#but it never caught my eye from the book reviews because it was too many names

[thekittyfox2999]

writing one book with incest in it: fine. it can be an interesting story and plot to work with, there are alot of psycological issues and horror elements you can play with when writing something like it as long as it is respectful

writing one book with incest in it and it's colleen hoover: what the fuck

writing more than one book with incest in it: it starts getting excessive. it starts to feel less interesting and you start to wonder if this is another "poorly hid authors fetish" in a book but. if the story is different (unless it's a sequal) and the elements are different enough ou can probably get away with it

writing more than one book with incest in it and it's colleen hoover: Colleen no-

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 70 – American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

I’m honestly not sure I ever would have gotten around to reading this on my own, but ended up buying it through the ‘blind date with a book’ thing a bookstore in New York was doing when I was visiting (incredible gimmick, for the record). The fact that it then took me a solid three months to actually finish probably tells you something about how genuinely difficult a read I found it. Not in the sense of being bad, but just legitimately difficult to stomach at points. Overall I’d call it a real triumph of literature.

Not that anyone doesn’t already know, but; the book is spent inside the head of Patrick Bateman, high-flying wall street trader and Harvard blueblood at the close of the Reagan era. Also a serial killer. The story is told as a series of more or less disconnected vignettes, jumping from dinner conversations at one exclusive bar or club or another to the brutal torture and murder of a sex worker to several pages of incredibly vapid pontification on Nina Simone’s discography. The story vaguely tracks Bateman growing ever-more alienated and out of control as the year goes on, but there’s very much not any real single narrative or cathartic climax here. - most stuff just happens (stuff that’s either incredibly tedious or utterly nauseating by turns but still just, stuff).

So yeah this is an intensely literary work (obviously), a word I’m here using to mean one that is as much about the form and style of the writing as about the actual events portrayed. Bateman is a monster, but more than that he’s just an utterly boring and tedious husk of a man, traits which are exaggerated to the point of being fascinating– if you told this story in conventional third person narration without all the weird asides, it would be a) like half as long and b) totally worthless. The tonal whiplash of going from an incredibly visceral depiction of Bateman cutting out the eyes of a homeless man to six (utterly insipid) pages on the merits of The Doors is the selling point here (well actually I think Ellis goes back to that specific well probably one time too many, but in general I mean).

Bateman is a tedious, unstable monster, but as far as the book has an obvious thesis it’s that he differs from the rest of his social milieu only in degree. A symptom of a fundamentally rotten society, not a heroic devil among sheep. The book’s climax, such as it is, involved Bateman getting into a drug-fueled gunfight with the NYPD, shooting multiple people in the middle of the street, and then stumbling home and leaving a rambling confession to every crime on his lawyer’s answering machine – but despite very clearly wanting and trying to get caught and face some sort of consequence or justice, people just refuse to believe that someone like him is capable of anything like that. (It’s not, it must be said, an especially subtle book).

There is, as far as I can recall, not a single character who gets enough screentime to give an idea of their personality who I’d call likeable. Sympathetic, sure, but that’s mostly because it’s pretty much impossible not to sympathize with someone getting horrifically tortured and torn apart (at one point a starving rat is involved). The upper crust of New York yuppie-dom is portrayed as shallow and vapid, casually bigoted towards quite literally everyone who isn’t identical to them, status-obsessed to the point of only being able to understand the world as a collection of markers of class and coolness, and totally incapable of real human connection. Bateman is a monster not because of any freak abnormality, but just because he takes all of that a few steps further than his coworkers.

The book is totally serious and straight-faced in its presentation, and absolutely never acknowledges any of the running gags that are kept up through it. Which shows impressive restraint, and also means that none of them exactly have a payoff or a punchline – it’s just a feature of the world that all the expensive meals at trendy restaurants everyone competes for tables at sound disgusting when you think about them for a moment, or that the whole class of wall street trader guy are so entirely interchangeable that ostensible close friends and coworkers constantly mistake each other for other traders and no one particularly cares. Or – and I’m taking this on faith because fuck knows I’ve got no idea what any of the brands people are wearing are – that the ruinously expensive outfits everyone spends so very much time and money on for every engagement all clash comically if you actually looked up what the different pieces looked like. The book’s in no way really a comedy, so the jokes sit a bit oddly, but they’re still overall pretty funny, at least to me.

I like to think I have something of a strong stomach for unpleasant material in books, but this was the first work of fiction that I had genuine trouble reading for content reasons in I can’t even remember. I’m not sure it’s exactly right to call the violence pornographic in a general sense, but as far as American Psycho goes the register and tone Bateman uses to describe fucking a woman and torturing her to death are basically identical (and told in similarly explicit detail), and all of Bateman’s sexual fantasies are more or less explicitly just porn scenes he wants to recreate, so. Regardless, the result’s pretty alienating in both cases – his internal monologue never really feels anything but detached and almost bored as he relays what he does, sound exactly as vapid and alienated as when he is carefully listing the exact brands and designers every person he ever interacts with is wearing at all times, or arguing over dinner reservations for hours on end with his friends and lovers (though both those terms probably deserve heavy airquotes around them). He legitimately sounds considerably more engaged when talking about arguing over sartorial etiquette. It all adds up to a really strong alienating effect.

Anyways, speaking of sex and violence – perhaps because my main exposure to the story before this was tumblr making memes out of scenes from the movie, but I was pretty shocked by just how explicitly awful Patrick is ‘on screen’. The horrible murder, sure, but also just the casual and frequent use of racist and homophobic slurs, the pathological misogyny, the total breakdown he has at the idea of a gay man being attracted to him and thinking he might reciprocate – all of these are entirely in character for an asshole Wall Street ‘80s Guy even if he wasn’t a serial killer, but it’s still oddly shocking at first to see it so thoroughly represented on the page. It makes how comparatively soft-pedaled the bigotry and just, awfulness, of villains in a lot of more modern books stand out a lot more, I suppose? I have read a lot of books that are in some sense About queerness and/or racism in the last year, and no one in any of them holds a candle to good old Patrick Bateman.

Part of that is just the book being so intensely of its time, I suppose. The New York of this book is very much one of the late ‘80s, incredible wealth living side by side with social rot and decay, crippling poverty everywhere and a society that has to a great degree just stopped caring. Absolutely none of which Bateman or any of his peers care one bit about, of course – they’re too busy showing off the latest walkmans and record players, going to the newest clubs, and just generally enjoying all the fruits of Reagan’s America. Recent history has made the fact that Bateman’s personal idol is Donald Trump almost too on the nose to be interesting, but in 1991 I’m sure it was a bit more subtle in how telling it was.

Anyway, yeah, horrifying and exhausting read, triumph of literature, my god did Easton Ellis hate America (this is a compliment). Now time to go watch the movie!

[exhelluvafan]

“Well, FUCK you, Stolas! You spring this ‘feelings’ bullshit onto me, are you kidding me right now?!” Like a bolt of lightning, the imp shot into the air, shattering the doors as it closed in on Stolas with a menacing growl. “Can I get a goddamn minute to think after everything you put me through, you pompous, rich, ASSHOLE?!” Stolas froze as Blitzø’s words reverberated in the empty room, his body stiffening. A year’s worth of pent-up rage erupted from Blitzø like molten magma as he paced frantically. "Treat me like one of your little BUTLER imps, you royals think you can manipulate us whenever you want. You toy with our emotions because you believe yourselves superior. And I'm sorry Your Highness, but I won't drop everything for you. That sexy cowboy was one thing, but I have a life beyond fucking you, EVERY MONTH. Do you think I owe you a rescue? Fuck no. This appointment is important. My father Cash was a royal fuck-up who only cared about himself. And I swore to be different. I adopted Loona five years ago, and she's my pride and joy. I've made mistakes, this is Hell after all, but I'm not your toy, I'm not your 'hero' and I'm certainly not going to fit into this sick fantasy you made, only a coward would hide away like that! Why dump this on me NOW?! Well, I'm not letting you, bitch...L̴̨̨̩̃͗̔͌͑E̴̢͍͈̩̳̋̓͒͘T̵͉͖͛'̴̡͚̞̐̃̆͝͝Ș̴̔̓͊͛̿ ̵̢̛̹͝G̵͕̲̋̓̈́̑O̴̧̺̫̞͗͑!̷͉̥͆" Blitzø landed behind Stolas with a thunderous roar, towering over him. His teeth were bared, wings flared, and red and black electricity crackled between his knuckles, a potent manifestation of his hatred for the pathetic demon. He waited for whatever came next. “Blitzø…” Stolas glanced over his shoulder, and Blitzø was met with an intensity of rage. But as quickly as it flared, it was gone, replaced by... wait, what? This motherfucker was crying.  "I thought so very highly of you," Stolas' voice cracked as tears welled up in his many eyes. His lip trembled. "I never imagined you could think so low of me... after everything I've done, everything I've given up for you." Despite the red-hot hostility coursing his veins, Blitzø grimaced as guilt began to bubble up in his gut. For a second too long, he thought about what he’d just said. “Stolas, I—“ He stopped himself, God, what was he on about?! The bird really did groom him. "So," he said, “You seriously think I'd ever think highly of you? After everything you put me through? What you forced me to do for the past year?!" Stolas remained motionless as a statue in the spacious room, bathed in the indigo light streaming through the stained-glass windows. “WELL?!” The imp’s voice cleaved the tense silence, sharp as a knife cutting through the fog. “Blitzø…” Stolas glanced at him, still with his “broken face”. The boss imp glowered at him. “Keep your shitty book, I’m done. Goodbye, Stolas.” Nonchalantly, Blitzø approached a nearby window. With a sharp blow from his gun, he shattered the glass. As he tumbled out, he flipped both middle fingers at Stolas, who glared back with eyes burning like hot coals. Ignoring his opponent's fury, Blitzø caught himself mid-air before gracefully descending to his van below. Sliding into the driver’s seat, Blitzø sat in stunned silence as he felt an immediate lightness in his chest. Tears welled up in his eyes, but he didn’t bother to wipe them away. He was free, the loss of the grimoire didn’t matter—this was what he truly needed. And God, was this the second happiest day of his life… the first, well, that’s another story.

Just a snippet from my Full Moon rewrite ^^! Feel free to comment, review, or ask questions! And yes, if you got the hint, Blitz knows some magic...

This rewrite is truly beautiful, this should've happened on the Full Moon episode, not the victim blaming and consequent gaslighting fest we got, both in Full Moon and Apology Tour.

Reading this was truly cathartic, thank you.

[t4le-4s-0ld-4s-t1m3]

So I'm on youtube, looking for reviews of Damsel because I loved it and wanted to find a comment section with like-minded people. Only I never ended up participating in any discussions. Oh there were a bunch a reviews, some of them positive. But I got distracted by the overwhelming amount of reviews made by middle-aged white men with horrible titles.

Now did I expect everyone to like it ? No, of course not, taste is subjective. Do I think the movie is perfect ? No, it's a B-movie if we're being honest, the plot is very basic and there is not a lot of depth, though I think there is more than meets the eye. It's a power fantasy movie, with all the suspension of disbelief and fun that entails. A turn your brain off, you leave feeling badass kind of movie.

All the same, the heartbreak and frustration I feel after clicking on a few of them, watching about a minute, and going through the comment sections is immeasurable. Because the commentary was always the same, "this is anti-white men" (media literacy is dead by the way, because how ? How was that a conclusion ?), "hollywood pushing the girlboss agenda", "worse movie ever", "why do all female protagonists have to be strong, why can't they be soft", "feminists and their anti-marriage propaganda". Guys, I don't know if it's just because I'm in my mid-twenties now, or because more men have become radicalised, or both. But I am so, so tired of this shit. So tired of feeling like some men want to put me in a very small box and keep me there because they feel entitled to it. And I'm by no means someone who doesn't largely fit in the mould to begin with. I'm a girly-girly with no desire to act like a man or fight like one. I appreciate book Sansa Stark so much for the symbol of soft power that she is, and I do agree that there should be more women like her in fiction. But that these men feel not only comfortable, but entitled to throw so many tantrums trying to shame and force me to never stray from the mould, and watch as they do the same to women who do not and should not have to fit into it, more and more grating. Why can't we have power fantasy movies ? Why does it make them so angry ? I've never seen their power fantasy movies get dunked on. Hell, we usely enjoy them alongside them. Why can't they do the same ? Why must everything targeted at us be something for them to ridicule ?

And do you know what the worse part is ? While watching the movie, I caught myself thinking "most of this isn't unrealistic for a fit woman with magical healing slugs, she only really survives because the dragon is sadistic and enjoys prolonging her suffering, surely the filmbros won't get too annoying". I already knew on some level what was going to happen, because it's what always happens isn't it ? I wast just too hopeful it seems.

[puckpocketed]

Autumn Hockey Diaries - Defencemen, Hockey Blinders, and the Hand of the Narrative: Brock Faber In 2 Minutes and 9 Seconds

[Foreword: This essay is not what I thought it would be. It's probably not what you think it will be either. I've cut down a lot of the content because it was approaching thesis length, and I've got a lot of uni-related writing to get through. Appendices of cut content and extra reading will be published some time down the road. Look for #puckmortems.]

Brock Faber is not on the agenda. Brock Faber is a gliding figure in the middle of my screen, on occasion. More often, he is a hunched over body on the blue line, or he’s directing traffic behind the net, or he’s a blurry smear of green-red-white on the outer edges of where the play is happening. Nonetheless, it's like he’s never off the ice. “how do i even begin to write about a rookie” I say into the void in a despondent blog post, not long after I reluctantly accept that the itch won’t leave until I do. This is deeply inconvenient. I’m already in the middle of researching for another piece, halfway through an ice hockey book which I picked up in an attempt to familiarise myself with forward cycling and forechecking systems. Ironically, I have the Flyers vs Wild game up to watch an entirely different 21-year-old defenceman. My eyes snag on Faber anyway. 

Let’s rewind a bit.

HOW DID I GET HERE?

Those following along already know this, but I’ve been meaning to write about the Anaheim Ducks. They caught my eye in December 2023, not long after I plunged heart-first into hockey — and then, of course, the Drysdale-Gauthier trade happened in January, and the idle research project I had going on kicked into high gear. I began to dig and dig and found narrative after narrative, and as I tried to sift through sensationalised click-farming and journalism, I felt the other narrative, capital ‘n’ Narrative, begin to close in. I was out of my depth; the rebuild was an abyss, Drysdale was inextricably linked to the media’s whipping boy, Trevor Zegras, and I was a little too fond of the Ducks to be any more lax with my research.

I wanted terribly to have clips and analysis on hand, real proof to throw in peoples’ faces when they made assumptions. There was too much to say, and too much tape to watch, and far too many books I needed to read in order to have the correct language and technical knowledge to do that kind of piece justice. I resigned myself to becoming one of those guys drawing over gameplay with a virtual marker one day. Afterwards, I picked up Take Your Eye Off the Puck: How to Watch Hockey by Knowing Where to Look by Greg Wyshynski. Unsolicited review: it’s got relevant information but all of that is sandwiched between unfunny Xennial sarcasm and Harry Potter references that are transparently desperate attempts at being accessible/relatable/fun — save your money unless you can hold your nose about all of the above. The man himself is possibly the worst thing you can be as a human being: annoying on Twitter. Any quoting from his book that I do is purely because, on occasion, he has anecdotes to share that can’t be found elsewhere.

So there I am, days out from the fallout of January 8th and rewatching Drysdale's first match.

WHO IS NUMBER 7? THE CALDER RACE, AND HOCKEY BLINDERS

But Brock Faber, number 7 a beacon on his back, surefooted and scanning the ice like a centre, is always just there. He’s skating every other shift, he’s on the penalty kill, or controlling the gap on a Flyer forward, he’s somehow also anchoring the power play — and really who is this guy? His name sounds familiar. The usual skim of articles turns up hype and speculation, opinion pieces written after Connor Bedard was confirmed to be out for 6 weeks with a broken jaw. They float Faber as a possible Calder contender, should Bedard somehow fail to catch up after his recovery.

And that’s where I’ve heard Faber’s name. He’s part of the class of poor bastards who have to share their debut season with Bedard, the fourth-coming of Gretzky — similar to Bedard’s draft year, yet infinitely worse because it’s the goddamn NHL and being in a different draft class doesn’t do you any good if you’ve got to share actual ice with him. All are afterthoughts, are footnotes in Bedard’s wake. When you speak of the rookies of the 2023-24 season the spectre of the Next Next Next One looms, and you can’t help but let slip the pity you nurse for those who would be the sweethearts of national media coverage, the new wave, if not for that monstrous boy and his, at the time, 33 points in 39 games.

There’s a border here. I step around it tenderly — helped along by a heavy dose of cognitive dissonance — when watching ice hockey, it isn’t to be crossed. I call them my ‘ice hockey horse blinders’, hockey blinders for short. They’re required safety equipment at this point, mandatory so that my sanity stays intact against everything ice hockey can be (aside from the best sport in the world): the retributive justice, the implications behind calling a player ‘soft’ for daring to protect themselves in a scrum; the insular masculist locker room culture which, in the end, is built upon rituals and language that degrades women and positions queerness as lesser-than.

One must also avoid thinking too hard about the way players are bandied about and dealt with like livestock, the way that they’re workers who sell their labour, too, and how they only really get to self-advocate when the collective bargaining agreement rolls around; how even then they’re hampered by all these unspoken traditions, arbitrary codes. Breathe and forget for a moment, for at least sixty glorious minutes of skating and violence, that for any athlete — for any prodigy — to exist and thrive, a child’s life was appropriated, taken in hand and moulded to fit a pipeline of production, because sports is a business the exact same way music and movies are.

The more I learn about Brock Faber, the harder it is to keep the hockey blinders from slipping off.

 “Brock Faber shouldn’t be possible,” is what people write about him in one form or another. They marvel at his strength, his size, his resilience; release article after article about how another rookie d-man would likely buckle under the weight of the work, how none of this was ever expected from someone so young and untested. Yet, the longer I sit with it the more unsettled I am. I watch his time on ice tick up and up with each game, hear on broadcast and read online that he’s on track to break the record for rookie average TOI. As of writing, he’s got 430 minutes on his next teammate for total time on ice. The only players on the Wild ahead of him are their goalies. The longer I put off finishing this essay (months now, from the time I first committed words to document) the wider this gap will grow. They say no one ever expected this from him, but an insidious thought creeps in: hasn’t the Narrative demanded this all along?

TIME, HAUNTING, AND MINNESOTA

Turns out I wasn’t wrong about Faber’s presence on the ice. The Wild have him skating minutes that usually go to veterans. He skates for 28:49 in the Philly match. Between the 10th of December and the 6th of January, Faber played 13 games. In 10 of them, he spent over 24 minutes skating. In half of those games, he logged over 30 minutes of ice time.

(NHL.com, highlights mine)

These are playoffs numbers, and they don’t just call it “playoffs hockey” because of the physicality. Exhaustion and injury go hand in hand, and playoffs hockey claims it’s tributes every year — rarely is it that this pace is sustainable, evidenced by how no teams make it through playoffs completely healthy. Top d-men are capable of it, yes, but it’s best avoided. When it happens, it’s an aberration. Poor management of ice time can result in sloppy play due to exhaustion. For the player who is exhausted, who fears exhaustion at critical junctures, they may choose to limit themselves, to compromise on plays to preserve their energy. More salient: every surplus minute extends the timeframe for possible injury, and every additional responsibility piled on top of that opens the door to potential burnout. So why do that to a rookie? What would compel any coach to do this, considering the risks?

Is Faber that good?

The question warrants another step backwards. Trouble is, this is where the tape begins to skip, a reverb-stutter-reverse that’s impossible to ignore. How far back to go? Does it start with the injuries that gutted the Wild’s d-core, shifting Faber into the limelight for sheer lack of options? Maybe further? Maybe it began in the mere hours between when Faber lost a devastating final match with his college team and signing with the Wild to play his very first NHL games — the third of which was the fucking Stanley Cup playoffs. 

Or perhaps it kicked off with the Wild buying out the Parise and Suter contracts in an effort to purge the team’s culture and start afresh? This was Wild management signalling that they’d take the salary cap penalty for now, but they were banking on a significant cap rise in the coming years. The subsequent “devastation” when Gary Bettman announced that the salary cap would only be going up by 1 million the following season — guaranteeing the Wild’s next few years would be lean ones — is what led to Faber being traded from the LA Kings for the Wild’s Kevin Fiala, after all.

But maybe linearity isn’t the play. The Narrative cannot be temporally bound, so why should this essay? The weft and warp of the Narrative sprawls out in four dimensions: the present weaves itself into the past; futures that never were dig their way down into the seams of time to rip into the present; and history is a concertina of repetitions and echoes, the same threads again and again.

Time and history are a deep well, I hover and put my ear to the dark, and Minnesota is the sound that echoes down. Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota.

Minnesota, the State of Hockey — and Brock Faber is a Minnesota boy. The Gophers, his college team, are a Minnesota team. He grows up going to Minnesota Wild games. And, because no kid gets to play for the team they grew up watching, he gets drafted 45th overall by the LA Kings. That’s the business; when you play hockey you are at the mercy of the draft lottery and the end-of-season standings. 

(@ mnwild via Twitter/X)

Only, this is the Narrative we’re talking about. The moment someone says ‘unlikely’ or ‘never’, it emerges and reasserts itself: sometimes things can be right out of a movie script. In Faber’s case, a dream. He talks openly about just how happy and grateful he is to be there. A real hometown hero — the title conferred upon him by media and fans and the ever-present Narrative. Faber doesn’t get to escape it just because the chances are slim, just because all the other Minnesota boys were scattered at the draft.

The Minnesota Wild as a franchise is held within its grip, too.

What do you call a Cup drought when it’s never rained in the first place? Meet the Wild, a middling American expansion team that’s not quite young enough to excuse their limping performance anymore, not quite old enough to have a sterling legacy to fall back upon. “Advancement seems there for the taking. It’s the least they could do after teasing this forsaken market April after unfulfilling April,” writes Brian Murphy; an embittered rally against the Wild’s historic floundering, even as he gushes about Faber’s first few games. Playoffs made in 13 out of 23 seasons aren't awful odds…until you read a little further to find out they’ve never come within sniffing distance of the finals. They are, it seems, perpetually on the cusp of — something. I couldn’t tell you what. Destruction? Greatness? Glory, even?

(via sergeifyodorov)

Just over 5 years ago, the front office asked for continued support in an open letter to fans. There would be a little patience required, but not too much — not when glory was just around the corner. The letter does not mention the vortex of rumours surrounding the locker room, the two veteran contracts they had to excise. They wouldn’t be rebuilding, of course, no need to panic and no need for a teardown — they had the pieces in line and were ready for a real effort, a deep run at the playoffs and a Cup, and “nothing less.”

Funny, a little over 5 years before that there was yet another letter asking for yet another small stretch of patience, right after acquiring two very familiar contracts. Parise and Suter, for those unaware, were brought in as two experienced players who would push the Wild over the line from “perennial playoff team” to Cup winners. Big name free agents, with lots of clout to go with them — and of course they chose Minnesota, says owner Craig Leipold, citing their “strong ties to the area.” Glory was, once again, just around the corner — what could go wrong?

And this time there’s been no letter but now they have Brock Faber, so bright and talented and so willing to just keep going, taking what he’s served, assignment after assignment. They have Kirill Kaprizov, a true superstar, ‘The Guy’, the kind who plants a flag and becomes the franchise. They’ve got Marco Rossi, yet another of their rookies who has made an incredible, unexpected splash — NHL-ready against the odds. The final season of the Parise-Suter buyouts will come in the next two years, and with it will arrive the much-needed relief of league-wide cap increases.And now, we see, the Narrative keeps the wheel spinning, keeps the story going in that reverb-stutter-reverse — and glory is just around the corner.

DEFENCEMEN AND THE SIZE ISSUE

Let’s talk about what it means to be a top pairing defenceman in the modern NHL. The Minnesota Wild’s d-core is fried from season-derailing (and in Jared Spurgeon’s case, ending) injury, yes. But normally, filling in wouldn’t fall to a defenceman in his rookie year. Where another team might’ve spread the responsibilities, Faber is given the lion’s share of downed d-men Brodin and Spurgeon’s duties. He's the power play quarterback, a given presence on the penalty kill; he’s out on the ice during OT; at times sent out as a catch-all shutdown defenceman versus the league’s best forwards (I watch him try to keep up with McDavid reviewing an earlier match against the Oilers and I think, with my heart in my mouth: you are so fucking young). It’s more than just a lack of options. To answer my own question: Faber might actually be that good.

I’m talking around it, but the Norris Trophy isn’t handed out to defencemen who can’t rack up points. And on the whole, defencemen who aren’t geared toward offence don’t score. The debate comes around every season now, I assume, to just make a new award for the best defensive-defenceman — this is entirely down to how the responsibilities and expectations of d-men are undergoing rapid evolution in the shadow of elite skaters and puck movers like Cale Makar and Erik Karlsson. The age of pure stay-at-home defencemen — those that play shutdown to the exclusion of all else — is seemingly winding down, has been for a while. “Offensive-defenceman” is no cute rejoinder for d-men who happen to have a little offensive upside. From Bobby Orr until now, it’s become synonymous with a set of traits that define the league’s best blueliners. Skating prowess is part of it, being able to carry and protect the puck is part of it, but the best of the best are able to seamlessly transition from defence to offence, joining the rush from the d-zone after a turnover, to become lethal in the slot.

Where Brock Faber lands on all these metrics begins with who he was before he arrived in the NHL. He makes a strange case amongst all the rookie defencemen I’ve had the chance to research, a mixing pot of what’s usually found desirable in a prospect — and a few quirks that separate him from the pack. I was shocked when I found out Faber played an exclusively defensive role for the Gophers right up until he signed with the Wild — and before then had spent no time on the power play. “I just hated getting scored on by these kids in college,” says Faber in his interview on the Wild’s official team podcast [43:31]. He goes on to tell the hosts; it actually feels easier to play in the NHL at times, because his teammates know where they’re supposed to be, and if he pushes up on an opportunity he can trust someone else to drop back and fill that gap — he is certain that this has smoothed the bumps in his offensive leap forward. And how has he done? Incredibly, by all accounts. Of the many scouting videos, podcasts, and articles I’ve perused, this trajectory is… rare. At least, for top defenceman prospects. He’s got it all backwards, see; as opposed to the archetype of the puck-moving, dynamic attacker who has leaks in their defensive game (presumably, something that must be worked on as they come into their own in the NHL), he came in a defensive powerhouse, a shutdown-d, and had to learn to let go of the blue line and attack. It took two months for the Wild to ease him into taking on Spurgeon’s role as PP1 quarterback, but since then he’s been a standout player.

Past the power play, Faber’s point and goal production has skyrocketed in comparison to his pre-NHL career — seemingly out of nowhere. He’s got the skating and the stick handling ability to do it, and now it seems he’s begun to hone that killer instinct. Coach Evason, before his dismissal, let out a critique of a then-struggling Wild: "Brock Faber can't be our best player every night.” On a streaky, at times unstoppable, at times paper-thin Wild defence, Faber was a boon.

One very obvious way Faber has adhered to the specifications laid out by scouts is his height and weight. It’s said that defencemen take a little longer than forwards to start showing up in the NHL from the time they’re drafted. It’s the body-size issue, according to some. The d-men who make the cut are older, bigger. The myth goes: while rookie forwards might get away with being 5 '9’’ and underweight on account of agility and hockey sense (and more than a little help from coaches who send them out while the puck is in the o-zone), when you’re a blueliner, and hence the only thing standing between Auston Matthews’ finisher, Nathan MacKinnon's rush, and a clear shot on your goalie and the back of the net, you can’t afford to be small. 

We’re living in a post-Statistical Analysis Revolution hockey world, though, so we know a little better about size. An alternative explanation to the size myth is something I’ve only ever heard of in oblique references — specific to d-men, coaches call it the “200 game” threshold for development. Further inquiry, (including appropriation of university catalogue access and trawling JSTOR), has turned up little helpful literature on the origins of this belief, aside from a stub of an article that called the cutoff “artificial”, taking note that prospects who failed to perform to standards by the 200-game mark were written off as doomed AHL ‘tweeners. I did, however, find a very interesting statistical analysis write-up by the folks over at Dobber Hockey.

Undersized forwards don’t float through on skill and quickness alone; one of the biggest predictors for success is, according to Dobber and Mat Porter, falling within the league average for size and weight. The theory here has been dubbed BT, short for “breakout threshold”, and represents the number of games taken for any given player to become competent and start producing consistently in the NHL. That number, for the average player? 200 games. And contrary to stereotypes, undersized defencemen and forwards struggle.  Furthermore, a stat that defies intuition arises when examining those on the taller end. Data doesn’t lie: “Bigger defencemen and exceptionally-sized forwards need 400 NHL regular season games.” Porter posits that growth spurts can be a detriment to young players just entering the NHL; the jump in body mass causing a mismatch in their expectations of their bodies, a “simple physics” problem, necessitating a slight buffering period as they readjust their physical and spatial awareness around the changes.

The belief remains, however, that larger is better. I’m understating just how much it pervades hockey discourses. It’s present in scouting reports and has had measurable impacts on drafting; I hear it on hockey podcasts; it’s thrown out casually during interviews by coaches and fellow players; it's the first thing you'll hear from a caster who isn't familiar with a player's game. I can’t read or listen to anything about Faber without stumbling across it — the preoccupation with size.

The language used to praise Faber and players like him has my stomach twisting in a discomfort that I find hard to quantify — players, coaches, and the media all talk about him, and the hockey blinders slip. He’s a “workhorse”, a “stud”, he’s got “a man’s body” — and call it projecting, call it reading too deeply into innocuous statements, but the closest thing I can compare it to is hearing my AFAB body spoken about as an object whose value can be reduced to its function, its usefulness, its closeness to sexual maturity.

Elite athleticism is produced when you derail a child’s life and set them on the path, just the same as all the other entertainment industries — think: the k-pop idol machine, pageants, child actors and models who then become adult celebrities, and, of course, the emerging phenomenon of the child influencer. For men’s sports, there’s something extra on top of the commodification of children’s bodies — it’s the vernacular of near-fetishistic worship; of the masculine, the oxymoronic youthful-but-mature, the virile.

I’ll be very clear here: I’m not reading anything malicious from specific people, I’m not accusing anyone of crimes, and in no way am I implying that ice hockey is unique here. Just the opposite, in fact. I know professional sports hinges upon producing stars, that the commodification of young bodies is endemic to the business. Those stars are, stripped down to the basest definition, workers who perform with their bodies and sell their labour, whose bodies will inevitably be coveted and revered for their adherence to the Platonic ideal of their respective crafts. MYTHMAKING: THE SHIFT

“Brock Faber’s play in overtime of the Minnesota Wild’s Dec. 14 victory over Calgary almost certainly has been long forgotten,” says Judd Zulgad in yet another article covering the miracle of Faber’s rookie season. Zulgad is wrong. This overtime play has been repeated, over and over again, a new myth constructed around Faber before our eyes. “He’s completely exhausted, but not only [gave] a second effort, he’s got the wherewithal to bump the puck back so we can gain possession and get a line change,” says Wild coach John Hynes — this particular quote is a favourite for the beat writers who mill out post-game fluff pieces.

The overtime starts like any other: face-off at centre ice, 3-on-3. The broadcast takes note that Brock Faber is starting, that he’s developed offensively in his rookie season. Things fall apart not long after.

Overtime line changes are tricky business. The margins for error are razor thin with 3-on-3; a sloppy line change during OT is a free odd-man rush for the opposing team. Almost guaranteed instant annihilation, and a pretty rude thing to put your goalie through to boot. You must, must clear the puck from your zone before changing over. This is how Brock Faber ends up on the ice; trapped with the puck in the Wild’s d-zone for 2 minutes and 9 seconds. 

Time trickles on as he engages in a scrap along the boards. The broadcast takes note of just how long he’s been on the ice around the time that I do, and then he stumbles. And what you’ve got to understand about Brock Faber is that the comments about his poise aren’t for nothing: Faber doesn’t fall, he doesn’t lose his edges. His skating, his balance, his ability to leverage his reach — is elite.

He takes a knee after the play moves away, slow to get up. The casters say what we’re all thinking as he skates back to the safety of the bench: “he’s running on fumes.” How can anyone watch this and feel anything other than sorry? He is barely there. He is carved down to the marrow, and all that made him wonderful to witness — his beautiful skating, his steadiness, his mastery of the craft — is cut away by exhaustion. Watching him tip over, watching his desperate last-second handling of the puck — it feels less heroic every time. I replay the overtime again and again to write this section and I ache. I am with him out there, losing my feet and my breath just the same.

When he makes it back to the bench, finally, there is no relief. The cameras voyeuristically linger on his pale, worn face, his eyes sweat-stung, as he slams his stick against the boards, each hit shuddering through his body. I want to take it from his hands. I want to wipe his brow and tell him he can rest, rest, rest. Later, giving an interview, instead of taking up the accolades he’s recounting how his turnover led to that endless overtime stretch. He is, of course, not wrong. But he’s not seeing the larger picture.

Consider: this is the kid who grew up watching the Minnesota Wild fail year after year, who likely held a secret hope that they’d draft him when it was his day — this Minnesota boy and his home-grown, Minnesota heart. He never once thought of himself as separate from Minnesota, because this is home, this is where his hockey dream was born; and this is where it must, to him, be fulfilled — of course he’d take on everything they ever asked, swallow down his duties and only ever be grateful.

There is no other way this could’ve gone.

THE HAND OF THE NARRATIVE

I'm trying to love ice hockey with my eyes open. If you haven't figured it out by now, my writing is rarely just about players or hockey concepts. It's about me - these posts are essentially a diary I've chosen to publish. Recently, I had a lecturer read this essay. She commented that it read like someone trying to come to terms with loving hockey. She was right.

"It would be just like the Minnesota Wild to carry on with their perennial early playoffs exits." That's how this paragraph started, when I was first drafting this piece. I'll be transparent; I believe in the potential of this team, and I want them to make an honest effort to win the Cup - but I need it to happen some other time. Armchair GM/coach moment: they aren't ready. They didn't feel ready to me, with their captain out and a rookie d-man holding their blue line together, and injury after injury piling on as the season entered its last weeks. I saw them pushing for another run at the Cup, saw their continued use of Faber in all situations, and thought, ah - see you in another five years. Wanting it simply isn't enough. And Brock Faber, as good as he is, cannot sustain this team on myth. No one person can.

I started this essay terrified Faber would get injured from over-use and play through it for the sake of the postseason, like so many players do; or that he would hit the infamous 'rookie wall' and flame out in his development (in the back of my mind, the question is still there). A few days ago, the Minnesota Wild were mathematically eliminated from playoffs contention. I breathed a little easier. I liked this team too fucking much to see them suffer. I wrote this essay with a kind of despair over Wild management and their preoccupation with Win-Now at the cost of the future. I wondered if Kirill Kaprizov's prime would run its course with the Wild barely scratching the surface of a playoffs run year after year. I wondered at times if the hand of the Narrative would intervene and make it so. The Minnesota Wild are haunted like that.

There are pages worth of writing to add to this essay that I've cut for brevity, and for the sake of telling Brock Faber's story in a way where it wouldn't be obscured by it.

I considered talking about my athlete friends. I spoke to them, informal interviews, we talked about the kind of mentality instilled in children who dream of going pro. You never say 'no'. You love your sport, you let it turn you inside out, you would do anything to keep going. Most of all, you think I'm still young. I can play through this pain. And once you aren't young anymore, you think I'm not young anymore. I'm running out of time. I have to play through this pain. And when your best years are behind you, your ideas about your body and your health are so twisted that you will grind the cartilage in your knees away to make the jump, you will play yourself into irreparable nerve damage just to be remembered, just to have the chance to touch greatness.

This is the truncated version. This is what I fear most when I think of the crushing weight of the Narrative upon someone like Brock Faber. He's hardly the first young athlete to be put in this position, he won't be the last. This essay is about him in the loosest sense that I'm covering the beats of his career and his team. It's not about him at all in the sense that it's about me and my crisis of faith.

To break character: I've been talking about the Narrative with a capital 'n', as though it is an entity with a will of its own. Sometimes it feels that way. It's not, and it doesn't, and it feels that way because we care so much. The hand of the Narrative is just how I rationalise the coincidences, the eerie parallels, the compelling threads of story that exist in sports.

I've wrestled with how to conclude this piece for months now. Since I started writing, I've taken up sports photography, produced poems and essays and assignments about hockey, and I've started ice skating - and in the process I've fallen in love with my dilapidated local rink. I'm now covering the AIHL, which zero people on this website care about. A lot has changed. I still don't know how to finish this, so here are some closing thoughts:

The hand of the Narrative is as real as we make it.

My leftist ennui about professional sports under capitalism could probably be explored on another platform - in a different essay that won't be hosted here.

That thesis I'm never writing about haunting, hauntology, and hockey is probably a symptom of some greater preoccupation. (There's an unfinished manifesto sitting in my drafts.)

If you're a Wild fan reading this - sorry for the editorialising about the Minnesota Wild. I'm quiet about it, but I do love this team and I want to see them be the best version of themselves.

Brock Faber deserves the Calder. He deserved it when I first started this piece, when maybe five people were talking about it, and he deserves it now.

Despite the turmoil of the season, the disappointments, the setbacks - I am still so excited to watch this team and write about them.

I think I'm going to love hockey for a long time.

[ottopilot-wrote-this]

Coven, Part II

Coven is a work of erotic fiction, intended for adults 18+, written by Ottopilot. Images were AI-generated by Ottopilot using Stable Diffusion 1.5. Content warnings: sexual content, mature language, mind control, corruption, occult, sadism

Previously: Part I, This is: Part II, Continued in: Part III, Part IV, Part V

Lily tossed her messenger bag on the sturdy but well-worn pine table, followed by her drip Clockwork Coffee, black, and had a seat. She pulled out her laptop and opened the clamshell.

Taking the coffee to her lips, Lily closed her eyes and took small, careful sips. Still too hot to take a big chug, she needed that strong acidic bite and intoxicating aroma to get the cobwebs out. Clockwork wasn't for everyone — too corporate for some, not foodie enough for others — but Lily appreciated its consistency. The trademark dark roast offered a dependably predictable experience in a world that was anything but.

The senior journalism student took a deep breath, drawing the earthy smells of coffee and university library into her nostrils, and began by reviewing her notes from Sarah's debriefing.

"I took Dr. Bishop's class on polytheism and paganism my senior year, and she wrote my recommendation letter for grad school. She's my faculty advisor, and we've become very close friends."

Starting with Dr. Helen Bishop's university bio, nothing pegged her as Future Evil Sorceress, Lily thought, chewing on her pen. B.A. Stanford, M.A. Harvard, PhD Brown. Tenured faculty at Blackthorn College, vis a vis Dartmouth, Wesleyan, and Amherst. Expert in polytheism and witchcraft. Author of two books: The Many Faces of the Divine: Polytheism in a Monotheistic World and The Arcane and the Divine: Magic, Ritual, and Worship in Antiquity. Her headshot, a black-and-white photo of a middle-aged Southeast Asian woman with short hair and a friendly smile, was pleasant and benign.

Lily frowned, peering at the search engine results. Amazon.com link to her books. Link to a piece in Anthropology Quarterly. Glowing student reviews of her classes. Notices of past speaking engagements. A neglected Instagram account with photos of her travels and food. Her LinkedIn profile.

With a frustrated sigh, Lily removed her reading glasses and rubbed her temples. There's either something I'm missing, Lily thought, or Sarah's out of her freaking skull.

"Through word of mouth, we formed an unofficial witchcraft interest group. We performed positive spells for personal growth or things we wanted. For example, the professor regretted never having children, so we cast fertility spells for her." "Did they cast spells for things you wanted too?"

The door to the apartment closed as Jamie headed off to class, and Sarah Rodgers was alone. He seemed like a good guy, she thought, making it harder for her to despise him out of pure jealousy.

Lily had practically sprinted out the door this morning, while Sarah pretended to still be asleep on the couch. It was clear Lil was trying to avoid her. She was doing Sarah a favor, a huge one, but that didn't make it hurt any less.

It felt strange to wear Lily's clothes, especially the sweatshirt. This goddamn aquamarine, threadbare sweatshirt.

Sarah didn't think it was intentional. Lil could come off cold and impersonal, but she wasn't insensitive. No, Sarah thought, just because she had strong memories of this sweatshirt doesn't mean Lily gave it a second thought.

Sarah took the sweatshirt in both hands, bringing it up to her face, and inhaled deeply. It wasn't exactly the same. She guessed Lily switched detergents. But it still smelled like her, sweet like a summer peach.

She loved to wear it, Sarah reminisced. Anytime she caught a chill, she put it on, unzipped, over her clothes. The bright hue clashed with Sarah's goth-influenced, monochrome tastes. But Lily loved it.

And Sarah loved Lil. So she came to love it too.

Spring of her freshman year, Lily ordered some sexy lingerie online as a surprise. But Sarah was late, stopping to pick up Szechuan on the way back from class, and Lily got a little cold. When Sarah arrived, there was Lily, an absolute knockout in sheer and lace…and glasses, and that goofy sweatshirt.

They both had a good laugh, and they stayed in all night, making love and eating out of take-out boxes in bed. Sarah truly loved being dominated by Lily. She craved submitting to her, had trusted her with her safety. Even after Lily had marked her flesh, after Lily's fingers closed around her delicate neck, she would have let her do it again.

Sarah remembered Lily before she became guarded and closed-off, when she didn't take herself so seriously. They were so happy then. As she sat alone, wiping away tears with the sleeves of Lily's favorite sweatshirt, she wasn't sure she had been happy since.

If you thought magic could heal your broken heart, was it so illogical to try it?

"When Helen came back to school this fall, something had changed. She had changed."

Lily felt a chill. This damn library was always so drafty. You think with the cost of tuition, they could turn the heat up a bit. Guess it's bad for the centuries-old books.

She pondered this sentence. Assuming Sarah hadn't lost her mind, what happened to Dr. Bishop last summer that made her go off the rails?

Lily leaned back in the chair. Besides wanting to get out of the apartment, Lily liked to work in the library because of these firm, unrelenting chairs. It was harder to fall asleep if the chairs weren't comfortable.

She looked at her notes. Looked at the browser. Cycled through the open tabs. Amazon. LinkedIn. Instagram.

Wait.

Turns out the good doctor was fairly active on the Gram for a while. A photo with a graduating student. A batch of cookies she baked. Striking Italian architecture. A pasta dinner and a generous glass of wine. Tuscan vineyards. A necklace bought at a shop. That was the last photo, 4 months ago.

Lily looked at the necklace. An odd thing, made of iron, triangles overlapping with horns, inset with rubies. Not particularly pretty, though definitely old looking. A strange thing to turn up in a tourist-trap Italian antique shop.

Excited at the prospect of a lead, Lily selected an area around the necklace's charm and conducted a reverse image search. Lily was initially discouraged as very few results were returned - until one of them stood out from the others.

"Hell yes," Lily said to herself, leaping out of her chair. She hurried to a computer, looking for the library's copy of "The Arcane and the Divine: Magic, Ritual, and Worship in Antiquity" by Dr. Helen Bishop.

With the enthusiasm of a bloodhound on the trail of murderer, Lily scoured the aisles of books until she found it. Quickly she scanned the index, and found the entry about the demon Asmodeus.

Lily read the passage aloud to herself:

"In Abrahamic religions, Asmodeus is a demonic king associated with lust and revenge. He wielded a weapon, the Ruby Rod of Asmodeus. It is believed that, in tribute, worshippers of Asmodeus circa 100 A.D. created an amulet called the Eye of Asmodeus. Constructed of iron, the Eye of Asmodeus contains a large ruby surrounded by both a triangle and inverted triangle, forming a pentagon. The Eye also has bull horns on both sides. "The ruby in the Eye of Asmodeus is rumored to have been created by submerging the ruby in the spilled blood of innocents. It is suspected to give the wearer the ability to influence and control minds, at the cost of eroding sanity and morality of the user."

"Well, that sounds bad," Lily said.

"She was leading us down a dark path, but we were so seduced by the power we willingly followed."

Watching morning game shows, Sarah tried to think back on how she got here. She thought of the metaphor of a lobster being boiled alive, the temperature slowly rising while the clueless lobster succumbs to its fate. The corruption of the coven was innocuous, comforting and soothing until she realized it was almost a full boil.

When Helen came back to school, she had so many new spells and techniques to show them. They all saw the immediate results, and were drawn to the power Helen yielded. She made them feel special and chosen and worthy of this forbidden knowledge.

The spells began small, with unforeseen consequences. Amy wasn't feeling well, so Helen taught them how to alleviate her nausea. Michiko had a disgreement with a neighbor in her dorm, and Helen taught them to make the girl see the error of her ways. It wasn't initially clear Amy got better by stealing energy from healthy students, or that the neighbor was mentally manipulated. The group identity of the coven eroded the morality of its members, making them rationalize the means to justify the ends.

Sarah started to wonder if she and Laura had overreacted. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. There might be punishment, but the coven would take them back, Sarah thought. And now, Sarah was reconnected with Lily. Lily had a curious mind and a thirst for knowledge. They could learn about the mysteries together… maybe, this could be a rebuilding point.

"Samhain, after dark tomorrow, is when the barrier between the physical and spiritual world is weakest. That's the origin of Halloween. But what if I told you it was real?"

Lily did not have "ask the school librarian about cursed grimoires in their collection" on her bingo card, but here she was.

A yawn escaped Lily's mouth as she looked over the musty tome. She wasn't even sure what she was looking for. Three years of high school Spanish was only marginally helpful for translating Latin. She was basically looking at pictures like a toddler reading the encyclopedia, trying to follow along.

"This has potential," she murmured, as she looked at a drawing of a person, laying on their back in the middle of a pentagram. "Samhain… luna… corpus… Ah, fuck this."

Lily pulled out her phone, opening up Google Translate. There's no way it can read this handwriting, she surmised, so she furiously typed the words into the text box.

Samhain cum plena luna occurrit, corpus daemonibus deditur; anima daemonium regis coronatur.

"Okay, Translate," Lily said, hitting the purple button on her phone. Within seconds, she read the resulting message.

At Samhain, when the full moon occurs, the body is given to the demons; the soul of the demon king is crowned.

"Oh shit," Lily exclaimed. Sarah was right, and in grave danger.

"One of the junior witches, a literature major named Laura Valencia, took me aside. She said she overheard Helen planning a ritual with another witch, and that she mentioned a sacrifice."

The Price is Right had ended, with a college student jumping up and down, hugging Drew Carey, before transitioning to the mid-day news. The anchor, a handsome well-coiffed man, spoke with a booming baritone.

"More reporting on our lead story from this morning: a fatal bus crash on Interstate 495 has traffic snarled up for miles around. It appears the culprit was poor visibility, as the driver lost control during last night's surprise storm.

"The driver and all passengers onboard were killed in this tragedy. The bus was a Greyhound bus destined for St. Louis."

Sarah covered her mouth in shock. No. No no no no no.

Laura's bus. Sarah put her on that bus to get her away from here last night, before going to Lily's.

She wasn't being paranoid. She was in danger too.

"Without Laura and I, there are only 11 witches in the coven. Samhain - Halloween - is tomorrow night. I don't think the ritual can take place without us, and I don't know what will happen when it doesn't."

In a panicked frenzy, Sarah tossed blankets and couch cushions, looking for her phone. She had to call Lil, to get out of here, before they found her. Where the fuck did she put it?

She heard her ringtone, from the bathroom. Of course, she needed to charge it last night. She started towards the bathroom to retrieve it, when a voice stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Hello, Sarah."

[bookwormscififan]

I (Don't) Wanna Be Free

Read on AO3!

A/N: Was there ever a time before we met him that Yancy wanted to be free? Mayhaps it involved a certain murder man?

--

Dear Y/N,

Have I ever told youse why I didn’t want to be free?

Not the musical, not the song and dance, not the dumb things I said to youse when we first met.

Did I ever tell youse the real reason I didn’t want to be free?

Well, it all started when I first got a new cellmate…

“Hey, Ohio! You’ve got a cellmate,” Murder-Slaughter called, opening the door to Yancy’s cell and ushering someone inside. The prisoner looked up from his book, sizing up the newcomer with a bored gaze.

“My bed’s top bunk,” was all he said that day, watching the new man settle in silently.

“Are you not even going to ask what I did to get in here?”

It had been a week since Yancy had received his new cellmate, who had been respectfully quiet until that moment. Yancy held back an eyeroll, putting his notebook down and leaning his forearm on it.

“Let me guess. Youse murdered someone.” He didn’t suppress his grin at the newcomer’s shocked expression, “They usually try to lump a murderer in my cell with me. Because I killed some people too.”

“I’m Murdock,” the man stated, offering a hand after he’d recovered from his shock. Yancy snorted, taking Murdock’s hand and shaking it firmly.

“I know. And youse know my name too. Yancy.”

“So…” Murdock trailed one night, lying in his bunk, staring at Yancy’s mattress above him and waiting for his cellmate to sigh before continuing, “Who did you kill?”

“My parents. Youse?” Murdock closed his eyes, wishing he had his trademark gloves or glasses to cover his face.

“Many, many people.” He rolled onto his side, yearning for the feeling of his knife in his hand again, listening to Yancy shuffling around above him before falling asleep.

“Hey, Murdock, youse wanna break out with me?” The mass murder frowned into his bowl of slop, looking at Yancy as the musician sat opposite him at the cafeteria table.

“Why would anyone wanna break out?” He mumbled, shovelling another spoonful into his mouth. He paused when Yancy slid an item across the table to him: a pair of black leather gloves, creases showing signs of wear, with a familiar black ‘M’ embossed into the bottom edge.

“Where did you find these?” Murdock whispered, slowly reaching for the gloves as if afraid to touch them, afraid they would disappear.

“I know a lot of secret passages in this place.” There was no denying the smug tone in Yancy’s voice, and Murdock snatched the gloves off the table before he could think twice.

“And if I do agree to break out with you,” he began, voice low, “What’s in it for me?” Yancy grinned, leaning forward on the table and pushing Murdock’s bowl away from him.

“I’ll make sure youse never get caught again.”

It didn’t take long for Murdock to figure out his own escape route. It took even less time for him to devise an escape plan that didn’t involve Yancy, and no time at all for him to execute the plan.

Yancy woke up to find the bunk under him empty. While not an unusual occurrence, this time Yancy had woken earlier than usual, expecting to wake Murdock and drag him out himself.

Instead he found a crumpled piece of paper sitting atop Murdock’s pillow.

Will come back for you.

Yancy held onto that written promise like a lifeline.

He never came back, Y/N.

Never wrote.

Never called.

Disappeared, just like that.

All of my being was waiting for him to come back and get me out of Happy Trails, but he never came back.

It took a lot of time and effort, but eventually I got back on my feet and decided the penitentiary was the place for me. It was better to be somewhere that wanted me, than to be waiting on someone who wasn’t showing.

What’s that song from that band? How’s it go? “Waiting on a train that’ll never come”? That was me and Murdock.

If and when I ever find him again, I’m going to show him what he did.

My review’s coming up soon.

We’ll see if I get parole.

Yancy.

[sochilll]

OKAY here we go my official A Good Girl's Guide to Murder the series review. It is very long.

Short spoiler free version: they flattened down most of the characters, made Andie much more palatable, and removed a lot of Pip's detective work. Overall it's not a very good murder mystery or adaptation, but I think it's a fun show on its own.

Okay now let's get into it.

(Extreme spoilers for both the show and the books below)

Pippa

They character assassinated my girl!!! They removed like all her defining traits!!! Where were the spreadsheets!!! Where were the backups and the secret backups and the third email back ups!!!!

Overall I think Emma Myers was a fantastic Pip. Her line deliveries were great and she definitely fit the way I'd imagined Pip in the books. The gripes I have are with the script. For example: the first interaction with Ravi. Yes that scene is supposed to be awkward and tense but she didn't even tell him she thought Sal was innocent! That's the reason he agrees to help her! Also I think the following him part was much weirder than just going to his house

Will get into this more below but Pip is barely doing any detective work....

Okay the decision to stop the project.... WHY. In the book she stops because her dog gets killed and she's terrified that the blackmailer will hurt her family. Or that they'll go after Ravi. Because THAT'S the essence of Pippa Fitz-Amobi! She is loyal! She cares about her friends and family more than anything. She ONLY stops because she's worried about them. When it's only HER life getting threatened she keeps it a secret so no one tries to stop her. And then also, Ravi forgives her because he figures out what happened to Barney and realizes the position she was in. In the show she just.... thinks Sal did it now? And Becca said she was selfish??? It makes Pip a lot more self centered that THOSE are the things that make her give up. And then also makes no sense why Ravi would immediately forgive her OR why she would continue after Barney gets killed later on??? Have a slight doubt and give up but your dog gets murdered and you don't bat an eye? Truly don't understand the thought process between changing the order of those two beats.

Why would Pip cut open the rabbits???? If it was Andie's drug stash she'd obviously have a way to get in without cutting it open and sewing it shut every time. Come on Pip is not that dumb 😭

Overall Pip is a lot less careful in the show. (Where are the gloves when they break into the Bell's??) They're constantly almost getting caught and giggling which gives the whole thing a much lighter tone. Maybe that's what they're going for but in the books you feel like Pip is actually in danger and it doesn't translate here. On that note: after the first note, Pip barely reacts to the threats at all. I LOVED the scene of her coming home from camping and seeing the note on the table but they just never brought that tension back.

Why did they give Pip a weird memory of Andie??? It (again) makes the whole thing more about Pip than Sal. Now it's about Pip's guilt because she told Sal where Andie was. It's supposed to be about Sal! The whole motive for her to research this is that Sal was kind to her. That she couldn't believe he'd do it. And that there were inconsistencies in the case. The show turns her motives into "he couldn't have done it because then I'm at fault too." Her obsession is supposed to come from knowing the truth, not making herself feel better.

Pip "I'd do anything for you" moment with Cara I WEEP!!!!! They are best friends!!!!!

Ravi

Ravi was simply not goofy enough ! He had a few really good moments but I missed so many of his little jokes

I know it's much harder without Pip's internal narration, but I feel like the show loses so much of Ravi's (and his parents') isolation. There's the brief scene of the graffiti at the beginning and the part where he won't go to the calamity with her (and even then Pip has to spell it out). But in the book the Singh's loneliness and isolation is so apparent. Ravi says they aren't even allowed to grieve because of what everyone thinks of Sal. It's fucking devastating and it just did not come through in the show

And the previous point manifests in Ravi taking a bit to trust her. He doesn't just hand over Sal's phone on day ONE!! And he never shows her his bedroom! There's a really good scene in the book where Pip steps into Andie's room and it's been perfectly preserved and she realizes the Singh's must have a room just like it. But that doesn't work when Ravi already showed her Sal's room.

Also Ravi would simply never sign off on "I'm gonna publicly challenge the blackmailer that murdered my dog to see if he tries to kill me" hello???? #notmyravi

Ravi just going "lol peace out" at the end HUH??? Also sorry but him finding the marshmallow and getting all sentimental was so dumb bro. Why did you add in this conflict just to solve it like THAT?

They also downplayed a lot of the racial elements. They give Ravi the one line about a brown guy breaking into a rich white guy's house (which is taken much more seriously in the book) but they remove Stanley Forbes and with him, the way Sal was treated by the media. Race is one of the main factors in the way the case was handled (also my theory that it's based on an actual case handled similarly comes from those very discussions). But they don't really acknowledge the fact that Sal's race was a factor in how the case was handled and the vitriol his family faced after in the show at all. (And then they added in the white savior line which was so....). Stanley openly states he thinks Sal is guilty because he's Indian and the show really doesn't touch on that aspect outside of Ravi's throwaway line.

Pip and Ravi

Oooooh the Pip and Ravi of it all.... I do care them

As much as I didn't like the initial interaction I did very much enjoy Pip showing up drunk in her cunty little star outfit that was so cute (also Ravi's mom being like "from a galaxy far far away?" Was so fucking funny)

SARGE!!!!!!! 💕💓💘❤️💞💝💗

He made her a nonalcoholic cocktail!!! And named it after her!!!!!

The romantic tension was very good. The bunny fluff in her hair... waaaaaahhhhg

Sobbing that Pip is so clearly standing on something when they kiss lmao

I like that we got to see the first kiss, very cute. But I am sad they removed the project presentation and the forehead thing ;_;

Andie and Sal

OKAY let's talk about Andie

I really didn't like starting on her. It gives away WAY too much - even though they never actually went through the alleged timeline and murder that Sal was assumed guilty for but still the head wound is such a huge clue to give as the opening scene.

Overall, I don't like how much presence Andie has. The whole thing is that the town is haunted by her absence, that it turns out people didn't really know her at all. And all that is kind of negated when she's showing up in flashbacks every five seconds. It doesn't feel like she's gone or mysterious.

Same with Sal, he's sort of supposed to be contained to the memories Pip has of him being nice to her and Ravi's grief for his brother. But he's also a mystery. The whole thing is that they don't really KNOW that Sal didn't kill Andie. There are times where he does look guilty. But again the flashbacks (especially the weirdly manipulated versions) kinda of ruin that. It's just so heavy handed on the "he's guilty or maybe not" front.

On that note I also don't like the ending they gave Sal and Andie. Sal never knew about her plan. They were fighting when they died and that sucks but it's true. They weren't having this epic love story. And either way, they're both dead, we shouldn't know what happened in that room. We shouldn't get to see it esp since it's Pip's POV and there's no way she'd ever know

Also curious why they decided to make Sal attack the cops??? The ONE thing Pip knows about him is that he's nice. The one thing every single person says is that he's exceptionally kind. In the book his interview is suspicious but he never gets violent. He's kind and they took that away from him and I don't fuck with it!!!

The Andie and Becca interaction..... whyyyyy did they do that? Andie blows her off. That's why Becca gets mad. Becca never knew she was planning to leave or about the head injury. All she knew was that she told her big sister she was assaulted and her sister didn't care. Andie said she should be grateful. That's why Becca got mad and shoved her. Becca was not overreacting or acting with intent to kill. If Andie hadn't already had a head injury she wouldn't have died from her sister shoving her. They changed it to make Andie nicer? I guess? Which brings me to...

Andie doesn't need to be a saint for her death to be tragic. They made all these changes to made her nicer (breaking it off w Elliot once she started dating Sal, the fake added scene of her and Sal planning to run away, her telling Becca the truth, no mention from her friends of how cruel she was to them) they softened her and contradicted the point the book was making. In the book Andie is put on a pedestal and Pip has to uncover that she was mean to her friends and horrible to her sister and cheated on Sal and blackmailed people and sold date rape drugs. But she was also abused and scared and wanted to protect her sister. Pip realizes Andie was real and complicated and nasty sometimes but her death was STILL a tragedy. It still matters who killed her. The movie sanitized that message right out and made her a way flatter character in the process ("You have cast her as your beautiful victim and willfully overlook the layers of her character, because they don't comfortably fit your narrative"!!!!!!)

The Pacing and Detective Work

On one hand I understand they have to cut things down for the show. But also did they??? The book isn't that long and they had like 5 hours. But most of my gripes aren't from stuff that got cut but stuff that was changed for no discernible reason

Everything happens so quickly (when Naomi dropped the alibi thing in episode ONE I was taken aback). Things are revealed so fast and yet Pip is like... so slow to put things together. Dan isn't even a suspect until the second to last episode. She never really suspects Max at all. Howie isn't even mentioned after their one conversation. She never considers any of the Wards. She's not really doing any detective work or making connections she's just waiting to find out a new piece of information. Which leads into the worst part:

Pip doesn't actually solve anything???? People just keep telling her stuff! She doesn't break into Naomi's FB and find out about Sal's alibi being real by studying the pictures, Naomi just gives her Max's secret insta and tells her the truth. She doesn't break into a guy's phone to get Howie's number, some guy just walks her over to him. She doesn't follow and blackmail Howie she just gives him $60 and he tells her shit??? She doesn't put in a request to view the transcript of Sal's interview, Dan just fucking shows it to her (also why is it on his phone????) All of her agency is gone. The only thing she does do is break into the Bell's house and even that was way less thorough than in the book

Elliot Ward and the Ending

I HATE how Elliot wasn't even a suspect. It pissed me off cause it was just for a shock value twist. I think it's a fuck you to the audience when the murder mystery ends with "it was this guy you had no idea was involved at all!" And they went out of their way to remove all the connections to him (the photo of Andie was found in his room, he lied about knowing her, she was openly at him) so they could pull a gotcha on the audience. It's cheap!!!

They also made Elliot a lot more sinister in the show. Not that he was a great guy in the book obv. But in the book he genuinely deluded himself into thinking he had Andie in the attic. Making her a conscious woman who knows she's been kidnapped + Elliot knowing before he even spoke to her that she wasn't Andie + him locking Pip in the attic too just makes him way less sympathetic. In the book he is a man who, yes, took advantage of his position as a teacher with a minor, but also who hurt her accidentally and tortured himself over that for years. He was driven so insane by guilt that he convinced himself he'd found her and she was still alive. Removing that flattens him completely to bad evil guy.

He also is relieved in the book when Pip confronts him because he wants it to be over. In the show he was much more whiny and tries to stop her

Also I don't like that him talking about Sal's death is relayed through a flashback from Isla. It's so distanced. He should be telling Pip.

They also way downplayed Elliot's relationship with Pip. She describes him as a tertiary father figure. He's always around and very involved with his daughters + Pip. But in the show he's in like 2 scenes which again makes the reveal less gut-wrenching for Pip.

Also the reveal with Becca was so.... Idk. In the book she comes off much more sad and like she's genuinely sorry she has to ("has to") kill Pip. More guilt ridden as well. She thought she caused the head injury. She thought everyone, including her parents, would think she killed Andie on purpose and she was scared. And she was scared that Pip would tell everyone that. And also BECCA DOESNT ACTUALLY DO IT. In the book she lets up. She can't kill Pip. That moment didn't happen in the show and it's such an important Becca moment esp considering book 2. In the show she came off much more criminal mastermind

Also small note but Pip thinking "she knows where to put you where they'll never find you" as Becca chokes her hits way harder than Becca going "that's where I put Andie. And where I have to put you" (paraphrasing I don't remember the exact line)

Random Details

Why did they hire a 9 year old to play like freshman year Pip 😭 she's supposed to be in high school with Andie in the flashback right? Why does she look SO small? Just style Emma Myers differently! (Also the way she interacts with Sal reads super young but if she's supposed to be that young why is she at the high school!)

Stop showing the Andie crying flashback stop it oh my god. They show it like 3 times just in one episode. STOP IT! Even if it was a good or important flashback you are overusing that fucking clip please

Why did they make Ant a popular dude instead of their friend?? My only guess is just simply so they'd have to hire less actors for the main group but I would've said to combine Zack and Connor. Ant's turning on Pip in book 2 (if they're even gonna renew it) hurts because he's her friend. And obv Connor has a whole thing going on in the second one but Zack is kinda the extra. I'm just confused on that choice

Why is the calamity party 1. A rave and 2. In a series of underground caves and tunnels?????? Hello??? Also how do they have electricity and overhead lights down there what's going on

Jesse? Cool as hell babey!!!! Lets go lesbians!!!! I actually love that they made her more of a character and she rescues Pip twice that's so fun I adore her

They replaced Chloe Burch with Nat da Silva. Not sure about that in general bc Nat's arc is sort of antithetical to being friends with Andie but I do get that Chloe and Emma aren't different enough to warrant devoting time to them separately when Nat is already there. But again, in the book they were never friends. Andie hated her (also Nat is supposed to have chopped all her hair off and have dark grungy makeup and an ankle monitor how dare you take this from me)

WHAT was up with the drama with Pip's dad??? Leave Victor out of this what was the point!! All u did was further erase her closeness with her family which is her wHOLE THING!!!

Second dad comment: they talk about her dead dad WAY more in the show than the book what was the reason for that? You cut the blackmailing of a drug dealer for that???

Actually laughing out loud at Pip slamming the breaks from 90 kph and literally not moving at all what the hell who filmed this

Pip *filming the most "I'm being held at gunpoint" ass video ever*: I was just joking yesterday. Do not ask me about this again.

They didn't act out the murder to see if it could've happened in the time frame :/

Also they just changed Jason Bell's job?? Why?

AND WHY WAS HE NEVER EVEN TALKED ABOUT??? HE WAS A MAIN SUSPECT AND THE SHOW BARELY EVER ACKNOWLEDGES HIM WHAT HELLO!!!!!

Overall the list of suspects is abysmal. One of the things I love about the book is how many suspects and trails there are so you can be finding stuff out along with Pip. It's not immediately obvious but it's also not out of left field. Pip has like 7 suspects in the book and she follows up on all of them. I get how that would take up a lot of time but in the show she seemingly had 0 suspects??? She never really thought it was anyone and didn't follow up any interviews with investigations. It didn't feel like you could've even made any predictions from the show because there were no leads.

Okay that's all go read A Good Girl's Guide to Murder and all subsequent books! <33333

[newberyandchai]

The Slave Dancer (1974)

A review quote on the back of this book called it "horrifying," and that word is 110% accurate in describing my reading experience. I had to look up from time to time just to mentally process what I had just read.

The Slave Dancer is banned in virtually all school districts, and I certainly never saw it on any classroom shelf. It depicts in vivid detail the grotesque conditions of a boat heading to and from Africa to take a group of 98 slaves to America in the mid-1800s. The main character Jessie is kidnapped and forced to play his fife for the slaves each day to keep them active so their muscles don't atrophy over the course of the four-month journey. They're forced to do a kind of shuffle-dance in their chains, and if they don't move fast enough, they get whipped by a cat-o'-nine — a whip with nine knotted "tails." Both the crew and the slaves are subjected to the cat-o'-nine if they don't do what they're told (blah blah something about symbolism and how even the slavers are slaves to the industry...).

Jessie says, "I saw the others regarded the slaves as less than animals, although having a greater value in gold." The crew jam-packs the ship with so many slaves that there is nowhere for them to move. (I have memories of cramming into a crowded PRT car at WVU at the last minute, taking shallow breaths to avoid breathing in someone's body odor or too-strong perfume that's taken over the entire car — I'm imagining that discomfort tenfold.) There's so little space that many of the slaves afflicted with dysentery can't even make it to the latrine buckets fast enough because there are just too many people to get past.

Each day some of the crew tosses dead bodies overboard, with even some still alive if they're thought to be sick and spreading illness. Jessie notices a very young girl who makes a scene upon boarding the ship. She dies only a few days into the journey: "[Stout] held her upside down, his fingers gripping one thin brown ankle. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Foam had dried about her mouth. With one gesture, Stout flung her into the water." Jessie protests and is slapped by one of the crew in return.

There was one scene that I think will stick with me for a very long time. Ben Stout, one of the crewmembers in charge of the slaves (and whom Jessie feels is a truly evil man), drops Jessie's fife down into the slaves' hold and forces him to go retrieve it as a kind of sick punishment.

"I caught sight of a black face turned up toward the light. The man blinked his eyes, but there was no surprise written on his face. He had only looked up to see what was to befall him next. I went down the rope knowing my boots would strike living bodies. There was not an inch of space for then to move to. I sank down among them as though I had been dropped into the sea. I heard groans, the shifting of shackles, the damp sliding whisper of sweating arms and legs as the slaves tried desperately to curl themselves even tighter. ... To search the hold meant I would have to walk upon the blacks."

I can't even imagine the smell. For four months, day after day, week after week, with friends and family members who couldn't survive the trip simply being tossed overboard each morning... There's no way to comprehend the scale of that tragedy today, and nothing we experience in the U.S. could even come close.

At the end of the book, the crew sees a rival ship that could board and arrest them for being part of the slave trade, so the crew starts throwing the chained slaves overboard right and left to destroy the evidence. To top it off, a storm devastates the boat immediately after. Only Jessie and a single slave boy survive; every other slave and crewmember has either drowned or been killed. Jessie makes it home, but he lives with the memory of those months for the rest of his life. As a result, he can no longer tolerate hearing music of any kind.

This book reminded me a lot of the Studio Ghibli movie Grave of the Fireflies. It's a movie I think everyone should watch at some point in their life, but only once — no one would ever watch it a second time for fun. It's about two young siblings trying to survive alone in WW2-era Japan, and ultimately they both slowly starve to death. (Cinema Therapy's review of this movie examines it in depth if you're looking for a summary/don't want to submit yourself to the trauma of watching the whole thing.)

It's an important story that shouldn't be forgotten, but not for its entertainment value. My takeaway is that I think historical fiction has equal value to real history, in some cases, because it's able to humanize the past. Reading "many slaves did not survive the journey to America" in a textbook is just not the same as reading a description of a dead child being flung overboard by her ankle.

I don't know how this book fits into the larger conversation around banned books. This is a work I don't think someone under 13 should read, and even that's pushing it. I believe kids can handle a lot more than we give them credit for, but this was too much.

5/10 for the sheer devastation this brought, and I don't think I can give a Recommendable/Not Recommendable rating because it's in the same place as Grave of the Fireflies: the "this is important to preserve and talk about, but not fun in the slightest and will stay in your head in some capacity for the rest of your life" category.

[mediaevalmusereads]

The Miniaturist. By Jessie Burton. Ecco, 2014.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: historical fiction

Part of a Series? Yes, Miniaturist #1

Summary: On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt. But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his study or at his warehouse office--leaving Nella alone with his sister, the sharp-tongued and forbidding Marin.

But Nella's world changes when Johannes presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. To furnish her gift, Nella engages the services of a miniaturist--an elusive and enigmatic artist whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways . . .

Johannes' gift helps Nella to pierce the closed world of the Brandt household. But as she uncovers its unusual secrets, she begins to understand--and fear--the escalating dangers that await them all. In this repressively pious society where gold is worshipped second only to God, to be different is a threat to the moral fabric of society, and not even a man as rich as Johannes is safe. Only one person seems to see the fate that awaits them. Is the miniaturist the key to their salvation . . . or the architect of their destruction?

***Full review below.***

Content Warnings: references to slavery, racism (including the N word), homophobia (including bury your gays), sexual content, animal death, childbirth

Overview: I was in the mood for historical fiction, and this book caught my eye. I haven't read a lot of books about 17th century Amsterdam, and the premise was eerie enough to intrigue me. A potentially spooky dollhouse? Sign me up! Unfortunately, this book fell flat for me in a number of ways. Not only did the narrative structure feel off, but I got the feeling that the author didn't quite know what they wanted this book to be. A commentary on the patriarchy? A struggle against religious oppression? A subtle supernatural tale? I wasn't quite sure, so it felt like it was trying to do too much yet nothing at all. For those reasons, this book only gets 3 stars from me.

Moreover, I felt like the choice to narrate the story in the present tense had the tendency to keep characters at arm's length. While the sentences flowed well and I never felt lost or confused, I also felt like I was struggling to connect with the characters, and I think that might be because of the style.

Writing: Burton's prose is quick and engaging without feeling too rushed. It genrally balances showing and telling well, and there are some evocative images that make the world feel rich and inviting. I particularly liked the desciptions of the canals, the smells of the house, and the small details such as dog hair being embedded in the carpet.

However, I do think Burton made some choices that didn't quite resonate with me. For one, she repeats some images or phrases or ideas to the point of irritation; for example, we're reminded multiple times that the servants in Amsterdam are more open and bold than the ones in the country, and we're told over and over again that Nell, our protagonist, longs for physical intimacy and (eventually) a child. While all well and good, I think Burton missed opportunities to show rather than tell in many instances. There was no sense of longing or angst, and I wish I was invited to feel those emotions along with our characters (rather than being informed of them).

Plot: The plot of this book follows Nella Oortman, an 18 year old girl from the country as she attempts to adjust to married life in Amsterdam. Nella has married a wealthy merchant named Johannes Brandt, in part to help pay her family's debts. When she arrives at his house in Amsterdam, however, she finds that her husband is distant, and her sister-in-law is intent on keeping control over the house herself. You see, the Brandts are in the middle of negotiating the sale of a warehouse full of sugar, provided by the Meermans (who own a plantation in Surinam). For some unknown reason, Johannes is failing to sell the sugar, putting the family's finances in peril. All this is made more complicated when Johannes buys Nella an expensive, cabinet-sized replica of their house as a wedding gift. Wanting to exert some agency over her own "house," Nella orders a set of miniatures from a local craftsman, but when they show up more detailed and more "prophetic" than anticipated, Nella decides to get to the bottom of it.

Overall, I thought this plot was a little meandering and somewhat off-pace. While some of the individual threads were intriguing, I didn't feel like they came together to form a complete tapestry. Instead, I felt like the novel was trying to juggle too many things, yet all the while, the pace felt slow because there were many scenes in which the suspense was frustratingly obscure or eclipsed by more mundane events or descriptions.

I also didn't quite feel like Burton herself knew what she wanted the book to be about, and as a result, it felt like there were a few shallow attempts at a message. At one point, it seemed like Burton was trying to craft a feminist message about how a woman could be more than a wife and mother, but at another point, it seemed like she was more interested in religious persecution. Turn around again and there was a tepid exploration of race and racism, and later, a message about how society imprisons people (like women and lgbt+ folks) and makes them act in desperate ways.

All these threads could have been tied together more strongly, I think, if more emphasis was put on the cabinet house and the miniatures. As it stands, the mystery of the miniaturist feels like an afterthought until maybe 50% of the way through the book, and with all the eerie coincidences that happen with the minis and Nella's life, I think Burton could have made it much more central. The best aspects of the miniaturist plotline were moments when Nella would notice something odd about her minis and then try to figure out what it meant. If the foreshadowing of the minis had been the main driver of the narrative, I think a lot of the plot would have come together in a much more suspenseful way.

TL;DR: The Miniaturist is a novel with an intriguing setting and an exciting premise, offering an eerie dollhouse at the center of an almost gothic tale. But while there are a lot of things that Burton does right (like creating a mystery, injecting the supernatural, etc), I ultimately found that the individual threats of the plot didn't come together in a satisfying way, and the lack of a strong overall message left me wanting.

Characters: Nella, our protagonist, is fairly sympathetic in that she is thrust into womanhood and not given much agency, but that sympathy can get a little grating. Part of Nella's arc seemed to involve finding the courage to dictate her own life, and while I enjoyed that aspect, I do wish it had been developed at a more steady pace. As it stands, Nella seems to wander about somewhat aimlessly until maybe halfway or so through the book (maybe later), and then she starts to take matters into her own hands. I wish the narrative had interrogated her own beliefs a bit harder, especially her views on womanhood, agency, and morality.

Johannes, Nella's husband, is somewhat likeable in that he's kind and hardworking, yet he could be careless to the point of frustration. He's also too forgiving of people who betray him, and his arc left me a little disappointed. If his end had meant something - like a point about how society tears down people who are different to preserve its own power - then I might have felt a little more satisfied, but after finishing the book, I just felt empty.

Marin, Johannes's sister, is a bit more interesting in that she wields power without being married, thereby challenging some of Nella's beliefs about womanhood. I wish Burton had explored their dynamic a little more, especially since Marin's arc involved a lot of outward piety yet hidden secrets; I couldn't quite tell if Marin was supposed to be hypocritical or if she was in some way covering for her family, and given her end, I wish Burton had crafted a stronger message.

Cornelia, the maid, was perhaps my favorite as she was fiercely loyal, kindhearted, and unafraid to stand for what she thought was right. I liked that she was willing to go toe to toe with people who disrespected her friend, a black servant named Otto, and that she was hellbent on saving children from orphanages, when she could.

Perhaps the biggest disappointments were the characters of Otto and the Miniaturist. Otto is a black man working as Johannes's servant, and while he is not a slave, Amsterdam is clearly unaccepting of him. Given his importance in the way the plot comes together, I wish Otto had more of a developed character arc, and I would have loved to see more of his perspective, perhaps tying it in to the idea of society being oppressive and how people need to write their own stories.

The Miniaturist, too, was something of a ghostly spectre, and once their identity was revealed, the enthusiasm for their arc kind of dried up. I think I would have enjoyed their character more if we never found out who they were or what their background was, as the almost supernatural elements of the novel were spookier without that knowledge.

[percontaion-points]

5 Survive chapters 39-41

Today's review might be difficult for some; reader discretion is advised

Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions

Click here for the rest of the series!

Chapter 39

“What are you talking about?” Oliver asked her, brows drawing together, a shadow across his eyes, hiding the fire in them. 

“She was th-there,” Red stammered. “I heard her. Maybe you don’t know this, but my mom called me, only ten minutes before she was killed, that’s what the police told me.”

I’m not even sorry for saying this… But why the fuck would you tell this psychotic lunatic any of this? I don’t seem to recall Oliver having ever put the knife down. 

 “It was a ringtone, your mom’s ringtone for Maddy.”

Again, this would never stand up in court. Do you know how many people have phones with “doorbell” sounds on their phones? 

However, since I know that we’re never going to see any of these characters after this book ends… At least we have some measure of closure. 

And Maddy…Maddy knew. This whole time. Since the day it had happened, the day the world ended around her, February 6, 2017. Maddy knew and she never said anything, in five long years.

And said what… exactly? That her mum got home late, and had “sauce” on her shirt? That her mum told her family that she had 100% been home that night? 

It’s weird, but it’s in no way evidence that Catherine killed Red’s mum. 

“Red,” Arthur said, fingers gentle against all her broken bones and skin. “It’s not your fault.”

How is the goddamned mafia son somehow the best option in what’s been unfolding? 

“I’m not fucking listening to you,” Oliver said, voice dark and rasping. “You’re a liar! You’re going to get my mom killed.”

Are you fucking serious right now? Maddy is literally BLEEDING TO DEATH ON THE GODDAMNED FLOOR, and the only thing that you care about is defending the shitstain that you call a mother. 

“No one leaves!” Oliver roared. “No one leaves until I work out what to do.”

I’ve said this before, and I’ll continue to defend this opinion: Oliver is a million times more scary than the man with the literal sniper rifle. 

“What?” Simon asked her. 

“I can rebuild the walkie-talkie.”

Chapter 39 summary: For some unholy reason, Red tells the others about how she now knows that Catherine murdered her mother. Oliver thinks that Red is talking nonsense again, but Maddy randomly also has some evidence that she’s been holding onto. The night Red’s mum died, Catherine was really late coming home. Maddy tried to call her (which we already knew from Red’s series of events). Catherine came home with a “sauce” stain on her shirt, which disappeared after that. Catherine also pressed to her family that she had been home that night. The call log also disappeared from Maddy’s phone. Red is angry that Maddy has been holding onto this all this time… But I said what I said about that. 

Arthur tells Red that none of this was her fault. Despite the fact that he was literally sent to kill her, he’s somehow more compassionate than Oliver. 

Oliver becomes even more unhinged. Despite the fact that not one single person is in his corner anymore. Arthur says that he can leave the RV to go talk to his brother (the sniper), but Oliver forbids anybody from leaving. Even after the others mention that Maddy is literally bleeding out in front of them. He doesn’t give a shit about anybody except saving his mum’s “good” name. 

But then Red says that she can rebuild the walkie-talkie. 

Chapter 40

“No, Oliver!” 

Reyna was outside now too, scrabbling for Oliver’s other arm, dragging him back in the same moment he swung the knife. 

It caught Arthur in the neck, slicing through flesh.

I love how every single injury that happened to them was because of Oliver. 

Yes, Arthur’s brother did kill Don and Joyce. But at this point, I’d consider their deaths to be merciful. 

Oliver got his sister shot. 

Oliver sliced Arthur’s neck. 

Red’s hands jumped to her ears at the sound of the rifle, her eyes flicking from Oliver, lying dead still on the road…

Fuckity bye. 

Mom stayed, and so did the stars.

Chapter 40 summary: Before Red can finish putting the walkie-talkie back together, the police show up. Red walks up behind Oliver to knock the knife from his hands, and then decides that the best course of action… Is to fucking run out in front of these police cruisers. 

Then Oliver tries to attack Arthur. The sniper must have still been watching, because he then shoots and kills Oliver.

However, the police officers mistook the walkie-talkie Red was still holding for a gun, and they proceeded to shoot and kill her. 

So… This book was titled “5 Survive” but like… Only four did? I’m fucking confused. 

Chapter 41

OFFICER 1: It was me, I shot her. She ran at me. I heard a gunshot. I thought she had a gun in her hand. It’s not, though. It’s not a gun, oh god, what have I done? 

OFFICER 2: Hold on, I’ll be there any minute. 

OFFICER 1: …What have I done? 

This is 100% why people have been screaming “defund the police” for such a long time. Red has been nothing but a victim her entire fucking life… And this is also the way that she’s going out as well. 

This morning, Catherine Lavoy, 49, who worked in the Philadelphia DA’s office, was shot dead outside the main entrance of Chesterfield General Hospital. She is believed to have been shot in the head by a long-range rifle, killed instantly at the scene.

[...]

Her colleague, ADA Mo Frazer, had this to say when asked for a statement about the murder of his coworker: “I just heard about it myself. I am absolutely devastated. With what happened to her kids, and now this. I can’t understand it. Catherine was a wonderful woman, a brilliant prosecutor and a terrific mom. I don’t know who would want to do this to her, but our office will work around the clock to assist in bringing them to justice where we can. Catherine leaves behind a huge hole and my thoughts and prayers go out to her remaining family.”

This is not justice. Catherine will now become a (temporary) martyr for the anti-mafia pushback. Her evil actions will never be brought to light. 

But I’ll be there, I promise. Will you? YES [] NO [] Yours, Arthur

Chapter 41 summary: This last bit is in three sections. The first is the police radio transcripts. The officer who shot Red realises what she’s done and she’s obviously completely HORRIFIED. 

The second is a news article about the abrupt assassination of Catherine. I said what I said about that. 

The third part is a really long letter from Arthur to Red. She actually somehow did survive all of that, although she was in a coma for two weeks. Arthur confesses to having killed Catherine, and then he snuck into the same hospital minutes later to see Red one last time. Maddy was in there, recovering from her own gunshot wound. He knows that she could have called for any of the officers who were swarming the hospital by that point… But she didn’t. I think she probably knew that it was coming; her mother was a sick person who played stupid games. 

He goes on to say that his brother, Mike, was arrested. And Arthur thinks that it’s for the best that he be in prison. That his brother has been in this “war” his entire life, and doesn’t know anything else. 

He also says that after talking with his dad about what happened in the RV, they’ve given a lot of cash to Red. Hidden in her room, placed when he left the letter. It’s hers to use for her hospital bills… and anything else she might need. 

He asks to meet her one last time, but says that he wouldn’t be surprised if she turned the letter over to the police. But the book ends with his letter. 

There was never any closure for the curtains. Zero stars. /sarcasm

[laurensbookshelves]

Why You Should Start a Book Journal

It's 2023, and soon we'll be in 2024 where we give ourselves excuses to set goals that most of us will inevitably forget about or that we'll find a way to get out of, especially when it comes to reading. But what if you had something that could allow you to be productive, set goals, be creative, and so much more. I started my book journaling journey (whew, what a mouthful!), a couple of years ago and it's a hobby of mine that has become so fulfilling in such a short amount of time, that I just feel the need to share that passion with you guys, and hopefully this can inspire one of you to start a book journal too!

Since starting my journaling expedition my ability to analyze and comprehend a story has grown immensely, while also appreciating the story writing process. This ability to analyze has in turn made me a better book reviewer on my social media pages like Booktok and Instagram. This skill has helped improve my reviews because by writing down my thoughts and feelings it makes me think deeper and more analytically about the book, which gives me a deeper insight to reoccurring themes, character arcs, and any plot devices. This skill is also useful in developing your own writing skills both for fun, and if you were interested in the possibility of becoming a writer yourself.

One of my favourite parts of reading is the journey you go on, the characters, and story that you fall in love with on the way. However, part of the reading journey is looking back on moments that you don't want to forget, and remembering how you felt the first time you met your favourite character, or read your most beloved quote. When us readers fall in love with a book we want to remember it, and much to our annoyance we usually end up forgetting unless we write it down, or annotate it. This is where having a book journal can be really useful because by journaling your current reads or favourite books, you can never forget any of the knowledge gained, or the parts you never want to forget.

Many readers, specifically fiction readers, look to books as an escape from their current reality or as a way to live a hundred different lives. So when you decide to start a reading journal, eventually it can be something you look back on and may be able to pinpoint certain parts of your life, what was going on at that time, and the things you thought to be important during that time of your life. It's also a way to see the parts of the book that first caught your eye, or the characters that sparked your interest. A reading journal is a great way to physically see your life through books.

Starting a book journal can potentially help you with future readings, at least the ones you decide to pick up. Keeping track of your readings can show you reading patterns that you seem to gravitate towards. By taking notes it can allow you to see what aspects of the book you didn't like or were lacking, and the things you loved, or that transfixed you. You can use your annotations as a guide for future books you want to read. For instance, you won't need to have the readers debate on whether you'll like the book because you'll be better equipped to understand your reading preferences. It's also a way to discover what genres of books you like, especially if you're new to reading and trying to navigate your style. Not only can journaling improve future readings, but it may also help you to better communicate with your book friends. Talking about your passions can be hard sometimes, especially books because there's so much information being piled into small, compact thing, so having notes to look back on can make conversing with others easier. In turn you may even get feedback, or book suggestions from friends based on your reading preferences, which is always a win.

There are so many reasons to start a book journal, but the most important one to mention is that you can be any age. Journaling isn't designed for one group, you can do just about anything in a journal as a way of expressing yourself, and that has no age restriction. It's also compact enough that you can bring a journal with you anywhere, you just have to remember to pack it. Also, with gravitating towards being a more digital society we've made it easy to download digital journals, and there are hundreds of different layout to best suit your needs.

[scorbleeo]

Book Review: Attachments

by Rainbow Rowell

Source: Google Images

It's 1999 and the internet is still a novelty. At a newspaper office, two colleagues, Beth and Jennifer, e-mail back and forth, discussing their lives in hilarious details, from love troubles to family dramas. And Lincoln, a shy IT guy responsible for monitoring e-mails, spends his hours reading every exchange.

At first their e-mails offer a welcome diversion, but the more he reads, the more he finds himself falling for one of them. By the time Lincoln realises just how head-over-heels he is, it's too late to introduce himself.

After a series of close encounters, Lincoln eventually decides he must follow his heart… and find out if there is such a thing as love before first sight.

ISBN: 9781409120537 (2012) | Source: Goodreads

A No For Me

I wonder, if I had read Attachments at its peak or when it was first published, would I have find it cute too? I hope not, but I don't really remember what kind of reader I was so many years ago. Now, I definitely do not find this romance cute, not even a tiny bit.

Reading Attachments pissed me off more often than not. It made me so confused in terms of how I felt about the book and the reading journey. For example, I hate Lincoln's obsession with Beth but any other time? I freaking love that man. That was pretty much how I felt the whole time reading this book, I might love the character but then they go and do something and I just hate loving them.

I started out liking Beth actually. Jennifer was the one who irritated me because what was her deal with the "pregnancy scare" when she refused to get a kit and take the test? But those feelings changed very quickly. I liked Jennifer a lot more after I started knowing her. On the other hand, the second Beth started gushing over her cute guy, I had no reason to like Beth. I don't care how neglected she was in her relationship with Chris, the way Beth gushed and obsessed after her cute guy was a form of emotional cheating I will never accept. That form of emotional cheating was lowkey reaching cheating. Personally, Beth is red flag walking.

There was also those email exchanges about Emelie. I understand there's a slight difference in today's society and the society when this book was published. So, I try not to fault this bit on Rowell's writing. Of course, that does not mean I have to like or accept it. I hated it. I hated how those women were belittling Emelie on things she had no control over. I hated that upon reading those emails, Lincoln looked at Emelie with similar lenses. I might have let it slip if Emelie was a mean one but she was such a sweet person and it was horrible reading about them bullying her.

Really, the romance part of Attachments is the part I hated about this book. Other than that, I actually enjoyed my time. I loved reading the book when Lincoln was doing anything else that does not revolve around Beth. Otherwise, it's weird and downright creepy. Reading those emails, I can accept. Following someone home? Big no. I just cannot imagine how was this a cute story.

If Attachments ended just as Lincoln caught Beth's eyes in the theatre, I might not have disliked this book as much as I did.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2.5/5)

[lesfeldickbiblestudy]

  Through the Bible with Les Feldick LESSON 3 * PART 2 * BOOK 77 CONNECTING THE DOTS OF SCRIPTURE – PART 46 Genesis – Revelation (Eternity) Okay, it’s good to see everybody back after a break. We’ll go into program number two for this afternoon. We’re going to continue connecting the dots of Scripture.  Those of you joining us again, we want to thank you for your prayers, your letters, your financial help, and everything.  And for those of you here in the studio, my, how we appreciate you coming in every month. Now again, we’re just going to pick right up where we left off in the last taping.  I think Jerry has titled this one “Eternity.”  When I review the programs, I think sometimes I waste too much time, so we’re going to get right back into it.  We’re going to start in Revelation chapter 19 at the Second Coming of Christ. Now, if you remember, for the last several programs we were talking about the Tribulation and the horrors of it.  And how by the end of the Tribulation, all the wrath and vexation of God will have utterly destroyed planet Earth as we know it.  Out of that will come, then, a renewed Garden of Eden-like planet that will be made ready for the millennium, or the thousand-year reign of Christ.    We’re going to look at that a little bit this afternoon.  But the millennium begins, of course, with the Second Coming of Christ. Oh, by the way, Iris wants me to let our television audience know we still have some of these Q & A books.  I don’t mind advertising them, because they are a blessing.  Everybody that gets one just loves our Question & Answer Book. It’s still available. It will be the best $11.00 you will ever spend.  They make wonderful gifts. All right, Revelation 19 and we’re going to begin at verse 11.  Now, before the guys flip the board, remember that this is what we’ve been talking about for the last, oh, I don’t know how many programs. That this parenthetical period of time that we had in our last half hour program is made up of these various doctrines of the Apostle Paul – what he calls the Revelation of the Mysteries.  That’s why we’ve left it on the board.  So that if you haven’t caught them all, you can at least be reminded that these mysteries are only found in Paul’s Epistles and nowhere else. That’s why I’m always emphasizing Paul’s Apostleship, and 90% of Christendom never reads Paul.  They never look at his letters, and that’s where we find the message for salvation and the Rapture of the Church and all the other mysteries concerning the Body of Christ! I can tell from our audiences that they never get to hear Paul’s letters in Sunday school and Church.   They say, “Why don’t we get anything from Paul?”  Well, get on your Pastor.  Tell him to get to where the things are really meant for us, but they won’t do it.  I’m aware of that. All right, Revelation 19—the Second Coming is going to be the final event of those seven years of wrath and vexation and will usher in the thousand years of Christ’s reign.  Verse 11: Revelation 19:11 “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.”  In other words, God never does anything out of anger or getting even.  No vengeance, as such, it’s simply the result of man’s rejection of His offer of love and mercy and grace.  Verse 12: Revelation 19:12-13 “His eyes (speaking of Jesus the Christ at His Second Coming, now) were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written that no man knew, but he himself. 13. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped (or sprinkled or splattered) in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.”  Which, of course, is a perfect fit with John’s Gospel chapter 1. Revelation 19:14-15a “And the armies who were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.  15. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations:…”  Now as I’m reading, I’m thinking.

  A lot of these things come up, and I really don’t intend to do.  But, you see, there is a difference of opinion, and I don’t mind that.  I don’t mind that people disagree with me.  And on some things, I just sit on the fence.  In fact, my answer with people is getting more and more, “Hey, let’s wait until we get there!  And then we won’t have to argue.  We’ll know.” Now, the question that is coming up more and more is—Is the Body of Christ going to return with Christ at His Second Coming, or will we be eternally set in the heavenlies?  Now, of course, there is a large group of people that think we will be strictly heavenly bound and heavenly abode; and yet, you see, when I come to a verse like this—this is why I had to stop.  When I come to a verse like this, I have to think that maybe we will be with Him at His Second Coming, even though we may later on go back up.  Because don’t forget, when we get into the eternal state, time will mean nothing. In other words, when Jesus went from Earth to Heaven, and He came back, He ascended again to Heaven. Well, was that millions and millions and millions of miles that He had to traverse?  Well, if it was, He did it instantly.  So, never confine yourself once we get into the eternal that, oh, it can’t happen.  Oh, yes, it can.  All right, now here’s what made me stop.  I sure didn’t plan to do this.  Verse 14: Revelation 19:14 “And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.”  Now think.  Who can be the armies in Heaven?  I think (this is why I’m on the fence), I think this is a reference to the Body of Christ.   Not angels. It can’t be the Old Testament Saints, because they’re not going to be resurrected until 75 days later, remember.  Here’s what puts me in a dilemma.  On the one hand, yes, I think we’re going to be with Christ at His Second Coming, and I think that we may have something to do with the Kingdom.  Now, I know that’s going to rile a lot of people.  But I just tell them, hey, disagree with me lovingly, as I’m not setting it concrete.  I’m not being obstinate.  I’m just saying, now wait a minute, we’ve got to think these things through. Come back with me to Romans. This is another portion that nobody that I read has ever addressed to my satisfaction. And again, I’m not going to claim that I’ve got the answer, because a lot of these things are debatable.  No doubt about it.  We have that freedom.  And when we get there, we’re going to find out who was right and who was wrong.  All right, but in Romans chapter 8, here’s another portion of Scripture that I just can’t throw aside and say, no, that doesn’t mean us, it means somebody else.  No, it means us. Romans 8 verse 18, now Paul is writing, so he’s writing to us members of the Body of Christ. Romans 8:18-19 “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in (or to) us. 19. For the earnest expectation of the creation (That is all the animal kingdom, the birds, and everything on creation.) is waiting for the manifestation of the children of God.”   Well, now go back up to verses 14, 15, and 16.  And let’s establish—who are the Children of God that Paul is talking about?  Well, it’s us, see?  It’s us!  Verse 14: Romans 8:14-17 “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God. 15. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. (Because we’re His child.) 16. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: 17. And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”  All right, now back down to where we were in  verse 19. Romans 8:19 “For the earnest  expectation (of all) of the creation (At the end of the Tribulation and the horrors of it, what are they waiting for?) waiteth for the manifestation of the children of God.

”  That’s us.  Well, how else could we be manifested except to be with Him at His coming.  Now, that’s the way I have to look at it.  All right, read on: Romans 8:20-21 “For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope.  21. Because the creation itself shall also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of (Whom?) the children of God.”  Who were the children of God?   The Body of Christ.  Now, I can’t separate that.  But kind of leave it.  If you read an article tomorrow that refutes what I’m saying, don’t get angry.  Just say, “Well, that’s one way of looking at it.” Now, I have to give you another one, if I can find it quickly.  I’m thinking of all this while I’m talking, you want to remember.  Back here in Revelation 19—it’s not only here that I have a question, where the armies which are in Heaven are clothed in fine linen.  Well, that can’t be anybody, I don’t think, except the Body of Christ.  Now, I’m not going to take time to look for the other one.  Like I said, this is all off-the-cuff anyway.  But come back to Revelation 19, at least I want to get people to think.  You don’t have to agree with me, but think. Revelation 19:14a “And the armies which were in heaven…” And I just can’t see that as angels, then it would have said angels.  It can’t be the Old Testament saints, because like I said, they’re not resurrected until 75 days later, remember.  That’s Daniel chapter 12, in case you have to look it up.  All right, verse 15: Revelation 19:15a “And out of his (that is out of Christ’s) mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: (And remember that Hebrews tells us the Word of the Lord is a what?  A two-edged sword.  So we’re not talking about a metal sword here.  We’re talking about the spoken Word that will come from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ at His Second Coming.) and he shall rule them (future—in the coming 1,000 years) with a rod of iron:…”  And then coming back to the final days of the Tribulation which we looked at in a previous program.  When I feel He will use the 100 pound hailstones, you remember, to crush those millions and millions of people gathered in the valleys of Israel.  All right, then verse 16: Revelation 19:16 “And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”  Now you see, there’s His full title.  And He’s going to set up His Kingdom.  All right, as a result of the horrors of those closing months of the seven years of Tribulation, come on up to verse 17. Revelation 19:17 “And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come (Now these are birds of prey—the vultures and the eagles and what have you.) and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;”  Now, do I have to compare Scripture?  Yes. Come back with me again to Jeremiah chapter 25 and drop in at verse 31.  Because I sometimes think when I read these verses that people just—well….maybe….but maybe not.  This is what is coming.  And I read an article again the other day of all the thousands of nuclear weapons that are just waiting to be exploded.  And we’re getting closer and closer to it every day. All right, by the end of the Tribulation I think they’re all going to be used, just like a string of firecrackers.  And this will be the end result.  Verse 31: Jeremiah 25:31-32 “A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for the LORD hath a controversy with the nations, (All of them.  Not just Israel now, we’re dealing with the whole.) he will plead with all flesh; he will give them that are wicked to the sword, saith the LORD.  32.  Thus saith the LORD of hosts, (The same Lord that we’re reading about at His Second Coming.) Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the borders of the earth.” Jeremiah 25:33 “And the slain

of the LORD (By the millions, beloved, millions, billions are going to be losing their lives.) shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung (or road kill) upon the ground.”   Everywhere you look, dead bodies.  It’s going to be awful. All right, back to Revelation.  And you know one of the amazing things of the last few years, and I’ve had more than one person call some of the wildlife people to see if this is true.  All around the planet, there is a great increase in the birth rate of these birds of prey.  The first one I read about, probably about 10 years ago, was one of the vulture types, I think, that was in the Middle East.  They normally had two eggs in their nest, but were now having four.  And same way here in America, a lot of the species that we call vultures and birds of prey are increasing by leaps and bounds.  And, of course, they are under protection.  Nobody can kill them.  And it’s all for a reason. And now here we have it in Revelation 19.  He calls all the birds of prey together that they can come for the supper of the great God.  All of this death and destruction, verse 18: Revelation 19:18-19 “That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. 19. And I saw the beast, (that is the anti-Christ) and the kings of the earth, (who have been subjected to his demonic rule) and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.”  Of course, we covered that several programs back, but now this is a new part that I hadn’t covered before—verse 20. When the Tribulation has run its course, and it’s over, then those two men who were primary in the leadership of planet Earth—the anti-Christ in the political and economical and the False Prophet, who will be the religious leader of that time—two men, and here they come. Revelation 19:20 “And the beast (the anti-Christ) was taken, and with him the false prophet (Or the religious leader, whoever it is.  I’m not going to put a name on either one of them.  These men--) that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them who worshipped his image. (All during these seven years.  Now both of these men--)These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. Now, I know we all shrink at the thought of an eternal hell-fire.  And nobody wants to even preach it or teach it anymore.  In fact, I had a letter just the other day where the guy was angry.  What kind of a God is it that would cast people into such a place?  I’ll tell you what kind of a God He is.  He’s a God who paid the price for every one of them if they would have believed it. They don’t have to go there.  And that’s going to be one of the awful things of eternal loss.  They’re going to regret for eternity why they rejected their free pardon out.  They don’t have to be there.  So, don’t ever blame God for preparing such a place, because He suffered far more alone than the billions of mankind will in unison.  So, don’t ever take anything away from God in that department. All right, so these two men, the anti-Christ and the false prophet, who had been the leaders of the last seven years, will be the first human beings to go into what we now realize was the eternal Lake of Fire.   All right, I’m going to take you on over into chapter 20.  The Tribulation has ended.  The Kingdom is now ready to be brought in.  Verse 1 of chapter 20: Revelation 20:1-2 “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.  (Not an iron chain.  Iron won’t hold a spirit being like Satan.  But it will be something that God can use to confine Satan.) 2. And he laid his hand on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,”

Now, this is the first time in Scripture that we have a time frame on the Kingdom.  All through the Old Testament, the Kingdom is merely promised as being forever and ever.  But never is it signified as 1,000 years.  But here in the Book of Revelation, we now have it simply defined as that period of time.  All right, reading on in verse 3. Revelation 20:3 “And cast him into the bottomless pit, (Not hell, not the Lake of Fire, this is a separate place that God has prepared to hold Satan for these 1,000 years.) and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, (But what’s the next word?) until (See, there’s another time word. He’s not going to stay there forever, yet.  He’s only being confined for that 1,000 years of the Kingdom rule and reign of Christ and then--) the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.”  Now there again, we don’t know how long a period of time that will be after the 1,000 years of the perfect rule and reign of Christ over planet Earth.  It’s going to be Heaven-on-Earth for all the inhabitants.  I maintain the 1,000 years are a dispensation.   Now, I’m going to exercise your thinking.  Remember what a dispensation is?  I hope you remember.  A period of time during which God deals with the human race in a particular way or under a set of instructions.  That’s a dispensation!  (Note the seven dispensations listed below) Adam and Eve were in a dispensation in the Garden of Eden. It was the dispensation of “Innocence,” and their instructions were simple—don’t eat of that tree.  The next 1,400-1,500 years they were under the dispensation of “Conscience.” Their instructions were to bring a blood  sacrifice. Well, conscience didn’t cut it, so they reaped the punishment of the flood. Then after the flood, they under the dispensation of “Human Government,” and they went through the Tower of Babel and the scattering of the population. And then God did something totally different.  He called out Abraham, and for a period of time he was under the dispensation of “Promise,” where God promised Abraham several things in Genesis chapter 12.   All right, then after Abraham had established the Nation of Israel, they became a Nation down in Egypt.  Then in 1500 B.C., God brought them out, and He put them under a new dispensation that we call what?  Law.  He gave the dispensation of Law, and that carried on from Moses until Paul.  And that dispensation has its set of instructions—how to respond to sin and how to keep the Law and so on and so forth.  It was a dispensation.  A period of time during which there were specific instructions. All right, today we’re in the  dispensation of “Grace,” in which it covers the mysteries of Paul.  But what are our instructions?  To believe Paul’s Gospel—which is believing in your heart for salvation that Jesus died for your sins, was buried, and rose again—plus nothing else.   Believe the Gospel.  And once we become a believer of the Gospel, how to walk the Christian life.  Those are our instructions.  It’s our dispensation. But when the Church goes in the Rapture, this dispensation ends, and the world goes back under an extension of Israel’s Law in the Tribulation.  But now we come to the final dispensation of the  Kingdom.  It’s a period of time during which those people will be re-populating at an amazing rate, remember. And what are their instructions?  Be obedient to the King.  That’s all.  Recognize that He’s the King.  He’s the God of Glory.  And as long as they’re obedient, they’re in God’s Grace. All right, now in order to exercise the instructions of a dispensation, you have to have two choices.  Think about it.  You’re either going to follow the instructions, or you’re going to disobey them.  Now, I stop once in a while to make people think.  In this Dispensation of Grace, the world is faced with two alternatives – believe the Gospel or reject it.  It’s that simple.  Believe it and have eternal life.  Reject it and go to an eternal doom.  Now, you can’t get it any simpler than that.

All right, now in the Kingdom, it, too, is a dispensation. It is where God has given them the circumstances so that all they have to do is be obedient to the King.  But, there has been nobody to trigger the opposition.  Satan is locked up.  So, in order for people to have the unction to make a choice, God has to bring Satan back for a period of time. Now, I hope that answers a ton of questions, because it comes all the time.  Why bring Satan back if He once had him off the scene?  He’s got to give those new generations of people who have been born during this 1,000 years the opportunity to be obedient or disobedient.  To make a choice like we had to make.   So when Satan comes back in that period of time, we don’t know how long it is.  Like I said in the first program, time means nothing to God.  It could be awhile.  But it’ll be long enough for those millions upon millions of new inhabitants of planet Earth to be confronted with the options—remain loyal to the King or follow the adversary.  And what will most of them do?  Like they’ve been doing for 6,000 years.  They’ll go after the adversary.  Unbelievable.  All right, let’s pick it up in verse 7. Revelation 20:7-8a “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, 8. And shall go out to deceive (Just like he’s been doing through this 6,000 years.) the nations…” That’s why several programs back I pointed out, who comes in at the front end of that 1,000 years? Well, a remnant of the Nation of Israel, who’ll be the largest of any nation.  But there will be a sampling of all the other nations on the planet who have survived the Tribulation as believers (Matthew 25:31-32).  They’ll come in on the front end and start having families and reproduce.  It’s going to be just like Israel in Egypt.  My land, how fast do you think the Jews reproduced in those early years in Egypt?  Why, like flies.  You know, they probably had multiple births.  They never lost a child.  You remember what the mid-wives said, Why, those Hebrew women are so lively, there’s no way of putting their babies to death.   It was a population explosion.  Well, you’re going to have the same thing in the Kingdom.  This 1,000 years is going to be a population explosion like the world has never seen, because there’s nothing to refrain life.  There’s no death.  No sickness.  No weakness.   All right, so now Satan comes back on the scene. Revelation 20:8-9a “And shall go out to deceive (all these repopulated nations) the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.  9. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city:…” In total—just like it was 1,007 years earlier. They come back in total rebellion against the King, with the idea of overthrowing Him.  But this time God doesn’t fool around.  He speaks the Word, and the whole mass of them will be wiped off, except those who remain true to the King. Revelation 20:9b “…and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.” All right, now in a quick half-a-minute.  What in the world will Satan use to deceive people who have had Heaven-on-Earth for a thousand years?  Well, the Bible doesn’t specifically say it, but I think it’s implied, and I’m comfortable with my opinion.  He’s going to offer them, just like he did Eve in the Garden of Eden – why be content to be under God?  Why don’t you just be God?  And that’s Satan’s lie.  And it’s going to just take all those billions of new people, and they’re going to follow after him, and they’re going to go to their doom.

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Review: How To Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

I’ve really enjoyed both of the other Grady Hendrix books I’ve read (My Best Friend’s Exorcism and The Final Girl Support Group), so I was excited to read his latest. However, sadly it fell pretty flat.

When Louise’s parents die suddenly, she is devastated. She also doesn’t want to fly to her childhood home, leaving her daughter in the care of her ex and sift through the remains of her parents’ lives, including her mother’s large collection of dolls and puppets. Most of all, she doesn’t want to face her brother Mark, who drifts from one job to another and is jealous of his sister’s success. The siblings will have to come together to get this house ready for sale because it really doesn’t want to be sold.

Mark and Louise’s relationship changes throughout the book but I never really warmed to Mark. He seemed to behave very strangely in the days immediately following his parents’ deaths, to the point where I thought he might have been involved. Perhaps this seemingly carefree attitude was his way of grieving but I really didn’t like how he didn’t involve his sister in major decisions -despite both of them being fully grown adults.

I felt chills go through my spine when Louise first entered the house. There were so many eyes everywhere and it was horrendously unsettling, regardless of whether there was any supernatural activity or not. The house stank of darkness and danger instantly and I couldn’t imagine it ever having been a loving, family home.

I apologise for the intensely surreal image that this quote conjures. It’s a very strange moment in the book that occurs right at the climax and I can only imagine that Hendrix went with the creepiest ‘monster’ he could think of. Of course, it would scare anyone who is already afraid of puppets about it but I was too busy trying to work out what was actually happening and whether the action was real, partly real or completely fabricated. 

It ends on quite a sad, poignant note and I wasn’t really expecting that. I almost expected (and wanted) a final twist to make my jaw drop but unfortunately, it never arrived. Instead, the horror was buried and we were assured that it wasn’t going to rear its head again. Which is great for the characters but it’s a much more mellow, tied-up ending than the best horror.

How To Sell A Haunted House was a disappointment. A lot of the action scenes were confusing and while I understood what was really going on in the house, it wasn’t particularly scary for me. I was too busy trying to make sure I knew what was actually happening to get caught up in the horror, which took me out of the story. I also wasn’t able to suspend my disbelief enough to get on board with Pupkin, the creepy little boy puppet. It was so silly that it bordered on comedy horror, even though it really wasn’t supposed to be. It probably won’t stop me reading more Grady Hendrix though!

[wri0thesley]

Just read your post on Kaeya being a menace, and not only do I fully agree, but to elucidate on it a tad further: Kaeya is definitely on a personal mission to fuck the reader in as many places in Mondstadt as he possibly can. We can agree on that, right? Basically any accessible place that has a decently-flat surface is free game, but he does have a preference for the riskier spots. Specifically riskier of getting caught. Makes it all the more thrilling, y’know?

a list of places i absolutely think kaeya has fucked reader:

Jean's office. That goes without saying; when he was standing in for her as Acting Grand Master during her illness, he had to take advantage of it somehow - and you were so cute as you looked around it and mumbled about how the two of you were going to get caught, even as he bent you over her desk and pounded you so hard you saw stars. It still counts as working; he occasionally let his eyes wander to the paperwork he was supposed to be reviewing. You were just there to help him . . . concentrate.

The library, when Lisa was on one of her tea breaks - you had to be very quiet as Kaeya pulled you onto his lap and let his hand whisper up your thigh, because there's no telling when she'll appear out of nowhere - and if she heard the noises you usually made? Kaeya's certain he'd be barred from the library for far longer than would be preferable. He needs to do some research sometimes, too!

The Angel's Share. Upstairs, whilst Diluc is behind the bar; when he's gotten you into a dark corner and all of the other patrons are too drunk to notice anything, he's started kissing you and pushed you against a wall and told you not to give the game away. Everyone will think you're getting a little too into the kiss, yes - but they'll never guess that Kaeya's three fingers deep inside you whilst his mouth catches your whimpers.

More alleys than he'd care to expound on; at this point, it's harder to find an alley that you haven't had a little nightly exploration within. You always tease Kaeya that one night the Dark Night Hero is going to find what the two of you are up to and steal you away, punishing him for corrupting a poor innocent of Monstadt - but for some reason, that thought just makes him fuck you a little rougher.

Several abandoned Treasure Hoarder camps, out in the wilderness, that he's been sent to have a look at - Kaeya and the Treasure Hoarders have a kind of agreement, yes, but he still needs to assert that he's the one in charge . . . so when they leave behind maps or books or crates, he figures the best way to do this is to fuck you on every single one of them. Don't question his methods.

Dragonspine, the few times he's had to go there; don't worry, the cold doesn't bother Kaeya at all, and he's willing to warm you up when you need it.

Windrise, far too close to the statue of Barbatos for your own comfort - people come there to pray and reflect, you tell Kaeya, as he bites into the soft flesh of your inner thigh and your hands tangle in his hair. Kaeya raises the eyebrow of his visible eye. "I'm praying too," he tells you, with a cocky grin. "But my altar tastes far better than any statue--"