#it's what i read and wanted to explore. war is never a simple affair. humans are more complex than that

[miraruinada]

interesting that for many, a character who is cruel, brutal, and remorseless for their status or their greed, and written about as people who vie for power to become tyrants, or because they're sticking to a rigid moral code and that makes them believe that killing 'the evil' as paragons of good and honor is justified, it's good shit to explore.

but the moment i introduced a character who is cruel, brutal, and remorseless, but this time fighting for 'the wretched of the earth', for something that he doesn't place morality on, (honor is nothing, love without justice is anemic, my motive is power, i did not come with a flower but with a sword, etc.), and to actualize high ideal standings like justice etc. without simply being placeholders, i got anon hate on some snark ass 'don't put politics into this hobby'.

[emergingsentiments]

Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha: Episode 10 (Repost)

Loneliness must have drawn you back here, says Hwajung to Chohui. But these could have been words for Dusik and Hyejin, too. The past and current entanglements of Gongjin’s love affairs, after all, run parallel to each other. For Chohui, her mother’s death and her brother’s migration left her solitary, so it only seemed natural to return to somewhere familiar. Hyejin, on the other hand, visited the seaside town to reclaim the memory of happier times, when her mother was still alive. Dusik’s reasons are still obscured but the glimpses into the wakes he’s stood vigil by are compelling reasons behind his return.

Home, as I observed in the first episode of Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, is where the heart is and the hurts are.

Episode 10 unfolded like the turning point that it is. As the previous chapters tackled the inner workings of all our characters, especially the progress of Hyejin and Dusik both as individuals and in their romantic engagements, we saw how people began to confront their fears. Whether it’s Cheonjae’s anxieties as a has-been singer and as a single father to a rebellious Juri or Gamri’s quiet suffering in her empty nest, the melancholy that undergirds the town’s surface pushed each one to face their scars and losses. For all the comic relief she brings, even Miseon had to brave confusion and rejection.

In this page of Gongjin’s tale, however, the theme of battling life’s greatest antagonist is truest among Dusik, Hyejin, and Seonghyun.

Poor Seonghyun, so new to the town yet so quick to have been thrown into the maelstrom of Gongjin’s charms and tragedies. His greatest fear was being late. He missed opportunities before, including in the postcard-perfect moments of his youth. Always an observer but never the one observed; always watching over Hyejin but always a step behind others in the line. If he were dancing, he’d be out of rhythm, too busy trying to memorize the choreography.

He has rehearsed his lines a thousand times. Will they come out right? Here, Lee Sang-yi gives Seonghyun his most graceful and yet graceless moment. Making an abrupt u-turn on his way to Seoul, he returns to Gongjin — late once again. Hyejin, attacked by a wandering sexual predator in town, has been saved by Dusik. If the shock of the night’s crime were not enough, he confesses the next evening to a Hyejin that had just mistakenly implied her growing affections for Dusik. She’s just had dinner, too.

Full and formal, Hyejin listens to Seonghyun’s lonely and tense confession. Sangyi delivers the lines Seonghyun has held onto for years. It’s a speech marked by jitters, fretful glances, and a slowly growing blush. Once out, he tries to stop the tension by marking the scene as a take. But the clapperboard humor isn’t enough. Hyejin watches him eat alone. She has no appetite.

Hyejin, for her part, couldn’t be blamed. She never really saw Seonghyun other than a senior to be admired. Yes, he’s saved her from a jerk before. But years of absence have made the heart grow duller instead of fonder. She’s also just come from an equally awkward dinner with Dusik, who is celebrating his grandfather’s death anniversary. There is no room for another meal. The night before — the night of the attack — she had slept in Dusik’s home for the third time as well.

At the first visit to his home, she kissed Mr. Hong on impulse and alcohol. On the second, she carried the weight and fears of an inebriated Dusik. On the third visit, she is traumatized from the night’s break-in, so now slips in to Mr. Hong’s clothes and stays over, unable to sleep unless Dusik’s around with poetry. He reads to her...It is my job to fall in love with you while waiting for you the next day. The antidote to Hyejin’s fear, after all, is Gongjin’s son.

But what does Hyejin fear? Well, it’s simple. She fears what she lost — her childhood, to be who she is. As a young girl who lost her mother, she had to grow up fast given her father’s alcohol-tinged coping mechanism. As a young woman, she had to build walls after a harsh rebuke of her lowly appearance. So she covers her scars with pretenses — and fancy shoes. Her clothes are her walls. Her life has been planned out. She steers this career with distinct professionalism and ambition. But it’s never ruthless. A woman-child, her core reveals a soft, compassionate heart.

This is what Dusik brings out in her. It’s not something Dusik necessarily gives. The two, after all, have their losses but they are whole persons, too. Dusik’s unconventional lifestyle and ways have eroded the surface of Hyejin’s fortress. Like salted sea slowly breaking down cliffs. With Dusik, she regains the lost child, the one who laughs when pieces of crab meat are flung to Dusik’s face. If that was Seonghyun, Hyejin would have been profusely apologetic and formal. But Mr. Hong is different. Around him, Hyejin can be unguarded, vulnerable.

Dusik, on the other hand, always saw her in a different light. Carrying the weight of unexplained grief, Dusik knows exactly what’s hidden behind Hyejin’s front. But for all his bravado, he’s afraid, too. The people he loved the most have left him, leaving him with an unimaginable sense of guilt. It’s what keeps him tethered to the idea of boundaries. He only likes Hyejin as a friend. But his eyes, his actions — they speak otherwise. If he admits to loving Hyejin, then the prospect of fresh losses cripple him. He’s an engineering graduate, so he has made the calculations. And yet, this strange woman who has returned from a childhood memory is urging him to take those risks and forget those probabilities.

He took a stab on the shoulder, one that nearly cost his life. Isn’t that love — or even the semblance of it? Why does Dusik need to certify his affections with assurance? Gamri, Gonjin’s wisest daughter, sees through Dusik’s barricades. Life’s brevity, she says, demands risks but most of all, honesty with oneself.

These are words worth ruminating in the evening breeze at the town’s breakwater.

It’s the same place where Hyejin finds him.

After a trip to Seoul to forget the town’s powers over her and Miseon, she realizes the city’s offerings were no longer attractive. Everything reminds her of Gongjin. She can’t stop thinking of Dusik. As a grown-up, Hyejin had sought security. Her instinct of self-preservation made her hard. Drenched in a sudden downpour in Seoul, she remembers her rain-soaked self with Dusik at the beach. It is enough for her to understand.

These realizations surge from Hyejin’s adrenaline-filled confession. Unable to deny her growing affections any further, she takes the plunge.

The child faces reality with simple acceptance. In the presence of a vulnerable Hyejin, things freely move and are themselves. The effects are immediately clear. Like any sensible woman, Hyejin knows Dusik could all but reject him, too. Who drives back from Seoul to rant about love, right? But Dusik understands. The hours waiting for her return were sooner than he had anticipated. But the man had made his calculations. The formulas are no longer useful.

True to himself, Dusik fulfills his new duty. It is my job to fall in love with you while waiting for you the next day. So he returns the confession with the most reasonable declaration: a kiss, first tender, one that leaves Hyejin breathless. He speaks but yearns for more. So he lets his lips touch hers for a second time. A kiss now free from all the tentativeness of the night.

A few weeks ago I read several criticisms about Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha. It’s cliched. People only watch it because the actors are popular. There’s nothing exceptional about a love story.

Cliched, true. But there is a reason why there are cliches because they are true. Do people only watch because the actors are popular? Perhaps. Perhaps not. A love story doesn’t hold a candle to the more intellectual and uncomfortable narratives available for consumption, right? You know, the stories that deal with war and violence, politics and its lack of virtue, the more profound tales that explore humanity or its degradation. But I fear this is an effort to leave the commonplace, the domestic, and the personal materials unattended for the sake of what seems profound. Yet, the production of these “better” and more profound stories does not offer any solace from suffering.

For over a year now, we’ve been fighting the wrath of an invisible virus. It might even be true to say that for many of us, we’ve lost someone dear, someone deeply loved. If not, we know someone who has dealt with these losses. Given the lockdowns and restrictions, even grieving has been abbreviated. Our reality is sobering. We fear many things. So while I don’t hold it against people to choose the more elevated tales, it would be a shame to dismiss those who gush over a love story as uncritical and frivolous.

Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha resonates with and appeals to many because it reminds us of the things we’ve lost to the pandemic. Face-to-face conversations. The stability of a job. Family. Friendship. The pat on the back. Our grandparents. Our first love. A hand to hold. Dinner with friends under the warmth of incandescent light. Office conversations. Senseless chatter. The thrill of falling in love. The smell of the sea, and the sand on our feet. Our best friend. The normalcy of a leisurely walk. Dancing in the rain. People. Our community. The words we wanted to say. A kiss.

In a world where physical intimacy and closeness are dangerous, we feel our lips with our fingers watching Hyejun and Dusik kiss. And we remember the way we were. Kim Seon Ho was right in saying Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha is a healing drama. To love and be loved, after all, remains the ultimate catharsis.

[elmidol]

Of the Stars, There Are So Many (NSFW)

Three Blind Tooke Part Two Precarious Harmony

Read on AO3

Warnings: sex, vaginal sex, oral, anal sex

Three Blind Tooke

Part Two: Precarious Harmony

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Of the Stars, There Are So Many

Being that the wedding ceremony was, as the new Supreme Leader of the First Order had declared, a small affair, and one that would take place so soon, you had been aware of the fact that there would be little time to select a gown. Naboo was known for its fashion. Dresses were readily available at any rate, and you had shoved aside the notion of wearing white. This was not due to the fact that you believed in the honored tradition of virgins being the ones allowed to wear that pure color. After all, you reasoned, there were other planets that used alternatives to white, such as Corellia’s favoritism of green. The red you selected was the same shade as had been your uniform when you had been a Resistance LDS. This was not an explanation that you offered to those gathered for the ceremony. All the same, you could see it in Kylo Ren’s eyes that he understood the reasoning. His mouth pulled into a frown for a split-second before his lips parted and he accepted the beauty of the dress. The gold trimmings had been an inside joke with yourself. There had been a different red gown with silver designs, and it had been gorgeous. Yet this gown gave off a more royal appearance. Perfect for the wife of the First Order’s Supreme Leader, who was also the descendant of former-Queen Amidala.

 Your mind wandered as you dressed in the gown. Had Ip remained alive, he would not have been there; his face, nonetheless, was an image you clung to in a desperate attempt to live out a fantasy wedding. Given that the pair of you had never explored a romantic relationship you did not know if things would ever have led to marriage. You liked to think he could have loved you in that way. It was difficult for you to fully bury him in the same way you failed to relinquish your father. Those two men had largely influenced the woman you had become, albeit not in an antagonistic manner as Ren had been. For your wedding, you borrowed their confidence in you. It was this that allowed you to hold your head up high, and it was also why Kylo had been forced to break eye contact with you. You wouldn’t yield.

 The marriage held minimal sentimentality for you. It was a means for you to gain power over your enemies. General Hux was a great threat to your mother, as was Captain Phasma. While you were aware of a necessity to play a more submissive role to the Supreme Leader when in the presence of the officers and stormtroopers, ultimately it was nothing more than a facade. Here and now, by holding his gaze, you communicated this fact. That he did yield to you offered a sense of comfort and power. Unlike in the past, however, you knew to read between the lines. Kylo was not entirely pleased with your behavior—he was afraid of it, of the looming sense of future betrayal on your part. The Force user was desperate for your affection. You could offer him only so much of it.

 You reached for his hand when he lifted the gloved limb. His fingers curled around you, his gaze once more meeting yours. Your expression had softened as you thought of the memory, or perhaps a mere dream, of when the two of you had been children. In some respects it pained you to think of that innocent being and what he had grown to become. The ache of knowing that he had at some point become twisted was outweighed by the relief of knowing he had streaks of mercy within him. He was selfish, without a doubt, however Kylo Ren had saved your mother.

 That minimal amount of sentimentality felt suddenly as though it weighed more than everything else in the galaxy combined.

 You are yielding to him, your mind supplied. You did not recoil from this blow to your pride, this chip to your defenses. It was a mental wound you had shouldered in the past. Back then, you had never fully realized how much you were playing into his hand. Ren had used your body against you; more than that, he had used your mind against you. Isolating you. Making you desperate for him and his company. You had formed your Resistance career around him, which had resulted in your entire life revolving around him. The difference now was that you knew what sort of being you were facing.

 No mere monster. No mere man. Your husband would be your enemy and ally at the same time. The rule of two. One day you would use the power he was offering with this union as a means to defeat him.

 Do I plan to still kill him?

 It was agonizing that you had no straight answer. The Supreme Leader had once more met your gaze. His eyes bore into yours, searching. You did not know what it was that he looked for. Your humanity? Your desire to become a monster so that you could bring down the First Order? He knew you. And it was because he knew you that his eyes darted away to Rey. The female Force user ran her tongue along her lips. The taste of power. That phrase lodged itself in your head. An impression sent to you through the bond. You heeded her warning.

 Rey had toed that line several times. On Starkiller Base and in the throne room most of all. A monster did not have to remain a monster; and monsters did not have to relinquish their humanity, not completely.

 The presence of your mother also served to ground you. Anchored to the memories of your childhood—the lessons from your father and mother alike—you viewed before yourself the man who was General Organa’s son. You had previously fallen victim to the corrosive relationship Kylo Ren had ensnared you inside of when he had taken you from your deceased allies. Obsession with one’s enemy was dangerous. Make believe with a monster who was also a man could be equally so.

 I could have loved you.

 Had things been different, you could have fallen in love with this man you were marrying. Completely head over heels in love. You would have adored him. Perhaps that was the ulterior motive. He did not wish to belong to anyone else, to have a bond—nevermind how twisted—such as the one he had with you. And you doubted anyone else would ever know you as he did. What a simple thing it would be, after the war ended, to allow yourself to live a lie. Simple, but painful.

 I could grow used to the pain.

 What a wretched thought; those who had lectured you against masturbation would have admonished you once more to hear such words. This was no lie. You tilted back your head to gaze into the eyes of the man you were marrying. The eyes of the monster who had murdered countless comrades. He was your death. He had saved you from death. Your life had wrapped around his existence. He was your life. Sometimes you just wanted to die. On other occasions, you enjoyed remaining in the land of the living.

 You’ve complicated me.

 There was a surge of envy that coursed through your veins. Tears welled up in your eyes; your subconscious stored this fact away to later pose the question as to what your mother believed you were weeping for. In the present, you fought against your quivering lip. Jealousy was hot, warming your blood. You wanted so desperately to know the thoughts running through Kylo Ren’s head at that moment. The anchor that was Rey’s presence began to fade. She was pushed to the edge of your thoughts. Not for the first time, you became tunnel visioned with Kylo as your focal point.

 The red of your attire melded together with his. Those lips, so familiar, descended. When, oh when, had the words of acceptance spilled from you? What was this weight of a ring on your finger? It led directly to your heart. A shackle that reinforced what the tattoos had previously stated: you were his. Only this time you had said as much. The kiss was gentle in comparison to the ones you had shared in the past. Brief. A seal.

 The Knights of Ren were adorned in their armor. You saw this sea of blackness when Kylo Ren pulled back and you searched for your mother’s face. Her eyelids descended repeatedly. This reminded you of times in your childhood when she had attempted to blink away the remnants of dreams when you woke her in the morning. There would be no waking up from this for her. You curled a hand towards your chest when the blackness shifted. Two of the Knights parted away from one another to allow a third a clear path forward. He, along with Rey, would be signing the document as witnesses of your union.

 Your mother pressed her lips into a thin frown, her nostrils flaring as she turned and began to walk away. You did not chase after her, opting instead to brace yourself on your father’s headstone. It had to say something, that the members of your family always left one another. You. Your father dying. You once more. Your mother not remaining any longer, and not due to the looming threat of Phasma or Hux’s presence either.

 The Supreme Leader of the First Order—your husband—drew up beside you. “I’m letting you win,” you said in a voice softer than a normal whisper. You knew by the shift of his body that he heard you. Leather cupped your cheek. You closed your eyes as Kylo turned your face towards his, and kept them closed as the tip of his nose touched against yours. “Right now I… I need your power.” He already knew this, which is precisely why he had laid it on the table for you to grab.

 “My little tooke,” he purred in that deep voice that did not veil his desires. You shuddered. Trembling, you opened your eyes and swallowed thickly against the saliva that had gathered in your mouth. “What does it taste like to you?”

 This newly found hunger for power. An unquenchable thirst for the time being; even when you had been a frustrated captive, a prisoner, you had not experienced this torture. Then, you had needed him dead. You had been able to commit yourself to fulfilling your duty. Now you did need him. Alive and well and with this power he had obtained by using Rey in his plot to kill Snoke and become Supreme Leader. You required his help to keep the forces of the First Order at bay. Without him, you doubted that you would be capable of getting into your hands the weapons necessary to kill General Hux, who remained a great threat to the remnants of the Resistance and your mother. You needed all his power could offer you.

 Kylo Ren dangled that power in front of you. Toying with you like a loth-cat with a...a tooke.

 “It’s… It’s bitter and sweet and hot and sour and it makes my stomach churn.” You almost felt like a little girl. Your hands shifted off of your father’s grave. Kylo’s eyes pinched in the corners as he grinned in amusement. Grin was not the correct term, you decided. He was smirking, self-content. He had you exactly where he wanted you at long last—in the palm of his hand. Just as on that fateful day when you had been captured. Him disappearing, turning the tables so that you were the prey and he the predator. Playing. Making you crawl backwards as he positioned you where he wanted before going in for the kill. You had started to believe that Snoke was the puppetmaster toying with your strings. He wasn’t. This man was.

 Husband.

 It did not make you feel weak as you had feared. You felt the power offered by the position of his wife. The First Order, all of those officers would be on their toes when it came to you. Kylo Ren’s mood had always been volatile. You had been his when Snoke was alive, yet an officer had struck you all the same. No one had moved to kill you. Water-boarded you and groped you until he had ordered them to not. His power over them now could not be questioned by Snoke. There was no buffer. If someone touched you…

 That power, after all of your defenselessness and being forced to live as a prisoner of the First Order, it was addicting. Kylo knew it. From his own experience of falling from the Light, he was familiar with how one sip of what he was offering could turn you. Ren enjoyed giving you tastes of power. Your mind flashed to the times he had allowed you to play lead in the bedroom. At any moment, he could turn the tides.

 I can’t let his darkness swallow me. One of the parts of you that had been so complicated by his influenced wondered what would happen if you did allow it to consume you. If Rey, at any point, fell to the dark, what would you do?

 “Hux will not be kept for long,” the Force user said, breaking you away from your thoughts. Your mind took several seconds to process the meaning behind those words. You would, for the sake of your future missions, be forced to act as though your injuries were once more getting the better of you. This was also Kylo Ren’s wedding night. He would not be able to indulge of the redhead was in the vicinity. It would crush any acting on your part. “This will allow Rey time to become better acquainted with the Knights.”

 No words escaped from you as one hand was placed on your lower back to steer you away from your father’s grave. You walked without protesting the nonverbal directions given to you by Kylo. Your eyes were on the ground. Your mind buzzing with a static-like noise. This was disrupted when Kylo Ren scooped you up into is arms. Your stomach swooped. One hand clasped the material of Kylo’s cape as you recovered from being startled. He said only a single thing to you as he walked. It was a question, him asking you which room you would prefer.

 You did not have an immediate answer for him. This was your childhood home. He had taken so much of your life from you. Had glimpsed who you had been once upon a time. Did you allow him to consummate the marriage in your bed? Would it change things if you asked him to instead have his way with you in the living room? Not the study, that was your father’s. Not the kitchen nor the library. The mental repetition of where, where, where started to drive you mad. So similar to when he had held the tattoo gun. Him asking you where you wanted it done, and you having no response. Just the same as then, Kylo Ren took matters into his own hands and chose for you.

 Using the Force to prevent a necessity to alter how he held you, Kylo opened the door to the house and began to carry you up the stairs towards your bedroom. You stared with wide eyes at each step, at your bedroom door, and at your bed. He deposited you onto the bed more gently than you had anticipated. You scooted backwards on the mattress until your rear met your pillow. Ren had not moved to undress. His eyes were freely traveling along your body and face in alteration.

 It took several seconds more before you realized he was taking in the dress again. Your wedding dress. How surreal, you thought for what felt like the hundredth time. You knew now where you would be consummating your marriage, but not how. You wondered if he would be gentle. Was that same train of thought running through his head? He had hesitated the first time, before he had had you impale yourself on—No! The scream inside of your head was your own. You pressed the heel of your hand to your temple.

 “You’re not supposed to be nervous. We’ve done it before,” you said through clenched teeth.

 With the war going on, you had not given serious thought to marriage. He likely hadn’t either. Here both of you were. Kylo Ren staring at your wedding dress. When was it that he had first known things were getting to this point? Before or after you had died? Before or after Starkiller Base had been destroyed? Before or after he had accepted that he was both man and monster? In complicating you, he had complicated himself, albeit in a less painful manner. His pain was regret. You knew by the way he was looking at you that he regretted the past. He regretted the things he had done to you, though you were doubtful he would fully admit to this aloud.

 This would have been your first time having sex if he hadn’t taken whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. You had been raised in a manner that had left you believing you would not have sex until marriage. Here you were.

 “You’ve thought about this,” you said, earning his attention. Brown darted upwards, locking with yours. You pushed yourself off the bed. Kylo was forced to take a step backwards. You held up one hand, its back towards him. Ren furrowed his brow before realization visibly dawned on him. “My mother left before we could.” The first dance as a wedded couple. Kylo Ren placed the back of his hand against yours, the both of you shifting into the correct stance. From there, you allowed him to take the lead.

 One step forward, him first and then you. Your shoulders nearly touched. A step to the left, next the right. Kylo Ren twisted his wrist as he turned, and you followed suit. Now palm to palm, the two of you continuing to face one another. The tips of his fingers started to trail down to your wrist as you turned your back to him. Here he executed a part of the dance he hadn’t during the other occasions the two of you had done this. It was a step both of you had skipped over. Ren brought his chest against you while shifting his hand upwards. Your left hand in his. Your wedding ring and his both visible. In the past, he had allowed you to maneuver yourself so that you were chest to chest as the dance demanded. Now he did his part in spinning you outwards then in. Your heart pounded in your ribcage, and you were certain he could feel it when you were pressed up against him.

 Any hesitation he had been harboring before was now eliminated. Kylo Ren hungrily claimed your lips with his whilst pinning you down against the bed. He rocked his hips forward, pressing the evidence of his arousal into your hip. You whimpered into the kiss. He had been nibbling on your bottom lip, seeking entrance, and wasted no time in dominating your mouth more thoroughly. Goosebumps began to pimple along your flesh under the red and gold material. It contrasted with the heat that coursed through your body. You strained to listen for something to rip. You were waiting for him to tear open your dress, however he did not.

 It occured to you why he had hesitated. It was precisely the how that had caused him as much pause as it had you. Since arriving on Naboo, there had been discussions regarding playing make-believe. That could have taken part, the pair of you pretending that it was your first time. That was a pain you were grateful you did not have to endure. You did not believe it was something you would have been able to recover from.

 You shoved at the Supreme Leader’s chest simultaneous to turning your head. The need for air had become too great for you. Above you, Ren grunted. His mouth moved instead to your jawline. Yours, meanwhile, hung open as you gasped for breath. The goosebumps faded in full, replaced entirely by the heat. The mattress under you squeaked, the bedframe giving a groan. There was the phantom sensation of his flesh on yours, which contrasted with the equally powerful feel of your dress rubbing on your skin with each shift of his body.

 Kylo Ren set his knees on the bed, your hips between them and placed his hands on either side of your head. His back was arched enough to where he could dip his chin and inspect your dress. His expression mirrored the one he had worn back when you had been a prisoner of the First Order and forced to wear Naboo clothes. Hunger tinged with admiration. You averted your gaze from his face to look instead at the ring her wore. Over his glove, though you knew that would change once this was finished. He would permit you to place the ring on his naked finger while the two of you were alone.

 The Force user twisted the wrist of his left hand, his long fingers in an arc with their tips meeting your cheek. “Do you know what I called you?” A tease, bringing up the secret term of endearment he had not spoken aloud in your presence, if at all. Your eyelids drifted downwards, pausing halfway. You failed to meet his gaze. Instead you stared at his lips. Now that they had your attention, they started to move again. “When I would think of you…. When I saw the tooke hairclip, the book, the virtual pet…”

 “Did you call me pet?” you questioned, unable to remember if he had referred to you as such during any one of your numerous conversations or arguments. Those lips of his twisted upwards, curving into an amused grin. And it was a grin this time, not a smirk. He mouthed the single syllable no then said nothing more. He would not tell you, at least not now.

 The color of his irises had seemed to darken with hunger, which was fast shoving aside the admiration he held for your dress. You touched the front of the gown. A part of you did not care if it tore, while another did. You did not understand this latter portion. You were not generally materialistic, were you? Had being a captive who owned so little changed you this drastically? Above you, Kylo hummed in thought. A flick of his finger and the zipper of the gown was tugged downwards three inches by an invisible force. A fresh set of goosebumps enveloped your skin.

 Ren rose from the bed. One hand on your shoulder, he pulled you along with him. Kylo positioned you on your knees before him. Your teeth chattered together momentarily, adrenaline pumping through you as anticipation mounted. You had been expecting him to go full force. Not take his time this way. In the past, after days of no physical contact, he had been insatiably drawn to entering you as quickly as he could. It was what you had been prepared for, which now had your body reacting to the neglect.

 Your nipples were hardened buds, pressing on your bra pad. Uncomfortable. You wanted to be naked. You needed to be exposed. Blood pulsed in your ears as you tried to figure out how you felt about these emotions, these desires. His darkness was swallowing you. Desire. Passion. You seized your bottom lip between your teeth and lifted your hands to cup him through his pants. Palming him, you accepted that you were seeking out something familiar to cling to before life again thrust you towards a path with an unknown outcome. You could fail in your goals to kill General Hux and stop the First Order, or you could succeed. Only time would tell.

 This, the weight of his cock, heavy through his clothing, that was a surety.

 Ren released a sigh at your touch. His left hand met the side of your head. A gentle caress, his fingers hooking behind your head in a promise that he would only be so patient. He wanted the warmth you had to offer. He wanted to be inside of you. You opened the front of his pants, bunched up the end of his shirt and pushed it to one side, and eyed the limb that moved to assist you. Kylo pushed his pants down so that they settled mid-thigh, his erection now fully freed. You gripped his shaft, thumb skimming the spongey head of his cock and smearing the precum that had started to bead out.

 Leaning forward, you pursed your lips and let saliva slip past them, wetting his sensitive flesh. You used your hand to smear the spit along his shaft. “Such a filthy, tooke,” he growled, his hips starting to snap forward before he could fully catch himself. The fingers in your hair caught on some of your strands. The light tug had you glancing up. “Open.” A demand, one you didn’t mind fulfilling.

 You sealed your lips around the first inch, tongue thrust against him, undulating as you hollowed your cheeks and pulled back. You were allowed but a single breath before the hand that had been threatening to take control did just that. Kylo Ren tugged you forward, his cock hitting near the back of your throat as your hands shot up to brace against his thighs. You arched your back, your legs sliding behind you a fraction. Kylo had started to fuck your mouth in slow, lazy thrusts. Shallow. You rolled your tongue again. A swear left him.

 His other hand now met your head. You had less than a second to prepare yourself for the deeper thrust, for the way he made you gag before you were able to better control your natural reflexes. Tears gathered in your eyes at the pressure. Kylo straightened his arms an inch on either side to aid in tilting your head back. The new angle lessened the strain on your throat. You grunted your approval, and his cock twitched in response to the vibrations.

 The next time he pushed forward, fully sheathing himself within your orifice, Kylo Ren held you firmly in place. Your eyes bulged, panic bubbling in your chest. The intensity of his gaze on your face conflicted with how he was panting. The former in control, the latter displaying how quickly that control could crumble. One shove, and you bounced gently into the side of your mattress. He ran one, lone digit up the length of his shaft. The seam of the leather providing enough stimulation that more precum presented itself. All the while his eyes explored the colors of your dress. It was one of those rare occasions in which you did know what he was thinking. A perverted, borderline twisted, thought: he could easily make you wear white on your wedding day. Heat filled your face, a different sort than what was swirling around your abdomen.

 You felt self-conscious, virginal even. You were not with him as an enemy; this was not his quarters aboard a starship or a military base. This was your homeworld, your bedroom. He was your husband. It was intimate. Filthy but intimate. You were vulnerable. This man could easily take advantage of you, dirty you, but he held himself back.

 “Get up.” Spoken sharply. He remained in control yet was losing his patience. He wanted you. You stood up, your movements shaky, your legs wobbly. Without needing to be asked, you turned to expose your back to him. His hand yanked the zipper down the remainder of the way, though not in too harsh of a gesture. There was no threat of him tearing the gown even now. He had settled on not ruining it. You stepped out of the red and gold material, allowing him to use the Force to move the dress off to the side. Hands on you once more.

 Your undergarments did not have the same luxury of being admired. Leather gloved hands ripped the straps of your slip. The torn pieces flopped forward. Now the material reminded you of the cloth that you had been forced to wear when you had been captured. That pathetic excuse for a dress. As if it reminded him of it as well, Ren yanked down the front to expose the strapless bra. Here you had more layers on than in the past.

 “N...not like this.” It was a surprise that it bothered you. You almost fully naked. Him clothed. Ren did not force you to repeat yourself nor elaborate. He removed his gloves first. His wedding band stay on the leather finger until you removed it in unison with him unclasping his cape. Kylo Ren was bare before you were. His thumbs hooked into your panties. You stopped him from continuing by catching his left wrist and working the ring back into place.

 Kylo Ren dropped down onto one knee, genuflecting before you while also pulling your panties down to your feet. He was fast, you thought as your ass met the mattress. Your jaw dropped. His face was buried between your legs, nose nudging your clitoris and tongue flicking back and forth against your inner lips. Shoving them right then left then right. Your inner walls tightened around nothing, wetness slipping from them. You had one hand on the edge of the bed and the other on the back of his head. Kylo shouldered open your legs further. Your right leg was bent at the knee, draped over his arm, and your toes curled.

 The heat of his mouth offered such promise, one that was left unfulfilled. Hands firm on your hips, he twisted you around while pulling you down. His cock skimmed your outer lips as you were made to sit on his lap with your back to him. He had spread your legs, pushing at your inner thighs and forcing you to straddle him. One of those hands, bare and warm, made a path from your belly to your throat.

 “You have to watch, tooke. That’s what you like.” If nothing else, it was what your body enjoyed. It was what caused you to grow all the more slick. Your eyes darted down of their own accord. You observed the way he rolled his hips, his erection teasing you. Nudging your outer lips without fully parting them. Your juices smeared, and each subsequent thrust produced a wet-sounding shift as your pliant body opened to him in want. Kylo raised himself a little, angling his body and entering you as you watched your body swallow him inch by inch. “You’re mine, tooke.” There was no denying it anymore. “I’ll let you pull the trigger.”

 Not to kill him, no. To eliminate threats that would ruin the Resistance and First Order alike. That was the deal.

 He splayed his left hand palm-down on your stomach. You eyed the wedding band, and words tumbled from your mouth before you had time to think on them. “You’re mine, Ren.” A hissed yes as he bucked his hips, his hand diving down to where he was able to pinch your clit between the sides of his index and middle finger. Your legs twitched, jerking and making you pitch forward against the mattress.

 As soon as you recovered, you raised yourself up then shifted backwards, meeting his thrust. Your belly swam in delight, pleasure fogging your mind. This was so familiar, this taste of his darkness. The Darkside fed on passion, and there were times that you did see its allure. You threw back your head, cupping your own breasts through your bra. Ren’s free hand unsnapped it. You lifted your limbs long enough for it to fall away then returned to kneading yourself. His mouth was at your ear. “I’m going to fuck you on every surface in this room.”

 That was the warning he gave you before standing, his arms hooked under your legs, lifting you along with him. You were thrown forward onto the bed, landing face-first into your pillow. It muffled the startled scream at the sensation of being filled. He no longer cared if you could see. That was just as well; you were too far gone to focus on the sight. You turned your head, sucking in air between moans. Kylo’s hands were on your ass cheeks, parting them, pressing them together. Your cunt opened and tightened in alteration, tugging at him. One of the times he had you parted, you felt a glob of spit hit your entrance. It slipped downwards onto his cock. You could feel its descent as well as how it mingled with your juices, serving as a means of further lubricating you for him. His cum filled you, drawing your own orgasm from you.

 I might not have to fake anything, you thought a little while later as your husband fucked you for a second time. This was directly beside your dresser. It was this time he also located a substance that served as lube. His fingers toying with you then slipping inside of you in a new way. You sputtered out nonsensical strings of words that could not correctly be referred to as sentences.

 “Don’t worry, tooke, you’ll like it,” he promised.

 And that third time he had you shuddering as your mind tried to process whether this was pleasurable or painful or both. No… Not painful, you settled. It was so much pressure. You were on your hands and knees, and he was guiding you back towards him. Helping you forward. Drawing you back. Commenting on how tight you were, how he was finally taking the rest of your virginity. Your eyes widened, your mind buzzing. No reaction. A swirl of feelings, none taking root.

 It would be so kriffing easy to drown in his darkness, you thought. You wanted to kill him. You didn’t. You wanted to live in this moment forever, where there was no death, only physical pleasure. His fingers inside of your cunt as he jerked his hips forward again, giving you the strangest sensation you had yet experienced. His fingers ghosting over the back of your vaginal wall while his cock pressed into them from the other side. You felt so full. You were cumming again. Kylo Ren groaned, swearing and picking up his pace, chasing orgasm. You felt more full, as though there was no room left, as his seed emptied into you.

 The two of you collapsed together on the ground after he pulled out. You were a panting mess, and he was there right along with you. Less winded, maybe not quite as tired. Your eyes searched his face, darting along the scar and then finding every other familiar quality. The beauty marks. The lips. The expressive eyes.

 Sometimes you wanted to die because you had failed in your mission to kill him. That had also put you into a position of power, into a position that had allowed you to witness Snoke’s death. General Hux, the destroyer of worlds, was another whose death you wanted to watch. Kylo Ren gave you a reason to live in that. A lot of the time, you did focus on the eventual demise of Kylo Ren. Other times…

 ...there were certain kinds of pain that people learned to love. You could be dark like him. You could kill the things you loved if it came down to it...one day. You were too frightened to do that just yet. Having no other reason to live. Wanting to die but wanting to survive. You reached for Kylo Ren’s hand, clasping it and staring at both your wedding band and his.

 “I called you Fate,” he whispered. It could mean countless different things. Some loved their fate, others hated it. Some believed in fate, others did not. You tried to make your own fate. He had, by compromising you, made his own fate with you. Except you did not know what it was, that ultimate fate of this complicated life with him. Was it sadness and misery? Was it closure? “Had I remained in the Light, working alongside General Organa, perhaps I would have been you. Hunting down the greatest threats from the First Order. You were my alternate fate.” Then, by destroying what you had been, he could prove to himself that he had been right in his decision.

 One could easily love the fate they had chosen and the one they had rejected with equal fervor. In destroying you, he was destroying himself. Thus, he would forever lose that battle. The two of you were far too much alike.

 The hush that had filled the room remained a little while longer. It was broken by your snort. Kylo looked at you. “You signed your Fate.” It made more sense to you now why he had obliged in including Ben Solo. You twisted your ring back and forth. “You know, it’s strange. I changed my name, signing both it and my birth name on a form to leave this planet. To join the Resistance. That led me to you. You sign something, saying that you understand it’s permanent but not really knowing the depth of that. You and I, we made mistakes in our old names and in our new ones. It’s just a name. It doesn’t tell us who we or who we will become.

 “I...slay...monsters…” You spoke those words slowly. “I pretended it made killing easier, but it did not. I hated you when you started to tell me of the officers’ families. In another life, I could have been you. Looking at the Resistance members as monsters. War is so ugly—what happens to us when it ends? What is our fate?”

 The man you had married did not speak of his promise to your mother to return you home to her. He did not bring up the possibility that one or both of you could die. His chest rose and fell heavily.

 “The sky is clear here at night. All the stars visible. Do you look up at them?” You murmured sometimes. “There is no point in asking the fate of stars. We move onto the next group when one fades away.”

 “Some stars are not easily forgotten like that, Ren. People pick favorite stars for themselves. They name them. They matter. It isn’t easy to lose something so meaningful and not wonder what happened to it. They find the evidence, and then...” Kylo lifted his arm and touched his knuckles gently to your cheek, caressing back and forth.

 You had to live life to discover your fate. You impacted those around you without always realizing it. Your mind flashed to the moment directly before your father had released your hand. Kylo Ren’s fury, his pain over your death. If you had died, whose fate would have suffered? Who else may have died? Who else may have lived? Your mother would be dead. Knowing this caused your lips to quiver.

 “I don’t want to die.”

 That was terrifying when, before, you hadn’t fully cared one way or the other.

[the-desolated-quill]

BBC’s The War Of The Worlds blog - Episode 3

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

You know, people often ask me why I get so angry when I’m reviewing BBC shows. I mean yes I give Disney and Marvel a hard time too, but they don’t get nearly as much bile and venom as I give the BBC. Well that’s because, unlike Disney and Marvel, BBC shows are funded by the British taxpayer through our TV licence fees. I’m effectively paying for them to make this crap. That’s what pisses me off more than anything.

Yes we mercifully come to the end of this... this. Episode 1 was a slow, plodding and utterly tedious affair that was about as exciting as an Amish bachelor party. Episode 2 was even worse thanks to its poor narrative structure, terrible characterisation and less than subtle allegories. Now Harness has come to hammer the final nail in the coffin with Episode 3. Is it bad?

...

You’re right, that’s a stupid question. A more apt question would be how bad is it. Very, very bad is the answer. Very, very bad indeed.

Lets start with the obvious problem. The non-linear narrative introduced in the previous episode. The stupid early reveal that the Martians ultimately lose and that Amy survives completely destroyed any and all tension and suspense thanks to Peter Harness desperately trying to outwit the audience instead of just telling a story. Now, bizarrely, he tries to reintroduce tension by having the characters umming and arghing about what killed the Martians off and whether this could help stop the Earth from terraforming. One teeny, tiny problem with this though. The audience already know! Even those that never read the original book know how it ended! And even if you didn’t, the episode drops enough hints like great fucking boulders. The prevalence of typhoid throughout the episode and its correlation with the Martians stumbling around like a drunken prom date isn’t exactly hard to miss. Harness’ writing is still as unsubtle as ever. But worse still, he completely undermines and misses the point of the ending to War Of The Worlds.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people (mostly Americans) criticise the end of the original book for being a deus ex machina. I mean the Martians get killed off by the common cold. How stupid, right? Except it’s not because those people (mostly Americans) are looking at it the wrong way. Your main takeaway shouldn’t be that the Martians were easily killed off by bacteria. Rather that we failed to stop them. The reason humanity prevails in the end is more down to luck than anything else. The narrator even attributes this to being an act of God. But here’s the thing. We didn’t stand a chance against the Martians. We didn’t beat them. They lost because they just happened to catch a cold. Now it’s not hard to imagine a society as scientifically advanced as their’s to be able to find some kind of cure or vaccine for it. And if and when they do, what then? We’d be fucked, wouldn’t we? Should the Martians ever return to finish what they started, the human race would be well and truly doomed. It’s not a deus ex machina. It’s a dire warning of what’s to come. A brief respite before the inevitable. That’s what makes the ending so effective.

The BBC series however completely misunderstands this, changing the story so that Ogilvy (an astronomer, don’t forget) somehow manages to weaponize typhoid in order to kill the red weed, which is presented as some kind of victory, when in reality it’s quite an insulting deviation from the source material. If only the Commonwealth could shake off the remnants of British colonialism as easily as these guys dealt with the red weed. Not to mention it just makes the Martians look really stupid. So they come to Earth, drink our blood, keel over and then... what, they just give up? Are they just waiting for humanity to die by itself? What happens when Mars HQ realises the red weed hasn’t worked? What then? Are they just going to shrug it off? It doesn’t make any sense.

Which brings us to the Martians themselves. The picture above comes from the Jeff Wayne musical version and is without a doubt the most accurate depiction of the Martians from the book. Most of the other adaptations have wildly different interpretations, which isn’t a problem in and of itself provided it works within the context of that particular narrative. However the reason I bring up the original design is so I can talk about what H.G. Wells intended when he came up with them. See, while the Martians are highly intelligent, they’re also presented as being quite vestigial. They’re sluggish thanks to Earth’s heavier gravity, rendered practically deaf thanks to Earth’s dense atmosphere and apparently have no organs with which to digest their food, hence their need to inject human blood directly into themselves for sustenance. The Martians represent what humanity could become as we become more and more reliant on technology. The Industrial Revolution brought about a lot of societal fears and concerns at the time, and the Martians are those fears manifested. Heartless creatures reduced to being simple brains, unable to properly interact with the world around them.

The BBC series goes a very different route. Instead of the giant brains, we instead get giant brown crabs, which, again, isn’t necessarily a problem provided it works in context. And that’s the problem. It doesn’t. The original Wells design told us what we needed to know about their biology, their motivations and their society. What do we learn about the BBC Martians? They’re big, generic monsters that look like rejects from Stranger Things. They don’t even inject blood into themselves. They feed off of us directly, leechlike. They’re more like animals. Not the vast, cold, unsympathetic intellects they were described to be. At no point do you buy that these creatures would be capable of building the Tripods or colonising the Earth. They just exist for some cheap jump scares and horror movie cliches.

What’s worse is that by changing the Martians’ design so drastically, any subtextual allegory gets chucked in the bin. The Martians from the book are meant to represent the British Empire at the height of its power. Merciless tyrants stomping all over the lives and cultures of the so called ‘lesser races,’ changing the environment to suit them rather than adapting to the existing environment. It’s Darwinism crossed with arrogance. And yet, ironically, the oppressors (the Martians) are technically inferior to the natives (the humans) as they are incapable of surviving without the aid of technology. The BBC series is unable to make this allegory, so Harness has to resort to straight up telling the audience the allegory. In by far the clunkiest scene in the entire series, we see George argue with his brother about how the Martians are no different from the Brits in their colonial ways. Not only does this break the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule and stands as a perfect example of bad storytelling, Harness doesn’t even bother to do anything with this other than just making the comparison. It’s been previously established that Amy was born and raised in India. You’d think she’d have something to say about all this, but nope. At the end, she wistfully describes India to her son in the most patronising and insulting way possible. It’s really quite disgusting. I mean H.G. Wells was quite patronising towards the Tasmanians in the book, but in his defence, he was a privileged white man from the 1800s. What’s Peter Harness’ excuse?! Ostensibly he pays lip service to the idea that the Martians are no different from the Brits, but he doesn’t want to really explore it or get us to actually think about it. Probably because it’s all a bit too complicated to get into, but if he’s not confident about exploring such topics, why the fuck is he adapting War Of The Worlds in the first bloody place?! Write something else!

In fact I think this is the root of all the problems with this adaptation. Harness clearly isn’t capable of exploring the complex themes of the source material, so instead he either introduces irrelevant social issues that aren’t nearly as complicated (women’s rights, empires are bad and so on) as a token show of progressiveness, or he goes as far as to uncomplicate themes and ideas to an almost offensive degree. In the book, the narrator is trapped in a church with a priest who is going through a major existential crisis and risks giving away their hiding spot to the Martians, who are busy terraforming the planet. So he resorts to knocking the priest unconscious and watching as the Martians drag his body away. In the BBC series, we see the old woman and the kid get killed off for no reason other than shock value and the characters have nothing to do with their demise, so they’re morally in the clear. The priest meanwhile doesn’t even appear in the scene, instead being relegated to the shitty flash forwards where his faith remains very much intact and even protests against the idea that it’s humanity’s illness that stopped the Martians rather than an act of God (brief side note, would Ogilvy really be this open about not believing in God? At the time of the book’s publication, the scene with the priest losing faith was considered extremely controversial, so this just seems utterly wrong). Plus there’s no tension in wondering what the Martians are doing and whether they’re going to find the characters. In fact there’s no tension whatsoever because we know the Martians have fallen ill and the characters are just hanging around, waiting for the fuckers to die. I cannot stress enough how atrociously awful the writing is in this show. We know the Martians are dying and the episode is about the characters waiting for them to die.

Jesus fucking Christ!

The Artilleryman from the previous episode was the same. In the book he was a deluded crackpot who willingly bought into imperialist dogma, believing that humanity could rebuild underground and eventually rise up and defeat the Martians. In the BBC series, he was a scared, innocent little waif being forced to fight in a war he wants no part of. It’s an incredibly shallow and uninteresting reinterpretation of the source material.

But the worst, the absolute worst, is what Harness does with George.

To be clear, no I’m not upset he gets killed off. I’ve made my views on him quite clear. He cheated on his wife because she was infertile and ran off to make whoopie with some redhead. The bastard deserves everything he gets, frankly. Plus I’ve had enough of Rafe Spall’s gormless acting to last a lifetime, thank you. What I am upset by is the way he gets killed off.

One of the most interesting parts of the original book is the fact that there are no heroes in War Of The Worlds. The Artilleryman is a young, impressionable, nationalist fool, the Priest descends into a pit of nihilistic despair, and the narrator survives only by his cowardice. He even goes as far as to attempt suicide, throwing himself in front of the unbeknownst to him dead Tripod because he cannot bear the idea of living in a world like this. It’s extremely dark and very cynical. The BBC series goes a very different route. We see George slowly become delirious as a result of the typhoid infection he got by drinking the poisoned cup of water in the previous episode (so all that stuff about the Martian terraforming was a load of bollocks) before, realising that he is becoming a burden to Amy, deciding to make the supreme sacrifice and facing the lone Martian alone while she makes a run for it. Not only does this open up a major plot hole - who the fuck was Amy expecting to arrive from the North if George is dead? They try to dismiss this as memory suppression, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t apply to losing a loved one to a fucking alien - it also completely stands at odds with the themes of the book. When facing annihilation at the hands of a higher power, the arrogant Brits, who previously lived a life of privilege on the backs of millions of subjugated, reveal themselves for who they truly are at their core. The BBC series says yeah, we were a bunch of racist tosspots with delusions of grandeur, but we weren’t all bad. The main takeaway I got from this despicable, badly written series was a three hour pity party about how all those selfish POCs don’t consider the feelings of white people and asking why can’t we all just get along.

Peter Harness’ bastardisation of War Of The Worlds is without a doubt one of the worst adaptations I’ve ever seen. In fact it’s quite possibly one of the worst TV shows I’ve ever seen, period. It’s not just the sheer disregard for the source material that upsets me. It’s also the absolute amateurish nature of the whole fucking thing. This series fails in some of the most basic ways. His writing is truly terrible, somehow getting steadily worse and worse with each episode. It’s not just upsetting to see someone get the fundamental elements of storytelling so spectacularly wrong, it honestly makes me sick to my fucking stomach. Peter Harness, please, for your own sake and my sanity, stop fucking writing. You’re clearly not good at it and I don’t want to see my money go to someone who obviously hasn’t the faintest fucking idea what they’re doing. Enough is enough.

So it would seem that Jeff Wayne’s musical version remains the best adaptation of War Of The Worlds. In fact can we just have a movie adaptation of that please?

[epicwrites]

→ GENERAL INFORMATION

Name: Noah Blackwell

Age: 1000+

Occupation: CFO of Blackwell Media

Residency: Hollow Grove, MA 

Species: Original Vampire

→ FAST FACTS  

Eldest son of the Blackwell children, Noah is inherently over protective and feels a strong responsibility to care for and look after his siblings, even to this day.

He planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a blacksmith to take over the family business. 

He married and had three children; two boys and one girl.

Maggie Blackwell, his older sister who was adopted into the family, was taken by a coven of witches who claimed she’d been ‘stolen’ from them originally. When Maggie refused to leave with this coven and chose the Blackwells as her family instead, the witches cursed the Blackwells with vampirism, and the vampire species was born. 

Noah gave in to the curse instantly, his humanity disappearing in a flash and bodies dropping in his wake. He became exactly what the witches had wanted; a monster, a slave to blood lust, an unfeeling devil. He lost nearly 300 years in the humanity-less, blood-thirty haze.

It was Lukas that managed to bring Noah back, only when Noah had his baby brother within an inch of his life. For years after he suffered through the memories of all the lives he had taken, the loss of his family centuries prior, and the never ending guilt for what he’d become. All he could do was try to become the man he’d once been in this new world he no longer recognized. 

Noah did his best to blend in with humanity, to seek other interests such as traveling and study over the wars waging in the background. He had no interest in fighting the werewolves as mortal enemies, though when they got in his way he was known to be a harsh contender. 

He’s skeptical that peace will ever truly be achievable between the different species, but is always willing to hear and weigh in on the discussions. He wants the safety of Hollow Grove to be a sign of what could be their future, but he’s hesitant to believe that it’s that simple. Nothing has ever been simple for him. 

Full biography below cut.

→ BIOGRAPHY

Even as a child, Noah knew he had to look out for his siblings. He was the eldest son and because of that he was responsible for each of them - even though Maggie was technically the oldest. It meant he had to try to keep Lukas on a short leash and on the right path. Joslyn was his baby sister, he had to be sure to keep her safe from anything and everything that could hurt her. When it came to Maggie; well, she was his partner in looking after the younger two...They worked together to teach their siblings the ways of their small town, how to navigate the forest around their home, how to hunt and cook and take care of themselves, read and write. Plus, he had to keep a watch over her, too. They were all his responsibility in the end of it; not to mention they were the most important thing to him in his entire life. He had to keep them safe.

Noah fell into that role well. From a young age he’d always been rather serious compared to his siblings and it helped when it came to keeping the rest of the Blackwells in line. It was only natural for him to stumble into the family business, too. He looked up to his father and wanted nothing more than to become a blacksmith alongside him. So once he was old enough to hold the hammer and start shaping the metal, he started working with his father, learning the skills of the trade. Come to think of it, his life had always been pretty much mapped out of him, hadn’t it? Not that Noah minded; He loved his family with everything he had, enjoyed the laborious but rewarding work of the blacksmith. When his parents found his ‘perfect match’, so to speak, he was at the alter and saying ‘I do’ to a woman he barely even knew at the time.

He and Dorothy were not a couple made of love. Instead, they were more of a mutually beneficial relationship. They worked together well and he enjoyed her company. Together they had three children within the span of five or so years, began raising their own little family - and he had more people to look after, a role he already had so much practice doing. Two boys and one girl, they became a bright light in his life, and he cherished them. Just as he was a strict and demanding older brother he took on a similar role over his children. He kept them in line with a stern voice but a nurturing hand. 

Just as he was settling into the routine of caring for his young children and working on his own as a blacksmith, a bomb was dropped into his life that changed everything. People appeared to take Maggie from them, claiming she was their rightful property and attempting to steal her away. They said she wasn’t a Blackwell, that they were her parents, that she didn’t belong with them. Noah didn’t even question it as he stood beside his sister, ready to defend her from anything. Even if she wasn’t biologically a Blackwell, if what these people claimed was true, she was his family - and no one would take her away. Not without a fight. He had made a vow to protect his family, and Maggie was just that. She always would be.

When Maggie refused to leave with them, Noah only felt a momentary elation, because her refusal was quickly followed by the life changing curse. Vampirism. A slave to blood lust. A thirst that couldn’t be satiated. In that instant, the whole entire world flipped on its axis and went dark. The light disappeared from within him, instead replaced with an undying hunger. The only thing he knew was he had to get away, and he fled - dropping bodies in his wake across the entire world. Without his humanity, Noah just didn’t care. Time became relative, hundreds of years were lost in what seemed like a blink of an eye but also felt as if they were stretched into infinity. He didn’t love, he didn’t feel, he didn’t care. He was a slave to the blood, a killer, a monster.

He’d all but forgotten his past life when Lukas reappeared to flip everything over on him once more. It was his baby brother who made him feel again - only when Noah had him within an inch of his life. Lukas convinced Noah to return to himself and let his humanity return and along with it all of the shame and regret he felt over the past several centuries. He hadn’t even kept a count of all the bodies that had dropped at his hand, how many innocent people that he’d murdered - but he could feel the weight of each and every one of them, bearing down on his shoulders and dragging him into hell. 

His wife and kids had died centuries ago thinking he’d abandoned them. He had abandoned them. For decades he walked the Earth on uneven footing, not knowing where he really fit or belonged. Even his family were only shadows of their former selves, waging war on the werewolves and fighting for power, no longer interested in the normal aspects of the life they’d once known. Noah wanted nothing to do with it. He fought the wolves that got in his way but otherwise didn’t seek to wage war with them, unlike his siblings who seemed more hungry for power and control than ever. While he knew Maggie, Joslyn, and Lukas didn’t need his help, perhaps even didn’t want it, he kept an eye on their affairs from a distance, meddling just enough to keep them from getting too deep into trouble. After all those years had past they may not be the family he once had known, but they were still his family - and he loved them now even more fiercely than before. As a boy he swore to protect them and that promise is still something he plans to keep. 

Noah sought out more of the finer things in life. He chose to travel, exploring every inch of the world and beyond as new territories were discovered. He studied, absorbing what knowledge he could and trying to keep abreast of the ever evolving world. Technology advanced at startling rates, often leaving the vampire behind to catch up years later. He chose the path of blending in, assimilating with humanity but never staying in one place too long.

At the mention of peace treaties, Noah was skeptical but willing to hear the offer. If a treaty would keep his family safe and let them settle down for once, he was willing to try and strike one up. Plus, it would help to get his siblings all back in line, maybe regain some sense of control over this whole, fucked up world. But supernatural wars didn’t easily come to terms of peace, not until they were forced to because there wasn’t much of another choice. Supernatural creatures were revealed to the world and humans were in an uproar in attempts to protect themselves, droves of every species getting wiped out. The original families - vampires, werewolves, and the supreme, came together to strike the deal and protect their kinds. Hollow Grove was created as a safe haven for all supernatural kinds, and the world started to settle again. 

Laying down roots isn’t Noah’s thing. He drifts in and out of Hollow Grove, preferring to live in a constant state of transition rather than letting himself get too comfortable. Even if it takes hundreds of years for things to change, he’s been burned by it far too many times to count, and he’s not willing to be caught off guard again. 

[steven-universe-renaissance]

Introduction

This is a Steven Universe Alternative Universe (AU). It tells the entire story of Steven Universe, episode by episode through fanfiction and illustrations. This is a story you can follow even if you have never watched Steven Universe (and if that is the case, you can skip this introduction and proceed directly to the story to avoid any spoilers). If you are indifferent to spoilers, you can keep reading below.

- - -

In this AU the initial change to the premise of the show is very simple: When the Diamonds blasted the Earth to end the rebellion, Rose Quartz did not succeed in saving any of her rebel-comrades behind her shield. It all happened too fast, none were within reach, she was the single sole gem survivor on the surface of the planet. As far as she knew, she was the only uncorrupted gem on Earth for thousands of years, until Amethyst emerged. Once Rose found Amethyst in the Kindergarten, they were the only two uncorrupted gems on Earth for hundreds of years. Along came Greg Universe and, well, when a Rose and a Greg love each other very much… they make a Steven.

That was the original idea that wouldn’t let me go, and I wanted to see if it could be done and how much would need to be changed and how much the story would change. But as I worked on it, I realised that I could change whatever I wanted, so I changed all the parts of canon that I had “fridge logic” problems with. The result is a Steven AUniverse story exactly the same as the show, except completely different.

Now I know there are a million different AUs out there, so I want to provide some indications that you can use to decide whether this is your kind of thing, in the form of questions:

What is this AU like?

-The tone of this story attempts to match the show as closely as possible. There is no grimdark or gore or disturbed or anything like that. It is lighthearted with gravity and important themes, just like the show. There are “filler episodes” with townies and there are “plot heavy episodes” and they are mostly in the same order as they are in the show.

How’s it differ from the show?

-The most important aspect is that it’s more political than the show. (What does that even mean?) But the first thing you’ll notice when you read is that in practice I have had to change lots of details: some episodes needed to be revamped completely (because in canon they were about Garnet or Pearl), some plot-important things I changed just because I had “fridge logic” issue with the canon, etc. So in the end it’s very different, a different story told with some of the same characters and structure.

I imagine that doesn’t help very much to know things were changed if you don’t know what sort of things that includes. So below are some specific questions where the answers are slightly more spoilery, and if you want none spoiler with left beef, then please stop reading here and skip to the first episode.

 - - -

Will Pearl and Garnet appear in the story?

-Pearl and Garnet got corrupted by the Diamond blast along with all the other Crystal Gems bar Rose Quartz. So if they appear in the story, they will be corrupted monsters like everyone else. You might recognise them, you might not.

Is Amethyst still the same person?

-Amethyst’s character in the show is very much dependent on being the “youngest” or “worst” Crystal Gem in comparison to Pearl, Garnet and Rose. In this story Amethyst grew up looking up to Rose and having her pretty much all to herself except for Rose’s human love affairs (which Amethyst didn’t mind as she wasn’t in love with Rose herself), and so when Rose disappeared Amethyst felt like she had to take Rose’s place and fill those shoes. So in this story Amethyst is somewhat more responsible while still having her flaws, and her character arc has a different shape.

Was Rose still Pink Diamond?

-I hate to include this here because it’s incredibly spoilery, but I realise these characters are very important and dear to many people, so I will answer honestly: yes and no. I know that’s a total nonanswer, but if the Diamonds are really important to you as characters, this might not be the AU for you, for there will be some… let’s say “character assassination” here.

Was Rose still a bad person?

-Rose has the same flaws in this story as she does in canon. Whether having flaws makes her a bad person or a relatable character depends on each reader.

Will Peridot/Lapis/Jasper/Bismuth/townies/Diamonds/off colors/etc appear in the story?

-Yes, everyone is present and accounted for – though there will be some changes.

Will Spinel appear in the story?

-No, this AU only covers the story we see during the show Steven Universe, not the movie or the epilogue series. And I’m sorry to say but Spinel’s character doesn’t exist in this universe, the Homeworld in this story is not the kind that would create a ”best friend” gem.  Spinels would have some totally different role in this universe.

What about fusions?

Obviously most of the canon fusions include Pearl and/or Garnet, so they are naturally out of the question. But don’t worry. There will be many other Crystal Gems, so there will definitely be fusions besides Smoky Quartz and Stevonnie. The only possible canon fusion, who could happen in this story but won’t, is Malachite.

Are there OCs in the story?

Mostly no. Of course fusions we haven’t seen on screen in the show will be OCs, as well as the component gems of fusions we haven’t seen unfuse in the show, and a few corrupted gems we haven’t seen uncorrupted versions of on the show. Some characters (mainly the Diamonds) are also reimagined and changed so much that they could be considered totally different characters. But there are no gem or human characters that are completely outside of the show’s canon.

Could you give some examples of details that you changed in the story because of “fridge logic”?

-Example 1. In the episode “Frybo” Pearl says that Rose Quartz would put gem shards in (I assume human??) clothes to make them fight for her. But from the way gems talk about shattering and shards (they consider it horrifying etc), it sounds preposterous that the Crystal Gems would have done that. It also isn’t something that Amethyst would know, since she wasn’t around for the war. So the gem shards that make Frybo move are out of the question and that episode’s plot is revamped while keeping the central point (Peedee’s relationship with his dad) intact.

-Example 2. The Rubies getting sucked out the door of the Moon Base is so unscientific it hurts my brain. Space is a vacuum, not a vacuum cleaner; space does not suck. When you open a door into space all the air rushes out really quickly, and then everything is calm (I still don’t understand why the Moon Base would be pressurised in the first place if gems don’t need air?) Also it is established that gems adjust to gravity (Amethyst can’t float-jump on the Moon like Steven can) so the idea that all the Rubies flew off the Moon’s surface so easily is ridiculous. So that part is all totally changed.

-Those are two small examples that changed episode plots significantly. I have some really big fridge logic problems with some of the important parts in the world building in canon, so there are some really big overarching changes. For hardcore fans who know the show well, spotting changes and trying to figure out why there is a change there might make for a fun way to engage with the text. It is also something the readers can engage me, the writer, about. :) I’m very friendly and like to chat with new interesting people from anywhere in the world.

Have you changed anyone’s identity in the story?

-Not intentionally, nothing that has been stated in canon. I’m not super well-versed in the Steven Universe fandom, so it’s hard to say about fanon. I am vaguely aware that there are some very popular interpretations of various characters among the fandom, and I cannot guarantee that the same interpretation can be made based on this story, since I don’t fully understand what specific details those interpretations are based on. Therefore I may have changed a detail that was important to a particular interpretation. But it doesn’t mean I am against that interpretation or that I don’t think that interpretation is valid. So for example, if your interpretation of aromantic and asexual Peridot relies on Peridot never fusing with anyone, then I’m sorry, but I need fusions and I haven’t got that many gems: Peridot will be fusing. But it doesn’t mean that I think aroace Peridot is not valid.

What about ships?

-I don’t ship (it’s just, my brain doesn’t work like that), so there are no ships in particular in this story. But I am also not against shipping. So while there might be some changes to relationships between characters as demanded by the story (for example, I can’t afford to drop Lapis in the ocean for half a season to explore the Malachite dynamic, this story needs more gems earlier than canon does), I’m not intentionally sinking any ships in this story.

[thesilverheroineproject]

The title of the rant explains itself, I think. I’ve put “more” in there because I’ve written rants in the past about different ways to diversify female characters, and slashed heroines/female protagonists because of the unfortunate connotation that “heroine” sometimes has.

1) A life in thought.

One thing missing from a lot of fantasy novels is philosophy—not morality, since there’s often a clear sense of right and wrong, but the exploration of abstract questions. What is truth like in that world? How is beauty regarded? Knowledge? Wisdom? (Is there a difference between knowledge and wisdom?) Is there a purpose to existence for your invented culture(s), and what is it? What is the philosophy of art?

Even in a society where philosophers don’t exist as a separate profession, class, or guild, I bet there are people doing some thinking about these things. And some of them can be women. Or should be women, since female philosophers are rarely, if ever, central characters in fantasy novels.

Want to use a noblewoman character as your protagonist but have absolutely no idea what to do with her if she’s not involved in a marriage plot? Make her a philosopher! She’ll certainly have time to think that a working-class character probably won’t have, and curiosity makes for a good way to show off the fantasy world. And if she gets into intellectual debates or is forced to defend her ideas, she’ll develop as a thinker in a way that many female protagonists don’t get to.

2) Friendship, complicated and complex.

As much as I enjoy reading about and depicting lesbian relationships, I think female friendships (at least, female friendships that are not centered on winning and discussing men) are even rarer in fantasy. They give you all kinds of things to consider. Here are just a few:

How did these women meet?

What drove the initial formation of their friendship? Are those factors still around? If so, how have they developed? If not, what kept them friends when the initial common ground turned to mud?

What wrinkles have their friendships gone through? What really spectacular fights, conflicts of principles, arrival of subjects on which they’ve agreed to disagree?

How hard do they pull on one another? For example, is one friend always supportive of the other no matter what, because support is what she needs most in her life, or does she smack her friend upside the head regularly and tell her not to be an idiot?

What do they talk about most often? (This seems to be especially hard for many authors to write about if they want to ban men as a discussion subject).

I’m probably prejudiced, because all the most complex relationships in my life have been friendships, not love affairs. But they’re also less “regulated,” because of the absence of common models in fiction, than relationships like mother-daughter or sister-sister or lover-lover. I always perk up when I see a pair of fictional female friends, because I feel I’m able to expect more variety from them. (Note that this does not tend to happen if their sole subject of conversation is who likes them and who likes-likes them).

3) A truly equal footing.

What would it take for a woman in a fantasy society that’s not gender-equal to gain freedom and the ability to form equal relationships with other people? Imagine that the solution is not to become male and abandon everything that makes her female. Maybe she likes some of the things that make her female (and, in any case, deciding that to be “free” a woman has to remain a virgin or never have a child is a limited vision).

So. How does she do it?

It’s going to depend on the circumstances of the society you’ve set up, of course, and the individual qualities and flaws of your protagonist. But say you’ve rejected the “substitute male” and “complete runaway” routes (the first for the reason given above, and the second because it insists that the character has to give up all connections to everybody else). How does she win her freedom without paying a price that’s intolerable to her?

4) Asexuality.

By this term, I’m talking about true asexuality, the lack of sexual desire and any longing to engage in a sexual relationship, not a character who’s been scared away from sex by rape or abuse. And yes, male asexual characters are rare, too, but men are more often written as though romantic relationships are unnecessary in their lives—asexuality in practice if not theory. Whereas female characters have to be located in relation to romance the moment they appear on-stage. They’re lesbians, or they’re going to fall in love with the men they’re currently screaming at, or they’re casually bisexual, or she’s had two kids in the past but they’re living with her sister now, or she’s a repressed virgin who just needs to find the right man.

But say that she’s asexual. She just has no interest in any sexual relationships.

Maybe her society has no classification for this, and so other people still try to shove or manipulate her into a sexual category. But this character conceives them all as not mattering to her. She slips out of the categories in her own head, or creates her own. And she doesn’t need to have children or take a lover to be a “real woman.”

Or the author can write her independently of romance whatsoever. If her society is accepting of bisexuality, homosexuality, and polyamory, they could be equally accepting of asexuality. Romance is dispensed with. It does not come up.

Any version of female asexuality could make an interesting story.

5) Changing oneself.

The version of this story that I’m most fascinated with is the human who ventures into a nonhuman culture, absorbing their point-of-view, shifting her own attitudes, mentally becoming the alien. But there are other ways to do it:

The female privileged protagonist who becomes aware of and tries to deal with her own privilege and the consequences of it.

The heroine whose life changes radically later on, rather than with puberty or as a child, and who has to integrate her sudden magic or destiny or binding to another person into the connections she’s already formed.

The oppressed/colonized woman who begins to be able to separate her consciousness from the oppression or colonization, and starts the process of changing what she can.

The woman who’s been hurt and whose life is not suddenly 100% better because a goddess chooses her or a man falls in love with her; she sets her sights on a goal and works towards it, even though complete healing may not be possible.

This requires a lot of introspection, which might be one reason it’s not that popular a plot for fantasy novels. But I think adventure is indeed possible in a story like this; it’s just that it can’t take over and be the sole thing happening.

6) Dealing with human limitations.

Her own and others’, in this case. And no, not in the so-familiar holding pattern in which everyone else’s needs—children’s, male partner’s, siblings’, parents’, random passing men’s—come before the needs of the heroine, who is a selfless (and often spineless) martyr. A woman in this kind of plot would need to choose and act; the difference is that she’s not able to knock down every barrier in her way as if she were a queen or a conquering savior.

What’s her life like if she’s living in the middle of an occupation? A natural disaster? A magical disaster? The sudden appearance of an alien species? A difficult political situation, with necessary compromises and powerful opponents who must be appeased? A personal limitation, such as a disdain for violence in a society where violence is one of the prime ways to advance? A chosen limitation, such as a refusal to go on bailing a rebellious child out of trouble?

This is where I have a lot of frustration with some specific fantasy plot devices, which are designed to destroy all the barriers the protagonist faces. Loopholes are the ones I hate most, but also common are sudden unbeatable power, prophecies, coerced loyalty because of prophecy (“But we have to obey her! She’s the Chosen One!”), and a simple lack of ethics (such as the heroine who has no problem killing other people because they’re The Enemy).

Why waste a beautiful difficult situation by insisting that the difficulties are just an illusion?

7) Work.

If the center of a female protagonist’s life is her work, that’s often a problem. If she has children, of course she’s too busy to be a proper mother to them. If she’s performing a job commonly done by men in her society, then she runs the risk of losing her femaleness (see point 3). If she’s an artist, she turns out not to be as good an artist as she thinks she is, and/or discovers that she wants a man/a family more than her art.

Why not have work be the center of your female protagonist’s story? She can still have a perfectly ordinary life outside work. Many male protagonists in fantasy are presented as having had friends, lovers, training, different jobs, and families in the past before they started saving the world or going on the quest or fighting in the war. A female protagonist can be a dedicated botanist, but that doesn’t mean that she’s automatically a bad mother or a dangerous workaholic.

Of course, fantasy also has an allergy to work as such. (Tasks are a different matter. For one thing, you can tell that it’s a task because the hero/ine is reluctant to undertake it and certain that s/he’ll be no good at it). There’s no reason that prejudice has to endure, especially because something that’s simple here may be difficult in another world—or another world may have work that doesn’t exist here. Try giving your female protagonist a job without implying that she’s a bad person for having one, and see what happens.

[ninja-muse]

Urban Fantasy Recommendation Masterpost

This is a list of the urban fantasies I’ve enjoyed most over the years, split down a few lines and to be updated as I discover new series. I’m also including contemporary fantasies because the lines often blur. Hope you find something you like on it!

$ for LGBT characters £ for characters of colour € for characters with disabilities * for potentially problematic depictions of the above ! for #ownvoices (all based on my slightly spotty memory, so feel free to correct if I’ve missed something)

World-Focused

or stories that spend most of their time steeping you in the magical world

American Gods - Neil Gaiman £

Shadow Moon gets out of jail and is hired by the cagey Mr. Wednesday to … he’s not really clear, honestly, but it puts him in the path of people who may or may not be gods. Multiple mythologies.

Among Others - Jo Walton €!

A 1980s teen flees her troubled home in Wales to get to know her birth father and attend an English boarding school. Is her mother’s family able to work magic or is it just wishful thinking? Reading science fiction might give her the answers. British folklore and faeries, and a very interesting take on magic.

The Boggart - Susan Cooper

A Canadian family inherits a Scottish castle inhabited by a mischievous boggart—who then stows away and finds himself in Toronto. Scottish folklore.

The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell £

The life of a woman from teen-hood to old age as she lives her life and occasionally intersects with an ancient war between good and evil, fought with telepathy and other things that look a lot like magic.

The Changeling - Victor Lavalle £ !

After his infant son is violently attacked, Apollo Kagwa, used bookseller, descends into the hidden world of New York in search of his vanished wife.

The City We Became - N.K. Jemisin - $ £ ! for race

New York City, newly alive, is being attacked, and six humans, no longer quite human, must do everything in their power to save their city.

the Dark is Rising series - Susan Cooper €*

A group of English kids—four siblings, a seventh son, and a boy who might be a reincarnated Arthur—versus the forces of darkness. Five books, only the last of which includes all the kids. Cornish and English folklores, Arthuriana.

Gods Behaving Badly - Marie Phillips

The Greek pantheon now lives in North London and is as dysfunctional as ever. Artemis walks dogs. Aphrodite does phone sex. Apollo is a washed-out TV psychic who’s just fallen, via Eros, for the cleaning lady—who’s trying to date someone else, thank you very much. Greek mythology.

The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker £

A golem and a jinni both find themselves in turn-of-the-century New York, both literally and figuratively. A beautiful exploration of the immigrant experience, friendship, and identity. Jewish and Arabic folklore.

Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

A mostly-good angel and mostly-wicked demon discover they’ve been training the wrong Antichrist days before the scheduled apocalypse. The real Antichrist wants a dog and to save the whales. Also features a legacy witch, a rookie witch-finder, the Four Horsemen, the Four Other Horsemen, Satanic nuns, and a Queen soundtrack. Christian mythology.

The Hunter’s Moon - O.R. Melling

A Canadian teen visiting her Irish cousin ends up mounting a cross-country road trip to retrieve her cousin who’s run off with the faeries. Irish mythology.

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London - Garth Nix $£

In the summer of 1983, Susan Arkshaw travels to London to find her birth father. What she discovers is a family of magical booksellers, and an Old World that’s very much alive.

Middlegame - Seanan McGuire

Roger and Dodger are exceptionally gifted, telepathically linked, and a little more than natural. James Reed will stop at nothing to use them, or people like them, to get ultimate power. Alchemy, time travel, and portal fantasies are involved.

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman £

Richard Mayhew has it all: a good job, a hot fiancée, a nice flat. Then he helps an apparently homeless girl with the power to create doors and is pulled into the magical community below London. Nothing will ever be the same.

Of Blood and Honey and And Blue Skies From Pain - Stina Leicht

It’s tough, living in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and Liam finds it harder than most. No one trusts him, he can’t find work, everyone wants him to choose a side, and to cap it off, he feels like a monster is inside him and knows something inhuman is stalking him and his. The war between the Fey and the Fallen is heating up, and the only people keeping peace are an order of priests—who also, surprise, want Liam’s help. Irish and Christian mythology.

The Sixth World series - Rebecca Roanhorse $£€ ! 

Maggie Hoskie is a Monsterslayer of Dinétah, but she’d rather not be. Even rescuing a kidnapped girl is supposed to be a one-shot deal. But the monster’s a new one, an apprentice medicine man’s attached himself to her, and Coyote’s around, so of course it’s not that simple. Navajo mythology.

Son of a Trickster - Eden Robinson £€ !

Jared’s life sucks. He’s sixteen, living in a crap house in a crap town with crap prospects. He’s paying his dad’s rent with weed money. His mom’s more interested in parties than holding down a job. His only friend’s a pit bull. And just when he thinks that’s as low as it gets, a raven shows up and say he’s Jared’s real dad. Heiltsuk (and other First Nations) mythology and folklore.

Sparrow Hill Road - Seanan McGuire

Rose Marshall, the Phantom Prom Date, the Ghost of Sparrow Hill Road, hitches her way from coast to coast while dealing with paranormal problems and route witches—and avoiding Bobby Cross, the immortal who killed her.

Sunshine - Robin McKinley

Rae is a baker. Tough and practical and smart, but a baker. Who’s just rescued herself and a vampire from captivity using magic she’d half-forgotten she had. Unfortunately, the master vampire’s still after them, the magical police know something’s up, and she just wants to keep being normal. Includes mild, realistic PTSD and a whole lot of delicious desserts.

An Unkindness of Magicians - Kat Howard

The Turning has started in New York and every magician in the city has their own reason for entering the tournament—power, status, acknowledgement, revenge, revolution. The high stakes would be enough for anyone, but it’s starting to look like there’s something suddenly wrong with magic, too.

Witches of Ash and Ruin - E. Latimer - $ £ € *

Dayna wants to be a witch, live her life, and block her OCD thoughts so she doesn’t have to deal with them. Then scary but gorgeous Meiner and her coven roll into town prophesying Bad Things, and a serial killer reappears who seems to target witches and shit. Meet. Fan. Themes of family and abuse.

Ysabel - Guy Gavriel Kay

Ned Marriner’s tagging along with his photographer dad to Provence when he begins to notice magic awakening around him. There’s an ancient love triangle that‘s repeated throughout history, using contemporary locals as proxies—and it’s very interested in Ned, his new friend Kate, and his father’s entourage.

Mystery-Focused

or stories that spend most of their time solving a magical crime

The Arcadia Project series - Mishell Baker $£€ !

Millie’s nearly broke, scarred, a double amputee, mentally ill, and Done with all the BS around that. She’s also despairing of ever resuming her directing career, so when a mysterious woman offers her a job with her temp agency, she’s intrigued. What wasn’t mentioned? She’ll actually be an immigration agent working with the Fae of Hollywood, and one of them’s just gone missing.

the Blood series - Tanya Huff $£€

Vicky Nelson is the pinnacle of the tough, no-nonsense PI—which poses a bit of a problem when she’s hired to catch a “vampire” on the streets of Toronto and then actually meets one. (He writes romance novels.)

the Felix Castor series - Mike Carey $*

Felix Castor is an exorcist. A hard-drinking, down-at-the-heels exorcist in a London brimming with ghosts and demons. Unfortunately, he never seems to get the easy cases where he can just waltz in and play a tune—and his past mistakes might be coming back to haunt him.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams

Dirk Gently solves mysteries by wandering around, getting into strange situations, and then connecting dots no one believes even exist. Like time traveling robots and Romantic poets, or rampaging eagles and mold-ridden refrigerators.

The Grendel Affair - Lisa Shearin £

Makenna Fraser is a seer working for Supernatural Protection and Investigations in New York. “Seer” meaning she can spot the ghoulies and ghosties few people can, including her coworkers. When an off-the-books gnome removal turns into a blood-soaked crime scene, she and her partner are handed the case—but will her eagerness to prove herself just land her in hotter water?

the Greta Helsing series - Vivian Shaw $£

Dr. Greta Helsing serves the undead of London. Her best friends are vampires and demons. The boundaries between worlds are thinning, causing all manner of metaphysical trouble. Plays with 1800s horror classics; equal parts sensible, disturbing, and funny.

the Greywalker series - Kat Richardson $£

Harper Blaine prides herself on rationality and unflappability, but after briefly dying on a case, she’s suddenly wrong-footed and seeing ghosts everywhere. In the middle of all that, she’s hired by a mysterious voice to track down an organ that’s more than it seems, and suddenly haunted street corners are the least of her problems.

the Incryptid series - Seanan McGuire $£

Meet the Price family, a close-knit group of cryptozoologists whose mission is to protect and preserve endangered cryptids like dragons, gorgons, and the religious Aeslin mice from humans. They’re also hiding from the Covenant of St. George, a.k.a. why the cryptids are endangered in the first place. Technically paranormal romance.

the Iron Druid series - Kevin Hearne £

Atticus O’Sullivan is a herbalist and seller of New Age paraphernalia by day, two-thousand-year-old druid by night. He thought moving to Arizona would keep him safe from gods bent on revenge. He thought wrong. Multiple mythologies.

Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge - Paul Krueger $£€ !

Bailey Chen is fresh out of business school, broke, and living with her parents. When a childhood friend offers her a job as a barback, she takes it as a stopgap—but then she discovers the secret cabal of bartenders who fight demons using magical cocktails and after that, there’s no looking back.

Moonshine - Alaya Johnson £

Zephyr Hollis, a charity worker and ESL teacher in 1920s New York, and therefore flat broke, takes a side job from a student, Amir, without asking questions. But will the vampire mob, the drug-crazed vamps, Amir’s literal smoking hotness, or her family history do her in first?

Night Owls - Lauren M. Roy $

Valerie is a vampire with a successful campus bookstore. Elly grew up fighting monsters and fearing for her life. When their paths collide via a book in Elly’s keeping, they must unite to prevent said monsters from unleashing hell and then some.

the October Daye series - Seanan McGuire $£€

Toby Daye wants sleep, coffee, and for everyone to leave her alone already—not necessarily in that order. Unfortunately, as a changeling Knight and PI with a knack of finding people and solving problems with maximum chaos, none of those things will ever be easy to come by. Multiple folklores.

the Olympus Bound series - Jordanna Max Brodsky $£

Selene di Silva’s been keeping her head down for a long time, shutting herself off not just from New York, but from the world. (Being a former goddess will do that.) But then she stumbles on the body of a woman who’s been ritually sacrificed and her past as Artemis comes rising up again. Greek and Roman mythology

the Rivers of London series - Ben Aaronovitch $£€

When Constable Peter Grant meets a ghost at a crime scene, it’s only logical for him to take a witness statement. When DCI Thomas Nightingale learns of this, he offers him a job as an auror the sorcerer’s apprentice a valued member of a magically-focused police unit. London, its river goddesses, various magic workers, assorted Fae, and the Metropolitan Police will never be the same.

the Shadow Police series - Paul Cornell $£

Following the mysterious death of a suspect, four Metropolitan Police officers are drawn into London’s sinister magical underworld in their hunt for a killer.

the Smoke series - Tanya Huff $*£

Tony Foster’s found his footing as a PA on a Vancouver-shot vampire show. Unfortunately, the paranormal weirdness that is his life continues and it’s somehow up to him to save the day.

Unholy Ghosts (and following) - Stacia Kane £*

Chess Putnam works as a Church exorcist, partly out of obligation and partly for the pay, which goes to fuel her drug addiction. Unfortunately, no ghosts are nice ghosts and her private life keeps intruding on her cases.

the Watch novels - Terry Pratchett

Ankh-Morpork is the citiest of fantasy cities. Its City Watch is a bunch of misfits. Sam Vimes isn’t putting up with any nonsense. Somehow, they fight crime.

Zoo City - Lauren Beukes £

Zinzi December is a con artist and occasional finder of lost things who lives in the Johannesburg slums with her sloth familiar. Her latest case? Find a pair of missing teen pop stars—before the apparent assassins do.

[lazyhomeread]

The Lucky Strike

“He was on the flight, no way out. Now he realized how easy it would have been to get out of it. He could have just said he didn’t want to. The simplicity of it appalled him.”

The Lucky Strike, Kim Stanley Robinson

↑ Sigh...... That hit me, but I’ll probably continue to say “yes” to everything and regret all of my life choices as, time and time again, I wait for the awful fulfillment of my agreement.

Anyhow, a little after this quote, in the same paragraph, is something less relatable but more crucial to the main idea of the story:

“Now there was no way out. It was a comfort, in a way. Now he could stop worrying, stop thinking he had any choice.”

The Lucky Strike, Kim Stanley Robinson

I found The Lucky Strike in Terry Carr’s Best Science Fiction of the Year (1985). A short story surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima, published about four decades after the historical event and the publication of John Hersey’s book. I was a little confused as to how it’s considered as science fiction, since the story takes place in the past and no time travel or alien gimmick is involved. The setting and the characters are all realistic and in that respect I thought the story should be categorized as historical fiction.

Robinson crafted the narrative around the character of Captain Frank January, a bomber tasked with the deployment of the atomic bomb. The larger half of the story is spent on build-up. January gets ever more sickened at the thought of killing hundreds of thousands with a flick of a switch in his hand, and entertains the idea of disobeying orders or sabotaging the strike. The pressure from his fellow men on the strike team (some who are more than happy to be on this particular mission), and the infeasibility of the solutions he came up with, deter him from backing out. And like the real bombers of WWII, he attempts the reasoning that it was Japan that started the war, that this strike would prevent the death of even more people, though that does little to resolve his conflict.

At this point the story seems to be a finely imagined character study that alludes to the deeper exploration of morality and consequence, a magnifying glass held to a small but important speck in history. However (SPOILER), just as you think history is about to take its course and the rest of the story would be spent on more inner monologues, Frank January deliberately misses the city, and the atomic bomb was never dropped on Hiroshima.

The twist made the story great, and although I’m still inclined to think it’s historical fiction, I guess the alternate history was what made it science fiction. While most alternate history stories focus on the grand picture of the new future, The Lucky Strike continues to follow January, a man now resolute, albeit miserable. Disgraced and condemned, he stays firm in his belief that he did the right thing, that bombing an entire city is unnecessary. And in this world, his decision made an impact. In his time, he is not hailed as a hero and meets his end facing a firing squad, but the melancholy ending shows a glimpse of the future, where January’s legacy is praised and his name becomes the front of an effort aiming towards denuclearization and peace. I’m glad Robinson didn’t give January a happy end — the conclusion has the right amount of real-world dismalness that gives tangibility to the belief the story imparts.

The Lucky Strike ultimately conveys the idea that each individual’s actions can make an impact, and the idea that while we like to distance ourselves from the bad decisions and actions — the general shakes off his guilt by not having his hand on the trigger, and the soldier dismisses his responsibility by relinquishing himself to orders — there is always a choice, a choice to do the right thing. While I generally dislike literary analysis and, as you can probably see from the previous sentences, am in no way good at it, I think every part of this story is worth looking into. The details made the story work. The pieces from January’s childhood further humanize the character and at the same time relate to the big story and theme at hand. There is not a sentence that is redundant. Foils to January, such as the strike team, the scientist, and the firing squad, add more depth to the world, create conflicts that make the narrative compelling, and present the other side of the argument. While a lot of time is spent inside January’s mind, you can still feel the world moving about him in its own way, obliviously pressuring in on him.

I didn’t start this out as a review, and it would be a mistake to take this as a review. I really liked the story and wanted to write about it, talk about the memorable parts, preserve the feelings that came from finishing the last paragraph — sadness but also an elevated sense of hope. Moreover, the writing is fantastic, and I wanted to copy down some of my favorite parts.

“They were having a good time, an adventure. That was January’s dominant impression of his companions in the 509th......His mind spun forward and he saw what these young men would grow up to be like as clearly as if they stood before him in businessmen’s suits, prosperous and balding. They would be tough and capable and thoughtless, and as the years passed and the Great War receded in time they would look back on it with ever-increasing nostalgia, for they would be the survivors and not the dead. Every year of this war would feel like ten in their memories, so that the war would always remain the central experience of their lives — a time when history lay palpable in their hands, when each of their daily acts affected it, when moral issues were simple, and others told them what to do — so that as more years passed and the survivors aged......they would unconsciously push harder and harder to thrust the world into war again, thinking somewhere inside themselves that if they could only return to world war then they would magically be again as they were in the last one — young, and free, and happy. And by that time they would hold the positions of power, they would be capable of doing it.”

The Lucky Strike, Kim Stanley Robinson

I always thought “Men who have seen battle are often among those who hold life most dear.” January is probably a man like that, but his companions are not part of the “often”. Reading the paragraph I also thought of All Quiet on the Western Front, but the young men in that story thought they wanted to fight and die in glory, only to see in the trenches that the reality of war is far from what they have imagined, and that they had never known what they wanted in the first place. Writing from the 1980’s, I wonder if Robinson was referring to any persons at the time — men who were in WWII in their twenties and went into politics or rose in the military in their sixties, mongering war and saying, “When I was your age......” But I think that as the living memories of the the great wars pass away and people forget the horror, the new generation of leaders may be more inclined to start war unaware of what they’re getting into. The old people that support wars nowadays seem to mainly come from a position of nationalism and prejudice.

Anyhow, let’s end with something more......inspiring.

“And he told him about the game he had played in which every action he took tipped the balance of world affairs. ‘When I remembered that game I thought it was dumb. Step on a sidewalk crack and cause an earthquake — you know, it’s stupid. Kids are like that...... But now I’ve been thinking that if everyone were to live their whole lives like that, thinking that every move they made really was important, then......it might make a difference.’”

The Lucky Strike, Kim Stanley Robinson

[alexsmitposts]

The Simple Truth About the Yemen Catastrophe Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s southern neighbor, is a human catastrophe that will go down in history as one of America’s biggest policy mistakes. This poor Middle East country is the perfect reflection of failing U.S. strategies that will only balloon as the years draw on. Here is a candid look at another proxy war to perpetuate a misshapen dream. The civil war in Yemen is about three things. Saudi/Israeli geostrategy, oil markets, and the geography of energy. Whatever else you hear about this most inhumane conflict, rest assured crude oil and natural gas are at the core of the conflict. With Saudi Arabia having already exhausted most of her oil reserves, only new finds in the region can prop up that ridiculous regime. I won’t get into the term “peak oil” here, I’ve already covered this many times. The point is, the world’s oil has to run out sooner or later, and places like Yemen are now becoming the battlegrounds for energy-dependent nations. The Big Energy Grab Yemen never was a big oil producer. Since the civil unrest began, the country’s relatively small output has been choked down to a dribble. But Yemen is a very young territory for exploration, when compared to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and others in the region. Two older fields that only came online in the mid-1980s reached peak production in 2001, and most experts say Yemen is one of those “post-peak” countries with no chance of a resurgent economy. I am not one of these analysts. The so-called frontier fields offshore are an energy bonanza I believe is fueling Saudi Arabia’s and America’s war on these people. Yemen’s offshore frontier basins, and to a lesser extent those onshore, are what the Saudi coalition is after. The idea that the Saudi’s are deathly afraid of Iran is a construct built to separate people in every nation from the truth. Religious differences, Sunni versus Shia, Christian versus Muslim, they’re a convenient excuse as has always been the case. Take a look at this report by Mustafa As-Saruri, Ph.D., and Rasoul Sorkhabi, Ph.D. at GEOExPro. Take note also, of the offshore blocks bid on by western oil giants recently. On offshore and other new discoveries, I quote from another GEOEx report from the mid-2000s: “Yemen boasts twelve sedimentary basins, but oil production has come from only two of these, both lying in the center of the country, indicating that there is promising potential for further exploration both on and offshore Yemen.” Take note here, these new reserves would be sweet oil and not the sludge Saudi Arabia is thinning with seawater to get it to pump. I won’t get into technicalities, but much of Yemen’s oil wealth comes in the form of 41°API or above oil, which equates to quality and ease of extraction compared to what is currently coming out of Saudi Arabia. Cold War II Geostrategy This declassified (sanitized) CIA document tells us the Yemen situation in historical context, and show us U.S. policy toward the country is all about what I’ve suggested. Oil is a key factor, there is more oil than has been projected, and Yemen is part of a New Cold War hegemonic strategy by the U.S. and allies. Ironically, the CIA’s information and recommendations on Yemen in the 1980s proved wrong on many accounts. The experts creating these strategies were no less Anglo-European in their thinking than today’s analysts. They got the oil part right and missed the Soviet influence and North and South Yemen’s reunion totally. U.S. policy back then, as now, looked like cheerleading for big oil. In the aforementioned report, Hunt Oil, Amoco, and Texaco were the superheroes that would bring both Yemen into the U.S. stable of allied nations. Today, the strategy has only changed slightly. Almost 17 million people in Yemen are unable sustain themselves, and the western narrative still relies on religious differences to explain the divide between Yemen and its neighbors. U.S. think tanks have Detche Welle convinced the catastrophe is a Sunni-Shiite conflict. Israel’s Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center gives the same diagnosis. These vested interests all want you and I to believe that Saudi Arabia is trying to save Yemen from the same fate as Iraq! No, I am not kidding, read the DW story. And the Germans wonder why “peace is still elusive?” Religion has precious little to do with the conflict in Yemen today. The root causes of this proxy war are as I have stated. Right behind the energy war, the battle for geostrategic posture has put the people of Yemen in extreme peril. To find the proof of this, we have to scan the western mainstream until we reach our old friends Al Jazeera. They tell half the story with: “Reminiscent of the “Great Game” played out in Afghanistan between Great Britain and Russia more than a hundred years ago, Saudi Arabia and Iran are engaged in their own decades-long strategic rivalry for power and influence in the Middle East, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf and Arabian Sea. It is built mostly along sectarian and ideological lines – Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Sunni Muslim world, and Iran as the leader of the Shia Muslim world.” The other half involves post-colonialist nations that always have a hand in the affairs of nations at cultural and economic crossroads. Insert Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, alongside China and Russia here. Of course, the Al Jazeera piece is slanted toward Saudi Arabia and the Israeli contingent, but the “Great Game” recollection is sound. Yemen controls the entrance to the Red Sea through the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal. When all is said and done, this is the only story. Cold War II – same as Cold War I. Political Geo-Dynamics When we think of places like Iraq, Kuwait, or even Russia, we often think of the energy and natural resources. That is, where economics and geostrategy are concerned. Transit routes are not so often discussed beyond choke points like the Persian Gulf or the Suez Canal etc. How oil or natural gas gets from one place to another is a bit too wide a topic for the average Washington Post reader, let’s just face it. So, imagine how obtuse most Americans or Germans are when we talk about other market factors like OPEC’s competition, and shale helping America reenter the energy game in a big way, most people just don’t have the time to invest. Reading how Royal Dutch Shell, BP, and Exxon Mobil Corp. is doubling down on shale output, it’s just not sexy for most people. On top of this, try to explain the complexities of global competition between Russia and the United States with Europe sitting in between, and you lose almost everyone. If I may, a bit over oversimplification can help even the busiest reader understand what I mean by Political Geo-Dynamics. Geodynamics is about the processes which have shaped the Earth. So, if we overlay a political map on top of the quantities of natural resources on our planet, we end up with a pretty good idea where conflicts and other synergies will surface. Consumption/demand plays a major roll in how crises flux, as you can imagine. The Middle East had to become a crisis point for a number of reasons, not the least of which being OPEC’s squeezing of America back in the 1970s. But let’s not digress. America and Europe need more gas, corporations want to maximize profits in fulfilling the demand. Russia and Gazprom making a trillion euro off of the Europeans, for instance, is not something that is going to make Dutch Royal Shell, BP, or Exxon happy. Iran getting rich off the world’s biggest natural gas resources is not going to happen either. I won’t even get into Germany and the world’s most profitable energy company, E.ON. (2015 earnings $126.97bn) This is a topic all its own. Yemen satisfies three of three qualifying characteristics to be a target for annihilation. If the western alliance cannot have a puppet government in place, and if BP, Total, and Exxon cannot share in the offshore oil riches, then the bombs are going to fall until they can. America is going to have the geostrategic location and the bases, or the blood will flow. Yemen was just unlucky enough to have jutted out of the primordial ooze in the wrong place. It would not matter if Yemenis were Southern Baptists or Episcopalians, Donald Trump or any U.S. president would be backing Saudi Arabia and Israel in destroying the place or controlling it. This is a simple truth. Yemen is about container shiploads of money. The religious aspect is just for headlines people can understand. Christian versus Muslim, Good Old Boys versus Terrorists, you know the game. What bothers me most, besides the starving or blown to bits children, is that we cannot just come out and admit its about greed. Hitler was more honest than current leaders, at least. Lebensraum was about killing people in Eastern Europe to get their land. Why can’t our killing Yemenis be about America maintaining power? I bet most Yemenis wish they’d been born in Nova Scotia.

[11toe11-blog]

oNce again on that sTreet

I suppose I am at a point where, i need to sit down and draw this out of me. Clean the well.

Shuba asked me yesterday. Why dont i write. I do. Almost every other day. About something or the other. As observations. Contemplations. Very rarely once in a while meanders into poetry and almost never creative fiction.

I am...afraid of fiction.

There i said it. 

I suppose then its corollary goes that I am afriad of reality. Maybe. 

But let me start with fiction and try and lean into the obvious and apparent fear of fiction. As i write i notice a weight, a clenching in the middle of my chest. And rolling up to my throat. 

But lets persist this one time. 

I am making it a point to note the very obvious physical sensations as i write. 

So yes, fear of fiction.

Yesterday Rajiv shared a talk between Marina Abramovic and Alejandro I ( I forget the surname but the same guy who made birdman). Talkin about Virtual Reality as the next frontier of creative exploration after film, he mentioned about how the human brain makes no distinction between reality and fiction. Obviously more so in case of VR, but garden variety novels and comic strips and books and stories and theatre and film and all of that fall into that space where the brain makes no distinction between what is my reality lived and expereinced and, even if briefly the story of another. From experience i know, some of us are better than others at extricating ourselves from the story we entered to continue walking in the present, many of us carry the seeds and suggestions of te story, and many many of us  remain in the story. 

That makes stories very powerful and dangerous.

That makes story tellers very powerful and dangerous.

Layers and layers of stories wrapped around. Layers and layers of memories. Layers and layers of connections. Gateways of infinite possibilities on one had. And very own, home spun energy leeching coccoon on the other.

My brain particularly has had difficulties distinguishing stories and reality. Ive grown up with stories. Like most kids. Like most kids who loved loved listening and reading to stories and were surrounded by generous adults who lavished attention as stories of adventures great and small, stories read or retold or instantly woven.

By the time i started on film, I could watch a movie. And sit then later sit and play the whole thing back and watch it in my mind. My own personal Netflix. I could run it when ever i was alone - in the loo, before i slept, when i woke up, yada.

After my sexual encounter with an older cousin at the age of 8 years, these films began to have distinct sexual content too. I could replace characters. Mix up relationships.  Easily enter relams of taboo.  So while outwardly i was struggling with the shame and social anxities and adaptation, my inner world and ofcourse my body demanded the thrill of the grind. That heightended feeling when one could rub ones vagina against something. A swollen penis covered by denim, a leg, a thigh, another vagina, pillow.

Well, given a young girl in kerala, i am sure you can imagine the confusion of the middle class family facing their own share of social and emtional hardships. The school that preffers children like a batch of uniformed cupcakes. Encountering this strange child who seemed wild and untamable. Plenty of trashings and socail embarassments and isolations.

Ofcourse not to mention, adventures. And misadventures.

I suppose since my mind could go anywhere, into any restricted area, physical restrictions made no sense. I remember dreaming up a story of the romance between two of my young teachers, both married to different people. Can you beleive the thrashing i got when i started telling these stories and it finally reached my teacher.

Or of imaging the sex lives of the young Brahmin couple with a child and parents living with them. I imagined them waking up after everyone had gone to bed and first the guy would make his way to the bathroom aoutside and then the wife would follow him. And there they would have steamy sex, have a quiet shower together and sneak back into the house. 

I was happily making porn even before internet.

Well. I suppose so was the rest of the state, i suppose. The older i grew, i dont think i accepted it because i probably had drawn a veil of self-propriety, most of the people around me too were living out imgained sexual fantasies. That was hard to accept. 

Like knowing that my father had affairs of sorts, or walking into him holding the handsof the servant girl in the darkest corner of the house and him suddenly making a scene about her having not done some work and her giggling. Or my mother hinting constantly at my fathers transgressions and waywardness, possibly to allay her own pressures and guilt of pleasures. 

Knowing that my mother lied to me about her relationship with her best friend...what was simple and liberal suddenly turned murky. And murkier when she had a strange toxic sexual relationship with the substaff in her office. Depiste the sick sadomachotistic territory it went through and put all of us through, the class-lessness also  mattered to me too i suppose. And years of silence and protecting honor and holding the family together and all those things

A simultaneous tightening and release of the chest.

Why did i  meander into this dark alley? Because stories are full of dark alleys. The mind is full of dark alleys. How to shine some light could be what stories are about. 

BUt then, in the hands of some, its possible to turn off the lights too with stories.

In my adult identity, i am surrounded by storytellers. Not passively as a book full of shelves or a netflix account. But the creators - film makes, illustrators, theatre makers, movers, singers, spiritual seekers, dream makers. At briefly before - journalitsts, PR gus, activists, hope makers. And before that colleges/ schools - naarative makers.

So yea, I am surrounded by storytellers. I chose this, obviously. I chose in my life path to be surrounded by storytellers. Yet i want nothing to do with them . 

As much as a part of me years to play and spin with them. Another part of me is terrified of them.

The tricksters.

Who can make one buy into anything. Any idea. Lose ones self in a moment. 

Offer ones mind on a platter. Mind and energy. 

I doubt their intentions.

What do they want my attention for?

What are they going to do with all this attention they are getting? All this fuel they draw out of people and surroundings, what are they offering it to? Whose altar do they worship?

Obviously i havent never articulated these out aloud.

 I would be without friends. Well over time i have ver very few anyways. So thats hardly the problem. I suppose the reasin i have never articulated this out aloud is probably beacuse, the three fingers point at me. I suspect corruption, because i have seen corruption within me.

The creating and dismantling of identities, hunting for attention, people becoming pawns, ambition, self obsession, narcissism, vacume. Addiction to the drama. 

A vehicle, for the archtypes to do their dance. Chewed and spat out and regenerated and chewed and spat out and gathering sharrered pieces of life only to be chewed again. Reminds me of the moringa. BUt clearly the moringa is not complaining. I am. 

Some part of me has had enough. With the circus. The puppet life.

Another part of is there, waiting in the wings on my toes to be swept in.

While i was always curious about the mind, i suppose it was never with this focus, this drive to tame it. And somewhere even in that i know i am still dancing, even if it appears like a non-dance. Kalari, Vipassna, Tai Chi, Tantra, Ramana. Even art therapy.

All of it is for self knowledge. And ofcourse the practises are taking one there, otherwise how else would this note have been possible. Though in my attitude, i am at war. There is a war for awareness and attention. I am at war with my mind. Even as i write it, i know how futile it is - same dog pulling at opposite ends of the same bone. How? Dog will go hungry. Period. 

Meaningless.

I suppose the idea is to trust ones self. And self will take care of the mind. So in effect, even trust the mind because one has already trusted ones self. But my mind has gotten me into so much trouble, made friends with the craziest of archetypes that i am afriad. Yes, i am afriad of it. That it will get me into trouble again. I wont be able to distinguish  and centre. And another archtype will possess and ride me. And my mind, will let it.

And all over again, i will lose my sense of self.

Pain. Confusion. Loss of dignity. Loss of stability. All of that i associate with that. And i am just resurfacing after one recent round. Brinks of insanity.

I suppose that is why i practise and hold on to the forms that have come to me. Kalari, Vipassana, Tai Chi. Thy have travelled through time. Stood the tests of the mind to anhilate them. And with them, Ill hopefully be able to fashion a key. To keep me safe.

Lightening of chest

There i said it. And i see that i am clinging. All this, to be safe. And if it is clinging to safety, it is the ego. Which wants to be safe. The mind wants to be safe from itself. Hirlarious!

Like puppet theatre. One hand plays red riding hood and the other hand plays the big bad wolf.

Distracting me from the puppeteer. 

Why?

If i see the puppeter ill want to be the puppeteer?

Deep breath

I know i have a blindspot. Somewhere. And my attention moves from being the red riding hood or the wolf or the chase. Maybe if i was able to spot the blind spot, ill get to be the puppeter.

The puppeteer who either a good guy or a bad guy, being puppetered in a meta play. In a meta play. Loop. 

Theatre of Earth.

It endless. And no way out. 

Yes, way. Buddha way.

But that doesnt seem to be my question now.

It seems to be, how do i get to play the playwright in one of the plays, at whever level. What is there to lose. Its all only a play. 

Playwright. Setting the frame for the magic. Or witch craft as someone in the comment section of the Marina- Alejandro talk said. Fiddling with the Tao. Not letting nature be. Not letting it be, but manipulating it. Power play. 

The fundamantal question posed by monotheistic practises to the tantric/multi - must the mindscape be meddled with? 

BUt then, unless we are in a continuus state of observation - are we continously always meddling with the mindscape one way or the other? Setting intention , desiring outcomes. God on No God. Arent we taking part in changing the play, upstaging the director, the playwright one way or the other.

Isnt every upstaging also written into the meta play?

What is one to do?

To do or not to do?

Even non doing actively is still doing - reminds ramana.

In flow, even doing feels like non doing - from expereince.

In earlier attempts to create full length work. Infact in earlier writings big or small, iremember most of it being largely dark, and  not wanting to share / put out there the very dark ones. 

My first play, petticoats still sits in paper after many rewritings.Because i couldnt bring myself to put much dark ness out there. Because in the process of rewiting it, i felt i had given into something very dark and powerful, and expereinced wanting to manipulate - lash out at the audience. Expereinced being manipulated - my own life giving way at the seams and lines got blurred.

Powerful forces, i have now come to understand. 

Similar experience with the art therpay project too.

And now a word to get a sense of it - archetypes. 

But hey! I survived. I am writing this am i not. So what am i scared of? The pain and agony and confusion. Losing balance. Giving into the dark egoistic mind.

Somewhere the mind gents hijacked - i stop being the story teller / reseacher and becomes a character - self obsessed and seeking power. One of the default slip intos.

So what am i saying?

So basically, i am/you are saying, i/you want to open this door. But i know this dragon awaits behind it. I have lost it, been mauled by it multiple times. And i am shit scared of opening that door and being mauled. 

Is there a way for me to tame the dragon?

Or should i just walk away from the door and forget all about the dragon. There is a very good chance that it might reappear else where.  Atleast in this case, it is a known devil.

My sisters instagram post just read “ My friend is an artist. And he likes my company. Do i need more validation?” 

A muse, channeler of inspiration. One has been that. But that didnt suffice. I want to be “one of them”, clearly. Yet, i want nothing to do with them clearly.

Do i weild a tool, a weapon or not. 

If i weild it, i can choose not to use it.

If i dont weild it?

I suppose there is so much ego still left in me, that i dont want to play second fiddle. I want my own sunshine. 

Or ……..

Lets look at it another way

is it an exercise is self discovery self knowlege? Then the entire approach is observational - comprehend and understand and question the self - rather than say and state.

An enquirey. v/s An expression

All enquireys are expressions

All expressions need not be enquireys

What is the fundamental question - Abhishek had asked. In my first playwrighting process.

I thought, at that time, that it had to be an intelligent question

Today after a decade of life, i understand that to be - What is the question i am/you are/ one is seeking to find an answer to? What are you grappling with? Articulate it into a question the best you can and explore it the medium of writing aplay. Use your imagination - to move characters- change them, puppeterr - but remember the essence - it is not for you to gain power. Play god, no and then let it go into your head. And be devoured by your own demon. No. Thats happened enough now. So we now know what not to do. And what this is not. 

Now the essence is to - very clearly, scientifically - explore humbly. Approach your gift of imagination - humbly. Opening the door gently. Entering softly - EVERY TIME. With great respect.

And work / play there with the questions. 

And quietly and humbly leave. Taking no more. Demanding no more that thevery process of observation and meaning making.

Reminds me of sandplay.

In the 6 pages and 2 hours, i feel a certain reassurance. I feel like i have asked, without really knowing how to ask. And have been answered to.  Quietly.

Keep the frame wide. And work fiercely to be regular. But with gentleness. And deep honesty. 

Go on and write. 

You can make meaning in many ways for yourself. Writing is one of your earliest tools. Use it to make friends with the dragon behind the door.

You have a very solid physical practise to ground yourself, to navigate the storms. The body practice and the garden. Trust that.

Between the two, the earthing of the physical discipline and access to the mindscapes, you will start finding meaning.

That itself is the purpose. To find meaning.

Remember to enter mindscape, imagination only after knocking on its door. And to close the door behind you as you leave. 

It is the great seas. You know that already. Offer her respects. She will test you to see if you have come/become greeedy. Remind her and yourself that youve come for meaning. ANd truth.

Meaning is truth after all. Layers stacked up, coinciding for a perfect opening. Insight.

Where is love in all this? I wondered

What is not love? Pat comes the answer.

[ah17hh]

A critique of Eugenics via /r/satanism

A critique of Eugenics

What follows is my critique of the essay Eugenics from The Satanic Scriptures by Peter H. Gilmore. I know some LaVeyan Satanists (I myself have a great deal of respect for LaVey and his philosophy but I also believe it is not without flaw, especially under Gilmore's developments) may not be thrilled to see this criticism towards the writing of the current High Priest of the Church of Satan but all I ask is that my words be given a fair reading and that any responses be civil and respectful, just as I shall try to remain. Thank you.

EUGENICS—THE VERY WORD raises the hackles of the egalitarians, as it exposes fundamental fallacies that underlie their doctrines.

The empty attack on "egalitarians" that this essay is introduced with is just lazy and self-righteous in a way. Not everyone who has an issue with the ideas of eugenics is necessarily an egalitarian. It seems very short-sighted to lump all critics of the core idea into the category of egalitarians instead of properly addressing the many problems people may have with it. As far as setting a tone goes, this is pretty abysmal.

Mankind is the only animal species which acts to circumvent the natural law of the survival of the strong and the weeding out of the weak. Acknowledging the non-equal, stratified status of humans, we Satanists see as one of our long-term societal goals the promotion of a higher percentage of creative and productive individuals, and a decrease in the numbers of simple believers and consumers, as well as the downright stupid.

The wording here is very vague and doesn't tell us anything about what the author's beliefs are or how he supposes the goal he advocates should be brought to fruition. What is meant by weak? What is meant by creative and productive? Someone who's weak in one aspect may be incredibly strong in another, for instance, Stephen Hawking, an individual who suffered from a physical condition that left his physically body nearly useless, was one of the greatest contributors to science in the past century. If we were to apply narrow definitions of what is weak and strong and use these definitions to determine who deserves to live and reproduce and who doesn't, don't we stand the risk of losing such brilliant individuals? And how do you suppose we determine who's "downright stupid"? There's no surefire scientific way of determining the overall intelligence of a human being (IQ testing isn't and never has been a comprehensive measure of complete intelligence, nor has it ever been seriously professed as such). It doesn't seem wise to use such flimsy and unscientific terms to dictate how a society should be run.

This could be advanced through the “forbidden” knowledge of eugenics. Simply put, it is a term applied to the scientific theories concerning the biological improvement of the human animal through the deliberate control of hereditary factors. This idea was pioneered by Sir Francis Galton. He thought that we could promote a progressive evolution in our species through increasing the proportion in our population of intelligent, health, and emotionally stable individuals via the strict control of human reproduction.

Galton's hypotheses were motivated by racism and xenophobia and don't stand up to scrutiny. This makes it difficult to take his ideas seriously as it seems that all they did was provide a so-called scientific justification for systemic racism in the United States without actually having withstood proper scientific testing.

We have used such techniques in agriculture and animal husbandry. Why not voluntarily apply such to ourselves?

The reason that the same genetic techniques applied to agriculture don't work with humans is that we function as social beings. We don't raise and breed each other to harvest and eat, but rather we form societies with the intent to satisfy the natural needs of both the collective and the individual. We also possess the ability to use empathy, and this has even been practiced with the very physically weak since prehistory. It's not our nature as a species to ignore this incredibly useful function we have evolved to use within our societies.

Historically, a eugenic approach to species improvement was acceptable, and indeed was pursued with fervor in many countries, including the United States, up until the conflict called World War II, when this area of research was tainted by some of the grotesque excesses attributed to scientists in the Third Reich.

The historical view of a practice doesn't change its validity in modern times. Bloodletting and lobotomy were time-honored medical procedures that went extinct due to scientific scrutiny as new discoveries were made. Just because something is the tradition doesn't mean it's necessarily the best option. Such practices of eugenics didn't just vanish after World War II. The United States government continued to practice involuntary sterilization on women of indigenous descent due to the perceived undesirability of their peoples. It's simply revisionist and irresponsible to deny this monstrous legacy that such programs left.

With the widespread growth of egalitarianism and collectivist thinking in the mid-20th century, some social movements resented factual reports that did not support their aims at homogenization, and thus even serious researchers found that their funding was dropped and their data was suppressed. This censorship has continued through today.

No evidence is provided for this supposed injustice. The author simply states that it happened without providing any examples or proof.

Traditionally, eugenics has had two approaches: “negative” measures which reduce the frequency of inherited mental and physical defects through sterilization and birth control—particularly the prevention of reproduction among individuals bearing hereditary defects, such as lifelong mental patients and those with crippling diseases; “positive” measures that attempt to increase desirable hereditary mental and physical attributes by encouraging superior individuals to reproduce, and could include subsidies from governments or private foundations to aid such parents in this undertaking. We now have a “third side” approach, since researchers are coming to understand the human genome and techniques are being developed for manipulating the characteristics of the zygote. These may make it possible for parents to select the abilities that will be born into their offspring, presenting the option to amplify their strengths and eliminate their weaknesses.

This line of thinking is uncomfortably similar to the one that's led us towards the quite horrifying prospect of designer babies. Meddling with genetic makeup in such a way is bound to have nightmarish results to remind us that Nature ultimately holds control over such things. It would, as I see it, be very foolish to open Pandora's Box with this issue, at least for a very long time.

Satanists have always explored areas forbidden to others, and we will not shy away from this topic so vital to the development of our species. We reject the flaccid maxims of universal equality and seek to ruthlessly reveal the truth about the human animal, so that we may move forward towards the proliferation of creative individuals. As champions of freedom of choice, we don’t expect governments to enforce such programs on their citizenry. However, we think this path should be a viable option for all who are concerned with increasing the numbers of the ranks of intelligent and creative people. There will always be many believers, consumers and parasites in human society. We do not advocate their destruction. However, their drain on the productive and capable inhabitants of this planet is debilitating to us. We wish the ranks of the “superiorly abled” to increase in number, before time runs out and we all perish under the crush of mediocrity.

Freedom of choice is, of course, essential for any free society. If someone doesn't want to have a child who is seriously disabled in one aspect or another, that's their prerogative. But this freedom shouldn't involve toying with fundamental duties of Nature the consequences of which we aren't even close to understanding. With advancing technology we are more than capable of accommodating those who suffer from disabilities and deficiencies while offering them a tolerable quality of life. Shouldn't these individuals be allowed the chance to use their creative and productive abilities among the rest of us? If not, where do we draw the line? When do we say "enough is enough" and let Nature handle Her own affair? Compassion and empathy are not the hallmarks of mediocrity, but rather they are evolved strengths of humanity that allow us to exist as civilized beings.

Submitted December 03, 2019 at 08:20AM by hollyjanefields via reddit https://ift.tt/2RhmD5e

[heyho-simonrussellbeale]

Lehman on stage: making a drama out of the financial crisis

For 10 years, politicians have been grappling with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Now, it’s the turn of the theatre

In a tiny store in Montgomery, Alabama stands a man surrounded by bolts of cloth. The floor is creaky and the door handle sticks. The stock is plain: wool, flax, hemp, cotton. “Nothing flashy,” he says. “In Alabama, you don’t work to live. You live to work.” This is 1847 and the man is Henry Lehman. He rises at 5am and works all hours, selling cloth by the inch to pay his debts. This shop is his whole world: just three years after leaving his native Bavaria, he’s making his way. The sign on the door reads “Lehman Brothers”. So how did we get from there to the famous scenes of 2008, when Lehman came crashing to the ground, bringing the global economy to the brink of collapse? For 10 years economists and politicians have fought over the answer as capitalism has faltered and populism soared. Now, it’s the turn of the artists. The Lehman Trilogy, by Italian dramatist Stefano Massini, opens next week at London’s National Theatre, under the direction of Sam Mendes. An epic, searching affair, it brings Lehman and his two brothers back to witness the eventual unravelling of their company. “At the end of it you do feel you have gone on this enormous journey,” says Simon Russell Beale, one of the three actors who portray the founding fraternity. “Alabama at the beginning seems very far away. But we never lose sight of the fact that, even when the three central men are dead and it is late on in the story, they are still around. It makes the moral dilemmas in the story clearer. Basically, what would the three founders think of what happened in 2008?” Finance is not an obvious gift to a playwright, particularly in an age of mind-boggling derivatives. Drama usually lies more in bedsheets than spreadsheets. Shakespeare didn’t have to unpick the subprime mortgage crisis or grapple with collateralised debt obligations. Even as a theatre critic for the Financial Times, the news that a play will tackle the 2008 crash doesn’t quicken the pulse. David Hare’s 2009 verbatim play The Power of Yes assembled opinion on stage from dozens of experts. It did an excellent job in covering the ground — but Hare himself admitted it wasn’t rip-roaring drama. 

And the crash is a crowded cultural field. Books, articles, films, documentaries — dozens of them — have charted the end of Lehman’s. A 2009 film, The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, dramatised the boardroom battles that preceded its demise; Adam McKay’s 2015 film, The Big Short, Charles Ferguson’s 2010 documentary Inside Job, JC Chandor’s 2011 film Margin Call and the 2011 HBO television film Too Big to Fail (based on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book) all lifted the lid on the rickety financial market in which it was embroiled. The Lehman Trilogy has to do something different to succeed. NT deputy artistic director Ben Power, who has written the English version, says the play has the sweep, scope and ambition to do just that. “It does something more complex and interesting than just tell the story of the lead-up to bankruptcy,” says Power. “It asks, in a very, very big way, ‘How did we get here?’ ” Massini’s drama spools back to when the Lehman Brothers were just that: three impoverished Jewish siblings newly arrived on American soil. The play starts in 1844, as Henry Lehman opens that tiny fabric shop in Alabama, grafting to keep his business on the road. From there it spills forward over three hours, three parts and three generations as a one-room family firm evolves into a huge global concern. We watch as the business shifts into cotton, into credit, into banking. We see the arrival of the railways, the creation of the stock exchange, the advent of film. The company weathers grief, the civil war, the Great Depression — only to implode, spectacularly, in 2008. With each iteration, we see the emergence of modern America and with it modern capitalism. “If you want to make money, you need to find the simple things before they become simple things,” says Philip Lehman in 1887. He could be talking about Apple. “Really it’s about how American finance, how the American capitalist mindset, was created,” says Power. “You keep seeing the country reinvent itself and change itself. And what might be unexpected is that the play celebrates that: it’s quite romantic about it. It’s an American Dream story — a story about an immigrant family who contribute in a really positive way for a very long time to the making of America and the making of the western world.”

The trilogy trains a long lens, then, on the question of how we got here. But what’s really striking about it is its style. It feels like an epic poem, studded with refrains, repetitions and patterns. There’s something myth-like, almost scriptural about it — we’re seeing recent history unfold like a parable. And above all, it’s a family saga — a form as old as storytelling itself — and a classic three-part story of creation, consolidation and loss. It’s about fathers and sons, falling in love, family feuds — all the stuff that drives drama from the ancient Greeks to The Godfather.

“We can see ourselves and our families in these people,” says Power. “The play explores where hubris and ambition meet, at what point the wrong decisions are taken and where the build to 2008 begins. But it does it in a really human way. “I don’t think success for The Lehman Trilogy equals ‘do you fully understand all the financial mechanisms now?’ ” he adds. “It’s interested in the people and the ideas behind the financial models, rather than the systems themselves.” Traditionally empathy has helped finance to find a voice on stage. Writers from Ben Jonson to Henrik Ibsen to Arthur Miller have tackled the human cost of financial affairs — as of course did Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. Miller, that great critic of the American Dream, made plain the terrible impact of corporate cover-up in All My Sons, and his masterpiece Death of a Salesman nailed the cost of failure so movingly that on the play’s first night in 1949 businessmen wept openly in the stalls. But more recently dramatists have ventured more directly into the heart of business. Hare’s play used theatre’s role as a public forum to frame the questions people wanted answering. A 2015 immersive piece, World Factory, at the Young Vic, turned theatregoers into economists and made them battle to keep a factory afloat as the markets wobbled. Children’s company Theatre Rites decided it’s never too early to get to grips with economics and staged Bank on It, an interactive piece for five-year-olds, starring a talking filing cabinet.    The play asks very good questions about when did capitalism become, in the eyes of many, a bad idea? Writing about high finance brings its own hazards, of course: the danger of obfuscation; the threat of over-simplification. But theatre can also bring snap and crackle to the business of explaining finance to the layman. David Mamet’s 1983 drama Glengarry Glen Ross talks about a bunch of desperate real-estate agents with a verve that brilliantly sculpts the story. Caryl Churchill’s ferocious satire Serious Money likewise has terrific velocity and a rat-a-tat script that channels the energy and rhythm of the City in the 1980s. Then in 2009, Lucy Prebble’s Enron applied great panache to unpicking the corruption scandal that engulfed the Texan energy giant. Prebble and her director, Rupert Goold, matched exuberant theatricality and clever stagecraft to Enron’s smoke-and-mirrors tactics. In one scene, a character explained an outrageous plan for debt-swallowing shadow companies by stacking boxes inside boxes. More significantly, perhaps, Enron didn’t just criticise. With its wild energy, it sucked you into the madcap story. It conveyed the buzz of innovation and the euphoria of being on a roll and so went some way to explaining not just the scandal itself, but the impulse that drove it. And so to Lehman’s. In the spirit of the real Lehman’s story, the staging of the play relies heavily on the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the actors. The show opens in 2008, in the deserted Lehman’s building, amid the abandoned detritus of a frantic last-minute meeting. From there on it’s up to the cast to spirit up the original brothers and draw us through 164 years of history.

The actors, like the brothers, have to create something from nothing. Where previous international productions have had casts of 20, at the National the whole epic saga will be carried by just three actors: Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley. “We keep waiting for the rest of the cast to turn up,” jokes Godley, when I meet them at the end of a rehearsal. As well as the three brothers — Henry, Emanuel and Mayer, respectively — they’ll play all the other characters, metamorphosing into sons, grandsons, neighbours, wives and even, in Godley’s case, a billiard ball. Over 164 years, it’s quite a roll-call. But it’s a tactic that means the three men are on stage throughout — tangible reminders of the original brothers. As the company shifts further and further from its origins, their physical presence should alert us to the distance travelled and make palpable the contrast between those early days trading bolts of cloth and the grand fiasco of the company’s end. “Basically we tell the whole story with just what is there,” explains Russell Beale. “So if we need a paintbrush, we pick up a marker pen, or, if it’s a glass of brandy, we use the jug of water that you’d have in a board room. That’s become very strict. So we don’t use anything else. We don’t change our costumes either.” “It’s a big exercise in minimalism and stripping away,” says Godley. “It’s a very efficient form of storytelling. That’s the delight and the challenge of it. How can you suggest a new character with something really tiny? Maybe just turn up your lapel, wear what you wear slightly differently. It’s doing the most with the least.”

Sitting in an office in the theatre, the three demonstrate: Godley flicks his collar and becomes another man entirely; Russell Beale shifts the angle of his head and the fold of his hands — suddenly he’s an 18-year-old girl in 19th-century Alabama; Miles illustrates how just the way you sit in a chair — stiff and upright, or more casual and expansive — can tell an audience what century you are in. How did the 2008 financial crisis affect you? Global financial crisis Tell us your story But it’s an unusual piece, they confess, very challenging in its scope and narrative style. “It is nothing like I’ve ever done before and that’s very exciting and intriguing,” says Miles. “It asks very good questions about when did capitalism become, in the eyes of many, a bad idea? When did it turn from a very valid pursuit into something slightly tainted? When did this small family business that grew and grew begin to transform itself into something that none of the original founders had envisaged? And why did it do that?” Will it work out? The show is, appropriately, a bit of a gamble. But if any art form can say something fresh about 2008, surely theatre — live, communal, dialectical — is the one.

[immortal-journal]

Granddaughter

The role of the mother was usually important to her children. Separation from parents was also an important life issue for the growth of children. I suddenly thought of my other two identities - a father and a grandfather. The father could intervene in the relationship between the mother and children, allowing my children to have more emotional communication and interaction in the family relationship which helped to promote the separation and individualization of children in the process of growing up with their mother. Grandfather's identity allowed me to enjoy my family life. I thought of myself that I had not seen my daughter and granddaughter yet. Sometimes it was difficult to separate the mother and their children. Maybe my daughter and my granddaughter would think that her father or grandfather was a person who worked hard all year round. My wife was a mother and a grandmother. She could only grapple with her family affairs, discipline and care of her children and grandchildren. She lost her own space for development. I felt very guilty that I had not been able to help and let her get enough physical and mental relaxation. This may easily lead to the psychological imbalance of my a woman. I decided to meet my daughter and my granddaughter, but I was nervous, super nervous. I did not know how to get along with my own children and grandchildren. On the way to Jerusalem, I actually did not see my daughter, but I met my granddaughter. She found me and I also found her. How did I accurately identify that was my granddaughter? Because her eyes looked really similar to mine. Was this the reason behind the inheritance? My mood was very complicated. I missed them very much, but I felt very nervous when I faced to them. I was eager to see them, but I was very afraid of saying goodbye after meeting. I was immortal, but their life was limited. Even if I met them, we would have one day to say goodbye to each other. Then why should such happiness begin? I was wondering, wondering a lot.

I even had  a thought of escaping, but I could not control my heart because I really missed them. Fine! I raised my courage and said hello to my granddaughter. Her eyes were bright and innocent, liked a stream, and my heart felt warm at once. My tension seemed to alleviate for a little bit. My granddaughter's face looked very flushed. I just saw she was coughing, maybe she was sick. "How are you, my dear? Are you sick? You look not very well.”

"Who are you?" My granddaughter had never met me before. She asked me curiously instead of answering my question.

“I am sorry. I forget to introduce myself." My tone was soft and slowly said to her, “I am your grandfather. You had never seen me before, but please trusting me. I will not lie to you, dear. ”

My granddaughter had a little alert in her eyes. I did not mind her attitude and touched her soft short hair. I took out a piece of candy from my pocket. "Gift for you."

The child's world was always simple. She could feel my friendliness. So after a while, she accepted my gift and was familiar with me. I was pleased with such good development. Jerusalem in Israel had always existed in my travel plans. This city, which was given a legendary history and a holy aura, once made it impossible for people from far places to distinguish whether it came from legends or whether it actually had its place in reality. During the past years, the direction of my knowledge and the pace of traveling did not lead me to this city which owned the "center of the world". Therefore, when I slammed its door with the attitude of an ignorant, I  was not even know that I would meet a light beyond imagination, or an embarrassing broken wall. But I was very happy. No matter what kind of scenes I would see, I had met my granddaughter here. I spent the happiest time with her.

Many people had read many books about Jerusalem before and after the trip in Jerusalem. I sat next to my granddaughter and read the book called “Three Thousand Years of Jerusalem” for her. I told her to read this book because this was the key to open the city which was not be easily understood. She looked at me with a misunderstanding. The child's curiosity was endless. Although she did not understand the meaning at this moment, she was full of interest and happy emotion about the words in the book. I smiled and asked my granddaughter, "Darling, are you ready for the adventure?"

This may also come from my expectation of the adventure. Visiting a magical city such as Jerusalem had only limited opportunities in one's life. Why should I waste these unknown to verify certain rhetoric and attitudes? I would rather use my eyes to observe and my own hand to touch the stone walls that had not been weathered for thousands of years. I preferred to guess whether the source of those gullies had trapped people's tears. I did not want my granddaughter to think I was a boring and rigid grandfather.

On our trip, the name of Jerusalem appeared two times. The first time was on the third day after the start of the journey. We entered into Jordan through the border with King Hussein bridge which located close to Jerusalem. This was a short stay. My granddaughter's coughing was much better than before. I guessed this may because of the climate change. The second time was after returning from Jordan’s journey. We would not leave Jerusalem until the end of the entire trip. I could not wait to take my granddaughter to visit everything in Jerusalem. We did not want to miss any place. It was dusty for a thousand years. People's love, hatred, beliefs, pain, and endless yearning for this place were inexhaustible. It was just the same as my love for my granddaughter. No matter how many years passed, I still loved my granddaughter.

The weather in Jerusalem was notoriously bad. Despite heavy snowfall in the mountains of southern Jordan, areas near the Mediterranean Sea had been refreshingly warm. Less than an hour's drive from this area to Jerusalem, traffic on the edge of the city began slowly. Arabic music and Hebrew news were not understood from the radio. My granddaughter's face had been tired. I let her head fell down on my shoulder to sleep for a while. The bright yellow light that lights up from the distant mountains which liked the galaxy scattered over the earth. Between the ripples, the sky began to rain.

Those who had never been to Jerusalem felt that there had been three thousand years of human suffering buried here and they had been watching with compassionate eyes to this peaceful city. I saw the raindrop from the sky through the window. It was like the mood of this sad concerto. It was a heavy atmosphere that was filled with sad emotions. Most people were no longer able to remember the origins of this city's memories, but they were not the same as most famous cities in the rest of the world. When I was in England, China, Mongolia, and Japan, the expectations and the feelings from the heart were completely different from those in Jerusalem. I could say those cities that emerged in my mind were colorful as neon lights, but the color of Jerusalem was probably only black and white which liked an old photograph sleeping deeply in history. It only had history, a profound and heavy history, and it had passively entered this era with endless stories and tears. It still had the atmosphere of the city which this era did not exist. It appeared in the same picture as the Jews who wore conservative black traditional costumes. It was just like a joke made me watch a fantasy in a movie. We cautiously explored as I opened a scroll of paper which had been old and yellow, filled with words we could not understand. I could not bear to wake my granddaughter up, but I did it because I wanted her to see the difference in the city.

Jerusalem had a unique color. It was covered with dirt, sediments, and stories. It was beige. We came to the Middle East for the first time. We insisted that the picture of the Middle East was full of deserts, poor cities, lonely temples and churches which had become an unmistakable reality. The old city was the center of this color. Under the continuous raining, it could still not give off a fresh taste of color. Most people who knew that we traveled to Israel showed a hundred times fear more than ourselves. The armed conflict tended to be gentle. I took my granddaughter liked the most common grandfather and his grandchild in the city of Jerusalem. The Gaza Strip was a blockade zone that travelers could not enter in. We entered into Israel with a relatively optimistic mood, but we found that the scars and wounds left by the war not far away from this era where were still filled in the air. The urban development of Jerusalem maintained a puzzling period of time. Israeli soldiers armed with live ammunition would appear on the street and in the market. My granddaughter was a little bit scared. She held my hands tightly. I comforted her, "My dear, do not be afraid. They will not hurt you because you are a good girl."

I did not know if it was a stressful atmosphere or peace of mind. I came from far city which owned different background and history. I could not understand this city. I could not touch the tension of the Jews, and I could not understand the restraint of the Palestinians. But everyone who lived in this city did not suffer from the solemnity of certain unsurpassable missions. What I saw was that they stood in front of unfashionable clothing stores. People laughed at the coffee shop. In the market, they cared about the price of bunch of grapes. They could stop at the side of the road indulging in mobile phones liked old antique dresses in black religious dress. I looked down and saw my granddaughter wore the same dress as them. Her eyes stared at a grocery store on the street. I took her in and bought some snacks. She was extremely happy. Sometimes happiness was that easy.

The concerns of the news about the law and order issues in the area had affected my sensitive nerves. I used to read the images similar to the bar explosions repeated in the book had appeared in my brain for long time. Although I was immortal, my eyes were constantly watching my granddaughter because her life was not immortal. We avoided crowded areas. I was afraid that my granddaughter would have an accident. My granddaughter was in a good mood, and everything she saw from her eyes was beautiful. Maybe I did not understand, but I thought this may be a kind of belief. Jerusalem was a place close to the heaven. People here were so close to the center of their faith. In their eyes, there was no such thing as tourists who did not even have the possibility of religious conflicts. I was also worrying about the cityscape of Jerusalem. The waste piled beside the market was a unique sight that was hard to see in the center of a big city today. Citizens were very calm to look through these fluffy plastic wrappers and waste paper boxes exuding the taste of vegetables, or to find a place where they could wait for buses safely. We were strangers far away from here, standing in front of these miscellaneous things. I and my granddaughter were surprised to see these things that were not nauseating but it would make our moods mess up. The city had always been sacred in my mind, and if it needed to be pyrotechnics, it should be a different kind of pyrotechnics.

Jerusalem was not only faithful and solemn, but also optimistic and romantic. We saw the singer of entertainers sang intoxicating songs on the street of Jerusalem. When I and my granddaughter stopped to smile with appreciation, it was tantamount to break a certain stereotyping of the Jews. The whole world knew that the Jews were suffering and poor. They had suffered from a certain day in history to nowadays. But they were also romantic and full of optimism. Their youth was just like our cartoon characters in pursuit of passion and dreams. It also smooth the helplessness and dissatisfaction of the reality depended on music and the expectations. People with a history of suffering also had the right to enjoy romance and sunshine right now. It was not a smile on the face that broke the tragic fantasies about Jerusalem and the Jews from worldly outsiders. If tragedy would never repeat the same mistakes as before, that was really something worth looking forward to.

At dinner time, I took my granddaughter and chose a local restaurant. Because both of us were really sleepy, we ordered two cups of coffee to refresh our bodies. It was not easy to be a pure outsider in Jerusalem because you could easily be involved in many emotions. If you were satisfied with this, you would stuck on an incomprehensible appearance and you would not be able to look at yourself in embarrassing situation in this city which was far less than the fundamental. I restrained myself from keeping up with these topics and expressed my respect for history. My granddaughter had an incomparable expectation here. Ethnicity, culture, religion, the current situation and the fear of the current situation had become easier to overcome in front go the charming of the city of Jerusalem. Well, it did not mean the city without these elements. I had experience with an anxiety disorder while I was traveling in this city with my granddaughter. I was worried about travel, and certainly because I had not had such an experience with my granddaughter before. I was afraid that she would not like me.

The journey was always short and memorable. Where did the charming of Jerusalem come from? I did not think it could be said clearly for just a sentence. We had learned different culture. It was accompanied by the frequency of history and the story that emerged. Therefore, when we faced to this situation, it was hard to be calm. In a sense, Jerusalem was a city that belonged to most human beings. It was the heartland of their beliefs. It was the holy city that had been expecting to arrive, and it was the coordinates of the beacon with its unfailing beliefs. For me and my granddaughter who had different religious beliefs, describing here as just a destination for a trip was bias. There was no way to show its value. In fact, it brought us a shock which was higher than any city I had ever visited. My journey with my granddaughter was very pleasant, but the time to say goodbye was coming. I became sad. My granddaughter was also very reluctant to me. I promised to her I would take her to another place after a period of time. I gradually liked the feeling of getting along with my family. It was a very important time in my life.

[dtutunzhiu]

“We’re all working together; that’s the secret.”- Sam Walton

Well here I am. Writing, on what little scrap paper we have. All because Fenten told me it would be good for after we’re all dead and somebody else finds our stuff. For a window into our lives or something. What life is like after the megastronic war. It was actually called “HOW THE FUCK DID WORLD LEADERS MANAGE TO DO THIS” on the news stations and in the papers, but I like to call it the Megastronic War. Sounds cooler. In case you somehow didn’t know, the Megastronic War is what happens when you mix steroids, cocaine, America and Russia into a mortar and pestle, crush and then stir vigorously.

You see, “somebody” high on cocaine (the Russian Czar, Slavic Restanyan) accidentally hit the big red button that launched a Tsar Bomba at Montana, USA. This pissed off the Americans, for reasons unknown to anybody because nobody really cares that much about Montana, and so they started nuking the person they thought was responsible: North Korea. At this time, North Korea had dissolved and was only North Eastern Korea, an unofficial country with no power whatsoever, that had resorted to selling steroids to drugged up Columbians. They, in turn, paid for it by selling opium to the Chinese, who sold cocaine to the highest Russian powers. After Americans nuked North East Korea, the Columbians got annoyed and stopped supplying the Chinese, who nuked Columbia and Oklahoma in response. Really, the enemies don’t know where to hurt America. After this America released a hellfire of nuclear bombs and cluster nukes onto all of the included parties, starting the Megastronic war and getting all other countries involved through various alliances and deals.

Almost the entire world died that year. The entire population of America now fits into Yellowstone National Park. There’s 30 of us, 10 men, 13 women and 7 children.

There are now 30.1 people. Two hormonal teenagers couldn’t keep their hands off each other and got a bit too busy.

We all work to keep this little base of ours running; I usually stand guard and build stuff that we need, Janice usually takes care of the children, Tom is our fisherman, Karnesh is our lovely hunter, and that’s all the people I care to mention for now. I’m honestly a little scared of Karnesh, but don’t tell her that. If she’s still alive when you find this that is. In short, we all do our part to make sure the gears of society keep running among this odd group of people.

Occasionally our scout, Jasper, will find a new person that we haven’t met before and has survived the wilderness on their own. Once we’ve checked to make sure they don’t have parasites or diseases we can’t remedy, we let them into our camp with open arms and open hearts. That’s how we found Karnesh, and also how we found Fenten.

Now I’ve mentioned Fenten twice now and I haven’t even introduced her. She is essentially the brains of the whole outfit, and while she is not the leader, she takes great care to make sure our actual leader, Jackson, doesn’t do anything stupid enough to kill us all. She’s also an attractive young lass of 23, and single. She likes long walks on the lakeside, pinecone coladas and getting caught in the rain (when it isn’t acid rain of course). Does it sound like I’m absolutely smitten yet? If so, that’s because I am. She’s wonderful and absolutely fantastic, if I had any visually artistic capabilities I would try and draw out what she looks like, but I don’t so suck it up and deal with it. My smittenness may be the only reason I didn’t try to argue when she told me to use all this paper to write out my thoughts for potential future readers.

Life in Boulderstone is usually pretty quiet. Occasionally we find a mammoth of a beast to take down, which requires the entire team, excluding Janice and the children, but including pregnant Dackyl and baby daddy Shawn as she isn’t far enough along to justify taking her out of the hunting party just yet.

One time, Jasper found a gigantic buck, with two sets of razor tipped antlers, muscles like you wouldn’t believe, and a tail long and dextrous enough to be considered a fifth limb. It took us only a day to find, perhaps because it was too big for the trees it tried to go through, or maybe the forest was too small for it. Either way, it was one bastard to kill. We found it in a clearing large enough for 200 men. We took up roughly half that space with twenty people and a Mammontian buck that could feed us for three months if we stored its meat beyond the treeline of Mount Holmes. Mammontian is a word we created to classify any seemingly normal species that has since grown to extreme proportions in one way or another due to the radiation outside of the park.

The only problem with that idea of course is that it would require someone to walk all the way there everyday. Why don’t you take a guess at who got that wonderful job? It was nobody. We ended up moving the entire camp closer instead, and before you call us all crazy and frivolous, I’ll ask you a question. Do you know how hard it is to feed a group of thirty people for three months? Especially when some of them are teenagers!?

Back to the hunt.

How does one take down such a large beast, while keeping the meat in good enough condition to eat? The answer is simple: at the base of its skull, sever its spinal cord, like the old bullfighters. Then again, saying and doing are very different things. First, we had to position someone in a place where they would be able to either climb its neck or land on the not-razor-part of the antlers and hang from there to get to the base of the skull, along with some sort of blade large and sharp enough to cut through the cord itself. This job was handed to Karnesh, the expert on such affairs. So while Karnesh, master hunter, climbed the two story tree with her machete, we took the buck’s attention by peppering it with pistols we found in various abandoned camps of very optimistic people. Why people just left their guns in camp, along with plenty of ammunition, I will never know, but they did. These bullets barely made it into the skin of the beast, as a splinter would on me, mildly annoying the beast into seeking utter destruction of the source. When we finally did our job right and put the beast into just the right position for Karnesh to stop being a coward and jump on it, not to say I would have done it any sooner, she somehow swan dived from the branch and caught the base of the second set of antlers. From there she took her machete from the holster on her hip and drove the tip into its flesh slightly left of the center as far as it could go and jerked the handle left, cutting straight through the spinal cord, ending its life cleanly and humanely.

Meanwhile, the other 19 of us were frantically trying to not to be trampled by its massive hooves or hit by its fifth limb of a tail. This is what happens when you annoy an animal four times taller and seventy times stronger than you. I almost died four times, not including when Jerry almost shot me in the head while aiming for it’s chest.

When it hit the floor, the resounding thud hit me like a clap of thunder, and we got to work field dressing it, saving the hide for later when we will make it into clothing, tarps, and blankets for everyone to use. I’ll spare you the gruesome details because it was truly disgusting and I’d rather you not ruin the only paper I was able to find. Our leader, Jackson, lives in the hollowed out skull now, because we couldn’t find a good place to put it.. It’s actually roomier than you would think.

Three days after we moved to the mountain, some neurotic teenagers decided that instead of asking one of us for assistance about the mushrooms they found, they’d try them out themselves. It’s been a week. They’re still high. They’ve been less productive than a sloth on sleeping pills while taking substantial hits from a bong.

Regardless, I’m running out of space on my paper. To keep this ending short, we keep working as our own gears in this living machine of new society, and it looks like it’s going to be a decent life now. Thanks for reading about humanity’s continued survival.

I incorporated New Historicism through the rampant corruption in politics, globally and locally, and the large international drug trade. I also incorporated New Historicism with the current global political environment in which current countries, such as North Korea and America, are threatening each other with nuclear missile launches. Similarly, I included the idea of people valuing their gun rights as they carry different types of guns along with them as they went camping, for self defense or hunting purposes. Examples of formalism in my story would be the jumps through time as it is told from the perspective of one man reminiscing on how his band of people have survived, and he wrote it as a stream of consciousness, while leaving some small room for an update or two as he went along. Due to the story being written as a stream of consciousness from the protagonist, the sentences were shortened and seemingly incomplete at times, giving off the feeling that he was directly speaking to the reader, giving an insight into the speech patterns of this period of time. On the mythological front, different archetypes throughout the story include “Protagonist” as being the Regular Person, someone everyone can relate to who just wants to belong to a group and not be left out. As such, he commonly is the one to advocate for the inclusion of newly found people. The scout, Jasper, is the explorer as he is often away from the central group for weeks at a time, looking for new things that might be useful to the group, proving his autonomy. This gives him the chance to not be trapped within the limits of their community, giving him freedom. Fenten fits the idea of the Sage as she primarily uses the knowledge of old to advise the leader in the right directions to assist the group in its survival. With her help, Jackson overcomes his weaknesses as the leader, to keep order within the group and keep a “Lord of the Flies” environment from developing.

I came up with the idea for my story from a free hand drawing I made. It was of a man sitting on a wooden patio, drawing a tree on some paper by the riverside. This image is not included as any art that would inspire the story as I unfortunately threw it out a few weeks ago, and did not take any pictures of it. The premise is that the story details how the man gets to that point of his life, living in reasonable comfort in the forest, and this short story is about the relatively early period in his new life. As I wrote it, I also took inspiration and knowledge from real world events and tensions, as well as old customs (bullfighting) that would assist the protagonists along their life’s journey and missions.

The main purpose of the story is to show that even in the face of the most extreme adversity, as shown by the conditions they were put under due to the war and having to learn to live off of the land, that people will still be people. This is to say that people will always continue to have interests, flaws, and hold onto whatever happiness they find. Too often it is found in movies and tv shows that once an apocalyptic event occurs, the protagonists, or the survivors, magically become flawless and know the perfect solutions to most problems while somehow not keeping a firm hold on their humanity. In this case, however, all the characters have their normal human flaws, such as the leader, who is a bit of a numbskull, or Karnesh who has trouble in social situations (as detailed with how “Protagonist” is slightly afraid of her). The primary theme of this story is that with a concerted effort, it is possible to traverse adversity, so long as everyone does their fair share. Even though everyone has their flaws, they can be overcome or overlooked, at least temporarily, to achieve a goal through collaboration. As the quote above the story explains, the secret to their survival is that they are all working together.

The relevance of the quote before the story is that it essentially explains the theme. Every person has their place and their role in this newly created society, and that is how they survive. The war that started the whole necessity for a new society was started because the leaders and people of the world did not work together for a better future. Instead, they always kept looking for the chance to kill or otherwise disadvantage their fellow man. The new generation will instead work together to survive this world, and try to better each other instead of destroy each other.

[actualasparagus]

Just a ramble about my Fallout protags because I love them so much and I just wanna get what they’re like down in writing so you can ignore this but yeah...

okay so I’m gonna do the main characters from Fallout 1 onwards although I haven’t fully played 1 or 2 so it’ll just be rough details until I can figure them out more - this is really rubbish though pffffff

Vault Dweller - Rosanne Sandra - Age 30 - was a cook in Vault 13, is pretty sure the Overseer has something against her considering she was probably the least qualified to be sent out into unknown lands. She’s very tired and just wants to feel safe. Her best friend in the wastes in Dogmeat because from what she learnt during her education in the Vault, dogs are good beings that help their human friend and are completely reliable. Dogmeat has pretty much kept her alive tbh because he warns her of potential dangers and threats, which she probably wouldn’t detect without his help. She never got married, she did have a significant other however whom she left California with after their daughter became the elder of Arroyo. She wanted to spend the remainder of his life using her new-found skills exploring this exciting new world. While she despised the wasteland to begin with, she came to love it. She never planned to be thrown into an alien environment to travel alone and later fight a super mutant army, but in the end, she’s glad she did.

Chosen One - Selkie Sandra - Age 18 - is pretty sure that having responsibilities that you don’t really want runs in the family. She just wants to farm and flirt with cute girls but her mother insists that she is destined for greatness, and all that. She really doesn’t care for the idea of leading Arroyo and living up to some legacy. When the people of Arroyo are abducted, she’s convinced the Sandra family name is cursed and plans to take the last name of whoever she marries in the future. Her best friend is Goris, who she tries to convince to chat up girls for her during their downtimes. To heck with him being a Deathclaw, the girl is super cute and she’s super flustered. She really dislikes the idea of wearing some filthy old Vault suit her grandmother apparently left behind, but family legacy and that.

Lone Wanderer - Lilith Hatari - Age 19 - naive af when she first leaves the Vault, it’s mostly thanks to Moira that she eventually learns basic survival skills. She kinda considers the people of Megaton to be her extended family, they taught her everything she needed to know in order to brave the streets of DC, and in return she’d perform chores for them, such as fixing leaking pipes, bringing scav for the local merchants, and disarming the bomb at the centre of the crater (which she learned to do after reading many magazines on explosives). Her time in DC really changes her, making her more streetwise. On the way there, she met Dogmeat, bonding with him over the loss of ones close to them. Her father mentions that her stubbornness to survive is much like that of her grandmother - Elise Hatari - who survived the Great War and pulled together the first community in DC (though it didn’t survive after her death). When her father kills himself, she mourns for months, confining herself to her home in Megaton. It’s the distress signal from Vault 101 that prompts her to finally leave, as she rushes to Amata’s aid, resolving the tensions in Vault 101 peacefully. She understands why she must be banished, and finally gets to say her farewells to everyone properly before leaving. She stumbles across Butch months later in Rivet City and convinced him to join her, mostly out of fear for his safety. She’s pretty convinced that he’d die without the kind of guidance she got in Megaton, so she passes on the knowledge they gave her. She later activates the purifier successfully, and aids the brotherhood in taking down what’s left of the Enclave. After that, she returned to Megaton with the intention of disappearing from the spotlight once and for all, content to live a simple life. She ditched Butch somewhere along the way, she’s convinced he went back to Rivet City, she hears word of someone who matches his description creating a scene now and again. She later has a whirlwind romance with Leo Stahl and marries him and declares Dogmeat their child. Chronicles of her life become vague around this point, but it’s known she lived a long and happy life.

Courier - Anita Almamata - Age 25 - really good and kind to those she actually cares about, a massive sadist to everyone else. She sleeps around in order to make gains in life. Her weapons of choice is anything that makes a really nice explosion, the bigger the better. Her extensive knowledge of things that go boom terrifies even Easy Pete. She sides with Legion as a silent ‘fuck you’... to Legion...? She reasoned that by demonstrating that they couldn’t do without her, she’d make a place for women in the Legion. It certainly inspired the female slaves, especially when granted the greatest honour by Ceaser after the second battle of Hoover Dam. After the battle, she didn’t retreat from her duties, instead she continued to pull off impressive displays, in order to further normalise the idea of female soldiers. She knew that simply pushing Legion out of Vegas wouldn’t solve their equality problem, so she wormed her way in and lay the foundations for change herself. She loves being a lady and wants everyone to know it. She never ties herself down to any man or woman, though she did have an affair with Picus at one point, covert ops is her jam and spending time close to him meaning she got to do just that.

Sole Survivor - Emala Hatari - Age 23 - afraid but ready to FIGHT. Her emotions are all over the place, she’s a big family person, and her family’s suddenly been ripped away from her. Often tries to gain intel on what happened to her younger sister, Elise, when the bombs dropped, but finds out little. She took up her maiden name once more after coming to terms with her husband’s death. She expresses a lot of self doubt, often saying that her husband was the soldier of her family, not her. The survivors of Quincy are a massive support circle for her, once they learn she had only just left Vault 111, they spend time getting her accustomed to the new world she found herself in. While she’s not fond of chems, she’s a massive smoker, she’ll look like the living dead every morning until she’s had a smoke. She refuses to accept that she’s responsible for Sanctuary slowly becoming a thriving community, she likes to pass the praise onto Preston. When she finally finds the real Shaun, she mostly feels despair towards what he’s become. Her best friends fear what he’s built and it breaks her. She sides with the Minutemen once tensions in the Commonwealth begin to escalate, she can’t side with her son knowing the fear his people has created for her friends. Destroying the Institute ruins her emotionally, but she distracts herself with raising the synthetic Shaun they rescued before blowing the place up. While she never sparks any romance with anyone, she adopts two children, raising them alongside Shaun, finding solace in the experience of Motherhood that she had thought was lost to her.

and that’s all I have for now, it’s shit, right