#here queer and covered in cat fur

[an-sceal]

Have I spammed you with pet pics lately? Bisquick got lots of gifts for Yule, including a new scarf so the Yule Cat wouldn't eat him.

He and his sisters, Widget and Burke, got a new cat tree. Widget models one of the caves here:

And Keeley celebrated her first hatch day on 12/21/23. There were apple slices and new toys.

[deconstructthesoup]

I've been thinking a little bit about how the Cat King expresses his affection, and specifically, how the fandom interprets it.

There's some people who see how he interacts with Edwin and think "oh my god, he's such a simp, Edwin really has this sexy catboy wrapped around his little finger," and there's some people who see how he interacts with Edwin and think "yowza, learn to take a hint, he's not interested in you and your fuckboy fur coat," which, y'know, are both valid. I love the Cat King, but he's clearly not a fan of boundaries---outside of his own, of course.

Which... is the point, isn't it? Because here's the thing---we all like to analyze the Cat King as if he's human, but... he's not.

He's a cat. And that's how cats are.

Let's look back at his first interaction with Edwin. Our sassy Edwardian boy has used magic on one of his cats, and he's pissed, because cats are protective over what they consider "theirs---" and seeing as he's the Cat King, all of the cats in Port Townsend are his. He's bitchy and rude, cutting Edwin off when he tries to explain himself, and doesn't exactly seem like he's a merciful guy.

Then comes the moment where he whisks Edwin away, and he gets a closer look. The Cat King realizes that he's handsome, he's clearly queer, and that there is something fascinating about him. So he gets closer, he gets intimate, and it's working. Even in the throes of internalized homophobia, Edwin's getting into it, and... the Cat King self-sabotages, slapping a binding spell onto him.

A cat hisses at you when you attempt to reach out your hand and reason with it. It changes its mind, and it comes up to you, purring. And just when you're about to scratch it behind its ears, it freaks out, scratching you on the hand.

Sure, right after that, the Cat King lays out the terms---the binding spell (which, honestly, is actually a pretty fitting punishment given that Edwin used a binding spell on that cat) can be taken off, "and I'm sure we can work something out." That's a line that's probably worked before, and that's a line that probably could've worked, but the damage is done. So the Cat King gets irritated, sneering at Edwin's "old-fashioned sensibilities," and gives him your classic trickster seems-easy-but-is-a-lot-harder-than-it-looks deal. And we don't see him again for a couple episodes... at least, not until Edwin gets that little cat-scratch at the lighthouse.

When a cat scratches your hand, you give it a wide berth. Even if it immediately changes its mind and meows for attention, you don't trust it anymore. So it gets pissy, getting more and more annoyed the more you ignore it, until it gives up and bites you when you won't give it pets.

Now, the Cat King has realized that Edwin's getting close. He's counted almost all the cats, and it won't be long before he completes the task and books it out of town. So, the Cat King starts flirting even more, even going so far as to mimic Monty and Charles if that's what it'll take. When that fails, and when getting Edwin to open up fails, the Cat King lets out a nervous little laugh and tells Edwin that he's way off, when in fact he couldn't be closer.

Once a cat realizes that it likes you, it becomes incredibly needy. It trots along after you, it begs for attention and love, it sits on your laptop and jumps up on the kitchen counter and will attempt to insert itself into any and all activities you might be doing. And while that may be the cat's way of expressing love, there's no denying that it is ignoring all of your personal boundaries and generally getting in the way of you doing anything---other than, of course, paying attention to it.

And then comes the moment in the forest. The Cat King shows up with a fancy chandelier to blow Monty's cover---why now? Because Monty isn't just a romantic threat, he's trying to do something that'll take away Edwin for good. Once the cover's blown, and once Monty storms off, the Cat King uses this as an opportunity---I just saved his life, maybe he'll notice me now---and Edwin snaps, dropping one of the best lines in the whole series.

This is the first time, mind you, that Edwin has really pushed back. He's been resistant before, sure, but he's never said or done anything that indicates that he really wanted this dance to end. And I don't even think the Cat King realized that he was crossing a line, had been crossing a line since he slapped that bracelet on. But when Edwin says that he's not the Cat King's toy to yank around, that he's nothing more than an inconvenience, that's a big old wake-up call for our boy---and of course, he takes it horribly, snarling after Edwin that he'll be stuck in this town if he walks away, that he'll stop playing nice, just fucking NOTICE me already why don't you?

There always comes a time when you're fed up with how invasive your cat's being. Maybe you've just had a bad day, maybe it's genuinely messing up something important that you're doing, but you break out the spray bottle. And how does it respond? With a hiss, with a scamper away, and with a baleful glare over its shoulder. It knows it's done something wrong, but it doesn't fully understand, and it's mad at you.

Afterwards, Edwin gets dragged into hell, and that breaks the charm on the bracelet. And the Cat King's left to think.

There's some conflicting emotions there, of course. He's moodily playing with the bracelet when Esther shows up, showing that he probably does care, but there's still something to be said about how he immediately calls Edwin a "tease" and hates himself for being willing to wait for him if and when he ever returns from Hell (which is very noble of you, Thomas, totally way more of a meaningful gesture than actually going down there to get him back---which, as a self-described eternal being, would probably be easier for you to do than Charles. Just sayin'). But as much as I love to clown on that, the Cat King does die in that scene, and it's only after that that he spills to Esther.

This, I think, is where the Cat King stops acting like a cat, and starts acting human. Because he doesn't go and see Edwin when he gets back---he's realized that he kind of was in the wrong, and he's giving him space. And I'm sure it can't have been fun knowing that Edwin and Charles only got kidnapped by Esther because of information that he let slip.

But when the boys and Crystal (and maybe Jenny) are about to leave, the Cat King visits Edwin to pay his respects to Niko. He gives Edwin a lily, which several people have pointed out is fatal to cats. He's still flirty, sure, but he's more understated now. No more tricks, no more spells. Just him. And that's the version of him that gets that little cheek kiss goodbye.

Because even cats can learn that there's a better way to love.

[sharpedgedfool]

Hello I was just wondering if we could get some more stuff and ideas about the sonadow future museum au (im just going to call it that cuz thats shorter)

heres a quick sketch cuz I really liked the designs👍

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YES YOU CAN AND IL OVE UR STYLE WITH IT???? I love how uncle-chuck-esc Sonic looks it's the exact vibe I wanted him to have 10/10

I'm in the process of writing this au as an actual story but I'm barely a chapter in yet, but I'll give some more snippets about Shadow and a page of sketches! (its a long read im so sorry but thank you for the ask!!)

Shadow goes by 'Oliver' as his fake name, he took it from a book he read once and liked the cover. They use He/They pronouns and identifies as something non-binary, he's not in a rush to label himself (they joke they've enough to label around the museum)

He lived as a vagabond until settling in Rainmeadow Town, and being taken in by the museum's solo-curator Beatrice, who's a field mouse with a physical disability and was unable to fully access the museum after she took it over from the previous owners.

Shadow adored museums as it was one of the only places he could visit freely so he has a soft spot, and Beatrice was so nice to him so he stayed to help restore it and got too attached he ended up settling down there. He was anxious at first, but its been five years and he's comfortable living there now

He lived with Beatrice for two years, before managing to earn enough from odd-jobs to buy out the small apartment above the local B&B

He has a stray cat he's taken in who wanders around town when he's at work. The cat is known to be vicious but is a sweetheart around Shadow, somewhat mimicking Shadows own demeaner

He dresses himself as unassuming as possible, and that sometimes makes himself a target for any outsiders of the village He gets tired out easily, due to them restricting their energy so much, but they can still fight viciously (almost feral after so many years outside of civilisation) for a short amount of time though would prefer to run. Shadow also needs rest throughout the day

Due to his tight inhibitor rings, Shadows red stripes and eyes have all dimed to a dull grey, his blood however remains a harsh green so he has to be diligent to ensure he doesn't injure himself in front of anyone. If he loosened his rings they would rapidly shift back to a red and he would regain energy to use his abilities, but he hides them and is extremely paranoid about his true identity

He likes to read and cook, and has a habit of reading while walking around even in the dark. He cooks meals for his cat and refuses to give them cat food from a can

He's a huge coffee fan, and loves brewing it himself with the manual machines at home (but also will still absolutely eat the beans straight if it's been a long day)

They haven't 'aged' but they've 'grown bigger' through mutation, their spines and fur are longer so they appear more mature even if internally he hasn't changed much.

He's always wanted a motorbike, but couldn't travel with one and can't afford the upkeep

Their glasses are generic reading glasses that he doesn't really need, but he finds it grounding to have them in his vision (he feels hidden behind them)

Rainmeadow is a known queer-safe town, despite it's remoteness, and the museum has a hall they regularly hold events in (Shadow is fond of the rollerskate hang-outs they schedule)

He has frequent panic attacks and extreme anxiety, they're selectively mute and uses sign (I use BSL when I'm drawing it out) and can't be around large groups of people for too long. He lets Beatrice work at the front of the museum and he lurks around in the back, people jokingly call him a 'shadow' often (and he's gotten used to the fear that shoots down his spine at the mention of his name)

No one knows of his origins, though Beatrice knows some of his vagabond experiences and topics that makes him uneasy

Shadow has met Rouge a handful of times. When he was saving money, he was contacted by her due to his experience in the museum. Due to his lack of background information, she assumed he had been involved in criminal activity and needed his knowledge on artefacts and assistance in restoring something. Shadow agreed reluctantly, but despite his uncertainty he enjoyed working on the things she brought and Rouge found his genuine interest in history and lack of concern for her intentions to be good company. Shadow became her main contact for these things (though she rarely needs his help) and the two are on good terms despite not being close

Rouge has worked with Team Sonic on occasion, and never worked with GUN. She's infamous but her identity is unknown to the public, except her name on her calling card. A few of Sonic's gang know what she looks like as eventually after knowing them for so long she doesn't wear the spy gear around them all the time, but felt strangely comfortable around Shadow rather quickly so he's seen her face

[chainmailchalamet]

Run Rabbit, Run (Dark! Eddie Munson 🍒🪽)

tags: roommates to lovers, modern!metalhead!eddie munson(maybe not a complete face match to ST!Eddie, but his look is up to your imagination), slight predator/prey dynamic (more tags in the next part when it gets more NSFW), but expect a lil degradation, impact, knives, kind of fucked up intense dirty talk, morallygrey!eddie, they may or may not be completely human (also up to interpretation), and as usual always!black always!non-binary POV 🌟🍒

roommate!eddie munson who puts you on edge from the moment you come across him — responding to a post on a queer housing page on facebook because you get a new job that pays enough to move out your ex’s place but you still need a roommate and something about his post is just…appealing. this self-proclaimed “bisexual metalhead chef” whose love language is homemade omelettes, who waxes poetic about maintaining a harmonious home, who bakes when he’s stressed and has a black cat named cerberus (“he’s not really mine, he just likes to curl up at the foot of my bed on the weekends like i’m his little side-piece, so you know…basically mine”), and just desperately wants to live with someone who is clean and sweet and will play taste-test with him when he experiments with new recipes.

and that sounds fucking nice, ok? especially after your previous situation where you did all the cleaning and cooking and emotional labour and got cheated on for all your trouble.

and yeah, ok, maybe eddie is kind of cute in every single picture he puts up with his post — with his dark hair and dark eyes shining bright and mischievous tucked into the fur of a serious looking black cat, and his ringed hands (big, and strong-looking, and tatted up) with a guitar clutched expertly between them and his chains and his fucking tongue between his teeth when he smiles this big, dumb, razor-sharp smile even while covered in flour and wielding a tray full of mini peach galette’s. maybe he’s kind of exactly your type on paper — good in the kitchen, queer as fuck and proud of it, sharp teeth, dark eyes….

it’s not until the day you meet him in person that you start to get a little bit antsy, a little too-small in your skin. because he looks better than his pictures, which is wild. he’s got just a hint of stubble, pretty eyelashes, so much silver glinting in his ears and all through his face and a blackout tattoo that crawls up his back and some ink crawling up the side of his face a little too and god damn it, it suits him — all his ink and silver and his long curly hair half tied up in a sloppy bun. he’s so much taller in person too, so much bigger than you, and it’s kind of funny cuz he doesn’t seem like he should be so big and broad in the shoulders because he’s a fucking metalhead kitchen nerd, but — his white t-shirt stretches so nice across his chest that it’s a little bit obscene and a little bit see through so you clock just a hint of the tattoos that he must just be covered in tip to toe and he smells like tobacco and jasmine, smells so good he kind of makes your mouth water — which is just like, so fucking rude.

and maybe you’d be able to deal with all of that if he was as much as an asshole as he kind of looked — but he’s not, he opens the door to you and his eyes light up, and he’s all bright and chatty and welcoming, asking if he can hug you or shake your hand or whatever you want, i’m just super tactile, here let me take your coat, woah your hair is so fucking cool, your braids are just gorgeous, kind of like zoë kravitz in high fidelity — oh shit, yeah, totally see the vision, and you did that yourself, that’s insane, you’re so talented.

and he keeps a clean apartment , a big beautiful apartment that smells of jasmine incense and bakery — kitchen nice and organized, cast iron skillets displayed proudly on the wall, a well-stocked fridge lovingly adorned with Polaroids and magnets, and he’s all like you can use anything you want, and if you need me to pick anything just put in on the list, i got a good plug for grocery stuff, yeah, totally it’s all cool, just picked up like, so many beets for like nothing, we’re gonna be swimming in beet juice for a week.

and the living room is so comfy, big soft leather couch smothered in blankets and an electric fireplace, and a glass coffee table covered in cookbooks and a bookshelf bursting with life, and you can just see yourself lounging here, laying on your front in the plush carpet in the flow of the fireplace while he tinkers in the kitchen. and your bedroom is huge too — wood floors, high ceilings, enough space for a king bed and your clothing rack and mannequins and maybe even some room to do yoga and to tuck your sewing set-up into the corner while you watch the skyline stretch green and gorgeous ahead of you.

and the bathroom is so clean you could eat off the floors, which is crazy — there is eucalyptus hanging in the shower. the bath mat is shaped like a cherry. you almost go light-headed.

it’s all so perfect, and it sets you on edge because you know there’s trouble brewing. you know you’re going to move into this big beautiful apartment and settle right in, that you’re going to wake up every morning relieved and grateful and comfortable. that you’re going to be well-fed and so, so much happier than what you came from.

it’s all so perfect — except for eddie. eddie, who is whip-smart and a pleasure to be around, who is accommodating and a great listener, who is so sweet and sensitive when you tell him the real reason you left your old place, who is all oh, man, i’m so sorry, what a fucking prick, can’t believe he did that to you — didn’t deserve you at all, so glad you chose yourself, if you need any space just let me know, if you need anything at all, just let me know, ok?

eddie, who is so perfect that he almost has you fooled. almost — because he’s good at playing sweet and sensitive, and he’s good at playing with the expectations that people may have about what he’s going to act like based on what he looks like. he’s good at subverting — but you’re good at reading between the lines, and noticing things about people that they don’t think anyone else can see — call it a trauma response, or some kind of innate intuition, or both. it’s how you knew that your ex had been cheating on you months before you got your shit together and decided to do something about it — it’s how you could see through every single lie, even when he was lying for so long that he started to believe it himself. it’s your little superpower.

and eddie is not immune to that, no matter how good he is at wearing the skin that he shows to other people — you see the shift, the split second where he can’t hide that look in his eyes, that tick in his jaw. it’s just a split second, but you catch it, feeling his eyes on you when you look through all the pictures pinned to the fridge (eddie playing with his band, bathed in pink neon lights, eddie in his work-whites, eddie making silly faces with bowls of spaghetti smothered in grated cheese, eddie dressed down in just his sweatpants and sleep mussed hair, flipping a lazy bird at the camera, ink all down his chest and across both arms, inked all the way down to his hips in his low-slung sweats…). his gaze makes the back of your neck warm up, and you feel, syrupy slow, the way his eyes travel all the way down your body and back up, as heavy as a physical touch brushing across your skin. you let him look for a second, and when you turn your head to look back at him, and his eyes snap up to yours, he can’t tuck that glint in his eyes back fast enough.

you see it, then — the way he looks at you, like he wants to pick the meat from your bones, like he wants to crawl inside you and feel every inch of you within, like he wants to bleed you, suck you dry, make you scream. it is the look of a starving man, of a wolf licking its teeth, of a creature that just spotted something supremely tasty right as it’s ears prick up because it senses danger. it is a look that makes you want to run, just to see how long it will take for him to find you, to know what he’ll do when he does.

and right before he tucks that look back into its hiding place, he catches you catch him, and that split second is what haunts you for days, the moment you realize that you are well and truly fucked — he holds your eyes, tilts his head and does not look even a little bit ashamed to be caught, because whatever he sees on your face, in your eyes, whatever you reveal to him — it makes his pupils dilate, makes his tongue run across his (sharp, sharp, sharp) teeth inside of his mouth, makes him go hm.

and then, just like that, it’s gone. he lights up again, tucks the wolf to bed, leans against the doorway (doesn’t come closer, like he’s trying not to spook you, like you’re a wild rabbit on alert, rabbit heart beating hard in your chest), and tells you the story behind every picture, funny and bright and inviting. like nothing ever happened.

and you know there’s trouble brewing.

[crystalkleure]

Having a real shit time IRL rn folks

[outer-spec]

There aren’t enough people talking about squishmallow lore

this guy is Archie the Axolotol. According to his official bio, he is shy, loves soccer and “talks with his hands” meaning that he speaks sign language. It also says that he started a club for other squishmallows to play soccer and learn “Squishmallow Sign”. Not only does this imply the existence of deaf and mute squishmallows, but it also means that squishmallows canonically have their own sign language separate from ASL, BSL, etc. Which is weird, because most squishmallows don’t have hands. Archie is one of the few ones that do, and his don’t even have fingers. So how is “talking with your hands” appropriate for a squishmallow-specific sign language? This makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

This is Cam the Cat, the mascot of the Squishmallows brand and one of the first squishmallows to be released. He is a male calico cat, but in real life, calico cats are almost always female. This is because the gene for colored spots is carried on the X chromosome, and you need two of those for two different colors of spots. In order for Cam to be both male and calico, one of five things has to be true:

He’s transgender.

He’s intersex and has Klinefelter Syndrome.

He absorbed his twin in the womb, becoming a genetic chimera with two separate genomes -> two different X chromosomes -> two different colors of spots.

Some of his skin cells spontaneously mutated during his development to grow different color fur. This is rare, even for male calicoes.

He’s not a natural calico. He dyed his fur, or got a skin transplant.

What I’m saying here is that there’s a pretty decent chance that the mascot of the squishmallow brand is actually LGBTQ+. It’s actually kind of neat that they have characters implied to be queer, as well as characters implied to be disabled.

This is only scratching the surface when it comes to weird squishmallow lore. The company made so many fucking squishmallows that I could do a whole series of matpat-style video essays on them and still not cover something. In fact, I might add on to this post later when it isn’t past my bedtime. Stay tuned.

[samwrights]

About Me~

I just wanted to say thank you guys so much for 1k! 

Seriously, it’s such a blessing to be able to wake up and interact with you guys—seeing people’s reaction to my work has been so enriching and therapeutic for me, I can’t even put it into words.

So for us hitting 1k, I’m doing two things—one is letting my husband actually read my work (something that I never ever do) and the other is giving you guys a proper face reveal (which I know I teased a few days ago) and an “about the author” section.

I love sharing my life experiences, which I do through writing, and different hobbies that I do. So I guess, without further ado, it’s nice to officially meet you all!

Thanks to the mobile bio, many of you know that my name is Sam and that I’m twenty six. Also, through not so subtle hints, I’m in a domestic partnership (see: my husband) with some dude named Rob. Rob’s an angel and he puts up with my chaotic energy somehow.

Chaotic in the sense that I never stop doing things. 76 percent of my time is dedicated to starbucks, whether I’m on the clock or not, while the rest of my energy is divvied up between writing, reading, and playing pool.

As I’m sure many of you have figured out, I have a love for writing. It’s been a solid hobby of mine for over ten years. However, thanks to le hubbs, I’ve also spent the last four years playing competitive 8-ball. It’s actually a very large portion of my life outside of here—Rob and I have competed in a worldwide competition held in Vegas for the last three years. Each qualifying tournament is such an emotional event in which I am heavily invested in and, oddly enough, the love and passion we have for pool is what sparked our interest in Haikyuu. I suppose that our sport is part of the reason I decided to revive this blog. I was actually in Las Vegas last year when I decided to go on hiatus to focus on my schooling. I’m currently an organizational leadership student with Arizona State University after a six year hiatus (are you starting to recognize a pattern yet?).

I tend to take breaks quite often because, as I mentioned, I never stop doing things. Sure, eventually old hobbies take the back burner; drawing, painting, gaming, tattooing, make up, hair, cooking, baking, a myriad of musical instruments, and singing are some prime examples. Once in a blue moon, I’ll sit down and pound out a new look if I’m lacking creativity or go for a drive and sing old songs that I used to listen to in high school if I need a break from whatever’s on my current roster of hobbies. Though, when it comes to my big three, hiatus isn’t as common as, you know, college.

Despite my chaotic, to-and-fro movements between my hobbies, I do actually have a few consistencies in my life as well. For one, I’m the “mom” friend. I’m the one everyone comes to for life advice whether it be that stupid s/o that’s been ghosting you or how to properly budget to make sure you can eat dinner for a week. And if you can’t, well it looks like I’m taking you grocery shopping or out to eat.

Speaking of mom—I’m a fur mom as well. I got a chinchilla who’s well past his life expectancy and loves playing dead to scare dad and I, a cat, and a really really annoying pup that I love dearly. My little family is probably the most consistent part of my life besides my nicotine dependency.

What else, what else.....

I dunno, let’s move onto my irl FAQs just for the sake of covering all the bases.

Tattoos—24; my favorite one is the sword on my arm

Piercings—14

Star sign—Leo

Favorite band(s)—The Front Bottoms and The Story So Far

Favorite video game(s)—The Sims, Final Fantasy X, and everything that is The Legend of Zelda

Favorite tv show(s)—Parks and Rec, Futurama, Queer Eye

Favorite anime(s)—Yu Yu Hakusho, My Hero, Fruits Basket, and obv Haikyuu

Favorite movie(s)—the entirety of the MCU. And I really really love Spies In Disguise. Also Mulan and Hercules.

Show us your kneecaps—we pretend 19 year old Sam didn’t tattoo roses on her kneecaps, ok?

Why tf are you so loud?—I was a cheerleader for ten years, dawg. It’s in my blood.

Are you still taking requests?—until I physically say no, the answer is yes! But after reading this, it’s pretty evident that I don’t have unlimited amounts of time. I am always doing something.

Which, on that note, I’m gonna cut the bio here. Thank you all again for taking the time to read my work—it means so so much to me and I hope you continue to read in the future.

xox with love,

Samwright

[madscientistjournal]

Fiction: Poor Girl

An essay by Jackie Rivera, as provided by Traci Castleberry Art by Errow Collins

From across the cobbled street, I watched the rag-clad girl who huddled on the leeward side of the Dolphin Inn. She held one trembling palm extended toward a passing gentleman. “Spare a copper, mister?” The man, like all the other passers-by gave the girl a wide berth, especially when she let out a barrage of coughs.

She was perfect for what I needed. The difficulty breathing was bad enough to be indicative of pneumonia or consumption, either of which would probably kill her soon. From the livid red scar and the fused fingers clutching at the collar of her worn dress, she’d been burned, and not all that long ago. No one would miss her, and she was near enough to death that if she passed on, I wouldn’t feel bad.

My missing hand itched as it always did when I was excited. I wound my way through the crowd and crouched in front of her, ignoring the stares of those walking past. “Spare a copper, mister?” she asked me.

I touched the knuckles of my good hand to my cap. “Morning, miss. I don’t have a copper, but I do have a hot bowl of stew to fill your belly and a nice warm bed to rest in.”

It was hard to make out her expression beneath her dirt-stained face, but her eyes widened as she gazed suspiciously at me. “I don’t have nothing you want. I got the consumption. Ain’t fit to lie with.”

“I don’t want to lie with you.” I held out my hand. “I’m just trying to be gentlemanly and help the less fortunate.”

“You ain’t no gentleman.”

I inhaled sharply, wondering if this pathetic urchin had guessed the truth I hid beneath my jacket and trousers. Then again, those near death were often delusional. “It’s your choice. Come with me or stay out here in the cold.” A night on the streets of Whitby was nothing to wish for with the constant threat from the sailors, traders, and dockworkers, as well as the bitter sea wind that almost never stopped.

Another round of coughing left her bent double. When the fit ended, I saw defeat in her eyes. She was so worn and tired that any risk would be better than enduring another moment begging on the street. She accepted my hand. I had to help her rise as she stood on unsteady legs. The poor girl was barefoot, her feet black and thick with calluses, and she shivered when I put an arm around her waist for support. She was hot, feverish, and I wondered more than once if she’d make it to my dwelling, which was not in Whitby proper but hewn into the cliffs below.

There were still a couple of functioning alum mines up north in Boulby, but for the most part the ones in Whitby had been abandoned, leaving me the ideal place to hide. The only time I feared trouble was when overzealous scientists had discovered the fossilized skeleton of a gigantic crocodile and incited searches for more. There were also those searching for veins of jet, the black mineraloid locals carved into crosses and beads and other jewelry. Men and boys scoured the cliffs after each high tide and storm, looking for any veins that might have been exposed. Fortunately, few came near my mine, and when they did, I scared them away with strange noises, letting them think the place haunted.

The main entrance had been sealed up, but I’d found another hidden beneath an overhang, which made it all but invisible from above or below. It was here I guided the girl, who by then had nearly collapsed from exhaustion. I had to catch her when she stumbled, though having her half delirious was to my benefit. The less she was aware of, the less she could reveal later–if she lived to say anything at all.

It was a frightening, ugly thing, covered with the bristled fur of a boar and bearing claws as sharp as a hawk’s.

To read the rest of this story, check out the Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2019 collection.

Jackie Rivera was born in Batavia to a Chinese mother and Portuguese father and speaks a half dozen languages fluently. Jackie has traveled the seas as a pirate, escaped from being a prisoner of war, studied Chinese medicine to become an alchemist and acupuncturist, and isn’t afraid of a damn thing.

Traci Castleberry lives in southern Arizona with two cats and a Lipizzan mare. She’s been published in numerous anthologies, is a graduate of Clarion, Taos Toolbox, and is a first reader for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Errow is a comic artist and illustrator with a predilection towards mashing the surreal with the familiar. They pay their time to developing worlds not quite like our own with their fiancee and pushing the queer agenda. They probably left a candle burning somewhere. More of their work can be found at errowcollins.wix.com/portfolio.

“Poor Girl” is © 2015 Traci Castleberry Art accompanying story is © 2019 Errow Collins

This story originally appeared in Daughters of Frankenstein.

Fiction: Poor Girl was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

[lesbianmonsterlover]

Fem Minotaur x Fem Reader

You didn’t know if it was lucky or unlucky that your little office window faced the big glass wall of the gym across the street,  because while you appreciated the view you got from time to time, it definitely made it harder to work.  There was an incredible looking minotaur woman who led weightlifting classes and coached the powerlifters.  Her broad back was covered in tawny fur, and irregular white spots.  You knew from the times she would correct form that she had a big white splotch on her muzzle and around her eyes, giving her long white eyelashes and a cute pink nose.  You desperately wanted to know what it felt like to have those huge hands caressing over your curves.  You sigh, your little queer heart aflutter, before you’re pulled out of your reverie by the shrill ringing of your office phone.

By the time you return from the early afternoon meeting, where you’re forced to listen to the higher-ups drone on and pat themselves on the back for projects actually managed and completed by workers like you they consider peons, you’ve almost ground your teeth down to nothing.  You collapse into your desk chair and huff, thankful the clock says you’ve only got three more hours before you can go home.  At five on the nose you shut down and clock out, sighing in relief as you walk through the front door of the building and start off down the street to get home.  Your commute isn’t long, but it does tend to be cramped, which can make you even more self conscious of the amount of space you fear you take up.  Sure you aren’t as big as, say, an orc, but it’s not like they can help it!  They’re merely built that way as a species!  You were just a chubby human. 

You make it back to your apartment, your little studio feeling lonelier and lonelier as of late.  You’ve been considering adopting a pet for a while, but have been concerned that your lifestyle would make it hard on an animal companion.  A dog was definitely out of the question, but perhaps now that you’re working more regular hours you can get yourself a cat to come home to.  That’s how you find yourself walking into your local shelter on a warm Saturday, out of your professional clothes and in a flowy, summery dress printed with pale watercolor roses.  The broad smile that crosses your face when you walk into the air conditioned front room gives way to a shy blush when the gorgeous minotaur woman from the gym struts by in a volunteer apron, two large bags of dog food slung over her shoulders.  You miss the greeting from the human behind the counter, which just makes her giggle and send you a knowing wink before repeating herself.  “Welcome, what brings you in today?  Looking for a furry friend, maybe a fuzzy girlfriend?”

The sly addition just makes you blush and stutter back that you were hoping to come by and adopt a cat.  Someone calm and older than a kitten, but still cuddly and playful on their own terms.  Her smile brightens and she perks up.  “Oh I’m so glad to hear you say that!  We have many older cats looking for loving homes, let me get someone to take you into the cat room with a few of our options…”  The smirk on her face almost seems sinister, if her eyes hadn’t been so warm and understanding you may have been concerned, but before you can voice any of this to her she turns and heads into the back, coming back mere moments later with the huge minotaur woman in tow.

You feel tiny as she looks down at you with a warm and professional smile.  You give you a shy grin, cheeks hot, and try to stutter out a greeting.  “Kharya will show you to the back room and give you a run down on some of our tenants, I’d argue you’re best with those little purr machines.  I know how much you love p...cats.”  You’re so busy getting caught up in being so close to this huge beautiful woman, and Goddess if she doesn’t seem bigger and more imposing in real life, that you miss the innuendo and almost-slip-up.  The minotaur, Kharya, gives her coworker a deadpan look before turning and smiling at you, her eyes crinkling, and you want to know what it feels like to pet over her soft pink nose and up the tawny fur of her snout.  The two of you are brought out of staring at each other by the snorting laugh of the human and her mumbled “useless lesbians” which just makes Kharya glare hard at the back of her head.

“Let me show you to the back room where we keep our fully grown cats.”  For the love of all that is holy that voice.  It was a bit higher than you expected from someone so huge, but it suited her.  Her long, snow-white eyelashes suited her, framing warm chocolate eyes.  Her smile is a little shy, she seems as flustered by her coworker as you were.  Your head barely reaches her chest, and you feel intimately aware of her muscles shifting as she walks near you.  Her smile is still soft as she opens the door and gestures for you to enter.  “Just take a seat on the floor and I’ll let a few of these guys out, we’ll see who comes over to take a look and go from there.”  

You take a chance to study her, up close this time, while she releases a few cats into the playroom.  She has two quite cute and dainty little horns curving up and around her ears, it somehow suits her better than hair could, and her strong shoulders stole your attention next as they flexed while she reached up for a particularly high crate.  You’re certainly smitten with her, but try to make sure your gaze is averted by the time she turns around, having opened about half a dozen little doors.  It’s easy as it turns out, because a sweet looking ball of fluff had come out of hiding sometime during your shameless ogling of the woman in front of you.  The black ball of fuzz mewed at you indignantly, pawing at your knee before headbutting and then nuzzling your leg.  

You giggle and scratch the little critter behind the ears, making it purr and drop like a sack of potatoes against your leg.  The giggle morphs into a laugh, matched by a chuckle from Kharya across from you, looking down at you with a fond tenderness in her gaze.  “That’s Sprite, he’s usually a bit of a recluse, but something seems to have gotten his attention.”  Her smile widens, “he isn’t the only one…”  Her gaze is full of open affection, and it makes your cheeks heat.  “You work in the building across from mine, yeah?  I’ve seen you around…”  Your face feels on fire, oh god what do you do?  You weren’t prepared for this, like at all.  You just nod mutely, gazing up at her, but something about your response seems to have been enough for her, since she just laughs and crosses the room to sit next to you, allowing one of the other cats curious enough to leave his enclosure to hop up into her lap and curl up.  You were jealous of that cat for a moment.

“I’ve...I’ve seen you around too.”  Your voice is quiet, but when you glance back up at her you can see she’s fixed you with an unreadable look.  Your fingers nervously skitter around on Sprite’s chin, making the fuzzbutt purr louder and lean further into your soft thigh.  “I’m happy to see you here today though, I’m always too chicken to talk to you.”  

She looks worried, her brow furrowed and her mouth twisted into what you’d guess is a sneer.  “You’re afraid of me?”  The loud peal of laughter from you at least smooths out her face, making her smile fondly down.

“No!  No, I’m not afraid of you.  But...beautiful women make me nervous…”  You’re feeling uncharacteristically bold, reaching your free hand over to touch her hand as you speak, feeling the soft downy fur on the back and trailing your fingers until you feel it fade into the calloused surface of her palm.  She brightens up at that, large brown eyes positively sparkling with delight as she turns her hand over beneath yours, lacing fingers together.  

Needless to say you went home that afternoon with Sprite, apparently short for Soot Sprite, the black void with big green eyes who decided to come flop on your leg.  You may have also left still holding the hand of the large minotaur woman Kharya while the two of you strolled over to the pet store, picking out all of the necessities considering you were starting from scratch.  Just as you were internally figuring out how to get all of this back Kharya offers to help you carry it home.  “Are you sure you don’t mind?  I’m sure I could just have them deliver most of this, I don’t want to bother you any more than I already have!”

She chuckles and nuzzles your cheek, her tongue just peeking out to lick a kiss on the side of your face making you blush.  “Never a bother, besides, what’s the use of all this muscle if I can’t even show off for a cute girl?”  This only makes your cheeks hotter, sputtering a little but agreeing.  

“It isn’t too far, maybe ten minutes, if you’re sure it isn’t a big deal?”  In reply she simply hefts up the large packages with the cat tree, litter, anything heavy really, and allows you to lead the way left carrying Sprite’s crate and a few bags of toys and treats.  The walk is beautiful, and the company only makes it better.  She probes you with questions about where you grew up, your family, what you do for work, and she tells you all about her childhood in the country, her job at the gym, her history as a competitive lifter.  Conversation and laughter are both flowing easily as you slow down in front of your building, biting your lip in consideration.  “Do you maybe want to come upstairs and help get Sprite settled in?”  

You try not to sound too hopeful, gazing up at her a little nervously.  Kharya’s answer is a wide smile and nod.  “Lead the way.”  You grin back at her and turn to key in your door code, holding the front door open for the large woman, who still has to duck to get through the door.  The elevator ride is full of giggles as you try to fit both of you and all the bags into the tiny box, thankful you seem to all come in under capacity.  Your front door opens with a key fob, and you’re thankful it can be read inside the pocket of your dress as you bump your hip up against the door and push down the handle with your elbow.

The ceilings are thankfully high, so while Kharya does have to duck to get inside once in she’s quite comfortable.  She sets down the packages, hardly seeming to have broken a sweat, and smiles down at you sweetly.  She grips your chin between her thumb and forefinger, leaning down to press your foreheads together in an intimate gesture, sharing breath and space.  Pulling back she swipes a kiss across your forehead with her tongue before releasing your face and moving back to the packages.  You stand there dazed for a moment before her voice breaks you out of your reverie.  “Why don’t you open Sprite’s cage and we’ll see if he wants to get out and explore.”  

Your cheeks are still hot, but it seems like you’re always blushing around the beautiful minotaur, so you just nod and go to open the carrier.  He’s out of there immediately, headbutting your face affectionately before gazing around and claiming a spot on a couch cushion near the window in the sun.  “Well...that seems easier than it should have been.”

Kharya glances over at you from where she’s opening the box with the cat tree in it, a full throated laugh coming out as she notices Sprite’s sleeping spot.  She’s full of mirth, her eyes watering with the force of her laughter.  “Oh, wow, yeah, cats usually don’t take like that.  It must be something about you…”  She winks at you flirtatiously, and you giggle and blow her a kiss back, making her eyes widen and then narrow in a playful smirk.

You spend a little while together just getting things set up for Sprite.  The litter box is in the bathroom, the circulating water dish is set up on the tile floor of the kitchen for easy cleanup in case of accidents, there are toys in every room and Kharya has set up the absolutely overly massive cat tower you bought because you wanted to make sure Sprite had enough things to climb.  You and Kharya are now sitting on the couch, Sprite having moved to a lounge chair in a spot much more preferable - where he could nap in the sun undisturbed by the movement of those other pesky creatures around the abode.

The two of you are drinking beer and relaxing after a job well done, Kharya has one massive arm thrown over the back of the couch and you can just feel the heat radiating off of her skin.  It’s quiet, but comfortable, and you’re thisclose to just leaning over to rest your head on her shoulder.  She clears her throat, making you peer up at her, the nervous look on her face simultaneously endearing and heartbreaking.  “So...I’ve kinda been hoping...that maybe you’d be willing to...um...y’know maybe you’d be willing...to go on a date with me?”  She’s studiously avoiding your eyes, although she still has her face turned towards you.  

You giggle and she almost looks crestfallen for a moment before you lean up and press a kiss on her cute pink nose.  “I was kinda hoping that maybe this could count as our first date?  I’d love to go on another…”  She grins and laughs, bringing her arm down from the back of the sofa and wrapping it around your shoulders firmly, pulling you into her side.  “How do you feel about tonight?  Maybe we could play with Sprite and order takeout?  There’s this killer Thai place near here I’ve been craving.”  You worry you might be moving this too fast, but damn if you want to stop this feeling, and you’d be lying to yourself if you said you wanted to wait.  Sure, you knew that’s what you should do, what logic would dictate, but you didn’t want to let go of her, afraid that if you did you’d realize this was only some fever dream.  That you’d wake up alone, in bed, no Sprite, no Kharya, just another day of the usual monotony.  

She perks up, leaning down to nuzzle the top of your head.  “Oh it’s like we’re on the same wavelength already!”  Her chuckle is deep, but still feminine, and it makes you just burrow further into her warm, strong side.  “I think this is the start of a beautiful relationship.”

[an-sceal]

"You're folding clothes. I know that means you're ABANDONING me."

I think I should probably set a better example for Widget, so she doesn't get this suspicious every time I do the laundry.

[lorenthian]

Phyllis and Her Witch

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there lived a witch. This witch was a rather ordinary witch, as witches go- he had a sinister cottage in a very scary forest, and it was surrounded by all manner of harmful and unpleasant things. His cauldrons were kept appropriately filthy, the windows ominously lit, and the steps creaked no matter where you put your feet.

The only unordinary thing he was never able to shake was his familiar, Phyllis. She was (as per regulation in those days) a black cat, but was the most peculiar cat you ever would have seen. Her ears were twice the size of her head and twitched so often they seemed to have minds of their own, while her eyes never quite met at the same place. Her legs stretched far beyond what it seemed like they should, ending in paws that thumped and clattered where other cats’ paws did not.

Her largest oddity, however, was found inside. For though she had been gifted the same quick mind that all cats seem to have when planning mischief, she found herself missing the part that helped her get out of the mischief she had planned.

___________

This story begins on a very blustery and altogether unpleasant winter evening, the kind where people look outside and say, “Good Heavens, not in That Weather!” and “Well, I wasn’t going out anyway,” with the sort of face reserved for only the most inconvenient but still expected things, like when the Aunt nobody invited to Christmas still comes anyway.

On this particular evening, Phyllis was warming herself by the fireplace and just starting to slip into sleep when her witch stomped in. He was covered head-to-toe with snow and ice, and for a moment Phyllis thought he was some sort of winter spirit before realizing that they probably wouldn’t sneeze so much, or trip over the doorway on their way in. Eyeing the open door distastefully, she stretched and got to her paws, picking her way through the clumps of snow left on the floor and followed him into the small library.

The library was very odd library, and if you were to see it I am not sure you would recognize it as a library at all. Instead of books, the shelves were stuffed with curious knick-knacks, each stranger than the last. Clumps of ancient rings glowed mysteriously, surrounded by carved bones and queer glass jars full to the brim with nasty liquids. The bottom selves were crammed with old, and also rather musty, clothes- enchanted pants, hand-stitched cloaks, dragon-hide gloves, and several talking hats who were all very peeved about their situation.

The books were stored in the very back, and it was there Phyllis found her witch seated on a rickety stool. He was trying to take things out from a knapsack and cover himself in blankets at the same time, and she privately thought he looked pretty stupid.

“You’ve left the door open,” Phyllis said, jumping onto one of the ratty bookshelves.

“Hello to you, too,” said the witch rather nastily, glaring out from frost-covered eyebrows.

“Oh, Hello,” she said, “You’ve left the door open.”

The witch glared even harder. Phyllis flicked her ears slightly and smiled back. Finally, though he looked very irritated as he did so, he waved his hand, and a small thunk sounded from the main entrance.

Phyllis sat down smugly and licked her paw a few times, just to remind him who was really in charge. “Thank you,” she said, “Though it would have been better if you closed it in the first place.” She cast a doleful gaze to the smudged window. “Why were you out in that dreary place?”

He sighed crossly, and then sneezed several times. “I was, if you remember, at achoo Maggie’s house, because achoo she has some rather,” here he let out several explosive sneezes and coughs, “Rare and interesting books.” He pulled out a dirty, snow-dusted handkerchief and blew his nose several times, sounding very much like an elephant as he did so.

Phyllis leaned forward, ears flicking in excitement. “New Books?” She asked.

“Yes. But they’re in a bad temper right now, so please leave them alone,” he added sternly, and then sniffled vigorously. He was shaking a bit now- Phyllis could hear the stool squeaking softly every few seconds, and he looked much more pathetic than he had before.

“I would never disturb them,” Phyllis said earnestly, “Never ever.”

Her witch looked at her, unconvinced, but it reminded her so much of a half-drowned weasel she had to stifle her laughter. “No need to worry about me,” she said, shaking slightly from the effort, “I’ll be on my best behavior. Why don’t you change clothes and get to bed? I’m sure you could use it.”

At this point her witch became rather suspicious, for anytime a cat (and for that matter, people too) looks like they won’t get into mischief is the time in which they most certainly will. Against his best judgement, and feeling rather tempted by a good day’s rest, he reluctantly got up and shuffled towards his room. Casting a wary look over his shoulder, he pushed his way through the shelves and left.

Phyllis settled down and waited. Now that she was listening, the knapsack did sound awfully annoyed. It was stretching this way and that, rustling slightly as it did, and seemed at danger of bursting. At this point she had a very dreadful idea, one which I am sure the witch would have disapproved of, but being a cat, I am not sure she cared. She wiggled her haunches, leaning forward, and looked around. She couldn’t see her witch anywhere, but she was almost certain that she could hear snores. She smirked, hunched down, and then pounced.

When Phyllis landed, she found the idea much less fun than she had thought it would be. For one, books, unlike small and stupid animals, are not soft in any way, and jumping on them often harms you more than it hurts them. Secondly, these books were very angry about being jumped on, and they happened to know how to bite.

Phyllis shrieked loudly, fur puffing so much she resembled more of a dandelion than a cat. She hopped from paw to paw frantically, dodging angry book snaps, and once she had finally gathered her wits enough to jump, the most disastrous (though very expected) thing happened- the knapsack, at its wits end and very aggravated, burst open. Furious books poured out of the opening, pages snapping and biting at anything nearby. Phyllis stood still, shocked. “He’s going to be so mad at me.”

[justdrarryme]

Shop Owner Drarry

I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of shop owner Drarry fics lately, so here’s a few for you....

The Light That is Blinding Me by leontina (Leontina) (Explicit, 22 K)

Bookshop owner Draco Summary: After Flourish and Blotts stop stocking the books of Harry’s favourite author, he is directed to a queer bookshop and discovers it’s owned by none other than Draco Malfoy, who has more in common with Harry than either of them realise.

The Destiny You Sold by tryslora (Explicit, 58 K)

Wand shop owner Harry, Yarn shop owner Draco Summary: In which Draco knits, Harry makes wands, and things get very tangled up between them.

The Magic Cat by dot_the_writer (Explicit, 17 K)

Cat Cafe owner Draco Summary: When Harry sees Draco Malfoy with painted nails and wearing an oversized jumper covered in cat fur, his obsession from school comes back in full force. Featuring supportive friends, cute cats and lots of Harry figuring out what he wants.

If the Fates Allow by Saras_Girl (Mature, 80 K)

Cafe owners Draco and Harry Summary: What's that crackling in the walls? Harry has no clue at all. He'll eat some cake and drink some wine Because he is completely FINE.

Maybe This Time by Hatsonhamburgers (Explicit, 32 K)

Potion shop owner Draco Summary: Draco Malfoy has returned home from France after a five-year Potions Mastery study. He opens a shop in Knockturn Alley, is researching mental health treatments, and has a lovely flat all his own. The ire toward his name seems to have blown over, and he's treated kindly by even those who were opposite of him in the war. His life feels so full, but he can't ignore that he knows what's missing: his old nemesis and obsession, Harry Potter.But something's wrong with Harry. He seems to have had a complete breakdown after the war, and has spent the last five years trapped in time. Every day is the same, and every day, Draco makes amends to him. Potter seems to have lost himself to the trauma, and Draco wants to be the one to help him recover. But not all is what it seems, and Draco may need Harry just as much.

Candyman by xErised (Explicit, 25 K)

Chocolate shop owner Draco/ Bakery owner Harry Summary: Harry can't believe it when Malfoy sets up his chocolate shop right across the street from his own bakery. He's got to win this competition, but for some bizarre reason, his friends have become rather... chatty with the Slytherins lately. Post-Hogwarts.

Jumeaux by VivacissimoVoce (Mature, 19 K)

Resort owner Draco Summary: Draco and Blaise own and operate a luxury spa resort together, and the Ministry's Auror department has scheduled a full service three-day retreat. Guess who's on the guest list?

Charmed Confections by Alisanne (Explicit, 35 K)

Bakery owner Draco Summary: There’s a new bakery in town, and Harry is obsessed with the luscious lemon fairy cakes. And with discovering the identity of the mystery chef.

[b4mymindmolders]

Step 1: Nail Color

I'm sitting here on the twin bed of the kitty litter and cat fur covered guest bedroom of my friend and her partner. I've been crying all day and am now drinking wine while admiring the terrible job I've done of painting my nails for the first time. Well, not truly the first time, as I've painted the nails of my right hand with clear hardener long ago when I first started studying classical guitar.

This coat, however, is the most lovely shade of powder(?) blue that I could find at the CVS whilst freshly body shaven and drenched in sweat from the long walk there. At first I desperately wanted out of the isle before someone saw my still masculine..ish presenting self grabbing nail polish and lip gloss. In my haste I noticed that I was only grabbing the first of two or three "steps" to great nails on the shelf. First is the colour, then the clear coat, and I didn't even bother to see what came next as the one bottle alone was $14.

After applying the first coat on my toes and finger nails I closed the bottle and spread my fingers to look at the results and became legitimately winded from emotions. The most accurately I can describe the experience is an overwhelming feeling of shock at how euphoric this simple change felt. They are horribly done but if I take off my glasses and stretch my hand out all the way they look pretty great!

I've seen men, who in every other possible way present cis and hetero, wearing nail polish before. I assume is was spawned by some online movement in solidarity with the queer community or something. The point, though, is that I would see them and see men with nail polish on. When I looked at my own hands I saw a woman's hands. Since the day I came out to myself (about 2 weeks now) and after spending almost every night and morning thinking about how ugly and hairy I am and how I'm just increasing my chance of suffering horribly to the hands of bigots for nothing. Tonight for the first time I feel like a woman.

I feel so happy but in the way that isn't just fleeting.

I keep thinking about how I'm going to hide this from my family but the further I go the more I'm realizing that I've finally found the thing I'm willing to risk excommunication to obtain. The further I go the more obvious it is becoming to me that hiding this for even a few months will take all of my will.

I can never go back now

Ps: I also blindly picked out a non-clear lip gloss while at the store. When I got back and put it on I was so lucky to have picked one that worked perfectly with my skin colour! It would appear that lip glosses do more to highlight the lips with a color instead of painting them in one as with lipstick. I do really want to try on a bold red lipstick but I must take my time and wait. The image of a far more fem (and HRT assisted) me with my hair grown out, cute outfit of whatever flavour, and bright red lipstick fuels me to follow this through.

Pss: The entire reason I went to the store was because I was extremely depressed after the terrible experience trying to call the only trans friendly counseling center within reasonable range that my employer's contract company recommended within the city. Now I need to make an entry explaining that. I'm glad I'm getting the motivation to actually use this blog instead of just telling these stories to my only friend like I always have.

[readbookywooks]

Bran

The ashes fell like a soft grey snow.

He padded over dry needles and brown leaves, to the edge of the wood where the pines grew thin. Beyond the open fields he could see the great piles of man-rock stark against the swirling flames. The wind blew hot and rich with the smell of blood and burnt meat, so strong he began to slaver.

Yet as one smell drew them onward, others warned them back. He sniffed at the drifting smoke. Men, many men, many horses, and fire, fire, fire. No smell was more dangerous, not even the hard cold smell of iron, the stuff of man-claws and hardskin. The smoke and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged snake whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but then the snake was gone. Behind the cliffs tall fires were eating up the stars.

All through the night the fires crackled, and once there was a great roar and a crash that made the earth jump under his feet. Dogs barked and whined and horses screamed in terror. Howls shuddered through the night; the howls of the man-pack, wails of fear and wild shouts, laughter and screams. No beast was as noisy as man. He pricked up his ears and listened, and his brother growled at every sound. They prowled under the trees as a piney wind blew ashes and embers through the sky. In time the flames began to dwindle, and then they were gone. The sun rose grey and smoky that morning.

Only then did he leave the trees, stalking slow across the fields. His brother ran with him, drawn to the smell of blood and death. They padded silent through the dens the men had built of wood and grass and mud. Many and more were burned and many and more were collapsed; others stood as they had before. Yet nowhere did they see or scent a living man. Crows blanketed the bodies and leapt into the air screeching when his brother and he came near. The wild dogs slunk away before them.

Beneath the great grey cliffs a horse was dying noisily, struggling to rise on a broken leg and screaming when he fell. His brother circled round him, then tore out his throat while the horse kicked feebly and rolled his eyes. When he approached the carcass his brother snapped at him and laid back his ears, and he cuffed him with a forepaw and bit his leg. They fought amidst the grass and dirt and falling ashes beside the dead horse, until his brother rolled on his back in submission, tail tucked low. One more bite at his upturned throat; then he fed, and let his brother feed, and licked the blood off his black fur.

The dark place was pulling at him by then, the house of whispers where all men were blind. He could feel its cold fingers on him. The stony smell of it was a whisper up the nose. He struggled against the pull. He did not like the darkness. He was wolf. He was hunter and stalker and slayer, and he belonged with his brothers and sisters in the deep woods, running free beneath a starry sky. He sat on his haunches, raised his head, and howled. I will not go, he cried. I am wolf, I will not go. Yet even so the darkness thickened, until it covered his eyes and filled his nose and stopped his ears, so he could not see or smell or hear or run, and the grey cliffs were gone and the dead horse was gone and his brother was gone and all was black and still and black and cold and black and dead and black . . .

"Bran," a voice was whispering softly. "Bran, come back. Come back now, Bran. Bran . . . "

He closed his third eye and opened the other two, the old two, the blind two. In the dark place all men were blind. But someone was holding him. He could feel arms around him, the warmth of a body snuggled close. He could hear Hodor singing "Hodor, hodor, hodor," quietly to himself.

"Bran?" It was Meera's voice. "You were thrashing, making terrible noises. What did you see?"

"Winterfell." His tongue felt strange and thick in his mouth. One day when I come back I won't know how to talk anymore. "It was Winterfell. It was all on fire. There were horse smells, and steel, and blood. They killed everyone, Meera."

He felt her hand on his face, stroking back his hair. "You're all sweaty," she said. "Do you need a drink?"

"A drink," he agreed. She held a skin to his lips, and Bran swallowed so fast the water ran out of the corner of his mouth. He was always weak and thirsty when he came back. And hungry too. He remembered the dying horse, the taste of blood in his mouth, the smell of burnt flesh in the morning air. "How long?"

"Three days," said Jojen. The boy had come up softfoot, or perhaps he had been there all along; in this blind black world, Bran could not have said. "We were afraid for you."

"I was with Summer," Bran said.

"Too long. You'll starve yourself. Meera dribbled a little water down your throat, and we smeared honey on your mouth, but it is not enough."

"I ate," said Bran. "We ran down an elk and had to drive off a treecat that tried to steal him." The cat had been tan-and-brown, only half the size of the direwolves, but fierce. He remembered the musky smell of him, and the way he had snarled down at them from the limb of the oak.

"The wolf ate," Jojen said. "Not you. Take care, Bran. Remember who you are."

He remembered who he was all too well; Bran the boy, Bran the broken. Better Bran the beastling. Was it any wonder he would sooner dream his Summer dreams, his wolf dreams? Here in the chill damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon. Though maybe he had only dreamed that. He could not understand why Jojen was always trying to pull him back now. Bran used the strength of his arms to squirm to a sitting position. "I have to tell Osha what I saw. Is she here? Where did she go?"

The wildling woman herself gave answer. "Nowhere, m'lord. I've had my fill o' blundering in the black." He heard the scrape of a heel on stone, turned his head toward the sound, but saw nothing. He thought he could smell her, but he wasn't sure. All of them stank alike, and he did not have Summer's nose to tell one from the other. "Last night I pissed on a king's foot," Osha went on. "Might be it was morning, who can say? I was sleeping, but now I'm not." They all slept a lot, not only Bran. There was nothing else to do, Sleep and eat and sleep again, and sometimes talk a little . . . but not too much, and only in whispers, just to be safe. Osha might have liked it better if they had never talked at all, but there was no way to quiet Rickon, or to stop Hodor from muttering, "Hodor, hodor, hodor," endlessly to himself.

"Osha," Bran said, "I saw Winterfell burning." Off to his left, he could hear the soft sound of Rickon's breathing.

"A dream," said Osha.

"A wolf dream," said Bran. "I smelled it too. Nothing smells like fire, or blood."

"Whose blood?"

"Men, horses, dogs, everyone. We have to go see."

"This scrawny skin of mine's the only one I got," said Osha. "That squid prince catches hold o' me, they'll strip it off my back with a whip."

Meera's hand found Bran's in the darkness and gave his fingers a squeeze. "I'll go if you're afraid."

Bran heard fingers fumbling at leather, followed by the sound of steel on flint. Then again. A spark flew, caught. Osha blew softly. A long pale flame awoke, stretching upward like a girl on her toes. Osha's face floated above it. She touched the flame with the head of a torch. Bran had to squint as the pitch began to burn, filling the world with orange glare. The light woke Rickon, who sat up yawning.

When the shadows moved, it looked for an instant as if the dead were rising as well. Lyanna and Brandon, Lord Rickard Stark their father, Lord Edwyle his father, Lord Willam and his brother Artos the Implacable, Lord Donnor and Lord Beron and Lord Rodwell, one-eyed Lord Jonnel, Lord Barth and Lord Brandon and Lord Cregan who had fought the Dragonknight. On their stone chairs they sat with stone wolves at their feet. This was where they came when the warmth had seeped out of their bodies; this was the dark hall of the dead, where the living feared to tread.

And in the mouth of the empty tomb that waited for Lord Eddard Stark, beneath his stately granite likeness, the six fugitives huddled round their little cache of bread and water and dried meat. "Little enough left," Osha muttered as she blinked down on their stores. "I'd need to go up soon to steal food in any case, or we'd be down to eating Hodor."

"Hodor," Hodor said, grinning at her.

"Is it day or night up there?" Osha wondered. "I've lost all count o' such."

"Day," Bran told her, "but it's dark from all the smoke."

"M'lord is certain?"

Never moving his broken body, he reached out all the same, and for an instant he was seeing double. There stood Osha holding the torch, and Meera and Jojen and Hodor, and the double row of tall granite pillars and long dead lords behind them stretching away into darkness . . . but there was Winterfell as well, grey with drifting smoke, the massive oak-and-iron gates charred and askew, the drawbridge down in a tangle of broken chains and missing planks. Bodies floated in the moat, islands for the crows.

"Certain," he declared.

Osha chewed on that a moment. "I'll risk a look then. I want the lot o' you close behind. Meera, get Bran's basket."

"Are we going home?" Rickon asked excitedly. "I want my horse. And I want applecakes and butter and honey, and Shaggy. Are we going where Shaggydog is?"

"Yes," Bran promised, "but you have to be quiet."

Meera strapped the wicker basket to Hodor's back and helped lift Bran into it, easing his useless legs through the holes. He had a queer flutter in his belly. He knew what awaited them above, but that did not make it any less fearful. As they set off, he turned to give his father one last look, and it seemed to Bran that there was a sadness in Lord Eddard's eyes, as if he did not want them to go. We have to, he thought. It's time.

Osha carried her long oaken spear in one hand and the torch in the other. A naked sword hung down her back, one of the last to bear Mikken's mark. He had forged it for Lord Eddard's tomb, to keep his ghost at rest. But with Mikken slain and the ironmen guarding the armory, good steel had been hard to resist, even if it meant grave-robbing. Meera had claimed Lord Rickard's blade, though she complained that it was too heavy. Brandon took his namesake's, the sword made for the uncle he had never known. He knew he would not be much use in a fight, but even so the blade felt good in his hand.

But it was only a game, and Bran knew it.

Their footsteps echoed through the cavernous crypts. The shadows behind them swallowed his father as the shadows ahead retreated to unveil other statues; no mere lords, these, but the old Kings in the North. On their brows they wore stone crowns. Torrhen Stark, the King Who Knelt. Edwyn the Spring King. Theon Stark, the Hungry Wolf. Brandon the Burner and Brandon the Shipwright. Jorah and Jonos, Brandon the Bad, Walton the Moon King, Edderion the Bridegroom, Eyron, Benjen the Sweet and Benjen the Bitter, King Edrick Snowbeard. Their faces were stern and strong, and some of them had done terrible things, but they were Starks every one, and Bran knew all their tales. He had never feared the crypts; they were part of his home and who he was, and he had always known that one day he would lie here too.

But now he was not so certain. If I go up, will I ever come back down? Where will I go when I die?

"Wait," Osha said when they reached the twisting stone stairs that led up to the surface, and down to the deeper levels where kings more ancient still sat their dark thrones. She handed Meera the torch. "I'll grope my way up." For a time they could hear the sound of her footfalls, but they grew softer and softer until they faded away entirely. "Hodor," said Hodor nervously.

Bran had told himself a hundred times how much he hated hiding down here in the dark, how much he wanted to see the sun again, to ride his horse through wind and rain. But now that the moment was upon him, he was afraid. He'd felt safe in the darkness; when you could not even find your own hand in front of your face, it was easy to believe that no enemies could ever find you either. And the stone lords had given him courage. Even when he could not see them, he had known they were there.

It seemed a long while before they heard anything again. Bran had begun to fear that something had happened to Osha. His brother was squirming restlessly. "I want to go home!" he said loudly. Hodor bobbed his head and said, "Hodor." Then they heard the footsteps again, growing louder, and after a few minutes Osha emerged into the light, looking grim. "Something is blocking the door. I can't move it."

"Hodor can move anything," said Bran.

Osha gave the huge stableboy an appraising look. "Might be he can. Come on, then."

The steps were narrow, so they had to climb in single file. Osha led. Behind came Hodor, with Bran crouched low on his back so his head wouldn't hit the ceiling. Meera followed with the torch, and Jojen brought up the rear, leading Rickon by the hand. Around and around they went, and up and up. Bran thought he could smell smoke now, but perhaps that was only the torch.

The door to the crypts was made of ironwood. It was old and heavy, and lay at a slant to the ground. Only one person could approach it at a time. Osha tried once more when she reached it, but Bran could see that it was not budging. "Let Hodor try."

They had to pull Bran from his basket first, so he would not get squished. Meera squatted beside him on the steps, one arm thrown protectively across his shoulders, as Osha and Hodor traded places. "Open the door, Hodor," Bran said.

The huge stableboy put both hands flat on the door, pushed, and grunted. "Hodor?" He slammed a fist against the wood, and it did not so much as jump. "Hodor."

"Use your back," urged Bran. "And your legs."

Turning, Hodor put his back to the wood and shoved. Again. Again. "Hodor!" He put one foot on a higher step so he was bent under the slant of the door and tried to rise. This time the wood groaned and creaked. "Hodor!" The other foot came up a step, and Hodor spread his legs apart, braced, and straightened. His face turned red, and Bran could see cords in his neck bulging as he strained against the weight above him. "Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor HODOR!" From above came a dull rumble. Then suddenly the door jerked upward and a shaft of daylight fell across Bran's face, blinding him for a moment. Another shove brought the sound of shifting stone, and then the way was open. Osha poked her spear through and slid out after it, and Rickon squirmed through Meera's legs to follow. Hodor shoved the door open all the way and stepped to the surface. The Reeds had to carry Bran up the last few steps.

The sky was a pale grey, and smoke eddied all around them. They stood in the shadow of the First Keep, or what remained of it. One whole side of the building had torn loose and fallen away. Stone and shattered gargoyles lay strewn across the yard. They fell just where I did, Bran thought when he saw them. Some of the gargoyles had broken into so many pieces it made him wonder how he was alive at all. Nearby some crows were pecking at a body crushed beneath the tumbled stone, but he lay facedown and Bran could not say who he was.

The First Keep had not been used for many hundreds of years, but now it was more of a shell than ever. The floors had burned inside it, and all the beams. Where the wall had fallen away, they could see right into the rooms, even into the privy. Yet behind, the broken tower still stood, no more burned than before. Jojen Reed was coughing from the smoke. "Take me home!" Rickon demanded. "I want to be home!" Hodor stomped in a circle. "Hodor," he whimpered in a small voice. They stood huddled together with ruin and death all around them.

"We made noise enough to wake a dragon," Osha said, "but there's no one come. The castle's dead and burned, just as Bran dreamed, but we had best—" She broke off suddenly at a noise behind them, and whirled with her spear at the ready.

Two lean dark shapes emerged from behind the broken tower, padding slowly through the rubble. Rickon gave a happy shout of "Shaggy!" and the black direwolf came bounding toward him. Summer advanced more slowly, rubbed his head up against Bran's arm, and licked his face.

"We should go," said Jojen. "So much death will bring other wolves besides Summer and Shaggydog, and not all on four feet."

"Aye, soon enough," Osha agreed, "but we need food, and there may be some survived this, Stay together. Meera, keep your shield up and guard our backs."

It took the rest of the morning to make a slow circuit of the castle. The great granite walls remained, blackened here and there by fire but otherwise untouched. But within, all was death and destruction. The doors of the Great Hall were charred and smoldering, and inside the rafters had given way and the whole roof had crashed down onto the floor. The green and yellow panes of the glass gardens were all in shards, the trees and fruits and flowers torn up or left exposed to die. Of the stables, made of wood and thatch, nothing remained but ashes, embers, and dead horses. Bran thought of his Dancer, and wanted to weep. There was a shallow steaming lake beneath the Library Tower, and hot water gushing from a crack in its side. The bridge between the Bell Tower and the rookery had collapsed into the yard below, and Maester Luwin's turret was gone. They saw a dull red glow shining up through the narrow cellar windows beneath the Great Keep, and a second fire still burning in one of the storehouses.

Osha called softly through the blowing smoke as they went, but no one answered. They saw one dog worrying at a corpse, but he ran when he caught the scents of the direwolves; the rest had been slain in the kennels. The maester's ravens were paying court to some of the corpses, while the crows from the broken tower attended others. Bran recognized Poxy Tym, even though someone had taken an axe to his face. One charred corpse, outside the ashen shell of Mother's sept, sat with his arms drawn up and his hands balled into hard black fists, as if to punch anyone who dared approach him. "If the gods are good," Osha said in a low angry voice, "the Others will take them that did this work."

"It was Theon," Bran said blackly.

"No. Look." She pointed across the yard with her spear. "That's one of his ironmen. And there. And that's Greyjoy's warhorse, see? The black one with the arrows in him." She moved among the dead, frowning. "And here's Black Lorren." He had been hacked and cut so badly that his beard looked a reddish-brown now. "Took a few with him, he did." Osha turned over one of the other corpses with her foot. "There's a badge. A little man, all red."

"The flayed man of the Dreadfort," said Bran.

Summer howled, and darted away.

"The godswood." Meera Reed ran after the direwolf, her shield and frog spear to hand. The rest of them trailed after, threading their way through smoke and fallen stones. The air was sweeter under the trees. A few pines along the edge of the wood had been scorched, but deeper in the damp soil and green wood had defeated the flames. "There is a power in living wood," said Jojen Reed, almost as if he knew what Bran was thinking, "a power strong as fire."

On the edge of the black pool, beneath the shelter of the heart tree, Maester Luwin lay on his belly in the dirt. A trail of blood twisted back through damp leaves where he had crawled. Summer stood over him, and Bran thought he was dead at first, but when Meera touched his throat, the maester moaned. "Hodor?" Hodor said mournfully. "Hodor?"

Gently, they eased Luwin onto his back. He had grey eyes and grey hair, and once his robes had been grey as well, but they were darker now where the blood had soaked through. "Bran," he said softly when he saw him sitting tall on Hodor's back. "And Rickon too." He smiled. "The gods are good. I knew . . . "

"Knew?" said Bran uncertainly.

"The legs, I could tell . . . the clothes fit, but the muscles in his legs . . . poor lad . . . " He coughed, and blood came up from inside him. "You vanished . . . in the woods . . . how, though?"

"We never went," said Bran. "Well, only to the edge, and then doubled back. I sent the wolves on to make a trail, but we hid in Father's tomb."

"The crypts." Luwin chuckled, a froth of blood on his lips. When the maester tried to move, he gave a sharp gasp of pain.

Tears filled Bran's eyes. When a man was hurt you took him to the maester, but what could you do when your maester was hurt?

"We'll need to make a litter to carry him," said Osha.

"No use," said Luwin. "I'm dying, woman."

"You can't," said Rickon angrily. "No you can't." Beside him, Shaggydog bared his teeth and growled.

The maester smiled. "Hush now, child, I'm much older than you. I can . . . die as I please."

"Hodor, down," said Bran. Hodor went to his knees beside the maester.

"Listen," Luwin said to Osha, "the princes . . . Robb's heirs. Not . . . not together . . . do you hear?"

The wildling woman leaned on her spear. "Aye. Safer apart. But where to take them? I'd thought, might be these Cerwyns . . . "

Maester Luwin shook his head, though it was plain to see what the effort cost him. "Cerwyn boy's dead. Ser Rodrik, Leobald Tallhart, Lady Hornwood . . . all slain. Deepwood fallen, Moat Cailin, soon Torrhen's Square. Ironmen on the Stony Shore. And east, the Bastard of Bolton."

"Then where?" asked Osha.

"White Harbor . . . the Umbers . . . I do not know . . . war everywhere . . . each man against his neighbor, and winter coming . . . such folly, such black mad folly . . . " Maester Luwin reached up and grasped Bran's forearm, his fingers closing with a desperate strength. "You must be strong now. Strong."

"I will be," Bran said, though it was hard. Ser Rodrik killed and Maester Luwin, everyone, everyone . . .

"Good," the maester said. "A good boy. Your . . . your father's son, Bran. Now go."

Osha gazed up at the weirwood, at the red face carved in the pale trunk. "And leave you for the gods?"

"I beg . . . " The maester swallowed. "A . . . a drink of water, and . . . another boon. If you would . . . "

"Aye." She turned to Meera. "Take the boys."

Jojen and Meera led Rickon out between them. Hodor followed. Low branches whipped at Bran's face as they pushed between the trees, and the leaves brushed away his tears. Osha joined them in the yard a few moments later. She said no word of Maester Luwin. "Hodor must stay with Bran, to be his legs," the wildling woman said briskly. "I will take Rickon with me."

"We'll go with Bran," said Jojen Reed.

"Aye, I thought you might," said Osha. "Believe I'll try the East Gate, and follow the kingsroad a ways."

"We'll take the Hunter's Gate," said Meera.

"Hodor," said Hodor.

They stopped at the kitchens first. Osha found some loaves of burned bread that were still edible, and even a cold roast fowl that she ripped in half. Meera unearthed a crock of honey and a big sack of apples. Outside, they made their farewells. Rickon sobbed and clung to Hodor's leg until Osha gave him a smack with the butt end of her spear. Then he followed her quick enough. Shaggydog stalked after them. The last Bran saw of them was the direwolf's tail as it vanished behind the broken tower.

The iron portcullis that closed the Hunter's Gate had been warped so badly by heat it could not be raised more than a foot. They had to squeeze beneath its spikes, one by one.

"Will we go to your lord father?" Bran asked as they crossed the drawbridge between the walls. "To Greywater Watch?"

Meera looked to her brother for the answer. "Our road is north," Jojen announced.

At the edge of the wolfswood, Bran turned in his basket for one last glimpse of the castle that had been his life. Wisps of smoke still rose into the grey sky, but no more than might have risen from Winterfell's chimneys on a cold autumn afternoon. Soot stains marked some of the arrow loops, and here and there a crack or a missing merlon could be seen in the curtain wall, but it seemed little enough from this distance. Beyond, the tops of the keeps and towers still stood as they had for hundreds of years, and it was hard to tell that the castle had been sacked and burned at all. The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I'm not dead either.

[an-sceal]

Talk of animal sickness below the jump.

My beloved idiot child has a mass in his stomach. Waiting on the pathology report to find out what kind, but honestly it's probably not a great outcome either way. He gets SO stressed and panicky going to the vet- all these trips in the past month have been awful for him. It doesn't make him a good candidate for cancer treatments, because we also can't get pills into him.

We'll know more next week, but now that everyone else is asleep I'm gonna go have a nice cry in the shower, because that's the only time I can break myself out of Hyper-Competent-Caretaker mode. It's very helpful to everyone else in a crisis, because it's all about Doing and Fixing what can be fixed, but it's not exactly equipped with an "emoting" function. And unfortunately, my wife and I have very different grieving styles that aren't super compatible unless we work at it.

I paid good money for this depersonalization, and I'm not ready to give up on it just because it's not "healthy" or whatever. Pfffft.

[googlenewson]

Whether you’re standing in the theater lobby or curled up in bed, deciding what to watch next is often the most difficult part of any pop-culture junkie’s day. And with dozens of films in theaters on any given weekend, plus virtually endless layers of streaming purgatory to sort through in search of your next binge-watch, there’s more out there—and tougher decisions to make—than ever.

Fortune’s here to help you navigate the week’s latest offerings, boiling all the entertainment out there down into three distinct recommendations: should you see it, stream it, or skip it? Find out below.

SEE IT: ‘Cats’ (In theaters)

What you have to understand about Cats is that it’s certifiably insane, from its Jellicle whiskers to the tip of its Jellice tail. I’m referring here to the beloved Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical, one of Broadway’s longest-running, as much as Tom Hooper’s gleefully demented movie adaptation. From day one, Cats has been one of the strangest megahits in any storytelling medium; it’s necessary to know this, and accept this, before reading any further.

Describing the plot of Cats makes you feel like you’re on bath salts (though not as much as does seeing it play out on screen), but the broad strokes are essentially this. Over the course of one night in an unnamed, eerily empty neighborhood, a group of cats take turns introducing one another—with names like Rum Tum Tugger and Mr. Mistoffeelees—as they debate which one of them will get to die, ascending to another plane of existence known as the Heaviside Layer, where they’ll be reborn into a new life. As a story, it’s pure fever dream, the kind of thing even Roald Dahl’s editor wouldn’t have let him get away with; but the strange non-plot of Cats functions, in a theatrical setting, as an ideal delivery system for visual splendor and powerhouse vocals.

Hooper’s tackled musicals before, notably in 2012’s Les Miserables, where he spent 158 minutes on extreme close-ups of France’s most impoverished, and he fully throws himself into the task of translating Cats, a much more experimental piece of work, to the screen. There’s a newly created audience surrogate, Victoria (newcomer Francesca Hayward), who’s tossed via burlap sack into the neighborhood of the Jellicles, a tribe of cats on the eve of making their “Jellicle choice.” Across the sung-through story, she meets a mewling menagerie of contenders for said choice, including bumbling Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), stately Gus the Theatre Cat (Ian McKellen), and portly Bustopher Jones (James Corden), plus the aforementioned Mistoffeelees (a gawky Laurie Davidson), and Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo, who sings and simpers gamely but seems to be missing a little something). Presiding over all is Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench and, no, I don’t know who named these cats), who’ll enjoy the festivities then select the lucky (?) feline in question.

The real draw of Cats involves seeing the all-star cast, which also includes pop sovereign Taylor Swift and vocal legend Jennifer Hudson (who gets to belt out “Memory,” the production’s lone showstopper), made over with the help of CG effects, called “digital fur technology” (though it’s basically just expensive deepfakery), into cat-human hybrids. The effect is deeply upsetting; though the actors are covered in fur and sporting twitchy tails, their proportions are still human, so the actors appear discomfitingly sensual while dancing and serenading one another. They have cat ears, but also human teeth; whiskers, but also fingernails. Some wear jumpsuits, while others go for a more paw-naturel look; the movie directs attention to the strange sense of faux-nudity that results by having Idris Elba’s villainous Macavity wear a hat and fur coat (which begs questions we shouldn’t dare to ask) but later make a surprise scene entrance after disrobing, to which the other cats react with a fairly hypocritical degree of horror.

In watching this digital fur extravaganza at work, entranced by the sheer scale of its visual chaos, I found myself wondering what else Hooper and his team could have done. The tactic most employed by Disney, the imperial overlord Universal’s bravely going up against with this freaky little musical (note this week’s skip it), has been to pursue photorealism in its animated productions. Earlier this year, it turned The Lion King into an uncanny-valley catastrophe, sapping the story of all emotional and dramatic resonance in the process. People simply did not want to hear human voices coming out of the mouths of Planet Earth lions, which is very understandable. Hooper’s techniques with Cats, through which his furry creations sing and dance maniacally into their versions of heaven or hell, bring the whole affair closer to Gaspar Noe’s Climax by way of The Aristocats. While Cats is by no means going to be a guaranteed hit with the little ones, who may be terrified by it or confused by its sexuality, it’s an absolutely unhinged piece of blockbuster filmmaking, worth beholding in all its tawdry, queer, bombastic glory.

It’s the kind of risk studios just don’t take any more, perhaps much more of one than executives ever intended it to be. The film cost some $100 million to pull off, and the amount of uncertainty Cats brings with it into the multiplex—did those oh-my-god-they-actually-did-it trailers turn people off, or the opposite?—makes it the most exciting box-office curiosity left in the calendar year. Will it break records or bomb? The experience of watching Cats—howls of stunned laughter from many, with a few Swifties cheering her grand entrance and the majority of us struggling to even once pick our jaws up off the floor—is one of the most strange and mind-melting you’re likely to have in a theater when it comes to studio content of this size and scope. I’d recommend going for much for the same reason the play’s stuck around so long—whether it’s a masterpiece or one of the worst things you’ve ever seen, it’s resolutely its own thing, a deranged freak-fantasia worth falling into for a couple of hours, if just to say you did. That is to say, it’s Cats.

STREAM IT: ‘The Witcher’ (Netflix)

Netflix’s latest original-series gamble is aiming for Game of Thrones-level complexity in its sketching of a dark-fantasy realm where mythical creatures lie in wait but monarchal power struggles loom just as large.

And based on its first season, The Witcher (adapted from the beloved book series by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski) is well on its way. Comprising eight episodes, a smaller number which clearly allowed showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich to focus on thoughtfully tracing an ambitious array of story arcs, the series hangs around the impossibly broad shoulders of Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill, great at veining these strong-and-silent types with a gallows humor).

A stone-faced loner who roams the dangerous Continent in search of monsters to slay, Geralt is no hero, and he’s often perilously close to going over the edge in his bloodletting. The character’s most distinguished by his unwillingness to diverge from his own moral compass by getting involved in court politics. In this, he’s reminiscent of Clint Eastwood’s tumbleweed-drifting Man with No Name or Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe, a sword in hand rather than a revolver. But Geralt’s on a path toward destiny, as protagonists in high-fantasy fare such as this often are, and he’s soon to become entwined in the fates of two distinctly powerful women. There’s Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), in training to become a powerful sorceress at a mysterious academy, and Ciri (Freya Allen), a young princess in hiding after her kingdom was ransacked and her parents slain. All three characters are afforded their own storylines, weaving their way across the Continent and finding themselves transformed in a myriad of ways by its darkest, magical elements.

Further detailing the epic, sweeping nature of The Witcher‘s story would be to deprive audiences of unexpected, rather graceful reveals that the scripts tease out in due time. What there is to say about The Witcher is that it represents one of Netflix’s most fully formed forays into genre territory yet. The fights, especially in a cinematic and sprawling pilot, are of a kinetic and impressively top-shelf variety, Cavill’s Geralt moving like a man possessed as he rends flesh from bone and engages in some surprisingly balletic bouts of swordplay. And the production design is similarly well-executed, quickly establishing the Continent as a grungy, bloody landscape for these characters to navigate. But it’s the strength of the storytelling that bodes most well for The Witcher as a new destination for those done licking their wounds after that fateful final run in Westeros.

SKIP IT: ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ (In theaters)

… even though you’ll see it

“If this mission fails, it was all for nothing,” characters tell one another throughout Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. That’s popcorn-prose concentrate, the kind of dramatic hyperbole that Star Wars has been coasting on since the very beginning. And while it’s traditionally been a fake-out—there’s always another mission, another battle to be won, even after ones that end with your hero encased in carbonite—such sentiment has never felt as profoundly hollowed out as it does by the end of Rise of Skywalker, a graceless franchise finale about nothing more than missions succeeding that itself feels like a staggering failure of vision, conceptually as well as on basic storytelling fronts.

Director J.J. Abrams’ anxiety in making Rise of Skywalker surely fell along those same all-or-nothing lines. By his own admission, he’s bad at endings, and there was tremendous pressure riding on Abrams to bring home the story of the Skywalker clan, a nine-movie saga that’s never loomed larger in the pop cultural imagination. The Rise of Skywalker may well be the last Star Wars movie to feature the heroes Abrams helped forge in his nostalgic The Force Awakens—Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and Poe (Oscar Isaac)—and it’s almost certain to be the final outing for original cast members the series is now starting to outlive. Carrie Fisher died after shooting her scenes for The Last Jedi, and this entry (once intended to be Leia’s movie in the sense that The Force Awakens was Han’s and The Last Jedi was Luke’s) is to be her last screen credit. This just makes the magnitude of Abrams’s failure all the more devastating. One last adventure? Hardly. In a pivotal entry for the franchise, he chooses not to tell a story, instead drowning the developments this trilogy’s second film put forward in a soupy mess of fan service and stilted, unoriginal plotting.

When The Last Jedi hit theaters two years ago, it offered a thematic depth hitherto unseen in Star Wars movies; in the hands of writer-director Rian Johnson, it tangled head-on with questions of hero worship and inheritance that have always been intrinsic to the galaxy far, far away. But the answers it provided—that one must relinquish the past to chart a future, that our heroes will disappoint us, that the Force is not the lineage of a select but a spiritual energy belonging to all of us—were bold and unexpected. In this, it was a shocking follow-up to The Force Awakens, Abrams’ play-the-hits remake of A New Hope, and ruffled feathers with a small but loud contingent of fans, who disliked the film’s treatment of Luke and focus on supporting characters (the most hated of whom, perhaps not coincidentally given the way these Internet mobs tend to go, were women and minorities).

This is worth mentioning because The Rise of Skywalker feels, more than a film, like a feature-length capitulation to those who disliked what The Last Jedi did with the Star Wars mythos (which was, at the end of the day, to make a real movie with it). Where The Last Jedi zagged, Rise of Skywalker zigs, choppily, back inside the pre-existing template to which Disney and Lucasfilm clearly now believes these movies must adhere. It is in fact comical how frantically it rushes to undo Johnson’s progression of these characters, crowding them unnaturally into the same space to combat criticisms everyone spent too much time apart in the last film and entirely sidelining Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran, the series’ first Asian-American lead who was brutally harassed online after The Last Jedi) with so little explanation it feels just as racist and sexist as the chatroom vitriol she was subjected to. The Rise of Skywalker also works overtime to retcon The Last Jedi‘s biggest twists. One deformed bad guy with Force powers is down for the count? Let’s introduce another. The question of Rey’s parentage got answered, unexpectedly, with the revelation her family name didn’t have to matter so much? Well, let’s revisit that actually.

From the first words in its opening crawl (“The dead speak!”) to its final frame, The Rise of Skywalker spends its whole runtime chasing ghosts. As teased by the trailers, Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is back, for reasons the script scarcely attempts to rationalize, and he brings with him a fleet of Star Destroyers capable of wiping out entire planets in one blast. You thought the First Order was bad? Get ready for the “Final Order.”

That’s truly the order of business in The Rise of Skywalker. It’s a movie slavishly devoted to hitting beats from previous films without basic narrative sense, to the point where it feels less like a natural ending to this franchise and more like bad fanfiction. The only way the characters progress is through ill-advised romantic pairings. One interminable (and ultimately pointless) lightsaber battle takes place amid in the wreckage of a destroyed Death Star. The finale involves outgunned resistance fighters making one last stand to blow up a massive bad-guy space base. Beloved characters are imperiled constantly, but there are no real stakes when even the already-dead ones are back for sizable roles. Familiar desert planets pop up, along with Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), for maximum fan pandering.

There’s a real difference between a director and an artist, and nothing demonstrates this better than the massive step down The Rise of Skywalker takes both thematically and visually after The Last Jedi. There’s little by way of distinctive or striking visuals; the entire film is hued a murky blue, with an ill-advised focus on strobe lighting. Furthermore, it’s a Star Wars movie with absolutely nothing under its surface, which is a damning trait for a movie in this franchise. Abrams is a great producer, but his weaknesses as a filmmaker have never been this exposed. In attempting to give a noxious portion of the Star Wars fanbase what they asked for, his finale feels like a cheap and derivative product, the ultimate end-result of Disney’s written-by-committee modus operandi, so craven about resurrecting Star Wars that it comes off like grave-robbing. This is Star Wars broken under the weight of its own importance, eating its own tail for lack of any original voices to better nourish it. It’s nothing short of a tragedy.

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