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apprentice-lex · 5 years ago

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Thank you so much, dear anon! That’s incredibly kind of you 💜 It’s no trouble at all, and I would also like to use this opportunity to wish all my lovely followers (and the wonderful Courtiers fandom) happy winter holidays! ✨ Best wishes from Valerius, Valdemar, Volta, Vlastomil, Vulgora, and myself!

Winter holidays with your favorite Courtier(s) under the cut; enjoy! (sfw, fluffy, and long)

Valerius

He is familiar with holiday celebrations, but... why would you want to spend the holidays with him? He still has trouble believing you want to spend this time with him, aren't you meant to spend it with your loved ones, friends and family? Surely, someone better than him, someone who deserves your time more. He won't say it out loud, of course, but it's obvious from his careful, hesitant behavior that he expects you to tell him to go away. Before he met you, he would of course receive invitations to holiday parties, but he'd inevitably spend the holidays shut in his study, working, secretly envying all those people who were well-liked enough for someone to want to be around them. And now you're here, with that genuine smile and that look in your eyes that tells him he's worth it and you want to be around him and he just doesn't know what to do with that. Everything must be perfect. The decorations you put up together, the food you make... he's such a perfectionist that you have to stop him in the middle of decorating, take his hands in yours, and tell him to stop worrying because, yes, you want to be there with him and he is someone you care about deeply. He'd blink the tears away and try to salvage what remains of his dignity with some wry comment. But, from then on, he is much calmer, you catch him genuinely smiling - so often as no one can remember him smiling before. He commissions artists to make sure your decorations are the most beautiful in Vesuvia; some whisper that even the decorations in the palace are lackluster compared to yours. Some of the palace cooks are whisked away with the promise of much higher wages. But what surprises you the most is the evening he invites you to his estate, and there isn't a servant in sight; just Valerius alone, putting the final touches on decorations. He turns around when you enter the room, smiles, and wordlessly holds out an ornament for you to take - an invitation to help him. Of course, you happily accept. Later, he takes you to the kitchens, and for the first time ever you see Valerius try his hand at cooking. Of course, it's rather disastrous, but filled with laughter and spilled flour and icing sugar in your hair; but when it's late in the evening and you and Valerius twirl around the dimly-lit kitchens to some unheard song, laughing together, a smudge of icing on his cheek and a spoon still in his hand - but the look in his eyes is one of deep, genuine happiness - you realize that this is it. There's no other way you'd rather be spending the holidays. Tomorrow, you'll be seeing all your friends and, knowing Valerius, there will doubtlessly be a pile of outrageously expensive presents waiting for you... but tonight, just the two of you, seeing this side of Valerius no one else gets to see, the two of you dancing like this with nothing to distract you but firelight and candles and the smell of cookies in the air... that's the best gift.

Valdemar

They're not usually one to celebrate - or pay attention to - such silly things as human holidays. They have far too much to do. But for you? Oh, for you they'll try their darnest to make these the best holidays ever. And what does Valdemar do when they feel they're unprepared? They read, of course. At first, you are surprised to find a book on "DIY decorations" among their medical encyclopedias, but you ascribe it to their eternally curious nature. However, it doesn't stop there. The week after, you find one on woodworking, one on paper sculptures, and a cookbook, of all things. When was the last time you saw Valdemar eat? You decide to confront them. They don't even try to hide what they're doing from you. Instead, they seem so proud to explain in detail the various projects they started; their smile wide and sharp, their crimson eyes glittering with inhuman focus and poorly subdued joy. It's not the holidays, you realize, it's the fact that they're doing something for you. They do need a bit of guidance; catching them poring over a book and muttering "hearts, yes, easily done, I do have several no one is using anymore..." you have to explain it's paper hearts, and not actual ones, but they're a fast learner. And they do so enjoy planning, so their staff all receive a detailed schedule and meticulously thought out arrangements, what pieces of furniture go where to make room for decorations, what times the meals are to be served... They approach the whole affair like they're planning a siege, stockpiling food and giving orders for their estate to be decorated like they're planning its defenses, and not holiday decorations. All the while they wear that wide smile and that obvious joy in their eyes; it's endearing, if eccentric. So, instead of stopping them, you join them, the two of you become a a force to be reckoned with, extending your efforts to the palace. When it's time for the holiday meal, everyone shows up - and you realize that the usually solitary Valdemar extended invitations to all your friends and loved ones, because it would make you happy. So as you sit at the table together, you hold their hand and smile at them, which they return. When you have a moment to yourselves, they wordlessly hand you their gift - it is a book, with a neat, dark cover; you open it to see pages of narrow, orderly writing. It takes you a moment to recognize their handwriting. You have no time to read it with all your friends around you, sharing food and happily talking. But you see enough to understand - they gave you their journal, started on the day they met you. People misunderstand too often, thinking that because the outward displays of affection aren't as prominent in your relationship, it is somehow lacking. Those people couldn't be more wrong. In your hands, you hold pages upon pages of all the things Valdemar loves about you. You are surrounded with the proof of their affection, their dedication. "Volume one," they explain, their eyes lingering on the tome in your hands before they settle on your face, and their sharp smile widens with sheer joy. "The first of many to come." And tucked between the final pages, crafted with otherworldly skill - a little paper heart.

Volta

The changes to the Procurator's personality in the few weeks leading up to the winter holidays are... alarming. Where you'd once be invited to almost every meal - and several picnics - throughout the day, these few days she's been... reclusive. "Otherwise occupied," her servants tell you. Worried about the Procurator, you resolve to confront her and find out more about what has been keeping her so busy. You are a guest at her estate so often that the staff treats you as if you lived there... and maybe you do, with how much time you and Volta have been spending together... but you wander the long, cluttered hallways without anyone questioning your presence there. Her staff - mostly comprised of cooks and other kitchen staff - are busy with the upcoming meal. They always are. But Volta is nowhere to be found... until you hear the familiar sound of her footsteps from a long-disused hall. Covered furniture looms in the semi-darkness - the fireplace is the only source of light. Chests and shelves and piles of clothing from ages past, from every corner of the world, fill the otherwise cavernous room. And there, amidst all those things, is Volta - her dress is stained with paint, and she is running an unfinished, gold-embroidered, translucent shawl through her hands with an anguished expression on her face. You call her name quietly and she almost jumps - like you'd caught her doing something forbidden. You do not have to insist much - she shares everything with you willingly, so she shares this, as well; try as she might, she could not find the perfect gift for you. So, she tried making one. Slowly, you take in the chaos around you - half-finished portraits, done by the Procurator's own hand. Half-finished garments, hundreds of hours of focus and effort gone into the stitches. Half-finished poems and unfinished recipes, sculptures half smooth lines and half rough clay. "Nothing," she confesses, her smile tearful and trembling as she looks up at you. "Nothing is good enough. And there is no time, anymore." Wordlessly, you embrace her; she'd spent so, so many hours crafting, sewing, painting, creating with you on her mind. You were, judging from her attempts at art all around you, her sole muse almost from the day she met you. None of the works are expertly made, but all are clearly made with love. Uneven brushstrokes of a loving hand, after all, make for a masterpiece much greater than a loveless heart could ever produce even if it belonged to a master artist. Embracing her, you realize that Volta had already given you a rather priceless gift; her love, her loyalty; and, through her art, countless hours with nothing but you in her thoughts. She has given you her trust. Her hope. Her heart.

Vlastomil

He starts worrying nearly two months in advance. Others fail to notice, but you notice how the Praetor has become distracted, sweeping papers off his desk when you enter his study, stopping on your walks to talk with merchants. It becomes clear what this is about, when you enter his study in search of him one day - he isn't here, but the window is open and the wind carries several sheets of papers right to your feet. You pick them up, scanning the neat, looping script in his handwriting, and the world spins when you realize this is a list of gifts - every single thing you mentioned you wanted, even in passing, no matter how ridiculously expensive. Usually, you'd not pry into whatever you come across in his study, but this? You have to confront him about this. You bring it up that evening, while you're having tea, and the moment you pull the paper out, his silvery eyes widen anxiously, darting from the paper in your hand to your face. He's... afraid? What could Praetor Vlastomil possibly be afraid of? With much - gentle but firm - insistence, the story comes to light: yes, he has been keeping a list of all the things you mentioned wanting, and yes, he commissioned and ordered many of those things, because he absolutely cannot find a gift worthy of you, and oh, he thinks you deserve the world. Besides, he isn't really... used to celebrating holidays, with people not usually wanting to be around him... Taking his hands, you smile and you explain to him that you don't need those things, that you need him. He's at a loss for words. But the next day, you find out from palace servants that the Praetor announced he would be unavailable all throughout the winter holidays - because he is spending them with you. And indeed, you spend those days at his estate - the decorating and cooking has all been taken care of by the staff, as Vlastomil wants no distractions. He wants to share all his hobbies with you, and he wants to learn all about yours - as well as to try new things together. You try your hand at painting, at playing the piano - Vlastomil spends more time holding your hand than playing - you read a book together in the evenings, and you make sure to pick a hilariously inappropriate play just to see him blush reading his lines. It finally sinks in what he's doing - your gift-related plea was heard, and what Vlastomil is trying to do is give you something that can't be bought. The things he is adamant you deserve - his time, his attention, his care. He is sharing with you endless gardening tips and worm care trivia because he wants to share with you all those fundamental things that make him, well... him. And he wants to learn about you. In truth, you've never seen the Praetor so vulnerable, so open, so enthusiastic; his smile so genuine and the look in his pale eyes one of sincere adoration. Of course, you still received way too many expensive gifts, but the greatest one? Curling up with him under a blanket, in front of the fireplace, with a book in his hands and a faint blush on his cheeks every time he looks at you as he reads a line where the hero speaks of love. He repeats that line. But this time, he puts the book away.

Vulgora

"You LIGHT THINGS ON FIRE? I LIKE THIS!" You smile with endless patience and more than a little amusement. "You light candles, Vulgora." It's been like that ever since you expressed the desire to spend the winter holidays with them. No wonder - Vulgora lived and breathed battle. And so, all the efforts they put into decorating and preparing for the holidays were just that - war. "Our decorations shall be a thousand times more brilliant than Nadia's." When they first made that solemn promise, their gauntleted hands clenched into fists and their golden eyes narrowed, you did not take it seriously. The next morning, you woke up to the entire estate covered with decorations - Vulgora elected to decorate instead of sleeping. The same thing happened with food - they were standing in the middle of the kitchens like an avenging angel, hands on their hips, issuing commands to the kitchen staff like a general on the battlefield. The large ladle they brandished like a weapon made more than a few of the servants wince, and you were at the very least grateful the ladle wasn't sharp as you gently pried it from their hands, laughing. Vulgora set out to give you the best possible holidays with single-minded determination, and they ran their estate like a monarch would run an army. You could do nothing to stop them - not that you wanted to - so you elected instead to follow them around, laughing good-naturedly at their unshakable determination. When the holidays finally arrived, passers-by would stop to look at Vulgora's estate in open-mouthed wonder - they seem to have acquired almost every single decoration available in Vesuvia. The stockpiles of holiday food were probably enough to feed a small army, and you could do nothing but laugh at Vulgora's brilliant, sharp, proud smile as they presented their accomplishments to you. Well, the holiday meal could always be moved from the palace to Vulgora's estate, you mused. That winter - with you at their side - was the first one Vulgora didn't spend alone. As the last guests said their goodbyes you found yourself alone with Vulgora; they took your hand to lead you out onto the balcony, crisp night air stinging your cheeks, but Vulgora's cloak was warm around your shoulders. There, they wordlessly handed you yet another gift - a box, beautifully carved and made from some dark red wood. The blade it contained wasn't a surprise, as beautiful and masterfully made as it was, breathtakingly expensive, its hilt decorated with gold and rubies. What surprised you was how well it fit your hand, how incredibly light it was - and yet by merely holding it you could tell it was deadly. It was a symbol as much as it was a weapon. The laughter, their bluster, was gone; replaced with something you couldn't quite define - a quiet determination. You gazed into Vulgora's golden eyes, understanding dawning on you. They didn't need to speak. You shared the silence in the falling twilight. But you understood what the blade in your hand meant. They were the blade, and you the hand that wields it. They were the will and you the purpose which drives it. You were their hope now. Their why. Without the other, both of you would feel so woefully incomplete, now that you knew there existed another who felt like the other half of you. Tugging their gauntlet off, they quietly intertwined their fingers with yours.

#Arcana imagines #Courtier imagines #Courtier headcanons #Consul Valerius #Quaestor Valdemar #Procurator Volta #Praetor Vlastomil #Pontifex Vulgora #Valerius x reader #Valdemar x reader #Volta x reader #Vlastomil x reader #Vulgora x reader #my writing #answered asks #food cw #I still have a few WIPs but this was a time-sensitive one #thank you for the kind words once more anon #also Vlastomil will always be my baby

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antivan-beau · 4 years ago

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51-54, give me your headcanons

Aww thanks, Auby!! I decided to lean in and had a lot of fun with these.

51. Favorite Warden/Hawke/Inquisitor headcanons (any or all)?

GOSH, this is so broad! I’ll go with some HCs for my characters that are a little unusual and/or contradict things established in canon.

Beatrice Cousland - Morrigan performs the dark ritual with Alistair without Beatrice’s knowledge or consent. For those unfamiliar with Beatrice’s story, she and Morrigan get a slowburn romance throughout the events of Origins that has a pretty different trajectory from Morrigan’s canon romance. On the eve of the final battle, Morrigan proposes the ritual, and Beatrice flatly refuses to ask Alistair to go through with it. She is perfectly content to sacrifice herself, do her duty as a Grey Warden, etc, plus she argues that this ritual is just a final way for Flemeth to exert control over Morrigan’s life. But Morrigan can’t bear to lose Beatrice, and she feels she has very legitimate reasons for wanting an Old God Baby that her lawful good gf doesn’t understand. So after Beatrice falls asleep, Morrigan sneaks out and convinces Alistair herself. Beatrice is shocked and upset when she makes the final blow and lives through it. Her time during Awakening is spent with Big Angst trying to figure out why Morrigan would go behind her back, why she would leave afterword, and how the heck is Beatrice gonna find her swamp witch gf again.

Edric Surana - By the end of Origins, my boy’s personality is 50% mage rights, 30% wanderlust, and 20% spite. He has no desire to stick around and be Warden-Commander. He can’t bear to be told what to do or to give other people orders anymore. He also shirks his duty because he and his BFF, unhardened King Alistair, end the game on tense terms, since Alistair doesn’t want to be king and Edric thinks he needs to suck it up. After Edric survives killing the archdemon (in this worldstate, Morrigan’s ritual is very much an awkward act of wlw/mlm solidarity), Edric and Zevran leave for Antiva together. Edric is an active participant in Zevran’s quest to hunt down and kill Crow masters, which pleases them both immensely. I’ve got a vague idea that Edric actually shows up in Kirkwall with Zev during the events of DA2.

Anias Hawke - like many Hawkes, she is a disaster, but I think in her own special ways. She goes from “bright-eyed refugee trying to do the right thing” to “overtired bureaucrat/public figure, constantly thwarted at doing the right thing” to “washed-up celebrity who spends too much time drinking with Isabela on weeknights and Aveline on weekends.” Probably my most unusual headcanon about her is that I simply rewrote the whole end of Act 2 / beginning of Act 3 because I was so mad she didn’t immediately get to have a follow-up conversation with Isabela about stealing and returning the Tome of Koslun. Anias is doggedly persistent and simply would chase Isabela to the city gates if she had to. This short, kind of mediocre fix-it dialogue was my earliest foray into DA fanfic, before I even knew there was an active fandom :’)

Bastien Adaar - Only 15 hours into my first playthrough of this game, so everything about Bastien is subject to change! I’ve been toying with the idea of roleplaying her as a faithful Andrastean who genuinely thinks she might be the chosen one? I don’t see that much with Inquisitors, especially with an Adaar, so I’m trying it out and seeing where it gets me.

52. Favorite non-Player Character headcanons?

Kirkwall feels so lived-in! My brain is full of specific ideas for the ways the DA2 companions spend their time away from Hawke’s missions. Merrill spending time with Alienage kids and telling them Dalish stories about elven heroes :’) Anders’ clinic is always busy, but every day is a different adventure - delivering babies, curing food poisoning, unexpected veterinarian queries that he’s 100% unqualified to answer but he’s so beloved by Darktown residents that people go to him, anyway. Fenris devotes serious time to learning to read, but I also like to think (after a particular Sebastian party banter) that he decides to teach Alienage elves how to fight. Aveline on the slow, tragic slide from ‘daily city patrols’ to ‘daily office paperwork.’

53. That One Headcanon that hurts to think about?

I love thinking about Taliesen and Zevran re-meeting in Denerim. I HC that Taliesen still has “yeah, we’re best friends! also, would definitely still sleep with you if you asked” feelings for Zevran. But since Zev’s actually experienced some personal freedom + healthy relationships by this point, his feelings about Taliesen are complicated at best. You know when you’ve grown and changed a lot, but somebody from your past shows up, and they haven’t changed at all? And they still have all their old flaws and lame ambitions? Must be an incredibly bittersweet moment for Zev - confronting his changed circumstances and how much he’s grown, but also confronting the realization that he doesn’t have any choice about killing his other lover, too.

54. Fluffiest headcanon ever?

Gosh… everything about Beatrice and Morrigan after the events of Origins’ DLCs. When they finally meet up again, perhaps a year or two after Witchunt, they are finally able to admit the depth and complexity of their feelings, and begin to reconcile their very different worldviews. They settle down in Orlais together, they’re very good moms to Kieran, Beatrice hangs out around the Orlesian court being a chill knight, probably stealing kisses with Morrigan in alcoves that aren’t as private as they think. I commissioned art of them at this point in their lives just to indulge my desire for fluff.

#ask meme #edric surana #beatrice cousland #anias hawke #bastien adaar

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dustedmagazine · 5 years ago

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Derek Taylor 2019: Keep Going

Two words coupled by Harriet Tubman and coined into a credo essential for negotiating the human condition. It's also the title of and invocation to a sublime duo album by Joe McPhee and Hamid Drake released this year as rejoinder to their first recorded ten-years earlier. Taking stock of that decade is something we at Dusted did recently and as the New Year arrives it’s an exercise that feels all the more important, particularly in the extra-musical sense of recognizing the folly of where we’ve been as a world and where we really want to go moving forward. As always, music is both balm and adhesive in remembering that no matter how divisive and discouraging everything seems, we’re still all in it together.

Joe McPhee

Seventy-nine-years young and still a human dynamo of energy, empathy, and optimism, the Powerhouse from Poughkeepsie’s been a constant of these retrospective essays for as long as I’ve been writing them. I haven’t done a hard count, but his horns grace at least a dozen releases this year. Duos with Mats Gustaffson (Brace for Impact), Fred Lonberg-Holm (No Time Left for Sadness), and Paal Nilssen-Love (Song for the Big Chief) join the dyad denoted above in delivering dialogues as personal as they are potent. Tree Dancing assembles the super-group of Lol Coxhill, Evan Parker, Chris Corsano, and McPhee collectively and in component combinations with bassist John Edwards on board for a culminating cut, while Six Situations realizes a dream of bassist Damon Smith in teaming him with McPhee’s tenor and now dearly departed drummer Alvin Fielder. The Fire Each Time bundles six concerts of McPhee in the company of the DKV Trio from a 2017 tour that took James Baldwin and John Coltrane as lodestones. Saving perhaps the best for last, Invitation to a Dream comingles McPhee’s pocket trumpet and soprano with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn and old confrere Ken Vandermark in a tripart colloquy delivered in crystal clear sound.

Peter Brötzmann

A year younger and another fixture in my yearly firmament, Herr Brötz has always had ears attuned to the early pioneers of improvised music through the unabashed embrace of Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins, and others. Those unerring affections erode some of the surprise from I Surrender Dear, an album of tenor-rendered jazz standards and originals, but also enhance the overall experience in how literally he makes good on the debt. It’s arguably his best solo album since 14 Love Poems and bolstered further by the focus on a single central member of his reed arsenal. Also of note, Fifty Years After commemorating the golden anniversary of Machine Gun with longtime confreres German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach and Dutch drummer Han Bennink,

Rob Franken Electrification — Functional Stereo Music (678 Records)

Four-hours of Fender Rhodes heaven recorded in elite Dutch studios between 1972 and 1981 that puzzlingly never found commercial circulation until last year as a six-LP series. The 2019 edition transfers the archive to three-CDs and only rarely flags as Franken’s fonky keys front guitar, bass, drums and a revolving cast of fellow aces fielding other instruments. Economy is the informal edict as morsel-sized originals alternate with covers of tunes by Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Atilla Zoller, and even Steely Dan. The utilitarian intimations of the title aren’t just lip service. Franken originally envisioned the music as an homage to the muzak strains common to “shopping malls, hotels, elevators, department stores, and airports.” Much of it sounds far better aligned with the kinetic cop and detective pot-boilers that populated television and cinema of the decade.

Brian Groder Trio – Luminous Arcs (Latham)

Keeping a working improvising ensemble together is no minor accomplishment, yet Groder’s been able to maintain one in his name with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Jay Rosen. This disc joins two previous albums in demonstrating both the depth of the musicians’ bonds and their shared zeal in exploring and capitalizing on them. Any novelty surrounding the particulars of a trumpet-led piano-less trio is fortunately long since lapsed. The precedence allows them to marshal their attention to shaping music that is simultaneously the sum and multiplication of the substantial parts.

V/A — Pakistan: Folk and Pop Instrumentals 1966-1976 (Sublime Frequencies)

Seattle-based Sublime Frequencies weathered a stretch where the “weirdness” quotient of their audio excavations appeared to outweigh accompanying scholarship and attention to edifying annotations. This scintillating compilation suffers no such skew in the balance of carefully sourced sounds and accompanying copy to shore up the context. Sixties rock, specifically surf, is a through-line in the preponderance of reverb-riddled guitars and buzzing Farfisa organ on many of the tracks, but indigenous melodies and rhythms are also frequent fodder for enthusiastic appropriation. Best of all, there’s a pervasive sense of fun to the sequencing that makes it a handy soundtrack for soirees of all sorts.

Jaimie Branch — Fly or Die II (International Anthem)

If her ascendant flight pattern is any indication, death, artistic or otherwise, isn’t even an option for Jaimie Branch. This follow-up to her meteoric (and long overdue) 2017 debut builds organically on previous cosmetic aspects (core quartet, cover art, etc.) while making progressive-pronged politics even more prominent. “Prayer for Amerikkka” doesn’t mince words in proffering a platform of resistance and the musical propellant to keep it confidently airborne. A robust touring schedule and well-earned media attention are only furthering Branch’s designs at getting the sounds into as many ears as possible.

Sam Rivers

The Sam Rivers Archive Series is the brainchild of producers Danas Mikailionis and Ed Hazell. A projected eight-volume celebration of the music of the eponymous composer/improviser/educator/doyen curated from a vast trove left in the care of Rivers’ daughter after his passing in 2011, it’s also probably the jazz news that most set my heart aflutter with anticipation this year. The initial pair of entries, Emanation and Zenith, certainly live up to the promise in presenting clean fidelity concerts by a high profile trio with bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Norman Conners (pre-disco) and a workshop quintet involving tubaist Joe Daley, bassist Dave Holland and the eight-limbed drums juggernaut of Barry Altschul and Charlie Persip. Both discs are essential.

Jimi Hendrix — Songs for Groovy Children (Experience Hendrix)

Not a long-lost Hendrix kids’ album despite what the jejune title might suggest. Instead, it’s four nearly complete concerts from the guitar deity’s iconic New Year’s Band of Gypsies engagement at the Fillmore East in 1969/70. Producer Eddie Kramer largely quashes his invasive impulses in mastering the tapes, leaving the only real minuses to manifest in the occasionally extra-loose interplay and Jimi’s decision to indulge Buddy Miles’ mic access to a regrettably arguable fault. Math done, there’s nothing stopping an instant trigger-pull for true believers, even folks who have it all already in bootleg form.

Ezz-thetics

Fingers remain collectively-crossed that Werner X. Uehlingher will one day decide to write an autobiography of his countless adventures as a stalwart producer of improvised music. Ezz-thetics is just the latest chapter in the future tome’s story arc that started with the founding of the Hat Hut label back in 1974. The new imprint, named after a classic George Russell composition, balances reissue and archival releases with new ones, packing them with branding that memorializes the old while consecrating the new. Discs by Jimmy Giuffre (Graz Live 1961), John Coltrane (Impressions Graz 1962), and Albert Ayler (Quartets 1964 Spirits to Ghosts Revisted) are the marquee name highlights, but the entirety of the imprint’s releases to-date have had their merits.

Stephen Riley

The tenorist is no longer my favorite under-forty plier on the instrument simply because he’s aged out of the bracket. Oleo builds on last year’s transparently veiled Sonny Rollins’ tribute Hold ‘Em Joe by adding the sturdy trumpet of Joe Magnarelli to the equation and turning the referential calendar forward to the saxophone colossus’ collaborations with Don Cherry. It’s a beaut from a brisk beginning sortie on “Ornithology” to lengthy slalom on the Ducal “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Tangerine Rhapsody is technically under Dutch drummer Snorre Kirk’s leadership, but it wouldn’t be nearly the album it is absent Riley’s supple and sagacious involvement.

Milt Buckner & Jo Jones — Buck & Jo (Fremeaux & Associates)

Curious about what makes an individual improviser tick? Duo contexts are arguably the best aperture to gain edification and insight. Even better than solo or ensemble configurations, the dyad distills things down to solo and dialogue. This four-disc, four-hour-plus collection is a remarkable case in point and surprise that it even exists at all given its vintage let alone its scope. Thank French impresarios the Panassie Brothers who invited ur swing organist and ur swing drummer to indulge themselves with only the gentlest of producer-dictated strictures. The results are fascinating, whimsical, bombastic, and above all, endlessly entertaining. An epitome of intimately undertaken jazz tête-à-tête before it was anything resembling a regular thing.

Del Shannon — Two Silhouettes (Bear Family)

Preconceptions can prove obdurate edifices. Prior to my forty-eighth birthday this year I dismissed Del Shannon as one of the disposable princes of bubble gum pop on the rare occasions he entered my consciousness at all. “Runaway” remains an influential song, particularly in its use of musitron organ, but it’s hardly the makings of unassailable genius. Bear Family’s exhaustive single-disc survey levies a much more convincing appeal for the crooner’s embodiment of a nexus of odd congruencies as moonlighting jazzmen conspire with duck-tailed rockers and barbershop harmonists. Dennis Coffey and Hargus “Pig” Robbins show up as sidemen and there’s even an S&M-tinged canticle called “Torture” replete with whip cracks and a Greek chorus of moans, leaving one to wonder what Ward and June Cleaver made of it all?

Sun Ra

Cosmic Myth and Modern Harmonic continue to advance the mantle apparently abandoned by the Art Yard label in keeping Ra-related albums in circulation. The erstwhile Mr. Mystery employed numerous vocalists throughout his career, even contributing his own less-than-stellar (pun intended) pipes to the cause on occasion. None among that eclectic number could match June Tyson, who brought joie de vivre to the lyrical manifestations of Ra’s cosmic-afro-centrism that was at once wholly believable and infectious. Saturnian Queen of the Sun Ra Arkestra does right by her memory by culling an hour’s worth of highlights from a vast and varied recorded archive. Monorails & Satellites (now in three volumes!) and newly minted editions of Pathways to Unknown Worlds and When Angels Speak of Love were also welcome arrivals.

Derek Bailey/Han Bennink/Evan Parker — Topographie Parisienne: Dunois, April 3rd, 1981 (Fou)

The Topography of the Lungs trio in concert and at length with decent sound eleven-years after their initial seismic contributions to free improv. Bailey and Parker weren’t yet at irreconcilable loggerheads but there’s still a galvanizing and palpable tension that suffuses their interplay. Bennink can’t help being anything but Bennink, bashing away one moment and pattering at barely a whisper the next while keeping ears cocked with split-second focus to the contributions his compatriots. Duos combine with solos from Parker sweeten and season an already delicious aural pot.

Fred Anderson Quartet — Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume V (FPE)

Leftfield guest Toshinori Kondo and drummer Hamid Drake were one half of Peter Brötzmann’s Die Like a Dog outfit when this 1994 concert was committed to tape. That take-no-prisoners context allowed his plangent, frenetic, effects-saturated brass free and ferocious rein. Anderson’s outlets didn’t usually involve electronics and its instructive hearing the adaptations to the roiling controlled-chaos within his customary cerulean-hued improvisations. Drake and bassist Tastu Aoki maintain a stout terrestrial tether enlivened by a revolving array of undulating grooves. Extra points earned for incorporating the original Velvet Lounge wallpaper scheme into the production design. Bottom line: I miss Fred.

V/A — Hillbillies in Hell: Tribulations: Country Music’s Tormented Testament (1952-1974) (The Omni Recording Corporation)

Amusing alliterative appellation aside, this series has managed the no-meager-feat of avoiding diminishing returns while mining the same expanse of time over successive volumes. The fifth entry tilts the lens even more sharply toward the sort of fervent tent show revival circuit favored by fictional religious reprobates like Rev. Harry Powell and Elmer Gantry and comes up with a bonanza off-kilter cuts from names both famous (Hank Williams, Louvin Bros., Tex Ritter) and arcane (The Burton Family, Durwood Daily, The Sunshine Boys Quartet). Ernest Tubb’s “Saturday Satan, Sunday Saint” persuasively sums up the ecumenical ethos, but every song exudes its share of sinful charms.

V/A — Sacred Sounds: Dave Hamilton’s Raw Detroit Gospel (Ace)

As a both prolific and preternaturally talented producer, Dave Hamilton’s usual purview was left-of-center soul and funk. Urban (but not urbane) gospel offered a less-publicized commercial side outlet and he brought comparable emphasis on authenticity and creativity to the various acts he championed. This compilation comprises all-killer-no-filler assemblage that lives up to the unvarnished signifier in the title. It’s nearly eighty-minutes of jangly guitars, tambourines, and impassioned sanctifying and proselytizing of all sorts, as suited for Sunday morning as Friday or Saturday night depending on the preferred mood of your personal household. I’ve enjoyed equal fun plying it in both.

Art Pepper — Promise Kept

Laurie Pepper, like Sue Mingus and other jazz widows before her, remains a passionate arbiter and steward of her late husband’s recorded legacy. The title of this box set collecting a singular tributary of Art Pepper’s later career aspirations could just as easily serve as a signifier of that bond. In truth, it’s reflective of a pact the couple made with producer John Snyder and a string of studio sessions largely left unissued during the Pepper’s lifetime. Rivalries real and imagined are revealed across the recordings as the altoist wrestles with his insecurities and the realities of choices made and paid for as a consequence of his addictions and fictions. Straightforward and vital, the music avoids gestalt in remaining consistently strong and emotionally true.

Paul Bley/Gary Peacock/Paul Motian — When Will the Blues Leave (ECM)

The prevailing mystery behind this twenty-year-old concert rests on the reason(s) why the fine folks at ECM left it in the can for so long. I don’t have an answer but rather a simple expression of gratitude that they finally decided to rectify the error and get the sounds out into the world. Bley, Peacock and Motian were already three-decades deep in the periodic associations that quietly helped open chamber jazz to free improvisation when they took to the Swiss stage. The ensuing masterful performance manages to feel simultaneously like three old friends shooting the shit and a trio of improvisatory experts operating at peak collective capacity.

Prince — 1999 (Warner)

Residency in the Twin Cities for the better part of two decades has resulted in many boons, personal and vocational for this writer. As with any life lived, the red side of the ledger has entries, too. Folded among them is the frictional, frayed listening relationship I harbor with the region’s most famous musical export. Nearly three years after his premature passing Prince is still everywhere and everything here. That perpetual, and perpetually irksome, ubiquity is what makes this five-disc+DVD beyond-exhaustive box so refreshing to my patience-tested purview. It contains lots of impressive material from arguably his most creative and questing period. It also has plenty of songs that feel competent but quotidian by comparison. That blend of bliss and banality is as effective a corrective as I can think of to the cult of purple sainthood that persists around these parts.

And as is my habitual wont, 25 more in no hierarchical order… thank you for reading and Feliz Año Nuevo!

Josh Abrams Natural Information Society (Eremite)

Michael Formanek’s Very Practical Trio – Even Better (Intakt)

Charles Gayle/John Edwards/Mark Sanders – Seasons Changing (Otokroku)

Dudu Pukwana/Han Bennink/Misha Mengelberg – Yi Yole (ICP/Corbett vs. Dempsey)

Nat King Cole – Hittin’ the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1945) (Resonance)

Willem Breuker & Han Bennink – New Acoustic Swing Duo (ICP/Corbett vs. Dempsey)

Whit Dickey & Kirk Knuffke – Drone Dream (No Business)

Mark Turner & Gary Foster – Mark Turner Meets Gary Foster (Capri)

J.C. Heard & Bill Perkins Quintet – Live at the Lighthouse 1964 (Fresh Sound)

Stan Getz – Getz at the Gate: November 26, 1961 (Verve)

Rita Moss - Queen Moss 1951-1959 (Fresh Sound)

Bill Frisell & Thomas Morgan – Epistrophy (ECM)

Marion Brown & Dave Burrell – Live at the Black Musicians’ Conference, 1981 (No Business)

Jon Irabagon – Invisible Horizon (Irrabagast)

Tom Rainey Trio – Combobulated (Intakt)

Joe Lovano & Enrico Rava Quintet – Roma (ECM)

Tomeka Reid Quartet – Old New (Cuneiform)

Johnny Griffin & Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis – Ow: Live at the Penthouse (Reel to Reel)

Takahashi Miyasaka – Animals Garden (Kojima/BBE)

Tiger Trio (Joelle Leandre/Myra Melford/Nicole Mitchell) – Map of Liberation (Rogue Art)

V/A – Jambu: E Os Miticos Sons da Amazonia (Analog Africa)

V/A – Put the Whole Armour On: Female Black Gospel 1940s/1950s (Gospel Friend)

V/A –Alefa Madagascar: Salegy, Soukous, & Soul from the Red Island (Strut)

Horace Tapscott with the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and the Great Voice of UGMAA - Why Don’t You Listen? Live at LACMA 1998 (Dark Tree)

Duster – Capsule Losing Contact (Numero)

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forestwater87 · 6 years ago

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Gwenvid Week Day 5

Day 5: Community Appreciation / Favorite AU

To celebrate the amazing Gwenvid community, I took the really fascinating Ghoul AU that @color-theorist (or @color-theorist-art ) created, which has no explicit Gwenvid as of yet, and then somehow accidentally created several pages of momgwen with very little Gwenvid in it. Oops. And probably fucked up the lore. Double oops. Oh well, I hope y’all have fun anyway! :)

It wasn’t anything like Buffy, was the first thing Gwen realized about fighting monsters.

For one thing, it was a lot less fighting -- she wasn’t exactly built for dealing out pain -- and a lot more researching. And not in weathered tomes blanketed with a thick layer of dust with crinkled pages full of secrets. Sure, there was some of that, but ghouls in particular seemed to be a relatively new phenomenon, or were just so uninteresting to the ancients that they didn’t bother writing about them. Mostly it involved trawling internet forums and trying to arrange interviews with the leads who seemed the most promising. Which in itself required a great deal of convincing paranoid heroin addicts that she was neither a ghoul intent on devouring their flesh or a member of the government who would haul them off to Super Guantanamo. All that work, only to have her work dismissed by every publisher she’d recommended it to, and a pointed recommendation by the History Department chair that it would be best for her career at Sleepy Peak Community College if she found another subject to focus her studies on.

“‘It’s really all about the branding,’” she mimicked quietly, shifting her weight in a futile attempt to get comfortable. ”’Just call it “folklore.”’ That’s academically dis-fucking-honest, Mr. Bishop.” Gwen grabbed her bag from where it was dangling off the arm of a marble angel and hauled out a binder and a flashlight. “I’m the only professor under thirty who hasn’t gotten the fuck out of here after three months, Mr. Bishop. This shitty school wouldn’t even have a goddamn newspaper if it wasn’t for me, Mr. Bishop. Fuck, this is cold,” she muttered, glaring down at the polished granite with distaste before sliding down onto the grass, leaning back against the tombstone she’d just climbed off of. “I’m doing important work, here.”

Gwen opened the binder, eyeing the hand-drawn map of the Long Sleep Cemetery and tracing the scraggly line of bright red X’s that marked out fourteen ravaged graves, then flipping to a map of the entire city, which was covered in yellow dates around the church, hospital, and veterinary clinic. She glanced from these to the mausoleum she was staking out, like the ghoul would just appear there if she looked hard enough.

“Come on, asshole,” she said, flopping back against the tombstone and turning off the flashlight. “I know I did this right, so just show up where you’re supposed to.”

It was crazy, she knew all that. Knew her meticulous tracking of local robberies and vandalism looked from the outside like the scribblings of a madwoman fraying her last nerve. It was why she took so much care in repackaging every piece of evidence into a series of respectable, ponderous, academic -- boring, if she was being perfectly honest with herself -- books.

A series of respectable, academic, unpublished books.

Because this was all crazy. Believing in undead monsters that needed to consume the living (or recently-dead) was crazy. Objectively, she was probably rather crazy.

The thing was, she was right.

She just had to find a way to prove it.

“You’re not good at this, are you?”

Gwen jumped at the voice and whipped around, brandishing her flashlight in one hand and her binder in the other -- before she overbalanced and had to drop both, catching herself before she fell flat on her back in the dew-drenched grass. “Whaatherfucke --”

So. Not much like Buffy at all.

Her attacker was thin, stretched out and lanky like a very short Slenderman. As he stepped around the gravestone and moved towards her, his eyes reflected the light from a nearby streetlamp like a cat’s, gleaming out from underneath the dark hoodie that obscured most of his features.

Human eyes don’t glow like that.

She snatched up her flashlight and flicked it back on; she tried not to shine it in his face, but he flinched away from it anyway, hunching his shoulders and shoving his hands into his sweatshirt pocket. The light revealed a narrow brown face that was sickly yellow underneath the eyes and nearly gray in the hollows of his cheekbones. “Kids aren’t supposed to be out after ten pm,” she said, narrowing her eyes. She took in the teenager’s slouchy grace, the way he walked as though every movement was both naturally easy and indescribably exhausting.

“No one’s supposed to be in the graveyard after it closes, but that didn’t stop you,” he replied, slumping against the marble angel and watching her with those unnerving catlike eyes.

She’d found her ghoul.

Gwen drew herself up, standing so she could look down at him. “I have permission,” she lied. “I’m conducting research on the series of grave-robbings in the last few wee --”

“My dad’s a cop with really shitty password protection. You don’t have permission for shit.” He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie. “You’re one of those nuts who wants to hunt vampires.”

“Ghouls aren’t vampires,” she corrected before she could stop herself, the pedantic need to be right temporarily overpowering her common sense. “Blood is evidently not an essential component of their diet, and -- you know what, this is a stupid conversation and I’m not having it.” She settled back against her tombstone and turned her gaze to the mausoleum her ghoul was supposed to be raiding instead of making snide comments about her profession. “Go get your dead person snack.”

The kid jolted, and she watched his look of horror out of the corner of her eye. “How the fuck --” He shook his head, a shock of floppy black hair escaping the hoodie and falling over one of his eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

She pulled her binder back into her lap with a small grunt of effort. Christ, this thing was getting heavy. “Whoever’s been raiding the cemetery’s been really smart about it,” she said, refusing to look up at him. “Always hits it just as the attention is beginning to die down -- pardon the pun -- and always far enough from the others that the area is totally isolated. But they do it without making it look like a pattern.” She glanced up at him, a little gratified to see him leaning over her map curiously. So this was what validation felt like! “I’d been wondering how they knew when to sneak back in here, but . . . having a dad in the police force might do it, if the cop was dumb enough.” She turned to another section of her notes, an alphabetical list of everyone in the SPPD. “I knew I should’ve paid more attention to their families,” she mumbled, flipping through the officers. “Which of you is the idiot with an undead son?”

“Hey, fuck you!” he snapped, stepping away from the binder and back to the marble angel. “You can’t just go around calling people monsters because they’re wandering around a graveyard. Hell, that makes you sound just as much like one of those things as me.”

Gwen ticked off on her fingers without looking up from the police directory: “Alarmingly thin, glowing eyes, a bit of a nasty undead pallor -- bet people are constantly asking if you’re sick --”

“Again, fuck you.”

“-- and a tricky-but-predictable pattern of raiding cemeteries, morgues, and . . . have you been eating dead animals?” She glanced up at him then with a frown. “I didn’t know ghouls could do that.”

“They can’t,” he muttered, kicking at the grass, “but it was worth a shot.”

She couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride. This was her first legitimate monster sighting! She wasn’t crazy! “It’s all circumstantial, of course. You never really know if you’ve got a ghoul or just someone with, like, lupus. But the cat-eye thing was a big tip off. Also, you know, hanging out in the cemetery when no one in their right minds would go anywhere near the place.” He looked at her for a long moment, and she cringed. “Yes, fine, I heard it.”

“So you’re like an expert in useless information no one gives a shit about, huh?”

She thought about getting offended, but he was kind of right. At least, a boatload of publishers would agree with him. “Yeah . . .”

He looked back over at the mausoleum thoughtfully, and she couldn’t help but be curious. “Does it taste good when it’s been dead for a while?” she asked. She was sorely tempted to grab her pencil and notebook, but that might scare the kid off. “I’ve read it’s not supposed to be as . . .” Nutritious just felt gross, in this context, so she let the sentence trail off.

He shrugged. “A little bland, but I kinda like it better. Got this weird kind of . . . cheesy aftertaste? Not like I’ve had cheese since I was a kid, but like that really smelly stuff rich people put on everything.”

“That’s pretty disgusting.” She couldn’t quite keep the note of appreciation out of her voice. (She’d always been a sucker for gory movies.) “So what’s with the change?”

“What’re you talking about?”

That was in her other binder. Gwen rustled through her backpack until she found the right one and opened it up to a spread of newspaper clippings. “All the killings. Two this week, three in the last two months. I haven’t put a map together yet --” and god, she already felt tired thinking about it, “-- but they don’t seem to have any sort of pattern. I figure it can’t be you because, well, all my research suggests that if you were eating fresh kills you’d be a lot more . . .” She gestured vaguely at him. “Alive-looking.”

He bared his teeth, and if they were sharper-looking than normal she was almost positive that was just her imagination. “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?”

She didn’t, but that was beside the point. “So do you know who’s doing this?” she asked, scrambling to her knees and finally giving in to the urge to grab her pen. “Can you tell me? I interned as a police sketch artist, so even if you just describe them I bet I could --”

“You expect me to narc?”

“They’re killing people!”

“Eh, I --”

“Max?”

They were both blinded; squinting past the flashlight, Gwen could barely make out a male figure. The newcomer lowered the light, stepping forward. His eyebrows drew together as he took in the scene: a kid lounging on a tombstone, having a conversation with a woman kneeling in the damp grass surrounded by open books and binders. “What are you doing out here? You know it’s past curfew!”

The ghoul -- Max, it seemed -- rolled his eyes and sighed. “It’s not like you’re gonna arrest me. I just saw this weird lady sneaking into the graveyard and wanted to see what she was doing.”

As surreptitiously as she could, Gwen glanced down at the list of police officers in her lap, comparing the smiling photos to the grim-faced man shaking his head at Max. Officer David E. Greenwood. On the force for about ten years. According to some gossip she’d scribbled in the margin, he’d turned down the opportunity to become a detective a few years ago, holding onto his lower-paying desk job for the sake of his --

His son.

“Miss?” Greenwood waved the flashlight, dragging her attention back to the conversation. “I’m going to need to ask you to leave the --”

“Yeah, fine,” she grumbled, shoving her work back into her bag. “You know, I should get a special pass or something for doing research,” she said, more to herself than to the officer.

He cocked his head to the side, looking for all the world like a big puppy wearing a police badge. “Well, I’m afraid we can’t do anything like that, but I’d be very interested in learning what you’re researching!” He frowned. “Actually, you look familiar . . .”

“I used to be the department intern,” she said with a shrug. She was a little older than Greenwood, so it wasn’t like he’d have been working there to remember --

“Oh, Gwen! Yes, of course I’ve heard all about you!” He took a step forward, like he was about to wrap her up in a hug, before his smile dimmed a bit and he coughed lightly into his fist. “Mr. Campbell speaks very highly of you! He’s been saying he wishes more people would be willing to work for no money, but I’m sure he just meant that you did such a fantastic job! You work at the college now, right? You know, I’ve been meaning to take some classes but I just haven’t had the time --”

“Dad,” Max interrupted, “it’s cold as fuck. Can we just go?”

“Right! Sorry, Max.” He shot his son -- though they really looked nothing alike -- an apologetic grin before turning the smile toward her. “If you’ll just follow me, ma’am. Goodness, isn’t it lovely out here at night? Sometimes I wish . . .”

When they were outside, Max broke through Greenwood’s stream of pleasantries. “Hey, can I talk to her for a second before we go?” When they both shot him a confused, surprised look, he shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket, hunching his shoulders defensively. “What? We were in the middle of a conversation.”

Greenwood hummed thoughtfully, glancing between the two of them. “Well, I suppose there’s no harm. It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Gwen.” He shook her hand enthusiastically.

“You too, officer.”

“Please, call me David!” He winked, then strolled along the outer cemetery wall until he was well out of earshot, his hands clasped behind his back like a military at-ease. Max scuffed his shoe along the asphalt; Gwen had dealt with enough students to know not to push him, so she watched the clouds slide like molasses along the sky and waited.

“You know a lot about this stuff, huh? Like, it’s useless, but you still have a lot of research.” She nodded, watching curiosity wage war with misanthropy across his face. Finally he blurted out, “So can I read some of it sometime? I mean, it’s probably mostly bullshit, but . . .”

She’d given up on carrying copies of her books around with her, on the off chance that someone might be interested if it came up in conversation. “I’m usually on campus at noon,” she said. “Stop by my office. I’ve got a couple things you could borrow.” She fought to keep the eagerness out of her voice, but the thought of her self-bound books actually being read by someone was way too exciting.

Even if that someone was a moody undead kid with the most improbable home life she’d ever heard of.

He nodded, a little awkwardly, and started to walk away before she put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, are you gonna be all right without eating?”

He shrugged. “Isn’t the first time.”

Gwen hesitated. It could get so so fired, but . . . “Listen, I work some nights at the hospital morgue. Just like, processing bodies and stuff.”

“I thought you were a professor.”

She sighed. “Adjunct,” she admitted. “Only part time. Anyway, I can’t always . . . like obviously we’d have to be really careful, and there’s no real good way to . . . but if there’s actual murderous ghouls around you probably shouldn’t be so hungry they’ll kick your ass or something --”

“How did you make offering help come out so insulting?” Max sounded impressed. He glanced over his shoulder at David, then raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. “We’ll work something out, yeah. Beats digging up coffins all night.”

David meandered back in their direction. “Would you like to be walked home, Miss Gwen? It’s not safe to be out alone at this time of night.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, sure.”

She knew how dangerous it was. Had written hundreds of pages on the subject, in fact.

But it was nice, for the first time in her life, to feel like she’d actually accomplished something useful.

“Dad wants you to come over for dinner again.”

Gwen jumped; Max had an infuriating tendency to just appear in doorways without a sound, usually when she was deep in concentration doing something else. She thought maybe he enjoyed scaring her. “I have class tonight,” she said, taking the book he held out, “but tell him thanks.”

Max slouched into the chair on the other side of her desk, watching her dig through her books for the next one in the series. Over the past few weeks he’d been going through her research, and while his habit of writing corrections or commentary in the margins -- with pen, no less! -- was unbelievably annoying, she was making more progress in two months than she had in years. “Second time this week,” he observed.

It took her a second to realize what he was saying. “Huh? Oh, yeah, I appreciate it. Seriously, make sure you thank him for me.” Dinners with Max and David were a little awkward, mostly because only David seemed to really want to be there, but it certainly beat microwave dinners in front of her computer.

“I think he likes you.”

She made a dismissive noise. “He likes everyone,” she said. In fact, she’d made it a personal goal to hear him say something unkind about somebody. It was unsuccessful so far, but she had faith. She handed him the next book, watching him turn it over in his hands appraisingly with something almost like nervousness. It was one thing to have someone read your life’s work -- it was quite another when the person reading your work was also literally the subject of it.

“So you’re gonna stop by after class, right?”

“I -- no?” Sure, sometimes Gwen did, if she’d forgotten to give Max something or if David’s texts had seemed especially plaintive; she got the sense that his life wasn’t as sunshine-and-rainbows as he tried to make it seem, and watching TV or sitting out on the porch after Max had disappeared into his room wasn’t much of a sacrifice. But it wasn’t a habit or anything. “Maybe I have shit to do.”

He snorted. “No you don’t.”

She didn’t, but she didn’t need to be reminded of the life she didn’t have by an obnoxious kid who literally had no life.

When she didn’t respond he stood up, tucking her book under his arm. “So I’ll tell Dad you’ll be by after class. And I’m gonna be at Neil’s tonight.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“Ugh, don’t make me say it. It’s fucking gross.”

Gwen watched Max lope out of her office, wondering if he was aware that he’d just told her his father was lonely. And that it worried him.

“For fuck’s sake, just go out already!”

Her pen jerked a scraggly line across the paper, jagged and uneven like the sudden spike in her heart rate. “Why can’t you knock, you shitty excuse for a Halloween monster?” she growled, shoving her notebook aside and glaring up at him.

He set her book on her desk with surprising gentleness for someone who reportedly didn’t care about anything. “First, Dad is so goddamn annoying, and if I have to hear him talk about how ‘sweet that Miss Gwen is, don’t you think so, Max?’ one more time I’m gonna eat him. Second, it’d probably be easier to sneak me food if you were dating, since it’d be less weird for me to hang out with my stepmom.”

“I’m not going to ask David out so it’s easier for you to feed,” she said, bristling at “stepmom.”

“No, you’re gonna do it because you keep staring at him like a creep whenever you think he’s not looking. That’s third, by the way,” he continued, holding up three fingers. “The only thing more annoying than him being all moony and stupid is you being all moony and stupid.”

“That . . .” is not true was on the tip of her tongue, but somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to say it. The problem was, she’d gotten accustomed to spending more evenings a week at the Greenwoods’ house than her own, and had started to find it more comforting. Which didn’t mean that she was interested in David, of course, but she’d been . . . surprised, by him.

By his genuine interest in her, and his support of her research even though it clearly made him uneasy. (Which was fair; “hey I think those murders you’re investigating are undead monsters” was a pretty uncomfortable thing to talk about, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to listen.)

By how he remembered stupid little things, like her favorite foods, and how even when he was thoughtless and absent-minded it never seemed to piss her off the way it should.

By his horrible sense of humor and his worse taste in TV shows. By how his eyelashes were longer than hers, and framed his eyes so prettily. By the freckles she could only see when they were sitting thigh-to-thigh on the couch, or when he pulled her in for a goodnight hug. By --

Well, fuck.

“Everyone I know is a fucking idiot,” Max groaned, tugging her out of her heart-attack-inciting epiphany. He ran his hands through his hair -- glossy and sleek because he’d eaten last night; everything about him was glowing and lively compared to usual, making him look almost human -- and stood. “Don’t even bother getting me the next book. You can drop it off with Dad tonight.”

“But he didn’t invite me to dinn --” She cut herself off at the look of pure exasperation he gave her, one that implied he couldn’t even deign that with a response.

“Fucking idiots,” he muttered, slipping out of her office.

“Okay, I know I basically made this happen because you’re both too dumb to function, but I’m hating every second of this. I take it all back.”

David practically leapt out of Gwen’s chair, almost knocking her out of his lap and face-first into a concussion courtesy of the corner of her desk. “M-Max! What are you doing here?!”

She just sighed, adjusting her position so she wasn’t in danger of falling and brushing her hair out of her eyes. “He does this.”

“I’m a student, Dad. I belong here.” He held up the binder -- Gwen’s most recent book in the making -- with a sharp, sarcastic grin. He was looking a little gray and drawn, and she made a mental note to grab him some intestines or something that wouldn’t be missed at work that night. When he was looking sick like this, his inhumanness stood out in stark relief, like the crisp lines of his teeth that were too big and too pointy for his supposedly-human mouth.

“In high school! Why aren’t you in class?”

He shrugged. “Lunch break,” he said. Gwen and David exchanged a look, because neither of them knew if that was true. It’d been a while since either of them had been students, after all. Dropping the binder on Gwen’s desk, he retreated to the door like he was afraid to coming too close to them. “What’re you doing here, anyway?”

“Um . . . lunch break,” David replied weakly, his face flushing.

Gwen picked up a stress ball and lightly tossed it at Max’s head. “Get out of here, you little shit.”

“I hate you both. See you at dinner,” he said casually, ducking out of the office and letting the door bang shut behind him.

David sighed, shaking his head. “Do you think he looks sick, Gwen? I’m worried he’s coming down with something.”

She winced. “Probably a 24-hour bug. Bet he’ll be fine tomorrow,” she said, ducking her face into the crook of his neck and kissing behind his ear. Sometimes she couldn’t fathom how someone who knew about ghouls could miss the fact that his own son was one.

But then again, David wasn’t an academic, and he certainly wasn’t trained in this kind of thing. And he had a tendency to ignore red flags when it came to people he cared about.

It was one of the things she loved most about him.

#campcamp #camp camp roosterteeth #gwenvidweek #gwenvidweek2018 #cc gwen #cc max #dadvid #momgwen #christ this is awful #and that ending is very half assed bc I got worn out #but uhhhh #sorry ct #you deserve better #but have this instead

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sicklyscribe · 6 years ago

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an AU

It was impossible to surprise anyone in this house without turning to the magical arts. Elijah must have turned on the blender as soon as she stretched herself awake five minutes ago, because there he was, pouring a strawberry-banana smoothie into a milkshake glass. He looked over his shoulder for a moment and smiled. “Happy birthday, Hope.”

Hope yawned and smiled, though the latter was a bit forced, as she sat down at the kitchen table. Elijah grabbed chocolate syrup from the fridge, drizzling it over the smoothie like it was gourmet (she was the only one she knew who drank strawberry-banana smoothies with Hershey’s syrup, but she was also the only vampire-witch-werewolf twice-over New Orleans princess she knew, so.)

“Where’s Dad?” she asked as he stabbed a straw into the drink and brought it over to her with a plate of warm beignets.

Elijah pursed his lips, fighting some sort of revelation that could be found if he did not restrain his expression. “He’s getting your surprise.”

His brows rose after a moment, prompting her to eat, little one. She took a bite of beignet and a sip of smoothie (he always made it with so much sugar, Hayley and Aunt Freya always scolded him) and didn’t even try to pry the surprise’s details out of him. Her uncle leaned up against the counter, sipping a giant cup of coffee. He was already in full Elijah-mode, hair coiffed and slacks pressed and tie tied, though his sleeves had been carefully rolled up while he prepared the birthday girl’s breakfast.

He watched her with eagle eyes, and she tried to avoid the sincere concern in his gaze. Eventually he put the mug down; unrolled his sleeves, clicked the cufflinks back into place. Air chugged and sputtered through the smoothie straw in the awkward silence. He looked away from her, giving her a reprieve, she thought, except he spoke. Gently, almost a whisper. “You don’t have to go tonight if you don’t want to.”

The newly-fifteen-year-old shrugged into herself, picking at the last corner of beignet on her plate. “It’s a tradition.” She put her feet up on the chair and leaned into her knees. “It’s important to Mom.”

Her uncle gave her a sweet, sad smile before looking back at the counter again. “You’re more important to your mother than any tradition, Hope Andrea Mikaelson.”

She sighed. “Mikaelson. So many of them hate me, Elijah. Because of dad. And you, and... everything.” She thought about a forest a few hundred miles northeast, ten hundred years in the past, when an uncle she never met died and a grandmother that tried to kill her in the cradle cursed her children with a lust for blood. “Mom always says they don’t matter, that they’ll get used to it...”

“She’s right.”

“But-”

“You listen here, sweetheart, there’s no buts about it.” He looked over at her halfway through his sentence, with a steely cold adoration that could only make sense on her uncle’s face. “You will never meet other’s expectations of who you should be. Because there has never been anyone in the world like you, there has never once and never will be someone that could compare.” He cracked a wide, proud smile. “People will hate you for that, and blame it on the vampire in you. Others will blame your grandmother’s blood, others still will blame your mother’s. What is it they say now -- screw them. Every fifteen-year-old deserves a happy birthday, especially when that fifteen-year-old is my niece.”

He had walked over to the table as he spoke, and she could smell his sharp aftershave as he gave her a kiss on the crown of her head. “You want to watch old movies with your uncle tonight, or invite your friends over to do God knows what kind of teenage witchy mischief, your mother will understand.”

Hope knew that he was right, that she would understand, but she would be sad, too.

The faint sound of a door clicking open from the courtyard was followed by a split-second of whooshing air before a gorgeous blonde stood outside the kitchen doorframe. “Where is my niece!” she shouted with a laugh, designer sunglasses threatening to fall from where they were tucked up on her head. The following moments for Hope were all jingling bracelets, fancy perfume, and a soft, not-quite-physically-warm but very emotionally-warm hug.

“Look at you! Elijah, look at this beautiful little woman! Can you believe she’s Nik’s?”

“Very funny, Bekah,” her father wrapped an arm around their embrace. “Happy birthday, my littlest wolf.”

“Thank you, dad,” Hope really smiled for the first time that morning, giving him a tight hug.

Uncle Elijah and Aunt Rebekah detangled from their own greeting, Elijah making some comment or other about Rebekah’s new hair cut. “Just because you choose one cut per century doesn’t mean we all must, big brother.”

“Is no one going to help me with all of these bloody suitcases?”

Hope gasped, quickly catching the cheshire-cat grins of the others in the kitchen as they watched her realize that there was more to the surprise. She bolted to the front courtyard and into her other uncle’s arms, making him drop the Coach duffels and Santa-esque bag of what had to be presents for her.

The two laughed and her Uncle Kol kissed her cheeks. “You better be happy to see me. I had to survive a whole eight-hour flight with your Auntie just to get here.”

“I heard that!”

“How long can you stay?” she asked, grabbing one of the suitcases and rolling it to the staircase.

“As long as Nik and your dear wolfy mother can stand to have me, I suppose,” he said with a wink.

As long as the Quarter can stand having all of the living Mikaelsons in one place, the pessimist in her translated with a frown. There was too much blood in this compound, too much blood in the name. They tried not to talk about it, but Hayley had made them promise never to lie to her. Recently the vague, sparing answers had become more detailed. Aunt Freya had somberly given her old accounts, a history that never made it into a human’s textbook.

Hope never quite got used to the way her dad’s family looked at her, like she was some Messiah, like she could do no wrong. She knew it had spoiled her, she knew it had made her act out. She knew she could never understand what it would be like to live a thousand years of violence without ever dreaming that a new generation could ever exist. And they could hardly remember what it was like to be human, much less a teenage one.

Not long after the newcomers were settled and Hope had been absolutely interrogated about her friends and hobbies and everything under the sun and moon, Hayley Marshall came home from the Bayou.

“Make way, I have cake!” she called throughout the compound. “Where’s my baby!”

“We don’t have a baby anymore,” Her father cried out mournfully from the couch. “Only a mischievous young lady who is far too good for the lot of us!”

“Speak for yourself, Nik,” (Aunt Freya had come to visit with her new wife not a half an hour before.)

Hope had made her way down the stairs from the living room at this point, meeting her mother in the courtyard and giving her a sheepish smile.

“Come here, little moon,” the hybrid woman said, gathering her in her strong arms and tucking her head against her shoulder. “Happy birthday, baby.”

They all went out to lunch after that, because Hayley was adamant that Hope should have a dinner out with her Quarter friends before being trucked down to the swamp, no matter how fun the party was going to be.

They each gave her one gift (the rest would be at the Bayou, they said, in case she thought they would each only get her a single gift).

Among them was a handmade leather-bound tome, with a card in the wrappings from Freya. She didn’t understand why Freya had tears in her eyes as she had handed her the gift, she had only felt the rush of excitement to see a new spellbook, gasping and leafing through the -- empty pages.

For a moment she sat at the table in the fancy French Quarter restaurant dumbstruck, mouth hanging open and tears filling her own eyes.

“I figured it was time,” Freya said, trying not to let tears creep into her voice.

Her own grimoire.

Hope closed the book now, to run her fingers over the exquisitely wrought leather on the cover. Her heart nearly stopped when she realized what it depicted.

“Your father helped me design it,” Freya whispered, but her voice seemed fuzzy and far-away.

In the glyphs of her grandfather’s tribe, Hope read the symbol for witch, large and central amidst the nordic knots snaking throughout the leather.

Inside the central symbol, right at the heart where two filled circles usually sat, was the symbol for Hybrid. In the uppermost circle, the rune for H was embossed. In the Vampire symbol, the A, and in the werewolf, the M. Her fingers shook as she traced the indents of the lines, and her mother’s hand covered her own, grasped it lightly.

Suddenly it all seemed right. Her parents met because her father lived a thousand years as a vampire, which could not have happened if her grandmother had not been a powerful enough witch to make him so. She was born because of the living werewolf blood in each of her parents, she was alive because she was all three.

And that wasn’t a bad thing.

She was all her own, and she was proud of it for the very first time, looking down at the symbol her father had sketched, no doubt, to give her a place in the history that had given her to him.

There wasn’t a word for what she was, not in English, not in a modern tongue. But now there was a title, even if it existed only as an image from an ancient culture.

She would go to the celebration tonight, the celebration for a Crescent princess, and she would dance her ass off and Mary would let her have more whiskey than the shot her mother had promised her. And no one could tell her she didn’t belong.

Screw them.

#i watched the most recent episode and it felt so wrong I had to do something about it #my writing #I just need Hope to have actual relationships with the MIkaelsons okay #I need it so much #tho i just realized Hope's initials are HAM someone please help that poor girl

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daphnewritings · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 9: The Secret Passage

Summary: Draco thinks about Harry while watching snow fall. Need I say more?

Warnings: Lucius is a dick, and on Christmas no less

Word Count: 3k words

- Chapter 8 / Chapter 10 -

On Christmas morning, Draco woke up before both of his parents. He sat up in his familiar room that was still too quiet at night without the soft sounds of five other boys sleeping around him, and looked out the window to see the steady fall of fresh snow.

Excited by the promise of a white Christmas, he leapt out of bed and started tripping around his room, narrowly avoiding the corners of his furniture as he flipped the top of his Hogwarts trunk open and dug around in its depths for the thickest socks he owned and the plush forest green robe his mother had forced him to pack all those months ago that he’d never used.

He would’ve never lived it down with Blaise if he woke up and put that thing on every morning. He may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he wasn’t that ridiculous.

Finally finding what he was looking for, he bundled up and padded across the floor to the door, but he stopped with his hand wrapped around the handle. His bedroom door was notorious for creaking and would surely wake up his parents, eliminating any chance he had of having an hour or two to himself before his mother insisted they all gather around the tree in the parlor to open gifts, so that they could all tell themselves the nice, tiny lie that they really were a wholesome little family.

Turning back around, Draco crossed to his bathroom, grabbing his wand off the nighstand along the way. He winced as he felt the bite of the cold, white tiles of the bathroom floor through his socks as he stepped through the doorway and beelined towards the massive, gilded mirror that dominated one wall of the small chamber. He made sure to stop at the sink and pull out the bottom drawer on the left, snatching up one of the many tapered candles he’d stolen from around the house.

Turning back to the mirror, he ran his hand along its right golden edge until he felt one of the shimmering roses give a little. See, if someone were to look closely at the left side of the mirror, amidst all the golden whirls and flowers that edged its border, they would see two small hinges that allowed the mirror to swing away from the wall, revealing the hidden passageway behind it.

He pressed into the golden rose on the right side of the mirror until he heard a faint click and stepped back as the mirror eased open in front of him, releasing a cloud of dust right into his face that immediately surged down his throat. He tried to smother his violent coughs as he attempted to wave the dust away as best he could.

He really should tell Dobby to clean these passages every once in a while, but then he would have to stop pretending like they were his own little secret.

Draco had discovered the passage behind the mirror purely on accident a few years ago. Crabbe, Goyle, and he had just finished messing around on a couple of old Cleansweeps they’d found in the shed earlier that day and were covered in mud, practically from head to toe. The three of them had tried to sneak past his mother, but the muddy footprints that spread from the conservatory to the art gallery quickly gave them away. It hadn’t been that hard for Narcissa to find them, given the fact they had left her a trail of figurative breadcrumbs to follow.

After she had laid into them about making a mess out of her household and yelled at Dobby to stop what he was doing and clean it all up, she sent them to Draco’s room to wash up with, “And for Merlin’s sake, take off your shoes!”

They had hurriedly done as she said and bolted upstairs, eager to get away from her yowling. But once they had locked themselves in Draco’s bathroom, Crabbe and Goyle seemed to think it had been a rousing success of a good time, and Draco had to agree. He knew his mother wouldn’t be too harsh on him to ground him. More than likely, she was probably in the parlor now, looking through her Witch Weekly for a flying instructor.

But then Crabbe and Goyle had gotten a little too rowdy in their jovial celebration, punching each other in the arms in congratulations, that when they’d turned to do the same to Draco, the punch that landed on his shoulder propelled him back into the gilded mirror. Luckily, his elbow had only made contact with the golden frame, but he had still heard a small click that terrified him. The mirror had to be old enough to be a family heirloom, and if he’d broken it, it wouldn’t be his mother coming down on him, but his father.

And it wouldn’t matter who’s fault it really was, Lucius would only see that it had been Draco’s doing.

“You idiots!” Draco seethed, leaping away from the mirror to find the damage that had been done.

“It’s just a mirror,” Goyle had said, confused.

“It’s just a mirror? It’s just a – get out of my room,” he snarled. “Find somewhere else to wash yourselves you overgrown buffoons.”

They had left, befuddled expressions on their faces at how fast Draco’s mood had been able to change, but Draco had really not cared at the moment if they may have thought him unhinged.

Shaking, he’d turned back to the mirror to see what could be done, but was surprised to find that it had actually come away from the wall. He’d stood, frozen, unable to think of what could’ve caused this new development. Taking a deep breath, he wedged himself up against the wall to see if it was something broken on its back that he could possibly hide to deal with later, but had immediately jerked back at what he saw. It wasn’t that there was something broken on the back.

There wasn’t anything behind the mirror at all. Just empty blackness.

He’d moved the mirror away from the wall, a millimeter at a time, until the mirror stood open and only the yawning black rectangle in the wall lay before him. Just as it had now, once the doorway was fully open, dust had fallen onto him and pushed itself down his throat. But at that point, he hadn’t cared to keep his coughing quiet since he’d been too busy trying to figure out how the mirror worked.

He had then proceeded to spend the next few months of that Fall and into Winter discovering all the hidden nooks and crannies he could in the house that connected to each other. He was still pretty convinced that he hadn’t found them all, and maybe he never would.

Once the dust had settled in the present and his hacking had quieted, he raised his wand to the candle wick and whispered, “Incendio!”

He quickly cut the bluebell flames off once they wick had sparked to life and made his way down the dark corridor. There were other passages that branched off from the one he was in now that led all over the top of the house, but he was only interested in the one that took him to the twisting staircase that would lead him down to the first floor.

Tiptoeing so his steps wouldn’t echo, he descended as quickly as possible down the stairs that ended abruptly before another small, rectangular door. Twisting the handle, he heaved the heavy door open and stepped out into the library, where a fire was already crackling in the fireplace and the curtains had been tied back from the bay windows that overlooked the snowy grounds of the Manor. Draco threw his shoulder back against the door, which looked like any other bookshelf around the room on the outside, and pushed it until it clicked into place once more and sealed the secret passage behind him.

He blew out the candle and hid it amongst the wood piled neatly to the side of the fireplace. Draco would have to come back through the passage later to retrieve it so that his father wouldn’t know he’d been in here. Finished hiding his contraband, he strolled in front of the shelves, trailing his finger across the titles to see if his father had bought any new books since he’d been gone. Despite the fact that his father barely came in here, much less read any of the books he bought for the family’s personal library, Draco usually wasn’t allowed to take whatever reading materials he wanted unless he begged his father.

And today of all days, Draco wasn’t in the mood to beg.

This was only one of many reasons why he’d been delighted to discover the hidden passageway entrance in his room. After the first few times he’d snuck into the library and snatched a book or two, he’d quickly realized that his father never noticed when a few of the tomes went mysteriously missing, only to reappear a few days later.

Realizing that there weren’t any new titles that he hadn’t read before, Draco sighed. Now, not only did he miss his dorm room, he also missed the Slytherin common room and the magic bookshelves that encircled the upper floor where you could find any book you wanted.

Leaving the library, he followed the quiet sounds of Dobby puttering away in the kitchen, getting breakfast ready. Turning the corner, Draco said, “Dobby, could you fill the teapot with-” but was cut off by a sharp cry from Dobby, who whirled around at the sound of his voice in fright and nearly dropped the bowl of strawberries he had just carefully sliced.

“Master Draco! Dobby did not hear you coming, sir!” the elf squeaked, his small hand pressed to his chest in shock.

“Sorry, Dobby,” Draco said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his robe as he walked around him to see what he was making.

He swiped a sliced strawberry from the bowl that Dobby still held aloft and dipped it into a bowl of homemade whipped cream that was sat on the counter. Dobby, who had finally brought his heartrate down to a reasonable speed said, “Dobby is not used to you being up and around the house this early, Master. Dobby apologizes for not having Master’s tea ready for him just the way he likes.”

Draco waved off Dobby’s apology. “Really, it’s fine, Dobby. Could you just bring me a cup once it’s done?” Dobby’s head bobbed enthusiastically as he immediately went about filling the teapot with water and setting it on the stove to simmer.

Draco skirted the edge of the rectangular island in the middle of the kitchen and was about to pull the day’s Daily Prophet towards him when Dobby said tentatively, “Dobby is sorry to stop Master, but does Master remember how his father likes to be the first to read the Daily Prophet in the morning?”

Draco, who’s fingers had just brushed the top of the front page, immediately retracted his hand. “Yes, Dobby, I remember.” Sighing again, Draco climbed the stairs out of the kitchen and said over his shoulder, “Just make sure to bring me the tea when it’s ready Dobby. I’ll be in the conservatory.”

Treading softly through the house, he looked into the parlor and saw that the underside of the tree was practically bursting with presents, no doubt a fair few that had his name on them. Smiling despite the impending spectacle that his mother would be making soon, he continued on his way to the conservatory, passing through the dark dining room and winding his way through the marble statues in the brightly lit art gallery and past the music room, until he finally pushed through the glass door of the conservatory.

The conservatory had three walls of glass windows that looked out over the sloping grounds behind Malfoy Manor. The hulking shapes of the tall hedgerows that marked the perimeter of the grounds to the left and right of the house led down to the forest, which bracketed the end of the smooth lawn. Everywhere Draco looked through the windows was covered in a quickly growing layer of white snow. The only shape that still stood with minimal snow coverage was the greenhouse that sat squarely in between two neatly shaped gardens, the dirt paths buried along with the carefully arranged flowerbeds that his mother watched over in the Spring and Summer. The only part of the gardens that wasn’t hidden under snow were the two reflecting pools, which had both iced over.

Draco walked around within the glass enclosure and threw himself down onto one of the low-slung white couches that were set out in a square in the center of the room. He gazed up through the glass roof and allowed his mind to wander back to Hogwarts as his mind drifted with the falling snow.

Was it snowing there? It had to be. Everyone deserved a white Christmas, even Potter. Potter, who was probably galivanting around the castle with the Weasley spawn, having snowball fights and being as absurd as ever. Potter, who might not have any presents to open today, when everyone should at least be able to open something and-

No, Draco chided himself, sitting bolt upright on the sofa. Stop it.

He blamed the infernal Christmas spirit that had climbed into his chest while he and Dobby were building the gingerbread house for the charitable feelings he was having towards Harry Potter. There was also the fact that even though he would probably get everything he wanted this year for Christmas, it wouldn’t be anything he needed.

And, despite how he squashed every thought in his mind about Harry Potter under one stockinged heel, he couldn’t help the niggling suspicion at the back of his mind that maybe Potter knew a little something about that.

A few hours later, Draco sat in the midst of a pile of shredded wrapping paper, running his fingers along the handle of his new Nimbus 2000. He was surrounded by a myriad of other things, including a pristine wizard chess set from his father and enough new clothes and shoes from his mother that he would probably either have to throw out all of his clothes or get another wardrobe. His cheeks hurt from smiling so much because, despite his gloomy thoughts from earlier, he would never not enjoy receiving gifts.

Narcissa, who had just finished unwrapping a new slim looking black velvet evening gown from one of her favorite stores, courtesy of his father, reached behind her seat and lay a long thin package on the coffee table in front of Lucius. Her cheeks were tinted a pleasant rosy color from the warm tea that definitely had something in it besides cream and sugar, and she smiled wide and unabashed at Lucius as he slowly pulled on one end of the bloodred bow.

“I remembered, darling,” she said in between sips of tea, “that you said a few months ago how much you wanted a cane just like your father’s. But, rather than find one that resembled it, I decided to get his refurbished! Isn’t it wonderful?” she tittered as his father pulled out a long black lacquered walking stick from within a nest of white tissue paper. It was topped with a silver snake head, fangs bared, with small emeralds for eyes that shone as Lucius turned it to face him.

“We can go tomorrow to Ollivander’s to have your wand fitted to the head of the snake, if you like,” Narcissa said, her smile small, but radiant behind her cup as she drank the rest of her tea. “Now, don’t open any more gifts while I’m gone, I just need to get some more tea before we continue.”

Draco watched her walk out of the parlor, noticing a slight wobble in her step that only came out when she was a bit tipsy, and then turned his gaze back to his father with interest. The whole Manor may be brimming with Malfoy family heirlooms, but he had never seen this particular one. He’d only heard about Grandfather Abraxas’s cane a few times, when his father was feeling particularly wistful and was in the mood to reminisce about his own childhood. As far as Draco knew, his father had stored it away ever since the day his father had passed away.

“Can I hold it, father?” Draco asked tentatively.

Lucius, who had been carefully inspecting every inch of the thing, blinked at him distractedly, “What?”

“Can I hold Grandfather’s walking stick, father?”

“Of course, but gently please, Draco,” he admonished, setting the cane in Draco’s outstretched hands.

Upon closer inspection, Draco saw that Sanctimonia Vincet Semper, the Malfoy family motto, was etched into the silver at the base of the snake’s head. “Purity will always concur,” Draco murmured, turning the cane slowly until the snake was facing him again. Its fangs looked sharp enough to draw blood.

“And don’t you forget it,” his father said, a note of pride evident in his voice as Draco glanced up at him, seeing the curled edges of his father’s mouth, the only real smile he ever made. Returning it with a halfhearted grin of agreement, Draco returned his attention to the snake head, lightly pressing the pad of his thumb to one of the snake’s fangs.

He yelped, pulling his thumb away to see a drop of blood gleaming on his skin. It was at that moment that his mother reentered the room, settling back onto the sofa gracefully. “Oh yes, I had the fangs sharpened to fine points, just like how you described, Lucius darling,” she said, scooting closer to him to actually run her fingers through his father’s long white hair.

The smallest bit disgusted with them, he refrained from curling his lip as he handed the cane back over to his father.

As he sucked the droplet of blood off his finger, he swore to himself to stay away from the business end of that cane as often as possible.

< Chapter 8 / Chapter 10 >

#merry christmas laurel #book one #dm

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b-radley66 · 7 years ago

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Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Someone sends Dani the gossip columns from the Aldera Advocate. Maybe she even gets some comms from the news. XD How does she react to becoming a mild celebrity on another world and the questions about whether or not she's dating a member of the royal family?

Game of Thrones: Alderaan - Gossip

Dani shoves the prisoner against the front of the station’s desk as the Selonian tries to bite her. “No, darling,” she says. “Buy me dinner first, and then we’ll talk.” She motions to two uniformed deputies, one of them another Selonian. They both seem to be smirking as they take the unsuccessful biter off of her hands. Her purple eyes narrow at them both.

“Hey, dear,” comes a voice from above her. She turns and gives the Senior Constable on the desk a bright smile.

“Hey, Kris,” she says. “What’s with all of the looks that I am getting?”

Kris Tome’s dark eyes are searching. “You’ve been undercover for a bit, right? Out of comms?”

“Yeah. Just have the burner-comms. Draq’ declared the counterfeiters a matter for Studies and Observation, so I got the gig.”

Kris nods. Her expression softens. “Go get your comm. You might have some texts and links coming in.”

Dani sets her jaw as she turns towards the locker room. As she passes the Station Commander’s office, Ishtan steps out. His hard eyes stare at her, his lips curling in a triumphant sneer.

~=~=~=~=~=

Dani sits at the desk in the borrowed office. Her eyes closed. Her datapad sits on the desk. The words have already stared accusingly at her.

Corellian Cutie Ambushes Organa Lord.

She opens her eyes to look at the holo of she and Maul. She is laughing up at him, after the Tango. His lips are quirked upward. The holo is not helped by the absolute look of lust from the octogenarian Lord from a lesser House in the near background. Or the fact that she had chosen Zeltron festival-wear for her assignment that night, with only an artfully draped sheer scarf covering her upper body. One that was less artfully draped in this holo, after the exertions of the Tango.

Her eyes flash at the caption under the holo. Corellian (Un)Concealed Weapons. Has the youngest son finally been reeled in? Who is this beauty?

She forces herself to read the story, if it can be called that. “No. Dammit, I will not.”

Dani picks up her comm. She sees several messages. One from Draq’ and one from Meglann. Other codes that she doesn’t recognize, except that they seem to originate on Alderaan. One is repeated several times.

None from Maul.

She looks around, then touches the familiar code. A smiling face pops up.

“Hey, sweetie. Can I have your autograph?” Meglann Florlin, part-time Queen’s Handmaiden and full-time diner-owner says.

“Bite me. So I guess the Palace is pissed?” Dani asks.

Meglann smiles softly. “No. I don’t think so. The Aldera Advocate gossip columnist that wrote that has been after tidbits of information about Maul since he came to the family. She has been known to make up stories before and adjust holos.” She grins, a mischievous gleam in her brown eyes. “I don’t remember your girls popping out that much during the dance.” She gives her a hooded look. “Only remember them much later.”

Dani rolls her eyes. “I think they made an appearance for about half a second, before an adjustment. The holo-slinger must have been staring at them.”

“Along with everybody else there that was breathing. Including, I think, the Queen and the Viceroy.”

“Love, I didn’t read it. Can’t really. Did it blow my cover?” she asks, steeling herself.

“Not really. The Queen’s press hack released a statement that said you were an invited guest who assisted the Lord Keeper of Rhindon in foiling a attempted theft of the Sword.”

“Well, there’s that,” she says after a moment. “Do you talk to the Queen?”

Meglann nods. “I do. We meet for breakfast every week. She might be persuaded to move it up.”

“Can you ask if I can call?”

Meglann’s smile grows. She had thought that the request might be something else. That she would apologize for her. No. That is not her way.

“I will ask. Dani,” she says quietly, “I don’t think you have to worry. The Organas are used to this. It can be a precarious life as a member of Alderaan royalty in the public eye.” Meglann blows her a kiss and signs off.

As she puts it down, her comm buzzes.

She closes her eyes as she sees the icon. She pushes the button. “Hello, Maul,” she says.

His holo pops above the projector. He looks at her with the same even gaze as he always does—at least once he got used to her resonance.

“Hello, Dani,” he says in his dry-as-tinder voice. “Are the flowers surviving?”

She rolls her eyes, laughing softly. “Yes, goofball. That is not why I called. You know why.”

His eyebrow raises at the nickname. She knows he is probably cataloging it, for further study.

“Oh, that,” he says. “The Queen mentioned something about it. I don’t pay that reporter’s work much attention. Too much work to do cleaning up from your last visit,” he says with a straight face.

“Oh, you will pay for that, bud,” she says as she sees his mouth quirk up slightly. On the left, this time. She looks down. “Maul. I am so sorry. I know how private you are...”

He shakes his head slightly. “It is alright. I know I am a source of public curiosity. This is nothing.”

“Still, I feel responsible...,”

“Did you supply the holos and the unfortunate headlines to the reporter?” he asks suddenly.

“No,” she says.

“Then it is beyond your control, Daaineran,” he finishes. She closes her eyes at the sound of his voice saying her full name. She shakes her head. No. I will not have those thoughts. No. I will not have those thoughts. No. I will not—

Her eyes snap open with realization. “I thought you didn’t read it,” she says accusingly.

“My mother showed it to me. She has ordered copies of the holo. She says to tell you that if she was a bit younger, she would show you a scandal.” He looks away. “She did ask for your commcode.”

Sometimes, even after the time spent with him, Dani cannot tell when he is exercising his dry humor.

She decides to add her own. She is after all, a daughter of Corellia. “Tell her Majesty I await her convenience and her call. So,” she adds, “did you enjoy the holo?”

“I only looked at it as a student of martial arts. I appreciate weapons. Concealed and unconcealed.”

Again, no irony whatsoever. She gives in.

Dani Faygan giggles. At the end of the laugh she does something she hasn’t done in over a decade. She gives a loud snort.

Her eyes lock on his holo. An eyebrow is raised again. “Is there some sort of Corellian boar loose in your office?”

Her laughter is unbridled. I think I am okay.

She takes a deep breath. “So,” she starts. “Is it true?”

“What?” he asks.

“Is the youngest Organa son caught?”

He grins wolfishly. “No. But it has been a valiant effort. May need a bigger net, though.”

She manages not to allow her eyes to turn black at the grin.

“Maul,” she says. “Thank you.”

He gives her a quizzical look, then dips his head. “It is my pleasure, Inspector.”

A loud voice sounds outside her office. “Faygan!” comes another roar. The roar of the unique Corellian Dragon.

She looks at Maul. “I leave you all of my knives in case I don’t survive this next meeting. You may not find my body.” She blows him a kiss and clicks off.

She turns as the door opens. She puts on her best smile. “Hello, Dragon. What’s up?” she asks innocently.

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backstoriesandbackstabbings · 5 years ago

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~The Past~

Life started off tumultuous for the young aasimar. The trial of birthing twins took their toll and her birth resulted in the death of her mother. Despite the birth of twin aasimars, a gift from the angels, nothing is without sacrifice. She was born into the human family of the Hallowcrests, a wealthy family of Dun Volleth that owned one of the five major territories. She lived here with her twin brother, father, and her paternal grandparents.

Eliana spent much of her childhood as any child does – racing around the Hallowcrest territory and causing trouble with her twin, Edan. The Hallowcrest twins were curious in nature, and devoured information and the world around them voraciously. The pair learned how to ride horseback, etiquette, how to negotiate, the art of persuasion, and so much more. While it became clear that their talents differed, the pair were forced to spend more time apart. Edan had a knack for more physical tasks, he was a better climber, a better runner, and deadly with all manner of blades. Their father was an accomplished duelist, and it seemed as though she was often in their way, so Eliana wandered to the libraries. She buried her nose in books, devoted to studying, so that even if she may be no match for him in battle; he would be outmatched in a battle of wits.

It wasn’t long until Eliana discovered her talent for magic that she was taken under her Grandfather’s tutelage. Edmund was a very accomplished wizard, who enjoyed teaching and sharing his knowledge with others. A proud and doting grandfather, Edmund celebrated Eliana’s every success, and the twinkle in his eyes was evident with each new spell that she mastered. However, Eliana was not his only student – a fact for which she was grateful for. There was a young man named Tobias Wildgrave that was her peer. Despite both being equals under her grandfather’s teachings, Tobias was a commoner, and therefore Eliana was not to spend time with him outside of classes. Still, he was a talented young man, intelligent, and his dry humor often made Eliana laugh. They became fast friends, and grew together, each of them pushing the other to greater heights as friendly rivals.

Meanwhile Edan had a sparring partner of his own. Valentine Guildeford, or Val as he insisted upon. The Guildeford’s were of a neighboring territory, and soon Val became a face that she would often see around the manner. An entirely too handsome, charming and well-mannered young man. He was beguiling, a mystery, and dangerous. Dangerous and beautiful, the same way a viper is before it sinks its teeth into your flesh. And although Eliana was always wary of that bite, her curiosity would not abate. Edan insisted that he wasn’t like the rumors, and those rumors of the Guildeford’s had reached her ears long before introductions had ever been made. They were posh, well-respected, but that respect was borne of fear. They were wrathful people, and took revenge for the slightest offence. Val would grow to be no different, at least in her eyes. Eventually however, his etiquette and looks wore her down, and it wasn’t until the pair were nearly young adults that Eliana let her guard down – in no small part due to Edan’s begging. Valentine was different from the other Guildeford’s. He was kind, and he claimed to hate the way his family treated the people in their territory. If it were up to him, he would strike out on his own, to weave his own grand adventures. A brief but intense friendship grew between Val and Eliana. Often the twins could be found with him under a large apple tree on the estate grounds, reading, or just laughing and spending time together with books long forgotten by their feet. It wasn’t long until Valentine did exactly as he had always wanted to. He slipped away in the middle of the night, taking only a horse and the necessities. Eliana thought he was a fool to leave such a lavish life behind, Edan disagreed. It wasn’t until Val had left that fear gripped Eliana, it wasn’t until she saw the jealousy in Edan’s eyes that she realized he may one day disappear as well.

Unfortunately, Eliana would never discover that desire to run. Not until she met Rolland Dantès. The only child to the Dantès family, and her betrothed. A match made by her grandmother, Sybil. The Dantès owned their only other neighboring territory, and with Val gone, a match between the two could mean a merging of lands for both. There was no downside, except to Eliana. Rolland was shy, quiet, and he lacked confidence or any semblance of a spine. He was blessed with decent genes, and heavy coffers, but Eliana demanded more from him if he were to be her betrothed. She often mocked and ridiculed him, beating him at every turn – chess, cards, etc. When he declared his feelings and intentions, Eliana would laugh, the only time that he could accomplish such.

It wasn’t until nearly two years into their courtship that she would regret that decision. One night Rolland appeared at the gates, bloody and begging to enter. Elliana was told to tend to go to his side. He gritted out how their lands had been attacked by the Guildeford’s. How Val had come home bloodthirsty, and sought to overtake the Dantès territory. Eliana stood and declared, “I hope he succeeds, I would rather marry him, than a coward that would flee his lands and abandon his people.”

“Truly? You would marry him, and not me?”

“Marry you? I would rather die.” Those had been the last words that she had spoken before she stormed out of the room. When the manor was silent once more, deep into the night, chaos had erupted. Rolland had an army enter the castle through a teleportation circle. Guards and housekeepers alike were slaughtered at their post until an alarm was rang. Sybil had their throat slit in their bed, and there were pieces of her grandfather that nearly made her sick. He would only use that spell if he were desperate. Eliana took her grandfather’s tome, and she looked desperately for Edan and her father, only to find them in the library cornered by Rolland and a handful of his soldiers.

It was a bloody struggle, but Edward demanded they run through the secret passage, and fought hard to give them a head start. The twins would escape with their life, all they had to do was get to the stables, and then hide. It wasn’t so easy. A dimension door had opened behind them in the stable, and when Roland stepped out, a dagger found its way into Edan’s spine. Eliana held her twin as he died in her arms, as he stared up into her face and gasped for help. He never finished his last words, “I love…” That was it.

“I am going to let you live.” She looked up as he spoke, “I am going to let you run, like a coward,” he seemed to spit the word back to her. “And when you least expect it, I am going to hunt you down at your lowest. And you will beg for all that I have taken from you.”

It was then that Eliana made her deal with Mul to become his cleric. Anything to get her brother back. Anything so that when she next saw Rolland Dantès, she would destroy him and get her revenge – she would reclaim her home, and her loved ones, and he would pay.

#theself #elianahallowcrest

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enouragement-blog · 5 years ago

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Ancient Winter

There are times in life when you encounter a magic so deep that it is very difficult to describe using our ordinary language. It awakens something inside of us, something childlike; as adults we lose touch with the magical, but every so often something comes along that allows us glimpses, as though there is a break in the clouds that once again reveals the moon. Just this very morning I was aware of the magical as I walked in the cold fall rain with leaves falling. A door appeared before me, and I walked through it to find myself in a Middle Eastern Desert with dunes made out of sand. We celebrated a winter festival with the different kingdoms and I was tasked to guide a messenger to the elven King. The way was hard and I felt very alone. Before I gave up, something came alongside me and I felt new strength as I accepted the struggle before me. Slowly I entered into foothills, with woods around me. I was joined by other creatures in a marching song. We climbed and marched, until I was quite suddenly in the presence of the Elven King. I delivered my message, but decided to stay in his court for a while, hearing the elven tales. At last and suddenly a new door appeared – a door called Noel Nouvelet, I arose and opened it. This is the magic I lived today, but it was not found in a vision or a book, but rather in this album, “Ancient Winter”, by recording artist Leah.

Whereas Christmas albums have typically disappointed and had a very limited audience and time for enjoyment, to describe such art as Ancient Winter by Leah as a “Christmas” album would be to mislead oneself. There are not the same Christmas songs repeated here that are always re-recorded by every musician. No, this is a winter album, an album that is full of the Christmas themes (life, hope, magic!) without taking you down the same roads; its Christmas music for people who don’t like Christmas music, but even die-hard Christmas music fans will find something reminiscent but new and enjoyable. Leah has succeeded in reaching the widest audience possible. While building on Christmas themes we are taken on a journey through the snow and mountains – an epic quest. What we have with “Ancient Winter” is in essence a fantasy tome written not with ink but with notes, read not with eyes but with the heart.

The case art work is gorgeous and detailed, with homage to Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, Bethesda’s “Skyrim”, and Elizabeth Moon’s “Deed of Paksennarion”. It has 8 tracks that are 35 minutes, and rather than feeling unfinished, it feels perfect. In fact, I recommend listening to it on repeat: it will take you on a new journey every time you listen to it, as though you are going, to borrow the words of C.S. Lewis, further up and further in. Musically it is distinctively Leah (if you are familiar with her other albums: “The Quest”, “Kings and Queens”, “Otherworld”, and “Of Earth and Angels”), yet you will find no blistering guitar solos here. What she has done in “Ancient Winter” is something we always desire from mainstream musicians but never find: creative talent rather than simple regurgitation of previous (and usually minimal) efforts. Leah is an independent musician, which I think has helped her make such a satisfying musical journey, but more than that she has it in her soul, and empties herself into her music. To listen to her music is to listen to her soul as it whispers enchanted secrets. It is standalone enjoyable, whatever style you prefer, without having to be compared to her other albums; it is much like reading Journey to the Center of the Earth after reading 20,000 Leagues under the Sea: this is a different story and well worth considering. I cannot emphasize enough what Leah has done here (truly the impossible!): she has made a winter album that is fresh, fun, enjoyable, and unshackled to the weights that bind Christmas albums – a real pleasure to listen to.

The album was conceived, written, funded, and recorded in a very short amount of time, but the rush does not come out in the music. There are quality musicians, quality instruments, quality recording, quality writing, quality editing; in a word: fantastic. When she said she was toying around with the idea of a Christmas album I tried repeatedly through social media to dissuade her, but I’m very glad she remained resolute. For my purposes I have divided Ancient Winter into 2 sections: the first 5 tracks (written fully by Leah I believe) and the last 3 tracks (reimagining’s of traditional holiday songs). A major theme in the album is light, but without knowing that it is (sort of) a Christmas album, one could easily overlook the connection and just enjoy the journey. Light is often combined with joy and peace while contrasted with sorrow.

The first 5 songs are the part of the journey I previously mentioned ending at the Elven King.

The first song “The Whole World Summons” begins with an ominous Cello, then quickly transitions into orchestra and wintery sounding music. It gives you the idea that you’re stepping into a story that already has much history to it. One thing Leah does frequently on this album is that she uses the same concept in multiple senses. For instance, winter as good, calm, and peaceful but also bad, dead, and ominous. Another example is how track #3 ends very similar to how it had begun, but she was able to capture a completely different emotion and mood with the same notes and words. Ancient winter is full of contrasts, between sorrow and joy (even in the same song), surrender and perseverance. No matter where you are, this album will reach out to you there and join you into the tale.

The second song is “Light of the World”. It begins singing about the light of the world in the 3rd person, but in the chorus she switches to the 1st person “I am the light of the world” which does a few things. First, artistically it works to keep from too much repetition, but poetically it joins the singer and even the audience into the statement: “I too am the light of the world”. Strangely at first this song picks up with a very middle-eastern feel (musically), but quickly turns into folksy/celtic, like a festival of many different cultures.

“Upon your destiny” begins mystically with Leah hum/chanting, but then transitions to a very sober, almost tavern song, which strikes all the more savagely after listening to the cultural festival in “light of the world”. I have intentionally not done a more thorough song analysis as far as “what does the song mean” because I don’t want to ruin the magic. One does not simply remove the magical from the mysterious.

The fourth song, “Redemption” feels very reflective, yet determined, as though the profound realization of a second wind has encouraged others to gather in a forward march. It builds more and more in complexity, but right when you think even the complexity may become monotonous, it shifts to a profound elegance. The notes themselves gain consciousness and build with her to a soft climax.

The last song of the first section “The Messenger” is completely atmospheric. It acts as a buffer between the first 4 songs and the last 3. It feels like something from the Lord of the Rings, as though you are in the court of an Elven King. Things switch from a journey to a destination in the realm of magic. It’s as though the journey is over, the quest fulfilled. Leah’s range comes out throughout the whole album, as does her musical ability and diversity, “The Messenger” reveals it more so since it is void of other distractions such as many instruments or singers. The realm of the mystical is not resolved, only elaborated on.

The second part of Ancient Winter begins with a reimagining of a traditional Latin Christmas song “Gaudete” (rejoice). Though the last 3 songs are not written by Leah, they don’t lack the magic, although they are definitely in a different chapter of the same book; they belong, but it is as though the narrative has changed. Indeed, I describe these final songs as “What happened in the court of the Elven King”. It is hard to know how much of the perfection in this album is due to the songs and how much is the musicians, how much is due to her voice and how much is due to the words. Is it all in the imagination, as though one’s ability to tune in to the magical makes the magical all the more alive? The seventh song “Puer Natus” is also a redone traditional song in Latin and carries with it celebration and joy. The last song “Noel Nouvelet” is in French and begins very mystically, as a foggy morning that slowly clears. Returning to the story, I liken it to a new door appearing while in the court of the Elven King, as though there is much more to experience, more yet to do. The quest has not left the traveler exhausted but rejuvenated and ready for adventure. And indeed, every time I listen to this album I appreciate more and go to places that I have forgotten and maybe never visited. I put it on repeat and feel as though I’m going on many quests – the end welcomes fantastically the presence of the beginning again, as though it was meant to be. This is perfect year round, but on weathery days, Christmas days, and Winter days it is especially welcome. Although you desire more songs, the album leaves you content, and travels through your veins to feed your body air while returning once more to your heart to wrap you in blankets of cheer. When you listen to the first track after listening to the full album, you feel wiser, as though you understand more fully something you didn’t before, but still realize there is much more to know.

How does one review a thing that impacts people in such various ways, accomplishes so much with so little, and causes such stirrings and yearnings? It’s as though you learn to listen so as to understand the message rather than impute new meaning, as it would be silly to confiscate Latin words and redefine them. “Ancient Winter” is very global in its scope, and therefore fulfills what is intended with Christmas albums without reducing itself – all Christmas music tries to do what Leah does. Leah is capable of such diversity in her albums. But all the more I can say is she nailed it.

One last thing worth mentioning whenever you are discussing an album is the musician. Leah is extraordinary. She homeschools her 5 children, she started her own business, built her brand herself, did all her albums without the help of a record company doing all the work, faced unexpected health problems this last year with transparency, courage and determination, and oozes wonder from her core. She is a fount of imagination, and much like finding a favorite author, I look forward to what else she has to say in the future. I greatly respect Leah, not just as a musician, but as a person. That is important to me because most mainstream musicians don’t have anything worth saying and definitely aren’t worth listening to.Conclusion: 10/10; flawless.

On November 15th, recording artist Leah is realeasing a brand new Winter album called “Ancient Winter”. If you are tired of Jingle Bells, this one is for you. Listen to the single “Light of the World” here:

https://youtu.be/do5LvwfqzSw

If you would like to support independent musicians, this album, and happiness, order your copy here:

https://theleahshop.com

“Ancient Winter” is available on Amazon and Itunes as well.

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dreamtimesovereign · 7 years ago

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Grand Order Dialogue For Natalie

Is done. That took way too long to finish. And I still need to do it for Natalya, Persephone, Hannibelle, and John. Why do I make these poor life choices? Anyway, the link for the page will be right here, as well as the content of the page under a read more. I hope you enjoy the fruits of my insanity!

https://dreamtimesovereign.tumblr.com/slashdialogue

Class: Ruler

True Name: Unpronounceable. She goes by Natalie Slash.

Max HP: 20,000

Max Attack: 16,000

Attribute: Beast

Traits: Weak to Enuma Elish, Sovereign, Nightmare, Dream, Cosmic Horror, Female

Card Line-up: QAABB

Active Skills:

True Name Discernment: B

Greatly decrease the NP power of enemy Servants for one turn.

Rejection of Boredom: A

Applies Invincible to self for one turn.

Midsummer Night’s Dream: Ex

Applies Madness to all enemies for three turns. Enemies with Madness act randomly and are unable to plan their actions.

God’s Resolution: A (Sealed.)

This skill is sealed off by Natalie herself.

Passive Skills:

Independent Manifestation: Ex

Increase Critical Strength by 15%. Increase Death Resist by 15%. Increase Mental Debuff Resist by 15%.

Magic Resistance: C

Increase Debuff Resist by 15%.

Noble Phantasm:

The Great Distortion: Reality Crumbles

Rank: Ex

Classification: Anti-Sanity Noble Phantasm (Arts)

Effect: Deals damage to all enemies, applied Madness to all enemies.

Overcharge Effect: Increases the duration of Madness.

Biography

Default:

A being of unknown origin and unknown species. From what one can gather she identifies as female and claims to be a sentient mass hallucination. Although, could something like this possibly be true?

Bond 1:

Height: Unknown

Source: Unknown

Origin: Unknown

Gender: Female

The fact that so much of her basic information is unknown is something which even Natalie herself is disturbed by.

Bond 2:

Although she is aligned with the Chaotic Neutral alignment, this is based off of observations of her actions. She advises against attempts to read her mind because “Not only is it a violation of privacy, but your sanity points would drop to zero in a fraction of a second.”

It is possible for her to perform great miracles of mercy as well as horrific acts of cruelty. To Natalie, both are fundamentally equal. She sees no problem with saving somebody and then immediately murdering another for her amusement. Both satiate her boredom, which seems to matter to her quite a bit…

Bond 3:

Natalie makes it no secret that she wishes for a physical body. This is because of the issues which she has with her own existence. Because she lacks physical matter, she can be considered by some to not be real. So Natalie is a self-aware existence which must constantly question whether or not she actually does exist. For her, it is absolute torture.

She may be an exceptionally powerful being, but she is also deeply flawed and just as vulnerable to horrible thoughts as the rest of us if not more so. She just wants to prove beyond a doubts that she is real. The very reason why she tries to avoid boredom at all cost is so that she won’t have to question her very existence. At her heart, she just wants to be happy, but even Natalie herself may not even understand that.

An eldritch horror that paradoxically desires to be like the beings inferior to her.

Natalie Slash.

Bond 4:

True Name Discernment: B

Even if Natalie was not summoned as a Ruler, she would still have access to this Skill through her ability to read the minds of others. As she is the ruler of the Dreamlands, she is always present, although in the background, in the minds of all of sentient life. This makes it simple to decipher the identities of those she must do battle with.

Rejection of Boredom: A

Natalie is adamant in her desire to avoid boredom. So much so that she will refuse to accept a conclusion which is unsatisfying. Having her fun cut short would be much too boring after all right?

Midsummer Night’s Dream: Ex

Natalie is an expert at driving mortal minds insane. It is one of her most treasured pastimes and an easy way for her to avoid boredom. She has absolutely mastered the art of breaking the mortal mind. A skill more befitting of a Cosmic Horror rather than a Heroic Spirit, as Natalie can be considered a Cosmic Horror, and because of its’ use within her legends, she has access to this ability.

God’s Resolution: A (Sealed.)

This skill is sealed off by Natalie herself. She believes that this is much too broken, and would make things boring way too fast if she could just use Command Spells on every Servant which she came across. And so to limit herself, she sealed away this ability. It can be reactivated by the use of a Command Spell, but doing so would most certainly earn the scorn of the Cosmic Horror.

Bond 5:

The Great Distortion: Reality Crumbles

A Noble Phantasm befitting of a Beast or a Cosmic Horror. When active, all of the hallucinations which it produces make it impossible to tell what is and is not real anymore. Nobody knows if this Noble Phantasm truly even has an ending. It may be perpetual.

Natalie uses the deepest fears and insecurities of whoever she is fighting to cripple her opponent and drive them to madness. Because she is technically already in their mind, the information which she learns is from her victim themselves. However, if they believe false information about themselves, this is what Natalie will take as fact. If she was summoned at her full potential, this limitation would be completely ignored.

Dialogue

Summoned: The Ruler of your dreams arrives. Pleasure to meet you. This can only go well, so long as you keep me entertained that is…

Level Up: Your sacrifice is accepted.

Ascension 1: Yes, let’s give the cosmic horror even MORE power! Why that sounds like a WONDERFUL idea!

Ascension 2: W-wait, you’re still doing this? You do realize this is just going to make me even more of a liability right?

Ascension 3: You do realize that I could kill you at any moment right? That at any time I could just simply make your heart stop. And yet, you still continue to give me more and more power. D-do you really trust me that much?

Ascension 4: I can’t believe that you actually trust me. The amount of those who are so little… H-hey, can we please be together forever? N-no I’m not crying!

Battle

Battle Start 1: Level one, start.

Battle Start 2: Time to cut loose.

Skill 1: I think, therefore you cry.

Skill 2: Let’s make things more interesting shall we?

Attack Card 1: It’s zappy time.

Attack Card 2: Yo check this shit out.

Attack Card 3: Let’s play a game.

NP Card 1: And the Abyss stares back.

NP Card 2: I’m real… I’M REAL!!!!

Attack 1: Have some of this!

Attack 2: Fight me!

Attack 3: How about no?

Extra Attack: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

Noble Phantasm: What is really reality? What is truly fantasy? What does any of it matter anymore?

Good night.

THE GREAT DISTORTION!!!!!!!!

NP Damage: HOW?!?!

Normal Damage: Tch!

Defeated 1: I’ll be back… You can count on that…

Defeated 2: I’ll see you in your nightmares…

Battle Finish 1: As expected.

Battle Finish 2: Did you see that?! That was hilarious!!!!

My Room

Dialogue 1: My origin? Not even I know that. It’s a bit of a touchy subject though, so can we please talk about something else?

Dialogue 2: Hey! What kind of things do you like? Tell me! I can make you have the sweetest dream if you just let me know!

Dialogue 3: Oh Master~! If you feel like joining the fight yourself I have just the thing! It’s my grimoire, the Tome of Slash! Reading it will grant you untold magical power! The only price is your sanity, but you summoned me so that isn’t an issue to you right?

Dialogue 4 (if you have Kiara): You know… I could be summoned as a Beast too… WaNt To SeE tHaT mAsTeR?

Dialogue 5 (if you have Dantes): …Just so you know I would wear the shit out of the Count’s outfit if I had the chance. When I get my body he better watch out because I’m raiding his wardrobe and never giving it back.

Something you like: Oh I like anything that’s interesting. Things like, music, animals, watching the life fade out of a man’s eyes, helping overthrow corrupt governments are all pretty fun and entertaining. You know what I mean?

Something you hate: Boredom… When my mind wanders I… Master, say something. Anything. I can’t stay on this topic for long. Please!

About the Holy Grail: I want a physical body. I currently only have two senses, sight and hearing. But I want to feel the world, smell the world, taste the world like you do Master. I just want to be more like you.

Then nobody could say that I’m not real anymore.

Event: So then, how are we going to win this contest? Or do you want me to plan it? I promise it won’t involve genocide. … At least this time…

Birthday: I don’t understand the cause of celebration. This day is just a reminder of your own mortality is it not? Even so, happy birthday. I may not get it, but if it makes you happy then it’s fine regardless.

Bond Dialogue

Bond 1: Please don’t try to understand me too much. That’s hard. If you just accept me the way I am things will go a lot smoother.

Bond 2: All this time and you haven’t tried to banish me? I respect your openness to beings outside of your mortal understanding Master. Perhaps we can be friends?

Bond 3: Hey, friend. I just want you to know how much I appreciate you taking me to these far-away places. It’s really entertaining!

Bond 4: You’ve done so much for me friend. It’s honestly heartwarming… H-hey… Do you believe in me?

Bond 5: If I believe in you, and you believe in me, then that means I believe in myself right? If that’s the case, then I really am real! Master… No, my best friend, thank you for everything that you’ve done for me. I’m actually crying with how much this means to me. Let’s be together forever bestie!

#ooc #the Dreamer #this is the Dreamer's life #Natalie Slash #Headcanons #I don't have a problem!#I can stop any time that I want!

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geejaysmith · 8 years ago

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Well, shit. So it's 3 am and I just woke up because I need to write this down before I doze off again, hoooooly shit I am incredibly disappointed because the dream I was having turned out to not be real. Should've been obvious, given it was taking place in a house I haven't lived nor set foot in in 5 or so years, and my family and I were celebrating my birthday. My birthday is in October. It's January. But like... so I'm in my bedroom, helping Mrs. Next Door find the iron to borrow so her kid can get Girl Scout badges affixed to her vest, when I see that somehow a book has wound up on the lower shelf of the cat tree my dad made for me years ago. Given said shelf's place as a substitute The Chair, I don't question shit being piled on it. But I don't recognize the book, it's an "anatomy for the artist"-esque tome. So I pick it up, only to realize it's like, a box sleeve that box sets are usually contained in. There's two larger artbooks and squeezed in-between is about six comic books. Fucking Hiveswap print comic books, I am not even joking. Naturally, dream-me freaks out, because the game's not even out yet (in said dream as well as real life) and here I am holding POTENTIAL SPOILERS. Again, completely unlikely in hindsight, because the actual contents were all over the place. Joey and Jude lived on a farm and also kid-Jake was there in the same time period and still lived with alpha Jade as his grandma. Rose was also given her own subplot despite acknowledgement she wasn't contemporary to the other kids, and I SWEAR there was one other human girl introduced. I think her name had five letters instead of 4 (I think it was something like Katie? Kitty? Might've started with a b or a d?) and she was introduced as Rose's best friend from Earth. She had white hair, a little bit longer than Rose's is canonically depicted (so if Rose is drawn as a circle around her head, Katie/Kitty/whoever has more like, the short bob that most fanart draws Rose with). Pretty sure she was wearing a magenta-lilac color but the details are slippery. Anyway, I thumbed through the comics and despite their billing as "Hiveswap comics" the plot details were all off. No mention of Alternia at all, everyone's playing SBURB instead, possibly. Though I vividly remember the covers featuring the kids in landscapes that looked nothing like anything seen in the comic or the game previews; Joey was on this floating landmass type thing overlooking a futuristic pointy Alien Citadel in mostly gray and blue. I could draw a very basic sketch of it if I wanted to, plus some of the page layouts, and I think I probably ought to before I try to go back to sleep? Anyway, Joey, Jude, Jake and New Rose Friend play SBURB with the acknowledgement that Rose and company have already won, and they think the other players have already grown up and will be waiting for them when they win. Jake keeps envisioning what they look like as grown-up god tiers, then what he'll look like as a god tier. There's no trolls to speak of, except for (of ALL PEOPLE, seriously brain what the fuck) Vriska, who is a thankfully toned-down mentor figure who says to Joey/Jude/somebody that yeah, Jake is set to more of a slow burn, God tier power-wise. That she says this without insulting him (nor do I recall her putting him down anywhere) is some kind of minor miracle and if this comic actually existed I would find it's writer and give them a deserving slow clap, and then offer to take them out to Denny's for a much deserved Grand Slam Breakfast (TM). I don't give a shit about whether said behavior could be considered in-character, I'd just be appreciative that somebody on the team with authority stopped acting like being a mean-spirited asshole is any kind of an endearing character trait. Oh, and the art was really nice. Kept shifting between something like we've seen for the game previews and some other fan art style, for some reason, but it's Homestuck so of course it's gorgeous. Dream-me put the comics down before I got into too many Spoilers and then found the iron for Mrs. Next Door and went to ask my mom about the birthday present I'd just found in my room (another dead giveaway, my parents weren't separated in my dream :Y). Then I woke up, and was kind of disappointed that those Hiveswap comics didn't exist for me to actually peruse. Unless I was getting a glimpse into future Hiveswap events, in which case HEY HIVESWAP TEAM, I'M SORT OF PSYCHIC AND ALSO ONTO YOU MAYBE? That's all I guess. Let me go draw out some of the comic details before I forget.

#//homestuck #haha that was weird #another potential name for New Rose Friend: Dawn maybe??#it's 3:30 #what the fuck am I doing

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theremightbecupcakespodcast · 4 years ago

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Goodbye, my friend, for now

Note: I wrote this on Tuesday, as soon as I learned of the death of my friend, Sherrill Curtis. He was initially my high school history teacher—twice—and became your friend as an adult. If you have listened to episode 57, the continuation of my novel in progress, Watching the Detectives, you might recognize his name. I named a character for him, Stith College’s World History professor, whose class is a comfort for Gwendolyn (Bendy Gwendy), a secret haven for her enjoyed even above her cheerleading:

Gwendy snapped back from her ruined past as Professor Curtis entered the Ancient History classroom with a flourish of books and papers and this whisper of cerebral noise that always seemed to follow him. Gwendolyn adored him, but in this strange warm way she could never possibly to share with him. His intellectual flourish and noise made her internal hum be quiet.

I’ve included episode 57 to stream at the end of this post.

Here is my eulogy for my friend. Please comment if you knew him:

My wonderful, learned, kind friend Sherrill D. Curtis has died today. Even after years of being his friend as an adult, he’s always been “Mr. Curtis” in my mind, as if that’s his name—Mrcurtis, one happy word—because he was initially my teacher. He first taught me in World History in tenth grade (the class in which I met my lifelong best friend, Joshua, thank you, Sherrill), then European History AP in twelfth grade. I was so excited when I was transplanted to the new high school in my senior year to find out that he was as well.

He taught me to cherish this world we live in, and to question it. I cannot look at fine works of art without thinking about him, because he took an entire month of Euro History to teach us Art History. I have a vivid memory of his teaching us how differing methods of warfare changed the world, and demonstrating the pike by lunging to the floor and kneeling with his pointer thrusting in front of him as a weapon, shocking all of us.

He once taught us a valuable lesson by lecturing with factually false information for five minutes, then yelled at us for blindly listening to authority (and for obviously not doing the reading).

Another thing Sherrill did in class was entice us with the more lascivious details of history, teasing us into rushing home and researching things for ourselves—mind you, in the days before the internet. He’d teach us about a king that was rumored to be homosexual, despised by his subjects, and finally murdered by them: “but the details of his murder are not meant for a public school classroom”. Off we’d go, hitting the books like they were illicit magazines, to find that yes, history could be naughty, and yes, that particular king had been choked with his own, shall we say, scepter. He knew exactly how to keep us interested. We’d return the next day, flushed with our new “grown-up” knowledge, and he so loved seeing it on our faces, noting who took the intellectual bait. (That would be Edward II, for the curious.)

He gave us an amazing gift by inviting a Holocaust survivor to speak to the class and answer questions.

He always had us read original sources. I’ve read Aristophanes, Plato, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Aeschylus because he told me I could.

He believed in me when I was a soggy, anxious, depressed teenager, turning in less than stellar work—and he told me in no uncertain terms that I was much more intelligent than I was demonstrating. He made me want to make him proud. Dead Poets Society came out my senior year, and the teacher it reminded me of was him. I don’t think I ever told him. I wish I had.

As adults, we had the same conversations, just not graded: books, art, religion, history, and history repeating itself. The last post I shared with him was people duplicating fine art in their homes. He did know I loved him. I know that for a fact. He liked Walt Whitman, and was so pleased that I finally read Leaves of Grass last year. So I won’t end this goodbye for now to my Mrcurtis with “O captain, my captain!”, which Whitman wrote as an eulogy to Abraham Lincoln, but rather something more celebratory of a full life, of the man who fell—hard—to his knee in the middle of a classroom to demonstrate pike warfare, who faked a lecture to teach us not to be the blind led by the blind, the man who called the pink monstrosity megachurch built near our school the “Mary Kay Palace”, the man who loved to learn and loved to laugh. He deserves a different Whitman, some Leaves of Grass celebrating life.

I’ll miss you, Mrcurtis. Thank you for everything. I’ll see you again. I love you.

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and nod to me and shout, and laughingly dash with your hair… Now I stand on this spot with my soul… This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Added yesterday (Friday):

I just read in We Were Eight Years In Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates that the Ken Burns Civil War documentary is in error, and so is the lauded Shelby Foote Civil War tome—Foote praises Forrest, the KKK leader. I was shocked, and wanted to talk to you about it, Sherrill—and was all set to compose my message and copy over a couple of quotes—and then I realized I couldn’t. I am going to be doing that for a long time.

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topmixtrends · 7 years ago

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MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS have something they want to tell us off the clock. The president is dangerous, and likely mentally unfit for office. That’s the hard truth of the essay collection The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

But there’s good news: Americans can make biscuits. At least, that’s what you might deduce if you pick up another anti-Trump compilation, Julia Turshen’s Feed the Resistance: Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved, with essays and recipes for grassroots organizers to feed a crowd or take on a march.

Both collections are riding a wave of anti-Trump momentum, a mixed blessing for the audience-obsessed publishing business. They depict two essentially nonpolitical industries — food and psychology — putting a partisan stake in the ground. But what can we learn from them? Are these conceits merely gimmicks to cash in on a bad national moment?

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump grew out of Yale’s “Duty to Warn” conference, a town-hall-style meeting organized by Bandy Lee, an Assistant Clinical Professor in Law and Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine who specializes in violence studies. In April 2017, she gathered two-dozen mental health professionals to discuss their ethical responsibility to warn the public of Donald Trump’s potential dangerousness. Hundreds in the industry followed online. Originally conceived as a traditional publication of proceedings, it grew in scope once the popular interest became clear. “It felt as if we had tapped into a groundswell of a movement among mental health professionals, and also an army of people who wanted to speak about the issue,” Lee writes.

The result is 350 pages that lay out three clear agendas: (1) assess President Trump’s mental health, (2) discuss the ethics of allowing professionals to comment on the mental health of a public figure, and (3) evaluate Trump’s short- and long-term effect on the United States.

Near pocket-sized and 141 pages long, Feed the Resistance is a smaller book with a more household aim, but it doesn’t take itself any less seriously. The editor, Julia Turshen, is a celebrated food writer known for co-authoring cookbooks for Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow, and hosting a podcast with Cherry Bombe, a periodical celebrating women in the food industry. Feed the Resistance comes on the heels of her own cookbook, Small Victories.

When she and her wife Grace Bonney, founder of the popular blog Design*Sponge, grew increasingly engaged with activism in their upstate New York town following Trump’s election, Turshen gathered other cook voices. Her mission statement: “I realized that the work I was doing in my own community could be exponential if I put some of it down on paper and shared it with you so that you can better feed your own resistance, whatever that looks like, and hopefully share it with those around you.”

The recipes are divided into three categories, with corresponding essays throughout. There are easy dishes such as Thai Yellow Curry Vegetable Pot and Greek Chickpea Salad for people “who are too busy resisting to cook”; the next on high-volume meals, like The People’s Grits and Easy Posole, that can feed a crowd; and the last on portable snacks and heritage recipes with their roots in earlier resistance movements, such as Persistence Biscuits and Spiced Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Rum Molasses Glaze.

These books show two ways of dealing with the post-Trump world: thinking about something big and out of the reader’s control, and doing something small that is easily within reach.

You can fix dinner, but you can’t fix narcissistic personality disorder. And so The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump seeks to answer a question many have been asking since Trump announced his candidacy: Is he crazy like a fox, or just crazy? Does he really believe what he says, or is he playing to the fears of his constituents? In “Sociopathy,” Lance Dodes asks, is Trump’s “indifference to the feelings of others for personal gain […] just being clever,” or is he suffering from “significant mental derangement”? A third of the way through the tome, the reader will deduce that Trump is likely “crazy,” but not with one simple diagnosis.

Philip Zimbardo and Rosemary Sword label Trump a present hedonist who suffers from a time bias that traps him in the immediate present. He’ll “say or do anything at any time for purposes of self-aggrandizement […] with no thought of the future of the effect of his actions.” Craig Malkin makes a case for Trump’s narcissism and tracks his psychotic spiral toward insisting on alternate realities as a manipulation tactic.

Gaslighting reassures pathological narcissists that their own grip on reality remains firm because they can’t bear to acknowledge their sanity is slipping away. We might ask if we’re seeing this now, as Trump and his closest advisors appear on TV claiming he didn’t make statements that journalists often simply play back.

Other contributors present evidence of the president’s sociopathy, delusional disorder, and even “daddy issues.”

If they can’t pinpoint one diagnosis, it’s because US psychiatrists haven’t agreed on the ethics of making one at all. They grapple with the Goldwater rule, a dictum in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) documentation that restricts psychiatrists from diagnosing a public figure they have not examined in person, and without the figure’s consent to discuss the results publicly. The rule collides with another standard in psychiatry, the “duty to protect.” That concept grew out of a California Supreme Court ruling that if a patient threatens bodily harm, mental health professionals must warn those who stand to get hurt. At scale, that’s the American people. Staying quiet may be technically “ethical” for a mental health professional. But it may also be immoral.

The strongest moments are when the authors go beyond symptoms and behavior markers, and illuminate Donald Trump’s dangerousness — and the extreme risk of keeping him in office. Michael J. Tansey’s engaging piece tells an anecdote that would likely have had a much different ending with a volatile Trump making the decisions. In 1979, President Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski got a 3:00 a.m. call alerting him to 250 Soviet missiles headed toward the United States. With only five minutes to act, he asked an aide to verify the report — it was a false alarm. For Tansey, no argument “is more compelling or terrifying than [Trump’s] control of the nuclear codes.”

Edwin B. Fisher uses President Kennedy’s steady hand during the Cuban Missile crisis as a foil for Trump’s impulsive decision making. While Kennedy cultivated relationships with many advisors of “divergent views” and with Premier Khrushchev himself, Trump’s trusted confidants include nine millionaires and billionaires who are mostly white, male, and older, and all loyal to Trump. With counselors too afraid to disagree, he’s left to make tough decisions alone. “That President Trump might ever occupy the loneliness of deciding about a potentially catastrophic course of action is rightly our most urgent and greatest fear.”

Several pieces ask the reader to look beyond immediate physical threats and consider the insidious effects of Trump’s toxic behavior on individuals. Betty P. Teng poignantly asks the reader to consider the mental health of Americans who suffer from “post-Trump stress disorder,” particularly those in marginalized groups who have been targeted by the president’s policies and remarks. The near-constant news coverage can be “a compulsive fixation” that “is particularly overstimulating and blocks us from recruiting the tools so necessary for healing from trauma.”

Harper West posits — amusingly and frighteningly — that the American people are in an abusive relationship with a narcissistic president. She tracks classic “other-blamer” behavior in abusers to the president’s emotional reactivity, lack of accountability, entitlement, and deception, along with his tendency to depersonalize his victims. In abusive relationships, there is often little energy left over after managing the narcissist, who sucks the air out of the room. “I could be working to improve the mental health care system,” West says. Instead, she’s writing about our leader’s sanity. What’s worse, Trump’s behavior may encourage “millions of Other-blamers” to act out as well, creating a generations-long ripple effect of trauma.

William Doherty points out new conceptual categories he addresses with his clients public stress, stemming from forces in the neighborhood and broader cultural environment, and political stress, the result of “words, actions, and policies.” He sees psychiatry as political action in that it “promote[s] the kind of personal agency that’s necessary for a self-governing, democratic people.” Trump’s sickness has crept into the collective psyche, and to treat it, we need to recognize it.

At times though, the essayists are tongue-tied by what John D. Gartner disparagingly terms “the Goldwater gag order.” They spend ample pages proposing to break the rule, uphold it but evade it, or reinterpret it. Judith Lewis Herman and Bandy Lee insist “only in an emergency should a physician breach the Goldwater rule. We believe such an emergency is now.” Michael J. Tansey dodges the question by detailing the symptoms of delusional disorder. “You now have the simple diagnostic criteria. You make the call.” Leonard L. Glass takes the position that a psychiatrist is also a citizen, and can speak out from that role.

Press coverage and splashy contributors — like Noam Chomsky, who features in the epilogue, and even Tony Schwartz, who co-wrote The Art of the Deal — will attract a wide audience, but tangled industry discussions might distract from the book’s goal of educating. There is only so much ethical pontificating that the reader can stand. But in the last essay, Nanette Gartrell and Dee Mosbacher make a suggestion for acting on this knowledge. They urge Congress to gather a panel of mental health experts to assess the president’s “fitness to fulfill the duties of the presidency,” and to do the same for all presidential and vice presidential candidates. Sounds idealistic. Also sounds completely implausible.

The Dangerous Case might leave the reader wishing for a more actionable next step, but Feed the Resistance holds up the concrete power of food, both as literal fuel for the people working against the Trump administration’s policies and as a gateway to larger issues. “Being interested in food,” Turshen writes, “really caring about it, has a domino effect. You start caring about where it comes from, what it means to the people you are feeding, and what it means to be fed.”

The first essay, by Caleb Zigas, executive director of the San Francisco business incubator La Cocina, celebrates the “informal entrepreneurs” of the food industry who struggle to hurdle social and financial barriers to entry. “It’s not just the woman selling empanadas, it’s also the man selling barbecue out of the back of his truck in parking lots, the pop-up in the back of a bodega, the meal delivered to a high-rise apartment building, and the pies for sale on a country road.”

The most appealing recipes are tied to stories like these. Executive director of FoodLab Detroit Devita Davison writes in the foreword to her Southern-Style Boiled Cabbage with Smoked Turkey: “I personally believe that the rest of the country is just now catching up to what Southerners have known for decades. That we can grow our food as an act of independence from, and resistance to, an unjust food system that is structurally racist, economically oppressive, and environmentally toxic.” She recalls her mother’s cabbage growing to fame at communal dinners in Alabama. Erika Council of Atlanta’s Sunday Supper Club contributes the Persistence Biscuits her grandmother used to “serve to the kids she felt might not have money for breakfast.”

Some dishes are more practical, like Sheet Pan Sausage, Potatoes and Red Cabbage, and Pizza Frittata for a Crowd. Several essays have a tangible application as well. Organizer Callie Jayne’s “Ground Rules to Organized Activism” include passing the microphone to “people who aren’t often heard” and a “non-martian clause” to ensure activists avoid exclusionary “or elitist language.” That’s one of the strengths of Feed the Resistance — it passes the microphone to a diverse group of 22 activists who don’t always occupy the spotlight.

But the contributors should have compared notes before publishing. In the foreword to Baked Japanese Sweet Potatoes, Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce, and Baked Polenta, writer Stephen Satterfield adds qualifiers: “ingredients should be readily available nationwide, even in underserved areas,” and dishes should be easy to make and cheap. Yet the first recipe in Feed the Resistance (Spiced Mung Bean Wraps), requires sprouted beans from a farmers market, or a five-day process of at-home sprouting. It doesn’t sound simple or cheap, and not likely to be stocked in every grocery store. The more complicated concoctions, like Spicy Tandoori Cauliflower with Minted Yogurt, assume a breadth of culinary knowledge that could be construed as exclusionary, and even elitist, fulfilling a certain stereotype of left-wingers.

Still, those desperate to do something will appreciate the real action items Feed the Resistance offers. Lists at the back of the book compile local, state, and national, and interest-group resources for asking and offering help. A section on getting engaged includes tips around voting with your wallet, becoming a mentor, running for office, cooking for first responders, and supporting after-school programs. The book closes with “Ten Things You Can Do in Less Than Ten Minutes,” including calling representatives, registering to vote, dining at a restaurant run by people who don’t look like you, and reading a book “by an author who has had a completely different life experience.” Despite the book’s gimmicky leanings (you can already follow #FeedtheResistance on Instagram), simply purchasing it will have a real effect — all proceeds will go to the ACLU.

How to take collective wisdom from psychiatrists and food activists? Call your representatives and tell them Trump is dangerous. Then cook some soup.

Randle Browning is a writer from Waco, Texas, living in Brooklyn. She holds an MA in English Literature from Boston College. Her website is randlebrowning.com.

The post A Recipe for Coping in Trump’s America appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

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Hyperallergic: Looking Back at the Strange and Surly History of Bay Area Funk Art

View of the Funk show (1967) in the Powerhouse Gallery at U.C. Berkeley (image courtesy BAMPFA)

SAN FRANCISCO — It was sometime after 8:15 pm on April 28, 1967, in the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall at the University of California, Berkeley. In progress was a symposium about Funk, the latest art show exhibited in the school’s University Art Museum. The symposium seemed to promise a lively discussion among several of the artists with work in the show, while moderator duties were covered by Peter Selz, Funk’s curator and the executive director of the museum. Instead, the symposium delivered total chaos.

The conversation went off course as the panelists let slip their grievances with the way Selz had approached the show. Figurative painter Joan Brown felt that Funk failed to present funkiness in context. Avant-garde ceramist Peter Voulkos decried that funk was strictly delimited to a Bay Area oddity. Experimental assemblage-maker, filmmaker, and altogether creative outlaw Bruce Conner denied the premise of Funk altogether. For Conner, the art was too diverse to fit under an umbrella so small and outdated. Conner was probably the most vocal of the artists who believed that whatever art qualified as funky was out of style years before the opening of Funk. Painter and ceramist Jim Melchert went on record with, “[Good funk] attempts to resolve those two essences of mankind: one a striving toward perfectibility, the other a kind of gross realization that we’re all just animals.” Melchert drilled down further into this by wryly lamenting all the funky artists that Selz had left out— like William Shakespeare and Albrecht Dürer.

Funk Symposium, April 28, 1967; University of California, Berkeley (photo by Ron Chamberlain)

Things fell apart when the artists voiced their dissent more creatively. A shoe flew across the stage. Someone began an impromptu jam session. One of the artists poured a glass of water over their own head. Despite the histrionics, the panelists had a great point. The premise of Funk was flawed. “Notes on Funk,” the essay Selz authored for the show’s catalogue, offers clues regarding where this creative fissure might have occurred.

Funk April 28–May 29, 1967; Powerhouse Gallery, University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley (photo by Ron Chamberlain)

“Funk art,” Selz wrote, “so prevalent in the San Francisco-Bay Area, is largely a matter of attitude.” I agree with Selz that this notion is a fundamental component of funk. There are no goals or agendas, only a je ne sais quoi accepted on a pass/fail basis. Conversely, as of this writing, the Wikipedia page for Funk Art offers a digest of how the subject is all too often conveyed: as a movement with certain practitioners. Both of these terms imply a shared goal or motive. However, there was neither a credo nor manifesto behind funk that would inspire the pursuit of perfection. If anything, funk artists avoided being labeled funky. The only definition for funk with staying power seems to be, as phrased by Selz in “Notes,” “When asked to define Funk, artists generally answer: ‘When you see it, you know it.’”

Despite the diffuse nature of funk, Selz takes a page of his essay to explore the pedigree for the show’s eponymous attitude. Marcel Duchamp’s readymades as well as the works of Jean Arp, Joan Miró (especially “Object” from 1936), and Méret Oppenheim are each singled out as possible prototypes, or distinct examples of funk. Selz continues by citing recurrent themes in funky art, especially: private metaphor, self-deprecation, “erotic and scatological” motifs, ambiguous intent, and moral ambiguity. Selz emphasizes this last point by opening the catalogue with a quote from The Bald Soprano (1950) by the absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco:

Mrs. Martin: What’s the moral?

Fire Chief: That’s for you to find out.

Selz wanted to respect the spirit of the artwork by steering the show away from making “a definitive statement” about funk. Nicole Rudick quotes Selz in her essay in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition What Nerve! (2014) at the Rhode Island School of Design: “I was merely interested in pointing out something that was going on right now with a few examples … from the background that have to do with the developments as I see it [sic].” The point of Funk was to offer viewers the chance to judge the art at face value. Selz amassed nearly sixty objects (we now recognize funk as extending into any medium, but Selz focused his exhibition on sculptural objects) for the exhibition and implicitly gave each equal billing under the singular title of Funk. Some pieces were small, while others were gargantuan installations. Some were created by Beat writers in the mid-1950s while others were created by hippies in the mid-‘60s. Some of the objects were pale while others were as brightly decorated as a venomous creature. Some were figurative, some surreal, and some vaguely squishy. The diversity of works ensured that a single definition of funk was impossible. If everything in Funk was funky, then sure, why not throw in the works of Shakespeare and Dürer?

Peter Saul “Relax in the Electric Chair (Dirty Guy)” (1966) exhibited at the Funk show (image courtesy Israel Valencia and the di Rosa Preserve)

No one, Selz included, presumed that the show would make an impact beyond its run through May 1967. Selz said years later, “We never expected that [Funk] would become a part of art history.” After the show, knowledge of the aesthetics associated with it quickly spread across the country. Reviews of the exhibition appeared in Artforum, Time magazine, Chicago Daily News, New York Times, and outlets abroad. While some of these were unflattering (Artforum was scathing, which Selz pinned on the magazine’s permanent relocation from Los Angeles to snobby New York City), the march of funk from sea to shining sea continued.

The term “funk artist,” first entered the American lexicon as shorthand for anyone with work in Selz’s 1967 show. The most famous example is John Perreault’s 1967 article titled “Metaphysical Funk Monk,” about a William T. Wiley show in New York. Notoriety followed the designation as Funk artists later showed with increasingly prestigious institutions and gained representation in the Big Apple. Joan Brown, for example, was in the Whitney’s Young America 1960 exhibition prior to Funk, while ceramist and painter Robert Arneson and ceramist David Gilhooly showed there just a few years later. Over the years, the definition of funk expanded, until today, when any artist whose art is difficult to categorize is at risk for being labeled funky, or worse, inspired by the funk “movement.”

To be clear, none of this historical account is meant to suggest that funk is bunk. A very real phenomenon of art that could be considered funky cropped up around the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid- to late-1950s. This art was made during a short period of time between the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, roughly aligning with the rise and collapse of Beat culture in the Bay Area. Artists went to New York to sell out, but they made the pilgrimage to San Francisco to create. Between World War II and the early 1960s, two or maybe three real galleries made up the corpus of the Bay Area art market. Despite this paucity of places to show their work, and a very small chance to earn a living off art alone, artists poured into the area seeking camaraderie and the freedom to pursue their vision. Artists felt the financial squeeze of trying to make a living in a small city without art buyers and a dearth of available day jobs. So, many sought refuge in the ivory tower. Teaching not only provided a steady income, a sense of community, and encouraged the free flow of ideas, but also offered artists the opportunity to use school facilities for their own projects after work. Most funky artists crossed paths while teaching or studying at the San Francisco Art Institute or the University of California, Davis.

Teaching was supplemented by the artists’ fascination with life outside the classroom — the streets, coffee houses, and houseboats or abandoned garages hosting single-serving exhibition spaces. In Selz’s words, funk looked “at things which traditionally were not meant to be looked at.” Without patrons or buyers to impress or woo, artists were open to risks. They experimented with challenging materials and unconventional ideas. They made art that was ugly rather than beautiful, rough rather than refined, and funny rather than respectful. The art was intimate, meant for very few eyes or no eyes at all. This is the essence of true, honest-to-god funk art.

Harold Paris, “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” (1966) plastic and rubber, 4 x 5-1/2 in., (courtesy of University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, gift of the artist)

It is disheartening to see this fiftieth anniversary of Funk pass by without so much as a nod from the art world. No heavy tome about funk is set to roll off the presses, no symposium gather to discuss funky tropes, and nary one prominent museum open an exhibition to celebrate funk and explore the directions of its scholarship. Still, some modern and contemporary art museums have examples of funk or funk-adjacent art, and some of the best are in Northern California. If you are in the area, check out the excellent Recent Gifts exhibition at the brand new Manetti Shrem Museum in Davis (which is free) and book a viewing for the di Rosa Collection outside Napa Valley (not free, but still very good). Further examples are on view at the Cantor at Stanford University and hither and yon in San Francisco MOMA.

The lessons of funk are available to contemplate if we find the art and, as Selz suggested, make up our own minds.

The post Looking Back at the Strange and Surly History of Bay Area Funk Art appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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duanecbrooks · 8 years ago

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On Not-At-All-Sloppy Seconds Now that you know what are my all-time favorite literary offerings, I'll fill you in on what is my all-time second-favorite literary work--and keep in mind when you get wind of same, as you did when you got wind of all my all-time favorites, that I, as I've said before, am and throughout my adult life have been a card-carrying geek a la Meghan McCain. My all-time second-most-cherished literary work is...again, a tie, here between that bitchin'-hot-blonde Goldfinger chick Shirley Eaton's personal/professional memoir Golden Girl and the Playboy Magazine darling Vikki LaMotta's ("with" Thomas Hauser) memoir Knockout!: The Sexy, Violent, Extraordinary Life of Vikki LaMotta. I should say here that, in coming to said decision concerning these books, there was, as always when compiling these rankings, a hell of a lot that I had to overcome. In the case of Eaton's tome there was at first my deep and long-standing resentment of aesthetes grabbing to their bosoms and swooning over anything and everything British, of those who (so they profess) admire Quality--whatever that is--gushing and cooing over every single solitary scrap the Brits come up with. Yet after careful reflection I've come to fully realize that my admiration of--indeed, my love for--Golden Girl transcends the usual if-it's-British-it-must-be-good dogma. In the case of LaMotta's book there was at first the suspicion that my intensely strong favoring of it was based not so much on the merit of the tome itself but on the circumstances surrounding it--the aforementioned tome was never, ever the subject of any politically-correct negative reaction or, indeed, any reaction at all, thus, for me, it had approval; LaMotta herself had no genuine professional cachet, her sole claims to fame being 1) she was Playboy Magazine's first middle-aged pictorial and 2) the Playboy Magazine issue in which she appeared was and to this day remains said publication's highest seller among women, the said facts concerning her giving her, to me, a fiercely enticing air of independence and individuality. Yet upon careful pondering I've come to the full realization that I dig LaMotta's tome because of the book itself, not because of any external facets of that tome or of its author. Having covered all that, I shall now detail just why the aforementioned books rate so highly with me. .Neither of their authors, at any time in their tomes, make any great claims regarding themselves or their books. While Eaton freely bows to the fact that it is her role in Goldfinger that has provided her with cinematic immortality ("I am the girl covered in gold paint in Goldfinger and, in a sense, I always will be...Every week I still receive fan letters from round the globe and although the writers mention the many other film roles I have played, the part they most often refer to is the Jill Masterson cameo in Goldfinger. There clearly is something about that image that has struck a chord with...women as well as men"), never, ever in her tome does she thump her chest, does she indulge in grandstanding concerning the part that, as she herself concedes, put her on the cultural map. And LaMotta, for her part, while she freely recounted the impact that her Playboy Magazine spread had (among other things, one woman wrote to her saying: "Our exercise instructor put a photo of you on the bulletin board as a goal to work toward"; a Niagara Falls high-school senior sent her an invitation to his then-upcoming prom), you easily get the sense that she was sincerely proud of the impact that her pictorial had, that she was genuinely pleased that she inspired others, not just that she dug calling attention to herself (I should say here that I'm referencing LaMotta in the past tense because, alas, she died in 2005). .The prose style of both books is consistently intelligent and sensitive. No matter where you turn in either tome, you quickly see that both were turned out by women of obvious depth and dimension, by girls of considerable maturity and considerable spirit who know (in LaMotta's case, unfortunately, knew) how to express themselves and are in no sense bimbos. At the end of both books, you feel uplifted by having spent time with fully rounded, fully centered females who, happily, have marvelous insight and marvelous perspective regarding their lives. .Both of our authors have led greatly individualistic lives. Eaton in her tome unashamedly tells of her decision to retire at 32, making her the youngest celebrity/entertainment adult to do so (she ingratiatingly and intelligently relates her post-showbiz doings, which includes being good buddies with her former co-star's successor as 007, Roger Moore, and his wife Luisa and having built and moving to, with her husband, this glorious French palace, which they called "Rose Grange," which was "the French equivalent to the name of our family house in Hertfordshire 'Rose Barn'"; also: judging by the various contemporary photos of her, including an especially mouth-watering one of her wearing a black leotard, matching fishnet stockings, and in her bare feet, she's still one damned sexy dish) and LaMotta in her own book not only told of the fact that after she did her layout she turned down literally all offers to do films, including a particularly tempting offer from Home Box Office which she wound up saying no to because of the script's excessive (for her) nudity, but disclosed her feelings about aging ("I'm not a fifty-seven-year-old woman with dreams of being thirty again. I'm a fifty-seven-year-old woman trying to act fifty-seven...[L]ook at a baby; any baby. We all start out knowing nothing and we learn") and about Being Recognized ("[W]hen [myself and my admirers are] done, if they smile and say, 'I can't wait to tell my husband I met you' or 'Wait till I tell the guys at the bowling alley,' I feel that both of us have lived a shade better"). And both of our memoirists conclude in grand fashion. Eaton at the conclusion of her tome answers the question of whether of not she'd like to go back into acting by asserting that she'd say: "I'm contemplating two offers at the moment. If they are interesting or fun, I will accept them, as now all my doors are open," And after coming out with this quite humorous saying referencing her world-famous cameo--"James Bond never dies and neither does gold paint!"--her absolute final words are her quoting this rather lovely poem. "There is nothing as sweet as promise, What is to come before it comes. The dream, the idea, is rich with pleasure, It has no end that we can measure." And LaMotta's absolute final words genuinely melt the heart: "Life is wonderful. I want to live it." The book itself ended with these mega-moving comments from LaMotta's surviving son Harrison: "I'll always miss [LaMotta]...My mother was full of life and she taught me to enjoy life. I love the fact that I never saw her talk down to or disrespect anyone. And even in her seventies, she was still a knockout." It was Meryl Streep who, upon being awarded for Lifetime Achievement during the Golden Globe Awards telecast, concluded her legendary acceptance speech by quoting "my friend, the dear, departed Princess Lela [Carrie Fisher, of course]": "Take your broken heart, make it into art." Shirley Eaton and Vikki LaMotta both took their hearts, which in their pasts were broken--the former's by her beloved husband lingering death due to cancer, the latter's first by the vicious beatings she was forced to endure at the hands of her father, then, much, much later, by the also-vicious beatings she was forced to endure at the hands of her boxer husband Jake--and turned them into not art but often incisive, frequently touching, always stylish autobiographies. And it is we readers who should fervently thank them for having done so.

#Meghan McCain #goldfinger #shirley eaton #Golden Girl #playboy magazine #vikki lamotta #Knockout!: The Sexy #jill masterson #cameo #Meryl Streep #the golden globe awards #acceptance speech

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