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mad-hunts · 8 months ago

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he is scorned, as barton expected himself to be due to the currently performative act he was putting on related to his depravity. but it evidently wasn't enough to get jervis racing to the door. hmm... is it possible that he misjudged his ability to scare people, or that he underestimated jervis's willpower? barton, personally, was inclined to believe it was the latter. he would rather not think he failed at getting someone to leave when he oh-so-carefully tried to curate his image to scream 'danger.' but different things worked on different people, he supposed. barton simply stared at the other from where he stood for a few beats. it was almost as if he found him more interesting, but then the dollmaker was walking to the autopsy-like table in the room, and picked up a pair of mayo scissors that lied next to him on a tray.

there was blood already on them. barton would go on to point them slightly in the other's direction: an obvious intimidation tactic, but also something else. the dollmaker feigned a contemplative hum then, ❝ well... i know for a fact that some people have talked about me, just as they've talked about you. so is it really self-aggrandizing? of course, i'm sure most of the stories come from the clown, and thus can barely be recognized as even the slightest bit reputable. he's a complete nut, ❞ and in a way, the way that barton said that implied that he didn't believe he was. like he was in a league of his own. the over-the-top and profoundly malicious persona he'd put on was already crumbling at his fingertips, it seemed, much to barton's own chagrin.

a much more relaxed, but still somewhat wicked and small smile tugged at his lips as he stifled a snort. the impact the other was trying to make his insults have kind of fell off in his opinion when he called him sir. even through his mask, you could sort-of tell that he was looking at jervis in a way that said 'seriously?' ❝ you know, i'd imagine that might've actually stung a bit if you didn't include the word 'sir' in there. it's like you're still trying to be polite while verbally attacking me — which defeats the purpose of an insult entirely. and don't worry, i don't actually care much that you wandered into here. i just don't like to be distracted while i work. surely, even a man who seems to hate me so vehemently already can understand that. ❞

the contrast between how he was acting before and now was like light and day. though, i guess he saw no point in continuing to antagonize him in the method he was using before if it wasn't working. barton suddenly lifted up the sheet in front of him partially to expose that there was a corpse underneath. a woman, ❝ mm, well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. but mine is that you obviously don't get out much if you think that organ harvesting is the worst thing people can invest in. my clients are still clearly messed up in the head, of course, but at least my victims were put out of their misery... while those trapped in rings governed by men are not so lucky. ❞

he was talking of another type of crime entirely, that people like black mask seemed to favor. but he allowed jervis to fill in the details as to what he meant. barton put down his scissors, picked up a scalpel, and used his hand to block the other's view of what he was doing to her face. whether it was out of courtesy for the other, though, was debatable. barton only looked up at jervis whenever he was done speaking. a glint, something unreadable, flashed in his eyes, ❝ that was an anne sexton quote, was it not? i always found her poetry to be assertively, and unapologetically, emotional. she was kind of a love junkie that believed that 'touch' is 'the kingdom and the kingdom come,' as she desperately wants acceptance and to experience someone's warm caress. but i did have a father once upon a time, ❞ barton turned his attention back to what he was doing, ❝ he's gone now, though. and if we were dolls... we'd be perfect. so, i believe you already know the answer to that one. ❞

❛Actually, you're not as bad as people say. You are so much worse. ❜

starter from @divingdownthehole !!

there was a certain satisfaction in catching someone red-handed doing something wrong, even if it was in something as small as peeking in someplace they weren't supposed to. or at least... after you got over all of the initial annoyance. this was barton's philosophy as he observed the other had opened his cold store without his permission whenever he left the room temporarily, and he had guessed, found something he really did not want to see. barton couldn't help but squint his eyes at the other as if he was trying to read him. was he just mildly disturbed by it, or did what he saw in there shake him to his very core, and he was merely putting on a brave face in front of barton right now?

he supposed he might never know the exact answer to that question. though barton knew for a fact that if you were particularly squeamish, that the carcasses in the cold store would probably do more than just turn your stomach; they would likely make you feel as if you'd just gotten off a rollercoaster and you were extremely motion-sick. the contents of it weren't of a traditionally animalistic nature after all — let's just say that. without even a moment's hesitation, barton could feel his feet lead him to pushing the other out of the way of the freezer shortly after pondering this to himself then, like jervis was less of a human being to him and more of a thing. a creature. the lack of respect that barton held for the other was quite clear, for the push was as harsh as he could make it.

but then again, the only reason why he felt quote unquote ' satisfied ' by catching him red-handed was because he finally had an excuse to be sarcastic towards him. barton could feel a slightly wicked smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he spoke, ❝ you find something you like? all of those were already set to be bought by a client i have who prefers being able to... handle all of the blood and gore that comes with harvesting things themselves. but hey, i could tell them i lost one if you're dying to get your hands on it, ❞ laughing at another person's expense was like second-nature to barton by now, so naturally, the chuckle that came out of his mouth was just as smooth as any other. he quickly closed and locked the door to the freezer: which was honestly something he should've done in the first place, but even barton had his moments of forgetfulness.

because jervis had visited him during his ' second businesses ' hours, barton was fully dressed in the garb that he typically wore when he took on his other persona: the dollmaker. this consisted of a white surgical apron, joined by a these long silver-colored gloves that went up to his elbows and of course, his mask. a lot of the people he'd encountered seemed to remember him by it because of the extremely macabre nature of it. though, barton found a twisted kind of comfort in wearing the skin of the face of his deceased biological father. he was only eight years old when wesley was shot down in front of him.

the dollmaker tried not to reflect too much on that memory, however. a light sigh came from him as he placed a hand on his hip and looked at jervis with a look that appeared to say ' you better not be here to waste my time, ' ❝ anyway, looking past how rude of a guest you've been thus far, what is it that you've heard about me? i don't really associate myself with a lot of the other rogues unless i have to. and so, i'm kind of interested as to what stories they're conjuring up about me. did they try to scare you into not coming here by telling you i eat people? ❞

#divingdownthehole #yeahhh you're not kidding about it bein a dumpster fire. barton literally went from 100 to 0 between one reply LOL #this man really said ' ehh screw pretending. if he isn't gonna go away the first time i push him then -#i'll just try to cut a body up in front of him ' jsjsj #and yeah i feel you there. barton is just here like casually doing all of this dark stuff #tw: allusions to human trafficking rings.#tw: corpse.#tw: the act of vivisecting.

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shredsandpatches · 5 years ago

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Bringing together the goal of childbearing and the concept of beata stirps, Anne’s marriage to Richard may inform us of his own political agenda. What led Richard attempt to canonize his grandfather, Edward II? Chris Given-Wilson has argued that after 1397, the desire for canonization was fueled by both vindication for Edward II and the desire to acquire Lancastrian lands. But what drove the original petition in 1385? This is before the events of the Merciless Parliament and any desperate motion by Richard to salvage power. Richard would have been well aware of his wife’s heritage; it would be fitting for his to somehow match, and adding Edward II to the company of the Confessor would help toward this. And if we must ascribe French influence to Richard II, then the model of Capetian sanctity and legitimacy, substantiated by a royal saint, would be appropriate here. I suggest that Anne the person and her family history were the inspiration for this effort. A child would have continued a saintly line of Bohemia and hopefully connected it to an English one as well. Richard did not pursue this aggressively; we may well have seen a push for a new English saint if Anne reached a certain stage of pregnancy or had given birth. By 1397, the utility of a royal saint had, in Richard’s mind, changed, but initially, it was something that was much more personal on both a spiritual and dynastic level.

Anna Duch, "Anne of Bohemia: A Political Post-Mortem" (here)

This is a really good article on Anne's legacy and the tendency of historians to treat Anne as though the only significant thing she ever did was to die childless. I've read it before but I was looking something up and I hadn't remembered this part, which I think is really rather sweet. Richard wanted a lineage full of royal saints to match his wife's! 😍

#richard ii #anne of bohemia #anne of bohemia is my forever girl #edward ii #otp: my derlyng is a bundel of myrre to me #i think richard's desire to canonize his great grandfather is very endearing to begin with #this just adds another layer of adorability #anyway #anne was a person and she mattered #a surprising amount of scholarly ink has been spilled just to establish this #that's why duch refers to 'anne the person' above #it's in contrast to 'anne the corpse'

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wil-is-done · 2 years ago

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Otherworld - Chapter 5: Bicker

Summary: This isn’t fair. Her number hit zero. It’s supposed to be over. She’s supposed to be home.

Word Count: 5.925

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a repost.

Anne never liked coffee. She didn’t like the bitter taste, didn’t like the buzz it would give her, didn’t like how shaky and jittery and hyperaware she’d feel afterwards. She’ll never drink it just for the sake of drinking it. If she has to drink it, then it better be for a good reason, like if a deadline was coming up and Marcy won’t be able to finish their assignments on her own but she never said anything about it until the night before the deadline so Anne and Sasha had to scramble over to Marcy’s place at, like, midnight and finish it together in a fuzzy blur.

Calamity energy (as Marcy had dubbed it) is like coffee, but better, and worse.

It doesn’t have a taste, fortunately. But the buzz was all-consuming, permeating her body from the scalp of her head to the tips of her toe. Her senses were forced into overdrive, keeping her too awake and too alert, better than caffeine ever could. Sometimes she felt she should go insane, just from how much of everything she perceived; like the droplet of sweat trailing down from her forehead to her cheek to the edge of her chin, or the way her ratty uniform and armor and sheath strap chafed against her skin with every motion she made, or the hairline fractures she left in the concrete with every stomp of her feet.

It could all get very distracting. And distractions were the last thing she needed when heading to a potential scuffle.

Ah, well. At least it helped her keep track of Owlbert.

The little owl was flying overhead a few feet ahead of her. Little guy’s trying his best, but Anne still had to slow down a few times when she overtook him. It sorta reminded her of spending hours chasing after pigeons in the park when she’s a toddler. Never imagined she’d ever beat any bird in a footrace, even though Owlbert wasn’t, y’know, actually a bird. Or was he? She’s still not exactly sure how palismans work.

Anyway. Having superpowers friggin’ rules. Never got that from coffee.

As Owlbert banked left on an intersection with Anne tailing close behind, past a person-running-a-cashier corner store, the road opened up ahead, leading to an expanse of vibrant green. The city park.

Anne stumbled upon the park once before, during her initial sweep of the city. The verdant green of the grass and the trees drew her in, a stark contrast to the ocean of concrete everywhere else in the city. She thought this might be the only spot in the city with any semblance of life, at first glance, but her senses quickly told her otherwise. She sensed nothing within. The trees were plastic, fake, the grass synthetic - too green to be real. This park was as dead as the rest of the city.

No, not dead. Dead meant it was alive once. This city never lived to begin with.

Also, from above, the park’s shaped like a person tilling the land. Or so Luz claimed.

But she sensed something now. A pulse of life, faint, distant, somewhere in there.

Anne shouted a quick thanks to Owlbert before sprinting past him with a sudden burst of speed, barely hearing a surprised and indignant squawk from somewhere behind her.

She stuck close to the provided footpath as she navigated further into the park. The fake vegetation got a lot thicker a lot quicker than she expected. Before long, she’d already completely lost sight of Owlbert, and the rest of the city. But the life she sensed only grew stronger, closer, so she must still be on the right track.

The footpath ended in a roundabout clearing, connected to three other paths leading elsewhere in the park. In the center of the roundabout was an ivory fountain, an intricate water feature left dry and unused. Anne skidded to a halt just before the edge of the treeline. There, hunched over unmoving by the fountain almost like a corpse, Anne saw her.

Long, wild, ginger locks spilling out from under a broken space-age biking helmet. An ensemble of pink and white and neon green looking almost like a space suit or a superhero costume. A chestplate cracked down the middle still proudly carrying the number ‘12’ in bold pink. A scratched up hockey stick lying by her feet. She looked so much worse than the last time Anne saw her.

“Twelve!”

Her head snapped up to attention at the sound of her name, her eyes darting in panic until they spotted Anne. Despite the worrying state that she’s in, it seemed she’s at least alive and conscious. Anne breathed a sigh of relief.

And groaned in annoyance when the first thing Twelve did was scramble to her feet, snatch up her hockey stick, and bolt in the opposite direction.

Here we go again.

Catching up to her was hardly an issue. Instead, Anne leapt over Twelve, landing on the other side with a clean three pointer, cutting off her escape route. The panicky girl jumped back, bracing her hockey stick in a defensive stance. Anne had to say her pitch, fast. She knew her time before Twelve tried to escape again, or worse, resorted to violence, was short.

“Would you just-! Gimme, like, five seconds to talk!”

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?!” Twelve roared, but taking two steps back as she did. Up close, she looked like she’s been through Hell. Her eyes were bloodshot, with enough dark bags under it to rival Marcy at her worst. Her arms were little more than skin stretched thin over bone. Her footing was unsteady, like she’s a stiff breeze away from collapsing. When was the last time she slept? Or ate? The girl had to be running on fumes at this point.

Anne sighed. She let the energy buzzing inside her subside, let her senses revert to normal. All that talk about not wanting to spook Twelve, and that’s exactly what she did the second she met her. She made a calming motion with her hands. “Dude, just hear me out, will ya?”

“No,” she spat. The knuckles wrapped around the hockey stick turned white. “Now, move! Before I make you.”

Anne tried not to sound smug, or patronizing. “You know you can’t.”

“I will!” Twelve stamped her feet, teeth bared. It was an intimidating sight, maybe, to someone other than Anne.

Anne thinned her lips into a line, and breathed in, and out. “Okay. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot. Why don’t we just… start over? Pretend this is the first time we met?” She put on a smile and opened her arms welcomingly. “Hi. Name’s Anne, and you must be Twelve! I’m stuck in this weird world, same as you, but! I think, if we work together, we can absolutely find a way out of here. How’s that sound?”

Twelve, much to Anne’s lack of surprise, voiced her stubborn thought with a short, succinct, “No.”

“Twelve, dude, I’m trying. I’m really trying. You gotta give me something back,” Anne said wearily.

Twelve’s eyes narrowed dangerously, her grip on the hockey stick adjusting as she snarled, “The only thing I’m giving you is a hockey stick to the face.”

Which won’t do a thing, but Anne didn’t say that out loud. “I legit don’t get why you’re acting so hostile,” she said, shaking her head. “Seriously, did I do something to you? The last two times we met have been nothing but you screaming at me.”

Something different crept into the anger in Twelve’s eyes. Something wet that made her eyes glassy. Hurt. She looked hurt. “You said I have several screws loose. Said I should get myself checked. You called me a lunatic!”

Anne was ready with a retort, but the way Twelve’s voice cracked held her tongue, and sent her flashing back to their second meeting. The slug-like beast that Anne bested moments before encountering Twelve again. The loud, long-winded, disjointed rant that Anne quickly dismissed as nonsense ramblings. The insults she hurled at Twelve through grumbles and mutterings under her breath.

She didn’t think Twelve could hear her. Not that any of it was okay to say. “I… did. I did do that. And I’m sorry.”

Twelve blinked, like she didn’t expect this to happen. Like this wasn’t something that happens often with her. Suddenly, Anne realized how small Twelve was. How young she looked. Suddenly, Anne had a feeling this girl might be younger than her.

“I was tired, and annoyed, and angry. Which didn’t excuse any of what I said! Not one bit. I messed up bad. I’m sorry,” Anne finished. Mincing around the issue was useless. The things she said were terrible and awful, that’s final. Now it’s up to Twelve to accept her apology.

Twelve’s guard visibly lowered. Her stance changed, the distance between her feet shrinking. Her hockey stick fell to her side, not completely letting go but not holding onto it like her life depended on it either. She scratched the corner of her puffed cheek, staring at things that wasn’t Anne.

“Well… d-don’t do it again. Ever. Forever and ever,” she said, stumbling over her words, like this wasn’t something that she does often.

“I promise,” Anne replied, ready with a smile when Twelve looked her way.

Twelve’s pasty cheeks suddenly turned bright red. Been seeing that a lot lately. Wonder why. “This doesn’t mean I’m joining you or anything,” she said quickly, pouting. “For all I know, you could have something to do with this place getting all messed up.”

So she hasn’t completely broken through just yet. The corners of Anne’s smile curled downwards ever so slightly. “I guarantee you, I know exactly jack about what’s going on.”

“Mhm. Sure.” Twelve crossed her arms, or tried to, because she stubbornly refused to let go of her hockey stick. “I know a liar when I see one.”

“If I do know what’s going on, why would I be bothering you?” Anne reasoned.

“To mess with me and slow me down,” Twelve shot back with an accusatory stare that really just gets on your nerves. “Liar.”

Anne’s eye twitched. “I am not lying.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes! You are!”

“I. Am. Not.”

“Yuh-uh!”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Uh-huh!”

“Don’t you uh-huh my nuh-uh!” Anne released a wordless groan to the sky, hands clawing and pulling at the tangles of her hair. “God! What are you, five?!”

Her left hand immediately flew down to cover her mouth. Her chest seized with sudden regret. Dammit, literally not ten seconds after she promised. Twelve continued to glare, silently pointing a finger at the number on her chestplate.

“No, I meant, like-” A sudden thought stopped Anne from finishing the sentence. “Wait, is there actually a Five somewhere? Is that how you got the name?”

A beat passed with Twelve silently, blankly staring. “This is a waste of my time,” she said, turning on her heels to leave in the opposite direction. “I’ve got better things to do.”

Anne didn’t use her powers this time. She jogged up to Twelve and held her back with a hand on her shoulder, like how a normal person would do it. “Finding your friends, right?” she guessed, and was most likely correct. “Me too. We can work together! I’ll help you find your friends, you’ll help me find mine.”

Twelve recoiled away from Anne’s touch, fixed her with a glare for a moment, before storming off. “I can do this by myself! I don’t need you messing with how I do things!” she screamed back.

Anne watched the distance grow between them, jaws clenching. “And you’ve been doing your thing for, what, ten days? More, right? How’s your progress looking so far?” she fired. The question pierced right through Twelve’s armor.

Twelve froze in place. Anne couldn’t see her face, but the panic emanating from her was palpable. When she spoke, she’s quieter that she’s ever been. “I just. Need to look harder.”

“Twelve, you can’t possibly search through this entire world by yourself. You can’t even search through this city by yourself!”

Twelve whirled around, glassy-eyed, to hurl a shrill, “Watch me!”

Twelve swallowed so loud that Anne could hear it. She frantically rubbed the back of her torn-up fingerless gloves against her eyes before a tear could leak out. Anne regretted ever being angry or annoyed at her even more. All Anne could see now was a lost girl, scared for herself, scared for her friends. She knew the feeling well.

“Twelve, if this place really does go on forever, then our best bet is sticking together.”

“How would you know how this place works?” Twelve muttered darkly, even as her eyes began to water again.

“I don’t. I got that from you.” Anne had dredged that up from what little she could parse of Twelve’s words from their previous two meetings. That detail was among the ones that stuck out to her the most. “You said it yourself. This place doesn’t have an end.”

Twelve sniffed. Paused. “What?”

“You said this world is endless.”

There was second, shorter pause. Twelve’s expression twisted, panicked distress melting to give way to indignant anger, like Anne had just said the stupidest thing she’d ever heard in her life.

“This world is called Endless!” She spread her arms wide, to the whole world around her. “This! Is! Endless Island!”

Two brain cells made a spark in Anne’s head.

Ohhhhh. Endless, with a capital ‘E’.

Oooh boy, that’s kinda embarrassing.

Welp. There’s your reason for why the box didn’t choose her for her wit.

Lucky for Anne, Twelve was too busy launching into another frantic tirade to notice her reddening cheeks.

“But it’s all messed up and wrong! I can’t find Brown Roger! Or Flaps! Or Mack and Beefhouse! Dr. Champion, Tasty Troy, Guy Pleasant, Borbo; they’re all gone! It’s not supposed to get dark! This city isn’t supposed to exist! The desert isn’t supposed to be there! And my key isn’t working!”

The stream of words leaving Twelve hit a high-pitched crescendo, stopping only because she’s panting so quickly and heavily Anne’s almost certain she’s on the verge of hyperventilating. Her eyes had lost focus. She’s clutching her hands against her cracked chestplate, hockey stick forgotten and left clattering to the ground. Anne was ready to rush in if she actually collapsed.

“I’m all messed up and wrong too! I’m supposed to be the hero! I’m supposed to be strong, a-and fast, and-” A sob wracked her entire body, sending her to her knees. Anne would’ve been by her side if not for Twelve’s eyes regaining their focus to glare at her, pupils turning into tiny pinpricks. “Me! Not you!”

Before, the outburst would have provoked Anne. Now, she just wanted to give Twelve a hug. “Twelve, this is all really scary, I know, I’ve been there. I don’t know what, or why, or how it happened, and I’m kinda scared myself. But if you come with us, we-”

“You took it.”

Anne’s words died in her throat as Twelve’s voice dropped, turning dark like a terrible nightmare.

“You took it! Didn’t you?!” Twelve growled. It’s scary how much she sounded like an actual animal. “O-or the Butt Witch took it! And gave it to you!”

A noise almost left Anne. Even in the midst of the mess that this devolved into, that last part stuck out like a sore, malformed thumb. “The what what?”

“You’re working with the Butt Witch! Aren’t you?!” Another accusation, with that name brought up again. Was it even a name? Who would choose a name like that?

Twelve bared her teeth. It’s all going downhill, fast. Anne barely had time to scramble for the handle. “Dude, what-?”

Before shit went flying off of it.

Twelve snatched up her hockey stick. Her charge was angry. Loud. Sloppy. She’s aiming for Anne’s left temple.

Energy flowed. Experience did the rest.

The stick never came close to her head. Her right hand caught it in the middle of its arc, and kept it there. Twelve balked, making a choking noise from the back of her throat. Her eyes went wide, glassy enough now that the blue glow could be reflected off of it, but suddenly narrowed dangerously. She pulled, giving her all to free the stick from Anne’s grip, to no avail. A wordless growl escaped her. She dug the heels of her feet into the ground, gritted teeth on full display, and pulled again. Anne didn’t budge an inch.

“No!” she screamed, voice cracking and growing hoarse from all the screaming she did, but she never stopped, punctuated with attempt after attempt to free her hockey stick. “I’m the one! Who gets to be! Super strong!”

Anne kept her face stoic and neutral with every last bit of willpower she has. The sight was getting sadder by the second.

“Give me back my powers! My friends! My world!”

No, that’s enough. Anne couldn’t watch this poor girl breaking down any further. Her grip twisted and she pulled. The stick slipped out of Twelve’s trembling fingers, the girl stumbling forward slightly from the force. She immediately jumped back, like she’s only now realizing that Anne was much, much stronger than she was. The fear in her eyes was something Anne never wanted to see again.

Anne closed the distance. Twelve flinched, shrunk, squeezed her eyes shut.

Anne wasn’t sure what Twelve expected. Probably not a hug, judging from how she completely locked up like a statue when Anne wrapped her arms around her. Anne kept the energy flowing through her body. Sasha and Marcy said she’s warmer that way. Maybe that’s what Twelve needed.

“Them’s fighting words for someone within hugging distance. Before you ask, no, I’m not mad at you. I get how you feel,” she muttered, gently, to Twelve’s ear. “You’re scared - for this world, for your friends, for yourself. You’ve been out on your own for god knows how long, doing whatever you can to survive, in a world that’s not yours. Messed up as it is, I know exactly how that feels.”

Anne pulled away, but still kept Twelve at arm’s length. She still looked like she’s in shock. But that’s better than being lost in hysteria, Anne supposed. “But then I got help. They were strangers to me too, which I guess is scary in a different way, but they really did help me, and everything really started getting better for me with their help.”

At some point in her little speech, Anne realized she’s basically equating herself, Luz, and Tulip with the Plantars, and suddenly she’s worried if they could clear a bar that high.

“I’m not going to force anything on you, but please Twelve, we need-”

Anne was cut off by a sudden sharp peck on her cheek, and Twelve wasn’t the culprit.

Owlbert fluttered in place to her left, wearing what must be the owl equivalent of a frown. Twelve jumped in her embrace, but after the initial surprise, she looked more bewildered than scared at this little owl that suddenly appeared.

“Owlbert, not now,” shooed Anne, returning her attention to Twelve.

Wrong answer, according to Owlbert, because he darted in to pull at her hair with his talons. She retaliated with a swipe of her hand. He swerved out of the way unscathed, the lucky little menace.

“Alright, sorry I ditched you, but I’m kinda in the middle of something here,” Anne hissed, while Twelve silently stared at the strange exchange. Owlbert’s still glowering at her as best as an owl could as she turned to Twelve with her composure regained.

Anne managed half a word before Owlbert landed on her pauldrons and started rapping his beak against the side of her neck like a woodpecker. It didn’t hurt, but with her senses amplified, it was distracting as hell.

She brushed Owlbert off of her, and snapped none too nicely, “Oh my god, what?”

Owlbert didn’t hoot or chirp or make any noise. He silently looked at Anne, then at Twelve, then back at Anne, and slowly shook his head. Something dark and cold shot down Anne’s spine.

A pulse of life. Not right in front of her. Not Twelve’s. But somewhere behind her to her left, creeping closer to the edge of the clearing. She’d been too preoccupied with Twelve to notice it until now. She snapped her head at its direction, and the pulse repositioned itself, circling to the opposite end of the clearing with inhuman speed. The human eye would only see fake shrubs and trees, but for a split second, through the shade and the greens, Anne spotted a glimpse of dark pink fur.

“Twelve wasn’t who you saw, was it?”

Anne sensed, rather than saw, Owlbert shaking his head.

Twelve’s trembling voice cut through the grim silence. “W-what’s going on?”

Anne Boonchuy heard Twelve’s question. Gemheart seized the hilt of the sword on her back without hesitation . The Star of Calamity gave the answer in a low, dangerous growl.

“It’s her.”

Tulip perked up when the barrier dispersed maybe five minutes after Anne left the apartment. She expected Luz to immediately take the chance, running to the balcony and chasing after Anne with a scolding at the ready, but no. Luz rose to her feet, took quick two steps as if to give chase, paused, then seemed to be content with pacing up and down the corridor.

Come to think of it, the apartment door hadn’t been blocked in any way. Luz could have easily gone after Anne even before the barrier dropped. She just chose not to.

Tulip’s curiosity moved her tongue, like it often did. “You’re not going after Anne?”

Luz stopped just short of completing lap thirty one. She looked over her shoulder, at the glass door and the balcony, and answered heavily, “I don’t know.”

“But you were dead set on going with Anne earlier,” Tulip said, halfway between a reminder and a question.

“I knoooow,” Luz deflated, plopping down to sit cross-legged in the middle of the corridor. She spent a few seconds staring at the balcony, chin half-buried in the collar of her cape, contemplating something - what, Tulip couldn’t tell for the life of her - before turning to Tulip on the living room couch.

“Thing is, Anne… just has a sense for these things,” Luz said, the words a result of firsthand memory. “You look at her and you can just tell - she’s been in more fights than she should be. She’s got the experience, y’know?”

Tulip was inclined to agree, and not just for fights. Anne simply has more experience than she should. The life she lived was at least double her age. “So you do trust the call she made.”

Luz nodded, slow at first, but quickly gaining speed and confidence. “And with those frog prophecy powers of hers, she’s pretty much unbeatable!”

As far as Tulip could tell, Luz genuinely believed that. She has the utmost faith that Anne could not only fend for herself against anything this world throws at her, but also emerge victorious. And something told Tulip that faith wasn’t earned through words alone. Luz has seen what Anne was capable of with her own eyes.

“But you’re still worried?” And that was the issue that Tulip had just nipped right in the bud. Despite Luz’s faith, “Something’s making you worry.”

Tulip wasn’t sure what she hit, but she hit something. Luz pressed a closed knuckle against her lips, in almost the exact same way as she did during her story session earlier. It’s what she does when she’s holding something back. And she doesn’t like keeping secrets.

“We…” Luz blew a sigh. Unlike before, now she’d given up on being tight-lipped, “there’s one one more thing you need to know, Tulip.”

Tulip leaned forward so fast in her seat she nearly gave herself whiplash. She wasn’t expecting this, but she’s all ears.

“Amity and Willow, Sasha and Marcy; they weren’t simply separated from us.” Luz paused. Swallowed. The dramatic effect was most likely unintentional. “They were… taken.”

Tulip held back a blooming smile, but stars did twinkle in her eyes. Finally. “Yeah. You slipped that out, earlier.”

“Er, yeah, we always planned on telling you. Just didn’t want to freak you out by dumping too much stuff on you. But it’s better if you know now,” Luz explained with a tinge of regret. “There’s this monster out there. Big, dark pink fur all over, three tails, four arms that are all misshapen and gross. She’s stronger, faster, smarter than any other beast we’ve seen.”

Tulip’s eyebrow quirked. She?

“She took Amity and Willow. Took Sasha and Marcy.” Luz closed her eyes. This hurt for her to say. To remember. “She ambushed me, Amity, and Willow right after we arrived. The only reason I wasn’t taken with them was because I hid. Anne said Sasha and Marcy were picked off while they were split up. By the time Anne realized something’s up, she’s long gone.”

Luz opened her eyes and, once again, harkened Tulip back to her story session in the worst possible way. To the time her eyes were clouded with fear.

“This monster - Anne and I have been calling her… the Jaguar.”

Tulip tried not to focus on how this monster was able to rattle a revolutionary hero who toppled a monarchy, and more on things that doesn’t scare the hell out of her.

“Why Jaguar?”

Luz shrugged. “She just looks like a jaguar. Like a really, really messed up, mutated jaguar.” She breathed in, and breathed out. She’s trying not to shudder. “I think Anne thinks she can take on the Jaguar in a fair fight.”

“But you don’t agree?”

Luz actually looked a bit irked. “I actually fought her. She’s something else. Nothing in the Boiling Isles prepared me for her. I don’t know if anything in Amphibia could prepare Anne.”

Tulip hadn’t actually heard much about the dangers that exist in Amphibia, but she’s going to assume Anne had told Luz all about it. To hear Luz say so with such conviction didn’t help with the cold sweat running down Tulip’s back.

“If there’s anything that can beat Anne-” Luz cut herself off with a grimace, like she’s afraid saying it out loud would cause it to happen. “If a fight with the Jaguar has to happen, I’d feel a lot better if I’m there to fight with her.”

Tulip wasn’t sure if this was comforting at all - probably not - but she said anyway, “It might not be the Jaguar.”

“No, don’t- you’re just tempting it.”

“Tempting what?”

Luz gestured vaguely towards everything. “Fate. Destiny. Whoever’s in charge of writing this story. The whole thing.”

Tulip nearly asked if Luz really believed in those kinds of things, but held herself back. This was hardly the time nor the place to be discussing that. Instead, she resigned herself to watching Luz staring at the balcony, looking almost forlorn in her silence. She briefly wondered if Luz’s anxiety, like her faith, came from experience too. That she once stayed back while someone she cared about went off to face danger on their own for her sake and got hurt, or worse.

A dark pit opened in Tulip’s stomach. Sacrifices were made. That’s what Luz said.

Tulip wanted to slap herself, and maybe Luz too, for that matter. Wallowing and digging themselves deeper into despair won’t do them any good. Inferring from what Luz explained, then Anne’s last encounter with the Jaguar was ten days ago, and Luz’s was eight. What were the chances of that beast suddenly appearing again now, of all times? At best, it could really be Twelve or some other lost individual who’d found themselves stranded in this world. At worst, it could be some other terrible beast, that Anne would have no trouble dispatching. She could feel the pit in her stomach close, little by little.

Until she heard the explosion.

She thought it wasn’t an explosion at first. Or maybe she wished too hard that it wasn’t an explosion. Maybe it was a frying pan in the kitchen that fell over or something. But it felt too powerful, came from too far away. Luz shot to her feet like she’d been electrocuted, disappearing from sight in the direction of the balcony. Tulip stayed frozen for a beat more before she sprinted out of the room.

They both saw it. It was impossible for either of them to not notice. A faint trail of greyish-black against the startlingly clear blue sky, emanating from somewhere over the rows of human-shaped buildings.

“I-It’s okay. Jaguars don’t make explosions,” Tulip shakily said, after noticing the fear and panic dawning on Luz’s face, hoping it’ll help.

But it didn’t, judging from how Luz grimaced and whined, “Noooo, Tulip, don’t say that out loud.”

“Why?”

“Because now it’s going to be the Jaguar and it can make explosions.”

Their eyes returned to the horizon, to the trail of smoke, Tulip’s not sure why. Searching, maybe, for good news. For a sign that things weren’t as bad as it seemed.

Tulip spotted the little bundle of earthy brown feathers before Luz, but Luz was the first to exclaim, “Owlbert!”

Owlbert hovered and slowed until he came to perch on the balcony railing. He didn’t make a sound. Didn’t chirp or hoot or anything. He just looked up at Luz with his big, round eyes. Tulip has never seen an owl look scared before.

Irrational as it might be, she couldn’t help the pang of guilt swelling in her chest.

Luz dashed back inside, leaving Tulip alone with Owlbert. Just in case both her and Luz completely misread the situation, Tulip tried asking, “Is it her? The Jaguar?”

Owlbert stared at her now, still not making a sound. Not that he needed to. Tulip already figured. Ask a stupid question.

When Tulip returned to the living room, Luz was on her knees, gathering up paper and pencil and other scattered miscellaneous components and tucking them inside her satchel. But she’s not stuffing them in a frantic rush like before. She’s filing them, carefully, placing specific glyphs in specific slots. It’s something she’s done hundreds of times before, and something she’s ready to do hundreds of times more.

Luz rose to her feet and whirled around. With her cape flowing behind her, with her satchel strapped across her chest, with her staff gripped decisively in her hand, suddenly, she’s not just Luz anymore. Suddenly, she’s a hero. The light of the Boiling Isles.

“The front door is rigged to shock anyone who touches it that’s not you, me, or Anne. If anything or anyone breaks through, Anne made a hole under the bed that you can hide in. Or, you can go to the balcony of the room next door. It’s close enough to jump to and I already unlocked the door. If I don’t come back in thirty minutes, I want you to-”

“I’m coming with you,” Tulip somehow managed to say through her starstruck stupor. Nobody’s more caught off guard by it than herself. The surprised look on Luz’s face didn’t last for very long, quickly replaced with a quirked smile of understanding.

“I hate hypocrites. Thanks for reminding me,” she said. “You absolutely will.”

Luz walked over to a particular corner of the room and set her staff down for a moment. “Let’s hope Sasha and Marcy are okay with lending their stuff.” She turned to face Tulip, rapier in one hand, crossbow in another. “Your pick.”

Tulip continued to surprise herself by taking both the crossbow and the rapier from Luz’s hands. “I know a thing or two about popping bad guys,” she declared, and a rapier wouldn’t handle all that differently from a donut-holer, right?

Luz’s smile grew, and somehow Tulip’s boldness grew with it. She let Luz strap the crossbow to her left wrist, give her a crash course on how to operate the peculiar firing mechanism, retrieve a quiver of crossbow bolts from within Anne’s backpack to fasten it on Tulip’s left hip, and fasten the rapier and its sheath to her right hip.

Luz stepped back, looking satisfied, and maybe even a little proud? Tulip stared down at herself, at the crossbow and the rapier, a small part of her quietly wishing she still had a reflection, just so she’d know what she looked like armed with an honest-to-god crossbow and rapier. She still had no idea how she’ll fare with these weapons, or if she could compare to what Luz and Anne was capable of. But that won’t stop her from helping them in whatever small way she could. If all she could do was make momentary distractions or take potshots from afar, then she’ll be a constant thorn on the Jaguar’s side. Tenacious. Persistent. Perennial.

“That’s a great look on you,” Luz beamed, but she didn’t wait for a reply before picking her staff back up and turning on her heels. Tulip followed suit. No time to lose.

Out in the balcony again, Owlbert fluttered up to perch on top of Luz’s staff at her signal. Tulip watched, a bit dumbfounded for the umpteenth time this morning, as Luz seemed to screw the little owl in place, feathers and flesh transforming into wood, until he became the once missing owl effigy that formed the head of the staff. So that’s where he came from.

Luz stomped the staff against the floor. The wings of the owl effigy unfurled and spread wide. She straddled the staff, owl pointed forward, and the staff began to levitate, lifting Luz up with it, like a witch on her-

Right. A witch.

Luz offered her hand, and Tulip accepted it. She vaulted one leg over the staff, and suddenly, she’s a backseat flyer to a witch.

“This won’t be a kiddie ride. Hang on tight.”

Tulip did as she was told. The staff jerked in place, then launched into the sky, leaving the safety of the shelter behind, charging into battle under Luz’s command.

“Hang in there, Anne. We’re coming!”

And your next line is, “HOLY SHIT IS THAT KIPO”

I honestly surprised myself with how fast I got this chapter done. Just under three weeks is a new record for me. Obviously, being shorter than the chapter before it for once definitely helped me. This fic is also way more structured and better planned out as we get closer to the Main Event. That helped keep me on track and keep the word count down.

Each girl has been challenging in their own way to write and Reggie is no different. Someone has expressed concern whether or not I can keep her in character without making her come across as too big of a jerk, and boy I felt that. I guess it sorta helped that we first meet her in this desperate, semi-delirious state, so she’s already kinda out-of-character to begin with. But I leave it to y’all to call whether I did good or not.

Anyway, lots of big milestones with this chapter! We are now a third of the way through this fic, we finally meet Reggie, we finally get some info on what kind of world the girls are in, and all the main characters have been introduced! On to the second act!

Up next, things get bad. Until then!

#amphibia #twelve forever #infinity train #the owl house #anne boonchuy #reggie abbott #tulip olsen #luz noceda #Otherworld

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willie-loomis-deserves-love · 4 years ago

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Episode 216

Horror

Literary Gothic The distinction between terror and horror was first characterized by the Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe, horror being more related to being shocked or scared (being horrified) at an awful realization or a deeply unpleasant occurrence, while terror is more related to being anxious or fearful. Radcliffe considered that terror is characterized by "obscurity" or indeterminacy in its treatment of potentially horrible events, something which leads to the sublime. She says in the essay that it "expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life". Horror, in contrast, "freezes and nearly annihilates them" with its unambiguous displays of atrocity. She goes on: "I apprehend that neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr Burke by his reasoning, anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one; and where lies the great difference between horror and terror, but in uncertainty and obscurity, that accompany the first, respecting the dreader evil."

According to Devendra Varma in The Gothic Flame (1966):

The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse. (1)

horror (n.) early 14c., "feeling of disgust;" late 14c., "emotion of horror or dread," also "thing which excites horror," from Old French horror (12c., Modern French horreur) and directly from Latin horror "dread, veneration, religious awe," a figurative use, literally "a shaking, trembling (as with cold or fear), shudder, chill," from horrere "to bristle with fear, shudder," from PIE root *ghers- "to bristle" (source also of Sanskrit harsate "bristles," Avestan zarshayamna- "ruffling one's feathers," Latin eris (genitive) "hedgehog," Welsh garw "rough").

Also formerly in English "a shivering," especially as a symptom of disease or in reaction to a sour or bitter taste (1530s); "erection of the hairs on the skin" (1650s); "a ruffling as of water surface" (1630s). As a genre in film, 1934. Chamber of horrors originally (1849) was a gallery of notorious criminals in Madame Tussaud's wax exhibition. Other noun forms are horribility (14c., now rare or disused), horribleness (late 14c.), horridity (1620s), horridness (1610s). (2)

Sources

(1) Literary Gothic

(2) horror (n.)

#dark shadows #willie loomis #john karlen #collinwood #collinsport #barnabas collins #horror #terror #etymology #literature #216 #gifset

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anhed-nia · 4 years ago

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BLOGTOBER 10/27/2020: THE CURSE OF CATTOBER pt 3 - THE CORPSE GRINDERS

Ted V. Mikel's notorious sickie THE CORPSE GRINDERS is one of a few movies that has become symbolic of my whole journey with psychotronic cinema. Today, I would understand exactly what kind of movie this is, even if I had not seen this exact item: An exploitation movie in the truest sense, just as infamous for its grossout premise as it is for its extraordinary cheapness, delivering all of the moral turpitude and almost none of the over the top effects promised by its attention-grabbing key art--or its dumbfounding title. But when I was a kid, I seriously wondered about these films; worried about them, even.

I wasn't allowed to watch anything that smacked of bad taste, but I still managed to build up a vivid awareness that there were movies out there about forms of perversion and evil that I could never imagine, made by freaks of the highest order. I would hunch nervously over the horror rack at our local mom & pop video mart, earning me the nickname Igor from the amused heshers behind the register, while my parents went through the motions of renting me LABYRINTH for a eight zillionth time. I was allowed to buy exactly one copy of Fangoria (the December 1990 issue featuring LEATHERFACE) before my mother reneged on this gesture of tolerance, but I was allowed to read most anything I wanted--my intellectual hippie folks wouldn't dream of censuring the written word--and I spent many hours, nay years, poring over the Re/Search book of Incredibly Strange Films. This helped create a kind of cinema of the mind for me, in which I tried my best to realize what the movies discussed in the book could possibly be like in real life. The book's detailed descriptions of pictures like SPIDER BABY, THE WIZARD OF GORE, SHE-FREAK, THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS, etc were stimulating in some ways, and only added to my confusion in others. Without seeing them up close, it was hard to make sense of their combination of laughable cheapness, unfunny comedy, and genuinely sickening crimes against human dignity. What these movies are like, is something you can only find out for yourself.

Having said all that, I'm still going to try to tell you what THE CORPSE GRINDERS is like. We open on the rainswept grounds of the Farewell Acres cemetery, where a jerky-addicted ogre called Caleb (Warren Ball) is extracting freshly interred bodies from the earth, as a gaggle of geese honk savagely from being a wire fence. Caleb's dotty wife Cleo (Ann Noble) argues with Caleb for not-the-last time about how his jerky habit is going to ruin his appetite for the dinner she slops out for her filthy baby doll instead, while Caleb bitches about not being paid by a Mr. Landau for his latest job. What's the job, you ask? Selling corpses to the Lotus Cat Food company, where Landau (Sanford Mitchell) has discovered that human flesh is the secret to his success, having kinda-accidentally fed a difficult shareholder into his cat food grinder. It's hard to say exactly how this has led to such a windfall for Landau, especially since he has to produce the illicit pet food one corpse at a time with his neurotic assistant Maltby (J. Byron Foster, my favorite guy in the movie). I guess I've just never dealt with a cat whose specific addiction is so obvious, so oppressive, even, that it forces me to buy the most expensive cat food on the market. This is what is happening to customers whose cats have fallen under the spell of Lotus, and they pay for it with their very lives because Lotus has given their pets a taste for long pig. Landau struggles to find more sources for his secret ingredient, including a mob hitman, giggly morticians who load the bodies up with "pork-flavored fluid (instead of) formaldehyde", and his own employees--"The world is full of ingredients!" he declares, hopefully. Meanwhile, Doctors Howard Glass (Sean Kenney) and Angie Robinson (Monika Kelly) decide to investigate the recent rash of cat attacks; it's hard to imagine how they're going to get to the bottom of anything, amid many makeout breaks and random changes of clothes, but somebody has to stop all these house cats from devouring the rest of Los Angeles, and it might as well be them.

So that's the plot, but THE CORPSE GRINDERS is still a lot weirder than what I've described. You could be forgiven for wondering whether the movie is supposed to take place in Andy Milligan's version of 19th century London, with Cleo's bizarre insistence on a cockney accent, and Caleb's grumbling about finances involving "pounds" (actually pounds of flesh) in their ramshackle dwelling on the edge of a cardboard-and-styrofoam cemetery. A further Dickensian touch is provided by Landau's one-legged deaf-mute assistant Tessie (Drucilla Hoy), who limps around glumly in a sailor dress and Little Orphan Annie fright wig. If she could talk, she would probably sound like the widow Babcock (Zena Foster), whose husband was the first to go into the grinder, and who speaks in a twittering falsetto that would sound more natural coming out of a sock puppet. All of these community theater touches contrast jarringly with the movie's exploitation nature, which revels in scenes of hardboiled scumbags shaking each other down, of women taking their clothes off for literally no reason at all, and in the suggestion that the gloopy pink paste extruding out of the cat food grinder was once a beautiful girl or a rotting cadaver. The grinder itself is a sight to behold, reminding me at once of something from SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS, and the Wish Squisher invention from the MST3K episode of SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS. The metallic gizmos whirring along its façade glint in the fabulous gelled lights over the production line, optimistically evoking the rich purples and greens of a Mario Bava picture; in a movie that's explicitly about money woes, in a subgenre that's specifically known for its cheapness, it's nice that director Mikels shelled out to add a little extra style to the grinding scenes.

And on that note, I would like to propose, without having much to say about it yet, that some exploitation films are allegories for exploitation filmmaking itself. I don't include all genre movies about money in this category: it's easy to identify many thrillers as being about more general economic conditions that affect us all, including a lot of noir entries. But then there are movies like THE CORPSE GRINDERS, or LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, or COLOR ME BLOOD RED (or its predecessor A BUCKET OF BLOOD), in which the main character tries to solve his financial woes by committing an utterly dehumanizing crime. In these three examples, there is the revelation that honest work doesn't pay, and that money is only gained through the individual's willingness to exploit sensational imagery and/or decadent sensations to tease, titillate, and even addict the customer. It's hard not to see Landau, Seymour, and Adam Sorg as avatars for Ted Mikels, Roger Corman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis, in their similar quests to prey on the craven appetites of the public, at a minimum cost for a maximum payout. If you have other movies you'd like to add to my list, please feel free to reach out.

All told, it's hard not to like THE CORPSE GRINDERS for its sheer audacity--first, in selling something so meager as a "real movie", and second, for making the movie be about THIS. Also, all of this is significantly enriched when you know a little something about Mikels, a polyamorous eccentric who lived in a castle, whose grounds--and guard geese!--were used for the scenes in Farewell Acres. I'm not even going to try to discuss his prolific exploitation career and personal exploits, because that would be better handled by a longform piece on him specifically. It seems like a few documentaries have attempted the subject, but I don't know whether they're any good. It would be nice if Frank Hennenlotter would give it a try, or someone similarly capable, if there even is such a person. In the meantime, I will contribute the sole piece of information that my own scant research has turned up in preparing for this Blogtober entry: That THE CORPSE GRINDERS was co-written by Arch Hall Sr, and Joe Cranston--father of the now-iconic Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston. I don't know if I'd call that a reason to see the movie, but luckily there are plenty of other reasons to check out THE CORPSE GRINDERS this Halloween. If you don't, then you can never really know what the hell I'm talking about.

#blogtober #2020 #the corpse grinders #ted v mikels #horror #exploitation #cattober #arch hall sr #joe cranston #sean kenney #monika kelly #sanford mitchell #j byron foster #warren ball #ann noble

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ranjxtul · 5 years ago

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The Necromancer’s Doctor

Pairings: Anna Ripley/Delilah Briarwood, Delilah Briarwood/Sylas Briarwood (secondary) or basically 4.5k words of self indulgence

As far as warnings and possible triggers there is a moderate amount of violence.

Delilah Briarwood is intrigued by Anna Ripley. That’s just it, and the fascination remains abnormally steadfast considering her past fancies. She is a woman of deep conviction and swirling feelings which often lead to volatile decisions. A person catches her eye; she and Sylas lure them into bed until Delilah has had her fill. If Sylas is uninterested, he lets his wife act as she wishes, understanding her infatuation is brief and superficial.

After all, Sylas is the love of her life. She broke the world for him. She has never questioned her devotion to the man she loves. From vivid memories of their life before his death, completing the ritual of vampirism, to now, she hasn’t questioned it. Her emotions guide her, and they don’t sway away from Sylas.

She felled the world for them, and the world will soon begin to fall at their feet. They have conquered Whitestone and taken over with an iron fist, allowing little room for question. Any resistance is squelched quickly; they are the Briarwoods: powerful, fearsome, and enigmatic.

The only person more enigmatic Delilah has encountered is Dr. Anna Ripley. The dark haired woman is unwaveringly ambitious and hungry to learn. The lady appreciates this. Dr. Ripley’s practical, almost cold nature entranced the necromancer from the first weeks of their partnership in Whitestone.

She has believed it would pass and the Doctor would become another one of many of her toys. She has taken her to bed and gotten her fill. Memories of nights etched into the black canvas of her mind refuse to fade. She always remembers the way Anna’s hands feel in her hair, pulling, taking advantage of Delilah’s rare submission, and god memories of Anna’s tongue fucking her are almost enough alone to leave her wanting more.

After the first several times, Sylas lost any interest he had, and Anna never seems to be interested in him intimately or otherwise. Then, it’s just Delilah and Anna. Both are happier this way and their agreement is unspoken: casual sex, that’s it.

Dr. Ripley doesn’t quite know why the Lady keeps coming back to her. She’s observant, and she knows Delilah is burns hot in her obsession for a brief moment and goes cold the next. Anna’s not necessarily complaining. These ‘midnight’ trysts satisfy any needs she might have. It is really is practical in her mind, and that’s what grounds Dr. Ripley.

She’s always been grounded in the carnal, experimental nature of her work. There’s no need to be so formal dissecting a corpse or experimenting upon something, and how she’s hated the rigid formalities of life. She sees little need in most ceremonies and the indulgent practises of others. Of course she indulges herself occasionally but she sees no reason to implement these things in her life permanently.

And Delilah is the opposite. She indulges herself on whim. Her plans are elaborate and grandiose, and Dr. Ripley doesn’t know the full extent of any plans. She does as she’s instructed, only prodding where she deems necessary or perhaps where there is something of particular interest for her to learn.

Lady Briarwood’s magic is also polar to Anna’s skillset. Her magic bends and alters the very fingers of fate. She bereaves those long dead of a peaceful, well deserved rest and speeds those with a long life’s thread toward the grave. In a stark contrast, Anna deals in mortal flesh and blades, really nothing she believed would interest a necromancer.

Yet, as time passes, she feels eyes on her as she works, intense searching eyes. Searching for what, she has no clue, but every so often she will feel Delilah watching her work. Once wryly, she comments, “I didn’t know you had any interest in medicine.”

She thinks she sees a flicker of some emotion that is so brief it’s indistinguishable flash across Delilah’s eyes before she recovers and her smooth, low voice answers, “I can’t help but check on your progress occasionally.”

Dr. Ripley gives a simple nod, humming as a verbal response. Delilah watches too much to be doing just what she admits.

Anna refuses to push though. She likes piecing together the puzzle that is Delilah Briarwood. It’s another intellectual challenge of sorts. By day she can occupy herself with her own experiments and the Briarwood’s orders. By night she can dismantle Lady Briarwood in her head over and over again until she understands.

Delilah knows she deceives well, but deceiving Anna Ripley is a different matter. The scientist can probably see through her deflection, but that wound to her pride doesn’t stop her from persisting. She herself is trying to figure out what it is about Anna that makes her so alluring. She can make a list of the things she admires about Anna: intelligence, ambition, medical prowess, wit, a certain other set of skills.

She spends ages contemplating this list, going over it over and over again in her mind as her agreement with Anna remains in place. Subconsciously, sex becomes more than just sex. She finds herself beginning to feel for the Doctor. When she feels she feels violently and quickly. She knows the difference between obsession and feeling.

Sylas begins to notice. He expected his wife to drop Anna after a couple weeks, but it’s been months. She is more distant. He wonders what’s happening in that pretty head of hers, and when asked she brushes it off with that charming little smile of hers. Often, she spends her nights with Anna and she during the day she spends more and more time ‘observing Anna’s progress.’ Sylas can feel a seething envy in his chest. Why should his wife have such marked and prolonged adoration for someone meant to be temporary?

So, he confronts her. “Delilah?” He asks as she enters their room one night.

“Yes, darling?” she raises a brow lazily in his direction.

“What is Dr. Ripley to you?”

The necromancer opens her mouth to respond, but almost hesitates. She does not know she has mulled over this question in her mind. She proceeds nonetheless, “An object of fancy.”

“Is that all?” he asks incredulously.

“Yes, really.” She appraises him from her vanity. His face easily readable after all these years. His traditionally stoic features twitch imperceptibly and his mouth is curved into a frown. “Are you really jealous?” she teases standing up and striding toward the bed in the room. He opens his mouth to respond, but she covers it with a delicate finger, “Let me show you how much I love you then, hm?”

His face morphs into one of hunger and he gives her an eager nod. In a moment, her lips are pressed fiercely to his and she’s straddling his lap.

That time doesn’t feel like it used to. Delilah is a woman of passion and she doesn’t feel what she has with Sylas in the past. As he roams the night after they’re finished, she lies there, contemplating the question posed to her before: What is Anna?

What does she feel for Anna? Has this crossed her threshold for obsession into more unwittingly? She tests this theory the next night as she finds herself at Ripley’s mercy. Her body is alight with energy.

Now, she is putting the puzzle together for herself. She believed Sylas was her great love? Can someone have more than one great love? She decides possibly because she can’t deny that she feels something for the doctor. Not just in the bedroom, but she adores conversing with her, watching her work, and seeing the moments where she is more human, and will give herself grin of victory or laugh at something said. It’s mesmerising. Delilah has grown to love each one of these things individually and on her own, while subconsciously she realises she is falling out of love with Sylas.

The latter is more concerning than the former. She broke the world for Sylas, she ‘signed a deal’ to pluck him from death’s grasp. In both of their minds, it had been them against a world ready to be taken. She doesn’t regret making her sacrifice for Sylas and she can’t identify where anything could have gone wrong.

Her head spins with thoughts and unwittingly rare tears prick at the corners of her eyes. This isn’t supposed to happen. It’s always been Lord and Lady Briarwood standing at the crest of the world, and lately it’s been them conquering bit by bit. She never imagined this happening, then she just had to meet Anna and let her fascination turn into whatever this is.

It hits her in full, she is indeed falling in love with Ann Ripley. This how she felt when she and Sylas were together in their hayday. She felt all of the passion and interest for him just as she now feels for Anna.

She’s not out of love with Sylas yet, bur rather a pendulum and Dr. Ripley and Sylas are opposite ends he is swinging further and further toward Anna, and she’s never considered herself a volatile woman. If anything she views herself to be obstinate and cold. This fact only adds to the confusion. She’s been so steadfast for so long, so this doesn’t make sense. On the other hand though, it adds a layer of validity to her feelings: this isn’t just a frivolous whim.

Not in a million years would she gave guessed that Anna Ripley would be different than any of the other people she and Sylas brought into bed. She thinks back, attempting to pinpoint a moment where Anna became more. She thinks back to their nights, to the discussions about their plans, to simple conversations, to the moments after they’re done for a night and Anna is vulnerable.

The necromancer enjoys seeing people at their most vulnerable; it makes her feel safer. She doesn’t always hide what goes on in that head of hers well, and seeing others vulnerabilities and every feeling that washes through them is comfort. It’s also somewhat of a manipulator and power move, but when she sees Anna in intimate, true moments, she only wants more. There is no inclination to manipulate, only to discover more. Perhaps it was lying there beside Anna, exchanging minimal words and the time spent late in Delilah’s study at first discussing work and then eventually drifting to other topics which causes the Lady to begin to feel something more for Anna.

She quickly brushes away the tear that streaks down her face now. Despite the confusion, it is not the time to cry.

Delilah speaks to Anna about it the next night. The two women lay in bed, Anna wrapped loosely around the wizard, a hand lazily tracing patterns on her side. “Anna, darling?” Delilah’s voice inquires.

She hums in response and Delilah rolls over to face her, “I want to talk to you about something.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve thought a lot about a particular matter, and that happens to be what you are to me,” she starts searching the Doctor’s face for any sort of hint as to what she could be thinking.

“Oh?” Anna raises a brow, an unexpected wave of nerves coursing through her body.

Delilah continues, “And I’ve mulled it over extensively. You’re much more than what our agreement as of now stands. Look, I won’t beat around the bush about it, I think I’m falling in love with you.” This is said as calmly as she can muster, her eyes meeting Anna’s. The fear of rejection looms, but if that were the case she could rid herself of Ripley one way or another.

Ripley’s quick fails her as she opens her mouth to respond and nothing comes out. Delilah’s statement is loud and clear, and much more than Anna ever expected. Similarly, the doctor has not only been appraising her bedmate but her own feelings in the situation. The difference is she’s not come to such a conclusion. For once in her life, she is insecure and unsure of her stance.

She is sure that Delilah is more than her boss, more than her acquaintance, more than a source of pleasure and stress relief, but she doesn’t know if Delilah is her love. Truth be told, she never contemplated that scenario.

“You think?” she deflects. Delilah is usually so sure, then again, she loves, or loved Sylas for many years. This is new territory, and she’s still married. Ripley also suspects she had a hand in Sylas’ current state, and that takes devotion.

“Yes. I’m in a rather precarious situation with these feelings, as you might imagine. Hiding them would do me no good, and confessing at least opens avenues for new possibilities, hm?” She raises a brow in return, a small smirk pulling at the edge of her lips.

Anna sighs in response, collecting what she wishes to say in her head before she speaks, “That is true. This is just,” she pauses, “not quite what I expected.”

“That’s fair I suppose,” she takes a moment to observe the Doctor. Her face isn’t contorted or lying flat. She seems to be somewhere in between a faint smirk and frown. “Don’t overthink. What do you feel?” She finally asks. Anna deals in practicality rather than emotion, and the necromancer just wishes that she’d speak.

“I’m unsure. I know what I feel is greater… affection than one feels for an employer or friend or bed mate, but past that I don’t know. And I thought you loved Sylas” She leaves an unspoken, ‘I’m not like you,’ hanging in the air. God, in this moment she wishes she were more like Delilah and could know and act on what she feels.

“Well, take some time to figure it out, love and people can fall out love, have two great loves I think,” she responds, testing the waters with a new pet name. Ripley almost smiles at it. Instead of verbally responding, she lays a gentle kiss on Delilah’s lips.

In the coming days, Anna ruminates on her thoughts and feelings. She pays close attention when she interacts with Delilah and there’s an undeniable flutter in her stomach when she knows Delilah will be in some capacity spending time with her. When did she begin to feel like this, or has it been there for quite sometime and she’s just repressed it? That she cannot decipher.

It frustrates her; unlike a disease or wound she can’t pick it apart until she determines a solid etiology. With her own emotions she is stumbling her way through a fog and over rugged terrain unsure where it started and where it ends.

Anna wonders what it is about Delilah that draws her in. There’s plenty of possible answers: her power, her intelligence, her charm, her face. Many people have fallen for at least one of those traits. Anna wonders if it’s a combination of it all, and perhaps in trying to puzzle such an enigma together, she stumbled upon long buried parts of the woman in question that only those intimate with her can see.

Two weeks later, Anna gives her answer, “I want to try this. I won’t name it, but I want you.” Now, that statement means more than just wanting her body, it means wanting all of Delilah Briarwood.

The necromancer’s charm seems to increase tenfold. If Anna can say one thing, it’s that she knows how to romance a woman.

The more time Delilah begins to intentionally spend with Anna, the more her feelings intensify. She tries to see if her feelings for her husband truly are waning by putting effort into romance with him, yet it doesn’t feel like it used to. Simultaneously, what she has with Anna feels so right and so wrong.

Sylas observes as keenly as he can, his wife’s attempts to romance him only marginally throwing him off. Anger builds as he begins to realise what’s going on. He asks Cassandra to confirm and she only tells him whispers of what she hears, but it’s enough. It’s enough to know that his wife feels for Anna.

“Delilah,” he confronts her as she slips into their bedroom one morning.

“Yes, darling?”

“I know what you’re doing with Anna.” His voice is cold.

Delilah stops in her tracks, recovering not a second later to the best of her ability, “And what do you mean by that?” She knew he’d find out, but has been preparing what she could say and to no avail yet.

“I hear and see things. Cassandra does to. You call her ‘love.’ You look at her with the same look in your eyes that you used to look at me with.”

Her vision burns hot for a brief second as she thinks of Cassandra telling Sylas whatever she’s seen. Quickly she clears her mind, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s all just business as usual.”

Sylas’ eyes flash, “Oh I think you do know, and you’re mine, not hers. I thought you knew that,” he says a growl behind his words.

“Excuse me?” Delilah raises a brow, and crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“You heard me. You’re mine.” And in a feat of preternatural speed, Sylas is in front of her and his hand finds its way onto her jaw. Before she can react, her lips are against his and she breaks back, pushing with a hand on his chest. His fingers still dig in to her jaw.

“I am not something to be owned, Sylas. I chose to be yours,” she warns dangerously, meeting his eyes. “Now. Let go of me.” His hand stays where it is.

“So now are you choosing not to be mine?” he spits pulling her closer.

Instead of responding, Delilah sets a spell off against his chest and he’s forced back, holding the now smoking spot where her hand lay seconds before.

“You bitch.” He lunges forward again, and this time grabs her tightly, pinning her arms behind her. She can feel his sharp teeth grazing the flesh of her neck. “Answer my question.”

“So what if I am?” she questions, her tone not revealing the fear she feels. She knows Sylas is powerful and quick to anger in certain situations from past experience, but she’s never been on the receiving end of it. He was always her loving, protective husband.

Though, things change just as her feelings have changed, his have. “How can you erase years of love? How can you throw it away in just under a year?” he hisses, his teeth scraping her skin.

“Do you think I know? Do you think I have control of what I feel?” She manages to wiggle a hand around to send another necrotic blast into his chest. The impact causes him to relinquish his grasp on her.

She spins to see his face looking, angry and broken. She doesn’t exactly blame him, but she does blame him for how he just acted. “You broke the world for us, for me,” he seethes.

“I did, darling, and now it seems I’ve broken our world. For that, I’m sorry,” she is sorry. She wishes her years with Sylas had outweighed what she feels for Anna Ripley so she could have avoided this situation.

“I don’t want your apologies!” he hisses, once again lunging toward her. She almost dodges, but hits her head on the wardrobe as she attempts to move through the narrow escape. This impact gives Sylas enough time to restraint her against him again, and in a moment of passion, he bites into her neck. He’s done it before, but this time he drinks and drinks, savouring the way Delilah writhes.

It’s then she notices their door is still ajar. She manages to blast it open more for someone to see. Sylas is too busy with his blood, and Delilah would fight back if she weren't heavily held back and currently having her life force drained.

Eventually, Sylas finishes drinking and just rests his head in the crook of her neck. At this very moment, Anna happens to pass by the door. It is an astronomical coincidence. She looks in, and arches a brow at the woman she is growing to love, who mouths ‘help’.

Sylas detects this near imperceptible shift in motion and looks up to see the dark haired doctor in the doorway. Suddenly, he relinquishes his grasp on Delilah and she catches herself against the nearest piece of furniture in order to steady herself.

“You took my wife,” growls his gaze on Ripley, and he goes in to attack. In a moment of wonder, she is able to dodge and draw one of her guns, it’s simple, strong metal with a metallic glint, even in the low lighting.

“I did no such thing. She chose me,” the doctor defends herself, her finger ghosting the gun’s trigger.

“You existed and wormed your way in. You took her and broke our world!” Sylas counters. Seldom is he blind with anger, but now he is.

He lunges again and Ripley shoots, hitting him square in the chest three times before he reaches her and rakes his claws down her side, tearing open her blouse. She hisses in pain barely able to deflect as he attempts to hold her in one place.

Now Delilah is spurred into action. She fixates on Sylas, attempting to hold him in one place, freeze his joints, but he pushes back and resists. He lunges again for Ripley who slams her elbow into his chest and in a split second is able to fire again. The bullets make their mark.

Sylas’ face contorts in pain; however, he’s still close enough to grab Anna and catch her off guard this time. His fangs without hesitation sink into her skin. In retaliation, Delilah shoots another blast of necrotic energy his way. He isn’t as hurt by it as he should be, but it’s enough for him to drop Ripley, who manages not to fall.

She begins to make her way back toward Delilah, in hopes that if she reaches her she could Dimension Door them out until Sylas gets a hold of himself. A mortal is no match for vampiric speed though, especially a dazed one. As he nears, she shoots again, hitting him in the neck twice. He is only minorly deterred as he swipes for Ripley again. The wounds begin to close themselves as he does so.

She fires again, reaching Delilah, and misfires, the bullet not exiting the barrel but breaking through the metal itself and richoting toward the drawn, thick curtain in the room. The bullet leaves a small but searing hole in the curtain while the paint crash of glass is heard. and Delilah reaches to touch Anna, presumably to cast her spell.

Sylas, seeing what she’s doing, and blinded by his anger toward the Doctor, grabs for her arm, catching her wrist tightly. Delilah glares at him, “Let me go.” The vampire makes no such moves and only stares into her intense gaze. Anna slips from her side, an idea popping into her head.

She makes her way quickly and quietly toward the curtain. It’s thick, bullets would be inefficient and noisy. A knife would be too slow. Taking a deep breath, she decides to chance it with her own physical strength. While Ripley isn’t the weakest, she knows physically she isn’t the strongest either. Nonetheless, she takes a hold of the curtains in two hands and yanks as hard as she can; much to her pleasure, it gives. The thick material shreds around its metal rod and the rod itself tumbles down on one side and the light of the day fills the room.

As the rays hit Sylas, the smell of charred flesh begins to fill the air and his wounds stop sewing themselves back up. He breaks Delilah’s gaze to look at Ripley and in the process, catches a full face of sun. Flesh melts off of bone and he lets go of Delilah as the sun saps his life force and strength. He begins to pace backward into the room, but by then it’s too late. His body swirls into mist for a split second and then the rays of the sun do their job. He is gone, just like that.

The room is deathly silent. Both women stand almost listlessly, processing what has just happened. Silent tears streak down Delilah’s face and she’s so drained both literally and figuratively, she can’t fight them. Just because things had changed doesn’t mean she wanted Sylas dead. There would always be a part of her that had respect and a certain love for him. She did not want him dead, but here they were. In hindsight though, she should have expected anger when she told him what was going on between her and Anna. He was a possessive man, and she knows he had a temper only rivaled by her own.

Numbly, she reaches a hand to feel the bite wound on her neck and looks over at Anna who stares where Sylas stood. Finally, the doctor looks at the necromancer. For once there is no attempt to veil what she feels and Anna can discern the shock and grief etched into her face through her blank stare and the tears glistening on her pale cheeks.

Slowly, the doctor makes her way over, “You should lie down,” she advises in a soft tone, noting the wound on her neck.

“Not here,” Delilah says blindly grasping for Anna’s hand which the doctor gladly gives.

“Then we’ll go to my room.” Delilah only nods in response, allowing the shorter woman to lead her through the castle halls. The undead servants pay her no abnormal attention, and thankfully she doesn’t encounter Cassandra. Once they reach Anna’s room, she helps Delilah lie down on the bed. “I’ll be back.”

She returns a moment later holding a glass of water for Delilah to drink. “Here. You’re weak.” Listlessly, for once, she takes it as Anna inspects the bite on her love’s neck. It’s deeper than usual. “This should heal on its own… but you will need to rest,” Ripley declares.

“He’s dead,” Delilah says quietly instead of responding. “He’s dead,” she repeats, a bit louder this time.

With a sigh, Anna sits on the edge of the bed, “I didn’t mean to kill him. I was only thinking in self defence. I wanted him to be hurt enough so we could escape and let him collect himself.”

“I know… he’s dead. I broke the world for him, and brought him back and he’s dead.” She’s not angry with Anna. She feels as if she should be, but she can’t bring herself to be. Sylas was attacking with the intention to maim and possibly kill. Ripley did what she had to, just as Delilah did.

Anna doesn’t question. She cannot fathom what must be swirling through the Lady’s head. Even if one falls out of love, that doesn’t mean you lose love for that person. All she can do is take one of Delilah’s delicate hands and say, “I know.” For a moment allows herself to be optimistic and have faith, perhaps things will be okay. Gingerly, she reaches to wipe away Delilah’s tears with her other hand. The necromancer leans into her touch.

“Hold me?” Delilah asks quietly. More than anything, she just doesn’t want to be alone.

“Of course.”

#critical role #delilah briarwood #anna ripley #sylas briarwood

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eternityunicorn · 6 years ago

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Elijah’s Eternity Part Four

Author: eternityunicorn

Genre: Romance/Fantasy/AU

Warnings: Violence, Language, Possible Smut

Pairing: Elijah Mikaelson x OC

Summary: Elijah Mikaelson didn’t know what to expect when he encountered the strange archer in the night, but he certainly didn’t think his whole world would be turned upside down by it. Yet, he quickly learns that she is more than what she seems, having come looking for an Original after a large spike in supernatural being populations started cropping up on Earth a thousand years ago. Now, he must help her decide if the supernatural community should stay on their home planet or leave it for good? A task that is made more complicated along the way, as his life is changed forever.

NOTE: OC is my main character from my novel. Also, elements from my novel are also present.

———————————————————————————————————

The sight that Elijah witnessed was one of sheer amazement, a word he seemed to use a lot in regards to Eternity. She moved with such speed that even his vampire eyes could barely keep track of her. She was there and then she was gone, almost like she was weaving in and out of reality. She had the grace of a well seasoned warrior, using a companion of archer and swordsmanship to subdue their assailants, whatever they were.

Within was seemed seconds the group as dead, in bloody heaps on the ground. Then once the battle was over, he witnessed her curl her hand up close to her chest in a sideways fist, save for her index and middle fingers, which stood straight up. Her head was bowed and it seemed to Elijah that she was offering a prayer of some kind, but then he saw the corpses vanish as of they had never been there.

Vampires were capable of great feats; super strength and agility, invulnerability to injuries and illness, for the most part, and excellent stamina. The only things that could kill his kind were the sun, a stake through their hearts, or decapitation. For Elijah, however, being an Original afforded him invulnerability to even these things, making him an even more formidable enemy...or ally.

Yet, he’d never seen someone with that level of skill that she displayed. Never again would he see such ability, except for however long he was around her. He found himself blown away, as would anyone who saw what he had just bared witness to.

“That was...impressive,” he said, coming up to her side just as she willed away her weapons and returned to the elegance of her white dress. “Remind me never to anger you.” He smiled.

Eternity returned his smile with a smirk of her own. “Yes, I’m a bad ass bitch that shouldn’t be crossed. Ever,” she boasted jokingly, “and done you forget it, sir.”

Elijah cringed at her use of explicits. It sounded...out of place with her sweet, soft spoken tone of voice. Yet, he said nothing against it. He didn’t feel comfortable speaking his thoughts on the matter. They simply hasn’t arrived at that point. So, instead, he turned his attention to those grotesque things they had encountered.

“Just what were those horrendous things anyway?” He asked her with distaste.

“Demons,” she replied casually. “Low levels to be exact.”

“Low levels?”

“Aye,” nodded Eternity. “In some immortals species, there are ranks of strength. The stronger the immortal, the more beautiful and civilized. The weaker, the more grotesque and animalistic.”

“I see.”

“These demons probably stumbled through one of several portals that exist by mistake.”

“Mistake?”

“Aye. It happens,” she shrugged. “There are holes in the barrier between this world and the Immortal Universe that pop up from time to time. Sometimes, creatures like these ones with no power of their own, find their way here through them. They were probably drawn to me once they crossed over, which was why they were here specifically.”

He still didn’t quite understand. “Drawn to you?”

“Yes,” a somewhat dark look crossed her delicate face then, “the dark always seeks the light.”

Elijah didn’t know what to make of that look, but it vanished from her face quickly. The light returned to her features as she turned her attention to him. She smiled brightly again, as if the phenomenon hadn’t happened at all.

“Well, now that that’s over, let us go for a walk and I shall tell you what I meant to yesterday,” Eternity said, tucking her hand in the crook of his elbow again, her other hand on his bicep. “There is much that must be said and the night is short.”

They began to walk back into sleeping town. Most people were warm in their beds or at least, safely tucked away in their little hovels. Therefore, it was quiet and easy to speak openly about the secrets that Eternity needed to share with him. No doubt to the free humans that remained out, they walked together casually, looking like a pair of lovers on a romantic stroll. Not that Elijah minded if they did. He was sure they looked quite like the sophisticated pair, him and her.

“So, what does the forgotten history you spoke of have to do with me?” Elijah asked, prompting her to begin her explanation.

“Oh, it has plenty to do with you, Mr. Mikaelson,” replied Eternity cheekily. “I’ve told you that immortals were taken out of the picture on Earth and other mortal worlds too. Well, my friend, that means that technically, you and the rest of the supernatural community is illegal. By the laws set forth, you’re criminals, the lot of you.”

He cast her a sideward glance with an arched eyebrow, “Is that right? Do tell?”

“You see, ever since the great exodus of immortals, there has been a remanent of magic left behind in the Earth,” she explained. “Humans born with magic powers aka witches were always here, just in such small quantities it didn’t matter. They were left here to live. But as humans do, they multiplied in greater and greater numbers, these gifted humans. Still wasn’t too much of a concern, but then the first werewolves were born, and another new supernatural species was created. And finally, your witchy mother created the first vampires. Nothing was done for a long time, but the conflicts and the bloodshed has grown since that day a thousand years ago, involving not only those supernatural creatures, but innocent humans too. And now it is a concern. So, here I am.”

“Why is it your duty to deal with this...issue?”

“Well, every kingdom needs a regent, right? There had to be some sort of government created after Ceres spit the universe to keep the balance, yes?”

He pulled them to a stop then. Elijah turned to her with narrowed eyes as he wrapped his head around what she was implying. “Wait. What are you saying exactly?”

“I am the Universal Queen,” she answered plainly. “Still, not a god though.”

Elijah grinned slightly, “I don’t know. It’s sounding more and more like you might be one.”

She was stern and unyielding then. “No, I am not. In fact, I loathe such a title. I didn’t create existence or the one universe before the division.. Neither has any other immortal, despite what they might say. I am simply a guardian, with the power to protect all. Both literally and figuratively, mind you.”

“Alright, alright. I understand.”

They began walking once more as Eternity continued her explanation, “As I was saying, the new supernatural community isn’t supposed to exist. Vampires, werewolves, and witches, the lot of you shouldn’t be here in the human world. Yet, you are and the issue is complicated because by all rights, you are all based in humanity; with mortal origins. Gifted humans or cursed depending on perspective. Humans with immortal capabilities, if that makes sense. It makes my decision very complicated.”

“And what decision is that?”

“Whether or not the supernatural community should leave this world and join the immortals on the other side of the divide.”

He took a moment to think on that, absorbing the information. “What if you decide to make us leave and you’re met with resistance?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” grinned Eternity. “I’ve been known to to be very persuasive, usually without fists even.” She lightly punched his arm and then gave a short laughed. “I can win them with diplomacy surely. Though, if I have to assert dominance, I can do that too quite easily.” She winked at him flirtatiously, though he wasn’t sure if she had meant it that way.

Moving on from it, Elijah chuckled a little at her playfulness. She may have had that shining grace that was regally otherworldly, but the more time he spent with her and the more comfortable she became, he began to notice am almost down to earth humanlike quality to her. It was quite the contrast in her personality. If he hadn’t seen the godlike side of her, he could have easily thought she was Earth based. Perhaps an unusual witch.

“It’s because I’ve spent a lot of time here on Earth, amongst humankind,” she answered his thoughts. Then quickly she sheepishly apologized, “I’m sorry.”

He paused in his step and placed his opposite hand over her that was on his bicep, “It’s okay. I’m getting used it...and I’m coming to not mind it. I understand it’s just what you do.”

Eternity smiled, “Oh, it is, but you haven’t seen all my tricks and how do the humans put it? My mad skills.”

They continued walking as he commented on her reply to his thoughts, “So, you spend a lot of time here. How come I’ve never heard of you long ago then?”

“I’m a well kept secret,” she shrugged. “I’ve met people, of course. King Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn, for example. I also met a Pharaoh of Egypt once and I was there when the RMS Titanic sank. That last one was not one of my finer moments. I had been...distracted, and failed to save those poor people.” She looked upset with herself for a moment, but recovered quickly to say, “Though, in the time of Henry the Eighth, I did save Anne Boleyn from her fate.”

“You did?”

“Aye, I did,” she boasted proudly. “History says she died that day in 1536, and by all accounts she did, but it was an illusion - a trick. I did have help in it,” she paused for a second, that dark look from before returning to her face before disappearing again as quickly as it came. “Anyway, I gave her life back to her, albeit a different one, so that she could live to see her daughter, Elizabeth, grow up and become the great queen she did eventually become.”

Just as before, Elijah didn’t comment on that dark look that had crossed her face again. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what caused it since the look seemed born of some deep sadness, like someone she had cared about had betrayed her. So for the time being, not wanting to intrude, he pretended he hadn’t seen it. Deciding it was best to move on.

Then he noticed they had reached the end of the main road of town and it was there that they stopped. He felt her disconnect from her hold on him, feeling a little more disappointed than he probably should have. Then she turned to him fully with that grace of hers, that queenly grace it turned out.

“I came in search of a Mikaelson to gain insight into the new supernatural community,” she said. “I have much to learn about you, about the world in which you live, in order to make my decision about what to do about said world. I cannot let supernatural creatures exist here, mortal born or not, if the danger to humanity is too great. It didn’t work out so well the first time human and supernatural coexisted, after all. I need to know if leaving things as they are is the right thing or if removing the community is necessary. I would like to stay with you, to see it for myself, your world, so my decision can be well informed.”

Elijah was a bit surprised by her request, but logically it made sense. Besides, he did figure it might come to this. She was hoping to meet one of the Originals, since they had started this whole supernatural community, allowing it to grow to the well established point it was.

Thinking about that, it was probably a good thing it had been him that she had encountered. If she had met Niklaus or Kol, no doubt they would be dead and the rest of the supernatural community would be banished from their home world forever. While seeing other worlds and meeting beings like Eternity was appealing, he personally didn’t want to leave the world that he had been born into. He was certain that most others would agree. He might not have been a saint, having done a lot of dark things in his time, he still wasn’t the murderous, unhinged madmen that his younger brothers could be. He at least attempted to keep an honor code to live by, if only to pretend he was more than a monster.

“I would be honored to help you in your endeavor, Your Majesty,” he answered her inquiry with mock flourish.

Eternity cringed, wrinkling her nose at him. “Don’t call me that, please. I may be a queen, yes, but here in this one world in which I am not know, I am just Eternity. Although, my friends do affectionately call me E.” She then smiled cheekily at him.

“Fine, as you wish, my lady,” he jested and laughed when she wrinkled her nose at him again with a smile of her own.

“No, don’t say that either.”

“Alright, alright. I promise I will refrain from such...formalities.”

“You better.”

They laughed.

Elijah found their companionableness even more profound than it had been twenty four hours before. It seemed impossible to be as such in an incredibly short amount of time, but here they were. And now, they had agreed upon a partnership, one that would define the fates of countless people. Even though it was a great task to ensure the supernatural would be able to remain in their birth world, Elijah didn’t feel pressured by the dauntingness of it. He was hopeful that he could plead the case of the supernatural community to her effectively.

“So, my dear, what now?”

“Well, I am rather hungry now. Perhaps that dinner that we had skipped out on?”

Elijah grinned, “Very well. I shall make the arrangements.”

To Be Continued....

#elijah mikaelson #the originals #the vampire diaries #ocs #my fic #my ocs #fanfics #fan fiction #first fanfic

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arofili · 6 years ago

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[id: 6 edits. the left side of each edit is light gray with a diagonal line separating it from the selected image. in the bottom left corner is the dark gray text “ann schmiesing” in all caps and a basic font. on the left side is a large dark gray box containing the light gray text “disability, deformity, and disease” justified to the left in all caps (save for the word “and”, which is lowercase and in italics); below that text, still in the dark gray box, is more text in a smaller all-caps font which reads “in the grimms’ fairy tales”.

each edit has its own selected image, all of which are drawn depictions of various grimm fairy tales. the first image is grayscale of a donkey with a child hiding within its skin. the second image is of a hyperrealistic drawing of a pale-skinned girl with long blonde hair in a white dress with no hands and bloodstains around her sleeves. the third image is of pale-skinned girl with dark hair and bandages around the stumps of her hands, looking upward at a tree with her mouth open. the fourth image is greyscale of a man cutting off the hand from a hanging corpse. the fifth image is of a humanoid figure with hedgehog spines and other hedgehog-like traits. the sixth and final image is of of a pale-skinned girl with dark hair and silver hands. end id.]

BOOKS I READ IN 2018 ✧ disability, deformity, and disease in the grimms’ fairy tales by ann schmieising

The Grimms aspired to restore an organic wholeness to their tales. By contrast, my own prosthetic goal has been to restore disability to their tales by foregrounding it instead of—as has been the case too often in fairy-tale scholarship—reading over it or seeing it as valuable only insofar as it symbolizes something else.

#disability deformity and disease #disability deformity and disease in the grimms fairy tales #fairytaleedit #disability studies #ann schmiesing #my edit #bk18 #tefain nin #i dont usually do id's for these edits but i thought it was important for this one #for class #fa18: eng201

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penniesforthestorm · 6 years ago

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Castle Rock

Part I: Memory and Time

Episode 1: “Severance” Episode 2: “Habeas Corpus” Episode 3: “Local Color”

“What I keep wondering—all the smells we smell, all the songs and pictures—do you lose them all? I mean, wherever you go next, does the tape get erased? And if it does, you aren’t really you anymore, are you?”

“Is that what you’re afraid of?”

“That’s what I want.”

The above conversation takes place almost halfway into the first episode of Castle Rock, the new Hulu series produced by Stephen King and J.J. Abrams. Henry Deaver (Andre Holland), a death-row attorney, is having a final conversation with his client, a 93-year-old woman whose appeal has been denied. She is musing on the nature of memory, and we get the general idea that her life is full of scenes she’d rather leave behind. For his part, Henry is drawn back to an incident from his childhood: during a freezing winter, he went missing in the woods near his home, and was found by the local sheriff, totally unaffected by the subzero conditions. The sheriff asked what happened to him, but Henry did not remember. Memory plays an enormous role on Castle Rock, both within the world of the series and outside of it. It’s been established that Stephen King’s work takes place within a connected universe, and ever since Castle Rock premiered, the internet has been buzzing with theories about how it ties into the larger King canon. Now I have to make a confession: I am nobody’s idea of a Stephen King aficionado. I’ve seen several of the most popular screen adaptations of his work, and just through pop-culture osmosis, I’d say I have a general awareness of his major stories, but nothing beyond a surface level. So that’s going to impact how I write about and interpret this series. Honestly, though, I haven’t felt like I’m missing out—the story so far has been strong enough to stand on its own.

In Episode 1, however, a near-immediate connection is established to one of King’s most famous works: The Shawshank Redemption. We see a man (Terry O’Quinn) cooking breakfast for his wife, and they have a brief conversation mentioning the man’s imminent retirement. The man, addressed as Mr. Lacy, drives through town, and on his car radio, an aria is playing. It’s “Che soave zeffiretto” from The Marriage of Figaro—the same piece from one of the climactic scenes of The Shawshank Redemption, when Andy Dufresne plays it over the prison’s loudspeaker system. We watch as Mr. Lacy drives into the woods, stopping atop a bluff. The camera shows a length of rope trailing out of the car, tied to a nearby tree. Mr. Lacy takes the other end of the rope (looped into a noose), slips it around his neck, turns off the radio, and floors the gas pedal, launching the car off the bluff. As the vehicle sinks into the black waters of the lake below, the camera fixes on its back bumper, where we see the insignia of the Maine Department of Corrections, and that evocative name: Shawshank. Then we see Shawshank itself, its stone turrets and barbed-wire fencing rising out of a grey mist. It turns out that Mr. Lacy was Warden Lacy, until recently. The new warden, played by Ann Cusack, listens grimly to the guards as they hint at the prison’s dark history, showing particular interest in a young guard’s remark about a wing of the prison that has stood empty for thirty years. The young guard, Zalewski (Noel Fisher), is sent to count the empty cells, and immediately finds something that doesn’t seem right—boot prints. He follows them to a heavy metal door, which leads to another door in the middle of the floor. Zalewski opens it, revealing only a seemingly disused water tank, and is about to leave when something falls out of his pocket. He crawls down the ladder on the side of the tank, and finds… A chair. A coffee can full of cigarette butts. A metal cage, with a young man in it. The young man, played by Bill Skarsgård, is emaciated and pale, and his bearing is meek and fearful. He does not speak, and more unnervingly, he doesn’t blink, his large hazel eyes staring hollowly at his questioners. Finally, in the warden’s office, he mumbles a name, through a voice that clearly hasn’t been used in some time: “Henry Deaver.” This brings us to the scene I discussed at the beginning. It turns out that Henry Deaver grew up in the town of Castle Rock, twenty miles from Shawshank. Zalewski calls him anonymously, defying the warden’s dictum that the mysterious young man should be kept secret, and Henry comes back home. Over the course of the rest of the episode, Henry begins to realize that something is rotten in Castle Rock. The storefronts downtown are boarded up, his adoptive mother Ruth (Sissy Spacek) is exhibiting severe memory loss, the local cemetery has been paved over, and the kindly sheriff from Henry’s childhood, Alan Pangborn (Scott Glenn), has taken more than a neighborly interest in Ruth. Also, no one at the prison seems willing to give Henry any information about his mysterious ‘client’.

In the second episode, Henry pays a visit to Warden Lacy’s home looking for clues, and at first, seems to find a sympathetic ear in the widowed Martha Lacy. But once she discovers who he is, she turns him out. Some people in Castle Rock have longer memories than others. When Henry vanished into the woods all those years ago, his adoptive father, the Reverend Matthew Deaver, was found with his neck broken, and later succumbed to his injuries. The young Henry was suspected of an active role in that circumstance. When Henry visits his father’s old church, the new pastor makes an awkward remark about Henry being ‘redemption in the flesh’. Over at Shawshank, the mystery around The Kid (as he is named in the credits) has deepened. Zalewski, on security camera duty, sees The Kid in a hallway, with a trail of corpses behind him. But it’s a false alarm—everything is as it should be. Meanwhile, Warden Porter is enjoying a drink at a hotel bar when she is interrupted by none other than Alan Pangborn. He tells her a strange story about Warden Lacy—that he claimed to have found and captured the Devil. Pangborn growls, “Don’t let that fuckin’ kid out.” The episode also fully introduces the character of Molly Strand (Melanie Lynskey), who used to live downhill from the Deaver house, and nursed a childhood crush on Henry. Current-day Molly is a nervous misfit, swallowing pills she buys from a scraggly teenager to deal with what she calls ‘other people’s noise’. In a flashback, it’s revealed that she may know more about Henry Deaver’s disappearance than he does—we see the young Molly watch from her window as Pastor Deaver calls Henry outside in the middle of the night. When questioned by the police, however, she denies any knowledge of what’s going on.

Episode 3, “Local Color”, opens with a scene of young Molly walking through the snow to the Deaver house, putting on Henry’s red plaid jacket, and climbing the stairs to where the injured Pastor Deaver lies. Without a moment’s hesitation, young Molly pulls out his ventilator. Now, the viewer knows the answer to at least one of Castle Rock’s mysteries. In the present day, we follow Molly as she prepares to go on a local-access show to talk about her plan to revitalize Castle Rock’s moribund downtown. Molly finally has a face-to-face conversation with Henry, and it leaves her so upset that she tracks down her dealer, who tells her to try her luck out at the motor court. Molly goes to the motor court at night, and asks a little girl if she knows where ‘Derek’ is. The girl points Molly toward a structure nearby, and as Molly approaches, we hear the voices of children. It appears to be some kind of mock trial, and almost all the children are wearing grotesque papier-mâché masks. The ‘witness’, a little boy, says that the ‘killer’ is in the courtroom, and immediately points to Molly. “Guilty! Guilty!” the children shout. It’s oddly disappointing when the ‘judge’, aka Derek, brings Molly to his perfectly ordinary trailer and they begin to haggle over the pills, only to be interrupted by sirens. The next morning, Henry happens to be at the local police station, trying to get information. He bails Molly out just in time for her to make her TV appearance. After an uncomfortable few moments, Molly bursts out with the truth: there is a young man being kept at Shawshank, without being convicted of any crime. At last, Henry Deaver is formally invited to Shawshank. At last, Henry sits down face-to-face with The Kid. At last, The Kid communicates more, asking Henry, “Has it begun?” in a way that seems fraught with some deeper meaning. Skarsgård’s gawky physicality and hesitant speech patterns make an intriguing contrast to the menacing aura that has developed around him. In the previous episode, he was forced to share a cell with a burly neo-Nazi, and shortly thereafter, the other man suddenly dropped dead. Henry, however, seems instantly won over, reassuring The Kid that he’s there to help.

I’m grouping the episodes three at a time for reasons that will become clear in future installments (hey, look, I can do serialization too!). Before I go, I do want to make a note of the music on the show: the score is composed by Thomas Newman, who has contributed to some of my favorite films (Road to Perdition, Meet Joe Black, and, of course, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption), and his spare piano chords go a long way toward establishing the show’s eerie atmosphere. I think I have now gone on entirely long enough for this round, but if you like what you’ve read, come back for more! There will be more anyway, because this is my blog and I’ve committed to this, so… that’s that on that.

#tv review #Long Reads #castle rock #CONTAINS SPOILERS #prose

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girljock · 3 years ago

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even though i have crazy muse im bedridden and can’t code replies so instead of doing the reasonable thing and just responding without code i wrote like 6 drabbles. here’s one ft @cannothide. cw death. i didnt proofread this <3

she is panting on the ground, clutching at her stomach and leaning against a birch tree. the seat of her jeans are wet from the dew beneath her; it rains in kirkwood so often that almost everyone has a barrel for water. the colours around her seem to lose saturation, greying out like a clouded sky. her vision blackens at the edges and she knows what’s coming.

a kowalski never loses.

sorry, dad. no rematch this time.

she can hear ryan’s heavy footfalls coming closer. they sound almost in tune with her heartbeat. she is afraid. terrified. she’s going to die, she’s already dying. the only thing next is complete nonexistence or something even stranger. she hopes dom is safe. everyone else is either dead or marked missing and she’s on her way to possibly being both.

well, at least she doesn’t have to do her chemistry final anymore.

the blood is warm in contrast to the cool autumn air, and it spreads across her side like a plague across a country. the bullet wounds hurt like hell, worse than anything she’s ever felt, any one of her shit injuries. she tries not to think about it. the world is getting darker, fading away, as if she’s drifting down into deep water.

she pulls her letterman around herself for warmth, the blood on her hands staining it. they’ll probably bury me in a dress, she thinks. ew. the idea of wearing a dress makes her feel farther away, like it’ll be someone else’s body in the coffin instead of her own. she wonders if her stepdad will come. she can’t tell whether she would want him to.

charlie lies there, dying, trying not to ask any questions she doesn’t know the answer to because she’s never going to get any and it feels ridiculous to entertain them at all.

dom is running. running as fast as he can, lucien at his side, helping him get to her, help him save her. the price doesn’t matter. she needs him.

ryan is no longer running. he is standing in front of charlie, eyes wide. his face is expressionless except for those eyes, huge and empty.

“why?” charlie asks him. she’ll let herself have that one question.

“‘cause,” he replies simply, and just as he says so he unloads his entire clip into charlie’s chest. wouldn’t want to miss this time. he reloads as he stands in front of the body of the kowalski girl. everything is black for her now.

it happens very quickly. dominick fucking lunges for ryan, tackling him from behind and ripping the gun from his fingers.

there is a bang.

ryan alexander douglas is dead.

but so is charlotte mary-anne kowalski.

dom rushes to her body. he knows she’s gone, he knows, but the second he found out ryan and charlie were in the forest, his heart and brain severed into two different things.

he holds her to his chest. “charlie, charlie, it’s okay, we’re safe. let’s go,” he whispers, knowing full well he’s not getting an answer. “this isn’t funny. charlie. charlotte. charlotte, please.”

lucien wants to hug him, pull him back from her corpse, comfort him, but he knows it will worsen things. a part of him is happy charlie is dead. she doesn’t matter anymore that way. but at the same time, dom will never be over this. he can’t … will he be happy again ? without her ? is she the type of person he can grieve ?

not now, at the very least. perhaps not ever.

lucien is torn. what is the price for this? a life for a life? he could never harm his sweet angel … but he detests to watch him be so anguished. charlie, too, would have guilt equivalent to no other concept if she were to survive at her expense. the two would be star-crossed. poetic.

dom turns to lucien with eyes that say do something before he even opens his mouth.

lucien’s eyes are alight, like green oil lamps lining the path to some dark terrible future. “i will, darling. but it will be very unpleasant for all.”

#long post #i cant add s fucking read more #( drabble. )#lol all by italics r gone xoxo

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ucflibrary · 6 years ago

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Hispanic Heritage Month, established in 1988, runs from September 15 through October 15. It recognizes and celebrates the contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans have made to the United States. Florida in particular has a strong Hispanic legacy including the oldest inhabited city in the U.S., St. Augustine, which was founded in 1565 by the Spanish. Later this fall, UCF will celebrate our new status as a Hispanic-serving institution which means more than 25% of our enrolled students identify as Hispanic.

Join the UCF Libraries as we celebrate our favorite Hispanic authors and books. Click on the Keep Reading link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the featured Back-so-School titles suggested by UCF Library employees. These 14 books plus many more are also on display on the 2nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library next to the bank of two elevators.

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño As through a crack in the wall, By Night in Chile's single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of Church and State in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel—Roberto Bolano's first work available in English—recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet, but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and a conservative literary critic, a sort of lap dog to the rich and powerful cultural elite, in whose villas he encounters Pablo Neruda and Ernst Junger. Father Urrutia is offered a tour of Europe by agents of Opus Dei (to study "the disintegration of the churches," a journey into realms of the surreal); and ensnared by this plum, he is next assigned—after the destruction of Allende—the secret, never-to-be-disclosed job of teaching Pinochet, at night, all about Marxism, so the junta generals can know their enemy. Soon, searingly, his memories go from bad to worse. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Elizabeth Catlett: An American artist in Mexico by Melanie Anne Herzog In tracing Catlett’s long and continuing career as a graphic artist and sculptor in Mexico, Herzog explores an important period in Catlett’s life between the 1950s and the 1970s about which almost nothing is known in the United States. She examines the “Mexicanness” in Catlett’s work in its fluent relationship to the underlying and constant sense of African American identity she brought with her to Mexico. Herzog’s solidly grounded interpretation offers a new way to understand Catlett’s work and reveals this artist as a fascinating and pivotal intercultural figure whose powerful art manifests her firm belief that the visual arts can play a role in the construction of a meaningful identity, both transnational and ethnically grounded. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, UCF Connect

Esperanza Rising by Pam Muoz Ryan Esperanza thought she'd always live with her family on their ranch in Mexico--she'd always have fancy dresses, a beautiful home, and servants. But a sudden tragedy forces Esperanza and Mama to flee to California during the Great Depression, and to settle in a camp for Mexican farm workers. Esperanza isn't ready for the hard labor, financial struggles, or lack of acceptance she now faces. When their new life is threatened, Esperanza must find a way to rise above her difficult circumstances--Mama's life, and her own, depend on it. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, UCF Connect

Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Contrearas Inspired by the author's own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricably linked coming-of-age stories. In lush prose, Rojas Contreras has written a powerful testament to the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Hot soles in Harlem by Emilio Díaz Valcarcel Gerardo Sanchez is not the average Puerto Rican immigrant to New York City: he is ironically blessed with blond hair and blue eyes, fair skin, and the good fortune to have met Aleluya, an intrepid guide to the "New Yorkian" world, on his first day in the city. Gerardo's contact with this mysterious intellectual - whose comings and goings are always surrounded by explosions - takes him into the slums of Harlem, the penthouses of Fifth Avenue, and the intellectual circles of New York. Guided by Aleluya, Gerardo meets characters from all walks of life - an unscrupulous restaurant inspector, an Alabaman bartender named Dutch, and Moira, a bewitching Greek model. His experiences unfold in a curious mixture of Spanish and English, punctuated by the sounds of immigrant voices creating dynamic new forms of expression. Published for the first time in English translation, Hot Soles in Harlem is a tribute to the creative power of New York City and the rich and diverse life it sustains. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez When the sister who delighted their parents by her faithful embrace of Mexican culture dies in a tragic accident, Julia, who longs to go to college and move into a home of her own, discovers from mutual friends that her sister may not have been as perfect as believed. Suggested by Emma Gisclair, Curriculum Materials Center

I am not a tractor!: how Florida farmworkers took on the fast food giants and won by Susan L. Marquis I Am Not a Tractor! celebrates the courage, vision, and creativity of the farmworkers and community leaders who have transformed one of the worst agricultural situations in the United States into one of the best. Susan L. Marquis highlights past abuses workers suffered in Florida’s tomato fields: toxic pesticide exposure, beatings, sexual assault, rampant wage theft, and even, astonishingly, modern-day slavery. Marquis unveils how, even without new legislation, regulation, or government participation, these farmworkers have dramatically improved their work conditions. Marquis credits this success to the immigrants from Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala who formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a neuroscience major who takes great pride in the watermelon crew he runs, a leading farmer/grower who was once homeless, and a retired New York State judge who volunteered to stuff envelopes and ended up building a groundbreaking institution. Through the Fair Food Program that they have developed, fought for, and implemented, these people have changed the lives of more than thirty thousand field workers.Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova The only way to get her family back is to travel to a land in between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland. Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation...and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she's not sure she can trust, but who may be Alex's only chance at saving her family. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: the makings and meanings of film and TV stardom by Mary C. Beltrán This book explores the role film and television stardom has played in establishing, reinforcing, and challenging popular ethnic notions of Latina/os in the United States since the silent film era of the 1920s. In addition to documenting the importance of Latina and Latino stars to American film and television history, Mary C. Beltrán focuses on key moments in the construction of "Hollywood Latinidad" by analyzing the public images of these stars as promoted by Hollywood film studios, television networks, producers, and the performers themselves. Critically surveying the careers of such film and television stars as Dolores Del Rio, Desi Arnaz, Rita Moreno, Freddie Prinze, Edward James Olmos, Jessica Alba, and Jennifer Lopez, Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes also addresses the impact of the rise in Latina and Latino media producers and the current status of Latina/o stardom. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Latino Images in Film: stereotypes, subversion, resistance by Charles Ramirez Berg The bandido, the harlot, the male buffoon, the female clown, the Latin lover, and the dark lady—these have been the defining, and demeaning, images of Latinos in U.S. cinema for more than a century. In this book, Charles Ramírez Berg develops an innovative theory of stereotyping that accounts for the persistence of such images in U.S. popular culture. He also explores how Latino actors and filmmakers have actively subverted and resisted such stereotyping. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging out with her friends. But then a corpse crashes their first party. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep tears... Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on. With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one. Now Sierra must unravel her family's past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for generations to come. Suggested by Emma Gisclair, Curriculum Materials Center

Super Extra Grande by Yoss In a distant future in which Latin Americans have pioneered faster-than-light space travel, Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo has a job with large and unusual responsibilities: he’s a veterinarian who specializes in treating enormous alien animals. Mountain-sized amoebas, multisex species with bizarre reproductive processes, razor-nailed, carnivorous humanoid hunters: Dr. Sangan has seen it all. When a colonial conflict threatens the fragile peace between the galaxy’s seven intelligent species, he must embark on a daring mission through the insides of a gigantic creature and find two swallowed ambassadors—who also happen to be his competing love interests. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria by Carlos Hernandez Assimilation is founded on surrender and being broken. This collection of short stories features people who have assimilated, but are actively trying to reclaim their lives. There is a concert pianist who defies death by uploading his soul into his piano. There is the person who draws his mother's ghost out of the bullet hole in the wall near where she was executed. Another character has a horn growing out of the center of his forehead--punishment for an affair. But he is too weak to end it, too much in love to be moral. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

The Regional Office is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales When a prophecy suggests that an insider might bring about the downfall of a powerful underground organization known as the Regional Office, devoted recruit Sarah and young assassin Rose find their respective lives clashing in a dispute that threatens everything they know. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore For twenty years, the Palomas and the Corbeaus have been rivals and enemies, locked in an escalating feud for over a generation. Both families make their living as traveling performers in competing shows-the Palomas swimming in mermaid exhibitions, the Corbeaus, former tightrope walkers, performing in the tallest trees they can find. Lace Paloma may be new to her family's show, but she knows as well as anyone that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra, black magic from the devil himself. Simply touching one could mean death, and she's been taught from birth to keep away. But when disaster strikes the small town where both families are performing, it's a Corbeau boy, Cluck, who saves Lace's life. And his touch immerses her in the world of the Corbeaus, where falling for him could turn his own family against him, and one misstep can be just as dangerous on the ground as it is in the trees. Suggested by Emma Gisclair, Curriculum Materials Center

When I was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago In a childhood full of tropical beauty and domestic strife, poverty and tenderness, Esmeralda Santiago learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs, the taste of morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But when her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity. In the first of her three acclaimed memoirs, Esmeralda brilliantly recreates her tremendous journey from the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years, to translating for her mother at the welfare office, and to high honors at Harvard. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

#hispanic heritage month #booklr #book suggestions #ucf libraries bookshelf #featured bookshelf #ucf library

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lyndsey-parker · 7 years ago

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Watch 20 Oscar-winning actresses in music videos

Hale Berry and Fred Durst in “Behind Blue Eyes” (Photo: YouTube)

Sure, we all know Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for Girl, Interrupted, or that Halle Berry made history Oscar history when she became the first African American to win a Best Actress trophy (for Monster’s Ball). But did you know that Angelina and Halle respectively starred in videos by… Meat Loaf and Limp Bizkit?

In honor of this weekend’s Academy Awards, here’s a look back at 20 music video cameos by Oscar-winning actresses. For some, these videos were career stepping-stones, or mere detours; for others, they were career lows. But all of them are recommended viewing.

20. Mecano, “La Fuerza del Destino”

No one could have predicted when 15-year-old Penelope made her acting debut, in this 1989 Spanish pop video, that she’d win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar 19 years later for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Incidentally, Mecano broke up in 1992.

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19. Parachute, “The Mess I Made” (starring Jennifer Lawrence, 2009)

Silver Linings Playbook Best Actress winner J.Law was a total unknown when she starred in the 2009 video by these Virginia pop-rockers. Parachute frontman Will Anderson later told TeenMusic.com: “She was amazing… We could tell when we met her that she was going places. Here was this amazingly talented actress, and just an incredible person who also happened to be gorgeous. How could we not ask her to be in the video? Seeing her get nominated for the Oscar was amazing. No one deserves it more than her and it’s awesome to see her getting casted in such rad roles!”

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18. Robbie Williams, “Something Stupid” (starring Nicole Kidman, 2001)

Robbie’s 2001 album of standards, Swing When You’re Winning, featured duets with Rupert Everett, Jane Horrocks, and Jon Lovitz, but its centerpiece was this adorable collaboration with Nicole — who’d win a Best Actress Oscar a year later for The Hours. Nicole held her own against the British pop star, which makes us wonder, when is her album coming out?

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17. iRAWniQ, “ALIENPU$” (starring Tatum O’Neal, 2014)

Tatum holds the record as the youngest thespian to win a competitive Oscar (she won the Best Supporting Actress award in 1973, at age 10, for her role in Paper Moon). The former child star has had her career ups and downs, but has continued to take on challenging roles. Case in point: this dazzling 2014 clip, in which she danced alongside an “alien Rosa Parks” played by rapper iRAWniQ. Tatum even dissected the bizarre, JB Ghuman Jr.-directed video in a play-by-play article for Vice.

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16. Roy Orbison, “I Drove All Night” (starring Jennifer Connelly, 1992)

This video starred not only the A Beautiful Mind Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winner, but also Beverly Hills, 90210 heartthrob Jason Priestley. It’s a true ’90s classic if there ever was one.

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15. Dave Matthews Band, “Dreamgirl” (starring Julia Roberts, 2005)

The Erin Brockovich Oscar-winner and longtime DMB fan made her music video debut in this Alice in Wonderland-meets-Fringe clip; it was first acting job after giving birth to her twins. “I just need the work,” Julia joked to People magazine at the time of the video’s release. Dave Matthews added, “We thought we’d politely give her a hand up.”

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14. Will Butler, “Anna” (2015)

Stone won an Oscar last year for the musical La La Land, but we think her casting may have been inspired by her star turn in this elegant Old Hollywood clip by the Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist.

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13. Massive Attack feat. Hope Sandoval, “The Spoils” (starring Cate Blanchett, 2016)

The two-time Oscar-winner shapeshifted from gorgeously dewy SK-II skincare spokeswoman to freaky decomposing zombie robot in this disconcerting clip. Imagine Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” mashed up with Lou Reed’s “No Money Down” for some idea of this video’s creepy impact. We need Blanchett to star in a horror flick!

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12. Jenny Lewis, “One of the Guys” (starring Anne Hathaway and Brie Larson, 2014)

The former Rilo Kiley frontwoman convinced Les Miserables‘ Hathaway and Room‘s Larson (along with Kristen Stewart) to dress up in male drag for this colorful clip… but we’re more impressed by the Gram Parsons-inspired, red-carpet-worthy rainbow tuxedo that Jenny is wearing.

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11. Limp Bizkit, “Behind Blue Eyes” (starring Halle Berry, 2003)

Halle made some major career mistakes following her Best Actress win for 2001’s Monster’s Ball. And making out onscreen with Fred Durst, in a video for a terrible Who cover from the Gothika soundtrack, may have been her most Razzie-worthy misstep — even if Durst, who directed the clip, told MTV it was “the greatest kiss you’ll ever see.” A decade later, this admittedly makes for fascinating viewing.

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10. Renee Zellweger with Ewan McGregor, “Here’s to Love” (2003)

The Cold Mountain Best Supporting Actress winner showed off an entirely different side of herself in this playful ode to the great cinematic era of Doris Day and Rock Hudson, from the retro rom-com Down With Love. Here’s to Renee!

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9. Meat Loaf, “Rock ‘N’ Roll Dreams Come Through” (starring Angelina Jolie, 1993)

The Girl, Interrupted Oscar-winner has also made appearances in music videos by the Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz, Korn, and the Lemonheads. But her most epic (and cinematic) music video appearance of all? The one in which she co-starred with Meat Loaf and played a teen runaway, of course!

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8. The Rolling Stones, “Like a Rolling Stone” (starring Patricia Arquette, 1996)

Patricia won Best Supporting Actress honors for Boyhood and gave one of the most memorable acceptance speeches in years. Also memorable? Her harrowing depiction of a strung-out party girl in this Michel Gondry-directed, fisheye-lensed clip for the Stones’ fantastic Dylan cover.

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7. David Bowie, “The Next Day” (starring Marion Cotillard, 2013)

Marion displayed her own musical chops portraying Edith Piaf in 2007’s La Vie en Rose, for which she won Best Actress honors. She has concurrently pursued a musical career, including an artsy collaboration with John Cameron Mitchell, Villaine, and Metronomy’s Joseph Mount titled “Snapshot of L.A.“ But her best music video cameo was in this controversial, banned-from-YouTube Bowie clip, in which she played a stigmata-stricken prostitute cavorting in a church brothel with a wayward priest played by Gary Oldman. This video definitely deserved an R rating!

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6. Tom Petty, “Into the Great Wide Open” (starring Faye Dunaway, 1991)

The Network Oscar-winner joined an all-star cast that included Johnny Depp, Chynna Phillips, and, um, Richard Grieco to play an evil rock ‘n’ roll Svengali. It was clearly the role Faye was born to play. Just call this one Manager Dearest.

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5. Devendra Banhart, “Carmensita” (starring Natalie Portman, 2007)

Back before she was a crazy Black Swan, Natalie was dancing in this crazy, Bollywood-inspired video by the eccentric singer-songwriter, who soon became her boyfriend. The relationship didn’t last; maybe Natalie was jealous that Devendra almost looked as pretty in sparkly Bollywood makeup as she did. A pregnant Portman starred last year in James Blake’s “My Willing Heart.”

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4. Brandon Flowers, “Crossfire” (starring Charlize Theron, 2010)

This badass, action-packed video, in which the Monster actress rescued the Killers frontman from ninja kidnappers, was soooo much better than Aeon Flux.

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3. Tom Petty, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” (starring Kim Basigner, 1994)

Ah, the creepy “love story” between a morgue assistant and the beautiful corpse girl of his dreams. We’re still trying to decide who was the better actor here: Kim, or Tom himself.

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2. Jay-Z, “Many Faced God” (starring Lupita Nyong’o, 2017)

The 12 Years a Slave Best Supporting Actress winner and Star Wars/Black Panther action heroine gave another awards-worthy tour de force performance in this stunning clip from 4:44.

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1. David Bowie, “The Stars Are Out Tonight” (starring Tilda Swinton, 2013)

In a bit of inspired casting on the part of director Floria Sigismondi, this video by the late Thin White Duke co-starred thin white duchess Tilda Swinton as his dutiful wife. For years, the uncanny resemblance between Bowie and the Oscar-winning actress had been noted by observers — so much so that an entire Tumblr site was devoted to their separated-at-birth similarity. In 2003, fashion photographer Craig McDean orchestrated a shoot with Tilda during which she dressed up as Bowie, and in 2012, Hint Fashion magazine even published a rather convincing compare-and-contrast blogpost titled “Visual Proof That David Bowie and Tilda Swinton Are the Same Person.” The fact that Bowie and Tilda appeared onscreen on the same time here refuted Hint’s theory, of course.

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