#it was originally intended to be in the town by the ranch

[thesconesyard]

Where the West Begins

29. Jolene

Jim had led them to a restaurant and it was a happy group that sat around the table. McCoy was settled between Scotty and Chekov. The meal was good, but it wasn’t anything like Christine and Uhura’s cooking.

“How do you think it’s going at home?” Sulu asked.

“I’m sure Jaylah is handling everything capably with Keenser’s help,” said Spock.

“Of course she is!” Chekov said emphatically.

McCoy kept a smile off his face, but shared a quick glance with Sulu.

“It’s nice to have an evening in such a place once in a while,” Scotty said, bumping his knee against McCoy’s under the table.

“Lots of fancy ladies to look at,” Jim grinned.

“Look all you want kid, we know where your heart is,” McCoy said with a raise of his eyebrow.

Scotty and Sulu chuckled, while a hint of color climbed Spock’s face. While Jim had admitted to McCoy that he and Spock were together, neither had said anything to the rest of the ranch crew, though everyone assumed as much.

As Jim took care of the bill, everyone made ready to leave, standing up and pushing in chairs. Listening to Scotty joke with Sulu, McCoy’s blood turned to ice as a voice behind him spoke.

“Lenny?”

He stopped breathing, rooted to the spot, not wanting to turn around and face the past.

A hand touched his arm. Delicate fingers covered in a pale pink lace glove.

“Lenny?” The voice was sweet and light, but McCoy knew the poison it could hold.

With his heart pounding loudly in his ears he turned.

“I thought that was you!” A bright face, trying too hard to be youthful was standing in front of him.

McCoy couldn’t find any words. He had never wanted to see that face or hear that voice ever again.

“What are you doing out here Lenny?”

“Jocelyn?” he finally managed. Beside him he sensed Scotty stiffen.

“You’re a long way from home,” Jocelyn said, still smiling at him.

“So- so are you,” McCoy bit out, trying his hardest to be polite and not yell at the woman who had reached into his chest and ripped out his heart.

“Clay and I are moving to California,” Jocelyn replied, just a hint of a defiant look in her eye. “He’s taken a spot with one of the biggest firms out there.”

“That so?” McCoy couldn’t help himself and began to scan the room for the man who had supposedly been his good friend. In a far corner a man raised a hand. McCoy gave a curt nod back.

“You’re the last person I expected to see out here,” Jocelyn continued, looking McCoy up and down. Her nose scrunched a small bit.

“Same,” McCoy said, holding back from snapping the word.

“We’re all set,” Jim said behind McCoy. “Let’s get going? Oh.”

“It’s fine kid, I’ll be a minute,” McCoy said over his shoulder.

“Ok,” Jim said slowly.

“Leonard?” Scotty said tentatively next to him.

“It’s alright Monty,” McCoy told him, not taking his eyes from Jocelyn. He couldn’t help but note she was as fashionable as she always was, but somehow now it was in a showy way, as if she wanted everyone to notice her. When McCoy had fallen in love with her she had been the prettiest girl in town because she had seemed unaware of her beauty.

“Still a doctor Lenny?” Jocelyn asked.

“Yes, some.”

“Oh.”

“What?” McCoy demanded.

“You aren’t much dressed like you used to be.” Jocelyn raised an eyebrow and even though she was shorter than him by quite a bit, he knew she was looking down at him.

“Well, my patients aren’t big time crooks anymore who call themselves lawyers. I don’t have to be all gussied up.”

Jocelyn’s smile stayed on her face, but McCoy could see how it had become a scowl.

“I do honest work that I’m proud of,” he continued before she could say anymore. He straightened and squared his shoulders. “Tell Clay hello. Enjoy California, I’ll be glad to never see you again.”

He turned to begin walking away.

“What a mistake you were,” Jocelyn called at his back. “I married him the second you signed the papers and he’s done more than you ever will.”

McCoy’s hands curled into fists, but he forced himself to keep walking. He would not take her bait and turn around. Outside the restaurant, Scotty was waiting for him.

“The others headed back to camp,” Scotty said quietly as he fell in step next to McCoy.

McCoy gave a grunt as a response, still too angry with his thoughts roiling.

“If ye want to talk…” Scotty trailed off. He didn’t say anymore, just walked beside McCoy.

Somehow, McCoy found that soothing. Scotty didn’t expect anything from him, just offered himself if McCoy needed. Jocelyn had always wanted him to tell her everything, and he had shut himself down to simple answers. But Scotty…

McCoy looked over at the man beside, face lit by the lights of the city. His anger began to melt away. Here was someone who appreciated him for who he actually was.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

“Of course mo ghràdh.”

[yanderes-galore]

idea popped in ma head, maybe a wolf hybrid jack marston with a domestic dog darling? Rdr1 eiplouge

Sure! Here's the wolf that's making your farming life hell.

Yandere! Wolf! Jack Marston with Domestic Dog! Darling

(Hybrid AU)

Pairing: Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Manipulation, Possessive behavior, Animalistic behavior, Stalking, Violence, Blood, Murder, Courting, Kidnapping, SFW smell kink, Mentions of mates, Threats, Forced relationship.

You're a domestic dog hybrid built for farming.

Since you were a pup/child you were raised by a human family who owned a ranch.

It wasn't an uncommon sight for humans to take care of domestic hybrids.

Cat and dog hybrids were the most popular.

Usually said hybrids are treated more like human children than pets.

Yet their animal characteristics often made them more capable for some jobs.

For example, since you were a pup you've been taught to herd animals.

You take care of cows, sheep, pigs, chickens...

You're often on guard duty to protect the animals, too.

You often saw your humans as family since you were a stray at one point in time.

Now you often follow them everywhere, even helping them sell supplies made at the ranch for extra money.

As you're often on guard duty, your humans have taught you how to use firearms.

You're quite the shot and have always defended the ranch with your life.

Nowadays your folks have gotten old, often needing you to help out.

They've told you when they go... The ranch is yours to care for.

You've always promised you would protect this place... it's your home, after all.

You don't typically encounter hybrids often.

Occasionally when you go down to town you'll see a cat or dog...

Yet you've never seen any wild hybrid.

You've seen normal wolves and coyotes.

Yet you've never seen hybrid versions.

The scent is always different from them... Even when they're in a mostly animal form.

You can just smell... human in them.

When you met Jack, you saw him as a threat.

He's a wolf hybrid... yet even you can tell he's oddly domestic for a wolf.

Which is true.

Jack was originally more domestic than your typical wolf.

The most wild he's been was when he was a pup, still cared for by his two wolf parents.

Yet his father was soon hunted like the wild wolf he is... right after the law used him to hunt a bear, a coyote, and finally an infamous panther.

For a while Jack lived with his two wolf parents and a sloth he viewed as an uncle.

Yet at least a year ago, all of that came crashing down.

Now all he's called family are dead.

Leaving him to go back to his roots, to be wild like the wolf he is.

Jack has always been depressed since losing his pack.

The life he now walks is quite lonely.

That is until he came across your ranch.

Your interactions were often from afar.

You two smelled one another, recognizing the scent as another hybrid.

You were always on edge when you smelled the wolf.

Meanwhile, when Jack caught your sweet scent...

He couldn't help but be curious about you, the rancher dog he often watches as he stalks about your home.

I imagine the obsession is gradual, just two hybrids watching each other from a distance.

Maybe Jack originally intended on stealing a chicken or sheep for food...

Only to find he's becoming enamored with the hybrid that lives at the farm.

Jack might test how close he can get, carefully stepping closer to see when you'll bark at him.

He may even get as close as the fence to try and start a conversation between you two.

He'll lean on the wood, tail swaying as he tries to make you speak with him.

For a long time you ignore him or give him threats.

Yet since he comes around so often, you eventually give him brief answers to entertain him.

Admittedly, as long as he stays where he is, his company is nice.

Your chats are often behind a fence, Jack promising to stay where he is just to speak with you.

You told one another your names... and Jack can't stop saying your name to himself when he's alone.

Occasionally, after feeling bad for the lone wolf, you may even sneak meals out to him.

Unfortunately, it's like feeding a wild animal... he only comes back for more.

Once you've entertained him the first time, the wolf stays.

He talks about how he used to help run a ranch... How you and him could probably do some farming yourself someday...

Without humans.

Jack finds you being domesticated amusing.

You're such an adorable puppy compared to him, a wild wolf.

Most of the time you two speak in your partial human forms.

But imagine you both in full animal forms?

You're laying on the grass in your dog form, resting...

Only for a familiar howl to occur, and a brown wolf stares at you with eager eyes.

This pairing actually makes a lot of sense, too.

Since wolves and dogs are compatible for breeding... if you know what I mean.

Jack may actually bring this up, usually leading to you ignoring it.

You aren't interested in a wolf hybrid like THAT.

But Jack is.

He finds the idea of making a domestic dog hybrid his mate pleasing.

He's been lonely for a long time on the run...

He needs a pack of his own.

Won't you help him find a new family?

You often refuse, which often makes Jack more eager.

He often prowls around your home, watches through windows...

He's always hated the fact you let humans take care of you instead of other hybrids.

You should've known Jack would be trouble.

Like a loyal dog, you left home to get supplies for your folks at home.

Which can end in two ways, depending on the honor of Jack.

If he's low honor, fitting of a wolf, you'd come home to a bloodbath.

Some of your animals are mauled, claw marks in their skin with bite marks bleeding.

You quickly enter your home, overwhelmed with the smell of blood.

Only to see your humans dead, their blood leaking into the wood.

You stare, nose assaulted with the smell of crimson as your ears and tail are down.

Then you pick up the smell of a wolf... yet not quite a wolf...

"Sorry, darling... All of this was getting in our way. Now with all this gone... I can court you properly yeah?"

Jack's behind you, blood on his claws, mouth, and clothes...

He looks happy with what he's done.

His tail is even wagging... while you stare at him in fear.

Even if you ran out as your dog form, how long can you go before the wolf catches you?

When Jack asks you to come with him... to run before you're framed...

You reluctantly listen.

High honor Jack instead leaves your family and farm alone.

He simply cuts you off between town and your home, sabotaging you on your horse if you're on one...

Or tackling your dog form as his wolf one.

This time he's not harming your family... yet he threatens you to come with him.

Either option ends in Jack kidnapping you.

One just so happens to end in more bloodshed.

Jack doesn't really have a den or anything.

He essentially makes you an outlaw like him, making camps in the wilderness and keeping you beside him.

While you don't see him as one... Jack always calls you his mate.

When you two camp, he only makes one tent.

Sometimes you two sleep beside one another as your more human forms, Jack's tag constantly wagging as he nuzzles and scents you.

Or if you're both in animal form, his larger wolf body curls around you, licking your fur softly as he looks after you.

Jack teaches you how to be a wild hybrid.

Poor you is so confused... but Jack's patient and often hunts for you.

In fact, he likes you reliant.

You should rely on your mate....

Jack originally feels guilt for forcing you beside him... yet he still feels like this was the right decision.

Now Jack doesn't feel alone... Just you two may not be a pack, but you're close.

He loves your scent and soft fur... he loves you.

He'll make sure you two are never alone when you have each other...

Meanwhile, as a domestic hybrid, you just miss your old home....

[youredreamingofroo]

εїз Stardew Valley Profile εїз ʚ- Roo Norman -ɞ

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Made by : @bigeyedkitteh ( Profile maker ) Portraits from : Slightly Edited Portraits by Poltergeister Duck and Chicken icons from : Elle's Cuter Coop Animals by Elle/Uploaded by junimods

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(Just a fair warning, this got a LOTTTT longer than I expected it to 😭)

Because I got a little too invested in this, I'm gonna lengthily elaborate on most parts of the profile, enjoy :)

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Pequeño and Gräddkanna/Grädde

Pequeño is a 3 year old Mallard Duck. As a duckling, Pequeño lived with Marnie on her Ranch for a couple of weeks, Marnie was convinced he wouldn't live to see the next week, at this point, as he was scrawny and very obviously a runt compared to the rest of brood. In this same week, Roo was looking for another feathery friend to occupy his space with him and ended up visiting Marnie, and upon seeing the scrawny duckling, he asked Marnie if he could take him in, she warned him, but he was persistent- He left that Ranch with a duckling who could barely hold his own. It's taken three years of strenuous work to keep Pequeño well, but Roo didn't give up and now, at three years old, Pequeño is alive and, although he struggles from time to time, he is well and very happy. Roo calls him Pequeño because it means little, and Pequeño is a very little duck- Pequeño is also one of the only words Roo knows in Spanish. (Pequeño is also a reference to a tame I had in ARK LMAO)

Gräddkanna, or Grädde, is a 6 year old Cream colored Silkie Chicken. Roo has had Grädde for 4 years, like Pequeño, She was taken in from Marnie, although Grädde was in much better condition than Pequeño upon being adopted. Roo never considered himself to be a bird lover, and especially never considered himself to be a bird owner, but it was like love at first sight when he saw Grädde meandering Marnie's Ranch- So Roo began indirectly asking Marnie if Grädde (or Mila, as Marnie had originally named her) was available to buy, she said that Mila/Grädde was there to stay on her Ranch, but it was the saddened look in his eyes when he was exiting that had Marnie begin to reconsider her choice, and Roo left her place empty-handed. A week later, Marnie showed up at Roo's door, early in the morning with a Silkie chicken being cuddled in her arms, she knocked and was met with a rather grumpy Roo, however he lightened up when he saw Mila in Marnie's arms, She offered him Mila for a low price (15 dollars), while she was willing to give up Mila, she wasn't going to give up Mila for nothing- He happily paid Marnie and took Mila, now Grädde, in his arms. Grädde co-parented with Roo to raise Pequeño, Grädde was very happy and eager to take Pequeño under her wing (pun intended), and so she did. Grädde and Pequeño are now best friends and sometimes you'll see Pequeño hitching a ride on Grädde's back, this is more commonly seen when Roo is wandering the town and he isn't actively carrying Pequeño, he [Pequeño] does this mainly because he is too weak to walk for long and has to rest, and Grädde is just strong enough to carry around Pequeño for a moderate amount of time. Gräddkanna means Creamer and Grädde means Cream in Swedish, Roo named/nicknamed her that because of her Cream feathers and because the texture of her feathers reminds Roo of Cream.

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Roo Facts 1-5

- ♪ "Tends to wander town with Grädde and Pequeño" Roo loves his birds, and equally loves wandering as much as he does his birds, so during the day (during any season except Summer), you'll often find Roo wandering about in town or in the forest with Grädde and Pequeño, there's a couple different wandering variations, the most common being him carrying Pequeño with Grädde following suit, an uncommon variant will be of, as mentioned earlier, Pequeño on Grädde's back, and a rarer variant that will only occur later on during your playthrough (around year 2, and progressively becomes more common beyond year 2), is of Roo with only Grädde or Pequeño, this is due to Pequeño's condition and age and Grädde's age, Roo will only carry one of his two birds, as the birds age, Grädde becomes weaker and unable to walk as much and unable to carry Pequeño as long as she used to. As for Pequeño, he is unable to stay out for long at this point, meaning Roo has to leave him at home so he can stay warm, leaving Roo to carry Grädde around town (and vice versa, depending on how Grädde is doing). Another rare variant that only occurs VERY late in the playthrough (around year 4-5+, becomes more common in later years beyond year 6) is of Roo by himself- as mentioned, his birds are old at this point, and around year 4-6, they are too old to be able to even travel with Roo, this variant contains the least amount of dialogue lines from Roo and is the variant where most times, you will not be able to talk to him, due to him being sad about not having his birds (I did not want to include pet death in his story, so Roo's birds do live, however any year after year 6-8 will only include his last wandering variant)

- ♪ "He hates Summer, so most of his summer schedule is spent in his home" It's as the fact states, Roo hates the Summer and thus doesn't leave his home much for most of the day. You're more likely to see him wander around around sunset, as it's cooler and isn't nighttime where his birds won't get lost. Due to this, it is significantly harder to befriend and/or romance Roo during this season- it's still possible, just a bit frustrating/difficult to do so. To get a brief/broader look at his schedule during the summer, here's a time chart of his weekly summer schedule:

Mon-Thurs, Sat : [ 9:00 AM: Waking up [ 10:00 AM: Tending to his birds [ 12:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Hanging out around his home with his birds, awaiting sunset [ 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM: Nap [ 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM: Town wandering with his birds (or without, depending on the year)

Fri : [ 10:00 AM: Waking up [ 11:00 AM: Tending to his birds [ 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Cleaning house [ 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM: Nap [ 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM: Town wandering with his birds (or without, depending on the year)

Sun : [ 11:00 AM: Waking up [ 12:00 PM: Tending to his birds [ 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM: More house cleaning [ 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM: Hanging out around his home with his birds, awaiting sunset [ 5:00 - 5:30 PM: Nap [ 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM: Town wandering with his birds (or without, depending on the year)

- ♪ "Used to date Leo until he [Leo] moved to Zuzu City" Leo and Roo briefly dated/were friends with benefits (it was complicated), Leo was new to Pelican Town, and it didn't take long for him and Roo to hit it off, however, Leo did not fancy the small farm/town life, and left a couple of months later for Zuzu city, officially cutting it off with Roo. This took place before Roo got his birds and when he was also new to Pelican Town (albeit, not as new as Leo)

- ♪ "He resides in Cindersap Forest" Roo technically lives in Cindersap Forest, he lives in the forest gap between Cindersap Forest/Marnie's Ranch and 1 Willow Lane (Sam's house), i'm sure ya'll know what I mean, but here's where he is on the map (for all my visualizer homies out there):

Roo's home is unavailable during the very beginning of a playthrough, and you cannot meet him properly until the Flower Dance. It IS possible to meet him during the Egg Festival, however he is off to the side somewhere beyond the bar, over by Dusty- At this point, Roo won't really talk to you, and will only say "Hello." before going back to watching the festival from afar, this will not count as meeting him. Going back to the Flower Dance, he is found standing awkwardly off to the side by Elliott and Leah, you can talk to him, and he'll, like before, say "Hello." and this will count as meeting him, and you will see him around town from here on out. After meeting Roo, two new areas will be introduced, when going between Cindersap and Pelican town, you will instead go to a small threeway intersection instead of going directly to and fro- going upwards will take you to another small area which is where Roo's home is. I don't have an exact image of what his home looks like right now, but just know it does have a little fenced off area for his birds, and the inside of his home is pretty duck/chicken-proofed. Roo's home cannot be entered until you get 2 hearts with him, and after reaching 2 hearts and entering his home, you will have to further your relationship with him (4 hearts) to be able to enter his bedroom.

- ♪ "Roo rarely visits Calico Desert, but when he does, him and Sandy chat up a storm" Perhaps one of the biggest surprise facts LMAO Him and Sandy are really good friends, unfortunately he doesn't visit a lot cause he hates the warmth of the Desert, but he does occasionally visit her, and their vibes actually compliment each other well and they like to chat and even sometimes gossip between each other (although Roo doesn't like to gossip a lot so it's moreso them just chatting).

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Favorite Thing

I just wanted to briefly elaborate on this one, but it's kind of two things (ofc I couldn't put two), Leo is his favorite thing/person, but since Leo has left and since Roo has... mostly... moved on, Roo's new favorite "thing" is Elliott, he's absolutely enamored with him. (It seems Roo's growing type is long hair...)

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Favorite Villagers

His absolute favorite villager is Elliott, he could marry Elliott if he could, and while Elliott does like him back, Elliott has established that he doesn't want to take their relationship further. Following Elliott (in order of most liked to least), is Sebastian, they both share a very familiar emo/grunge-y vibe... Next is Sandy, who I've talked about- Then it's Alex, who's kind of a guilty-like/crush, Roo doesn't really like some of Alex's ideals/outlooks, but he can't help but catch himself admiring Alex's face when he's near- and lastly is Harvey, Roo thinks Harvey is cute and they're good friends, but Roo is a little weirded out by the fact that Harvey's name is... well, Harvey- If you know Roo lore, you'll know that Roo's birthname is Harvey and thus why Roo getting with Harvey would be a little strange. Saying Roo doesn't like any of the aforementioned villagers isn't right, he loves all his friends (and Elliott a little moreso), however there are a couple of villagers he doesn't like... 👀

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Other Random Facts

★ Roo and Elliott, ironically enough, have the same birthday hehe

★ While Roo is romancable, his sexuality is still in place, and is the only villager/character who is only romancable to male villagers/characters/farmers. If a female character tries to romance Roo (Asking him to the flower dance, Bouquet... etc), He will reject them and their advances, you'll lose a heart with him initially and if you try again a second time, you'll lose 2 hearts and if you REALLY just cannot give it up and try again, you'll lose all your hearts with him and all his dialogue with the farmer will change (basically being distant), you can regain hearts with him, but it takes twice as long and if you do end up trying again for a FOURTH TIME, he'll reject you and will become incredibly distant to the farmer, and you will not be able to regain hearts with him.

★ Most of Roo's disliked items are items that can only be acquired during the Summer (Spice berry, Hops, etc), which goes hand in hand with his general dislike for Summer altogether- While most of his liked items are catered towards Fall items (Fairy Rose, Wild Plum, Plum Jam, etc). Even though his likes/dislikes are catered toward preferred seasons, he also has separate reasons for liking/not liking those things (not liking Hops because he doesn't like beer / liking Fairy rose because of the color)

[paxtonrp]

"I'M NEVER WORKING IN THIS PLACE AGAIN."

The news breaks first thing in the morning — OBSIDIAN HOLDINGS PURCHASES OCEANVIEW APARTMENTS. Alongside the news, architectural renderings and town planning documents flash on the screen. There are plans to reduce the residency of six apartment buildings on a block of Seton Village. Obsidian-contracted construction companies intend to knock down the formerly historic hotel to build a block of high-end luxury apartments. The plans also include new retail spaces on the first floor, which will serve the public.

Although many regard Oceanview Apartments as a breeding ground for various acts of depravity, from drugs to gambling to prostitution, Oceanview is one of the only places in Paxton that offers furnished living spaces for those with criminal records. For people trying to start their lives over, Oceanview functions as a safe space. This is especially true for the various ranchers and their families who lost their land in the fires that ravaged Paxton months ago.

Obsidian Holdings expects outrage regarding the removal of a vital community resource. Among the outraged, is the Paxton Historic Society whom filed orders against the demolition permits. The documents cite Paxton's historical code as the primary reason for an immediate cease and desist. After all, the hotel grounds once belonged to a bathhouse that housed various outlaws from the days of Wyatt Earp. This history could prove difficult for Obsidian Holdings to overcome as they submit their final plans for city council approval.

However, Obsidian Holdings shows no signs of stopping. With the original construction site being reduced to ash months ago, they have no choice but to renovate what currently exists. Regardless of whether or not the council approves their building plans, residents of Oceanview report their monthly rent skyrocketing to unaffordable rates. For the displaced families worries continue to rise. Phonecalls to Oceanview's property manager play an automated hold message that quotes new move-in dates two years from now. Another shocking line on the automated message quotes a hair-raising price of $2,600 a month for a five-hundred-square-foot studio apartment.

As these facts reach the community, three classes of opinions arise: those who believe Obsidian's move is predatory, those who want to see Oceanview Apartments cleaned up, and those who are ambivalent because they live outside the proposed construction zone...

THEN I SAW THE ZEROS ON THE PAYSTUBS.

OOC INFORMATION.

This plot drop is OPTIONAL. However, we encourage writers to mention this plot drop and its collateral impact on their characters' lives.

COWBOY MAFIA: The news took them by surprise. While Obsidian is gobbling up properties left and right this purchase raised some neck hairs. Many of their friends and family in the ranch community suffered because of the fires last year, so this feels like salt in an open wound.

OBSIDIAN HOLDINGS: This plan existed in negotiations for years. With Obsidian's current CEO, Hector Santiago, standing at the helm it’s begun to see its fruition. The purchase marks one of Hector's largest business deals since his promotion last year. It's not their fault the original construction site went up in flames.

NEW SKELETONS will tie into this plot drop.

[lolathelotus]

An Alternate Universe Vignette: Prologue

Painfully long exposition under the cut...

Background:

After their mother moved in her boyfriend, Don Lothario, Dina and Nina felt like visitors in their own home in Oasis Springs.

The way Don looked at them...

They tried talking to their mother, Nighat, about Don's constant staring, but she assured the girls they were misunderstanding the situation. After a few more conversations that all went exactly like this, the girls gave up on trying to talk to their mother.

Dina and Nina co-existed with their mom and Don, but avoided interacting with them whenever possible.

Six months after Don moved in, the Calientes received some strange news.

A letter came in the mail addressed to Nighat that read as follows:

Dear Ms. Caliente,

I hope this correspondence finds you well.

I represent a small property management company located in Chestnut Ridge.

I am writing to inform you that it has come to our attention that a piece of land located in the town legally belongs to a Mr. Tariq Al Mahmoud, whom I believe to be your father.

As records indicate that Mr. Al Mahoud has long passed, this property belongs to you, as his next-of-kin.

For the past few decades, this property was believed to be abandoned, a town official having recorded the wrong name under the ownership information. Recently, the town's officials have been sorting old paperwork, and came across the original deed for the property, which has the name of Tariq Al Mahmoud as sole owner.

Please contact my law firm at the number listed below at your earliest convenience so that you can complete the paperwork needed to take ownership of the property, known locally as Palomino Junction.

Best Regards,

Swann Weston, Esq., Weston & Floof Law Firm, Chestnut Ridge

Dina and Nina were shocked to find that their mother had no intention of taking ownership of the property, and intended to let the Chestnut Ridge Bank take it over. After speaking with Swann Weston, Nighat said the property sounded like more trouble than it would ever be worth, and that she would probably end up losing money on it in the long run.

The girls couldn't believe how foolish their mother was being. Dina and Nina could see that their mother was so obsessed with Don that she had little interest in anything else. Her relationship with Don really was the only thing she cared about anymore.

During a heated conversation in which Dina and Nina confronted their mother about putting her relationship before everything else, Nighat looked the girls dead in the eyes and asked, "Since you two are apparent experts in renovating old, dilapidated properties, why don't you do it? You two want to move to Chestnut Ridge? I'll sell you the property for 10 Simoleons."

Out of sheer spite and anger, Dina and Nina said yes.

And with that, they packed up their belongings, and left Oasis Springs for Chestnut Ridge with a few suitcases, the deed to Palomino Junction, and $1,037 Simoleons to their name.

Let's see how they do.

Next

The Caliente Ranch Master Post

[eatingbugsanddirt]

SPLAT OCS no way!!! I originally intended to fully color this sheet and all that, but after fighting tooth and nail with my art program to keep this file from corrupting, I’m just gonna save colors and whatnot ‘till the next time I draw them. One of em is filled with sodium and the other is a cowboy. Both of them reside in an apartment in Splatsville together, alongside a couple other roommates. They are in fish love!!!

Grit (Athirst Apotheosis, Hungering Teeth of the Great Steel Jaw) // She/her // Adult // Salmonling - Signature color is orange; she has silver and pink scales? Skin? Whatever it is it’s always at least a little grimy - Grew up near cephalopod society and in Splatlands sewers, hence mimicking their humanoid forms. Followed Curly back to Splatsville to become FRESH - Born in the maws ancestry to Gullet. Gullet’s a big ol dune-worm style king that swims beneath the map and swallows up large chunks of it as her main gimmick. Grit’s swim form shows off this heritage a lot better. Chomp - The salmonids’ race-wide death-food cult is more distant from her, but not entirely separated. She continues to cherish food and doesn’t mind participating in turf wars and such despite being shit and dying* constantly - Smells bad, dresses bad, literally eats garbage. Rabid - Fishnets lol. Always barefoot - Was nicknamed Grit by Curly after she held their hand and they went “ew this is gross why are you sticky” - HUGE casual. Never ever ever plays ranked, wouldn’t touch Grizzco with a ten foot pole. She plays turf whenever she feels like it, tableturf when she doesn’t, and otherwise just dicks around with the shell out machine and steals from the concessions. She has several pokemon-style binders for her tt card collection Curly J. Tucker // They/them // Adult // Octoling - Signature color is purple; they’re very dark skinned and plastered with the sort of web patterning you can find on coconut octopi - Can glow like coconut octopi!!! - Initially COULD NOT tolerate Grit. There’s a fish in their home taking all their money and food help. Fell in love slow-burn style, but Grit is a dumbass and eventually they just had to express their feelings explicitly - Continues to work at Grizzco after Grit. No Grit does not give a single shit - Coveredddd in scars from Grizzco, but it’s paid off; they have a max pay grade, they’re terrific at their job, and they have an apartment chock full of documents, trophies, and gear for work - Suuuper tired all the time thanks to both Grizzco and Alterna (Curly is my personal neo agent 3). Try to relax using ranked, but ends up getting even more exhausted and frustrated anyway. They recharge via Grit snuggles - Splatfest extraordinaire. Absolutely try hard bonkers for any big competition like this. Will come home miserable of their team doesn’t win - Always wears comfy clothes. Has the Texas curse of temperature confusion, hence the sweater and shorts - Bite mark on their hand is from Grit - The hat does NOT COME OFF. They originate from a distant Splatlands town notable for their skill ranching Zapfish and other silly goofy sea livestock, and they make it known 100% of the time Other notes * - In my personal canon getting splatted, falling in water, getting fucked up in ANY way in Splatoon is dying in a different sort of way. Getting your molecules dicked up or something, but not a permanent death, hence being able to revive. Maybe think the way immortal jellyfish are able to revert to earlier cell stages to escape death? - They both live in a big ol flat with another octoling gal owned by my friend @squidgobbler34 and a huge ribbon eel guy named Ruben. She is addicted to squid alt rock and he is long n fat and takes up so much space. He lines every wall of the apartment but its ok bc he’s good for snuggles

[wutheringmights]

17 for the writing questions!

I know I just answered this question, but I'll do it again. And I'll actually try to follow the prompt this time.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

Under Sheikah law, Impa has adopted Warriors, which was a part of how she was able to get him a house and make him take medical leave in Kakariko. On the Miyashita shrine, there is a family tree that lists Warriors as her adoptive child. He has no idea about this.

Ganondorf's daughters (Elham, Amal, and Juri) view Lincoln as an uncle figure more than a step-dad

Spirit's best friend is Linebeck III, and whenever he visits him, he will stop by Captain Linebeck's grave. He can sense bits of Linebeck's lingering spirit and can pick up on a few of his sensations, including what sounds like a teenager shouting "Aye Aye, captain!" Spirit writes this off as being the voice of one of Linebeck's kids, unaware it's actually Wind's imprint on Linebeck's spirit

Also very important is that Linebeck III knows nothing of Spirit's adventures or even his extra senses. He's very confused as to how this teenager became so close to the actual princess, and how he manages to hold down a position in the Castle Guard. Spirit also never told him where he went to when he was off in Warriors's Hyrule, so as far as Linebeck III is concerned, Spirit just disappeared one day and came back like two years later with a nasty scar and anger issues. And Linebeck III never learns about what happened, no matter how much he suggests that Spirit open up to him about it

But one of the main draws of having Linebeck III as a friend is that he knows shit about Spirit's hero and spirit business, so Spirit would rather die than tell Linebeck III anything about destinies or grand fates or whatever

You know how I said Wind disappeared after his argument with Tetra re: the founding of New Hyrule? He originally intended on staying behind only for a year or two as he went on some solo adventures, but after a terrible storm, he unfortunately drowned at sea

Also, in New Hyrule, a town has sprouted up around Linebeck III's trading post. It's where Spirit opened his own garage. He likes to take breaks by walking along the nearby beach.

Malon originally thought that Time spent 5 years in the future to fight Warriors's war. The actual number of years as we all know is actually much shorter. But when Mask/Time returned to his own era, it was in the middle of Hyrule, which Mask swore he would never live in again. So he just immediately left, never bothering to stop by Lon Lon Ranch on his way out

[lokilickedme]

Just realized I have no concept of time anymore.  Like, at all.  Ever since we arrived we’ve been in a weirdly surreal maze of househunting, ranch tending, phone calls with realtors/bankers/loan agents/insurance agents/construction overseers, and just holing up watching the snow through the window in general, and I have no clue what day it is or even what part of the month we’re in.  I didn’t know today was Monday and I certainly didn’t know yesterday was Sunday.  The boys aren’t registered for their semester yet because we’re technically homeless and the program requires proof of residency in the state of enrollment, which we don’t have yet even though we’ve been here a couple of weeks (has it been longer than that?  Shorter?  Who knows) so in between tending to the animals and taking care of the main ranchhouse and keeping the kids alive and trying to set up house in a place of our own that isn’t finished being built yet, I’m in a perpetual state of Saturday.  Everything feels like a Saturday.  Nothing is real and it’s all happening on a Saturday.  Even husband’s job, which went from a 5-day week back home to a 3-day week here with 12-hour onsites and a stray floating 4-hour fill-in wherever he feels like putting it is just...messing my head up.  I have no internal clock anymore except for the one that screams IS IT SATURDAY?? constantly.

But -

The house is close to completed, though it seems like the crew has slowed down ever since the sale closed.  Note to self: go to construction site and show disapproval.  Also I talked the builder into throwing in some staging furniture because I sold everything we had and he just happened to have some in storage that he’d intended to put in the house anyway for prettying-up purposes on the sale listing.  Bonus.

I don’t know if I mentioned it in here or just told it to somebody in person (is it Saturday?  It feels like Saturday) but the first house we contracted to buy ended up being yanked out from under us at the last minute due to...issues.  A crumbling foundation, an illegal non-permit-acquired addition onto the structure, and nearly half a million in liens against the property due to the deceased previous owner’s bad habits (I’m guessing gambling but who the hell knows, dude died of covid before they could break his kneecaps) - you know, the usual shit that happens when you’re about to drop your life savings and your kids’ college money on a place to live.

That ended up leading us to something better, though.  Smaller town on the outskirts of our original destination, beautiful idyllic location, close to the ranch we’re currently tending, close to the boys’ grandmother, in an incredible tourist spot so all you travel-y folks have plenty of places to stay when you come to visit :)  This second house is new construction, which wasn’t anything we remotely required in our search, but happy accidents and all and it’s always nice being the first person to pee in a bathroom you’re going to be spending the next few years using.

And my god, the eclectic mix of hippies and cowboys here is astounding.  Every time I go in the grocery store I cross paths with at least a half dozen stoners so blissed out I worry about them finding their way back home.  It’s a legal state with dispensaries everywhere and I’ve never seen a group of residents jump so collectively onto a bandwagon like this.  It’s amusing until you get stuck in line behind a guy who’s been smoking all afternoon who’s trying to get the clerk to agree with him that the produce section definitely needs to stock car parts because somebody moved the NAPA store while he was getting a pack of Ho Ho’s and his jeep is sitting at the co-op with a flat tire.

This place is going to grow on me, but it’s definitely not the same place I lived in years ago.  When I lived here before I worked in an apple packing shed at an orchard, and that’s still there, but the other place I worked at that made coil resistors for spacecraft (I worked indirectly for NASA, which was cool) has packed up and moved operations to Mexico.  Husband worked at the newspaper in the print room when we first got married, and now that’s all gone online.  He works in the bioceramics division at a huge corp now, lathing segments for cybernetic prosthetics (that’s fancyspeak for robotic arms and legs).  The company also makes beer :)

But I digress, I guess.  It’s a beautiful place but the pay is shite just about everywhere, mainly because most of the people here are either wealthy travelers hitting the hot spots between Moab and Aspen or they’re wealthy Californians moving in with a few mil in their pockets from the sale of their houses in LA.  The locals are the only ones that need work, and the work doesn’t feel the need to pay a good wage even though a quarter mil will only buy a person a sub-standard fixer-upper on a 2-inch bit of land.  There are a grand total of 14 houses for sale in the valley with price tags under $300,000 and they’re snatched up before you can even click on the listing.  We got lucky, I was holding my phone in my hand when an under-construction house in our price range popped up - it had gone on the market literally one hour previous, the app had just that moment cycled it into the listings, and husband and I jumped in the car and drove out to look at it without even grabbing our coats.  We were sitting in front of the partially completed house when we called Husband’s realtor friend and told her to submit an offer on it and to make it fast.

The next day we were under contract :)

That was on a Saturday.

We’d spent two weeks trudging from listing to listing, trying to find something.  At the last two houses we’d looked at I had sat down on the steps and cried.  Ever since the first house had fallen through nothing had worked out for us, everything was too expensive, too wrecked, too expensive, too small, too expensive - and now, finally, the perfect place.

We’re real damn close to being home, finally.  We have approximately a month to go before our closing date.  Until then I’m content to drift in my eternal Saturday, waiting for the calendar to finally click over onto an actual weekday.  It’ll stop being Saturday and I’ll get my days sorted.  Something of a schedule will fall into place, maybe even a routine of sorts, though I’ve never been big on structuring my days.  Til then I’m sitting up here in this gigantic ranch house trying to figure out if that noise downstairs at 2 am means the place is haunted or is just JD the ranch guy messing around with the feed storage in the basement, playing Fallout 3 with Big, chasing Little up and down the stairs to tire his hyper ass out, tromping around in the snow doing various ranch-type chores in my new weather-appropriate boots, battling the blissbots (stoned mountain hippies) in the grocery store for the very meagerly-stocked frozen waffles and peanut butter, trolling the thrift shops for used furniture that I can’t buy yet, and drinking copious amounts of good local coffee in between the neverending phonecalls required to get us settled.

Until then, it’s always Saturday.

[micahdcwson]

Character Name: Micah Dawson Character Age: 38 years, January 30th, 1984 Gender & Pronouns: cis-male, he/him Time living in Tonopah Falls: his whole life Occupation: Police Sergeant  Gang Affiliation?: Sons of Silence Where do they live: Glenn Estates Face Claim: Chris Evans

Background: 

Tw: fertility struggles, miscarriage, parental death, drunk driving, alcohol & substance abuse 

The Dawson’s have lived in Tonopah for generations. They weren’t necessarily founding members, but they’ve lived here for years have been apart of the framework that makes up the town 

Henry and Juliette struggled with fertility issues for most of their marriage, so when Micah was born, it was a huge blessing for them 

They wanted to have more children, giving Micah younger siblings, but after multiple miscarriages, their doctors finally convinced the Dawson’s that they should give up for Juliette’s health

Needless to say, the Dawson’s became quite a tight knit unit. Growing up, his parents were Micah’s biggest supporters and favorite role models 

Tragedy struck just after Micah graduated from high school. His parents were both killed instantly, when they were run off the road by a drunk driver 

Micah went into a bit (ok a whole freaking lot) of a tail spin. Whereas he had originally intended to go on to play college and even professional football, he dropped every plan he and his parents made and decided to become a cop with the sole intention of getting to enact his version of justice on assholes like the drunk driver who had killed his parents but had walked away without a scratch 

He went through the police academy and did pretty well, joining the Tonopah PD immediately after and quickly rising through the ranks due in some part to his determined attitude, but also because of his connection to the Chief of Police, Harold Donovan

Growing up, Micah and Cassie Donovan were best friends. They met in kindergarten when Cassie came up and said hi to him at the playground and were joined at the hip ever since. In middle school, their friendship turned into crushes, and they dated off and on throughout high school. They were each other’s firsts, or so he thought, so when Cassie up and left for New York the day after they slept together the first time, to say Micah was shocked, would be an understatement 

On top of this connection, Micah was pretty good friends with Nate Donovan. The two went through the police academy together and when Nate quit the force, his father, Harold, placed his interest & investment instead in Micah 

When Nate started getting involved with the Sons of Silence, Micah couldn’t help but feel envious of the family type relationships the club fostered. Eventually, he started getting involved until pretty soon he found himself in the pocket of the club, covering up incidents for them, hiding evidence, etc. 

In the years that followed, Micah spent much of his time insisting he was perfectly fine, meanwhile he drowned his loneliness & the huge hole his parents’ death had left in his life, with alcohol and substances

He has a bit of a drinking problem & a bit of a hoe problem in that, he’s a hoe

Since Cassie, Micah has only had one serious relationship, but when Reese ‘died,’ the loss of Cassie, then his parents, and then Reese compounded and created a refusal to put himself at risk again. He’s a serial dater and one-night stander, but as soon as anything remotely close to feelings get involved, he does something asshole-ish. It’s become quite the defense mechanism 

Headcannons: 

He inherited his parents’ ranch and while he doesn’t keep any animals, he loved having all the space

His one normal hobby out of work and his connection to the club, is beekeeping. He’s spent a lot of time and done a lot of research on beekeeping and now sells his own honey at the local farmer’s market 

He holds the record for winning the man vs. food challenge at License to Grill the most times

[route22ny]

BY MICHAEL J. MOONEY | PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVE SHAFER

Staring at the front of the Royal Theater, I feel as though I’m looking backward through time. Taking in the cerulean marquee, the painted red fringe around the box office, the vertical ROYAL sign jutting into the afternoon sky—it’s easy to imagine why the denizens of Archer County flocked here for decades. The theater was a dark, cool respite from the blazing sun, a still escape from the whipping winds of the North Central Plains, a glimpse of entertainment from the outside world.

The theater—or what’s left of it anyway—peers out from the northeast corner of the town square. Without the storied theater, this could be any small town in Texas. Weathered barns and rusted oil pumps dot the landscape. Anchoring the town is the imposing three-story Romanesque Revival county courthouse, with stone archways and provincial peaks. There’s also a small café (Murn’s), a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it police station, a few antiques stores, and a single four-way stoplight swaying in the breeze like an apparition.

The Royal Theater as it is now and as it was then.

This isn’t just any small town in Texas, though. Archer City is the Texas small town. It’s the setting of both the novel and film versions of The Last Picture Show, a coming-of-age story rendered in black and white that earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Directing, and Best Picture. In Larry McMurtry’s book, published in 1966, the town is called Thalia. In the movie, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released in 1971, it’s called Anarene—a name taken from an abandoned town 8 miles away. But rest assured, both places are Archer City: the looming courthouse, the blinking stoplight, and the Royal Theater, where so many of the most dramatic moments of The Last Picture Show take place.

The novel, which McMurtry called a “spiteful” book intended to “lance some of the poisons of small-town life,” received critical acclaim when it was published. But it was Bogdanovich’s film that truly introduced the entire world, in utterly unromanticized fashion, to the intense, sweeping sagas of everyday life in Archer City. The Last Picture Show turned this particular and peculiar town into art.

Both the novel and movie contain language that was considered lewd at the time. McMurtry’s own mother, Hazel, once said that after reading the first 100 pages she hid the book in the closet and called her son that night. “Larry, honey,” she said to him, he revealed in his 2002 travel memoir Paradise, “is this what we’re sending you to Rice for? Those awful words!”

The film, with its nudity and frank depiction of teenage sexuality—including Cybill Shepherd’s first and only topless scene—absolutely scandalized upright, moral Americans all over the country. Nowhere more so than in Archer City, where it was regarded at the time as a “dirty” movie.

Now, 50 years after the film’s release, the town’s past dalliances with Hollywood are somehow simultaneously scuttled and omnipresent. There’s no billboard at the city limit announcing the place’s cultural significance, no notation on the water tower. But there are echoes of the art formed here, about this place, along every street, around every corner. Some might even feel the spirit of McMurtry, who passed away in Archer City earlier this year.

Over the last five decades, Peter Bogdanovich, a New Yorker who operated in Los Angeles, has told the story of the movie’s origin many times. He’d seen the novel in a store, liked the title, saw what it was about, and immediately put the book back down. Then actor Sal Mineo, who’d starred alongside James Dean and Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause, gave Bogdanovich a copy of the novel, saying he thought it would make a good film. Bogdanovich still didn’t read it, but gave it to his wife, production designer Polly Platt, and asked her to read it. When she inspired him to finally read it himself, he was intrigued by the challenge of conveying small-town life in Texas and eventually co-wrote the screenplay with McMurtry. Bogdanovich, Platt, and McMurtry took a long road trip scouting locations in Texas, but ultimately the director realized he wanted to shoot the movie in McMurtry’s hometown.

Set in the early 1950s, the story follows three teenagers—the co-captains of the football team and the so-called prettiest girl in school—through their senior year of high school, as they each struggle to make sense of adult concepts like love and sex and the fragility of human life. Sonny Crawford is the sensitive, thoughtful boy from a broken home. Duane Jackson is Sonny’s lovelorn best friend who escapes first into the oil fields and then the Korean War. Jacy Farrow is the coquettish rich girl who yearns wholeheartedly for something beyond the confines of her surroundings. The Last Picture Show also famously includes an ensemble of carefully rendered adults trying to cope with their own expired dreams and broken lives.

McMurtry repeated over the years that the characters he created weren’t based on any real-life individuals, but the people of Archer City always suspected otherwise. A man named Bobby Stubbs, who was photographed with McMurtry in their high school yearbook, believed he was the inspiration for Sonny. Stubbs had a troubled home life and worked nights like Sonny, and he drove the same kind of pickup truck. He was also once hit in the eye by the boyfriend of a girl he liked. “It kinda pretty closely followed me,” Stubbs used to say.

A woman named Ceil Cleveland Footlick was often asked if she was the inspiration for Jacy. She was “very good friends” (her words) with Stubbs and had been voted “Most Beautiful Girl” in her class. For years she brushed off the question, but in 1997 she published a memoir with the title Whatever Happened to Jacy Farrow?

Because of the book’s reputation, getting actors to audition was a challenge. Randy Quaid was cast as Lester, an awkward, sleazy suitor of Jacy’s. He’d only read the parts of the script that involved his character, which mostly centered on Lester taking Jacy to a naked swimming party. “I just thought it was going to be like this B-movie, teenage, soft-porn movie,” Quaid would later say. “Something you’d see at the drive-in.”

None of the young stars had much experience in film. Timothy Bottoms, who’d only been in one movie before, was cast to play Sonny. Jeff Bridges, cast as Duane, had been a professional actor nearly all his life, but at 21 years old, this would be his first major film role. And Bogdanovich cast Shepherd as Jacy after seeing her face on the cover of Glamour magazine.

Most of the adults in the movie were played by established Hollywood actors, including Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, and Eileen Brennan. For the role of Sam the Lion, the wisdom-dispensing owner of the town’s pool hall, Bogdanovich cast Ben Johnson, the champion-rodeo-cowboy-turned-stuntman-turned-Western-movie-icon. At first Johnson turned down the part on account of the foul language, but Bogdanovich called in a favor from his director friend John Ford, who convinced Johnson to do it.

Almost as soon as filming started, real life began imitating the art being created. While making a movie about illicit sex and barely veiled scandal, the set was awash in illicit sex and barely veiled scandal. The actors spent a lot of time drinking and smoking together in their hotel rooms 30 minutes north in Wichita Falls, and that led to drama. Bottoms fell in love with Shepherd. Bogdanovich started an affair with Shepherd, dissolving his own marriage while his wife, Platt, continued to work on the movie. (Most mornings Platt styled Shepherd’s hair.) “It was quite a soap opera,” Burstyn said in the documentary Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas.

This was everything the locals had feared: all the immoral luridness of Hollywood, right here in a part of Texas not so comfortable with unwholesomeness that didn’t stay behind closed doors.

Outside of Archer City, it was a different story. The movie received great reviews from coast to coast. Johnson won the Oscar for Actor in a Supporting Role and Leachman won for Actress in a Supporting Role. The film is still beloved today and maintains a spot in the coveted National Film Registry.

But at the time of its release, most of the locals disapproved. Strongly. The Los Angeles Times ran a story about it with the headline “Movie Riles Town It Depicts.” McMurtry, who was involved in Bogdanovich’s vision, eventually got so annoyed by the vicious gossip in town that he sent a letter to the editor of the Archer City newspaper, challenging anyone in town to a public debate.

His offer went unrequited.

Archer City’s population is 1,848, only a couple hundred larger than it was when McMurtry grew up there in the ’30s and ’40s. The town is the seat of Archer County, created in 1858 by the Texas State Legislature and named after Branch Tanner Archer, former secretary of war of the Republic of Texas. Ranching and oil have long been the predominant industries—by late 1926, there were more than 400 oil wells within 13 miles of Archer City—but many people are increasingly attracted to the town for its proximity to prime hunting.

Many of the locations where The Last Picture Show was filmed are gone now. Where Sam’s dusty pool hall once stood, with its door flapping in the wind, there’s nothing but an empty dirt lot. The Rig-Wam Drive Inn, the burger joint where Jacy dangled french fries over Duane’s head as if he was a trained seal, is just a plot of asphalt and patchy grass. The West-Tex Theater in the neighboring town of Olney, used for the interior movie theater scenes, was torn down in the mid-’80s. Today it’s a small, quiet park with a gazebo.

Some places are still here, but different. The restaurant where Brennan’s character worked turned into Booked Up No. 4, one of four bookstores McMurtry set up around the town square before shuttering all but one in 2012. The high school has some of the same old features, though it’s been updated and decorated with a handful of granite statues marking state titles the school has won through the years.

Much of the town looks and acts remarkably like it did when The Last Picture Show was made. Boys about the age of Duane and Sonny still speed through town in pickup trucks. Men the age of Sam the Lion still stop them to talk about football. The dance hall at the American Legion, where Jacy and Duane twirled around the room and Sonny ran into his estranged father, looks like it could host the same event today. On a recent evening, four or five locals were perched on barstools, sipping cold beers, listening to songs on the jukebox. They got rid of the old Wurlitzer years ago, but the updated digital version there now still plays all the Hank Williams Sr. songs from the movie.

In time, feelings in Archer City softened a bit. Mostly, the people here don’t talk much about the movie, or about McMurtry, the town’s most famous son. You can spend all morning at Murn’s Café and all night at the American Legion, the only bar in town, and never hear The Last Picture Show mentioned once. It’s not the source of tension it once was.

The public change of heart was most apparent in 1989, nearly 20 years after The Last Picture Show was filmed, when Bogdanovich returned to Archer City to shoot the sequel, Texasville, based on a book of the same name by McMurtry. This time the townspeople lined up to participate as extras. People came from miles away to sell concessions or to take photos or just get a glimpse of the nearly $20 million production.

“The bad taste that the movie left for some folks, that’s gone now,” then-high school principal Nat Lunn told the Austin American-Statesman at the time. “Especially with money being short in town, they’re ready for another dose of Hollywood.”

By the late 1980s, the three leads in the first film—Bottoms, Bridges, and Shepherd—had all become stars. While the entire budget for the first movie was around $1.3 million, Shepherd alone was paid $1.5 million to reprise her role. Bridges was reportedly paid $1.75 million. Bottoms, who’d complained publicly about Bogdanovich and said he didn’t like any of his co-stars, would only agree to return if he was given an additional $100,000 to fund the Picture This documentary.

In the two decades since the first movie, Bogdanovich’s career had soared and crashed. He and Shepherd had broken up; he went on to have multiple relationships, and she had two divorces. Bottoms was also divorced and remarried, but on the set he confessed the crush he’d had on Shepherd. Platt returned, too, and brought the 21-year-old daughter she and Bogdanovich shared. It became a grand, twisted Hollywood reunion, right there on the streets of Archer City.

Drawn by the potential spectacle of what was by then some sort of love-octagon, media outlets from across the country sent reporters to town. There were long feature stories in both Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. By all accounts, though, the entire production served as a therapeutic experience, healing the wounds of the past. At one press conference, the often-sullen Bottoms hugged Bogdanovich. Behind-the-scenes footage caught Shepherd hugging Bottoms. Residents of Archer County took photos of themselves on the set.

But when the movie was released, it tanked. It received middling reviews, earned back only a fraction of its budget, and even today it’s not easy to find on any of the major streaming services.

A lot of people associated with The Last Picture Show are dead now. Stubbs, who claimed to be the basis for Sonny, died in 1992. Johnson in 1996. Sam Bottoms, the real-life younger brother of Timothy Bottoms who played the mute boy Billy, died in 2008. Platt, the producer and production designer who somehow never pulled Shepherd’s hair, died in 2011. Then Brennan in 2013.

In January of this year, Footlick, the woman who wrote about being the real Jacy Farrow, died in North Carolina. Leachman died almost two weeks later. And on March 25, McMurtry, the writer who created all this beautiful trouble, died at the age of 84.

A few days after his death, nobody answered the doorbell at his house in Archer City, a majestic, three-story mansion just down the road from the high school. Looking through the front window, everything seemed to me to be just the way he left it, from the table made from a giant dinosaur fossil to the towering shelves of books in every room. McMurtry bought this place, the biggest home in town, after he won the Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove. He’d wake up early in the morning, type for an hour and a half or so at his long oak table, then go to the bookstore to price antiquarian volumes. Most of the locals would leave him alone.

On the house’s front porch, a single rocking chair was situated to look out over the front yard into the surrounding neighborhood. Someone sitting there could see the comings and goings of a lot of people. As the early-evening wind moved through, the chair began to rock ever so gently.

These days, I sense the people of Archer City think differently of The Last Picture Show. It’s a part of the town’s story, just like the cattle industry and state titles. The movie is even mentioned on the town’s website, though it’s certainly not prominent.

There’s also a tiny park just off the square with a fiberglass horse covered in brands from local ranches and a display that chronicles a bit of the town’s history. The welded metal wall has separate panels for the town’s founding, the first successful oil well drilled here, and the giant fire that swept through in 1925. There’s also a panel explaining how the town was the filming location for The Last Picture Show and Texasville. Bogdanovich’s last name is misspelled.

A couple hundred feet away is the Royal Theater. Most of the building is a burned-out hull, popular for weddings, photo shoots, and occasional performances. The front of the building has been restored, though. It looks just like it did in the movie, the image that begins and ends the film. It’s haunting and beautiful, weathered and damaged—but still here, still standing, still looking at that single blinking light swaying in the wind.

***

The Last Picture Show wasn’t the first movie based on a novel by Larry McMurtry, and it certainly wasn’t the last. You might besurprised by just how many films and TV shows have been made from his novels. Here are a few:

Hud, 1963 (based on Horseman, Pass By) The Last Picture Show, 1971 Lovin’ Molly, 1974 (based on Leaving Cheyenne) Terms of Endearment, 1983 Lonesome Dove, 1989 Texasville, 1990 The Evening Star, 1996

https://texashighways.com/culture/how-the-last-picture-show-changed-the-worlds-view-of-small-town-texas/

[combat-wombatus]

Anti-Asian Racism (Pt. 2)

so if you haven’t read my (long) post about historical anti-asian racism, you can find it here. i tried my best to put things in chronological order, so you might want to read that before you read this one!

i got really tired writing that one bc it was super long and i only covered up to like...the 1920s?? and so here’s a second part bc i couldn’t fit it all into one post oopsies

WARNING: this contains some graphic descriptions of violence. i don’t want to accidentally trigger anyone, so please read at your own discretion. however, i do feel that it is important to be educated on the parts of history that schools often overlook, so if you can handle this, please read it.

the watsonville riots—january 1930

as US nationals, filipinos had the legal right to work in the US, and employers exploited these workers relentlessly as they assumed the filipinos were unfamiliar with their rights. they were paid the lowest wages among all ethnic laborers. the immigration acts of 1917 and 1924 allowed filipinos to answer the growing demand for labor in the US, and many young filipino men migrated to the US. due to gender bias in immigration & hiring, filipino men courted women outside of their own ethnic community, contributing to mounting racial tensions. white men decried the takeover of jobs and women by filipinos and resorted to vigilantism to deal with the “third Asiatic invasion”, and filipino laborers in public risked being attacked by white men who felt threatened by them. eventually, on january 19, this culminated in 500 white men gathering outside of a filipino dance club—owned by a filipino man—with clubs and weapons intending to take the white women who lived there out and burn the place down. they were turned away by security guards and the armed owners, but returned later to beat dozens of filipino farmworkers. they dragged filipinos from their homes and beat them, threw them off the pajaro river bridge, attacked them at ranches—and at a labor camp, twenty-two filipinos were dragged out and almost beaten to death. the mob fired shots into filipino homes, killing 22-year-old fermin tobera: no one was ever charged for his murder. in stockton, a filipino club was blown up—the blast was blamed on the filipinos themselves.

many filipinos fled the country. filipino immigration plummeted. anti-filipino violence continued in california in the months after the violence ended.

japanese internment camps—1942–1945

established during ww2 by FDR through executive order 9066. shortly after the bombing of pearl harbor, FDR signed the executive order, supposedly to prevent espionage. military zones were created in california, washington, and oregon—states with a large population of japanese americans—and the executive order commanded the relocation of americans of japanese ancestry. it affected the lives of around 117,000 people—the majority of whom were american citizens. canada soon followed, relocating 21,000 of its japanese residents from its west coast. mexico did the same, and eventually 2,264 more people of japanese descent were removed from peru, brazil, and argentina to the camps in the united states.

even before the camps, discrimination ran rampant. just hours after pearl harbor, the FBI rounded up 1,291 japanese community & religious leaders, arresting them without evidence and freezing their assets. a month later, they were transferred to facilities in montana, new mexico, and north dakota, many of them unable to inform their families. most remained incarcerated for the duration of the war. the FBI searched the private homes of thousands of japanese residents, seizing “contraband” (looting).

1/3 of hawaii’s population was of japanese descent. some politicians called for their mass incarceration. 1,500 people were removed from hawaii and sent to camps on the US mainland. japanese-owned fishing boats were impounded.

lieutenant general john dewitt prepared a report filled with proven lies—such as examples of “sabotage” (cattle knocking down power lines)—and suggested the creation of military zones and japanese internment camps. his original plan included italians and germans (because we were at war with them too!) but the idea of rounding-up americans of EUROPEAN descent was not as popular.

california’s state attorney general and governor declared that all japanese should be removed at congressional hearings in february 1942. general francis biddle pleaded with the president that mass evacuation of citizens was not required, pushing for smaller, more targeted security measures. FDR didn’t listen, and signed the order anyways.

around 15,000 japanese americans willingly moved out of prohibited areas. inland states were not keen for new japanese residents, and they were met with racist resistance. ten state governors voiced opposition, fearing the japanese would “never leave”, and demanded they be incarcerated if the states were forced to accept them. eventually, a civilian organization called the “war relocation authority” was set up to administer the plan, but milton eisenhower (from the department of agriculture) resigned his leadership in protest over what he characterized as incarcerating innocent civilians. 

no one really cared back then, but we appreciate the sentiment. however, this led to a stricter, military-led incentive to incarcerate the japanese civilians, so you didn’t really win, mr. eisenhower.

army-directed evacuations followed, and people had six days notice to dispose of their belongings other than what they could carry. anyone who was at least 1/16th japanese was interned, including 17,000 children under 10, as well as several thousand elderly and handicapped. 

these camps were located in remote areas, the buildings not meant for human habitation—they were reconfigured horse stalls or cow sheds. food shortages and poor sanitation conditions were common. each center was its own town, with schools, post offices, work facilities, and farms—all surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.

in new mexico, internees were delivered by trains and marched two miles, at night, to reach the camp. anyone who tried to escape was promptly shot and killed, no matter their age.

when riots broke out over the insufficient rations and overcrowding, the police tear-gassed crowds and even killed a japanese-american citizen. three people were shot and killed for “going too close to the perimeter”.

in 1942, fred korematsu was arrested for refusing to relocate to an internment camp. his case made it all the way to the supreme court, where he argued that the executive order violated the fifth amendment. the supreme court ruled against him.

the camps were finally closed in 1945, after mitsuye endo fought her way to the supreme court once again. the government initially offered to free her, but endo refused—she wanted her case to address all of the internment camps. she was successful; the court eventually ruled that the the war relocation authority “has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure.”

the my lai massacre—march 16, 1968

during the vietnam war, US army soldiers entered a vietnamese hamlet on a search-and-destroy mission. they didn’t encounter any enemy troops; they did, however, proceed to set huts on fire, gang-rape the women, and murder around 500 unarmed civilians—including approximately 50 children under the age of four. army leadership had conspired to sweep this massacre under the carpet—the my lai massacre triggered a cover-up by the army that served to keep the atrocities committed a secret from the american public for 20 months during an election year.

american soldiers stabbed, clubbed, and carved “C [for Charlie] Company” into the chests of their victims (alive); herded them into ditches and blew them to bits with grenades. they cut off victims’ heads and slashed their throats.

this was more than spontaneous barbarism; for years, the army had dehumanized the vietnamese people as “gooks” and depicted women and children as potentially lethal combatants.

army officers who heard eyewitness reports of a massacre were quick to discount them. they issued a press release that informed news coverage—with lies. they claimed that their troops had killed 128 viet cong forces, even though they had been met with no resistance and suffered only one self-inflicted wound.

after word of the massacre reached the general public, more than a dozen military servicemen were eventually charged with crimes, but lieutenant william calley (the leader of the charlie company who was the main perpetrator in the massacre) was the only one who was ever convicted. pres. richard nixon reduced calley’s sentence to a light punishment—three years of house arrest.

three years of house arrest, and for only one person. for slaughtering 500 unarmed civilians. you do the math.

deportations

in 1975, more than 1.2 million refugees from southeast asia fled war and were resettled in the US—the largest resettlement for a refugee group in US history. in 1996, the illegal immigration reform and immigrant responsibility act (IIRIRA) expanded the definition of what types of crimes could result in detention & deportation—this broader definition could be applied retroactively, resulting in more than 16,000 southeast asian americans receiving orders of removal—78% of which were based on old criminal records.

islamophobia (article 2 preview) (article 3)

after the 9/11 attacks, islamophobia was especially prevalent in the western world, although it was also prevalent in other places without large muslim populations. from a small percentage of violence, an “efficient system of government prosecution and media coverage brings muslim-american terrorism suspects to national attention, creating the impression that muslim-american terrorism is more prevalent than it really is”, even though since 9/11, the muslim-american community helped security and law enforcement officials prevent nearly two of every five al qaeda terrorist plots threatening the united states. globally, many muslims report feeling not respected by those in the west, including over half of those who live in the US. in late 2009, the largest party in the swiss parliament put to referendum a ban on minaret (a tower typically built into or adjacent to mosques) construction, and nearly 60% of swiss voters and 22 out of 26 voting districts voted in favor of the ban—even though most swiss say that religious freedom is important for swiss identity. a network of misinformation experts actively promotes islamophobia in america. muslims are more likely than americans of any other major religious groups to have personally experienced racial or religious discrimination in the past year—48%, compared to 31% of mormons, 25% of atheist/agnostics, 21% of jews, 20% of catholics, and 18% of protestants. 1/3 (36%) of americans say that they have an unfavorable opinion about islam (gallup polls).

in the aftermath of 9/11, the US government has increasingly implemented special programs with hopes of “curbing and countering terrorism” and “enemy combatants.” these policies—such as the USA Patriot Act and the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System—have been targeted towards and disproportionately affects arabs, south asians, and muslims in america.

of course, the most lethal terrorist groups active in america are white supremacist groups, but people tend to overlook that because it’s always easier to blame something you have zero understanding of.

the non-profit advocacy organization South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) cataloged 207 incidents of hate violence and xenophobic political rhetoric directed towards south asian, muslim, middle eastern, hindu, sikh, and arab communities between nov. 15, 2015, and nov. 16, 2016. approximately 95% of those instances were animated by anti-muslim sentiment. also, “approximately 1 in 5 of the documented xenophobic statements came from president-elect donald trump.”

that’s who america hired to run our country in 2016. this was way before his misdeeds in office, yet it took us so long—and such a hard fight—to oust him. did it really take that long for everyone to catch on?

police brutality—(christian hall) (angelo quinto) (tommy le)

“CHRISTIAN HALL was a 19-year-old chinese american teen who experienced a mental health emergency on december 30, 2020. pennsylvania state police were called and requested to help de-escalate the crisis. rather than providing aid or assistance, the troopers shot and killed christian. his hands were up in the air as he stood on the SR-33 southbound overpass to I-80, posing no threat to the armed officers.”

they shot him seven times, with his arms up in the air.

“I miss my son so much. I love him so much but if his death is the catalyst for change, then so be it. Let his name be remembered. His name is Christian Hall.” —Fe Hall, Christian’s mother.

a video, shot by his mother, shows ANGELO QUINTO, a 30-year-old Filipino immigrant, unresponsive on the floor after officers subdued him with a knee to the back of his neck. the video shows him bleeding form the mouth after police knelt on his neck when he was experiencing a mental health crisis in his family home. he died three days later in the hospital without waking up. the antioch police had no body camera footage, nor has the department named the officers involved.

“I was just hoping they could de-escalate the situation,” his sister said in an interview. she called 911 when her brother had been experiencing mental health problems and paranoia. she says that she remains conflicted about calling the police that night: “I don’t know if I will not feel bad. If it was the right thing to do they would not have killed my brother.”

“TOMMY LE, a 20-year-old Vietnamese-American student, died hours before he was scheduled to attend his high-school graduation in June 2017. He was shot multiple times by sheriff’s Deputy Cesar Molina after responding to reports of a man armed with a knife. Deputies discovered after the shooting that he was carrying an ink pen, not a knife.

The office reported that Le had lunged at the sheriff’s deputies with a knife and had been threatening residents, shouting he was “the creator.” An autopsy showed that two of the three bullets that struck Le were in his back, and a witness said that Le was shouting he was “Tommy the renter.”

despite the challenges our communities face, AAPI communities receive less than one percent of philanthropic funding.

covid-19

i’ll try to keep this brief. there have been so many instances of violence perpetrated against the asian community during covid-19—not to mention the casual snipes at our culture, the microaggressions we face every day, the verbal and sexual harassment we encounter, sometimes even on the way to the grocery store for a supply run.

VICHA RATANAPAKDEE: a thai-american, he became known as “grandpa” throughout his neighborhood, where he’d made it a ritual to go on morning walks each day. it was during one of those walks on january 28, 2021, when the 84-year-old was forcibly knocked onto the ground. he was transported to the hospital, where he died two days later.

“He never wake up again. He [was] bleeding on his brain,” his daughter said in an interview. “I called him, ‘Dad, wake up.’ I want him to stay alive and wake up and come and see me again, but he never wake up.”

between march and december last year, the organization Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander Hate recorded nearly 3,000 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents nationwide. the new york city police department also reported a 1,900% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes last year.

i think senator tammy duckworth put it very aptly.

“Most people, I don’t think, think of Asians as being the subject of racist attacks, but we have been. And we’re the one community that’s often always seen as the ‘other’. I—to this day—still get asked, ‘So where are you from really?’“

i don’t think i’ve ever related so much to something a senator said.

actor and activist daniel dae kim talked about an encounter he had with a pollster who said asian americans are “statistically insignificant” in polling models in a congressional hearing:

“Statistically insignificant. Now all of you listening to me here, by virtue of your own elections, are more familiar with the intricacies of polling than I am, so undoubtedly, you already know what this means—statistically insignificant literally means that we don’t matter.”

do we matter? are we really “statistically insignificant”? blips in the machine, to be used and then thrown away once we become too “fussy” or demanding?

testimonies from victims showcase the array of xenophobic and racist insults they’ve encountered. i’ll put an (x) next to the ones i’ve personally heard.

“Go back to Wuhan and take the virus with you.” (x)

“You are the reason for the coronavirus.” (x)

“Damn, another Asian riding with me. Hope you don’t have covid.”

*fake coughing* “Chinese b—” *more fake coughing* (x)

now for some really “creative” ones that i’ve personally encountered:

“Cock up my dad’s botton, Chinease cunt”

“You don’t got the kung-flu, do ya?”

“Ever ate a dog?”

Along the same vein, “ever had any bats? Heard they’re delicious.”

“Wouldn’t want ya to pet my dog. Ya might steal it and cook it for dinner!” *hyena laugh*

a little personal anecdote

i debated whether or not to wear a mask to school in early march. my aunt lives in china, and she’s a first-responder (trained paramedic & contact tracer) and we knew how bad the virus was going to be in late february when we facetimed her, quarantined in her apartment. her toddler was staying with her husband at her parents’ house because she was afraid of infecting them. she didn’t see them in person for four months, working 14-hour shifts in the back of an ambulance decked out in a hazmat suit.

my mom cried when she facetimed us the second week of her grueling shift. i couldn’t stop thinking about her when i went to school that day. my mom sent me another picture during art class, and i just couldn’t control myself. i started crying during class.

i asked my mom whether or not i should wear a mask to school, and she said that if i did, i would be singling myself out. i wouldn’t be protecting myself—far from it. if i wore a mask to school, people would think that i had the virus, not that i was trying to protect myself from it.

gossip spreads like wildfire, and the next day, everyone knew i had relatives in china. most of my friends were sympathetic, but they were wholly removed from the situation. it was early march, and they never believed that the coronavirus would spread here. they were firmly rooted in their opinion that it was an easy situation, grossly mishandled by the chinese government, and that we’d do much better if it ever washed up on our shores.

i do hate the chinese government, and back then, i didn’t think too much of their antagonism. yes, the situation was mishandled. it was like a repeat of the SARS outbreak in 2003—first a cover-up by the local government, then a cover-up by the national government, and finally, a realization that no, in fact, they could not handle it in secret. yes, the media had to get involved. no, dead bodies were not piling up in the hallways while they waited for doctors to triage care. yes, we have capacity! look at these documentary mini-videos, forcing doctors and patients to leave a wing of the hospital empty and operate below maximum capacity so they could shoot propaganda videos for the lunar new year, boasting about how well they’re handling it!

i won’t argue that in the beginning, this was mishandled. i will argue, however, against the idea that asian countries are incompetent. that western approaches are oh-so-much-better.

in wuhan, they built a makeshift hospital spanning three soccer fields in the span of a week, with properly-functioning utilities, hospital beds, decontamination, and security. people rallied together and donated everything from money and supplies to food and ventilators, from all across the country. doctors and medical staff shaved their heads so they could better wear masks and volunteered to go to wuhan, where the situation was much more dire than in other areas. thousands of medical students from shanghai were transported to wuhan to fill the personnel shortages.

china reopened in june.

what did we do?

we didn’t ask the asian countries for experience. china, japan, and korea had handled the 2003 SARS outbreak and knew what kinds of things needed to be done. from the beginning, they wore masks. they halted travel, they did routine testing, performed contact tracing, set up programs for bringing food to the immunocompromised, elderly, and disabled, and worked as a cohesive community.

on the other hand, we resorted to childish infighting, political games, shunning masks and blaming it on asians, when we could’ve learned from them instead. we didn’t do contact-tracing. our testing systems were sorely inadequate. borders were closed with china, yes, but the majority of the cases in the US arrived from italy and other european countries who had already been infected. banning travel between the US and china was nothing more than a political gimmick.

states fought each other for basic medical supplies. there was no national unity. we were fractured in two, and COVID became more fuel for the fire dividing the two parties, when it could’ve been something that unified us.

and instead of blaming china, we would’ve been better off recognizing our own failures.

you can say that the virus caught china by surprise.

it shouldn’t have done the same to us.

we knew it was coming. but we still botched it.

blaming the virus on asian communities is a sign of immaturity and a lack of accountability. own up to your failures.

anyways, my mom was right. whenever we wore a mask in public, people really did think that we were “dirty, foreign chinese.” we stocked up on groceries so we wouldn’t have to go out, because every time my mom did, people would look at her weirdly. they didn’t wear masks.

one time, she was accosted by a blonde woman when we were at a supermarket. i’d gone with her that time because it was right after practice, and i was in the car anyways. the lady came up to us (without a mask: this was in may) and said, “excuse me, you don’t have the virus, do you?” with a pointed look at my mom (who was masked up).

my mom, being the polite person she is, simply responded “no, i don’t.”

the woman didn’t let us go after that. she pushed even more. “well, you see, i was just making sure...with this chinese virus going around, it’s scary, you know?”

i wanted to ask her why she wasn’t wearing a mask if it was “so scary”, but i couldn’t get a word in before she asked another question.

“by the way, y’all aren’t chinese, right?”

yes i am. yes we are. why does it fucking matter. we’re wearing masks, you’re not, get the hell out of my face.

honestly, i don’t know how my mom does it. she has the patience of a saint. she said “mhm”, grabbed a gallon of milk, and walked to the self-checkout area. the lady looked at me and raised her eyebrow, and i said “so what if we are?”

she looked like she’d been slapped in the face. i turned and followed my mom, but she said “now hold on young lady!” i ignored her and kept walking.

i don’t owe her anything. why do people think it’s okay to talk to others like that? we’re human beings too. we’re allowed our basic dignity. basic respect. we’re not something for you to joke at, to laugh at, to fetishize or bully into submission. i don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to realize that. i don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to treat others like human beings.

to people like that lady in kroger:

why do you feel the need to do it? is your opinion of yourself really that high to think that you’re superior to others who are different from you? are you really that conceited to think that you’re the perfect image of a perfect human, and anyone not like you is unworthy, considered lesser? or is your opinion of yourself really that low, to think that whatever you say, it doesn’t really matter anyways? why do you find derogatory jokes and demeaning comments funny? why do you think it’s okay to harass a stranger just going about their day? is your life really that boring, and you have nothing else to do with your time? why? would it be okay if i came up to you and asked if you ate rotten shark meat, then laughed it off and said “oh, i thought you were from iceland”? is that okay? can i ask if you eat cockroaches? how would you respond if i asked “where are you from?”? you would say america, right? and if i asked again? europe? where in europe? oh, you don’t know? are you illegal? was your mother a prostitute? are you a communist? why are your eyes so big? do you speak europeanese? crut iveroij aeish poient. oh, those aren’t words? well i think they sound like european words. what’s your name? je-re-mi-ah? like jeeryyy-miiiaaaccchh? oh, that’s not right? sorry, my tongue just won’t bend that way. your names are so weird! why would your parents name you that? oh, it means something? well, i don’t know the language, so don’t expect me to say it right. have you ever eaten haggis? oh, that’s scottish? oh, you’re not scottish? sorry, you all look the same to me. scots and italians are just so similar, you know? what’s your name? your last name is anderson? i know an anderson! she lived in texas. are you related to her? oh, you don’t know her? sorry, i thought you were all related. yeah, like i said before, you all just look so much alike, you know? are you lazy? oh, nothing, i just heard from my dad that all french people are lazy. oh, you’re not french? well, you still look lazy. are you good at english? oh, nothing, i just assumed that all white people were english. i know you like to assume that we’re good at math. oh, you got an A in english? isn’t that normal? i can’t help it, you’re just smarter. you probably don’t even study. oh, you do? well, you’re smart anyways, so it doesn’t matter. you’re so good at math for an american! oh no, nothing, i just assumed that all americans were bad at math. *starts playing with her hair* oh, that’s making you uncomfortable? but your hair’s so silky, and it’s so smooth. what kind of hair products do you use? i want to learn how to make my hair look exotic like that. oh, you’re not exotic? but you’re foreign. of course you’re exotic. you know, *leans in and whispers* men like you this way, yeah? they just looveeee exotic ladies. *winks*

can you see how this is demeaning? can you see how this diminishes our culture, our hard work, our accomplishments?

racism isn’t funny. it’s not cool, it’s not a joke, and it’s hurtful. it makes us question our capabilities, forces us to have unrealistic expectations of ourselves, makes us feel unworthy and “other”. just stop? stop making hurtful comments. stop stepping on other people to feel better about yourselves.

[eryiss]

Summary: Gajeel always spent his winters working at a Christmas Tree ranch, cutting the trees down in solitude. But now, some rich prick is his colleague, and he plans to put the man in his place. It doesn't work as intended, as Freed starts to flirt.

Notes: Here's the Gajeed Modern story. I really liked writing this one, and I hope you all like reading it. Enjoy.

Links: Ao3, FFN, Other Drabbles

The New Guy

Gajeel slammed the door to his truck closed, adjusting his large coat to fight the chill. As he walked to the small wooden hut, his boots crunched under the snow and his breath clouded in front of him. He had missed this.

There was nothing better than a Christmas in Minnesota, which was always covered in snow and as such looked like a kind of cliched Christmas wonderland. The town had always seen the winter holidays at their time to shine, and as such went all out on decorations throughout the town, as well as parties and celebrations of every type. Gajeel wasn't the biggest celebrator of Christmas, but after spending three months in California in his first semester of college, the wintery environment was a welcome reprieve from the heat.

Another return he was looking forward to was his winter job.

Ever since he had been fifteen, he had worked at Fairy Tail Tree Suppliers, who were the main source of Christmas trees in the town. Originally he'd worked at the front of house, but when they realised his people skills were less than ideal, they had moved him to the felling station, cutting the trees down and netting them when needed. It was good, tactile work, and Gajeel loved it.

As he approached the hut, he saw an unfamiliar car parking. It was a hell of a lot nicer than any cars the members of staff owned, so clearly it was a customer. The place wasn't open yet, but it wasn't Gajeel's job to tell them to leave so he'd let the idiot wait. He walked into the hut, rubbing his hands to warm them as Levy passed him a paper cup of coffee.

"Some guy's already here," He informed her. "Nice car, so probably a dick. Tell me if you need me to kick him out."

"Sure," Levy said, but seemed unsure. She leant forward and looked out of the window towards the car. "Oh, that's just Freed. He's working here now."

"Freed?" Gajeel frowned. "Who the hell is that?"

"He's new," Levy shrugged. "Started two weeks ago. He's nice," She sat back behind the counter. "You'll be working with him, so be nice."

"The hell's a guy with a car like that doin' working here?" Gajeel mumbled under his breath, not expecting Levy to hear him.

"Why don't you ask him," She said patiently.

Gajeel didn't answer, and watched as the man climbed out of the shining, brand new sports car. He was about their age, wore clearly designer and expensive clothing, and had his hair done in a way that looked like he'd just walked out of a fashion show. He was clearly from the more affluent side of town, and in Gajeel's experience that meant he was an entitled and obnoxious dickhead. How someone with designer jeans and a car - that worked as well in the winter as it did in the summer - thought he'd fit in here, Gajeel couldn't guess.

But still, he wasn't bad looking. Awful pretty. The kind of face that would look real handsome while pissed off. Red and angry, realising he couldn't keep up with a man like Gajeel. Maybe it could be fun.

He'd teach this spoiled new guy that he didn't know what he was doing, taunt him into frustration, and then maybe push him against a tree and get down and dirty with him.

First things first, however. He needed to show 'Freed' how it was done.

----

It was harder to put Freed in his place when it seemed he was a damn good lumberjack. Even with a slightly blunt axe - they had only one chainsaw and Gajeel had taken that for himself today - he knew how to cut the trees down and how to move them onto the back of the truck. Hell, he even looked pretty fucking elegant when he was doing it. It pissed Gajeel off.

"So," Gajeel began, rather than introducing himself. Freed turned with a start, apparently not having noticed Gajeel's presence. "Your parents threaten to cut you off if you don't get a job. That what this is?"

Not a best first impression, but Gajeel cared about this company and wouldn't have some smug dick leave them before the early December rush.

"Excuse me?" Freed replied, voice smoother than Gajeel would have liked.

"You heard what I said," Gajeel crossed his arms. "Daddy gonna take away the car if you don't make enough to cover the gas?"

"You must be Gajeel," Freed said with a smirk, resting the axe and turning to face Gajeel fully. It pissed him off that Freed knew his name; who had been talking about him? "Unless this place has more than one man who is 'pierced, brash and rude without realising it' That seems unlikely, though."

"Answer the question, pretty boy," Gajeel demanded. He flushed a little when he realised what he had said.

"Pretty boy?" Freed chuckled. "And you're wrong. It's rather the opposite. It was given to me by my parents as a bribe to stop me from coming to a place like this. Clearly it didn't work."

"Yer parents got you a luxury car to stop you from getting a job?" Gajeel scoffed. "I ain't gullible."

"Actually, they got me a car to stop me from dropping out of college," Freed mused, not rising to the angry tone Gajeel was using. "But once the car was mine, and they could no longer hold it over me, I removed myself from college and started looking for jobs. This was a good mixture of a hometown business and manual labor, which was perfect for what I wanted and would open doors for me. Hence, here I am."

"Sure," Gajeel grunted. He didn't believe him. "Why'd you keep the car if you dropped out then?"

"They thought me so shallow that a car would keep me from doing what I wanted in life and forging my own path," Freed shrugged, picking his axe again. "I found that insulting, and thought scamming them out of seventy thousand dollars was appropriate revenge."

Gajeel went to say something, because no car should be that much fucking money and no man should be flippant about spending that much, but Freed began to cut the nearest tree down. His designer clothes were tight, and Gajeel could see the strong arms flexing with the movement of the swing. His thighs strained against the denim of his jeans, and Gajeel had to look away as the man's firm, plump ass faced him unashamedly. His clothes were way too expensive, but fuck they flattered him well.

Distracted, Gajeel didn't notice the sound of the tree cracking. He blinked when he realised he was standing in its path, and winced as he expected for it to land on him. It didn't, and when he opened his eyes he saw Freed holding it with his right hand - arm flexing hard - and with a smirk on his face.

"I was told you were the expert on felling trees, Gajeel," Freed taunted, a voice cocky and self-assured. Two very hot traits. "I hope I haven't been misled."

"You ain't," Gajeel argued immediately. "And I'm a hell of a lot faster than you, so you better not fuck with my productivity. I ain't gonna deal with dead weight."

"I'm sure I can keep up," Freed stated as if it weren't a problem at all. He then slowly looked Gajeel up and down with an unhindered expression of interest which sent a jolt of something throughout Gajeel. "Though, if I were to affect your productivity, I'm sure you could think of a way for me to make it up to you."

Gajeel swallowed. That was a pretty damn clear come-on. He liked it.

"I'm a pretty physical man," Gajeel grunted. "Sure you can handle me?"

"I can take anything you're willing to give, Gajeel," Freed smirked tauntingly. "And I'll gladly do so."

Oh.

Fuck yeah he would. This was going to be a hell of a lot more fun than pissing off a pretty rich boy. Not that he could say that, so instead he said. "You want a coffee?"

"I'd appreciate that," Freed smiled, "Black, no sugar."

"Comin' up," Gajeel nodded. "Now get back to work, Slacker."

Freed chuckled, and started chopping again. Gajeel smirked to himself; this year was going to be fucking fun.

[somedew-fictions]

15 w/ Shane apologizing to the farmer

1462 words - Shane x GN Farmer (pre-relationship) [WHOLESOME ALERT]

#15 “Please stop and listen to me.”

The farmer steps into the clearing in the woods, dressed for the flower dance. This is their second ever flower dance and they know exactly who they are going to ask to dance: Shane. Last year he had originally declined, forcing them to instead take up Emily’s kind offer instead, but now they are better prepared to ask him.

Shane has grown a lot over the last year and the farmer has actually gotten to know him to the point that now they are actually friends. The farmer knows Shane isn’t one for dancing, but when they mentioned it the week before he had given them a small smile and mused to them with a “maybe” behind a suppressed chuckle of amusement and slight rosy cheeks.

The farmer goes around and greets their friends in town, complimenting everybody’s attire and mentioning how beautiful the weather is to keep conversation light. Time always seems to stop during town festivals, but that is just because of how fun they are; time flies and before you know it, its 10 pm and everybody has to head home.

Across the clearing the farmer spots Haley practicing her dance moves as Alex watches, the slightest hint of color across his cheeks as he tries to keep his calm composure. Close by, relaxing in the shade of a tree, is Shane. He is watching Jas play with Vincent near by, his body completely relaxed.

The farmer excuses themselves from their conversation with Gus about his cooking before they begin to move across the grass towards him, their smile growing into a genuine grin. His face is freshly shaven, his shirt is free from wrinkles, and his tie is miraculously not already undone. He has cleaned himself up so nicely, and the farmer secretly hopes they are the reason behind it.

As the farmer approaches they can suddenly see Penny standing on the other side of the tree, her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. She leans across the tree towards Shane and whispers something close to his ear which makes his calm expression crack into a smirk, an eyebrow raised at her before he begins to chuckle.

Penny proceeds to laugh but Shane beacons her back in close where he whispers something back. She throws her head back into a fit of giggles, serving a perfect slap to Shane’s shoulder playfully as he continues to chuckle, his smile radiating.

The farmer stops advancing towards him, their smile thinning away. They don’t know how to react, and before they know it, watching Shane and Penny converse for who knows how long, Mayor Lewis calls for the dance to begin.

The farmer watches as Shane glances around before scratching the back of his head and looking back to Penny. He offers his hand to her and she takes it, accepting his offer.

The farmer’s heart drops into their stomach, their jaw falling slightly agape in disbelief. Had they read Shane wrong this entire time? Was his “maybe” really just a polite way of declining their offer to dance last week? The farmer feels their body tense, unable to move their limbs as the couples of youth line up to dance.

If it wasn’t for Emily once again swinging in, heading quickly over to the farmer and taking their hand to line up with the others, they would have probably just watched the premiere like an idiot, all alone on the sidelines.

“Is everything okay?” Emily whispers to the farmer as they dance, but the farmer is at a lost for words, turning on auto-pilot as they dance and completely zoning out of the whole song. Their thoughts are buzzing wildly in their head, a thousand and one thoughts fighting to be the central point that they don’t even notice Emily whispering to them as they dance with one another.

Soon after the dance is done, the farmer is sitting in the grass with a cup full of punch, deciding they want to be left alone. Leaving a festival early was always deemed as rude, so they stay only to make polite chatter with whoever ventures over to them and to keep an eye on Shane and Penny.

Time crawls by but the Sun finally sets and the air becomes cold, signaling to all the villagers that it is time to head home. The farmer stands up and helps clean up the decorations with Gus and Lewis, packing away everything into boxes and putting them away in the back of Lewis’s pickup truck for him to drive back to town.

By 11 o’clock everyone is gone and the farmer walks home alone. Wanting to get home as soon as possible, they take the short cut by Marnie’s ranch to their property, assuming Shane is already asleep.

The farmer hugs themselves to keep warm as they see the lights of Marnie’s house in the distance, breaking free from the shroud of the forest’s trees into clear view. The farmer begins to walk faster to quickly pass by her house, but to their unfortunate luck they hear the home’s door swing open and somebody’s footsteps in the grass.

“Is that my neighbor sneaking by?” Shane’s voice calls out to them, catching the farmer red handed. They step dead in their tracks, knowing they can’t make a run for it to their farm if they ever want to be able to face Shane ever again.

Taking in a deep breath, the farmer calls back, “yeah, it’s me! Just heading home!”

“You have a second to talk?” Shane asks, pulling on his jacket and approaching the farmer with a friendly smile on his face. 

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” the farmer’s words come out bitter, harsher than they intended them to be. Their words cause Shane to stop in his tracks, his smile falling away and a confused chuckle arising from his throat.

“Did...” he chuckles awkwardly. “Did I do something to make you upset?”

The farmer bites the inside of their cheek and turns their head away from him, unable to think of what they should blurt out next.

“I didn’t really get to see you at the dance,” Shane continues, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I was looking for you but-”

“But you were too busy flirting with Penny,” the farmer cuts him off, their tongue soaked in poison. They don’t know where these harsh statements are coming from, the words forcing their way out of their mouth before they can take them back.

Shane’s jaw falls agape in surprise before shaking away the punch the farmer had just thrown at him. “What are you talking about?”

“It was obvious, Shane,” The farmer sighs heavily, believing Shane was playing innocent. “You even asked her to be your dance partner- I thought you didn’t dance, Shane. That’s why you declined me last year, remember?”

“Please, stop and listen to me,” Shane’s voice sounds hurt, his eyes begging the farmer’s to meet his gaze. The farmer falls silent, their eyes darting around his, allowing him to speak. “Penny and I were watching Jas and Vincent playing and she was telling me embarrassing stories about them in class, not wanting them to hear. I told her some stories of Jas at home too. She is Jas’s teacher and we never really talked before because of the whole ‘drunkard’ thing,” he sights heavily. “I was waiting for you to come ask me to dance like you said you would. When I didn’t see you, I guessed you finally realized what a loser I am and changed your mind, so I asked Penny because I knew you would probably dance with Emily and Marnie would kill me if I didn’t participate.”

He drops his hands to his side in defeat, having said his piece of the story. The farmer is now left without words, their thoughts changing from targeting Shane to now targeting themselves. They were so stupid, having read everything wrong- doubting Shane...

“Shane,” the farmer meets his gaze, a frown across their face. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Shane sighs, opening his arms for a hug as the farmer quickly rushes to him to accept it. They share a tight hug, the tenseness from the entire day melting away into thin air as they realize how stupid they both had acted.

“Can I still have that dance?” the farmer whispers into his shoulder after a long pause.

“Maybe,” Shane chuckles softly, unable to hold back his smile. “Only if you promise not to tell anyone we are dancing out here in the dark like idiots.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” the farmer smiles, the two of them slowly letting go with one another.

[aj-allen97]

You know…

If Wanda really really wanted too…she could of just gone to any rural place ever that has a zero population count and just…recreate the hex.

But you know…make it so that no one can just come in and hijack it by adding those Runes on the Hex’s walls?

I’m pretty sure if she wanted the space and atmosphere of a small town she could have founded a abandoned ghost town and use the hex there.

Or even a ranch in the middle of nowhere with pets and animals? Just make a self sustaining commune and just create a hex bubble around it.

Like win win! Wanda gets her husband and kids back, no one is trapped in her hex and she can play out her fantasy life.

It’s not like she intended for her kids to go out make friends with the neighbors or to get a girlfriend/boyfriend (not in her hex bubble) in the original hex bubble, so why not try again and just do it in a area where there is no people to interfere with the moral ambiguity of creating a false life within a hex bubble where all your dreams can come true.

[demi-shoggoth]

COVID-19 Reading Log, pt. 16

81. Monstrosities by Matthew J. Finch. This is a bestiary for the Swords and Wizardry game, an 0e D&D retroclone. The book is an elaboration on previous Swords and Wizardry bestiaries—it has both reprinted and original monsters, but every monster gets a piece of art and a sample encounter. The art varies wildly in quality between entries. The sample encounters are pretty samey, to be honest, and not a ton of them fire up my GM imagination. The flavor of the monsters is in the genre of Weird Fantasy: there are extradimensional abominations and meat-filled robots to go with your more typical frogmen and giant vermin. Some of the more unfortunate tropes of old school fantasy rear their head as well. There’s plenty of low-key sexism (with a few places it really ramps up) and lots of Orientalism. You can make Asian themed monsters without relying on either vague mysticism or the “inscrutable foreigner” archetype, guys. Please.

82. Scarfolk Annual 197x by Richard Littler. I’ve been familiar with the Scarfolk project through tumblr for a while. For those who don’t know, it’s a British dystopia perennially stuck in the 1970s, with ominous graphics and catchy slogans like, “Whatever You Do, Don’t”. So I was interested to see what a whole book of Scarfolk would look like. The book posits itself as a reprint of an artifact collected from the isolated town, reprinted on normal paper, since the original was laced with drugs that made people hallucinate and turn murderous. The book has two main modes, which I think clash. One is using the dystopia to present satires on Brexit and other modern right wing British politics. The other is a building horror piece, as the book is intended (in universe) to indoctrinate children into murdering their parents. Both would work separately, I think, but together the tones make for a somewhat jarring reading experience. Note that there’s some pretty nasty depictions of violence throughout—more graphic than I’ve seen from the internet Scarfolk material (so tw: suicide, eye horror, gore, child abuse, animal death).

83. Scientifical Americans by Sharon A. Hill. This book is a study of other people’s studies, namely the culture of amateur paranormal researchers, like ghost hunters, Squatchers and UFO networks. Sharon Hill is a real scientist, and her main thesis of the book is that APRs use science trappings without understanding how science actually works. There’s a lot of discussion in the book about the mixed relationship that Americans have with science—appreciating the results while distrusting the process, and seeing it more about personal authority than community consensus. The book includes chapters about how people interested in ghosts, UFOs and cryptids can make their process more genuinely scientific, but I feel like she’s preaching to the choir a bit here. The book does not go out of its way to make friends among True Believers.

84. The Avatar’s Handbook by Jesse Decker. This book is a D&D 3.0 era book that slipped past my radar way back in the day, but was recommended to me by @thetygre​. It is nominally a book for a new character class, the Avatar, which is a divine sorcerer type that summons angels. That takes up maybe 15 pages of this 80 page book. The rest of it is a bestiary of good-aligned monsters, nominally for the avatar to summon, but mostly so that Green Ronin could expand on its cosmology introduced in Legions of Hell and Hordes of the Abyss. Their takes on celestials are mostly in the vein of magical animals and pretty humanoids. There’s some inspiration drawn from the Book of Enoch and other angelologies, but nothing direct (for example, there’s a seraphyl angel, and an angel that looks somewhat like the seraph of Ezekiel, but they aren’t the same creature). My personal favorite monster in the book is the bene ishim, which looks like a stereotypical devil and does propaganda work—they convince mortals that fiends are untrustworthy while tricking fiendish armies into attacking each other and leaving the mortal world alone.

85. Robbers, Rogues and Ruffians by Howard Bryan. This is a book I picked up literally years ago and has been collecting dust on my shelf until, say, a global pandemic. The book covers true crime stories from Old West New Mexico (how’s that for a word salad?), stretching from the 1860s to the 1910s. The book presents itself as a “demythologizing” of the idea of glorious criminals and loveable scoundrels, presenting most of its subjects as deeply unpleasant people. What struck me on this reading of Old West tales is how little has changed. Entitled white men lashing out when drunk, unrestricted access to firearms, racist violence, extrajudicial killings… the USA of 2020 is not as different as the USA of 1880 as we’d like to think. The book is relatively old by the standards of this project (published 1991) and is based on newspaper columns stretching back into the 1950s. Which means that some material is taken from interviews of people who were actually there (children at ranches, teenage posse members, kids hearing tales from their outlaw relatives firsthand). That’s cool.  

[gerec]

AU-gust 2020 Prompts

AUs 1-10 on Ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/25749364

11. Farm/Ranch AU - Cherik Xavierine, Cherigan?

A day late but I did get it finished! Based on an actual place in Colorado, the Dunton Hot Springs which seems to be very cool and very expensive lol :D

----

It’s an hour’s drive from Telluride to their designated home for the week, a luxury ranch slash resort nestled in a picturesque valley in the San Juan mountains. Charles is still in shock that this is the place they’ll be spending their vacation this year, given Raven’s (and Charles’) tastes and their penchant for more cosmopolitan locales or beach-y destinations. But Raven insisted that they were overdue for a change in scenery, and so Charles caved dutifully to her sisterly demands, and set her loose to do all the necessary planning.

Now, as he’s pulling up in front of a few scattered log cabins (and tents!) surrounded by a sea of green, Charles thinks he should have fought much harder for that villa in Capri.

“Isn’t this view magnificent?” Raven says, throwing the passenger door open and taking an exaggerated breath of fresh mountain air. He concedes that the scenery is quite beautiful, in that ‘rugged old west’ kind of way, though he’s not ready to pat her on the back yet until he gets an actual look at the lodgings and the amenities.

So far…he’s not all that impressed.

“You know this place used to be an old mining town? Some of these cabins are originals from the 1880s—”

“Oh my god, Raven, please tell me there’s indoor plumbing here? If you tell me I have to do my business in an outhouse I’m turning this car around and taking the next flight home.”

Raven laughs, shoving him good naturedly as they grab their bags out of the trunk of their rental SUV. “You are such a snob, Charles—”

Charles snickers. “You’re one to talk.”

“Anyway, this place has been renovated and updated from top to bottom with five star amenities. En-suite bathrooms, Wi-Fi, gourmet meals and our cabin has a private soaking pool with a view of the mountains! I think I know you well enough to know your minimum threshold for ‘roughing it’ in the woods.”

Charles shrugs, smiling as he follows Raven up the path and towards the main lodge for check-in.

“Nothing wrong with having standards, darling.”

--

Charles’ opinion of the place goes up a bit once they get to their cabin, which is a one bedroom + one loft that used to be the town’s General Store. It’s quaint, and more than a little kitschy, complete with old John Wayne movie posters on the wall. The décor is a little (a lot) more rustic than he’s used to, but he’s willing to give it a go solely on the presence of running water and a bathtub, and being steps to the ‘Saloon’ where the bar and restaurant is located.

His opinion goes up even more with the quality of the food available, when he and Raven sit down for dinner that evening, to a splendid meal of smoked pork tacos, lamb loin and huckleberry turnovers with whipped cream. It goes a long way to appease the part of Charles that preferred a less isolated vacation spot, or at least somewhere with a lot more people to flirt with and share a drink. Most of the other lodgers here are couples or families with kids, which is a little disappointing, especially compared to last year’s trip to Rio…

All of that changes once Raven heads off to turn in, leaving Charles to nurse a whiskey at the bar, the ambient chatter of the other guests lulling him into a state of relaxation. Though the peace only lasts for maybe twenty minutes, before the door to the Saloon swings open, and two very handsome, very fit specimens in plaid shirts and tight jeans saunters in. One has hair that’s a bit wild and muscles practically straining his sleeves, while the other looks equally dangerous and sexy, with sharp eyes and an almost feral smile.

The bartender Kitty – a lovely young lady Charles has been chatting with about the activities available at the resort – looks up and snorts, just as the two men turn in their direction, their gazes landing squarely on Charles.

“Well that’s gonna be trouble,” she says, smirking at Charles’ gobsmacked expression (because oh my god so hot) and the very intent looks he’s suddenly getting from the objects of his overwhelming lust. “Look at those two competitive idiots over there, ogling you like you’re a juicy piece of steak.”

Charles swallows, trying very hard not to drool at the very finely toned biceps and chest muscles he can see even from across the room. “Do they work here too?”

“Sure. Logan and Erik. They take the guests out on excursions; horseback riding, hikes through the mountains, rock climbing, rafting. Whatever’s on the day’s schedule. I think they’re taking the horses out again tomorrow.”

Suddenly, the itinerary Raven’s planned for them this week looks a hell of a lot more appealing, with Charles intending on making the most of the incredible views and the very fine amenities.

“I think I should probably turn in,” he says with a grin, downing the last of his drink and licking his lips just a little, just to see if he gets any kind of reaction (he does). “I’ve got to get up early and sign up for some horseback riding.”