#i think if melanie were in a saw trap she would also survive through her sheer determination to kick john kramer’s ass

[podcast-hemocytoblast]

I think he would on account of his willingness to cut off his own finger, but I’m curious about other people’s thoughts on the matter

[giggles-and-freckles]

Okay woohoo some fic recs incoming!!!! These will probably be all over the place, but I’ve just got to scream about them for a second!!! PS gonna try to do these more frequently because this is fun!!!

Click below the cut if you dare!

Declarations by Nny11

Summary: A series exploring Obi-Wan and Ahsoka's relationship as Grandmaster and Grandpadawan.

Okay, so this is one of the first fics I can genuinely remember reading with a heavy emphasis on the relationship between Obi-Wan and Ahsoka where I was like 'hey oh my god I love them?’ It was a monumental moment for me because now I am so obscenely ride or die for them and I truly do think back to this fic often with utter fondness. 

A moment I loved: 

“From a certain point of view,” he finally conceded, motioning her to start again. “At least I know you’ve learned something from me!”

“Well I couldn’t learn the secrets of your hair routine!”

the flood comes rushing in by @kenobilovebot

Summary: "I have done this for you. I have put you first." Or, Anakin finds out.

A little bit of sith!Obi-Wan? As a treat? Hm, well...all right!!!!! I don’t want to say too much here because I would really prefer you read it than read any more of my mindless babbling but–it’s good.

A moment I loved: 

He can hardly think around the smothering darkness that has so wholly encompassed his master, so effectively destroying the light that has always been. He’s always been able to reach for it at the worst of times. Now he can’t feel it at all.

a time to say goodbye by Sokaless

Summary: Ezra isn't the only one facing the temptation of change in the World Between Worlds. Just minutes after facing Vader, Ahsoka falls through a portal seventeen years into the past and must relive her final encounter with Anakin and Obi-Wan without drastically altering the future. But Anakin Skywalker taught her many things. How to push her luck was one of them.

This is a short and sweet time-travel fic that finds Ahsoka back in that moment in the hangar with Anakin right before they unknowingly have their last goodbye. She knows more now than she did before and struggles not to say it all. But the theme of learning from loss is really special and powerful and I feel this sad sort of closure when I finish (I say that actively because I have...read this fic several several times). Painful, poignant–all the best things.

A moment I loved:

One last thing she learned from Anakin- teaching a lesson often requires holding your student to higher standards than you hold yourself. 

With the knowledge that she’s holding him to a standard she herself might never reach, Ahsoka tells Ezra, “I’m asking you to let go.”

good morning, sun by @katierosefun​

Summary: “You look miserable.” Ahsoka dropped her hand, spun around. Obi-Wan stood behind her, one arm carrying a cloak and the other half-extended to Ahsoka. [or: After she leaves the Order, Ahsoka has one last encounter with Obi-Wan.]

Let’s see how many of Caroline’s fics I can get away with posting before someone reports me. This one-shot is full of all the good post-wrong jedi stuff. Soka and Obi have a conversation at Dex’s that hurts a lot but also feels real and I will never not respect Caroline for understanding the nuances of the disaster trios intricate and intimate relationships with each other and how they shift and mold around different circumstances. This feels so authentically them that it hurts.

A moment I loved: 

What came out instead was a small, half-choked sound.

When Obi-Wan opened his arms, Ahsoka fell right into them. “It hurts,” Ahsoka said, her voice cracking. “A lot.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan replied thickly. “We’ll take care of it.”

You Haunt All My What-Ifs by @kckenobi

Summary: But then she saw the way Obi-Wan’s lip was quivering, and his eyes were shining, and she realized— He hadn’t called because he needed to tell her. He’d called because he needed her. “Obi-Wan,” she breathed. “Oh, Obi-Wan…” And she wanted to reach out, to hold him. To be his refuge, his shelter, his home. Instead she just watched as he shook his head, palmed at his eyes, apologized. She reached out. Touched the hologram. It flickered. — [Satine and Obi-Wan—then, now, and every echo of what if between them.]

One of the first fics that got me on my Obitine grind!! Just the right mix of angst and angst to create the perfect recipe of absolute sorrow. These characters feel so real I could reach out and hug them–and oh, how I want to after this incredible little fic.

A moment I loved:

And then suddenly she was thinking of every little what if—the other paths they could’ve taken, the millions of ways they could’ve ended up here. She imagined a future where he’d stayed. She saw white weddings, crying infants, painting nursery rhymes on a pale bedroom wall. She saw herself rolling over in the middle of the night, bumping shoulders, feeling his warm breath on her face. She saw family dinners, rushed breakfasts as they hurried the kids off to school. She saw laughter. She saw a lifetime. And at the end, she saw herself old and gray, holding his hand, his eyes the last thing she’d ever see.They had arrived at the end now. But she was not old and gray.

Dying Words by @cloudyskywars

Summary: Anakin is trapped beneath a collapsed building, and has one final conversation with Obi-Wan.

One of my favourite febuwhump contributions from within the mountain of wonderful fics that the second month of the year created!! Some good ol classic Obi & Ani pain. Hint of a deathfic...but mostly just the moments leading up to it. And they...hurt. Also!!! Melanie took the care to make Anakin’s final words be about Obi-Wan, which is very special to me for the reason she includes in her author’s note.

A moment I loved:

“And,” he said, “if you ever see Ahsoka again, tell her she was the best padawan I could have asked for.” His breaths were coming in rapid pants, now, and the room was spinning out of focus. “Obi-Wan?” he asked, voice barely audible. “Yes, Padawan mine?” he responded, his own voice shaky as well. “Thank you for being my Master,” Anakin said.

i’m only me when i’m with you idiots by @renegadeontherunn

Summary: who let Obi-Wan pick the holo? and where's the remote? they might need a bigger blanket. 

[or, Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan have leave on Coruscant and holo night is the perfect excuse to all squeeze onto a couch together, bicker, and be, well, a family]

Fluff, fluff, fluff! Yes, please! My dear Fiona does a wonderful job wrapping these three up in a blanket and plopping them in front of a holo for a night of witty banter and so-cute-I-could-melt platonic cuddles. I love these three, I love this fic!

A moment I loved: 

“You met a civilized Padawan? Couldn’t have been ours.”

get home by @curse-of-men

Summary: After a mission goes wrong and Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker goes missing, it is up to Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka Tano to bring him home.

[or: a Grandmaster and a Grandpadawan go on a road trip to rescue chaos personified]

What? Me? Rec’ing another Obi-Wan and Ahsoka centric fic? HUH? Hehe, I love that Lou says this is the missing Obi & Soka arc in their author’s note because um, did they look into my heart and know that’s what I most desire? Anyway, this three-parter is incredible from start to finish and I demand you all go read it immediately. :-)

A moment I loved:

Making their way to the cockpit, Ahsoka tilts her head into Obi-Wan’s general direction and says: “You know, Master, Anakin would probably think things so far have gone excellently.” Obi-Wan returns her look and sighs.

“Now you surely must get why I am so worried about this.” Ahsoka grins and gestures back and forth in the empty space between them with one hand.

“For what it’s worth, I think we make a good enough team.”

we stand here, together by @nightdotlight​

Summary: Master Depa Billaba and Padawan Caleb Dume.

Windu worries for them, out in the wider galaxy. Waging war, while he and Anakin sit here, waiting.

But he trained Billaba, and Billaba is training Dume. Anakin once took lessons from her, when he himself was a Padawan, and he knows she is skilled enough by far, to ensure that both she and her student make it back to Coruscant safely.

It’s ironic, that when cut off from the Force he can understand other people better than he has in years.

ZOWEE!!!! This fic made me ugly cry on my conference period at school!! Ha! Another fic that culminates in, er...death. But!!!! The lead-up! Ooh, baby! The writing style of this one is also very fresh and unique which I appreciate as someone who essentially reads the same thing eight million ways (by choice, mind you!!!! and loves it every time!!!!). This is just an absolute gem of a fic. Queue: your best crying playlist.

A moment I loved: 

Depa, her Padawan braid hanging from her shoulder, hugs him around his middle and drags him to the training salles. The whole way, her laughter follows them– warm, like summer rain. Like the smallest, most ephemeral moments of happiness.

Her smile feels like a sunset on his back, and Mace smiles back even as they spar, as green and purple clash over and over again in a dance unique to teacher and student.

He does not need to reach out to know the galaxy is at peace. When they take a break from their own spar, Mace feels a light tap on his presence in the Force; when he turns, Ahsoka Tano stands there in training robes, her own Master a few paces behind– and beside him, Obi-Wan Kenobi, face lighter than it has been in years.

Her Padawan beads hang from her headdress; when she smiles at the banter behind her, turning to retort, they catch the light, and the half-formed impression of those beads torn asunder and held in gloved hand is dissipated by the glare.

Only Hope by @tessiete

Summary: The infamous "Year on the Run".In the wake of her father's death, Satine is assigned two Jedi to escort her safely back to Mandalore, but in the chaotic aftermath of a civil war, there is more at stake than one person's survival. Together, they work to unite Mandalore, overcome ancient grudges, and bring peace to a world ravaged by bloodshed.

Man, oh man, do I love a good year on the run fic! And man oh man am I loving the heck out of this one. It’s in progress so go ahead give it a bookmark and a subscription while you’re at it!!!! But the banter! The sass! The (I assume soon to come) pining! The Qui-Gon third wheeling! READ IT! Cannot recommend highly enough.

A moment I loved: 

“...and you’re bound to be hungry.”

“I assure you, I’m not.”

“Well, Obi-Wan is,” Jinn asserts. His back is to his apprentice and so he cannot see the mutinous glance which darts his way. “And as you’ve seen, he’s trouble when he isn’t fed. You have five minutes.”

Goes to Ground by jerseydevious

Summary: Obi-Wan has a question for Anakin following his experiences on Zygerria.

Silly Jedi boys trying and failing to communicate, gosh dang it!!! They get there, eventually, though. :’) Some post Zygerria angst and some tough discussions. HERE. FOR. IT. 

A moment I loved: 

“You are a bad influence, padawan mine,” Obi-Wan said. He gave Anakin that smile, the one that made Anakin feel like he shared a secret with his Master, something only for them.

In Sacrifice, Peace by @ilonga

Summary: “Shh. . .” Anakin says, gathering the younglings around him, reminding Obi-wan of all those whispered arguments where he had insisted to Anakin that yes, he was good with children, he’d be just fine teaching Ahsoka. He can almost feel the terror rising off Anakin from the hologram; Anakin doesn’t know what’s happening either. But he isn’t letting the younglings feel it. “You need to listen to me very carefully, okay? This--” his voice breaks, “--this is going to be scary. But you have to be calm, and strong. Just like Master Yoda taught you.” [Or, the ROTS au where Obi-wan finds a very different type of pain while looking through the Temple's recordings of Order 66.]

PAIN AWAITS YOU HERE! But that is exactly why you should click, kudos, comment, bookmark, and let this fic live in your head rent free like it’s living in mine. Truly couldn’t get it out of there if I wanted to! AND I DO NOT! Yet another deathfic and angst with The Team (TM). Read it, peeps.

A moment I loved: 

“And then?”Obi-wan closes his eyes, pretends he can’t feel the weight of the body in his arms, pretends it’s really Anakin he’s talking to and not some worrying coping mechanism. “And then we fight.” he says.

to hold by @katierosefun

Summary: “What—” Ahsoka looked up and, where she had expected to find a mumbling drunk, she found instead—

“Master Kenobi?” Ahsoka asked, stunned. She straightened, already swinging her backpack around herself again.

“Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan managed. He was breathing hard, just barely bent over because he was supporting, Ahsoka realized dumbly, Anakin.

Anakin, whose head was lolling against Obi-Wan’s shoulder. Whose face was two shades too pale and eyes fluttering and lips parted in a soundless groan that brought Ahsoka right back to battlefields and med bays and other places that she hadn’t been in a long, long while. [or: after leaving the Order, Ahsoka runs into some familiar faces.]

Caroline at it again with the post-wrong-jedi disaster trio angst comin’ in hot! Some platonic bed-sharing, some confused Anakin, some conflicted Ahsoka, some pained Obi-Wan. Well–strike that. They’re all in pain. But what do we expect, honestly? What do we want, honestly? Pain. We want pain.

A moment I loved: 

“Only another dream,” Obi-Wan said. He looked at Ahsoka, his face just barely shadowed. “Seems that it’s passed.”

Another. 

Ahsoka’s stomach twisted. She looked at the hand she was holding. It was strange—she couldn’t remember if she had ever actually held onto Anakin’s hand this tightly before, but now she could feel the familiar callouses, make out just the faintest of old scars. Ahsoka squeezed it once.

Not near as many as I planned to do or have saved and ready to rec, but...this already got, er...quite lengthy. So! Same time, next week! I’ll have some more! (Well, probably not same time and maybe not even next week...but soon.) 

[fakecrfan]

Since you very nicely offered to write me a fic:

Your prompt is: A story about a background character or characters dealing with life after the TMA apocalypse.

It can be set in the OG TMA universe in the post-post-apocalypse, or it can also be set in a different universe that was affected by the events of MAG 200.

Both OCs and characters established in-show are allowed.

This one aligned so well with my interests that I am actually tempted to open my inbox, briefly, in case anyone else has questions like “what is X bavjground character doing after the apocalypse?” so I can make a series out of it and expand on my post-post-apocalypse headcanons.

For now, you can read your fic here, on over here on AO3

---

Sarah doesn't know where she is.

England, she has to still be in England, she thinks. But it's not an England she recognizes. Not the cobblestone streets of London, and not the moors she used to visit on her vacations. The ground is barren, as though all blades of grass but a few have shriveled up and died. There are no trees, houses, or landmarks for miles--just scorched remnants of where they might have been before.

For a moment, the emptiness of it all is a relief after the hotel. But everything is the same on all sides, and she doesn't know where she is or where to go. She's starting to get hungry, too. She never got hungry in the hotel, nightmarish as it was.

She has to sit down for a moment, take a few deep breaths, and think.

Get food. Find shelter. Survive.

Find Alex.

(God, why had she left her child in a hotel room? Little twelve year old Alex who was still afraid to sleep without a night light. He'd begged her to stay, she should have--)

With that in mind she gets up. Doesn't know what direction to walk in, so she doesn't concern herself with trying to pick one. There's nothing to do but walk, keep her eyes open, and hope.

So she hopes.

---

None of our old maps match the landscape, anymore.

The world these days it's... not like in the before times, as I suppose we're calling it. Despite our hopes, ending the apocalypse wasn’t like everyone waking up from a nightmare. The land is...

It's scrambled, I guess. There are patches of the world that--well. They're not the same, but still have infrastructure intact. Electricity, running water, air conditioning. No scorched earth or rubble in these areas. Just a bunch of traumatized people living in an intact town, or city.

When I talk to them, they tell me it's not the city they remember, though. Everything has been switched around, houses and stores not where they remember them. Their neighbors aren't the neighbors their remember.

Those are the lucky ones. And then there's, well... the outside.

Some places have rubble everywhere, jagged steel ripped apart and waiting for someone to cut themselves on it. Some are frozen over, still waiting for the ice they were frozen over with in the apocalypse to melt. Some are scorched to dust. No phones out there, or anything that lets you connect back with home base.

I'm going out there. We need to map it out. We need to figure out our new world, understand it--and we need to get as many people out of the wastes as possible.

Melanie, Georgie--I’ll see you soon.

---

Sarah does find water. That's something. She's hungry still, so hungry, but she knows that the water is more important.

She wonders if she should stay there. She doesn't know if there will be more watering holes in the future, after all, and she has no way to carry it with her. She decides to keep moving on, and hope for the best.

She starts to see blades of grass poking up, along with some sort of metal crap strewn about the landscape. She looks at them a moment--it seems to be bits of an old carousel? Eventually, a giant sit in their shade, for a while. There she takes a moment to look at the horizon, and goes cold.

She recognizes the tower on the horizon.

A  scaffolded tower with two legs beneath it. A sight she'd last seen on a postcard from her brother. The Eiffel Tower.

Is she in Paris? No, that can't be it. It's just the tower out here in the wastes. There are none of the buildings that would normally surround it. It's almost as though its been ripped out of the city and transported here.

Does Paris even exist anymore? Does London?

If she even finds Alex, will there be a home for them to go back to?

---

I have a theory, Melanie. I think lots of people got transported to different places in the world based on what fear they belonged to. Like, a bunch of lonely people were put in the same place, a bunch of claustrophobic people were put in the same place, and so on. All away from the people they knew.

I’m in one of the suburban safe areas now. No one here knows each other. I talked to them all, and all of them remember living in the same house before, but none of them recognized the houses near them or the people in them. When I went from house to house, everyone had a different native language. I talked to a German guy and a French guy who spoke English, but a lot of them… couldn’t talk to me at all.

There was a woman who--she saw me and she lit up. She grabbed me and started talking a mile a minute in Arabic, I think. But I couldn’t understand her, and she--when I tried to talk back to her in English, her face just. Fell. And then she started to cry.

My dad refused to speak it at home, you know. He-- Actually, never mind. It’s not important. 

She ended up shoving me away.

---

Sarah makes it to the ruins of a forest. 

There’s nothing but stumps left of it, along with litter everywhere. She finds water again, filthy brackish water, and she drinks it anyway because she’s so thirsty. She starts sifting through all of the garbage strewn about for something edible. She finds stale bread crusts crawling with ant and eats them anyway. 

She finds a can of beans, and almost cries. When she can’t find a can opener, she screams instead.

---

The death count has gotten to me, honestly.

I’ve found dead bodies even in the towns and cities. Some looked like heart attacks. Some suicides. People who woke up but couldn’t bear the agony they’d just gone through. That’s still not… the worst of it.

I passed a whole field of dead bodies today.

Hundreds of people, I think, all of them lying dead in the soil. But there were... trails. They had been walking, before they collapsed. All walking in the same direction, to where you can still see London on the horizon.

They were alive. They were trying to get help. And they just... starved, it looks like. The walk was just too long.

How many people are going to die from it all, Melanie? How many already have, out where we can't see them?

I left as many jugs of clean water and rations along the roads as I could. I put up signs pointing to London, saying how many miles out they were, where I had stashed food. I gave them your number, so they know who to call to get to the shelter.

I hope it means the next group that passes by won't die.

I hope there is a next group.

---

Sarah can see what looks like a city in the distance before she collapses. 

She tries to get up, but can’t. She’s been walking for days now, it feels like, only sporadically drinking and almost never eating.  There just isn’t enough energy left in her to stand.

She tries to think about little Alex again, running around in his Batman cape, hoping some kind of love or maternal instinct will kick in and give her the last burst of adrenaline she needs to get up. It doesn’t work. Maybe she doesn’t love her own son anymore, really. Maybe it’s just been fear and guilt driving her this far, and that source has already been wrung dry. 

She manages to crawl a few feet, before she can’t even do that. With nothing else left to do, she starts to cry out. “Help! Water, please!” 

She doesn’t think anyone will hear, or show up. But against all odds, in her dimming vision she sees a figure come into view. Backpacked, clutching a water bottle. 

“Help,” she croaks out again. 

The figure gets closer, and she starts to be able to make out the details of his face. He’s her age, or older, with worry lines carved into his forehead and wide eyes. His nose looks eerily like her brother’s nose, and the shape of his jaw reminds her of her old boyfriend, the one who left her with--

She blinks. Maybe she’s hallucinating, or maybe she’s somehow run into a long lost cousin. But then, the man’s eye’s widen and his mouth opens.

“Mum?”

No, no it can’t…

“A-alex?”

No, Alex was a little round cheeked boy. This is a thirty year old man, at least, taller than her. It hasn’t been that long. It can’t be, it’s not--

“Mum?” He’s doing a frown that looks so, so familiar. This has to be a dream. “Mum, it’s--no.”

He sniffles. He steps forward, and steps back. He paces, uncertain.

“No, no,” she hears him mutter. “It’s all fake, all fake. It’s a trap. That’s what they want, the monsters and the face stealers. No one is real. Don’t give them what they want--’’

“Please.” she begs. 

But she hears him walk away, sniffling, and shortly thereafter everything goes dark. 

---

I have a confession to make, Melanie. I was going to side with Jon, back then. I could have lived with keeping everyone here suffering to prevent more of it. But when he said he was going to kill the whole world, not just leave it--that’s what made me snap. 

I couldn’t let the whole world die. Genocide of the entire human species? Anything but that. Surely passing along the suffering would be better, as long as it didn’t lead to the extinction of whole worlds. But… 

I keep finding more dead bodies.

I went back to that suburb I talked about, to restock on all my food. It was a lonely domain before, I think. I’d thought everyone there would be fine, you know. They didn’t have any deadly sicknesses, or twisted flesh injuries. They had food and water and shelter. But when I went back… more of them had died. 

Lots of suicides. Some of them snapped, and started to self injure.

The German guy I talked to had started to starve. He had a pantry full of food and he just wouldn’t eat it. I tried to get him to eat, to move in with someone else, but he said talking to people “made him sick.” 

I gave up, and left. I had to. There were too many people, and too much to do, so I left him. He’s probably dead now, or going to die soon. Because he can’t find the will to live, and I don’t know how to help someone with that.

The Lonely is probably one of the least directly harmful entities, right? This domain was just a suburb, probably the most comfortable you could get during the apocalypse. And yet the victims are still all dying. 

How much worse is it in places without food and water? In the corruption domains that still probably have deadly diseases spreading? In war zones, in flesh factories?

I think about that nursing home we found. All of the patients who'd died of heart attacks a few minutes after they'd woken up. The ones left alive screaming for help where no one could hear them, for days after the fact. All of the ones that died in their beds before we found them. 

I think about that field of bodies I found the other day. I think about the ruins of that Circus I found, people refusing to talk to me or each other--refusing to help because they didn’t believe it was over and thought everyone else was a mannequin. 

I think… I think it doesn’t matter that we saved the world. If people can’t find the will to live, ro rebuild, to trust and help each other again… I think we’re going through a mass extinction event anyway. 

---

Sarah’s in a car, she thinks. Not a moving one. She’s propped up against a seat,There’s something plastic pressed to her lips.

“Come on,” says a woman’s deep, level voice. “Come on. I got you. We’re getting to London. All you have to do is drink.”

Sarah opens her eyes. She sees a dark-skinned woman trying to coax her to drink, holding up a water bottle. 

“Just a sip,” the woman says. “Just enough to make it.”

Sarah closes her eyes, and takes a long moment to consider whether she wants to.

[woulddieforperrytheplatypus]

So… I clicked on your Marvel tag and, because I am a cruel, cruel person, what do you think would happen if Perry, Candace, and Vanessa got snapped instead of Phineas, Ferb, and Dr. Doofenshmirtz? Obviously, the gang probably wouldn’t remain completely intact, so one or more of Isabella, Buford, and Baljeet would have also been dusted. Like, Candace and Vanessa would end up the same age as Phineas and Ferb, and Doof would lose his entire support system (except maybe Norm).

ooh throwback to the first snap au 👀

First of all, HOW DARE YOU

Secondly, I think this would throw off the PnF gang just as much as losing Phineas and Ferb would but in a completely different way. I think losing Candace would really dull the boys' spark, and they'd really stop wanting to build things. The rest of the gang (whoever's left of it, at least) would want to be there for them, but they'd be facing their own losses as well, and I think eventually they'd stop hanging out too much. They'd be friendly enough at school, but by the time they've started recovering emotionally, their friendship would pretty much be over. One day they'll look back on it as just a summer thing when they were kids.

I think what happens to Doof is entirely dependant on who remains at OWCA. The best case scenario (for him, at least) would probably be if Monty, Mrs. Monogram, and Carl were all snapped out of existence, leaving Major Monogram with pretty much nothing left. I think they might be able to help each other if they're both feeling the same loss because they'd both need someone to lean on. But if any of Monogram's family or friends (well, friend. there's Carl. other than that, he has no friends) survive, Monogram will doubtlessly lean on them instead.

I think the other possible alternative where Doof comes out on top (or, you know, not on the bottom) is if Monty loses everyone he loves. He doesn't necessarily have the best relationship with his parents, but he loves them despite Major Monogram's their flaws. If Carl gets snapped, too, Monty would naturally be the next in line to take over OWCA. I don't think he'd want to, but I think he'd feel compelled to when he saw the messes that were the OWCA agents and the LOVEMUFFIN scientists. Half of them will have lost their nemesis, you know? They need guidance. And if Monty's in charge, he's going to make it his personal duty to keep track of who's alive and who's not, so he'd keep an eye on all the scientists.

I have to think he wouldn't know who's been snapped? I'm assuming OWCA would be in contact with Fury and Monty would know what's going on, but Fury wouldn't have all the answers so Monty would have to go to all the scientists' empty lairs when he doesn't hear from them. He wouldn't want to go to Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc after losing Vanessa, but it's been dead silent here anyway; it'll just be a quick-in, quick-out (and maybe a brief conversation with Norm).

Obviously, that's not the case; Doof is just sitting there in the dark — and probably crying if he has any tears left. They both love Vanessa, they both like Perry, and they both have complicated-but-probably-positive relationships with Major Monogram, so they'd have a lot in common. I think Monty would take pity on him and sit down with him and just hang out. There'd be some talking, maybe some crying, probably a lot of silence, but in the end, they'd both appreciate the other's company, and I think that might almost evolve into a substitute father-child relationship to make up for the ones they just lost. It's not the same, but they have to make due where they can, right?

Alternatively, maybe there's nobody left for Doof. Maybe there is, but they don't want anything to do with him. Either way, Doof would be all alone, and maybe he'd want to let it that way. Maybe he'd unplug the phone. Maybe he'd put a sign on the door asking for people to stay away. Maybe he'd turn Norm off. He'd cope by shutting everyone out — not that there's really anyone left for him to let in anyway — and fall into a deep, years-long hopeless depression. I don't think there's a single possible outcome where he thrives; I think it's just a matter of how much he suffers.

I do have to wonder if it would be a possibility for him to reconnect with his blood family. I'd hope he wouldn't want to see his parents, but he still loves his mother and he still respects his father; maybe he would want to if they'd want to see him. Maybe Roger got snapped and Heinz tries to talk to his parents about it. Maybe it goes well; maybe they call him a schnitzel and kick him out because they're grieving, too, and they don't have time for him. Alternatively, maybe Roger survives and he loses everyone close to him. Maybe Melanie gets snapped away and he loses his closest friend/maybe girlfriend. Maybe their parents are snapped away, too, and Heinz is the only one he knows would understand. (Bear in mind that Roger really doesn't understand the scope of their parents' hatred for Heinz; he knows he was the favorite but he doesn't seem to have much of a grasp on just how miserable Heinz's childhood was. Because Heinz still wants his parents' love and respect, I don't think Roger will ever really understand what his brother went through.) I don't know if Heinz would accept an olive branch from his brother. I do think that if it went the other way, Roger would accept one from Heinz. If Heinz decides he'd like Roger back in his life, I think it would work out.

I think the interesting part would be what happens afterwards. Perry obviously fits like a glove. His boys love him; Doof would literally have mourned him until his own dying day if that's how it played out; Candace didn't even realize they were both gone. He'd be upset to have missed such a big part of his boys' lives, but overall, things would be fine.

Candace, meanwhile, would probably have the hardest time adjusting. Her annoying little brothers aren't even little anymore, for god's sake! And they'd be do different, too. No more building; no more little posse of kids; everything changed in literally the blink of an eye for her. And what about Jeremy? What if he didn't get blipped and he found someone else? He'd be thrilled to see her again, obviously, but probably not enough to break up with whoever he's seeing right now. Alternatively, maybe Jeremy got blipped and Little Suzie didn't, so she and Jeremy can bond over their little siblings growing up so fast.

I think the only one(s?) who would have it worse would be the ones from the main gang that got blipped. They'd all been in elementary school together, and now some of them are in high school. They might all try to become friend again and maybe it works for the older kids, but it's such a big gap in both age and maturity that I don't think they'd ever be the same. The blipped kid(s) would probably have to make new friends and start all over.

Vanessa would be welcome back with open arms. Then those arms would wrap around her and not let her go until she was literally about to pass out from lack of oxygen. If Monty wasn't blipped, he definitely would have moved on, but I'd like to think they'd still be friends? I also think seeing Ferb all grown up (or, you know, 14ish years old) might expedite the dating process. I also think that would make Candace incredibly uncomfortable — more so than I think it did in canon because not only is that her friend and her little brother, but it's a reminder that he's really not that little anymore.

I'd like to think that if Doof did make friends with someone (one of the Monogram boys or Roger), they stay friends. It absolutely boggles Vanessa's mind when she comes back to it, but it just makes Perry happy to see that he wasn't completely miserable. I don't think he'd go back to evil, but he and Perry would still hang out (and it would take Perry a while to get used to the idea of going to DEI without getting trapped). Vanessa might kill her dad when she finds out he turned Norm off to mope in peace, but they'd dust him off and turn him back on and they'd explain everything to him.

I don't think things would ever go back to the way they were, but, ultimately, I think it would all be fine. It'll take a few years, but I think everyone would ultimately adjust just fine to their new lives.

[girlmeetsliv3]

K-12: Kindergarten

~ Inspired by Melanie Martinez’s K-12 ~

No one said school was easy nor that it was a fun place. However, Tentoria academy was not a place for the faint of heart, mind, or soul. It’ll be a miracle if you survive your first day - not to mention 12 years. Oh well. Battles to the death, demonic summoning, and interdimensional travel is all part of growing up…right?

Word Count: 1857

Release Date: October 14, 2019, 7 pm (GMT-4)

It was a rather peculiar dream even for you. Granted your five-year-old standards weren’t too high, but it was different from your usual dreams: those were plagued with death, cryptic messages, and content that might have another other child screaming for their parents. You had tried before, but Mommy was always passed out after taking several sips from her special sippy cup and Daddy was never home. This dream was too bright, cheerful with clouds that contained bright rainbows, and sweet music that traveled through your ears. It also smelled sickeningly sweet like the way you felt after eating too much cotton candy after going to the fair by yourself. It was a bit scary for you. That everything was so happy and joyous. You felt it wasn’t going to last. “You need to get going soon.” You turned around to see a beautiful woman decked out in a gold silk dress and braids falling down her back. “Who are you?” you asked, in awe of how pretty she was - almost like an angel. Instead of answering she simply smiled, crouching down to be at eye level with you. 

          “Wake up you’re going to be late.”

           You heard the alarm clock, the metal stick rapidly clashing into the bells in order to emit a dreadful sound. The second your eyes peeled open the clock flew from its position on your bedside table to halfway across the room. You immediately sat up, glancing around the room to see what could have caused such a thing. Was that me? Your eyes focused on the clock, now laying on the floor, and willed it to move. You concentrated so hard that your head began to hurt, it was all a little too much for your small brain to handle. Knowing it wouldn’t do you any good to remain in bed, you stood up walking towards the giant calendar on your wall. Under today were written the words: ‘first day of hell.’ Grabbing your red crayon on the table beside you, a heart was drawn around the words. Your suitcase had been packed the night before, Mommy has been in a good mood, and your uniform was neatly ironed for you to put on. The uniform consisted of a pink frilly dress with white stocking and closed shoes for girls, while it was a light blue collared shirt and blue shorts with dress shoes for boys. You didn’t like pink and the dress was a bit boring, so when your mommy had given you the money to go out and buy the uniform you had bought a purple one instead. One with pretty flowers embroidered into the sleeves. 

           Opting to prolong putting in on and sealing your fate, you went to the bathroom to brush your teeth. Recalling that one dream you had where you opened your mouth and all of your teeth fell out as a red thick liquid filled your throat. You had it after seeing grandma take off her teeth during dinner one night when she didn’t want to talk to Mommy anymore. You counted to up to one hundred and twenty before finishing and going back to your room. You got dressed, grabbing the backpack and suitcase before heading to the kitchen. Mommy was asleep on the couch, drool falling from her open mouth onto the pillow. So you made yourself some breakfast, cereal with milk, before walking to the bus stop. You wanted to say goodbye to her before you left, but she would only be upset that you had woken her up. The walk to the bus stop wasn’t long, only fifteen minutes of you walking at full speed. Thankfully the sun wasn’t out yet or it would’ve been a lot worse. 

           From the distance, you could see someone else standing at the bus stop. A bright green suitcase with heart and unicorn stickers practically everywhere. “Rosé!” The young brunette turned around with shock in her eyes before she recognized your figure running towards her at full speed. Rosé was your only friend in town, her parents were much nicer than yours, but she had once told you that her parents hadn’t really wanted a second child. So she was the scrap compared to her older sister. “Are you excited?” She asked her voice high and squeaky something that happened when she was nervous. “Not really.” Both of you stayed quiet after that, neither knowing what was the right thing to say. It was when the bright white bus filled with screaming kids inside approached that the two of you locked hands. “Do you think we’ll make friends?” you asked, your hand turning white from how tight your grip was. “Hopefully, but we have each other and that’s all that matters.” The two of you exchanged a kind smile, as the bus pulled in front of you and opened its doors. The two of you grabbed your stuff and hauled onto the bus where only two seats at the center remained open.

           It seems no one had paid much attention to either of you prefer to talk loudly amongst each other and make obnoxious noises. That was until you felt something hit the side of your head, and you saw a paper plane fall onto the ground. Picking it up, you opened it before handing it to Rosé. “What does it say?” She sounded it out before turning around and screaming at the boys in the back, “Real mature.” Everyone began to laugh, but from the way you felt all their eyes on you, it wasn’t because of a good thing. Then they all began to chant a specific word, one you had heard your mother say to you when she was upset at you. “Freak.” The words seemed to trap you until you felt the familiar feeling of tears strolling down your face. “Aw does the little crybaby need some tissues?” One of the girls further down asked in a mocking tone. All of her friends laughed before one of them whispered back. “She probably has some in her bra.” Rosé comforted you as best as she could, but with the incessantness of their bullying, it was difficult to. The bus driver was viewing everything from the rearview mirror but didn’t see a point in stopping it. Wasn’t in his job description nor payroll. 

           Eventually, they stopped, getting bored and seeking entertainment in other ways. A child’s attention span wasn’t very long anyway. The bus had left the city and was now entering a highway, after a while, you saw a sign that read: Tentoria Academy K-12 Sleepaway School. The only time you would get to see your parents from now on would be on the weekend, which wasn’t a big deal since you barely saw them whilst you were at home. The bus slowed to a stop as it picked up the final kid, a young boy with chubby cheeks and a bright smile. The second he stepped on with his blue backpack with small frills on the ends, you felt your heart flutter. “Oh my god, Y/n. You’re blushing.” Rosé poked fun at you. Your stomach hurt and your heart began to race, but it wasn’t because of what you ate. Nor was it due to the way the other kids treated you; it was all him. Tentatively you stood up and opened your mouth to greet him when you were interrupted. “Jimin!” A taller boy pushed past you and embraced Jimin, the two of them laughing. 

           “I thought you weren’t going to come.”

           “Duh, loser. How could I not?”

           The two boys engaged in a playful banter completely ignoring the world around them. Dejectedly, you fell back into your seat. A full-on put had formed on your lips and the space between your brows wrinkled. “Are you okay?” You nodded at Rosé, simply staring outside the window. You hadn’t even arrived at school and already you hated it, wishing something anything could happen to stop the bus. Your prayers were answered when the bus driver suddenly turned on the road, causing the bus to start spinning uncontrollably. Screams from both you and your peers were so high, they practically shattered the glass windows. Thankfully they didn’t, for when the bus spun so much it broke through the railing and went straight into the lake. Those windows were the only thing that prevented your imminent death. The bus driver was passed out a large gash on the side of his head. You glanced around frantically as Rosé tried to get the door to open for everyone to swim out. The school bus was drifting to the bottom of the lake, the pressure keeping the doors jammed. “We’re gonna die here!” One of the girls screamed out. “I don’t know how to swim.” echoed another. 

Rosé and you looked at each other before grasping each other’s hands. You both closed your eyes and softly began to pray. “I wish this bus would float. Float so high it went up to the sky.” You don’t know how or why the two of you were speaking those specific words, but they felt right. So you kept repeating them. Repeating them until it was practically second nature to you both, then you both opened your eyes. At first, all you saw was white, so much that you assumed you were in heaven. Once you saw the dewdrops forming on the glass you realized something else - “They’re clouds,” Rosé spoke awe clear in her voice. Everyone else had gathered trying to look outside. The bus was floating so high above that it was difficult to make out the things on the ground, slowly though it was going down. No one dared speak, it was as if it was a dream and everyone was afraid to shatter it. The school bus got closer and closer to the ground until the wheels hit the solid pavement and it caused such turbulence it made everyone fly from their seats. It even woke up the bus driver. Coincidentally, it seems you had been dropped off right in front of the school.

It was rather large in size. A pearly white with high arches and accents that instantly drew you in, but something felt off about the place. It was too picturesque and beautiful, something was bound to go wrong. Nice things always turned sour fast. Everyone hurried to get off the bus, while Rosé and you lingered behind; waiting until everyone had gone inside. As you climbed down the steps, you hesitated a bit before stepping on the ground. Feeling that once you did, you might never be able to go back. Rosé gave you a slight nudge which encouraged you to take that final step. “Everything will be fine.” You said, mostly to yourself. “Of course it’ll be. What’s the worst that could happen?” Rosé was trying to be strong, but you could hear the nerves in her voice. She’s right. What’s the worst that could happen? So the two walked together until you reached the giant school doors. You entered feeling prepared for whatever might come your way.

[mygiantesslove]

Christmas Eve at My Cousins Feet

Last Chance For Survival (14)

December 24th 5:37pm

Time passes by and your spirits have been broken almost beyond repair.  As your family laughs with happiness, Jake wonders how they can be so happy without even checking on him on Christmas Eve, when he’s supposed to be grounded and locked in his room. The sad minuscule, bug of a boy observes the cheerful room and says

 “It looks like they don’t even want me around anymore.”

Finally, after waiting forever, an opportunity arises.  After Jennifer receives a gift certificate to Victoria's Secret, Trixie opens up a new mp3 player and starts jumping around for joy.  She startles your cousin Melanie and she gets up and moves her seat.  This was your chance.  You run to your mom as fast as you can and start pounding on her shoe.  

 "Mom, look down here quick I’ve been shrunk hurry up, look, look."

It doesn’t work, so you climb up her loose shoelace and climb up to her ankle.  Jake sinks his teeth into the cherry moisturizer smelling skin of his mother and she instinctively extended her knee and kicked her foot in the air.

 "Ow, a bug bit me."

You were sent flying in the air straight towards Melanie's DDD breasts.  You landed in her cleavage and Mel didn’t feel a thing.  These breasts were amazing compared to the other pair you were crushed by and they jiggled just a little bit every time you poked them.

The bottom half of your body was stuck between Mel’s melons and you couldn’t move your legs.  Waving your arms in the air to get her attention did no good and even your dad and uncle were being polite and not staring at her rack.  10 minutes went by and you would have enjoyed your bouncy prison if not for the cutoff of circulation in your legs.  Melanie finally gets up and bends over to pick up her gift and you fall out and land in your sister's Black furry Ugg boot.

You fell all the way down to her white socked heel.   It was only the back of her foot, but you knew there was more than meets the eye to this sweaty, socked monster.  Samantha shifts her foot just a little bit, but that small amount of room that was moved in her boot caused her heel to move over right on top of you.

Samantha notices there’s something in her boot and moves it across her arch up to her toes and starts to like the little rock under her foot.  she plays with you for a while, squeezing you with her sweaty toes and rubbing you against her the ball of her foot. Eventually, you manage to grab hold of her pinky and pull yourself up across her sole and on top of her foot.    Samantha notices her little pebble is gone and misses playing with it.

 "There’s no way I’m going to be stuck smelling my sister's stinky feet all night, I’m getting the hell out of here!"

You ran across the top of her foot and jumped onto her leg and leaped onto the inside of her boot.  The inside was furry too and you used the fur as handholds and climbed up to the rim of the Ugg boot.  The smell of her feet was still stuck to you but Bianca's was much worse.  In fact, you preferred being under your sister’s feet much more than being trapped with Bianca's sole.

Jake fell over just as Samantha was fidgeting with her foot and he landed on a long brown object.  It’s lifted up into the air and when you open your eyes you see the wide-open mouth of your little sister about to eat her Favorite Christmas treat.  A peanut butter and chocolate Santa.

 "No Trixie don’t eat me I’m your brother”

But Trixie doesn’t hear her tiny brothers pleas and sends the piece of candy into her mouth.  You and Santa are lying on her tongue and she hasn’t chewed yet because she wants to savor the flavor. You look down her throat and see her esophagus go down forever into the pit of her stomach.  You know there’s no escaping the mouth of a giantess and sit on the candy Santa until she eats you and your fate is sealed to be eaten by a young girl and digested in her tummy.

But your Destiny doesn’t have to be this way!  The sharp teeth are pried open by none other than Jennifer herself and her giant hand reaches in and saves you from a humiliating death inside the belly of a little girl.    

 "Thank god she saw Trixie eat me.  Now I can be rescued and saved from being my cousin’s pet."

Jennifer says "Trixie, mom told you not to eat any more of these."

 "Aww, but I love the creamy filling."

 "I don’t care.  You can’t have any but I can’t let this go to waste, so ill eat it."

Out of one mouth and into another.  this time you’re about to be Jennifer’s snack and see her pearly whites open up and her tongue is salivating waiting to devour you.

But this time you’re ready and jump off the Santa Claus and into her well-endowed bosom.  Well, that’s where you would have gone if she didn’t turn around and bend over exposing her coin slot.   You screamed in horror as you knew you were about to enter another asscrack and fell perfectly into the center.  Jennifer felt your intrusion but was more concerned with her dad seeing her plumbers crack so she pulled up her jeans and sat down.

Jake had been pushed into the center of her plush cheeks and was squeezed on all sides.  She sat like this for a while before getting up and walking to the kitchen to get a drink.  This left you room to get out and you slid further down until you reached her anus.  Jennifer’s butthole was a lot bigger than the last rear exit you saw and you quickly squeezed yourself down before her asshole got too hungry for you.  but it was too late,  Jenny's dark pink hole expanded around you and sucked your torso in up to your waist.  you struggled to get out of the vice-like sphincter of your older sister but couldn't escape from her rectum until you heard a rumbling deep in her large intestine. A small fart escaped her bowels and you were shot like a rocket down her pants leg and fell on the thong of her flip-flop.

Jennifer drank the glass of water, turned around and when she took her first step you were kicked from her big toe to her right back to Melanie’s Breasts.  But this time you were sent all the way inside her cleavage and your whole body was being squished by two gelatinous squishy orbs.

After fighting a useless battle against two colliding planets your body fell limp and you slid down her bra and into her belly button.   You stayed perfectly still for quite some time until Melanie bent over and you fell from her navel into the front of her panties.  You couldn’t tell what color her underwear was but something much bigger caught your attention and you were staring straight at The Redheads, Redbush.

Scattered pubic hairs covered her vagina and before you knew it Mel fixed her panties and you were inserted inside her.  Her juices coated your body but you managed to grab hold of her pussy lips before Melanie continued to be aroused and leave the room to pleasure herself.  You slid through the lace of her panties and down her pants leg.

Mel walked away but when you looked up you saw the Giant barefoot of your aunt Michelle out of its sandal home and hovering over you.  Michelle thought she saw a bug on the floor and quickly Stomped on it before any of her party guests noticed it.  She didn’t want them to think her house had a bug problem.    

It was amazing.  The bare sole of your aunt's foot looked exactly like her daughter's foot except much larger and a few wrinkles in the middle and above the heel.  it also had the same similar smell to it except Michelle’s was a lot milder than Bianca’s since she changed her socks often and mainly wore open-toed sandals and pumps.  You wondered if this was what Bianca's foot would look and smell like in twenty years?  Jake hoped he would Never find out.  

Before he knew it, the familiar, beautiful foot came crashing down on him and squished him under her sole.  Michelle ground her foot against the carpet and this sent her nephew in-between her toes.  She slid her foot back in her shoe and that’s where you stayed for the rest of the night inside this attractive Milf's footwear.

Michelle had another glass of wine and watched as her daughter started to open up her first present.  It was a sweater and she looked a little disappointed, but Bianca didn’t say anything....yet.

After about an hour of being your aunt's foot toy, she slipped her foot out of her sandal again and even though your body hurt from the squeezing you managed to jump out onto the carpet floor and roll back underneath the couch.  You were defeated.  After all, that time trying to get their attention the only thing you accomplished was getting masticated by their various large body parts.

 "Kicked, Squished, Stepped on, crushed, eaten, licked, flipped, pressed, inserted, imprisoned, smashed, rubbed, squeezed and toyed with.  What hasn’t happened to me that any other normal human being can say that’s never happened to them?  After all that work, I’ve accomplished nothing.   Should I just give up on trying to be seen?  I’m too pathetic. I can't even get one giant girls attention when there's a room full of them.  I may as well just walk right back into Bianca's sock and go back to being her foot slave."  

A weird thought entered Jake Smith's mind?

[benajahccjoseph]

The enchantment of a piece of writing delivered by the human voice may come on little cat feet, so to speak, slipping in so softly that we hardly notice its arrival. It can also dash forward and strike with a blow, as it did one night in 1917 to the future novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston had enrolled in a night high-school English class taught by a man named Dwight O. W. Holmes.

In her memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston wrote, “There is no more dynamic teacher anywhere under any skin. He is not a pretty man, but he has the face of a scholar, not dry and set like, but fire flashes from his deep-set eyes. His high-bridged, but sort of bent nose over his thin-lipped mouth—well, the whole thing reminds you of some Roman like Cicero, Caesar or Virgil in tan skin.”

One fateful evening, this teacher opened a volume of English poetry and began to read to the class:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery . . .

Hurston was transfixed. “Listening to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan for the first time, I saw all that the poet had meant for me to see with him, and infinite cosmic things besides. I was not of the work-a-day world for days after Mr. Holmes’s voice had ceased. This was my world, I said to myself, and I shall be in it, and surrounded by it, if it is the last thing I do on God’s green dirt-ball.”

What happened to Hurston that night was a kind of intellectual and aesthetic liberation: the sound of her teacher reading Coleridge was so thrilling, so arresting, that it cut her loose from the life she might have had and freed her to find her destiny as a writer.

At other times in history, and in other places, reading aloud has been the means of more literal liberation. The human voice is just a sound in the air, and yet it has built bridges from ignorance to knowledge, and from bondage to freedom. In the American South before the Civil War, for instance, it was illegal in some states to teach enslaved people to read and write. There were no laws against listening, though, which is how the future abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass got his first taste of what words could do. He was about twelve at the time, and as he later wrote, “the frequent hearing of my mistress reading the Bible aloud awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and roused in me the desire to learn.”

The woman began to teach Douglass the letters of the alphabet, but her husband soon put a stop to it. After that, Douglass recalled, her attitude toward him changed. “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me,” he wrote. “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamb-like disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.”

At one point, Douglass’s mistress became so enraged at the sight of him holding a newspaper that she yanked it from his hand. “She was an apt woman,” Douglass observed dryly, “and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other.”

Like Douglass, the future missionary and preacher Thomas Johnson paid close attention to readings of the New Testament at night. Johnson would ask to hear certain passages repeated, so that he could fix the words in his mind, and then he would compare what he’d heard with what he saw printed in a stolen Bible that he kept hidden away. Reading aloud became, for these determined men, a secret staircase that led to the open air of intellectual escape.

When a cell door slammed on Yevgenia Ginzburg, a Communist Party official caught in the purges of Stalin’s Great Terror, she was left with one source of consolation: “Poetry, at least, they could not take away from me!” she declares in her memoir, Journey into the Whirlwind. The prisoner prowled her cell, racking her memory to recite aloud the literature she’d read. “They had taken my dress, my shoes, my stockings, and my comb . . . but this was not in their power to take away, it was and remained mine.”

A few years later, eight hundred miles to the west, retelling literature from memory came to the rescue for Helen Fagin, a young prisoner of the Warsaw ghetto. “Being caught reading anything forbidden by the Nazis meant, at best, hard labor; at worst, death,” she writes in an essay for the collection A Velocity of Being.

I conducted a clandestine school offering Jewish children a chance at the essential education denied them by their captors. But I soon came to feel that teaching these young sensitive souls Latin and mathematics was cheating them of something far more essential—what they needed wasn’t dry information but hope, the kind that comes from being transported into a dream-world of possibility.

One day, as if guessing my thoughts, one girl beseeched me: “Could you tell us a book, please?”

Fagin had spent the previous night devouring a contraband copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, so her own dream-world was still “illuminated” by the story.

As I “told” them the book, they shared the loves and trials of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, of Ashley and Melanie Wilkes. For that magical hour, we had escaped into a world not of murder but of manners and hospitality. All the children’s faces had grown animated with new vitality.

A knock on the door shattered our shared dream-world. As the class silently exited, a pale green-eyed girl turned to me with a tearful smile: “Thank you so very much for this journey into another world. Could we please do it again, soon?” I promised we would, although I doubted we would have many more chances.

Only a few of the children in the secret school survived the Holocaust. The green-eyed girl was one of them. “There are times when dreams sustain us more than facts,” Fagin concludes. “To read a book and surrender to a story is to keep our very humanity alive.”

  It is no accident that repressive governments often limit people’s access to books and information. That was true in Spanish Cuba, when the authorities put a stop to the public readings in the cigar factories. That was true in the Warsaw ghetto for Helen Fagin. Books consumed in private cultivate independence of mind, a thing unwelcome and even dangerous when the culture outside is in the grip of orthodoxy.

The experience of Chen Guangcheng, the blind human rights activist who made a dramatic escape from house arrest in China to the American embassy in 2012, speaks to the power of reading out loud as a means not only of liberating the listener’s imagination but also of engaging his critical faculties. If those faculties happen to be subversive, well, the responsibility for that doesn’t lie with the thinker but with those who would stop him from thinking.

Chen was born in 1971, and in rural China the blindness that took his sight after a fever meant that he could not get a formal education. As a result, he spent his days isolated from other children. While the rest of the kids in his village attended the Communist Party–run local school, Chen spent his time trapping frogs, devising gimcrack homemade guns, and building kites that he couldn’t see, but whose airborne vibrations he could feel through the string in his hand. His mother was illiterate, but his father had picked up the rudiments of reading and writing just before the Cultural Revolution shuttered the schools in 1966. In the horror and tumult of the next decade, young Red Guards plundered libraries and ransacked temples, smashing and burning books and antiquities.

They brutalized and rusticated the educated, the once-prosperous, and the insufficiently zealous in a state-sanctioned campaign to extirpate the “four olds”: old ideas, old customs, old habits, and old culture.

The fever would pass, but even as Chinese society was shuddering in the aftermath of the revolution, Chen Guangcheng’s father was doing something extraordinary. Quietly, every night, he read to his blind son. In doing so, he imparted old ideas, old customs, old habits, and old culture.

“My father and I would sit under the kerosene lamp as he read aloud, making out the words in a halting rhythm, his voice rough and low,” Chen recalls in his memoir, TheBarefoot Lawyer. Their books ran from folktales to history to Chinese classics. Father and son read the sixteenth-century novel Investiture of the Gods. They read the sprawling, tragic eighteenth-century love story Dream of the Red Chamber (banned during the Cultural Revolution). They read the fourteenth-century epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, also banned, on the grounds that it encouraged mythology.

Hour after hour, sometimes sitting up, sometimes lying by his father’s side on a narrow bed, the boy listened. “The stories my father read to me served as a counterpoint to the official party line and the usual propaganda,” Chen writes.

Just as important was that my father’s stories and our discussions about them gave me an organic education in ethics, providing a framework with which to understand my experience as a disabled child. The stories I heard when I was young allowed me to imagine myself in the position of the characters, to consider how I would react if faced with similar challenges, to devise my own responses and then to compare them with what actually took place.

Chinese history is full of examples of the disempowered overcoming the odds through wit and daring. Though I lacked the conventional education of my peers, I also avoided the propaganda that was part and parcel of the party’s educational system. Instead, my father’s tales became my foundational texts in everything from morality to history and literature and provided me with a road map for everyday life.

It is a brilliant testament to the dedication of a loving father, and to the excellence of five olds: old ideas, old customs, old habits, old culture, and the old practice of reading aloud.

Wherever young people are growing up, they deserve to know what went into the making of their world. They have a right to be free to enjoy the richness thereby.

January 17, 2019  By Meghan Cox Gurdon

Reading Aloud to hear the characters true voice The enchantment of a piece of writing delivered by the human voice may come on little cat feet, so to speak, slipping in so softly that we hardly notice its arrival.