's there without getting too hung up on what's not, it's a pretty good time.

If you're up for it, you can find it on this YouTube playlist -- though be prepared that it often mutes the opening music. It's also available on Viki (with ads, but less muting).

Just look at those precious, pinchable cheeks. Adorable.

[hockeyandhrsepwr]

Surprise Homies!

Luke Hughes x college vlogger!reader

Sup Homies Masterlist

** I had this idea but wasn’t really sure how to write to so hopefully it makes sense & y’all like it**

"Okay boys, you ready? " You ask the guys as you finish setting up your camera. Nods come from all of them, so you hit record. You’re crouched in front of the camera blocking most of what’s behind you. 

"Sup homies & welcome back to the channel!! 

Todays video is going to be a bit different, but still fun!! I’ve had lots of people asking for a boyfriend tag, but I think those can get boring so we’re spicing it up. I have here some of our closest friends too, since we’re going to play a little game so without further ado, let’s get started.”

You step back & walk backwards towards the couch, where there’s a spot for you on the floor between Luke & Dylan. Ethan, Steve, Philippe & Jacob are on the sofa behind. As you sit down, the boys wave. Steves made a couple of appearances in the vlogs when the two of you are studying together, but none of the other boys have so they’re pretty excited. 

You plop down & Luke wraps his arm around your shoulder. 

“This is Luke, my lover. Boys, introduce yourselves.” Quickly they go around & say their names. 

“So, some of you many recognize these lovely lads, as they all play for Michigan’s hockey team. Steve here is the reason I met these lunatics, and you may recognize him as my study buddy as we go through engineering hell together” You stick your hand up for a fist bump, which you get before continuing “the rest of them just want to be in the vid for some clout.”

They protest “dont lie! Dylan asked me to put instagram handles in the vid. Anyway! They’ve all been playing since they were tiny, and today, we’re going to be testing their hockey knowledge. I’ve got 5 questions, of varying difficulty for them. They’ll have 10 seconds to write down their answers on these” you grab the mini whiteboards out of the bag in front of you and pass them around 

“Okay, lets got going!!

Question 1, and if you guys can’t get this there’s no hope for you here”

“Hold up, what do we win?” Ethan pipes up “The satisfaction of beating your teammates isn’t enough?” he shrugs, “I mean yeah”

“Anyway, question 1. 

Name one of the greats who had a fun nickname. "

“What the hell is considered a fun nickname “ Steve asks as he starts writing

"ehhhh. times up. flip!!"

L: CuJo

S: the dominator 

D: Super Mario baby

E: The great one

J: Sid the kid

P: Finnish Flash

“Ethan, thats basic, so no point. Steve, who the fuck is that, Luke, Phil, Jacob you all get a point. Duker gets a bonus for being the only one to put Super Mario which is the best nickname, no question.”

“Dude, Dominik Hasek!” Steve says “oh okay, never heard him called that but” you pull up your phone “google says that was his nickname so you get a point. Moving on”

“Question 2, name Two teams to win back to back Stanley Cups at any point. Go” The boys are writing as you count down. “Done! Flip them” 

L: Tampa bay & Islanders

S: Red Wings & Tampa

D: Pittsburg, Montreal

E: Oilers, Canadiens 

J: Detroit & Toronto

P: Canadiens & Lightning

“Okay points for all good job boys. Next question, numba three!!

Give me 2 teams located in State, or provincial before you get your panties in a twist Ethan, capital.”

“Bruh I dont know geography!” Dylan complains. “Well, that sucks for you then”

“I though this was going to be stats or something!”

“So if I asked you to list the top scorers in NHL history you would get it?”

“Yeah probably!”

“That sucks for you then since I’m asking the questions. Go”

Dylans muttering to himself going “is that a capital” as the timer ticks down

L:  Rangers & Preds

S:  Avs (Denver) & Blue Jackets (Columbus)

D: Columbus & Boston??

E: Edmonton & Toronto 

J: Red Wings (duh)  hurricanes (hopefully)

P: Detroit & Boston

“Luke, you’re wrong no points!”

“Hang on, NYC isn’t the capital?”

“Dude even I know that & I’m Canadian”

“Jacob & Steve, you both get bonus points for actually putting teams, not just cities. Clearly the rest of the boys can’t listen” 

“Duker, good job you bullshitted your way through that”

“Thats my talent babe” he winks at the camera

“Question 4, What is the dumbest penalty that a team can get? “

“Is there a right answer here?” Jacob asks

“Yes, There is a correct answer, And if you don’t know this, clearly you don’t pay attention when we watch hockey together”

“Oh thats easy” Luke & Duke both say before writing 

“Time!! Flip.”

L: Too many men - can y’all not count or something (direct quote)

S: Too many men

D: Too many “idiots on the ice” 

E: Too many sticks? idfk

J: yelling at the ref (abuse of officials)

P: Too many men?

“Wow Jacob & Ethan, wow. I see how it is.”

“You know we’re normally playing when youre watching hockey right?” Jacob says in protest. 

“Well the others got it right so stop being a sore loser. The rest of you all get points. And get your shit together guys. Lukey, bonus point for the quote”

“Its not hard, you say it every time.”

“And yet, you idiots still get the penalty!! Think of poor Adam who had his hatty taken away the other weekend because you guys can’t count!”

“Okay lets move on. We’ve heard the rant before” Steve butts in before you can get too heated. 

You stick your tongue out at him but continue

“Final question, and you can get a lot of points here. There have been lots of brotherly duos that have played in the NHL” The boys immediately start protesting & talking over each other.

“Seriously?”

“Pretty sure this is blatant favouritsim”

“Oh Hell no” 

Putting your fingers in your mouth you whistle to get their attention. 

“Can I finish? Thank you. Now, there have been many brotherly duos play in the NHL. Name one duo where at least one of them has played at least one game this season. More obscure means more points, for a max of ten, so for example if you were to say a certain Canuck & his annoying brother, that’s easy as fuck so half a point. Since this requires some more brainpower, I’ll give you 20 seconds. Go”

“What if we dont know both their names?” “You’ll still get the points if you give one as long as it fits the criteria”

“Bro what the fuck?” 

“Who the hell” 

You sit there laughing at them as they try & come up with more obscure duos than the others. After 30 seconds, times up. 

“Flip em boys”

L: Mikey & Ryan Mcleod (Go Devs!!)

S: P sure Adrian Kempe had a brother 

D: Foudy Bros (CBJ!)

E: Willy & Alex Nylander

J: Reinhart (??)

P: Kevin Hayes

“Okay, honestly I dont know off the top of my head so imma google.”

“So Luke, you’re good, 2 points.  Dylan also good, three points .”

“Hey!” Luke protest 

“Shut it. Your brother plays with one of them so its not worth as much.”

“Ethan’s secretly a Leafs fan confirmed. Also 3 points”

“Philippe & Steven. One of your boys have played this season so 5 points for more obscure”

“But Jacob, I’m impressed. Even though you weren’t sure, you not only got 2 brothers, you’ve got 3!! And only one of them has played this year, Mr Sam Reinhart. I would’ve given you more if you had at least one first name, so 7 points for you!! Be more confident in your answer next time”

“Woah woah woah 7?!” Steve says

“What would it have taken to get ten?” Phil muses

“My game, my rules. Okay!” You clap your hands “Time to see who our winner is.”

You’ve got the scores on the whiteboard in front of you, just have to tally them up

“Alright, so here’s our final ranking

On the bottom  Ethan with 5 points. You did terrible. 

Not much better, we have Luke next with 6. What the hell babe, thats embarrassing for you.

Dylan in fourth with 7. Philippe with 9, 

Stevn has 10

And our winner, Jacob! With 11 points!! 

“WHOOOO!!”

“Can I just say, they’ve been alive longer than us so obviously they’d do better” 

“Ethan age has literally nothing to do with this. You just suck.” Jacob says

You stand up and talk to the camera

“Before this ends up in an argument or wrestling on the floor, Thanks for watching everyone! If you want to see more with these lovable idiots, check out the UMich hockey social media accounts. Maybe they’ll make some vlog appearances too! 

Love all you homies, see you in the next video!!

Luke pulls you down into his lap and you smile up at him while the boys argue, as your outro music plays in the video. 

Arms wrap around your shoulder and Luke presses a kiss to your neck. “Done babe?”

Smiling, you lean back in your desk chair & tip your head back for a kiss. “Just about”

“Hurry up I want cuddles” he whines. 

You giggle as you turn back to your laptop, double checking the title & thumbnail before scheduling the video to go live in place of your usual Sunday vlog. Hitting upload, you close you computer & join Luke on your bed.

“All done” you whisper before kissing him. He palms your ass, pulling you closer & says “good” before hungrily kissing you. You ignore the rest of your responsibilities to lay there together and cuddle, knowing your time like this is coming to an end soon. 

[yaoipigglet]

I did I thing.

Inspired by certain someone who did this art work.

Please go follow them!!!

A young beautiful man wearing a soft green dress walked through a large mushroom forest. The sun shining in his crystal blue eyes, his sweet chocolate brown hair, tied back under his head scarf. His ghost dog floating next to him.

‘Little town, it's a quiet village

Every day like the one before

Little town, full of little Toadies.

Waking up to say-”

“Bonjour!”

“Good Morning!”

“Hiya!”

“Hello!”

“Yo!”

Luigi laughed as he walked through the town.

‘There goes the baker with his tray like always

The same old bread and rolls to sell

Every morning just the same

Since the morning that we both came

To this poor, provincial town’

An old looking toad sat on his porch and waved as the young man passed.

“Good Morning, Luigi”

Good morning, Señor Jean!”

“Where are you off to?” He laughed, tapping his cane on the floor.

“To return this book to Père Robert?

It's about two lovers in fair Verona” Luigi swooned, spinning on his toes. A look of happiness on his face.

“Sounds boring,” the old man laughed, sipping his tea.

‘Look there, he goes, that boy is strange, no question!’ Other toads gossiped.

‘Dazed and distracted, can't you tell?’

‘Never part of any crowd’

'Cause his head's up on some cloud!’

‘No denying he’s a funny boy, that Luigi!’

“Bonjour!”

“Good day! How is your family?”

“Bonjour! Good day! How is your wife?”

“I need six eggs!”

“That's too expensive!”

‘There must be more than this provincial life!’ Luigi sighed as walked into a building.

Walking into a small library, Luigi called out to a light green toad, putting books away on a shelf.

“Good Morning Señor Père!”

“Ah, if it isn't the only other bookworm in town!” The old one laughed, fixing his glasses.

“So, where did you run off to this week?”

“Two cities in Northern Italy

I didn't want to come back!” Luigi giggled.

“Have you got any new places to go?”

“I'm afraid not,” he sighed sadly.

“But you may re-read any of the old ones that you'd like!”

“Your library makes our small corner of the world feel so much bigger.” he smiled kindly, squeezing the old toad’s hand.

“Bon voyage!” Père smiled back as he walked off.

‘Look there he goes, the boy is so peculiar!’

‘I wonder if he's feeling well!’ Others spoke as he passed.

‘With a dreamy, far-off look

And his nose is stuck in a book!’

‘What a puzzle to the rest of us is Luigi.’

Luigi sat down on a bench, his dog sitting in the air beside him.

‘Oh, isn't this amazing?

It's my favourite part because you'll see

Here's where she meets Prince Charming

But she won't discover that it's him 'til chapter three!!’

Polterpup barked happily back at his owner.

‘Now it's no wonder that he’s called a 'Beauty!

His looks have got no parallel’ a few female toads laughed.

‘But behind that fair facade

I'm afraid he's rather odd!’ Another smirked.

‘Very different from the rest of us!

He's nothing like the rest of us!’

‘Yes, Luigi is different from the rest of us!.’

Meanwhile, somewhere in a large ghostly castle, a tall male ghost stared at our hero through a crystal ball. He wore an old white suit and large purple jewelled crown.

“Look at him, LeFou, my future husband!

Luigi is the most beautiful man in that village!

That makes him the best!”

“But he's so clumsy and timid, while you're so athletically inclined!” His smaller minion gulped, looking at the same man as his master.

“Yes, but ever since the war against that stupid reptile!;

I've felt like I've been missing something

And he's the only man that gives me that sense of-”

“Mmm, je ne sais quoi?” The minion smiled.

The ghost glared at his servant angrily.

“I don't know what that means!”

They look back to the ball.

‘Right from the moment when I met him, saw him

I said he's gorgeous and I fell!

There in town, there's only he,

Who is as beautiful as me!;

So I'm making plans to woo and marry Luigi!

‘Look there he goes

Isn't he dreamy?

Master Boo!’ Cried some Victorian ghost women hiding behind the door.

‘Oh, he's so cute!

Be still, my dead heart!

I'm hardly breathing

He's such a tall, dark, strong and handsome brute!’

Back in town, Luigi walked past everyone, buying food for him and his brother.

“Bonjour”

“Pardon”

“Good day”

“Mais oui”

“You call this bacon?!”

“What lovely flowers!”

“Some cheese”

“Ten yards”

“One pound!”

“Excuse me”

“I'll get the knife”

“Please let me through”

“This bread”

“Those fish”

“It's stale”

“They smell”

“Madame's mistaken”

“Well, maybe so!”

‘There must be more than this provincial life!’ Luigi sighed to himself as he walked back home through the forest, his dog at his feet.

‘Just watch, I'm going to make Luigi my bride!’ King Boo laughed.

‘Look there he goes

That boy is strange but special

A most peculiar young man!

It's a pity and a sin

he doesn't quite fit in

'Cause he really is a funny boy

A beauty but a funny boy

He really is a funny boy

That Luigi!’

@angelxd-3303

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

What if you gave Edward from Twilight the Auryn and a responsibility to reimagine Fantastica, because I feel like the end results would be hilarious. And also do you think any of his family is coming to rescue him when he's lost all concept of who he is?

I mean, that's the thing though, Bastian's father in the real world was becoming increasingly worried his son was missing for several hours but a) didn't know his son was in a book b) probably couldn't enter the book if he tried.

Going to Fantasia is a solitary journey that's just you and your imagination, I was never given the impression that you could go after anyone or that someone could travel with you. The only people that can help you are yourself and the friends you make along the way during the journey (e.g. Atreyu).

As for Edward, we'll have to back up a bit. We know the Neverending Story changes per whoever is reading it, as it's intended to draw you in and sus out who can add to the world and save them from a lack of existence.

In Bastian's case, it was the tale of a boy he would always have wanted to be, Atreyu, who is kind, brave, a heroic warrior, who undergoes many trials as expected in a fantasy novel. It's the kind of story that Bastian not only loves to read and escape in, but wants to be himself (hence, when he goes to Fantasia himself, he immediately starts transforming himself into someone much closer to Atreyu: handsome and skinny, brave, heroic, a warrior, wise and charming).

What I'm getting at is that this has to be a book that engrosses Edward so that by the time he meets the Childlike Empress, he's invested.

I imagine it's the story of fantasy Bella Swan. (We'll place Edward before he actually meets Bella Swan).

The Neverending Story for Edward opens up on a beautiful young woman in a poor provincial town who believes she's very unordinary, plain, and isn't like the other girls. She's kind to others to a fault, sacrificing her own needs and wants for the sake of others, and is overlooked by everyone.

One day, her father falls ill and so she goes on a journey to seek the Childlike Empress who is the only person left who may be able to save him. When she reaches the Ivory Tower, Bella is devastated to hear that the Childlike Empress is ill herself and seeing no one. She is told that there is a person that Bella must find who can save both the Childlike Empress and then her father. Bella goes on a perilous journey to find said person, nearly losing hope several times along the way and growing as a person as she faces dangers she never imagined.

In despair, Bella returns to meet the Childlike Empress in defeat, noting she found no such person, "oh but you have" the Childlike Empress says and then Edward gets the truly surreal experience of being talked to by a book.

Like Bastian, it won't shut up until he gives the Childlike Empress a new name, which he eventually does, at which point he finds himself in Fantasia.

There, similar to Bastian, some of his first efforts are to change himself. He becomes human again, gallant, handsome, wise, a prince in every aspect, everything that is worthy of Bella in the novel (losing bits and pieces of himself along the way of course). To his dismay and anger, Bella doesn't love him, seeing that he's losing himself constantly and that what's left of him is a caricature of a man. Edward, too, forgets why he ever thought he loved Bella or the idea of this woman, and gets high on a power trip.

"I will declare myself emperor!" Edward says and... I imagine Bella does try to stop him but I'm not sure raising an army as Atreyu did is in her wheelhouse.

Edward might just kill her to obtain his goal at which point he damns himself and becomes one of Fantasia's many emperors.

[eolewyn1010]

OH MY GOD you guys, I know my blog has a bit much Ancient Rome theme on it lately because I'm currently deep in three different researches and have temporarily lost my mind, but I gotta tell you of this one, it just made my day:

So, there's my dude Publius Clodius Pulcher, being a tribune, making a hobby of shitting all over Cicero (which I applaud), you know, your average day in politics. It's 58 BC, and Clodius woke up and chose the principles of the welfare state ANARCHY. The grain laws? Those that the patricians were complaining about already because it was alas such a burden to the state to keep grain prizes and qualities stable, and it made the plebs lazy not to have the bare minimum of their existence at risk when they wanted to, y'know, eat even though the measure every adult Roman citizen was rationed just about covered the needs of one single man when in reality most of those had families to feed and needed to work fucking hard anyway?

Yeah, my most blorbest Clodius took a look at this and cried bullshit. Actually, we should give them guys their rations for free. So they can invest the money in not having their wives and kids starve. Wouldn't that be cool if sustainment security went up? People would be less pissed in general, we could tell around what an awesome government we are, and we could get economics to pick up speed as we stuff some of our money into the provinces in exchange for more grain deliveries so they look less... provincial.

And the citizens are like, oh boy, Clodius, that's neat! I'll just set my slaves free then. They'll still work for me because they need something to earn their living with, and I have work enough to do, but they'll get a few citizen rights as freedmen, including the right to get grain rations. That way, a good chunk of the duty to feed them falls to the state! Hurray! Everyone's fed, my slaves are former slaves now, what a great idea that was. Write them all down on the list so we don't forget anyone in the distributions. And Clodius goes, I'll do so ASAP! And writes all their names down in the grain lists, and stores the lists in the temple of the nymphs because feeding citizens is Rome's holy duty, so into the sanctuary the lists go.

Along comes Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus on this fine day! And he's like, Clodius, my man. Look, we now have this big amount of new mouths to feed, and none of them pay for their rations. You just. Give them food for free. That means we have to pay! And that means I can't buy that ridiculously expensive new house on the Palatine hill / build a theater that bears my name / invest in my next war as quickly as I want to. So how about we just. Amend that list a little. See, those freedmen aren't really Roman citizens anyway. They are just slaves+. Hell, I was able to buy or sell the most of them in the forum only a week ago! Shouldn't they be grateful already that they can't be bought anymore? Now we also give them things for free? Come on. Let's keep this in a small circle.

And Clodius, my most blorbest. Goes: Bitch say WHAT

And so Pompeius doesn't get his greedy hands on these lists.

Clodius, my darling. The nutjob. The madman.

Goes and SETS THE FUCKING TEMPLE OF THE NYMPHS ON FIRE.

Talk about taking a hammer to that hard drive. Can't amend lists when there are no lists, amirite? He probably couldn't find a bigger middle finger to show to Pompeius that day. Message received: No tampering with the Clodian law reforms.

Did he do it just to ingratiate himself with the plebs for the next elections? Yes, definitely.

Did it work? Yes, absolutely.

Does the imagination of Pompeius' aghast expression at this total punk ruining his day with some casual sacrilege out of sheer spite make me immensely happy? Yes!

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Eye of the World! Chapter 2: Strangers

Hello and welcome back to the madness that is me. As usual (three times in a row totally counts), I am rereading The Eye of the World and I am spoiling the crap out of everything so you should run away if you're not into that. Thanks and have a good one!

To the rest of you, thanks for staying, let's get started. This chapter begins with the raven icon, which is often used to symbolize those allied with the Shadow or the Seanchan, which is really such a glowing review of them, isn't it? Here it's being used to refer to the evildoers Moiraine and-- Wait no that's Whitecloak talk. It's being used to refer to the dear, sweet, innocent raven whose only crime was watching Rand and refusing to be killed for it.

At that time of the busy day before Festival, Rand expected to find the common room empty except for Bran and his father and the cat, but four more members of the Village Council, including Cenn, sat in high-backed chairs in front of the fire, mugs in hand and blue-gray pipesmoke wreathing their heads.

I wonder now about how the Village Council gets chosen and how Cenn Buie keeps his seat if it's anything other than "life positions for certain families".

though who knew what Taren Ferry folk really thought about anything?

I'm glad Jordan put in so much effort to make Rand so incredibly provincial when in about ten chapters we'll be past Taren Ferry and he'll never get a chance to look back.

“It’s old Luhhan,” Mat said, peering past Rand’s shoulder into the common room. “I think he suspects I was the one who—”

Dammit Mat just confess to your crimes so I can laugh at you for them!

She was one of the few married women in the area who never tried to play matchmaker with Tam.

Yeah, if she gets him married, then when Tam dies of old age Rand and Egwene have to take care of the new widow al'Thor!

If she occasionally looked at him as if she wanted to do more, at least she took it no further than looks, for which he was deeply grateful.

Rand, you and Egwene are basically already promised to each other according to the retcons, of course she's not putting in effort. She thinks she's already won.

"Nothing, really. I told Adan al’Caar and some of his snot-nosed friends—Ewin Finngar and Dag Coplin—that some farmers had seen ghost hounds, breathing fire and running through the woods."

I guess this is the local name for Darkhounds, or Jordan was gonna straight up go with ghosts at the time. Were they supposed to be literal ghosts, or just the third age interpretation of whatever modifications Aginor made?

“I hear she chased old Luhhan and the dogs, all three, out of the house with a broom.”

Poor Luhhan, getting blamed for shit he had nothing to do with. I wonder if Perrin tries to model his marriage after this, where he assumes Faile is acting like Alsbet and gets to be hot-tempered and low-key violent but he is supposed to go with it. Really both of these couples should try and model their relationships off of some healthier couple, preferably in an entirely different story.

The years separating Rand and Mat from Ewin, only fourteen, were usually more than enough for them to give short shrift to anything he had to say.

Ah okay so the boys are definitely MEANT to be 16, probably more, but they really don't feel like they could be older than 16 so *shrug*.

Maybe southern boys are hella immature for their age or were in Jordan's childhood. *insert completely unfounded rant about the toxicity of 'boys will be boys' based entirely on this supposition without the slightest bit of research done because I'm an expert on everything by default*

“Of course I could see his face. And his cloak is green. Or maybe gray. It changes. It seems to fade into wherever he’s standing. Sometimes you don’t see him even when you look right at him, not unless he moves. And hers is blue, like the sky, and ten times fancier than any feastday clothes I ever saw. She’s ten times prettier than anybody I ever saw, too. She’s a high-born lady, like in the stories. She must be.”

Oh thank fuck, the grown-ups are here! Lan and Moiraine are not the perfect mentors that they sometimes get mistaken as, but they try twice as hard as most and that goes a long way. Shame about the whole "beauty equals nobility" thing going on, but since Ewin said it and not the narration I'll assume he's rightfully crushing on her.

“They arrived last evening,”

So they got here before Thom and were traveling at decent hours. Was he trying to follow them? Doesn't seem quite right, does it? Was he trying to AVOID them?

It was a good five years since the last time a real stranger appeared in Emond’s Field, and he had been trying to hide from some sort of trouble up in Baerlon that nobody in the village understood.

I wonder what the guy did. Or was he a channeler trying to hide from himself?

“She asked the Wisdom for directions this morning,” Ewin said, “and called her ‘child.’ ”

Poor Moiraine, sticking her foot right into it. Didn't even mean to, of course, but that's the problem with having a standard mode of address for unimportant young'ins: when they become important, there's no good way to tell, is there? Almost like you should treat everyone respectfully regardless of perceived differences, but what do I know?

When Cenn Buie called her a child last year, she thumped him on the head with her stick, and he’s on the Village Council, and old enough to be her grandfather, besides.

Yes but even hyper-violent Nynaeve knows you can't just beat the shit out of guests Rand. She's not axe-crazy; that's Perrin.

Then something led him to turn around, to raise his eyes. On the edge of the inn’s tile roof perched a large raven, swaying a little in the gusting wind from the mountains. Its head was cocked to one side, and one beady, black eye was focused . . . on him, he thought.

I don't think we see ravens pulling much crap after this book, do we? It's hard to view them as a serious threat when the protagonists are capable of doing more than missing with thrown stones and when even Trollocs rapidly become cannon fodder.

Fancier than any feastday clothes, Ewin had said, and he was right. No one ever dressed like that in the Two Rivers. Not ever.

Frankly I doubt the whole Two Rivers could combine their net worth for the clothes, let alone the jewelry.

Ewin leaped forward before either of the others could speak.

If it weren't for the fact that it isn't how it works, I'd assume she was trying to compel the boys and Ewin somehow got caught in the cross-fire. But again, the weave doesn't really work like that.

Then again, it's the first book, and the boys seem to "wake up" later like they're all being compelled... Guess she hit Ewin on purpose not to leave him out, and he was hit hardest.

Rand had been wondering if he should do something of the sort, the way men did in stories, but with Mat’s example, he merely spoke his name. At least he did not stumble over his own tongue this time.

The Wheel makes sure that the king of the world doesn't bow, I suppose.

“You cannot be expected to work for nothing. Consider this a token, and keep it with you, so you will remember that you have agreed to come to me when I ask it. There is a bond between us now.”

I feel like this is another early bookism, though an easily dismissed one - I think Jordan intended this wording and the boys' acceptance to be part of making the bond spell work, though going forward such things are much less necessary.

Her smile did fade then, slowly, as if something had been recalled to her. For a moment she merely looked at him. “I am a student of history,” she said at last, “a collector of old stories. This place you call the Two Rivers has always interested me. Sometimes I study the stories of what happened here long ago, here and at other places.”

This isn't Moiraine's first half-truth to dodge the lie restriction (telling Ewin "We'll see" after his invite is a half-truth so common even non-Aes Sedai use it), but it is a big one and an interesting one. She likely did have to study history both in Cairhien and the Tower, so that explains her student claim. Studying the DR means she's probably looked over the Karatheon Cycle and many similar documents, hence collector.

But has she always been interested in the Two Rivers? Obviously this can't be LITERALLY true (or can it? Did a very young Moiraine wonder about the place that all the grown-up men in her life said had the best tobacco?), so when did her eyes turn to it? When she learned about Manetheren? It's exactly the kind of story the Jedi would teach her.

Men wear many names, many faces. Different faces, but always the same man.

And here she almost outright tells them what's up! She's getting hit hard by Rand and Mat's combined ta'verening.

It was as if he were weighing them in his mind, and there was no sign on his face of what the scales told him.

Two minutes later:

Lan: So it's the Aiel kid.

Moiraine: Maybe.

Lan: It's obviously the Aiel kid. Explains why your list didn't find him twenty years ago: no one wrote down that some Aiel gal had a baby.

Moiraine: What if he's a decoy?

Lan: Why would there even be a decoy?

Moiraine: The Wheel weaves, Lan.

Lan: If you say that to me one more time I'm just gonna go kidnap the Aiel kid myself and take him to the Amyrlin.

Moiraine: The spring on the green is probably quite chilly in this unnatural winter. It would sure be awful if someone magically relocated it on top of you.

Lan: ...

Lan: It's still the Aiel kid. Think I'll teach him how to use swords. That would be funny to see.

Anyway, Warders have swords and armor covered in gold and jewels, and spend all their time up north, in the Great Blight, fighting evil and Trollocs and such.

Statistically, most Warders spend all their time down south, fighting lady bits and pubic hair and such. With their tongues.

If it weren't for the Yellows I'd call Greens the greatest failure of an Ajah since Mat very accurately describes what they SHOULD be doing. In fact, while with the text as written it's obviously one of those "truth becomes fiction in the retelling" things that pops up a lot, I suspect that it was intended to be an accurate description that fell by the wayside as Aes Sedai politics were defined.

He did not recognize the fat silver coin with the raised image of a woman balancing a single flame on her upturned hand

Y'all really are provincial hicks if you get coins that so obviously scream "The Official Currency of the Witch-Papal Queendom" and don't even speculate it might be from the region, if nothing else.

Strangers and a gleeman, fireworks and a peddler. It was going to be the best Bel Tine ever.

Spoiler alert: It was going to be the worst Bel Tine ever.

And that's another chapter! I would like to rewatch more of episode 1 and comment on the differences in the introductions of Lan and Moiraine, but my Fire Cube is having some hilarious technical difficulties where it's playing the episode at a rate of one frame a second right now, even though it plays the episode PREVIEW (and Futurama on Hulu) properly, so I can't go too in-depth, which means I only have one thought to give and it's sadly negative:

Nynaeve, you massive idiot (shhhh not you Zoë Robins, it's the script writers' fault and probably the Amazon execs for forcing so much cut time, you're doing great though, keep it up), inns are exactly where reputable strangers are supposed to show up! Be more like your book incarnation and have a tiny inclination against threatening out of towners!

Episode 1 is going to be rough to get through even if I do get it working at the proper frame rate.

[harrison-abbott]

PENICUIK (1996)

Davies called me with the details. It didn’t sound good. A boy had gone missing in one of the provincial towns. Penicuik. He’d been gone for four days and he was thirteen. Cases like this didn’t usually end well. But it was my duty to go and find him.  

So I got in the car and drove out of the city. The boy’s name was Tim Milton.  

I went to a high school in a provincial town as well. It was actually near this same motorway, only the other side of the city; I remember those apocalyptic bus rides each morning, drudging into hell. I fucking hated school and adolescence in general. And it contributed nothing to my being a detective. But, I’m sure most teenagers feel the same.

Penicuik, when I got there, was very similar to the town where I schooled. Industrial housing from the 1950s. A kind of gaunt collectivism. I was supposed to go down and see his parents first, Tim’s parents, to see what they had to say. But I wanted to go to the crime scene first. It wasn’t a ‘scene’ per se, as a collection of evidence. They’d found Tim’s hat in the woods. Football hat. In a spot near the river. The police sealed off this section and I had a rough area on a map as to the location.  

What I first noted this this was some distance from Penicuik. According to his neighbours and family Tim was last seen heading on a bike ride down to the woods, where he often went for journeys.  

I parked my car at the top of the woods and walked along the trail. It took me nearly half an hour to get to the river and I saw nobody as I went. The trail was pulpy with mud and I fumbled about with the map trying to find this cordoned area. The map was no use and I only found it when I stumbled on the yellow POLICE tape strung around a group of trees. I went under the tape.  

Okay … So it was close to the main trail. And, as I heard, close to the river. The most likely scenario was that somebody had attacked Tim here. And during the assault he lost his hat, and the panicky attacker or attackers didn’t notice it. But, what about the bike? Where was Tim’s bike? They’d obviously gone to the effort to hide the bike.  

I went down to the river bank and looked up and down. I followed its current. The bankside was gnarly and tricky to cross. I drank from my flask and it livened me up a bit: shouldn’t be so lazy. There was so much junk in the river it was crazy. All sorts of detritus. Supermarket trolleys and weird household items, TVs, binbags, footballs, everything. There were clearly dodgy histories in Penicuik.  

But then I found what I was looking for.  

The bicycle. It had been thrown in the river, as I’d expected. But had been snagged against a tree trunk by the riverside. Caught against the limbs. I went up and examined it. It was new and usable and boy’s size. The witnesses said he drove a white bike. It was white. I lifted it up and brought it dripping onto the bank.  

So the assailants threw the bike into the river, just as many Penicuik residents did with their un-wanted items. But what did they do with Tim after that? There was a reasonable chance he might be in the river too. I just had the sense that there was something else, other than the river. That Tim had been taken further into the woods. I kept going.

And I came to a bridge. 30 yards above me. I was drinking when I heard a noise. There were heads popped out in the sky atop the bridge. They were kids – teenagers like Tim. Hollering at me. I decided to ignore them and go on but when I came to the bridge I found that the river trail ended there and I wouldn’t be able to get past without jumping in the water. I hesitated, wondering what to do. Then a bottle smashed at my feet. I jumped cartoonishly. And all the boys on the bridge above laughed. I took a slug of whisky and went up the hill.  

I climbed over the fence at the top. There were four lads there on the bridge. Red-faced, drunk and grinning. They walked towards me.  

“What you doing creeping around in the woods, man?” the leader of the group said.

I looked over the area and realised I needed to cross the bridge to continue down the river. There was no other route. The lads kept approaching, confident; I walked towards them.  

“Why are you here anyway?” the leader said again.

“Here, lads,” I said, “I’m not interested in you. Leave me be.”

“Who are you?”

“I just need to get over this bridge and then I’ll be off.”

“Why?”

The leader lad lunged towards me and stood over my body. I’ve always been a small man and not physically terrifying. I flinched. And his cronies laughed.  

I took my pistol out of my holster. They froze when they saw the gun. Lifted it up and bullet into the air. And they all twitched. The gunpowder rang over the woods and the birds burst out of the trees. Then the boys all ran away along the trail.  

Jesus, kids can be so stupid. Fucking idiots.

Did those lads have something to do with Tim’s disappearance? They seemed arrogant in their territory. It was very possible; but I needed to keep going along the river. So I dipped off the main trail and drank along the way.  

The river had a hypnotic, cinematic quality to it. The way it changed light and sound. It made me feel more endangered than those kids or anybody else I’ve faced in my career. A sense of eeriness, as if I might fall in the water any second.  

At length I saw an urban shape over the water. It was some kind of tunnel. I got closer and stared up at it. It looked like some kind of sewage or industrial pipe. But it was obviously disused, as the metal was all rusted. And it just looked decades-old in style.  

I climbed up the bank-side towards it. Which was tricky; I clung to the ivy strands to pull myself up, and when I eventually got to the top was all sweaty and prickling. I approached the tunnel. Something about its image attracted me, as if it wasn’t a part of this case. Even though I knew it was.  

The tunnel had these spikes on the end of it. To stop people walking across the pipe. Next challenge. I held onto one of the spikes at the bottom, then jumped off the side. And, man, I was so unfit that I nearly ripped off the side. But I somehow managed to crawl up onto the surface of the pipe. It was still possible to fall off into the river below so I had to be careful.

I walked the length of the tunnel, looking for clues. I saw little save inscriptions of an old factory district in the city. NIDDRIE – where there was a booming steelwork back in the day. It went bust 20 years back. I’d forgotten about it until then.

At the end of the tunnel I had to jump over the other spikes. It was a goofy jump and I landed on my face but at least I got over. Then I looked at the other end of the tunnel. There was some kind of contraption on its vessel. On the underside of the tunnel, before the piping led back into the woodland ground. A door. A trapdoor that was sealed at the top with a padlock. Wow.  

I tried to open the trapdoor with my hands. It obviously wasn’t working. As I wrestled with it I heard a noise from inside the tunnel. It sounded at first like an animal. I couldn’t move the door. So I brought my pistol out again and I shot through the padlock. The padlock pinged away. I pulled the trapdoor open.

And now looked into a tunnel. Where something was screaming down it in sublime echo.  

It was dark. I turned my torch on and shone it down the cone.  

There was a little boy screeching at the end of it. His body raced about the walls of the tunnel like a confused spider. I put down the torch. And called out to him.

“I’m a policeman!”

The kid screamed.

“I’m a policeman, kid. Are you Tim Milton?”

Stupid question.

“Here, son,” I said, not knowing what else to do. I brought out a chocolate bar I had in my inside pocket. “You must be hungry and tired, right? I’m police and I’m here to get you back to your family. Do you want something to eat?”

The child nervously came down the tunnel.

“Did a group of boys take you here?” I said.

He nodded and his face scrunched up as if he was about to start crying. His face was bruised up. I didn’t want to touch him so I used my words.

“It’s all right, Tim, you’re safe now. Those boys won’t attack you again. And we’ll get them back. I just saw those fuckers up the path. I’ll get them. Arrest them, give them a charge.”

Then the boy started crying. He sobbed hysterically. I asked him to come out of the tunnel and he did so. And crouched there crying in a ball on the grass. But at least there was now green all around him.

Okay so I’d found Tim Milton and the case was essentially solved. He was going to be damaged for the rest of his life. A group of boys older and bigger than him had abducted him and trapped him in a weird tunnel in the woods. Probably for no reason other than sadism. This ranked fairly moderately on the spectrum of cruelty I’ve witnessed throughout my profession.

Tim sat up on the floor. I held the chocolate out to him. And he took it. He ate it. He chomped greedily and it was satisfying to hear his jowls work.  

I put a call through to the team back at the head quarters. Asked them to put me through to Davies.

“I’ve found him,” I said. “Tim Milton is still alive.”

THE END

[theonetruebangtan]

100 days with Face

Its been 100 days since Jimin released his debut ep Face. And boy what a ride we’ve had with it! 

To date it has amassed over 700 million streams on spotify. One can not talk about Face without talking about the elephant in the room:

#1 on the Hot 100!! The first k - soloist to achieve this and the second only k - act (bts being first). Park Jimin really did not come to play. He brought us a beautiful album, cohesive in its conception. 

Let’s take a look back on his debut:

Set Me Free pt. 2 Music Video

He introduced us to this new era with the pre - release track, Set Me Free pt. 2, and boy if you weren’t already tuned in you definitely were after this. The horns ppl, THE HORNS! 🎺 ugh love it so much. The way I stopped breathing during the second verse during the music video felt like a reset. The choreo for this song is so good, like aesthetically I’m obsessed with the synchronized movements.

Like Crazy Music Video

Like Crazy was the title track for the album and it did not disappoint. The teaser for this mv will go down in the history books. I just love this song so much. A synth - pop dream, and the dance choreo? So sensual. The way I didn’t notice what the background dancers were doing until a performance vid like 2 weeks later 👀

I’m not going to speak on all the rest of the tracks, cause the way I could go on about the soundscape for interlude: dive is kind of crazy. But I want to show some love to my fave track off this album: Face - Off.

I don’t know how to encapsulate the way Face - Off makes me feel, as an opening song it makes me pay attention. Essentially it perks up my hind brain and says hey focus on me. And its so controlled in its anger, a slow build that just makes me seethe. Cause I’ve been there, we’ve all been there, and it really really gets me. Please pleases give it a listen if you haven’t.

Now this came out later and not really apart of debut but I feel like I would be doing you and me a disservice if I didn’t mention it…

'편지 (Dear. ARMY)' Live Clip 

the Festa gift to make all army’s cry. So beautiful, his voice, the guitar. So good. And I’m gonna assume this was intentional but the way the album had a hardware and a software concept. And chronologically Set Me Free pt. 2 comes before Letter. His outfit in SMF is all black until the very end, the hardware aesthetic. Then in Letter he’s in all light cream, the software aesthetic. Idk maybe like can’t update the software without updating the hardware? 🤷🏼‍♀️

Jimin did a number of different promotions for his debut but I wanted to highlight my favourites:

Suchwita Ep. 7 with Jimin

PIXID ‘Find the imposter among the provincial fans (feat. BTS Jimin)’

Jimmy Fallon Like Crazy Performance

Studio Choom Like Crazy Performance

I also loved his Beat Coin ep too! Please take a look if you haven’t watched any of the content Jimin did! 

But I gotta be honest my absolute favourite promotion was his weverse live (not only cause he bullied me into dancing 🤣) but because it gave me this best smile ever:

(Credit to Jimimn)

To date I can’t look at the video clips of this without breaking out into a large grin too! 😊

I hope you all have been enjoying Face as much as me, but if you haven’t yet listened to it please check it out! Its such a good pop album!

Face Spotify Link

[birchkillchronicles]

Getting to Marigold

Chapter One

Mushroom, Raw Umber, Tobacco

            A mole’s nest. 

A dark, stuffy mole’s nest. 

That’s what Bernie’s bedroom is, sniffed Jeanie Dinmont. 

A dark, stuffy mole’s nest where—for the last fourteen years!—my daughter has chosen to burrow her silly head.

Gazing around the offending room, Jeanie was stumped. 

Why, she wondered for the trillionth time, had Bernie—back when she was a cantankerous sixteen-year-old—cruelly demanded that they chuck the lovely ivory-and-cream French Provincial décor—with pops of cherry-blossom-pink!—which her mom had so lovingly designed? 

And for what? 

For the Gothic-Victorian-techno mishmash of her current dismal lair?

What a waste of effort! Jeanie had mourned at the time.  And, frankly, she hadn’t seen the need to let Bernie have her own selfish adolescent way.  In her opinion, the sweetly feminine bedroom had been perfect for a young lady of tender years and, at the time, she’d wished that her daughter would just leave it alone. 

Yes, well…

As Jeanie’s mother would say, ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’

The hollow-eyed teen had moped and sighed and sulked and pined, until—bowing to her best friend Sylvie’s parenting advice—Jeanie had yielded to Bernie’s unfathomable desire to transition her room into a ‘more grown-up space.’

Still—loathe to give up all aesthetic control—Jeanie had energetically counselled her daughter on how to curate her attic retreat. 

“Now, kidlet—with these small windows and sloping ceilings,” she’d cautioned, “you’ll want to keep everything light.  A neutral palette is the ticket here.  So, if I were you, I’d switch out those ivory pieces with a blond Danish-modern suite.  And then freshen up that matte cream wall paint with a semi-gloss buttermilk hue...”

But had her daughter listened? 

Nope. 

Not a chance.

Stubbornly insisting on her own dour notions for the space, Bernie had pushed her perplexed mother to repaint and then cram far too much dark-walnut furniture against stodgy mushroom-gray walls.  

Next—during an increasingly rare mother-and-daughter shopping jaunt to Sears—the cranky teen had opted for equally bleak soft furnishings. 

Then, she’d staged a weekend hunger strike—which her scrawny body could barely abide—in order to gain a plush area rug in a regrettable shade of raw umber. 

And, to complete the desecration, she’d insisted that her pleasant sitting area be transformed into a video gaming lounge!

So, now, an olive-drab duvet smothered the heavy Victorian double bed.  A battleship-grey slipcover obscured what had once been a delicate ladderback desk chair.  And over Bernie’s flat television screen lurked ugly posters featuring the sombre wizards, pointy-eared boys and snarling white wolves from her ghastly video games. 

The window treatments were no better. 

Inky-black roller shades masked every pane.  And tobacco-brown curtains shrouded each implacable shade so that Bernie could never be startled awake by even the slightest stray hint of rosy dawn. 

No sunlight.  No birdsong.  No air…

            Gee whiz, grimaced Jeanie.  I’d go mad if—even for a single night!—I  had to endure this frumpy old nest.  Let alone for the past fourteen years…

            Still—once she’d let Sylvie persuade her to allow the gawky girl dress her third-storey refuge to her own leaden taste—Jeanie had to concede that her best friend had been right.

Concede that Sylvie had understood far better how to assuage the pain of Bernie’s murky adolescence and her ensuing prickly twenties than Jeanie had ever wanted to.

Concede that Sylvie—a seasoned campaigner in the teenage wars with her flamboyant son, Nick—had been entirely correct when she’d warned Jeanie to forfeit the small battles to Bernie and save her energy for the big conflicts to come. 

            Yes, but—

Where was Sylvie now?

            Gone. 

Gone forever…

And that, decided Jeanie—vigorously refusing to be slurped into an insidious bog of regret—that abandonment, no matter how involuntary, certainly meant that now—right now!—Jeanie was allowed to decide for herself that enough was enough!

            With her usual deliberate stride, she wooshed across the deep-piled rug to the window, threw back the heavy curtains, snapped up the roller shade and wrenched open the double hung window. 

A waft of mid-July heat met the chill of the air-conditioning and died on the sill.

            “Jessica Bernadette Todd!” she carolled in her cheeriest voice. “Rise and shine!”

            Beneath the heavy duvet, a slight figure stirred.  Then, an unaccountably tidy head of dark-brown hair turned to reveal hazel-grey eyes peering dully out of a small pale-white face.

            “Mom.”

            With that single word, Bernie neatly expressed everything she wanted to say.

Don’t fool around with my window.  Leave me alone.  Go away.   

            Jeanie decided to ignore it all.

            “The day’s a-wasting!” she chirped.  “It’s time to greet the sun!”

            Her beloved kidlet—never ‘Jessica’ since that September afternoon when she’d announced that, with three other Jessicas in her fifth grade class, she would henceforth be known as ‘Bernie’—dropped a limp hand over to her bedside table to consult her phone.

            “Mom.”

It’s only nine-thirty on a Sunday morning.  Close my drapes.  Leave me alone.

Bernie’s pallid face swivelled inexorably back towards the wall.

            Jeanie decided to ignore that too. 

            Leaving the window wide open, she nipped over to her daughter.  Tugging off the unspeakable duvet to reveal Bernie’s frail powder-blue flannel-wrapped back, she plopped herself down on the bedside for a bracing chat.

            “Look, Bernie—” Jeanie began. “If our loopy-neighbour-from-three-doors-down, Lindy Styre, can get over herself long enough to write a summer play, you can get over yourself long enough to get up and go see it.” 

Bernie’s hibernation remained undisturbed. 

“Oh, for pity’s sake, kidlet!” Jeanie continued, relentlessly.  “According to the radio, Loopy Lindy’s done such a cracker-jack job, her theatre group’s gone and scheduled a whole extra matinee in the Glebe today!  Now, the show starts at one.  And I know that—if you stop for breakfast—it’ll take you at least an hour to get up and out.  So, I thought that, after you’ve had your shower and got dressed, we’d hike over to Starbucks for our coffee and then trot across the Bank Street Bridge.  Once we’re in the Glebe, we’ll pick up a snack—and then window-shop our way up to the park—”

            Heaving a deep-dark sigh, Bernie flopped back over to confront her intolerably perky parent.  “Mom.  There was a headline in the Old Ottawa South paper that said Excursion Theatre’s coming to Windsor Park in early August.  Why can’t we go then?  It’s not as if this matinee’s a case of now-or-never.”

            Delighted with this multi-sentence response, Jeanie seized upon her daughter’s argument with gusto.  “See?  You’re planning to go see Loopy Lindy’s play. Why not take advantage of this lovely golden day?  That August date could be rained out and then we’d miss everything!”

            “Mom—”

            “So why not sling our folding chairs over our shoulders and march on down through the Glebe?  We’ll buy fresh bagels, and it’ll be so much fun—!”

            “Mom—” groaned Bernie, attempting to retreat beneath her bedclothes once more.  

But Jeanie had scented victory in her daughter’s former lengthy reply. 

“Oh no, you don’t!” she laughed, wrestling the awful duvet from Bernie’s feeble grasp and tossing it to the floor.  “We’re overdue for a Girls Day Out!  So, get cracking, kidlet!  And I’ll go rustle up those chairs…”

            Filled with happy purpose, Jeanie scampered down two flights of stairs to her blond maple kitchen.  There, her husband, Donald Todd—an unpretentious man in his late sixties who’d recently retired from the Federal civil service—sat on a caramel-leather-upholstered stool at the pink-granite-topped kitchen island.  He was just as fair-skinned as Bernie and three inches shorter than his long-limbed wife of almost forty-two years.  And, as he sipped his second cup of coffee, he was puzzling through the cryptic crossword from yesterday morning’s paper. 

Always the intellectual, thought Jeanie, indulgently.  Can’t simply do the regular crossword like the rest of us mortals…

            Don had popped his golf shirt collar up on one side, so Jeanie straightened it out for him.  Then, planting an airy kiss on his greying temple, she offered, coyly, “You’ll be glad to hear that your devoted wife and darling daughter won’t be underfoot for most of the day.”

            “But I’ll miss you both so sadly,” returned Don, evenly.  Without even a glance his wife’s way, he filled a long word into his puzzle grid.

             “We’re having a Girls Day Out.  No men allowed!” Jeanie brightly informed him as she disappeared into their recently refreshed mudroom.  There, she pulled a couple of bagged folding chairs out of the closet and leant them against the wall.  Now, she thought with satisfaction, those will be close at hand...

Returning to the kitchen, she double-checked that the box for today’s date on the Inuit art wall calendar was empty.  She wanted to fill it in with the lively acronym ‘GDO!’  But where was the pen that ought to be laying on the shelf nearby?

“Don,” she asked, “have you seen the calendar pen?”

            “Mmm…what?”

            “The calendar pen.  The one that we always leave here on the shelf.” 

The pen wasn’t on the counter.  It hadn’t been knocked to the floor.  So where was the calendar pen? 

Had somebody moved it on purpose? 

Jeanie felt a buzz of frustration arise in her mind. 

“Not this one, is it?”  Still concentrating on his crossword, Don waved the pen he was using at her.  “I found it over there somewhere.”

Jeanie’s mouth pursed in to a strained smile. 

“You know, Don,” she admonished her husband, as if spelling out an indisputable fact to a little child, “you should leave the calendar pen where it belongs.  Then—whenever we need it—we  won’t have to search all over the house.”

“Sorry, dear.”  Don kept reading his puzzle clues and, again, didn’t bother to look up at his wife.

“And I know that you don’t mean to be careless.  But it doesn’t take much to throw everything into disarray.”  Jeanie didn’t like to be a nag.  And since it was only about a month ago that Don had reluctantly retired from the long days of his government career, he could be forgiven for not being on board with her household routines.  But there was a limit to her patience.  “If you start picking up stuff at random and just using it for whatever, pretty soon the whole system will be in a shambles.”

Don nodded thoughtfully and wrote another answer.  “As soon as I’m finished, I’ll put it back,” he said.  And—although her fingers itched to grab the pen out of his selfish hand—from long experience with her husband’s talent for sly evasion, Jeanie knew that she had to be content with that.

Restlessly, she surveyed the kitchen.  What other mischief had Don been up to?  There weren’t any of his used breakfast dishes cluttering up the counter or the sink, so she unobtrusively checked in the dishwasher to see if he’d put them away correctly.

Aha!  Don’s cereal bowl was in the appropriate slot on the bottom rack.  But he’d stuck his juice glass in the widest row of the upper… 

Juice glasses go in the narrow outer row, frowned Jeanie.  Any fool should know that. 

With an air of great tolerance, she lifted the offending glass and placed it in its proper spot.  Then she snapped the dishwasher closed and, with a pen selected out of her cache in her kitchen junk drawer, wrote ‘GDO!’ in today’s calendar box.        

With her good mood restored, Jeanie placed the substitute pen on the designated shelf and turned to Don with an unfeigned smile.  “Don’t you wonder where your girls are going?”

Don glanced up briefly from his puzzle and took a swig of coffee.  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll eventually tell me,” he said.

            “We’re off to see that play that Lindy Styre wrote.”

            “Uh-huh.” 

            “It’s got great reviews, and they’re doing a matinee today in the Glebe.  So, Bernie and I thought we’d give it a peek.”

            “Great.”  Don’s slate-blue eyes drifted back to his crossword. 

            “It’s supposed to be really funny.”

            “No doubt.”  He picked up the ex-calendar pen again and wrote.

            “But you can’t come with us—”

            “Mm-hm…”

            “—because we’re having an exclusive Girls Day Out!”

            His brow wrinkled in deep thought, Don looked up and past his wife to stare vaguely at a spot over the kitchen stove.  So, giving him up as a bad job, Jeanie retrieved her phone from its charging bay to check for messages she might have missed while she was upstairs rousing Bernie. 

There was nothing too important.  Just a reminder from the clinic about Jeanie’s follow-up mammogram.  And a text from her former boss, Roberta Tsang. 

Nearly twenty years ago, Roberta had hired Jeanie as a part-time receptionist at her Bank Street interior design company.  And, now, she was asking whether Jeanie would like to come bargain hunting at the Westboro garage sale next Sunday? 

Jeanie deftly texted Roberta that she’d ‘love to go pickin’!’ and ‘how ’bout lunch too?’ And then stuck the details of the medical appointment into her phone calendar. 

‘Done like dinner,’ as Sylvie would have said. 

‘All good and proper!’ as Jeanie’s mother would amend. 

Pocketing her phone, Jeanie ran up the back stairs to refresh her lipstick in her marbled en-suite bathroom.  Once there, however, she paused to admire her newly-dyed hairdo in the vanity mirror. 

Keenly aware that her aging Clear Spring complexion now benefitted greatly when she lightened her colour palette to a Pastel Spring’s lower intensity hues, she’d instructed her stylist to tone her hair down to a soft-honey tint.  She wasn’t ready to go grey, she’d explained.  But she certainly didn’t want to look like one of those desperate ladies in their early sixties who try to offset their wrinkles with a brash shade of copper or platinum blonde…

Then again, Jeanie was a realist, and she wasn’t going to hide from the fact that she was getting old.  Yet, even with their fortieth anniversary in the rear-view mirror—and a year’s hiatus during her health scare—she and Don were still having it off a couple of times a month.

I might be vintage, Jeanie reminded the smiling woman in the mirror as she lightly touched up her coral lip gloss, but I sure ain’t antique!

As usual, Jeanie had dressed very carefully this morning and, assessing her appearance in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door, she was quite pleased.  She hadn’t painted too much tawny colour on her cheeks, and she liked the nice summery effect of the plain gold hoops in her ears.  Her flowery aqua cotton top bloused enough to disguise any imbalance in the size of her breasts and, with a nod to her mature status, she’d opted for a pair of faded denim-blue shorts which left only a tasteful stretch of her long legs bare.  And—playing peek-a-boo with her neatly coral-polished toes—sprightly new espadrille sandals completed her flawless attire. 

“You look like a million dollars!” she told her beaming reflection and giggled when it responded with a duck-lipped super-model pose. 

Next, knowing that—even at the best of times—Bernie never moved fast in the morning, Jeanie detoured for a few minutes to her craft room, which was located across the hall from the guest bedroom on the second-floor.  She wanted to finish cutting and filing a couple of articles from her favourite women’s magazine. 

Of course, Jeanie knew very well that this was the age of the computer.  But, in some fundamental way, she preferred winnowing real pages to simply downloading images from a screen.  And she wasn’t about to give up her favourite hobby just because it wasn’t modern…

In fact—through years of careful scrutiny of homemaker’s magazines—Jeanie had assembled a tangible ‘vision’ of what her family’s life should ideally be.  And via scrapbooks, files and inspiration boards, she continued to pursue that vision with passion and zest.

Now, donning her reading glasses, Jeanie flipped merrily through the latest issue’s glossy pages.  She clipped illustrated instructions on how to host a gingham-themed summer picnic.  And then a page of chowder recipes with both seafood and vegetarian options.  She usually filed the ‘Simple Sewing Crafts’ feature, as well as the fantasy vacation pages, so she plied her scissors there too.  Then, making sure that the paper remained uncreased, she stashed the articles into appropriately multi-colour-labeled folders, ready to be pasted into one of the many tidy scrapbooks that lined her craft room shelves.

Gratified with this bit of orderly housekeeping, Jeanie skipped up to the third floor to monitor her daughter’s progress.  But—

There wasn’t any. 

Or, at least to Jeanie’s mind, there hadn’t been.

Perhaps, in Bernie’s opinion, there had.

            The window was once more firmly shut.  The inky-black roller shade was pulled down and the tobacco-brown curtains had been yanked across.  The olive-drab duvet had been restored.  And it was painfully obvious from the bedclothes’ unruffled façade that the small silent bulge beneath hadn’t moved since Bernie had rearranged her mole’s nest back to her own heavy dark taste. 

            Wordlessly Jeanie stood and stared dumbfounded at her daughter’s dead heap.  She felt like she’d been slapped in the face with a wet fish… 

And then blistering incredulity replaced her initial shock.

How could any kid of mine, gasped Jeanie’s mind, so brutally reject my efforts to engage her in the wonderful al fresco pleasures of life?  Haven’t I tried beyond hope to understand her ridiculous reserve?  Haven’t I given her the benefit of my sunny philosophy every single day?

So, why this obstinate refusal to participate in a cheery Girls Day Out?

As my mother would say—'What’s the worst that can happen?  What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, girl.’

So, get out there in the fresh air and have a ball!

It all seemed so easy to Jeanie.  But then again—as she was the first to admit—tolerating the personal quirks of her deeply loved but totally mystifying kidlet had always been the major challenge in her life. 

Jeanie had miscarried multiple times before Bernie had finally been born, and the doctors had decreed that she’d have no more kids.  So, there went her plan to have a troupe of children skipping through the halls of the three-storey, two staircase, six-bedroom, white elephant of an Edwardian red-brick house that she and Don had optimistically purchased in Old Ottawa South.

Then, Bernie had been a difficult, hyper-sensitive baby, hard to put to sleep and often screaming with colic.  And—long past the ‘making shy’ stage—her finicky daughter had strenuously objected to strangers.  So, Jeanie’d had to shelve her new scheme of housing international university students too. 

No matter, she’d rationalized, and industriously repurposed the four superfluous bedrooms instead.  On the second floor, she’d allocated a study for Don and a craft room for herself.  And, in the two bedrooms on the third, she’d set up a box room for storage and—in the larger one—a quaint gabled playroom for her only child.

But then it had turned out that Bernie’s immune system had been massively unforgiving of even hypoallergenic pets.  Reluctantly, Jeanie’d had to re-home their Labradoodle dog and Balinese cat.  And, for the last twenty-eight years, the only animals in their home had been the mindless goldfish swimming endlessly around their bowl in Don’s study.  

So, no brothers or sisters or boarders.  And not even a furry pet…

With puberty, of course, Bernie had insisted on moving her bedroom up to the third floor.  And—remembering her own dramatic middle school years—Jeanie had indulged her twelve-year-old kidlet’s sudden need for privacy.  Efficiently, she’d hired a builder to tear down the wall of small attic box room and install another full bathroom for Bernie’s exclusive use.  And then she’d happily decorated her daughter’s new en-suite bedroom and sitting area in that delightfully feminine ivory-cream-and-pink colour scheme.  

Next, the generous walk-in closet in Bernie’s former second floor bedroom had been renovated to become Jeanie’s and Don’s en-suite bath.  And—after purchasing an antique birdseye-maple bedroom set which included a spacious wardrobe—Jeanie had refurnished the remaining space for the use of overnight guests. 

But then, as an ungrateful older teen, Bernie had stubbornly chosen that woeful attic décor.  And—all the way through her Carleton University days and right into her nerdy government computer system analyst career—she’d persistently ignored her mom’s every encouragement to brighten it up. 

Unfortunately, to Jeanie’s mind, thirty-year-old Bernie seemed to be stuck in a teenage funk.  And—equally unfortunately—the end of their tense mother-daughter journey seemed to be nowhere in sight. 

Which was because—as far as Jeanie knew—her persnickety kidlet had never led a normal social life.  No gang of gal pals, no best friend and not even a whiff of romance had given a dash of spice to her daughter’s achromatic existence.  Day in and day out, she’d simply slunk off to class or to work.  Or sat at a computer.  Or stared at a phone…

And when, a couple of years ago—at Jeanie’s urging—Don had offered to help with a substantial down payment, Bernie had balked at moving into her own place. 

So, it had become increasingly obvious to Jeanie and Don that their daughter wasn’t planning to decamp anywhere else anytime soon.

Holy doodle, grimaced Jeanie.  Imagine a thirty-year-old woman deliberately living at home with her aging parents.  Still single and perfectly content to be buried alive in her dark, stuffy mole’s nest—

That was Bernie in a teacup! 

And now, Jeanie realized, bitterly, the world’s most exasperating daughter wasn’t even going to disturb her self-centred agenda to venture forth on a rare Girls Day Out with her long-suffering mom!

Swiftly, Jeanie’s incredulity morphed into fury.  And—aware that she was on the edge of saying or doing something unforgiveable—she abruptly spun on her heel and swept down the back stairs to the kitchen where Don still struggled with his puzzle. 

“Bernie’s not coming!” she snapped.  “Your daughter won’t even get up out of bed!”

“She won’t?” returned Don without looking up from his crossword.  “What a surprise.”  With a grunt of pleasure, he filled in one of the last two answers and, surveying the final clue, nonchalantly offered a helpful suggestion.  “Maybe you could call somebody else to go with you.  Probably Sylvie—oh, dear god, Jeanie, I’m so sorry—!”  Too late Don realized his indefensible mistake and, red-faced, sprang up from his stool to give his wife his full attention.  “Jeanie, I didn’t mean to—!” 

But there was really no excuse.

“She can’t be bothered—and you don’t mean to—!  That’s the story of my life!” snarled Jeanie, snatching her light summer tote bag from its peg.  “But don’t let it bug you, Don!  Sylvie may be gone.  But I’m not beaten yet!  I’m going to Lindy’s play—all by myself!”

Helpless with guilt, Don shrank back on his stool. 

And, ditching her miserable husband, Jeanie stomped into the mudroom, seized her folding chair and slammed through the side door to face the pitiless hot and sunny world.

Alone.

[beebobeebo]

Title: What's It Take To Bring You Home?

Fandom: Justified

Characters: Raylan Givens, Art Mullen, a gaggle of deputies, &Tim Gutterson

Relationship: Tim Gutterson x Raylan Givens (Givenson)

Summary:

Well ain't that a goddamn sonnuvabitch‽

Starting over is always weird.

Some people just have to make it even weirder for Raylan.

A.K.A. The Pizza Boy AU or "I do not remember this cut of the first episode."

Raylan, acting against his very nature, behaves his first day in the Lexington office. He lets Art, new boss and old friend, hand out introductions like some provincial town mayor. Raylan shakes hands or nods as appropriate. Hell, he even smiles at the lady deputy when Art fawns over her for being competent.

Their last stop, the newest deputy in the office, was spinning in his desk chair like an over-caffeinated sixth grader when Art pauses to acquaint them. Raylan didn't need to hear about how Tim Gutterson was in the Army and a good shot. He knows. He plays along though, going so far as to shake the hand that he'd last seen curled over his own damn heart.

The rest of the day Raylan avoids staring at his personal conspiracy theory in the flesh.

After what seems like an eternity, apparently the Lexington work ethic outstripped Miami's, they're alone in the office. Raylan breaks the silence.

"Are you fuckin' kiddin' me?"

Tim comes back out of the small closet by the elevator performatively dusting off his hands.

Tim bursts into a giant grin.

---------------------------------------------------------

"Free rein now," he says with a less petulant version of the bored demeanor he'd had at twenty-three. He was an even calmer version of their last rushed encounter.

"Looping a camera system something you do on the regular?" Raylan asks with a raised brow. He's still at a loss as to what he feels. One moment he wants to wring Tim's neck and the next he wants to push him against a wall and kiss the breath out of him. He settles on awkwardly making up for the staring he avoided all day.

"Nah. Not now," Tim says motioning for him to follow him back to the office, every badge reader bypassed by what looks like a palmed business card. Before Raylan knows it they're in Art's office on the couch with a bottle of bourbon and two glasses. Tim pours generously without being asked.

Raylan has a million questions but settles on the easiest for himself.

"Jesus, baby. How?"

Tim shrugs. "Lets say I got bored, so I got out. You meet people who can make things happen when you're a delivery man." He takes a drink. "Sorted out my file through some back channels. Kept the Army. Added a wife who died tragically leaving me a good bit of money to explain away some things. Employment gap, bank deposits, and the other things the government asks about."

"A wife?" Raylan pauses to look at Tim over the rim of his glass. "A human woman?"

"I wasn't going to put proficient cocksucker on my resumé for the US Marshal Service, Raylan. So, as far as anyone knows, I'm faithful to her memory." Tim grins and downs his glass before adding, "Best pussy I ever had, present company excluded."

Raylan rolls his eyes. "And Glynco?"

Tim shrugs.

"That part was easy. Take a few tests and make a few jokes. I kept wonderin' when they'd throw me somethin' hard." Tim pours himself another glass. "Lot of skill overlap between delivery man and deputy. I mean, I could always find you even when you had no idea where I was, so I figured I was as qualified as one of their deputies in good standing. Well, good standing until you went and shot that guy."

Raylan sits up. "That was —"

"Justified," Tim finishes for him. "Said that a lot. Who you tryin' to convince? 'Cause I ain't judging."

Raylan looks at him. He hears his own jaw click.

"Never killed anyone that didn't need it. Either of us," Tim says as he downs Raylan's glass and then his own before setting them aside. "You gonna fuck me or not? 'Cause you can take all that out on me without hurtin' me. I ain't any more afraid of an angry man than you were."

"Ain't gonna hurt ya," Raylan says before he brushes his fingertips over Tim's cheek. He hesitates trying to formulate a way to say he missed Tim without hardly even knowing him, but he does know every true thing about him scattered amongst the lies new and old. He collected every little scrap or detail to file away in his head. The memories always at the ready when he needed them.

Tim pulls off Raylan's hat and bumps their foreheads.

"Stop thinkin' so loud, cowboy. You're ruinin' the goddamn mood."

At that, Raylan kisses Tim like he'll die if he loses him again. They're both half undressed before Raylan takes a moment to consider he's been at the new office one day and he's already fucking his coworker, regardless of who it is, on his boss's couch. They're naked by the time he looks down at a panting Tim and finds that he couldn't fucking care less where he was. But who?

He presses a hand against the other man's chest.

"Tim, you got a chance to back out here. You got a new life, baby. You don't have to risk it on this for old time's sake. Did a lot of work to—"

"Like this ain't the reason I did everything. You're the only person who gave a damn about me, Raylan. Only person who looked for me." Tim stares up at him with those sleepy blue eyes. "People thought I didn't exist."

"I knew. I'd held you in my arms," Raylan says through his teeth. His eyebrows threaten to twist themselves into a knot as he lowers his mouth to Tim's shoulder.

"You knew. You'd had me," Tim hisses as Raylan sinks his teeth in over his collarbone.

Raylan leaves a trail of stinging welts down Tim's torso. He purples his hip and looks up to see Tim's searching expression.

"Don't stop now, 'cause we're feelin' sentimental. I'll have to kill ya."

"I promise not to hurt you and you throw out a casual threat," Raylan teases with a smirk and nips down until Tim's hip jerks up. "God, I always forget how pretty you are."

"Raylan, you spend half our time together lookin' at me. Just fuck me and I'll let you look whenever you like," Tim offers as he drapes a leg over Raylan's hip. "I'm here now."

"Not the angry 'Fuck me' I usually get," Raylan says as he leans in to nip at Tim's jaw.

"I've mellowed in your old age. Now take it all out on me. I've been listening to your voicemails, Raylan. You got years of hurt to give me. Years."

Raylan nods with a rough "yeah" as he grabs Tim's thigh and pulls him close.

What follows is a kiss with teeth. Every fuckin' thing wrong with this goddamn world pulsing through Raylan Givens bores down into Tim. Not a sin, smirk, or ill thought is left aside as Raylan's tongue explores every bit of the other man's mouth. The hurt of everything he couldn't fix burns through his touch as his hands slide over a body so foreign and yet so intimately known from replayed memories.

When a hand fists in Raylan's hair and yanks his head to the side so a leg can go over his shoulder, he doesn't even think. He presses inside Tim without a warning. He's going to break them both, but they're already broken so who the fuck cares. The way Tim's breath hitches and his back curves to accommodate the force of the cock stretching him makes Raylan lose his last bit of restraint. He slams into Tim for every time he felt less than, for every disappointment, and for every goddamn time someone wasn't Tim. When the force and rough friction makes Tim spill a mess between them, Raylan buries himself deep and comes with a broken shout.

Tim holds Raylan close and buries his face in the crook of his neck.

"You good?" Raylan whispers into Tim's hair.

"Y-yeah," Tim says before kissing Raylan's neck. "Might need someone to help me walk."

Raylan laughs. "Some asshole did a number on you?"

"Some handsome asshole who has to help me clean up this couch and refill that bottle."

Raylan starts to pull away. "You always able to do that leg thing?"

Art was certain something was wrong with his office. It was too clean. Smelled like like a pine tree exploded in the middle of the damn thing. Then there was the lamp facing the wrong way. Hell, the couch was even back a few inches and wiped down, but facilities didn't vacuum or bother with the furniture on Wednesdays.

"You got no clue." Tim grins. "No fuckin' clue."

---------------------------------------------------------

At a loss, he even made the kid come in there and have a look. Tim could pick out if a target moved two inches to the left, but he swore he didn't see anything different from the last time he looked.

Damn.

The next day, as they are driving down to Harlan, Raylan gives Tim a review of a long, bitter history of crime, misuse, and abuse. Tim nods and leans back his seat.

Maybe his wife was right, Art should just leave this mess to Rachel. Let Raylan and moving couches be her problem.

---------------------------------------------------------

"You told me some pretty horrific shit in those phone messages you left, Raylan. I'm not exactly a fan of your hometown."

"Forget that. Since I left Winona, I only called when I was pissed or…" He trails off.

"Sad," Tim finishes for him. "All I got of you for these last few years was all your rage and sadness. That and the occasional peek at you through a scope."

"Not me at my best. Bet half the time I wouldn't have minded if you pulled the trigger."

Tim laughs. Raylan feels himself laugh before he consciously realizes it. Fuckin' kid.

"You know I could solve this all real quick. Just get the Crowders in one go. I don't like multiple targets in one spot, because people," he pauses to wiggle his fingers," scatter. I could make it work, though."

Raylan shakes his head.

"I'll talk to Boyd. He might see reason. He and I have history. We dug coal—"

"No, that's a special case of crazy. That's cool ranch crazy, Raylan"

"You work with him?" Raylan idly rests his hand on Tim's knee just because he can.

"Sat down, but he's a Nazi. I killed people, but, man, he's a Nazi," Tim says like this is the most basic concept in the world. Raylan can't exactly disagree. Tim clears his throat and puts on a mocking version of Boyd's accent. "And with my romantic predilection, I might find our working relationship acrimonious if I refuse to be pragmatic." Tim rests his hand over Raylan's.

"Reason Boyd's eyes are brown is 'cause he's so full of shit."

Tim rolls his eyes over to look at Raylan. "And you offhandedly know the eye color of a man you used to work with. In the dark. For a hot minute. Not to act in a way that would upset national treasure Hilary Duff, but that's pretty gay."

"Leave it," Raylan warns.

"It's left." Tim leans over to fiddle with the radio. Raylan swats his hand away. Tim huffs and looks up in time to see a battered sign with "Harlan" scrawled in a loopy font.

"Welcome home, Raylan Givens."

"Thanks, asshole."

[desassosegos]

Happinnes is a warm gun

I return to therapy, the same fears, but not the same anymore, the whirlpool of my soul, the brutal agitation and the absence of meaning, the incommunicability, the envy and jealousy of my older brother, the walls that I (they) built around me like in Kavafis' poem, my brother who reaped mom's love before me, and I had to fight to win it, but soon her belly grew, Flipper, the dolphin, Felipe would be his name, I would get another brother, I would lose the attention again, I loved those afternoons so much, my brother was at school, just me and mom and the silence of the afternoon, the clean house, and to this day I only like having sex in the afternoon, the smell of nail polish, it was a time of care, without dad and brother, as if I betrayed mom, Éric Rohmer's "Love in the Afternoon", Chloe, I dreamed I was wearing Flamengo's jersey, but I'm not a Flamengo fan, horror for what I wear, for what I am?, a shirt that costs one hundred dollars, but I wanted to show it off, wanted to be someone else?, a Flamengo fan, a Carioca, a New Yorker, a cosmopolitan, is there a more provincial dream than one day being a cosmopolitan, am I driven by resentment and this endless quest for freedom in the big city, in the crosswalks full of hurried people crossing the street with unknown destinations, and I dissolve into this crowd, this shapeless mass in motion, this being together with the anonymous, and to this day I cultivate the fear of looking into eyes, the fear of the other, which may have been from being beaten at school, Pablo, Biscoito, Aurélio, the nameless boy who chased me after Mirandão School, my father, my father, I can't forget the slaps, punches, and whippings I took on my back, I was so small and I can't forget, and when I read, today, Hannah Arendt and her denunciation of the apostles of violence, Sartre, Fanon, Sorel, those who believe in violence as a way of self-creation of man, in the creative death, I feel contemplated, I find myself there because violence and its demand for immediate obedience, obedience without mediation, is the denial of the possibilities of being together, of joint action, and today I cultivate my muscles in the gym and in running, I want to be strong so that no Pablo and no father can hurt me, but even with my strong and firm body I still hold that ancestral fear, "the child, you need to hug her," says my analyst, "maybe you are driven by the resentment for the love you didn't receive from your mother," "you are your first home," "this whirlpool story you have already told me," and "the refusal of praise," the "impostor syndrome," "you are brave to tell me this, the men of your generation were all pruned by a castrating masculinity paradigm," "and what made you feel the loss of that well-being you once felt?" I don't know, I don't know, I always repeat the mantra of my abysmal ignorance about myself, I turn to the books I've read, "have you read 'Ancient Tillage'?", "no", she answers me, I explain, "the biblical parable of the prodigal son, but in Raduan Nassar's book it's an immigrant family living in the rural interior of São Paulo, the father, the powerful father, the symbol of union, the sin, I love André, I am André, I also ran away, and I also have a brother who aims to carry the family torch, and I say no, I am the one who denies, am I Mephistopheles?, "do you understand, doctor," I returned to therapy, I don't know what I'm doing here, I'd rather be reading Virginia Woolf's diaries, what am I doing here, doctor?" I see myself on the computer screen, you want my money, not my health, I'm leaving here, I've already left. I'm back.

***

Happinnes is a warm gun. Retorno à terapia, os mesmos medos, mas não mais os mesmos, o redemoinho de minha alma, a agitação brutal e a ausência de sentido, a incomunicabilidade, a inveja e o ciúme de meu irmão mais velho, os muros que construí(ram) em volta de mim como no poema de Kaváfis, meu irmão que colheu o amor de mamãe antes de mim, e eu precisei lutar para consquistá-lo, mas logo a barriga dela cresceu, Fliper, o golfinho, Felipe seria seu nome, eu ganharia outro irmão, iria perder a atenção de novo, gostava tanto daquelas tardes, meu irmão estava na escola, apenas eu e mamãe e o silêncio da tarde, a casa limpa, e até hoje eu apenas gosto de fazer sexo à tarde, o cheiro do esmalte, era o tempo de cuidado, sem pai e sem irmão, se que é como se traísse mamãe, amor à tarde de Éric Roemer, Cloé, sonhei que vestia a camisa do flamengo, mas não sou flamenguista, horror pelo que visto, pelo que sou?, uma camisa que custa 500 reais, mais queria mostrá-la, queria ser outro?, um flamenguista, um carioca, um nova iorquino, um cosmopolita, há sonho mais provinciano do que um dia ser cosmopolita, serei eu movido pelo ressentimento e essa busca infinita pela liberdade na grande cidade, nas faixas de pedrestres repletas de gente apressada que atravessa a rua e não se sabe que rumo irão tomar, e eu me diluo nessa multidão, nessa massa informe em movimento, nesse estar junto dos anônimos, e até hoje cultivo o medo de olhar nos olhos, o medo do outro, que pode ter sido por ter apanhado na escola, Pablo, Biscoito, Aurélio, o menino sem nome que me perseguia na saída do Mirandão, meu pai, meu pai, eu não esqueço dos tapas, dos socos e correiadas que tomei no lombo, eu era tão pequeno e não esqueço, e quando leio, hoje, Hannah Arendt e sua denuncia dos apóstolos da violência, de Sartre, Fanon, Sorel, esses que acreditam na violência como modo de autocriação do homem, na morte criadora, sinto-me contemplado, me encontro ali porque violência e sua exigência da obediência imediata, da obediência sem mediações,  é a negação das possibilidade do estar junto, da ação conjunta, e hoje cultivo meus músculos na academia e na corrida, quero estar forte para nenhum Pablo e nenhum pai me agridam, mas ainda com meu corpo forte e rijo guardo ainda aquele medo ancestral, “a criança, você precisa abraça-la”, diz minha analista, “talvez você seja movido pelo ressentimento pelo amor que não recebeu de sua mãe”, “você é sua primeira casa”, “essa história do  redemoinho você já me contou”, e “a recusa do elogio”, a “síndrome do impostor”, “você é carojoso por me falar isso, os homens de sua geração foram todos podados por um paradigma de masculinidade castrador”, “e o que foi que fez com que você sentisse a perda daquele bem-estar que você um dia sentiu?”, eu não sei, eu não sei, eu repito sempre o mantra de minha ignorância abissal sobre mim mesmo, eu recorro aos livros que li, “já leu Lavoura Aracaica?”, ela me responde que não, eu explico, “a parábola bíblica do filho pródigo, mas no livro de Raduan Nassar é uma família de imigrantes que vive na zona rural do interior de São Paulo, o pai, o poderoso pai, o símbolo da união, o pecado, eu amo André, eu sou André, eu também fugi, e também tenho um irmão que almeja carregar o bastão da família, e eu digo não, eu sou o que nega, sou Mefisfófoles?, “você entende, doutora”,  eu voltei para terapia, não sei o que faço aqui, queria estar lendo os diários de Virgínia Woolf, o que estou fazendo aqui?, eu me vejo na tela do computador, você quer meu dinheiro, não minha saúde, eu vou sair daqui, já saí. Voltei.

George Segal, Walk, Don't Walk, 1976

[empty-mailbox]

Let me tell you a story of a girl.

When the girl was 14 years old, she had a boyfriend (a childish one!), a thin and tall boy who’s so all over himself and thinks he’s a big shot. Well, she didn’t expect anything from the boy to be honest. Unsurprisingly, the boyfriend had his fair share of his bullshit. 

There was an event in school, like a halloween party of some sort. The girl and her boyfriend decided to get ready with her boyfriend’s friends, the type of barkada that passes around their boyfriends and girlfriends, the barkada that throws their lives away without a care for anything. Anyway, they were in a big house and her boyfriend’s friends were all there, drinking (underage yes ofc), smoking cigs and pot, and all of the teenager toxic YOLO fun they thought they were having. 

But you know, all of this was new for the girl. The girl, a new student in this provincial school, who came from a no cellphone, no inappropriate things, sheltered and very religious school in the city. So when the barkada asked her to drink and smoke and do all of those things with them, she politely said no, thank you. 

Back then, she didn’t understand yet. That saying no to this barkada would spark different impressions on her. That saying no to them is like saying you don’t want to be with them. That saying no to them was the same as offending them. And this was a complete ick for the girl’s boyfriend.

So when she said no, thank you, the boyfriend proceeded to say that she’s boring and that he wished the girl was more adventurous. That she’s so hard to love because she’s not like the girls he dreamt about. That she should be thankful that the boyfriend stayed with her for so long, after not satisfying him enough. 

After this incident, her boyfriend became more hostile, more monstrous, more cruel towards her. He was pressuring the girl to kiss him (first kiss). Imagine, being in a big church, the boyfriend forcing the girl to let him touch her breasts. And when the girl confronted him, she said what are you doing? In church, really?. The boyfriend just gave a lame excuse about testing the girl whether she is a pimp who lets anyone who asks to fondle her breasts do whatever they want or if she is a good girl who reserves herself only for her boyfriend, whether he asks for consent or not, wherever and whenever. 

You know, what hurt the most for the girl was not how she was sexualized, objectified, or used by her boyfriend, but by how the boyfriend’s friends knew exactly what he was doing to her. What he was saying to her. And how these same friends were actually thinking about the same fucking things about her. 

When one of the friends of her boyfriend talked to her, he whispered to the girl and said maybe if you let yourself loose more, you can be a better girlfriend. Maybe if you let your boyfriend do whatever he wants, you can keep him. Maybe if you make yourself more beautiful, your boyfriend would love you better. Maybe if you are not so boring, I would have liked you for myself.  

So she decided to change herself. At first, for her boyfriend so he would stay. The girl hoped, really hoped, that if she changed into something he wanted, she would get the respect she demanded. That if she is someone who his friends liked as well, she would be seen as a person, and not as an object of a woman, of sex, and of a plaything. 

And you know what? She did change. She got more serious in her academics and she excelled. She navigated the different things a normal teenager would, with all the drinking and smoking and taking risks and sneaking out. She was better than that hypocrite barkada and she would be lying if she said she didn’t like what these changes made her feel. She felt wanted by a lot of people, not just her boyfriend. She felt like she belonged finally. 

She knew. She knew she could do better than her boyfriend, so she left him. She felt this new power over her (ex)boyfriend, who was begging her to stay, who was beginning to realize what he wasted. But after a while, it all felt superficial. 

Because she was still not respected, albeit she was more objectified and sexualized. Yes, she was wanted by a lot of people, but not for who she was. They all wanted this new girl, a new persona, who she built for herself, thinking it was the way to be seen and respected properly. 

At the time, it all came crashing down on her. It pushed her into a dark and deep place, again. Why is she doing this? Why is she changing herself to please other people? All of these thoughts but it came to a conclusion. 

Maybe, she’s the one at fault. Maybe her ex’s friend was right. 

She was (is) too boring, too dull. She is a handful, a difficult person to be with. She is hard to love. This was on her mind for god knows how long. Maybe too long for her to believe that this is her truth.

But she got better. She thought. She hoped. The girl basked in the changes she made, for what was changed cannot be undone. The girl tried her best to be okay. And it worked, for a time, that is too long because she believed she was okay. 

Now she’s a woman, sometimes a woman of nothing, sometimes a woman of something. But most of the time, just a woman who’s trying to survive the dreadful days and the cold nights. 

Now, she’s a woman who had forgotten. 

So when she heard those words again after all these years, this time from a person she completely trusts, from a person who taught her what love should feel like, from a person whom she believed to be her person, she did not know how to react aside from the fact that it sounded foreign but so fucking familiar at the same time. 

Because she had forgotten. She had buried it in her heart, in her mind, how awful and painful it feels to hear those words. She had sworn to never let herself be hurt from those words ever again. Because she is now a woman who’s too old for this, who’s too busy for this.

But alas, she is still the same girl, a little bit older, yes, but not wiser. So when her person said you’re so boring, it ringed in her ears. 

She knows her person did not mean it like that. They did not say it like how her silly old ex said it to her. The woman and her person were just walking down the street and her person cracked a joke but the woman did not laugh. So they just said that as a response, as a joke. But it still hurt, it sounded so wrong in her ears. 

She was quiet for the rest of the night. She was hurt by it, and she was trying to process the feeling again. Her person noticed this and they said sorry, looking so guilty. And the woman said it’s okay.

She knows it’s not her person’s fault. They do not know the girl’s past. And the girl never bothered to tell their person, because honestly, what’s the fucking point right? It’s something she should have let go. It’s something so fucking petty that she should not give a fuck anymore, right?

But, she is stupid for forgetting that she is indeed boring. That she is hard to love. That she is too much. And that this is her truth. 

So now, the woman is thinking about her 14 year old self. Blaming her younger self for having so many traumas. For letting people have rights to hurt her so much. 

Most of all, she feels fucking sorry at herself to the point that she is typing this to verbalize everything. She doesn't know what to do anymore. I do not know what to do. 

I’m sorry.

[harrison-abbott]

There was this other time in high school.

A weekday morning. It would’ve been about 9 a.m. and I had to head to maths class. And the corridors in our school were incredibly claustrophobic. Each time there was a movement of the pupils there was always a traffic jam in the hallways.

And on this particular morning it was worse than usual. On the way to the maths room there was a geography teacher – trying to order the kids about and disorder the clutter of them in an irritable, yelling manner. His name was Mike Creamer. I was right behind him. And a group of other kids, coming in the other direction, darted towards me. So I moved out of their way: and by accident I bumped into Mr Creamer’s shoulder.

He turned and glared at me. I was intimidated by the glare … and the whole corridor went silent.

“Which classroom are you going to?” he demanded of me.

I pointed to the maths corridor to the left. And then he said “Wait in there.” And told me to go inside. I didn’t really know what he was going to do. But I obeyed him and went inside the room. Again – everybody else in the maths class were chilly and quiet and nervous about what he would do. And Creamer stayed in the doorway and I was looking up at him – and he scowled at me with this deep disgust. And it scared me oblivious.

Then he demanded me to come out of the room. And he led me into a small side-corridor down the hall.

And from there he just blared and screamed at me for minutes. He was twice the size of me, a bit bald, with the remaining hair white, totally raging, ranging over me as if he wished to smack me. He used the words instead. “YOU JUST THINK YOU CAN WALK PAST EVERYBODY ELSE!” And so on, so forth.

Honestly. The above incident I described, where I knocked into his shoulder lightly. This was all that had happened. And I had no clue what it is that I’d done wrong or why I had misbehaved.

But when you are so young, you don’t have the verve to overpower adults when they are trying to do that to you. It was hard to maintain eye contact with him (as an autistic person, this is something I already find tricky) and yet I felt I had to, whilst he just hollered and shouted. All I could think of to do was say “I’m sorry.”

And he sent me back to the classroom, shivering.

Then I had to sit through an hour of mathematics, trying to do the sums with trembling fingers.

A few days later I saw him again. Mr Creamer. In the same hallway, actually. He recognised me from the last time; and his face just blackened with rage. As if he was still offended. He looked away and cut past me, fresh and wrathful.

And for a long time afterward I still didn’t understand why he would go to such an extend to berate a young boy like that. I had literally never met him before.

Now that I’m older, I realise it in different ways. I despised that high school. It was a gory, squalid place, a backward, sad, depressed building in a provincial town. It wasn’t even in the town: it was halfway down a raging motorway. Nobody wanted to be there.

I went there for five years and detested every second of it. My eldest brother, who is ten years older, attended there, too, and he said that Mr Creamer was there when he was a pupil. And I have a family-friend who is six years older than me. I told family-friend about this story once, and he said that he had a similar incident with Creamer as well. That he got harangued, too.

So, Mike Creamer had already been in this horrible place for over a decade. And he dealt with his anger by exploding at children. Basically?

Is it as simple as that? To go out of your way to pinpoint a boy and explode at him. I was 14. Couldn’t defend myself.

It’s very hard to forgive incidents like this. I think about this one quite a lot; or, have thought about it continuously since it happened, around sixteen years ago.

The great irony of the whole story is in relation to what another of my brothers had said to me. Before it happened. My big brother Louis, the second-eldest.

Louis used to say that, of all his favourite teachers, it was Mr Creamer. Because they were both fans of The Smiths, and they used to talk about how much they loved Morrisey. Louis remarked that he and Creamer were pally and liked to talk about music in between Geography lessons.

Would Creamer, therefore, have blared at me like that if he’d known that I was Louis’ little brother? Or, afterward, if he’d learned that fact, been ashamed about what he’d done?

I get that we’re not all ‘morning people’. (As for me – I tend to write most in the nocturnal hours, the a.m. period, when the world is most silent; but that’s not technically morning.) And that we can be in bad moods. We are tired and hate our jobs and don’t wish to be here, hate where our life has taken us.

But I don’t think there is anything excusable about what than man did to me that day.

To use your small role of power as a high school teacher to do that. That is not cool. That’s plain abusive, a loss of control, sadistic.

And, so, what is the conclusion? Well … I will never do a similar thing to a younger person. When we are in our teens we are at our most vulnerable. Social interaction is just excruciating. We can’t handle things like irate, bitter, spent, desperate, unhappy adults: we just don’t understand where the wrath comes from.

I couldn’t be mean to a kid, like that. That’s the positive angle to take from this tale.

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Okay fair enough, you may be being a bit rude about it but you have a point. I didn’t include the actual pitch when I made this PowerPoint because it was late at night and I was hungry and I wanted to avoid spoilers and it’s also a long and complex series so I didn’t think it was necessary for a shitpost adjacent propaganda PowerPoint. But I have also found it annoying when people just say what is featured in something instead of telling me what it’s about in the past so I will go ahead and give you the actual pitch.

Because the idea of this 14 book epic not having enough plot to talk about is so funny to me that I simply have to correct this misunderstanding.

The wheel of time is about how much it sucks to be the chosen one. It is an inversion of the high fantasy tropes that dominated post Tolkien literature: a wise powerful sorcerer comes to town and spirits the provincial country bumpkin along on a quest. The main character is foretold by prophecy to be the specialest boy in the world. Which is unfortunate for him because he would much rather stay Just Some Guy and herd his sheep.

Our central protagonist is simultaneously a christ metaphor and an antichrist metaphor with a little King Arthur and reincarnation thrown in for flavor. He is fated by prophecy to both save and destroy the world and to go mad and die horribly, and the entire series is the progression of several years towards The Last Battle, when the Dragon Reborn must face the Dark One. He is the reincarnation of a powerful man who was driven mad by the incident that cracked a hole in the Dark One’s prison and tainted the magical force that drives the universe (and turns the wheel of time) so that every male magic user goes insane and starts killing everyone around them, usually starting with their loved ones.

Society collapsed in the breaking of the world and now three thousand years later the Dragon Reborn must fight the Dark One and break and remake the world. As a result of the breaking, society is matriarchal, given that a man committed the cultural equivalent of Original Sin, and the most powerful group of people are the ancient order of female magic users called the Aes Sedai. One of the aes sedai finds our protagonists, a group of 20 something’s from a farming village, and pulls them into the plot, which is a massive geopolitical conflict spanning multiple continents across 14 books and 4 million words. Some of the driving themes are about how real events become history which becomes legend which becomes myth with information changing over time and space, and how older societies collapse into new societies, and uses a circular instead of linear view of time and the universe (hence. The wheel.)

Also it’s really funny and Robert Jordan had a BIT of a femdom kink.

Oh and the whole breaking of the world thing is a nuclear apocalypse metaphor because ya know. Written by a nuclear physicist.

wheel of time show should be HUGE on tumblr like. SO much blorbo potential + gay + cool magic + evil milfs + visually appealing. what more do you people want