#edwin's expression was very hard because he wanted to look at charles and i was like no!!! you're supposed to be reading!!

[technically-human]

Hello! I absolutely adore your art it’s lovely 💙

Could I request Edwin reading to Charles to comfort him after a difficult case? It’s my favorite trope and I’d love to see your take on it :) have a wonderful day!

I have actually made a similar drawing before here but it's never too much comfort for Charles!

Ko-Fi

[paraphwrites]

followup on my post about dbda & loneliness.

'dead boy detectives' is a show where fundamentally, every character is very very lonely. but, they make each other less lonely. jenny is a surrogate parent for crystal, edwin and niko are always there for each other, crystal and charles understand each other, charles and edwin complete each other. there's just something so beautiful that even though they are all in pain and lonely, they are not alone, they have friends who would literally die for them.

i realized i was queer pretty young and in a very non-accepting environment. i was the only queer person i knew for a really long time, and that was really hard for me. and there was something devastatingly beautiful about watching edwin go through the a similar journey and not be alone.

dbda is important for a million reasons. but i would like to focus on one reason in particular.

'dead boy detectives' illustrates that there are multiple different ways to realize one's queer identity. you have simon, who is so wrapped up in self-hatred that he tears other people down with him. you have edwin, who is utterly unwilling to express any desire in such a way but ultimately embraces it. you have monty, who seems to have always known he was queer and always been very okay with that. you have charles, (i include him because i believe he is, but that can be debated) who goes on a long journey to realize it due to his circumstances. and they are all valid, and they are all real, and some of them hurt other people. because when the world hurts you so fundamentally, sometimes you end up hurting other people too. and you have people who have never had an issue with being queer, and that's great. and you have people who have to come to terms with it and it is hard and it is beautiful but they don't have to do it alone.

and that MATTERS. so often in media, we have a narrow, limited perspective for what realizing one's queer identity means. but there are so, so many different ways to figure yourself out, and dbda shows that in a very tangible and real way

the stories you tell are the stories we hear. so if @netflix only wants to tell stories about straight white people (maybe featuring a token gay character, so they can put it under the lgbt section), then that is the stories that people will hear

chimamanda ngozi adichie gave an incredible ted talk, back in 2009, called 'the danger of a single story.' in it, she discusses how, when you only tell & hear a singular story about a certain group of people, that becomes how you perceive the entire populace.

when a coming out journey is limited to its popular depiction (*realizes* *is kinda sad* *gets a bf*) then that is what all queer people are reduced to

look, i get that netflix has a couple of great shows featuring multiple queer characters, and i've watched & loved most of them. but god if i am not tired of people telling me to watch heartstopper. (i did & it's great & that's not the point.) the point IS that there should not be Two Gay Shows on your platform. because then the entirety of queer people are reduced to that.

now, maybe if it was just dbda, i wouldn't be so up in arms.

BUT THE FUCKING PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY ADAPTATION?????????????????????????????????

you CANNOT reduce queer people to shows that aren't worth renewing. you CANNOT erase queer characters from classic lit just because you want it to be more mainstream. when you do that, you are reducing queer identities to the single story you are willing to tell.

(to be clear i'm not blaming all of homophobia on netflix. i am simply pointing out a way in which they are contributing)

[suzyblue0292]

Rewatch - Dead Boy Detectives S1E1 - The Case of Crystal Palace

We are introduced to Edwin guarding Charles or the boys guardian each other

The bickering

They are time cards not library cards.

Does the show often say one thing and show another? REVISIT

“Death will take us” v Death asking Wilfred if he is ready

The boxing scene is interesting given everything we learn about Edwin later - getting out of hell couldn’t have been easy he has to have more skill than Charles gives him credit for - or they want the audience to give him less credit

You are the brawn? - I feel like they want us to doubt the narrative. 

We are presented with Crystal as a good person. (Aside from being American apparently). Again we are being told one thing so we are blindsided by the other. 

The looks on the boys' faces when they observe Crystal. 

We never see them as relaxed looking as they are in the office again. 

Edwin knows how to knit.

Was there a debate over the disguises?

She has her purse and phone. Does the memory loss prevent her from reading her contacts/ID?? 

Charles does not hesitate to call Edwin on his BS - he also knows that Edwin is jealous (just not the exact nature of said jealousy) - but he said it himself during the boxing scene - he knows Edwin hates change - and the very first thing we see him doing in the next scene is defending Edwin to Crystal

This is also how we learn about the “Clerical error” - is this the extent of Charles’ knowledge or the best way he has to explain it?

We start to see the meaner side of Crystal but Charles' good nature still acts a deterrent from following that to a conclusion.

Charles’ admits that part of the reason its so good to talk to Crystal is because she’s living and his age - they probably don’t meet a huge amount of teenage ghosts - although I would guess they might have more unfinished business than most - I have a feeling its the living part that’s the biggest appeal

What is Edwin doing with the coffee??

Why are you warning Edwin about the cleaver, Charles? 

Crystal is carrying a considerable amount of cash - but no cards?

Edwin gets them a clue quickly through mirror travel. - The Cat King and his little bracelet are quite the plot devices. 

Why so rude to the cat Charles?

Also did the Crow not tip off the whole witch thing?

Crystal seems so young and vulnerable when she realizes the girls are staring.

Crystal’s mind is so desolate - all the broken picture frames - empty memories - the three eyeballs should have given it away though - “the third eye”

We know they can travel by mirror, and the normal way, but can ghosts travel through ether? How do they get in front of Crystal?

Poor Charles, no it’s not a competition but Crystal and Edwin are both terrified in their own right.

Every demonic case must be a nightmare for Edwin and now he realizes they didn’t get rid of the demon. He only knows how to express his fear in terms of case work though. 

The flashback: Simon is so clearly reaching out, but Edwin is so clearly expecting to be bullied. And the shot of him marching against the flow of other students, bless.

Its also so heartbreaking that Edwin is terrified BEFORE there is any sign the demon sacrifice will work. God only knows what he thought those boys would do. 

Five other boys died with Edwin and it seems like Sa ’al obliterates their bodies. Was there anything for the school to give the parents to bury? Just ashes? No wonder it was deemed an act of God. Six boys either vanished or reduced to ashes. 

And no wonder the memory drives Edwin to recklessness. 

Jenny laying down the hard truth. 

“I get angry. It's like knowing you have a home but being unable to get there.” Poster child speaks to poster child.

Yeah, I totally thought Niko was going to be the love interest.

Why never tell Edwin? Because he really can’t go home?

I try to be extra happy for all of us. - Oh Charles.

And now the boy who was dragged to hell learns that Crystal chose her demon. Ouch.

Edwin isn’t just yelling at Crystal. He’s reminding Charles too. “You are sharp and fun, but this isn’t a game.”

They are such vulnerable children, and then so cute as they plot.

Poor Jenny. She doesn’t doesn’t even get paid teacher’s wages for this shit.

Edwin does a good job of actually telling Crystal the stakes with the plastic girl bit. She  might be cottoning on. 

Charles is comforting Crystal, but holding Edwin.

Note that Charles doesn’t roll his eyes or dispute “and we’re punishing you.” After Edwin’s outburst and Crystal’s confession his loyalties seem to have tipped back a bit.

Why doesn’t it trip Edwin that Esther left her kettle on? It worried me from word go.

Again, Charles is the brawn but Edwin is the one checking out the weird witch’s lair.

So many fucking shoes.

I love Esther. I know I shouldn’t but….

Can Charles actually understand the Crow?

Edwin has such poor form, but he does as well as Charles when it comes down to it.

Round 1 of Esther underestimating Crystal

Edwin goes straight to help Crystal, despite his concern for Charles possessing Esther. 

Okay was anyone else expecting that kid to get mowed down crossing the street?

Oh Charles, counting your chickens to soon is a bad idea.

It’s interesting that Charles possessing someone sets off an alarm for them both - this must not be the first time they’ve tangled with the afterlife for them to have a joint file.

[seiya-starsniper]

Six Degrees of Separation - Ch 3 (Sandman x Dead Boy Detectives)

Relationships: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling, Edwin Paine | Edwin Payne/Charles Rowland, Crystal Palace/Charles Rowland (DCU), Johanna Constantine/Jenny Green Rating: Teen & Up | Status: Incomplete | Chapters 3/5 | Words: 3.5K

Tags: POV Multiple, Hob Gadling gives live advice to a bunch of teenagers, while helping them solve cases, that's it that's the fic, also he maybe plays matchmaker for his hot mess bestie

Summary:

The Dead Boy Detectives run into a familiar pub while out on a case, and Crystal has to contend with an unfortunate event from her past. Hob Gadling wasn't planning on adopting three teenagers and a full grown woman, but stranger things have happened in his long centuries of life.

Tumblr Posts: Chapter 1 || Chapter 2

Read Chapter 3 below, or at the above link on AO3

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

Crystal thinks she's being clever by hiding in a corner of the pub away from where most of the staff can see, but somehow, Hob finds her anyway and places a steaming hot mug of tea down on the table in front of her. 

“On the house,” he tells her, and Crystal frowns.

“I can pay,” Crystal tries to insist, reaching for her bag to pull out her wallet. Hob shakes his head and shoos away the attempt, and Crystal doesn’t have it in her to fight too hard. Not today anyways. 

“Next time then,” he tells her with an easy smile. “If I’m being honest, you look like you could use a pick-me-up right now anyways.”

She really could. Crystal imagines she looks like shit. Her eyes are bloodshot from crying, and her nose feels stuffy from all the times she’s blown it in the past hour. She hasn’t even bothered trying to hide the pile of used napkins on the table.

“You did say Tuesdays were slow,” Crystal manages to croak out, trying to keep her voice even as she takes the tea in front of her into shaking hands. 

“I did,” Hob agrees, and then he sits down in the chair opposite her and starts taking out what looks like a pile of homework from his canvas bag. “I actually have some papers to grade, if you want some company. I’m happy to listen if you want to talk about it. Or we can just sit here in silence, if you’d like.”

She does want to talk about it, but the problem is, Crystal doesn’t know where to start. Doesn’t know how to tell Hob, who is both a complete stranger and not a stranger at the same time, that her life is both the best and worst it’s ever been in a very long time. She doesn’t know how to tell him that it’s Niko’s birthday today, and that the giant shopping bag next to her on top of the table is full of dozens of manga volumes she’ll never read, but felt the need to buy because, well because .

But, true to his word, Hob doesn't press her for more conversation, instead focusing immediately on the pile of paperwork he'd stacked. Crystal watches him smile when a student gets the answer right, and frown when they get an answer wrong. Every once in a while, his face takes on a bewildered expression, and Crystal wonders just how terribly bad the answer he’s looking at is.

Crystal wonders if Niko would have been in school now if she hadn't died. She seemed happy to simply solve cases with Crystal and the boys once they’d gotten the parasite out of her, but how long would that have lasted? Did Niko want to go to university? Would she have come to London if Crystal asked her to?

“I walked by a bookshop the other day,” Crystal finally offers, unable to keep the raging storm of emotion to herself any longer. Hob looks up from his paper and puts his pen down. She has his full attention now.

“They had a new volume of a manga out on display,” Crystal continues, glancing over at the shopping bag from that exact same store. “I thought, ‘Oh I should tell Niko, she'll be so excited there’s a new volume out!’ But then I remembered Niko’s not here. Niko's not here because she died trying to save me.”

“Ah,” Hob sighs sympathetically. “You're feeling guilty you're alive and she's not.”

It shouldn’t hurt so much to hear it spoken out loud, but Crystal's tears begin anew. She drops her gaze down to the steaming mug of hot tea and blinks them away as best she can, knowing that the hitch in her breathing gives her away anyways. 

“Survivor's guilt is a bitch,” Crystal says, and just like that, the dam of emotions she’d been holding back finally breaks. “I didn't even get to say goodbye ,” she practically wails into her mug. “We get to say goodbye to all these other strangers, to watch them go into their afterlife and I didn't even get to say goodbye to Niko. I hate it.”

It feels good, to finally get it out there in the open. To put words to her heartache, to the giant, endless maw of raw emotion and guilt. Crystal had tried to vocalize how she’d felt to Charles and Edwin, but they were too used to death, to people moving on. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, but they didn’t know what felt like to be left behind, not really. Not when it was all but guaranteed that they’d always have each other. 

“Life's unfair like that, sometimes,” Hob tells her, and the tone of his voice tells Crystal that the immortal is full of unsaid goodbyes himself. “I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance, truly.”

“You would've liked her,” Crystal replies, wanting to move away from the subject before she has another breakdown. The staff at the bookshop had definitely thought she’d gone through a bad breakup when she was paying for everything. Crystal looks back up at Hob and gives him a wry smile. “Probably way more than you liked me. She wouldn't have tried to burn the place down.”

Hob snorts. “I like you just fine as you are now, kid,” he says, returning her smile with one of his own. “Just no more arson attempts and we're good, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Crystal agrees. “Can’t guarantee a different ghost won’t try though.”

“They’re welcome to try,” Hob says, then gestures around the room. “But you’ve seen my wards. Been building them up here for almost twenty years now, not much is getting in or out of here without my permission.”

“How did you end up owning this place anyways?” Crystal asks, curiosity now burning a hole in her. “Charles and Edwin said the other night that when they first met you and were a traveling merchant or something.”

“Ah,” Hob replies, and his expression turns soft and fond. “I have this…friend, and we used to meet once a century at the old White Horse tavern down the road. For drinks. When they shut the place down, I bought this place, so we could still have someone where to go.”

Crystal narrows her eyes at the way Hob says friend and drinks .

“Is that a euphemism?” Crystal asks, and Hob chokes on his tea. “You know it’s 2024 right?” she continues. “Being gay isn’t ille—oh god, ” she cuts herself off, realization dawning upon her. “Are you in a centuries-long situationship? ” 

Hob goes into a full-on coughing fit now, but still manages to vigorously shake his head at the accusation.

“No I—cough—we’re just—cough—friends!” he insists, but Crystal isn’t convinced. 

“What do you even talk about?” she presses. “And who the hell only meets once a century for just drinks? ” she adds, putting the words in air quotes. 

“It’s complicated,” Hob replies, seeming to finally get his breathing under control. “Mostly just this and that,” the man adds, waving his hands around to emphasize the vagueness of their meetings. “You know, current events.”

“Current. Events.” Crystal repeats incredulously. Right. Yeah. Definitely a situationship. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

“You know what, next time he comes in, I’ll introduce you,” Hob huffs indignantly. His face is bright red too, and Crystal just knows that isn’t all from the loss of air to his windpipe just moments ago. “And then you can see we are just friends .”

He looks so serious, so intent on proving Crystal wrong, while still so desperately pining , that she can’t help but burst into laughter. It feels like a cord unwinds in her chest when she does, loosening a pressure she’d forgotten was there. 

“Yeah okay, sure, I’d love to meet you ‘friend’,” she replies, putting the word friend in air quotes. “But for like, actual drinks, and not ‘drinks’”, she adds with an exaggerated wink. Hob grumbles something about ‘kids these days’ which makes her laugh even more. 

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

When Crystal leaves The New Inn hours later, her heart and belly both full, she curls up with her gigantic pile of manga and reads while waiting for Edwin and Charles to get back from their latest case. Since their investigation took them to a condemned building that was quite literally falling apart and structurally unsound, Crystal had been ordered to stay home, and wait for Charles and Edwin to bring the evidence back to her. 

When they do eventually make their way back, it’s with Jenny in tow, and she’s holding a giant cake box in her arms. Crystal smiles through the mist in her eyes, when she opens the box and sees ‘Happy Birthday Niko’ in bright red letters. 

“You remembered too, huh?” Crystal hiccups.

“Stop it, I don’t want to cry too,” Jenny replies, her voice also wavering. Her hands are shaking when she places the cake box down on the table. It’s way too much cake for two people to eat, since Edwin and Charles don’t partake, and Crystal thinks she’s going to be eating leftover cake for the next week at least. Jenny handles the cutting of the cake, and when the two of them each have a slice in hand, Edwin clears his throat, directing their attention to him.

“Right then. A celebration of Niko is not complete without Scooby-Doo,” he declares, and though his tone is light and teasing, Crystal can hear the emotional weight behind it too. 

“Right,” Crystal agrees, and when Charles wraps his arm around her, she gives up all pretense of not wanting to cry, and sobs openly into his shoulder. “I’ll get the TV set up. Just—give me a minute.”

Crystal falls asleep to the sound of cartoon feet running away from the latest villain of the week, and in the moments just before her mind is claimed by the Dreaming, she swears she catches the scent of poppies and dandelions.

[terresdebrume]

Actually, speaking of Charles and Crystal's situationship and how it interacts with Charles' trauma, I have some thoughts about their two main scenes (the kiss and the not break up) and I'm going to start with the kissing scene and keep the other one for a different post

Prefacing this with the fact that Crystal is doing her best in a shitty situation with no model for or experience with healthy relationships and while I'm looking at this from the angle of 'this is actually probably fucking Charles up a fair bit' I am NOT here for Crystal bashing (hmu if you want to talk about Crystal's fucked up situation though, girl is Going Through It)

So the thing about the C/C kissing scene is that not only is it more about both of them trying to get the Devlin house out of their head, I think it's also the result of Charles' survival mechanism meeting the fact that Crystal is too in her head to be emotionally available when Charles needs it, and as a result kind of paves the way for Charles' later outburst

As a reminder, the scene goes like this (transcribing this with netflix on):

Charles & Crystal sit on Crystal's bed. Both fiddle with their hands, both are looking at the floor. Crystal: Today totally sucked. Charles: Yeah. Yeah it did. Crystal, glancing at Charles: Mmm, at least it's over now. Charles, still not looking at her, visibly tense: You know I've... [chuckles] Wow. I've been angry for such a long time. He looks at Crystal Crystal, nodding: Mmm. And I'm tired of riddles and spirits and demons and not being any closer to finding out who the hell I am. Charles does a little sigh and relax/deflate. Crystal, looking at Charles: I just want something that's real. Charles visibly makes a decision, then kisses Crystal. Crystal, surprised, rubbing her lips like they tingle: Could you even feel that? Charles: No. Shakes his head. But it doesn't matter. They kiss again.

The thing that strikes me here is that Charles was actually trying to talk about his trauma. He starts the scene wanting to discuss his emotions, something that he probably assumes

Would make Edwin uncomfortable

Crystal will understand because at this point I think he still thinks Crystal is angry like he is

I'm also reasonably sure he doesn't know about Crystal's encounter with David in the house. I don't think Edwin would have mentioned it, for one. Secondly, the scene reads like this is the first occasion they've had to sit down and discuss anything (so no prior catch up) and thirdly, and most relevantly, I think if Charles knew about David's little stunt while he was in the loop, it wouldn't even occur to him to bring up his personal issues.

Again, this is not a diss against Crystal. I think if she realized what Charles was trying to do she'd do her best to listen. Unfortunately, she doesn't realize, and I think what happens here is that Charles' takeaway is that Crystal's ongoing issues need to be prioritized over the recent development with his, because she needs comfort and Charles fixes things both as a protection measure and as a way to be loved needed and appreciated.

So, when Crystal says she needs something real, I think Charles makes a conscious decision* to give her something real and nice that'll take her mind away from the bad places it's stuck in. At the same time, I think he's also sinking into kissing (which he's missed) and being seen by someone his age who's alive so he can tell himself that it's close enough to what he wants for him to be okay...and in doing so, he adds a layer of repression to a very recent re-traumatizing event and precipitates the build up for the lethal confrontation with the Night Nurse.

*Based on the fact that Crystal has expressed interest in the option before. I'm 100% positive the kiss wouldn't have happened if Crystal had been on a hard no from the start.

[shitty-check-please-aus]

2020 Books Read So Far

Note: Most of these are audiobooks (listening to books counts as reading books and if you disagree I’d ask you to consider why you believe that), books I started and didn’t finish will be listed but not reviewed, and all my opinions are extremely subjective. I’m putting this on this blog because I want to and I think it’ll help me keep track of what I’ve read if I write it down in a couple places. 

Some notes:

I’m surprised that most of these are nonfiction! I don’t usually think of myself as a nonfiction reader. 

Having audiobooks has made me way more productive as a reader, since I can read while I’m doing repetitive tasks at work, when I have to stand on the bus, when I’m running, etc. 

Naked, by David Sedaris

3/5, the audiobook was “unabridged selections” which means “we didn’t edit the individual essays but you’re only getting half the book”– it would probably have been a 4/5 if it was a whole book. I liked that Amy Sedaris was reading parts of it, but that’s because I like her more than I like her brother. This is sort of an example of the difference between “comedic” and “humorous,” because it’s definitely the latter. 

Read it if: you want to read something pretty fucking weird. 

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, by Sarah Vowell

4/5, I saw this recommended a lot when Hamilton first came out so it’s been in the back of my mind for a good while. The book had a great cast, and having different people reading the historical quotes was an excellent touch! 

However, I think Vowell’s conversational style is a little jarring here sometimes. It’s like “wait, why are you talking about Bruce Springsteen, I’m not that familiar with his work but he definitely isn’t from Revolutionary War times.” I got her book Assassination Vacation at a used bookshop recently as well, and both books suffer from post-2016 hindsight, where she’ll say something about how incompetent and foolish the politicians of her time are, and I just have to snort to myself and say “Sarah, you’re going to lose your goddamn mind soon.” That’s a bit of an unfair reaction, but it’s hard to avoid having it.

I was also, maybe unfairly, expecting to learn more than I did. The problem is that I know a Lot about the Revolutionary War, and from the introduction I thought we’d hear more about Lafayette’s later life (my knowledge drops sharply after about 1810). The book basically ends after the Battle of Yorktown, though.

Read it if: you have not seen/listened to both Hamilton and 1776, or if you want to read a summary of the Revolutionary War with a focus on one French captain. 

Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell

3/5, honestly maybe a 2.5/5. Okay, so. Either I know a lot more about American History than I felt like I did or this is again a very surface level thing. Part of it is because she spends 123 pages on Abe Lincoln. There are 255 pages total. 2/3 of the states I’ve lived in are Indiana and Illinois, two states that fight about claiming Lincoln as their own, and I’ve been to D.C. 4 or 5 times, so I feel like I know enough about Lincoln. I know about John Wilkes Booth, and his brother Edwin who saved Lincoln’s son’s life, and the death train that took Lincoln’s body around the country. I did enjoy learning about the doctor who was probably conspiring with Booth and how he ended up saving tons of lives in prison when there was a yellow fever outbreak (also to be briefly unbearably nitpicky: I think she might have mixed up dengue and yellow fever? She calls yellow fever “breakbone” but I can only find instances online of people calling dengue fever that. Maybe they called them all breakbone in the late 1800s. If anyone reading this is an epidemiologist, let me know).

It was interesting to hear that Charles Guiteau, killer of President Garfield, was part of the Oneida cult. I’m trying to think of anything notable she said about Leon Czolgosz, killer of President McKinley. I guess she talks about how people assumed he was a foreigner because of his name, but I already listened to “The Ballad of Czolgosz” in Assassins, so I knew “Czolgosz, angry man, born in the middle of Michigan.”

This one is from 2005 so the politics stuff is a little more interesting, since at the time I was busy learning multiplication and spending one entire baseball season learning about baseball and following my team (they won the world series, I have excellent timing). I will say that in 2005 we did have Google, so I am again annoyed with some of her asides and personal anecdotes. Look, if you go to the Hemingway house and you don’t know there will be cats there, that’s on you if you don’t bring your Claritin. Hemingway is associated with only two good things, six-toed cats and Daiquiris. 

She also does not acknowledge that the parties basically switched platforms? Lincoln’s Republican party is not today’s Republican party, in fact kind of the opposite, so it’s weird that she starts the book with a dedication that’s like “to my lifelong Democrat grandpa, he’d be pissed I dedicated a book about 3 Republicans to him.” I guess she does sometimes say stuff like “how did Lincoln’s party become Reagan’s” (paraphrase), but she doesn’t actually get into it. 

Speaking of Democrats, she literally spends more time talking about Pablo Picasso than she spends talking about JFK. She doesn’t explain why she didn’t talk about JFK, but it seems bizarre to me to write a book about American assassinations and to leave out John Fucking Kennedy. Literally I’ve talked more about JFK in this section than she did in her assassin book. It’s not until page 253 that JFK gets a full paragraph. There are 255 pages total. Truly, if she’d taken a paragraph to be like “I’m focusing on the presidents who were elected before 1900″ or “the presidents whose immediate families aren’t still alive” or even “I didn’t want to travel to Dallas for research” or SOMETHING to explain why she left out JFK, I would have understood it more instead of flipping through the pages wondering what was going on. 

Read it if: You do not listen to too many history podcasts and you didn’t read the Wikipedia page for the musical Assassins. And I guess if you don’t want to acknowledge that JFK did also get assassinated and that was kind of a big deal. Actually just listen to Assassins instead. 

And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

5/5 as a mystery, 0/5 for its original title (not gonna say it here but if you’ve ever googled the name of HP Lovecraft’s cat, it’s along those lines). Less than 6 hours, narrated by Dan Stevens from Downton Abbey, fairly ideal as an audiobook. I am 95% sure I’ve already read this, because I spent the summer before I started high school reading every Agatha Christie book in the library (I do not have a list of all the Agatha Christie books in my library the summer of 2010, so there is some question). 

Read if: you want to hear the guy from Downton Abbey deliver the line “I’m not a complete fool!” in a tone that makes it sound like “I’m not a fucking moron!” Sidenote: Can anyone tell me if Brits say “solder” by pronouncing the L that I’ve always heard as a silent L? Or if Dan Stevens just fucked up that one word?

Over The Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love, by Jonathan Van Ness

4.5/5

This was a super enjoyable audiobook! It’s a testament to JVN’s considerable charisma that this book is full of him giving people in his past who would rather be anonymous Russian names, and it doesn’t get grating (as a Marina, however, I was shocked to not hear my name at any point; most of the other Marina’s I’ve met in my life are Russian). JVN has had a wild ride in life, and it’s a really raw, honest story of how he became who he is. I will say that if you are interested in reading this, please look up the trigger warnings; there are a lot of things that could be triggering to people. 

I feel a little bad at how much more I liked this one compared to Tan France’s memoir, but I also feel like whoever was ghostwriting that one did a bad job at making Tan seem... not extremely defensive, cocky, and prickly (it seems that JVN did not use a ghostwriter; Tan’s on the other hand, let the phrase “I’m proud to be a petty bitch” make it into the final proof several times). Also JVN advocates going to therapy in his book, while Tan kind of says that you should only go to therapy if you have no friends or family or life partner to talk to, which I fundamentally disagree with. I don’t know. I also feel like, if I were to get a makeover from the Fab 5, Jonathan would love my hair (I have great hair) while Tan would say that I’m dressing too old for a 24 year old and then take me to fucking Lane Bryant or Torrid (I wear a size 16 US so IRL options are limited). 

Read if: You like Queer Eye or Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness

Medallion Status, by John Hodgman

4.5/5

I really like John Hodgman’s podcast, and I got to ask him a question at an event he did at the Field Museum and he was very nice, so I went into this inclined to enjoy it. 

And I did! I had a good time reading it. I read it the first week of January and now it’s the second week of February so I have already erased much of the book’s content from my mind, but he somehow made the perspective of being a formerly kinda famous person really interesting. I would also recommend Vacationland, particularly if anyone wants to write an au where Nursey, as a New Yorker, has a vacation home in Dex’s town in Maine. That’s right, I brought it back around to the topic of this blog. And that would be a fucking fantastic au. 

Read it if: you like memoirs! it’s a good one. 

Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

Gonna give this one a 3/5 for performance, because Dan Stevens (again, because I liked his narration in the other one) does a really annoying American accent for a few characters, and an extremely bad Italian accent for another. I’m starting this review only a few hours in, so if it turns out that the Italian man is not Italian, I’ll revoke my criticism. Still a 5/5 mystery, though. I did have to stop many times when they were talking about Istanbul to go over to Spotify and play “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by They Might Be Giants. 

Books abandoned in 2020 (so far) (no real spoilers, I didn’t get more than a few chapters into any of them):

The Unhoneymooners, Christina Lauren

I got to a point where the main character was telling a lie that would put her newly accepted job into jeopardy, and it stressed me out so much as a relatively new hire that I stopped listening for the day and started another one, and then the week had passed and then the library took it back. I think I’d enjoy it more if I was reading it physically and I could control how fast I got through awkward parts (I am practically allergic to secondhand embarrassment). The performance was good and I did get a hankering for cheese curds. 

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

I had like three audiobooks checked out at the same time, and even though this was again an abridged version, I just didn’t have time for all of them. My mom has a physical copy, I’ll borrow that at some point. 

The Witch Elm, Tana French

This is one I may revisit someday. The main character is kind of an asshole, which is the point of his character I think, but it made it hard to get into the story. It’s also a 22 hour audiobook, which is kind of insanely long. Additionally, the narrator has a very slow way of talking, but if I tried to speed up the rate of playback I had trouble understanding his accent (I think I just have trouble processing really fast speech in general as well, but I would’ve had an easier time understanding someone with the same accent as me). Anyways, someone put a hold on it at the library and then I didn’t check it out again. 

[husheduphistory]

Book of the Dead: A Oujia Board, a Claim, and Mark Twain

It's a thrilling moment for any author, the first time they can look into their hands and see an officially published copy of their work, ready to be unleashed for mass public consumption. Arriving at this moment can be hard-fought and visions of the outcome can be grand. Will be a best seller? Could it become a blockbuster film? Will this be the title to make them a household name and enter their work into the hallowed halls of classics?

But, there is another way it can turn that is filled with potential nightmares. Financial failure? Bad reviews? Accusations of plagiarism? All of these have the power to ruin an author but when Emily Grant Hutchings was accused of publishing someone else's ideas she was not surprised. In fact, she fully acknowledged that the story was not hers. According to her it was the a brand new offering from beloved American author Mark Twain who, according to Hutchings, fully supported her publishing his work. This was because he was unable to, he had been dead for seven years.

Emily Grant Hutchings was born in Hannibal, Missouri, the youngest of six to her doctor mother and minister father. She attended the local high school and returned there after college to teach multiple languages including Latin, Greek, and German. While she taught foreign language to her students, she also was a proficient writer in her own tongue and in August 1896 Hutchings moved to St. Louis, Missouri to take a position as a writer for the St. Louis Republic. The position was for only six months but while traveling to Memphis to gather information for an upcoming story Emily met Charles Edwin Hutchings. Charles was an admirer of her work, having enjoyed a piece she authored in June 1897 focusing on an interest they both shared, another writer from Hannibal Missouri named Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. By the time Emily was due to move back to St. Louis, she and Edwin were married.

Emily Grant Hutchings.

The Hutchings pair had the opportunity to meet their mutual figure of admiration in June 1902 when Twain came to St. Louis to address the Art Student's Association at a luncheon held in his honor. Mr. Hutchings wrote down the speech given by Twain and proceeded to send the author a copy of the words he spoke that afternoon. On June 12th Twain wrote back to Mr. Hutchings thanking him for the record stating "I ought to be very grateful to you for making that verbatim report and printing it, and I am." It was this letter that began a string of correspondence between Twain and both the Hutchings, a connection that may not have been overly enjoyed by Twain given a note written on an envelope from Emily where he scrawled simply, "Idiot! Preserve this.”

Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain.

When Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910 most of the world was forced to resign itself to the fact that one of its great literary minds was gone. But, there was a large number of people that raised the question ".....is he though?"

Beginning in the 1840s Americans became deeply enveloped in the practice of Spiritualism, a belief system that the spirits of those departed were not only present among the living, but were fully capable of communicating with them and evolving far beyond what their earthly selves ever could have dreamed. After experiencing such mass tragedies like the Civil War, the practice exploded with people desperate to make contact with those departed. A common tool used by Spiritualists were talking boards engraved with the letters of the alphabet and numbers which were selected with a planchette to form messages from the dead. In 1890 the Spiritualism field gained it's signature tool with the invention of the Ouija board.

Ouija board circa 1915.

With death being so abundant and often unpredictable it only made sense to the believers in Spiritualism that all those departed would still have something to say, or in some cases, unfinished work to complete. According to Emily Hutchings it was March 1915 when she was asked to attend a meeting for a "small psychical research society.” The scheduled speaker failed to show so the hostess asked another  woman named Lola V. Hays to entertain everyone with her talking board. To their amazement the spirit introduced itself to the group as none other than "Samuel L. Clemens, lazy Sam.” Being from his hometown, Emily was asked to say something but she fell silent. She later asked for another meeting with Hays and when the two again sat together some rules were laid out. Hays would have her hands placed on the planchette with her eyes closed while Hutchings recorded the messages coming through. Almost immediately Twain came through and he had a odd request, "I tried to write a romance once, and the little wife laughed at it. I still think it is good stuff and I want it written..." After a few minutes of exchanges Hutchings claims it was revealed that after many attempts at fining a living human to bring his unfinished work to life "a twenty-minute test with me seemed to convince him that in me he had found the negative side of the mysterious human mechanism for which he had been waiting.”

This last story that Mark Twain reached across the veil to write was entitled Jap Herron, the tale of Jasper James Herron, a boy born to a Missouri family after the Civil War. Born into poverty, Jasper James, nicknamed "Jap", finds himself under the wings of a well-to-do newspaper family and through many trials and tribulations, is able to find success and help revive his struggling town. The story is filled with the unique flavors and mannerisms found in Twain's other classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but the method through which this tale allegedly came to light was anything but familiar. 

According to Hutchings, the transmission from Twain through Hays was not a smooth process with Hutchings and her husband needing to modify the board to add punctuation, numerous chapter revisions, Twain expressing disgust with the type of tobacco being smoked by Mr. Hutchings during one session, and Twain scolding them "...don't try to correct my grammar. I know what I want to say. And, dear ladies, when I say d-a-m-n, please don t write d-a-r-n. Don t try to smooth it out. This is not a smooth story."

The story of Jap Herron was published in the fall of 1917 by book dealer Mitchell Kennerley and while the authorship was granted to Hutchings the full title of the work read "Jap Herron: A Novel Written From The Ouija Board" with a sketch of Twain placed next to the title page. Also included in the volume was an introduction entitled "The Coming of Jap Herron" where Hutchings described in detail how this last story of Mark Twain came to her through the talking board. 

The title page for Jap Herron.

The claim of a book written from beyond the grave should have raised immediate questions, but this was not the only book to do so. Only a year earlier in 1916 national attention was given to the book "Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery" which was allegedly the collected writings of a spirit named Patience Worth that were dictated via Ouija Board to a woman named Pearl Curran, who just happened to be friends with Emily Hutchings. In the October 14th 1916 edition of the magazine Literary Digest the rumor of the upcoming postmortem book by Twain was mentioned with the quip

"Nearly everybody in St. Louis is monkeying with "weejie-boards" and talking to dead novelists! The call for the little heart-shaped things on wheels, known as ouija-boards by the elect, has sent prices shooting skyward, and shipments of them are coming to St. Louis from all over the country. Mark Twain is the latest author said to speak to those on earth by this unearthly means, and it is whispered there is discord among those spooks who are seeking possession of the mental pipe-lines to the mystic pointers.”

Once released, Jap Herron was not the recipient of kind words and the book review from the September 9th 1917 edition of the New York Times reported "If this is the best that 'Mark Twain' can do by reaching across the barrier, the army of admirers that his works have won for him will all hope that he will hereafter respect that boundary.” But, the strongest blow to Hutchings's release did not come from a book reviewer, but from Twain's daughter, Clara Clemens.

Clara Clemens.

Clemens, the Mark Twain estate, and publishing house Harper & Brothers had the sole rights to all of Mark Twain's work and the publication by Hutchings and Kennerly threw various wrenches into established copyright law. Could a dead person be recognized as an active author? If so, what about the copyright on Samuel Clemen's pen name "Mark Twain" which was also held by Harper & Brothers? Would it be legal if it was under the Clemens name? Twain was not listed as an author but having his picture alongside the title page and the detailed description of him communicating through Hutchings and Hays clearly pointed at his authorship of the work. Hutchings was backed into a difficult corner. The book's claim to fame (and sales) was that it was written by well-known author Mark Twain and not the relatively unknown Emily Hutchings. But, the more Hutchings and Kennerly stuck to the story that this was an original story by Mark Twain the stronger they made the case against themselves putting legal victory firmly in the hands of Clemens and Harper & Brothers. The Ouija board wielding authors simply had nowhere to turn.

Twain's publishers and Clemens, who in a February 1918 interview with the New York Times called the publication "silly, foolish, stupid, and crazy", filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court on June 8th 1918 and requested that all copies of the book be prohibited from being sold and subsequently destroyed. The lawsuit became the talk of major newspapers with articles teeming with speculation. Would Hutchings be required to use the Ouija board in court? Could the spirit of Mark Twain be made a witness? Is spirit testimony valid in a court of law, especially the highest court in the land? While there were eagerly awaited answers for these questions, they would never get to be formerly asked. Before the case could ever get to a courtroom Hutchings and Kennerly agreed to quietly pull the book from further publication and most copies were destroyed.

One surviving copy of Jap Herron with missing dust cover.

The disappearance of Jap Herron from further publication accompanied the name Emily Grant Hutchings which quickly faded into obscurity. She never retracted her claims of having the work dictated to her by Mark Twain.

Today, physical copies of the book are rare and sell for large sums of money.

The text of Jap Herron can be read here