#letting a horror reader rave about horror authors is such a kindness

[lowhorrors]

Hello, hello!

Sorry if this has been asked before, but who is your absolute favourite horror author?

Likewise, do you have any other authors you'd recommend?

Hi! What a great question. Thank you for asking!

The first name that jumps to mind is Stephen Graham Jones. All of his books and short stories stick in my head and I find myself thinking about them months later. I reread Mongrels at least once a year.

Okay, all of my favorites have books that I reread often.

Mira Grant, specifically Into the Drowning Deep. I love ocean horror and she stocks this one with so many interesting characters. I am obsessed with it.

T. Kingfisher (Hollow Places), Cherie Priest (The Toll), and James Brogden (Hekla's Children) are a few more that I jump at their books, devour everything of theirs I get my hands on. The books in parenthesis are just my favorites that I am always screaming about.

This was such a cool ask! Thank you!

What about you? Favorite horror authors? Or favorite horror book?

[buckybarnesdiaries]

i won't let you down

© @snyderzack

bucky barnes x reader. ⎢ masterlist.

Bucky helps you and gives you hope.

word count: 1.196 words.

warnings/tags: very brief mention of domestic violence, the winter soldier coming to help you.

author notes: none of my stories contain reader’s body descriptions to be inclusive.

Join the tag list here.

BUCKY POV

It was the fourth month he was living in the same building as you, concretely, in the apartment next to yours. Since the very first moment you met in the lift, you were extra kind with him and he couldn’t help but think that you were hiding some kind of intentions, until the days passed away and he discovered it was part of your naturality. He remembered, as if it happened yesterday, the first morning he knocked on your door asking for some coffee and you practically invited him to have breakfast together. You two talked about your part-time job in a cafeteria by morning, close to the neighborhood, and another one in a book shop by evenings. Bucky was fascinated by how much you used the hours of your days, letting you work out and have long walks in Central Park.

And he also remembered the night you knocked on his door for the first time, after hearing him having some nightmares and not being able to go back to sleep. The walls seemed like thin paper. He didn’t get it out of his head that time he heard you crying in your room, in the small hours, after a fight with your boyfriend. A punk who didn’t deserve an angel like you. On all the occasions you two argued, Bucky wanted to intervene, but he didn’t because what was his right.

Until a night where the heated talk escalated too quickly to swearings coming from him, and a painful scream coming from your lips after a loud hit. Bucky kicked the door down without doubting, panting furious and breaking into your apartment like a bat out of hell. As soon as he reached the living room and saw you crying and lying on the floor, all his rage contained during months got concentrated on the same point. Five cold fingers closing in a big and dangerous fist.

“Who the fuck are you?” Your boyfriend spat raving mad.

“A guy who’s gonna disappoint his therapist for breaking rule number two”. The soldier hissed, not giving time to the other to react.

With his left hand grabbing your boyfriend’s throat, Bucky pinned him to the nearest wall with so much uncontrollable strength that he almost opened a hold in it, straight to his own house.

“Listen to me now, you son of a bitch”. Their faces were separated barely for a couple of inches, drinking each other’s breathing. “If I see you coming again, laying a finger on her… I promise I’ll turn your life into a damn nightmare”.

Bucky could see the horror borning in his eyes when your boyfriend recognized him. That voice. Those blue orbs. The metallic fingers cutting off the air from his lungs. He was in the news for a long time. The Winter Soldier. One of those freaks with superpowers, with the difference that he was a trained assassin. Only a fool wouldn’t obey his threat. But for some reason, Bucky wasn’t able to loosen the hold around the other man, driven by the desire he had for killing him. After all the suffering he made you go through, after all the nights hearing you crying, after all the time waiting for your boyfriend to change. He wanted to end his life.

“Bu— Bucky”. Your weak sobs brought him back to reality. To New York. To the year twenty twenty-one. To the new century.

As if it was an automatic act, his fingers opened making your boyfriend fall to the floor. Coughing, choking with his own saliva and the lack of air. The poor coward ran away before Bucky could blink twice. Shaking his head to shut up the voices inside his head claiming him to chase the man, he turned around and squatted next to you. A thin thread of blood poured out from the upper right corner of your lip, as your cheek was burning in pain after the punch. The soldier held you onto his arms, listening to the sound of the police sirens coming. Probably some neighbor called them, fed up with the fights inside your house.

You were crying inconsolably and ashamed when he walked into his apartment, placing you with so much care on his sofa. Bucky didn’t utter a syllable, heading to his bathroom to take something to fix you up. He had a good medical kit since he didn’t want to visit any kind of hospital. Coming back to you, the soldier knelt next to you, feeling a knot inside his chest pressing out his skin. He wetted a cotton in hydrogen peroxide and placed his warm free hand on your untouched cheek to urge you to raise your head towards him. You couldn’t help but draw a grimace of pure soreness that broke his heart in one million pieces.

“Sorry…” Bucky murmured, earning your look filled up with sadness. “I, uh… I wanted to… So many times, I…”

“Thank you… for saving me”. You stuttered in low tears, while he continued healing your lip and cleaning the blood on it. “You’re a… good man, James”.

“I just did what I had to”.

“We’re… more than fifty persons living here… And you’ve been the one who has saved me”.

Knocks on his door interrupted your little chat, causing him to frown as the two of you heard it was the NYPD. Bucky left a delicate caress on your cheek before standing up and attending the call. The cops came into his house without asking if they could, knowing very well the man who was living there.

“Ma’am, you okay?” One of the officers inquired walking closer.

“Yeah, it was… I just… slip off to the fl—”. Tell them about your, now, ex-boyfriend wasn’t an option for you, feigning a soft chuckle as you cleaned the tears in your eyelids.

“His boyfriend hit her”. But Bucky interrupted you.

“And you helped her, mister Barnes?”

“Yeah, and she’s gonna make a complaint”.

That wasn’t an option for you either, but by the look coming from his eyes, you knew it was the only one for him. You couldn’t persuade him.

“Ma’am?”

Bucky licked his bottom lip, shortening the distance between both to grab his cozy and baggy black hoodie to offer it to you. He was determined to help you. He really wanted your welfare.

“C’mon”. He almost begged you in a whisper, shaking briefly his hand holding the piece of clothing to convince you of taking the good road. “I’ll be with you, I promise. I won’t let you down… Not again”.

It took you a couple of seconds to nod your head, getting up from his sofa being helped by the cold hand showing up. Bucky made you wear his hoodie, with so much careless to not touch your right cheek still burning because of the pain. Under the attentive look of the cops, he placed his flesh arm over your shoulders, not caring about the lack of distance when you clung yours around his waist and tried to hide your face on his chest. For the first time since you started that toxic relationship, you felt safe. You felt liberated.

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[thepeakyfckingblinders]

āmentĭa || Thomas Shelby x reader

⤠ MASTERLIST⤟

Anon requested: “Can I request #16 with a jealous tommy, angsty pretty please?”

Summary: n.16 from prompt list: “Another’s hands on her skin” Warnings: swearing, anxiety, angst, a bit of smut, jealous desperate Tommy making my soul ache

Author’s notes:

Behind each one of these works there are sleepless nights and something really close to multiple mental breakdowns, so, please, take a minute to send me a message about it, I need actual feedbacks to understand how to improve my skills and grow ♡

Paragraphs written in italics are flashbacks.⤟ IMPORTANT

Sentences between bold quotation marks (❝  ❞ ) are Tommy’s thoughts.⤟ IMPORTANT

I wanted to thank you darlings for all the love you’ve been sending me, you truly make me happy, I’m so grateful to share my works with you ♡

I’m sorry for being this late, but I’ve been really busy in the past days and writing is never just easy, it demands concentration and effort, plus I don’t want you to be disappointed, so I’m always extra accurate while working. I hope this is worth the wait!

If you want to be added to my tag list, please, directly message me

I’m Italian, English isn’t my first language, so I apologize for every possible mistake I made. Also, please, help me improve my writing by telling me if there’s something wrong

ENJOY!

āmentĭa [amentiă], amentiae  feminine noun I declension

1. compulsion, disturbance, raving, hysteria 2. malaise, vexation, affliction, regret, 3. viciousness, anger, furor, choler, 4. impetum, violence, heat, rush, impulse 5. separation, rupture, abandon 6. paroxysm, yearning, eagerness 7. infatuation, frantic desire, amorous fervour

Heavy rain incessantly hit the windows sideways, giving life to a perpetual recurrence of dull sounds relentlessly haunting Tommy’s eardrums, yet he remained laying on his cold bed, motionless, with his glacial stare disturbingly fixed on the ivory ceiling. His bare chest kept raising and lowering in toil, labored breath coming out of his slightly parted lips in agonizing sighs, goosebumps slimily crawling on his more than ever pale skin, due to the extremely low temperature in his room; still, he didn’t seem to care.  Two deafening chimes abruptly ripped apart the bleak air, midnight struck with no mercy, inexorably, raiding into his black lungs, plundering all of the oxygen he had left. The day had eventually come, the day in which he would’ve lost you, forever. Thomas brusquely stopped breathing as his raw flesh seemed to lacerate, it felt like the Devil’s acuminate claws had pierced his ribcage, penetrating through his bones, carving to reach his cardiac muscle, ruthelessly stabbing it, brutally slicing into his stomach. For a full, interminable minute, blind panic took over his paralyzed body, having him pant and whine, making him look like a dying animal in pure agony, while his empty gaze never left the spot right before his dilated pupils. Tom had met you three years before, by the time war had just come to an end: it’d been only a few months since Harry had hired you to help him handle the pub, and when the Shelbys finally entered the Garrison again, after four long years, you clearly didn’t have a clue of what was going on.

Your boss had tensely hurried to instruct you on what your job was for that night, apparently, it only consisted in following those three men in their private room, favoring their every wish, always with a smile and kindness. You remembered looking around the tavern, deeply confused, since the whole clientele had suddenly fallen deadly silent: every man in there was gazing at the ground and taking off his hat out of respect, causing you to be even more disorientated by that odd situation. “Just keep your head down, y/n, those guys are dangerous, I mean it. They take whatever they want, whenever they want, whether people like it or not” Harry’s words kept echoing into your mind, Tommy’s crystal eyes immediately piercing your soul when you quickly reached for their privè. There was some sort of  unsettling stravation sailing through his granitic irises, while he shamelessly stared at you, barely blinking his eyelids, and a cheeky grin peered out on his angular face. Breath unexpetedly shattered into your throat, your forearms rippled with evident goosebumps, as you truly began to see what that previous alarming reccomendation was about. Your heart grievously skipped a beat because of that abrupt scene mercilessly flashing before your tired eyes. A huge amount of air was forcefully shoved down your pharynx in a miserable effort to put to rest any of your conflicting emotions, yet you didn’t seem able to abort your detrimental thoughts; once more, your restless glare fell on the wooden pendulum clock pinned to the wall in front of your queen size bed. “Oh my God, what happened?” Thomas watched your hexyl hand shake before your open mouth, an expression of pure horror mixed with shock virulently took over your soft features at the sight of bleeding abhorrent wounds mutilating his marble skin. “Let me in” That order dropped from his busted lips, but it sounded like nothing more than a feeble prayer, as he painfully cought up blood on your doormat. His stomach unusually clenched when he sensed your tiny arms carefully wrap around his torsum for the very first time, in order to support his weight, thus his head innately tilted in your direction, making your noses rub one another by accident, while his icy-blue eyes carved deep into yours. “You’re a fucking angel” He whispered at the end of his rope, already being in a state of partial unconsciousness, therefore it took only a few more instants for him to effectively faint in your warm embrace. That brief memory led Tommy to hastily lift his back, a crippling feeling of anxiety, along with deep overwhelming fear, came unbidden, having him struggle to inhale as much oxygen as possible, while he crawled towards the edge of the mattress, then sitting and propping both his elbows right above his knees; his left hand convulsely run through his face, like that simple gesture could’ve helped him get rid of those loathsome sensations devouring his guts from the inside. Bells rang again, another hour went by, time continued to unrelentingly slip between his fingers. “Just be rational for once!” Tommy ferociously shouted in your face, thick veins appallingly throbbing in his neck, blood traces invading his white orbs; as usual, he was plainly too despotic and hardheaded to let anyone around him make their own decisions. “I don’t see what the problem is, Thomas. You’ll find another bloody bartender, for God’s sake!” Soon afterwards your reply brusted out in another yell and your hands started franticly moving into the air, as you were strenuosly fighting for your sacrosanct right to finally leave Birmingham and move to Paris to begin a whole new life, putting all of that shit behind you.  Yet, before your brain could process what was actually happening, you felt your back hardly clash with the cold brick wall, Tom’s mighty figure trapped yours forthwith, one of his fists vehemently grabbing a consistent strand of your hair, so to make your mouths collide in an unexpected tempestuous movement. “That’s my fucking problem” An atrocious knot cluttered up your gullet, forcing you to scarcely gasp for a fresh breath again, your velvet fingertips unwittingly went to brush your slightly wet lips, due to a lonely tear which had just tumbled from your full lashes. You could almost sense his touch on your fervent skin.

Faltering, you dragged yourself on your feet and your shoulders shriveled, for a cool draft brutally hit your quivering body; with heavy steps, you reached for your wedding dress armonically rested on a copper mannequin. Ivory tulle coursed amidst your fingers, while your blurred vision remained anxiously fixed on that wonderful piece of haut couture at the fathal stroke of the third hour of the morning. “You belong to me” That husky grunt lingered the soft skin of your naked chest, instantly followed by Tommy’s luscious kisses, his callous palms utterly enveloping your curves as your live flesh superbly engulfed every inch of his length and his hips kept diving into yours, miraculously giving life to an exquisite blend. He was revelling in the sight of your erotic beauty, he couldn’t just avert his thirsty glacial irises from your winsome shape now twitching with raw pleasure.

Those ruthless sequences of images irretrievably haunted his dark pupils, unfolding into his head over and over again. Thomas squeezed his eyelids nearly in physical pain, allowing himself to drown in his bittersweet memories: he was still perfectly able to feel your edges fill his hands, your voluptuous voice reawaken his numb ears, your mild thighs fondling his sharp pelvic bones. “Fuck!” All of a sudden, his hoarse tone clamorously reverberated in the room, brutally tearing apart the previous stillness, while Tommy berserkly stood up and, affected by a pernicious choler, he savagely ravaged every single thing in his path, until the floor was completely covered in shards and his breathing showed clear symptoms of hyperventilation. Everything was shot in pieces because of him, because of his pathetic selfishness and his shameless arrogance; you had loved him from your skin to your bones, never leaving his side, offering him a safe harbour from his private hell, stoking that cataclysmic fire, only to let it consume yourself with each passing day. He’d always been aware of that, in truth, he’d always felt the same about you, still, he had treated you like nothing more than one of his whores; afterall, it was just a matter of priority, and business was his one and only priority, obviously. So, when you had eventually presented him with a definitive choice, demanding to know  what your strange affair truly meant to him, he had almost laughed in your face, deliberately making it clear that, whatever that thing was, it would’ve never become something more.

The thought that in the end you might have really left him didn’t even remotely cross his mind, not once; nevertheless, barely a year later, you were about to marry another man, and it was too late for him to fix all of his uncountable mistakes. ❝  There will be another’s hands on her skin, Tommy. He’s gonna hold her, he’s gonna take your place, and it was your fault, you wreck everything you touch ❞ That voice inside his brain continued to scream that obnoxious truth with no mercy, steadily driving him to madness, violently gouging dire tears from his hollow eyes. Intoxicating fury festered his already rotten blood, pushing him to throw several raging punches at the door, excruciating shrieks kept escaping his maw, until two deep dents ploughed it and his bleeding knuckles broke under the abnormal strain of his animalistic blows.  Thomas surrendered to his agonizing sorrow, soon he let his empty corpse fall against the damaged wooden surface, his fractured fists henceforth laying along either side of his bust, while his growling voice didn’t seem to find peace, as it was still spilling from his lips into deafening cries alternated to beastly snarls and sporadic curses. Sure, Tommy Shelby had learnt far too soon what pain and darkness were, he had experienced death, loss, abandon, even the gory war itself, but never before that wretched day he had felt his soul disintegrate into his aching ribcage in such a diabolical, cruel, inhuman way.

tag list:  @spidey-pal, @shadow-of-wonder, @shelby1baby, @peachlle, @livvtheangel, @myjbphase, @namelesslosers, @crazyonesarethebest, @vxxn128, @keithseabrook27, @spaghettirogers, @writingstudent​

[yandere-deredere]

monster boyfriend: beelzebub

a/n: for whumptober 2019: shaky hands and monstertober 2019: demon warning: mentions of religious themes and occult, implied unhealthy relationships, implied touch starvation pairing: beelzebub the demon x gender neutral! reader word count: 2113 summary: Who knew someone could get so lonely that they’d be desperate enough to summon a friend?

“Now, darling, why are you so… nervous?” 

You took a step back, your foot unsteady as it settled against the creaking of the floorboards. Your eyes frantically flickered here and there, trying to find a way to escape or, perhaps, for an object to use.

There was nothing.

In this empty attic filled with only dust and stray boxes, you couldn’t find an exit or a weapon. The only way out was the trap door with the ladder but that was behind it and you wouldn’t be able to duck and maneuver yourself over there.

No, you were trapped and it was all your fault.

You had thought so foolishly that you could play with the books you had found in this musty attic. They were all dumb occult things with hard covers carved with occult symbols, pages lined with gold and paper heavy and expensive. 

You had doubted, at first. Blasphemy and demons weren’t the kinds of things your family members were interested in so you couldn’t help but wonder where these books had come from. Maybe the previous owner of the house? It was a mystery for sure.

You thought nothing of it and read, filling your head with what you had thought were fictional stories or the ravings of a mad lunatic. The books were all about summonings and different demons, about their different hierarchies and their different legends, what they did in the mortal realm, what they were known for. 

It was interesting if not mildly gory. It was the kind of horror that you couldn’t help but continue reading even though you were scared shitless; the kind of horror that made you stay up at night, wondering if the shapes you were making out in the dark were really just your imagination.

Soon, the books held you in a sort of trance. Your curiosity had peaked and, suddenly, your thoughts of ‘Surely, these couldn’t be legit?’ turned into ‘But… what if it was?’. 

Though the thought of them being real would’ve been absolutely macabre, you still couldn’t help but wonder. You had researched certain things in the books and found allusions of them in the Bible as well as other holy texts and history books about the church.

Certainly, if the book was pure fiction, the author was well-read or, at least, researched the topics thoroughly.

Eventually, you found yourself lonely.

You had never been close to your family, not really, so it wasn’t a surprise that you kept drifting away from them. You had always been an introvert and shy so your ideal day was just locked up in your room. It was easy to drift away from people when you rarely saw them outside of maybe dinner and lunch.

There weren’t any friends in the picture, either. You had never been very good with socializing so, other than classmates that you barely spoke to when unprompted, the only human contact you really had were on screens, in TV shows and movies.

You had always been a fan of fantasy and, after Supernatural and god-knows-what other demon/angel shows, the thought of summoning a friend met with your endless curiosity for the books. If they were real, undoubtedly, you could summon one.

Summon a demon.

It should’ve hit you how dumb that was. Selling your soul for a friend was just about the most desperate thing in the world and were you desperate? Were you that lonely? Did you really crave the touch of another thing so much that you’d be willing to do a stupid (probably hokey) ritual? 

The answer was, obviously, yes.

Still, despite your desperation, you still strongly believed that the books were just a fabrication of someone’s imagination, just an exaggeration of religion and what little information it gave on demons and Hell. There was just no way the books were about something real.

So, you went straight to the top. You thought ‘Might as well since it wasn’t even going to work’. You couldn’t summon the leader of Hell itself, of course, so you went one step lower: Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies himself. 

It was surprisingly easy to collect the materials because the book was just so vague. Just blood, never about where it's from. Just a sacrifice, never about if it was alive or not. Just candles, a room, symbols to be painted and carved. 

It was too easy.

“What? Didn’t you… want to see me?” It continued to speak, pulling you out of your thoughts and making your eyes snap away from your surroundings and to the being in front of you.

As it spoke, its mouth forming the words, its lips lush and its teeth sharp, you couldn’t help but notice that its voice was velvet and smooth too. You were smart enough not to fall for things like that, though. You knew all too well that the thing in front of you was made to be perfect.

Well, perfect in a sense. No matter how much it tried to make itself beautiful, to lull you into a sense of false security, there was still something so off about it.

The demon looked like any other man, its build stocky but obviously muscular. Its body was naked, smeared here and there with blood but you couldn’t focus on that out of fear. Either way, it was a normal, very male, body. Its arms ended in normal unclawed fingers, its hair mussed to look effortless but still handsome. Its smile almost seemed genuine, too.

It didn’t matter. There was something about its eyes, something so cold, so lifeless and dead despite the brilliant blue hue. Its smile, though disguised as genuine, was sharp, almost predatory, like a wolf trying to convince a rabbit not to run.

In this scenario, you were, unfortunately, the rabbit.

It stepped closer “You don’t have to tell me what you want. I know what you want and I’ll give it to you, free of charge.”

You shook your head, taking another shaky step back. There was no way it’d give you what you wanted for free. After all, the book had warned you. Demons never did anything for free. No matter what it was, no matter how little the request, they always took something as payment.

“Okay, you’re right, sweet thing, there is something I want in exchange.” It grinned wider, taking another step closer “Trust me, though, it aligns with what you want so, really it’s not payment at all.”

You couldn’t find your voice. Instead, you continued to stare, frantic at the thought that it was reading your mind. You hadn’t said anything since it had crawled out of the bloody portal you had painted onto the floor so the fact that it had just countered a thought in your head made you scared. 

The demon chuckled, its laugh rumbling and deep and almost sinful the way it sent a tingle down your spine “Don’t be scared, darling. The mind-reading thing is just a side effect of the summoning. We’re tied together now, you and me.”

You took another step back and he took two steps forward “You can block your thoughts, don’t worry. I’ll teach you how or those silly little books will tell you.”

You didn’t like how it implied that it would be staying.

“Of course I’d be staying. You’ve summoned me and I’m here to make your…” It chuckled again though, this time, it felt more like it was in on a joke you weren’t a part of “...wish come true.”

You shook your head, trying your hardest to force words out of your throat, except, your mind jumbled and you couldn’t get anything out. 

You didn’t want to say anything just in case it was the wrong thing to say. One misconstrued word could lead to a decapitated head or your soul sucked right out of you. It was a demon, something from Hell, with supernatural powers that would put fictional demons to shame.

As a result, you didn’t think it’d have any qualms with torturing you if you had happened to offend it. As one of the Princes of Hell, it had surely seen its fair share of slaughter and carnage. You had even read that it would often incite wars and bring men to murder.

If it could do that without even a shred of pity or sympathy, if it could see blood shed and families torn apart and men killed for nothing, it could surely crush you under the heel of its foot without hesitation.

So, you struggled, throat constricting so tightly that nothing could come out. You wanted to tell him to leave, that you hadn’t thought your actions through, that you didn’t want to be fooled by a demon because you were so vulnerable. Yet, the words wouldn’t leave your mouth.

You tried harder, mouth stuttering, words stumbling over your lips into something incomprehensible. Your eyes watered as you continued to struggle.

You were scared of him. Of course, you were. 

It could kill you, end your life, yes, that was true. That wasn’t what you were scared of, though.  Dying wasn’t something you feared and, instead, you welcomed it. There were things worse than death, after all, and, now that you’ve summoned him, you knew of them, have read them from those cursed books. 

An eternity in Hell, tortured by your worst nightmares, would scare anyone.

And, maybe, that wasn’t the only thing you were scared of. Maybe the reason you were so scared of other people, of reaching out and befriending and building relationships, was also the same reason you were scared of it. 

A rough hand pressed against your skin, fingers encircling your upper arm. Your struggle died abruptly and your vision cleared to see that it had taken several steps towards you and that it stood there, only one step away.

The coldness in its eyes gave way to something indecipherable.

“Darling, I won’t hurt you.” The demon’s voice was still smooth, still velveteen, but the seductive tone in it was replaced with something soft and comforting “I promise, I swear, I won’t.”

You knew a promise from a demon was something of an unbreakable vow so you nodded to show you believed It.

It let go of your arm and, suddenly, you craved its touch like some sort of starving man. It had been so long since you had felt a hand so calloused but soft and a touch so strange but gentle. 

Instead of completely pulling away, though, it took another step forward and its chest pressed against yours, its skin pressing against the cloth of your t-shirt. It reached down and took your hands.

You hadn’t even noticed that your hands had been shaking. Now, as it held them so loosely in its own, you noticed every tremble of your fingertips and every quake of your palm.

It held your hands tighter, fingers interlocking with yours. It pressed itself closer, the pressure of its chest against yours heavier. It felt warm, almost inhumanly so, but you leaned in anyway, your skin yearning for more touch, more contact, more warmth.

It let go of your hand, wrapping its arm around your waist to pull you closer. It leaned forward, allowing you to curl up against it, face pressed into its neck. You wrapped an arm around its neck to pull it even closer. There was a soft rumble as if you were cuddling with a giant cat instead of a murderous demon.

“I told you, I can make your wishes come true.” The demon whispered temptations against your ear, its breath just as inhumanly warm as its body “I can make the loneliness go away.”

You bit back a whimper, knowing that your desperation would make any price feel like a bargain and it continued, its arm tightening even more “All I want in return is you; all of you, every single part of you, dedicated to me.”

“Say it. Say my name, say you’re mine.”

Your grip on its hand tightened and your arm around its neck pulled it closer. You mumbled the words as if shy and scared which, really, you were “B-Be-Beelzebub… I-I’m yours.” 

“And stop referring to me in your head like I’m an inanimate object. Anything else will do but I’m not an it or a thing.” It-- He-- They chuckled and you could feel the vibrations of it against your chest “I’m yours and you’re mine.”

Your nod sealed the deal and you burrowed yourself deeper into its arms. The searing pain on your back confirmed it: you were branded as theirs and you would be for god-knows-how long. 

[esbarrison-writing]

Insights: My Thirteen Year Long Path to Publishing

I would not recommend that anyone goes through my insane publication process. It’s stressful, time consuming, but I hope it will pay off.

It starts when I was thirteen.

Enter Ms. Black’s English Class: I’m an aspiring writer already, with some little story pocketed away. Do I remember what it was? Not really. But it was the first thing that really sparked my interest in writing.

One day in October, Ms. Black told the class that our job was to write a suspenseful horror story inspired by authors like Edgar Allen Poe, in the spirit of Halloween of course. So, I wracked my little thirteen-year old brain. Horror wasn’t necessarily a genre I wrote, but suspense was something I enjoyed.

The idea started simple: an old priest, knowing his death would be soon, sat in his church writing a letter in red ink. He heard a hysterical woman in the graveyard, so he abandoned his writing and hurried out to hear the commotion. The woman was screaming because a bell beside the grave, known as a safety coffin, was ringing, and there was not a breeze in the air. The priest tried to calm her, but to no avail.

This is where I was caught off guard though. The woman transformed in my story from a terrified young lady…to the fierce and stunning Goddess of Death, or Grim Reaper.

This is my notorious Woman in Black. She was the first character I developed for The Mist Keeper’s Apprentice, and frankly, she hasn’t changed much over the years.

Granted, the story has undergone multiple makeovers. Names of characters have changed. Personalities altered. But with a few central themes: conflict in an ancient council, a kind-hearted protagonist, and strong women of different personalities.

So let’s go back to the beginning. From the age thirteen to eighteen, I worked on this story. Initially it was called simply “Apprentice”, then “Discipulus”, which was the name it kept for a long time. It took place in the modern world, the main characters were highschoolers, and honestly I was probably way in over my head. But I still wrote an entire five book series (Discipulus, Medius, Venator, Proditor, and Dominus). It was an accomplishment! I was proud of myself!

I think I wrote over five drafts of Discipulus alone.

Then college came. I abandoned them for three years after my story was accused of being childish.

I’m glad I did.

I grew beyond what I initially wrote. After three years of learning more about myself, I knew where I had gone wrong.

So I scrapped everything.

Okay, okay, scrapped is the wrong word. I have the original files backed up, but after trying to keep the premise the same, I knew it just wouldn’t work.

I wish I could tell you how I came to the revelation. Yet, no matter how I wrack my brain, I can’t. I think it comes down to how the story never really left me. It was always there, waiting to be taken again.

Over the course of a few more years, I worked on rewriting my novel. I kept the name Discipulus for the time being, but knew the change would ultimately come.

I finished the revised draft one sometime in early 2018. Then by mid-year, I came up with the name…The Mist Keeper’s Apprentice.

I was so proud, and I thought the idea was fleshed out entirely by the time I looked for beta readers in late 2018. A few circumstances led me to believe that was not the case: an overly ambitious beta reading plan, a low response rate, and the few readers that did finish pointing out the flaws.

In early 2019, I reassessed, and rewrote over half the novel.

It was worth it.

Beta readers loved the story. Over 70% of those interested finished, and they raved and loved the book! So, at the end of 2019 I knew that this year, 2020, I would finally publish this story. I sent it to an editor, Charlie Knight, who helped make the story stronger, hired my cover artist, and got to work.

I’m two and a half months now from the book’s release. I can go on about why I chose to indie publish, but I think that’s a story for another day.

Needless to say, the point of this rambling is to say this: don’t give up. It’s a lot of work, no one is every going to say it’s easy, but if you stick with it and are willing to adjust due to criticism, you will soar.

Will this 13 year journey of mine pay off? I don’t know. But I am proud of what I have put together.

And isn’t that all that matters?

Originally Posted on esbarrison-author.com

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The Mist Keeper’s Apprentice is a Fantasy Novel coming out on June 14th, 2020! Be sure to follow for updates.

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[seenashwrite]

It

Word Count: 3K Category: One-shot; Behind-the-scenes canon-compliant; Humor; Friendship-Turns-To-More; On-the-case Rating: Teen & Up Character(s): Dean, Sam, Reader/Female OC, Cas [ever-so-briefly*** ] Pairing(s): Dean x Reader Warnings: None Author’s Note(s): *This is a re-post, minus tags and links, in an effort to make it show in searches; more post-story Overall Summary: Dean, you thing-breaking dumbass, this is why we can’t have *nice* things.... Okay, but really:  A fellow hunter finally finds it, the answer to solving a case she never quite put to rest; enter Dean and his penchant for picking up, dropping, and breaking things. 

“I broke it.”

Dean immediately made some sort of slightly cringy face that I’m guessing he thought came off as adorable, then Sam looked over his shoulder at me with the same routine, albeit nervously.

I couldn’t say what expression my face had taken on, but Castiel was staring at me like I was either going to vomit or combust.

“It was an accident,” Sam tried. 

And failed - I was seething.

“I can’t kill you, I know, ‘cause that never seems to take,” I said to Dean. “But I sure as hell can beat the tar out of you.”

Dean narrowed his eyes a bit at me, and I knew he was trying to judge if I was serious.

I was serious.

Several moments of near-painful silence went by, which Dean, naturally, broke.

“It was… look, this thing on the side… here… and the… is… it wasn’t my… then my hand, so… see?"

"Uh-huh,” I said, crossing my arms.

“I’m going to go. I think I should check on the bunker,” Castiel said to me as he backed up, sticking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door.

“Uh-huh,” I repeated, only seeing him out of the corner of my eye, as I was still focused on my target.

Dean frowned. “Nice, Cas, thanks a lot.”

“You’re most welcome,” Castiel replied, then promptly zipped away.

I was proud of him. That was some absolutely-on-purpose, right-back-atcha sarcasm. I was also glad he had 86′ed himself, one less thing to stand in between me and laying down that aforementioned ass-whooping.

Dean rolled his eyes, then warily brought them back to mine. Sam sighed and leaned over in his chair, getting a better look at the pieces scattered around Dean’s feet. He reached out.

“Nope! Don’t. You. Dare,” I said.

Well, possibly yelled. Could’ve been a shout. Either way he jumped back, held up his hands briefly as if I were going to arrest him.

“What is your problem?” Dean snapped.

My jaw dropped. “You. You, with the constant touching things and handling things and us having to watch you like you’re a four-year-old!” I snapped right back.

He glared, and I started pacing around, gesturing with my arms and hands, and I probably looked like a raving lunatic but I felt like I was dealing with a lunatic, so he deserved a little crazy dished back at him.

“I honestly don’t get it - I really don’t. Consider me boggled. With the knife spinning and the gun flipping like you’re in some movie, and then the behind-the-back shots, and the sliding over to some nasty or away from some creeper, like you’re on a damn baseball team, all those moves, and I just - how can one man have that level of coordination and still manage to fumble everything else? Huh? Can either of you tell me that?”

“You know, you’re being a real—”

“I don’t know how Sam survived childhood, with all the dropping him on his head you must’ve done, but hey - maybe by some stroke of luck you activated a hidden part of his brain and that’s how he ended up a genius.”

Sam grinned. “Thanks!”

“Oh, shut up,” Dean told him.

“The hours… the days…. the weeks… months… all wasted,” I went on. “There’s not another one. It’s one of a kind. Nothing else like it. You have single-handedly screwed me.”

Sam stood and walked over. I’d quit pacing, but my arms were still up and out. I brought my hands to either side of my head. I was muttering random sounds, essentially growling at no one in particular. Sam hesitated briefly, but then took me by the wrists and gently lowered my arms, sliding his hands down to hold mine, giving them a few good squeezes as he spoke.

“Listen, lemme just… if I can just move all of it to the table, get a real good look at the damage, maybe there’s something that can be done to fix it.”

“Sure, super glue should do the trick,” Dean said dryly. He was still hanging out on the side of the bed. I had to give him credit, though - he was holding onto what was left of it like it already had been coated in super glue, not making the first move to touch the rest.

I made myself inhale and exhale a deep breath before responding. “I appreciate that. I do. I wish you would let me do the moving. ‘K?”  

Sam nodded. “Okay. And we’ll go pick up some dinner, let you have some space, that sound good?”

“Good. Yeah.”

“What can we bring you?”

I almost said a time machine so we could all go back ten minutes, so I wouldn’t have left it with Dean, and so he wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place. But I didn’t - Sam didn’t deserve to be treated that way. His brother on the other hand…

Dean stood.

“Don’t move!” I exclaimed, pulling my hands from Sam’s and rushing away from him, dropping to my knees near Dean’s feet.

“I can step over—”

“Put— put it down on the bed, and please, just— please take it slow.”

He did so, but then I felt him staring at me as I surveyed the mess around us. I looked up, and I admit, the anger was fading and the panic was starting to set in. He must’ve seen it because his expression got a bit softer and there was actually a little sympathy in his eyes.

He glanced away for a second, then back. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“I know.”

“If I thought it would slip out of my hands, I would have—”

“Stop, will ya?” My head had already dropped again, as I gingerly picked up one of the larger pieces that was directly in his path. I leaned up briefly to set it on the bed, away from the edge, then back down I went. I grabbed the back of his calf, scooted myself to the side, then prompted him to lift. “Step clean over these smaller pieces, alright?”

I raised my free hand so he could steady himself. He responded with a firm grip and allowing me to guide the leg til his foot was planted, then we repeated the action with no problem on his opposite side. I let out a huge sigh of relief - so did he.

“We’ll be back in no time,” Sam told me, and I heard Dean fishing his keys from his pocket, but I was focused and didn’t acknowledge them. The door closed without any of us saying another word. And that was when the tears finally came to my eyes.

Here was the thing: the Winchester brothers had helped me over the last few hurdles in my quest to find it. I was more grateful than they’d ever know. I needed it to put a long-time cold case of mine officially to rest, and I couldn’t figure it out on my own, which had pissed me off to no end, but not getting the assist just wasn’t an option.

Sam had labored for countless hours over piles of clues and hints and other nonsense that had been tripping me up for years. Dean had been a champ out in the field, often checking leads on his own when their cases took them near some place that held promise, clocking who knows how many miles. We’d hung out socially a few times when they were in my neck of the woods, I’d spoken with Sam at least every-other-week, texted with Dean just as frequently, and well…

I considered us friends. Good friends. Maybe my only friends. MaybeI was their only friend, too.

And I thought about that, all of those things, as I stood over the table, staring down at what we’d worked so hard to find. Nothing was cracked or chipped, thin motel carpeting be damned. None of the pieces were tiny or crumbled, the smallest of them still taking up my entire palm.

It almost seemed… it shouldn’t have, really… it hadn’t felt like it…

Yet there were things about it I hadn’t noticed before, all these intricate details. Diagonal grooves on the piece Dean had managed to keep in his hands, along with oddly-shaped spaces that almost looked like they tunneled. I studied the smaller pieces - similar grooves. And on the sides that had faced internally, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, now that tears weren’t clouding my vision.

I was just starting to smile when the door opened.

“Hey that’s good to see,” Sam said. He was carrying our drinks and headed straight to the dresser - he knew better than to set them on the table with it.

“What’s good to see?” Dean asked. His arms were full of bags stacked atop a small box, so he kicked the door shut behind him.

I don’t know what came over me, but I rushed him, and the poor klutz would’ve likely dropped his cargo had I not pressed in so far as I put my hands on either side of his head and pulled his face in close, planting a quick kiss on his lips.

It was a toss-up, what I saw on his face - horror or surprise - when I pulled away and wide eyes stared back at me, but I couldn’t have cared less.

“Oh you beautiful man,” I told him, now smiling so much my cheeks hurt.

He blinked a few times, still startled. “I got you cupcakes.”

“What?” I asked.

“What?” he asked right back.

“What?” Sam chimed in. “I mean, what happened, why are you—”

I went to turn from Dean, but he wobbled, so I thought better of it. I grabbed the bags, leaving him with just the box. I mean, priorities and all, but I wanted those cupcakes. I answered Sam as I made my way to the dresser.

“He dropped it, but he didn’t break it - looks like it was supposed to come apart.”

“What?!” Sam exclaimed.

“We need to all stop saying ‘what’,” Dean said, and in a gruff tone, so I glanced over at him.

He met my eye, then immediately turned his back to me and started sorting out the food. I frowned slightly, but I didn’t have time to figure him out. I walked back over to the table where Sam was standing, taking a good look at it.

“I liked the compliment and all - but you are the genius,” Sam told me, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “Did you see, on these, how on the inside they’ve got—”

“Yup! Think those might twist and turn and snuggle up all nice and cozy into these gaps?”

Sam grinned, pulled me into a huge hug, held so tight I almost gasped. “I’m really happy for you,” he said, and heaven help me, wrapped those never-ending arms even tighter.

Dean cleared his throat. Loudly. Twice.

Sam let go and I chuckled as his stomach growled. Loudly. Twice.

“Let’s dig in,” I announced, heading over to the spread Dean had laid out.

“You don’t wanna—”

“Nah. It’ll still be there when we’re ready.”

Dean was on his bed and I was on Sam’s, both of us propped against the headboards, a handful of cupcake wrappers tossed on the bedside table between us.

Sam didn’t join in on dessert, instead making a beeline for the table, and was currently in a chair, hunched over, working on the puzzle. He’d made good headway - I’d barely set in to my second cupcake when he’d already gotten three pieces back in place. In their new places, that is - because that was the key to my little mystery. It wasn’t supposed to stay the same.

“It’s looking good,” I told him. And it was - it was turning into a completely different shape, but one that seemed much more sturdy. Dean had noticed immediately.

“It’ll stand up now, on its own, instead of being wonky on bottom, won’t it?” he asked.

“Looks like,” Sam replied. “There’s still something that needs to go over here, to keep it steady, I think.”

“You sure you don’t want me to take over?” I asked.

Sam looked up, shot me a little wink, then shook his head. “No way. This is the fun part.”

“You’re the boss.” Then I looked at Dean, who had just killed off the rest of what had to have been his fourth cupcake, adding the wrapper to the pile. “For someone in a love affair with pie…”

“Pie understands me.”

“You know, at first I thought that was going to keep us from being friends.”

“Hmm?”

“My cake preference.”

“We all have our faults.”

“Truer words,” I replied with a laugh. I pushed myself off the headboard, made my way to a sitting position on the side of the bed, grabbed my boots and started putting them back on.

“What’re you doing?”

“Well, if Sam’s not gonna let me help, least I can do is make a beer run.”

“That’ll be great, thanks,” Sam said.

Dean watched in silence as I laced up, then grabbed my jacket off of the chair Sam wasn’t in. He waited til I’d almost had my hand on the doorknob before he got up, told me to wait a minute, he’d come with me. Then I heard his keys jingle.

“I’ll drive.”

“My car’s here,” I reminded him.

Dean all but shoved me aside when he reached for the handle, pulling the door open even though I was still partially blocking the way. I gave him a look.

“Well?” he asked.

I looked pointedly at his arm. He moved back so I could pass, and out into the parking lot we went. We were nearing the Impala’s driver side, but I waited to go around, instead turning so fast Dean stopped just short of running into me. The odd vibe that had been hanging over us for months had to come to an end.

“I’m sorry I was such a bitch earlier, I really am.”

“You had every right to be. Anyway, I tend to have that effect on women.”

I glanced down. The last quarter of his jeans and most of his boots were coated in a thin layer of dried mud, leftover from what he’d brushed off before getting into the car. I knew there must’ve been plenty of bruising on his arms and legs, too.

My mind went back to earlier that night, all the work he’d done to retrieve it from the abandoned, mostly caved-in mine out in the middle of nowhere. Sam was too big to fit through what little of an opening was left, and he’d physically held me back, fussing with me about the danger of a full-on collapse, when next thing we knew, we were alone. Dean had climbed down and started making his way inside while our backs were turned.    

I looked back up to find him staring at me, not making a move to go around me or rush me, remind me that the beer was out there all alone, waiting on us, needing a good, loving home, and I added that to the list of oddities.

“Still. I shouldn’t have. Being that close to something that… I’ve just been looking for it so long, to think it was right there and in one second…”

Dean nodded. “We’re good.”

I nodded as well, but didn’t budge. “I believe you. So can we… can we stop being weird?”

“Who’s weird?”

I gave him another look.

He gave one in return.

I let out a little huff.

The side of his mouth quirked up ever-so-slightly.

“It’s been… tense,” I pointed out. “Not just you making with the clumsy and all. I mean the past couple times we’ve been around each other. Then over this whole trip, we’ve been… Listen, I know what a basket case I’ve turned into, as we got closer to it, and I wanna make sure it hasn’t wrecked our friend—”

Dean planted his lips on mine just as abruptly as I’d done to him earlier. Only this was different. He’d shut his eyes. And he lingered.

He pulled away for a fraction of a second, I suppose to see how I’d react, and I didn’t give it much thought before I leaned in and kissed him right back.

It wasn’t what I would’ve expected. I’d seen him kissing other women. There was always this urgency to those kisses, like he was trying to speed through it to reach a finish line, to hurry and get it out of the way.

This, though… this was a slow burn, then just as slowly, his hands were creeping around my waist and slipping under my jacket, pulling me in, and I found myself following suit.

“See? Here you go again, with the touching…” I mumbled into his mouth.

“….and the handling….”

“….all the moves….”

He stilled, stopped another kiss before it really even started, though he didn’t move away. “But am I fumbling it?”

“Oh, this is a horrible idea,” I replied, my lips still brushing against his.

“Huge mistake,” he agreed, eyes shining.

We were kidding, sure, but there was truth behind it, and that was something we both damn well realized. And I realized I was probably the one who had to play the grown-up, so I let my hands fall away from him, stepped back. Not by much, though.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Liiiike….”

“Like you do at the chicks in the diners and the bars. That bartender last time we were all together -  the look.”

“And it’s how I’m looking at you, huh?”

“Mmm-hmm. It happened when you knew all you’d have to do was snap your fingers at her. Just like all of ‘em, when you’d know… ooooh.”

He hadn’t stepped into the space I’d created, just leaned, dropped his head to my neck, started planting barely-there kisses, and at that moment had landed on a nice spot just behind my ear.

“When I’d know what?” he asked, lazily kissing his way back around, under my jaw, then higher, to my cheek.

“Know you’d… how… it’d be a sure thing… that you were… you know… gonna get it.”

Dean brought his head around to look at me, and one of his patented, pleased-with-himself smirks was planted firmly on his face. “Well - I did get it.”

“Horrible idea and horrible jokes, I’m loving this whole thing we’ve got going.”

He dropped the smirk, turning it into something with a touch of sincerity. Something a breath away from being serious, and I didn’t quite know how to feel about it. About any of it.

“Not what I meant,” he said.

I drifted closer; he closed what little distance remained.

“That right?” I asked, and I couldn’t help it - it came out as a whisper.

And he whispered into my ear once he’d pulled me into his arms.

“Yeah, I got it. I’ve got it for you.”  

Want more stories? My Master Post is linked in my profile, and it tells you about getting on the Tag List, too! If for whatever reason it gives you trouble, don’t hesitate to send an Ask and I’ll link you.

Re-blogs and feedback are fuel for a writer’s soul - please do let me know if you enjoyed. 😘

.

Author’s Note #2: Several folks asked what “it” was, and so I made a post explaining - you can find that link on the original story post, via my master list.

Like I say - this is a repost leaving off links purposefully, so that’s why you’re not directed to it so if you don’t feel like looking but want to know the “secret”, just shoot me an ask and I’ll link you.

Author’s Note #3: In case you wondered, this was written for a challenge involving taking inspiration from outtakes of the show. And the ***ever so briefly on Cas was because the challenge runner doesn’t like him but I snuck him in just long enough tee-hee-hee

[blackbeerandcoffeemovies]

The Color out of Space (a.k.a. The Paranormal)

Confucius says: “Be always mindful. Minor spoilers ahead”.

Alpacas.

Yes, alpacas!

Never heard of the South American, fluffy, adorable and kin-to-the-camel mammal? Nicholas Cage who plays the patriarch character in the film and raises them and claims they are the “animal of the future”. They look something like an uber-cute amalgam of a sheep, camel and poodle dog. 

Yes. alpacas . . . Damn honest truth. So, now I’ve either piqued your interest or turned you off by beginning this review with such an exotic animal.  A reader with discerning taste would continue on though.

But first, a much needed literary context for the basis of the film. Based on the short story of the same title and published in 1927 by the acclaimed American classic horror and weird fiction mythos creator, Howard Philips Lovecraft or HP Lovecraft for short. 

To say that Lovecraft was an interesting fellow is grossly trivializing! He’s likely the kind of guy you might feel revulsion towards but, at the same time, feel a bit of sympathy as well. Kind of like that kid in school who was always by himself and who no one would talk to. You feel sorry for him, so you walk up to him to try to start a conversation. About five minutes in, you realize WHY no one wants to talk to him or engage him!  Born initially in affluence with some hints of “proper English” in his family, he enjoyed a sheltered life filled with books and literature. Tragedy though often re-occurred in his life like some annual respiratory infection. He not only lost his father at a young age but an overly protective mother (who would also pass on a bit later) would smother him to a fault, thereby endowing him with the fortitude and broadmindedness of a pillow cushion! That’s going to put a big dent into your social life, right? Also, it didn’t help that his elitist, isolationist tendency had a xenophobic side as well, but let’s not float the boat on those waters.   

Fortunately, he was able to channel all this introverted, awkward, alienism into a sub-genre of horror literature that would later morph and expand thanks to the efforts of other fellow authors. This collective of fiction would eventually be termed as “Cosmic Horror”. The mythos of Lovecraft’s universe can essentially be summed up through his own words: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”. His writings had a strong, naturalistic bent and were influenced by the great scientific discoveries of the early 20th century. The themes would delve far outside the familiar, brightly-lit world and would even reach further beyond the realms of “space and time”. Yes, BEYOND, where gods dwell or are in a state of suspended animation. 

These gods, however, are NOT personified beings with our familiar temperaments or even with a rationality that we could all somehow relate with. No, these gods are titanic, indescribably grotesque, hideous masses of both matter and energy who absolutely do not care about you, or just as much as you sparing a passing thought for an amoeba or a bug crawling on a shrub! It is a vast, dark and indifferent universe, and you just have to deal with the horrors and disasters that result from this apathy. You’re going to be eaten, stomped or sacrificed and then eventually forgotten. Get over it!

Cheerful fellow this Lovecraft, huh?

At this point, I’m already hearing the protests: “Nice Lit lecture there, but what about the damn movie!?” Ok, because I was so looking forward to seeing again a Lovecraft opus in motion pictures, I just had to listen to reviews prior to watching the film and the overwhelming consensus was positive. How positive was it? Between “Great” to “Lovecraft done right” to “Future cult classic”! 

Well, let’s just say I’m not a member of the fan club. . . 

The plot: a family lives out in the middle of the woods trying to live an ideal life. A meteor crashes in their property. Chaos ensues by way of a supernatural force with indescribable colors because “they fall outside the range of anything known in the visible spectrum” (from our friends at Wikipedia). There were beastly transformations, eerie environmental changes and light shows in all the various shades of magenta! A simple and straightforward plot, but as always, it’s HOW you tell the story.

Personally, this movie was underwhelming NOT because it lacked the essential elements of story-telling I prize so much in my critiques, but because it did have the potential to be great, YET fell short of that goal. The pacing aspect could be forgiven because of some supernatural influences, yet still, it felt a bit forced throughout. As for the narrative aspect, it was certainly there but the character-building I found sorely lacking, all except for two: the “angsty” daughter character (played by up-and-comer Madeleine Arthur) and the legendary creature known as Nicholas Cage. 

What can you say about Cage and his well-known, “eccentricities” (i.e. - His famous wild rantings and ravings)? He becomes a spectacle that could somehow detract from the coherence of the film. In some moments though, he personified the descent of a man into madness with such acumen, you sort of feel suicidal! A difficult scene with the alpacas comes into mind. 

Some scenes are also so obviously contrived, you feel that the characters surrendered their brains and willingly put themselves in danger in order for something nefarious to escalate. Director Richard Stanley in all of this is enjoying some sort of second wind as apparently, he had just started getting attention back in the early to mid-2000s but was stymied for a bit.    

I suppose I understand the hype about this movie: I think those who rave about it are die-hard Lovecraftians who celebrate any passable interpretation of the literature into a film (however mediocre it might be). Such an effort is hailed as a triumph of sorts. Believe me, I understand; it’s the same situation for comic book/graphic novel fans (whom I could have an affinity with since I grew up with American comics).          

By my estimation, this is a very lukewarm film and somewhat engaging. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not worth writing home about either! If you are a Lovecraft aficionado and enjoy tales of the eldritch abominations, then this might be a worthy, almost 2-hours of entertainment. If not, at least you could see Cage displaying the full range of, well, “Cageness” he’s known for!     

Finally, it was released here under the mind-numbingly generic title of “The Paranormal” since apparently Filipinos might not be intellectually capable enough to appreciate classic titles!  

[mugen-monogatari]

Star Watching Dog - Tragedy and Love through the eyes of a pet.

The opening pages of Hoshi Mamoru Inu sets the tone for the very short series straight away. We’re greeted with a gorgeous art work of a broken down car in a field, while investigators state that within the car, the corpse of a man, dead for a year, and the corpse of a dog, dead for several months, have been found. We’re told straight away the fate of our two main characters, “Happy” the dog, and “Dad”. This isn’t a spoiler, this is the opening scene of the series, what we start with and finish with. You’re told up front, this isn’t going to be a happy ending. 

And yet, what I find so strange about this, is that this isn’t sad. This isn’t death in the tragic sense. The artwork is gorgeous and clean. The field is beautiful and the car has faded, worn down by the time it has spent in the field. Much like the memory of our protagonists over the course of the series. 

For those of you that haven’t read it, Hoshi Mamoru Inu (Star Watching Dog) is a really amazing short story, that literally everyone should go read. Being a pet owner myself, there were multiple scenes that had me sobbing like a child, and even recounting the story to my girlfriend later that day, I began sobbing uncontrollably in front of her again. This story just hits you with all the feels in all the right ways. When you’re finished, despite being a very digestible 6 chapters, you’ll feel like you’ve been on a journey.

To give a brief plot summary, we follow “Happy” the dog and his owner, simply referred to as Dad. The story begins with Dad getting a divorce and setting out on a cross country road trip to the south, taking whatever belongings he has and Happy, before setting out in his little car. From there, they face hardship after hardship, before reaching the conclusion of their already foretold deaths. 

So let's talk about why I loved it so much. Why did a simple story about a man and his dog, hit me so damn hard, and why am I suddenly raving about it on Tumblr?

Well first of all, there’s no pissing about. We’re told straight away, both of our main characters are going to die. We don’t know how or why. Just that they have died somehow. The premise is set up very simply, and we’re told within seconds “Hey. It’s going to be this type of story.” I love this honestly. Knowing how the story will end is all the more tragic, since it makes the journey all the more heartbreaking. Seeing the good times is a lot harder when you know everything will end up poorly for everyone. 

And the series pulls it off so well. SO WELL. 

Watching these two set out on their optimistic journey was nice, but there was always this ever growing fear, that the events shown in the first pages will come about. It’s less of a question of “will things be okay?”, and more of a “When do they go awfully wrong?” Which is it’s own kind of suspense. When the tragedy does strike, it’s set up well enough to where it’s still powerful, heartbreaking and tragic, but not BS. The author doesn’t pull a fast one on us, and especially reading it a second time, the signs are all there, to the point where it actually goes in the opposite direction, and the author literally flags you down and tells you everything will go wrong and how. 

The story handles this well. There isn’t an incredibly deep meaning to be had here. It’s not quite the sort of story where you can break it down, it’s just a story about a man, his dog, their bond and the people they affect on their way through life. It’s very tragic, but sweet and uplifting. If I had to find a message in the story, it’s just one of, treat your pets well. Treat your family well. Make sure to show love to the things that are precious to you, because you won’t have them forever. Which I’ll come back to in the end. 

And while I could probably gush about this series for hours, for the sake of Brevity, I’ll just talk about my two favorite aspects of the series. The first is perspective, while the second is how the story handles all the characters that are affected by the life of Happy and Dad. 

First of all, the series plays a lot with perspective. For the first half while our characters are alive, we follow Happy, and see the world through his eyes. From his adoption to death, we watch the world as he sees it. Which is interesting as he doesn’t understand a lot of things that we would. He monologues internally like a young child, and he doesn’t get the horrors of the world. He’s optimistic about everything, which makes it even more heart wrenching when things go wrong.

To elaborate, I’m going to have to go into spoilers briefly. You’ve been warned. The series isn’t incredibly plot heavy, so it shouldn’t matter too much, but still. I really recommend you go take an hour or two and read this before you continue onwards.

Early on, we get a scene where Dad buys a pair of sunglasses. At the time, nothing is thought of it, he mentions they’re just a fashion statement, yet doesn’t really take them off until the end of his arc, where it’s revealed that he now has (what I presume to be cataracts) in his eyes, meaning he’s genuinely gone blind. And then it clicked with me. This was foreshadowed, outright even said, but as a reader, I dismissed it because Happy dismissed it. I didn’t understand because he didn’t understand. 

Suddenly several more panels made far more sense. For example there’s one scene where he goes to a restaurant by the sea, and just sits and eats for several hours. He attempts to take the Dog with him, but is refused entry on account of no pets, but then claims he is blind and it is his guide dog. We dismiss this as lying, due to the fact we’ve been shown he just doesn’t want to leave happy alone. Happy even dismisses this, not really understanding why Dad just sat there for hours watching the sunset. But then it clicks, that he was genuinely going blind. He really did need happy to guide him, and the sunset was him coming to terms with losing his sight. Much as the sun sets on another day, another chapter in his book of life ends. Past this point, his vision is almost entirely gone. 

That makes the last panel of him, just gazing up at the sky, the starry sky, as he passes away peacefully, all the more powerful. He mentions the sky is full of stars, but one glance at his eyes reveals they’re white and clouded over. He can’t even see them properly. A tragic moment, since the sky is genuinely gorgeous, but he’ll never see it again. Almost as if that’s where the title comes from. Star watching dog, a dog that gazes at the stars, even knowing that it can never reach them.

What drives this home is Happy’s reaction to this. He doesn’t understand his master is ill. He doesn’t understand his master has just passed away, even though we as an audience do. So seeing him try to remain optimistic, trying to find food and survive, as well as still trying to communicate with the corpse, is so heartbreaking. This was where I sobbed especially fucking hard. I was like a child. Happy, in his final moments, wishes to be reunited with his owner, curling up into a ball, before slipping away into a dark abyss, waking in the field of flowers him and his master crashed into, before reuniting with Dad, and stepping out into the field at the end of the story. 

It’s not a happy ending, not by a long shot, but seeing it portrayed in such an optimistic way, makes it so hard to read. Happy, doesn’t understand any of this, so watching him struggle on, knowing the futility of his actions, the dramatic irony in the situation is heartbreaking. Making the story all the more powerful in turn. 

But this happens around 3 chapters in, with the other half of the story being what I liked even more than this. 

For the second half of the story, we follow an investigator looking for clues to do with the death of the protagonists, an old lady who adopts Happy’s brother and a young boy who was helped out by Dad in his story. Which all worked out to make the story even stronger, as it shows the effects we have on those around us in our lives. The detective is especially interesting, because we see the opposite of Happy. We see how humans see their pets, instead of the other way around. And that view is distressing and almost nihilistic. While Happy only saw the best in his owner (who was set up to seem kind of like a dick), the detective only found his own pet he had as a child, annoying and obstructive. He couldn’t be bothered to deal with it, and only lashes out at it in annoyance, providing an interesting contrast between our main characters and the opposite end of the spectrum. Only after studying Happy and Dad, does he begin to regret his actions towards his dog, and reflects back on his life and what he’s done. It’s a rather emotional scene, a man coming to terms with the fact that he now has all these regrets, it was very genuine and sincere, a stage that we’ve all as humans gone through at some point. I wish I did that different, or this that way. We all have thought like that. But this change and sudden reflection is only brought about by the influence of Happy and Dad.

The contrasting viewpoints, really hammers home the relationship between the Dad and the Dog, as we've shown it was truly something special, but also that pets are a really wonderful thing. They’ll support you and love you forever, they sense your sadness, and will share in your happiness. No matter how you treat them, they will always love you, because they are just as important as the people around you. A pet isn’t a Christmas gift or some sort of toy. They’re family too. And just like family they might one day disappear from your life.

But this has been going on for long enough, I’ve said my peace, I don’t want to ruin everything in a series and if reading this has interested you at all, I highly recommend reading the series itself. It’s very short, just 6 chapters, taking no more than an hour or two to read, but it’ll stick with you for your entire life. 

I just want to close things out with a quote from the series. 

“What did I do for my dog? I should have played with him more… I should have taken him for more walks. I should have let him go along guard rails, curbs and telephone poles without pulling too much, so he could sniff them until he was happy. I should… Given him more love without being Scared…” 

That’s all from me for now though, please take care of yourselves guys, 

Saki~

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 28

I’m back! With front row seats to the zombie apocalypse, some musings on the writing of Mat’s character, and an appreciation for not-so-subtle symbolism

Chapter 28: Night in Hinderstap

Apparently it’s a surprise murder party. Where’s my invite?

I’m just not even going to comment on “I can’t rightly be blamed for their unsociable behaviour!”The less said about that, the better. It never happened. Quote? What quote?

A group of raving men soon descended on the two villagers Mat had hamstrung, beating their heads against the ground over and over until they stopped moving. Then the pack looked up at Mat and his men, bloodlust clouding their eyes. It was an incongruous expression on the clean faces of men in neat vests and combed hair.

Everyone’s trying to kill everyone else and is anyone else here reminded of that church scene in Kingsman? Or really any kind of zombie-apocalypse-esque scene from anything ever? Maybe Shai’tan’s a fan of pulp fiction?

The real question here, of course, is this: how did the villagers know this was going to happen? They clearly knew – or at least, they knew somethingwas going to happen at sundown; they were too vehement about the curfew for it to not be something sinister – but if this had happened before, how are any of them alive? And if it hasn’t happened before, how did they know? Also if it’s a one-off thing, the patches on clothing and lack of trade wouldn’t make sense…

Or maybe it’s a ten plagues sort of deal: something happens every sundown, or frequently at sundown, but it’s something different every time. So they know to set a curfew and they want people out, but…

Oh, maybe bad things only happen at sundown when outsiders are in the town? Or have I just read too many far-right campaign speeches?

And the zombie apocalypse continues. This is definitely weirder than ghosts. Pattern? Hey, Pattern, you feeling okay?

“The gold!” Talmanes said. “Burn the gold!” Mat said.

No, Mat, it’s pillage beforeyou burn. Come on, that’s practically the first rule of piracy!

So they start trying to get the hell out of dodge. Zombie apocalypses: keeping our borders secure.

Sorry, I’ll stop.

“This isn’t just about our wager,” Mat said, listening to the screams and shouts.

No shit, Sherlock. The Pope is Catholic, bears shit in the woods, the Dragon Reborn needs therapy, and this is definitely not just about your fucking wager.

Down a side road, a couple of struggling bodies burst through the upper window of a house.

Everything’s better with defenestration!

I’m absolutely picturing this happening with a lively scherzo playing in the background, by the way.

Indeed, it seemed to him that the darkness had come tooquickly here.Unnaturally swift. The road’s length squirmed with shadows, figures battling, screeching, struggling in the deepening gloom. In that darkness, the fights looked at times to be solid, single creatures – horrific monstrosities with a dozen waving limbs and a hundred mouths to scream from the blackness.

Subtle.

But certainly effective; it’s a well-painted picture of horror with very clear undertones of greater chaos and darkness. Jordan was good at these occasional short forays into horror, and this measures up reasonably well.

“Light,” Talmanes yelled as they galloped toward the inn. “Light!”

I see what you did there. The image of unnatural, roiling, violent darkness, and the ensuing cry of “Light!” from the one charging into it.

Because that’s what we’re coming to, now. The end – the Last Battle – is no longer some distant looming threat on the horizon; it’s imminent and immediate and everything else is fraying at its approach, the veneer of order cracking and the pieces so desperately held together falling apart, the places that once may have thought to be passed over unscathed are feeling the touch of apocalypse, and the underlying battle lines: Light and Shadow, are becoming more and more apparent. There isn’t room for anything else, try though they all might.

The night itself seemed to be trying to smother them, to strangle them, and to spawn beasts of blackness and murder.

So in other surprising news, I am still and always a sucker for not-really-hidden secondary layers of meaning. What can I say? I’m a simple girl of simple tastes.

They screamed and hissed, like legions of the drowned trying to pull him down into a deep, unearthly sea.

I was on a plane earlier today, flying over a city that clearly has precisely no chance whatsoever at surviving a sea level rise of even a metre or so and I’m reminded of it here, of clear impending disaster and how humanity responds. Which seems to be, in life as in fiction (in fiction as in life?), to ignore it in favour of other petty conflicts.

He hated fighting in darkness, he bloody hated it. […] It reminded him, briefly, of another night, killing Shadowspawn in the dark.

Hate to break it to you, Mat, but there are going to be more of those nights to come – and I don’t think even you would take the long side of that bet.

Except now of course these aren’t Shadowspawn, but in the growing darkness it becomes harder to tell the difference.

For a moment, it seemed Mat fought the shadows themselves – shadows made by sputtering firelight, random and uncoordinated, yet all the more deadly for his inability to anticipate them.

An interesting line, read through the lens of potential foreshadowing, regarding the Light’s likely general...

Ha, foreshadowing. See what I did there?

Okay, sorry.

Shadows bled where he struck

None of this is remotely subtle but it’s more fun than most of Sanderson’s Mat has been so far, so I’m going to enjoy it and YOU CAN’T STOP ME. So there.

(I haven’t slept in about 36 hours because overnight flights are hell; give me some slack here).

Thom throwing some of his last knives to save Mat as they flee on horseback from a town that becomes deadly with the fall of night…now where have we seen this before…

He didn’t know horseback battle commands himself, but those blasted memories did

This seems off, though perhaps more in the phrasing than the sentiment. Mat usually couches that sort of feeling in terms of being the one to remember, even if the memory belonged to someone else originally. Then again, he’s not exactly at a point of feeling particularly charitable towards the Eelfinn and their gifts, so okay.

“Thank you. For coming back for me.” “I wasn’t going to leave a man to that,” Mat said, shivering. “Dying on the battlefield is one thing, but to die out there, in that darkness…Well, I wasn’t going to let it happen.”

This, too, feels a little bit off – as if Mat should be thinking it rather than saying it. In these sorts of circumstances he has a tendency to almost awkwardly brush off thanks and praise, as if he’s uncomfortable taking it, saying something about ‘anyone would have done it’ or ‘I don’t have enough men to replace you if you died’ or something else that sounds slightly more callous than his actual motives. But again, it’s not completelyout of character, just…a little unusual, it seems. Which could mean it’s actually off, or could mean I’m overly aware of anything that doesn’t fit my own mental picture of Mat, and because his last few chapters have been…interesting…confirmation bias is working against Sanderson here.

I give up; I can’t quote all the light/shadow imagery with secondary meanings here. But there’s a lot of it and I do actually enjoy it. It’s the sort of thing that, at least at this point in the story, I don’t think needs to be subtle. It’s the entire focus, after all – so the idea is that it’s permeating everything, that even the little things have been pulled into this all-consuming war of Light against Shadow, that nothing is free of it this late in the game, especially when the ta’verenstand at the centre.

Mat argues with Aes Sedai; what else is new.

The robe was parted slightly at the top, giving a hint of what hid inside. Talmanes whistled softly.

I miss the actual character of Talmanes. I never liked Nalesean as much and I’m not thrilled to see him here, having done an Arya and stolen Talmanes’s face somehow.

“She’s not a woman, Talmanes,” Mat whispered warningly. “She’s an Aes Sedai. Don’t think of her as a woman.”

Yes, because with the true battle lines drawn before you, between Light and Shadow for the future of humanity and future itself, what you really want to be focusing on is dehumanising your own allies.

“It’s as if the darkness itself intoxicates them,” Thom said while Mat helped Delarn into his saddle. “As if Light itself has forsaken them, leaving them only to the Shadow…”

Ah, Thom, we can always count on you to point out the symbolism inherent in the situation, just in case we’ve missed it. This is why you bring the bard along.

“Not my fault, Talmanes. How was I to know that staying would cause them all to start tearing each other’s throats out?” “What?” Talmanes asked, glancing at him. “Isn’t this usuallyhow people react when you tell them you’re going to spend the night?”

STOP. RUINING. TALMANES’S CHARACTER. FOR THE SAKE. OF A PUNCHLINE.

Part of the problem is that Jordan’s characters just aren’t constructed to carry this style of banter, whereas it’s something of a staple of Sanderson’s. Both styles are fine – mileage will vary depending on individual readers’ tastes, of course, but both are at least internally consistent – but this is definitely one of those places where they very much are two distinct styles, and they don’t merge very well on this particular field.

It’s part of why Mat seems to be the character Sanderson struggles most with, at least thus far; more than any other major character, Mat is at the mercy of the author’s sense of humour.

Well, more than any other major character with the very possible exception of Nynaeve, but I have a theory about this one. I’ll save that one for another time, though.

Actually no, you know what? Let’s just do it here because this is stream of consciousness and it’s on my mind now. Also I’ve already gone political in this post so let’s go ahead and throw a gender discussion in as well, for shits and giggles.

Nynaeve and Mat, as I know I’ve talked about before and as I’m sure plenty of other people have talked about, have quite a lot in common in terms of their characterisation and the role they fill in the story. Both have the self-awareness of a particularly unintrospective goldfish, both love to dress up in dramatic irony for a night on the town, both are incredibly loyal and will stop at nothing to protect those they love, and both are often used for comic relief, when one (or both) of them is in a scene where comic relief is called for.  

So why does Sanderson seem to get Nynaeve mostly right, while wildly missing the mark with Mat? (check out that alliteration).

I don’t think this is the only reason, but I think part of it is to do with the gender of the characters, and the resulting filters Sanderson, like many readers, would subconsciously be perceiving them through, and thus also writing them through.  

In Nynaeve and Mat we have two very similar characters, but the emphasis – in the narrative and also, it seems based on my (admittedly limited) interactions with other readers, in the way they are perceived – with each of them is on versions of those shared traits that are coded more masculine or more feminine. Loyalty tilts towards chivalry and honour (‘masculine’) in Mat, and towards the nurturing, caretaking, and healing side (‘feminine’) in Nynaeve. Mat’s blindness to his own character reads as funny, where Nynaeve’s tends to read as more annoying and hypocritical to many. Mat’s irreverence reads and is treated as roguishness; Nynaeve’s as rudeness.

Not all of this is criticism, exactly; it’s more just observation of a pattern. There are things I wouldn’t mind seeing done differently, but I think for the most part both characters are well-handled, and serve as good parallels to each other in different situations.

But let’s bring it back to humour, and Sanderson’s ability to write one of these characters better than the other.

I think, perhaps without consciously framing it to himself this way, Sanderson sees Nynaeve not as ‘funny’ but as a character around whom funny can happen. She can be used for comic relief, but her character doesn’t read immediately as ‘the funny one’ because her irreverence and lack of self-awareness are treated as character flaws – and as flaws and aspects of her growth, they’re done well – because we as a society tend to see those things as flaws in women, more so than in men.  

This, then, is how Sanderson seems to write Nynaeve (at least based on the little I’ve seen so far). It’s also how Jordan wrote Nynaeve, and it thus is consistent with her character and with the way she has grown and changed over the course of the story. And when it’s time to throw comic relief at her, she doesn’t make jokes, but instead gets herself into situations that are funny because of who she is and how she reacts.

This, incidentally, is also largely how Jordan wrote humour involving Mat. However, we’re more primed to see Mat as an inherently funny person, because in a male character that’s how those traits combine. To our unconscious filters, Nynaeve should be the butt of the joke; Mat the one making the joke. Except…most of the time, Jordan’s Mat isn’t. He’s irreverent, yes, but the humour around him is actually written much like the humour around Nynaeve; it’s the result of dramatic irony: the character not seeing what is immediately obvious to the audience. We’re all in on the joke, at Nynaeve’s or Mat’s expense.

Sanderson gets Nynaeve’s character right because in a female character this combination of traits doesn’t immediately scream ‘funny’.

But Sanderson gets Mat’s character wrong because in a male character this combination of traits, to the set of filters and biases a reader in our society is likely to possess without realising, doesscream ‘funny’. In Nynaeve it’s easier to see a set of individual traits; in Mat there’s more likely to be that immediate association that gets in the way of seeing how the character is actually used, and how those traits come into play.

Again, I don’t mean this as a harsh criticism of Sanderson; unconscious bias is a pretty strong thing, and it’s an easy trap to fall into without even realising – hence the ‘unconscious’. Also, to his credit, he has made a fair bit of progress in this general area across his writing career.

But that’s my theory, such as it is.

And now back to the zombie apocalypse and your not-so-regularly scheduled nonsense.

There was an odd wrongness about the entire experience. Was the curfew intended to keep this from happening, somehow? Had Mat, by staying, causedall of these deaths?

Rand isn’t the only one who can leave destruction in his wake – though he does probably have the most impressive track record so far. Still, Mat can claim the harbour at Ebou Dar and, you know, gunpowder. It ain’t easy, being a ta’verenwith a conscience.

“It’s not going to leave me alone, Thom. […] That bloody gholam is out there, I know it is, but that’s just a part of it. Myrddraal and Darkfriends, monsters and ghosts. Chasing me and hunting me. I’ve stumbled from one disaster to another, barely keeping my neck above water, ever since this began. I keep saying I just need to find a hole somewhere to dice and drink, but that won’t stop it. Nothing will.”

Wow, Mat, that sounds almost like self-awareness, and acceptance of your role in all of this. And he has shown that more and more; he knows now that he can’t just run; it’s gone from being an actual plan circa TSR/TFoH to a wistful fantasy he occasionally indulges in. He knows the Last Battle is coming, knows he’s ta’veren, knows he can’t run from this. And more and more, he’s having to actually admit that, and face it straight on. You can’t strategise when you’re constantly half-trying to run away.

“Burn me, I wish they’d all just go bother Rand. He likes it.”

Ow.

“You really think that?” Thom asked. Mat hesitated. “I wish I did,” he admitted. “It would make things easier.”

This is one where maybe it’s out of character writing but I’m actually going to take it at face value, as Mat having to face some harder truths rather than dodging them as he has in the past. He knows this all already, and knew it before, but it’s different to actually have to admit it out loud. To deny yourself the refuge of denial and glib evasions.

It would make things easier – just like telling himself he’ll leave as soon as this battle is won, and then this battle, and then that errand, and then and then and then would make it easier – but he can’t afford that anymore.

It’s not the first time he’s realised this, exactly, but it feels less…forced, now. He accepted that he was ta’veren, accepted that he would have to fight in the Last Battle and that he couldn’t just leave, accepted a degree of responsibility for those he leads, but at every stage there’s resistance. First he resisted the whole thing, trying time and time again to leave. Then it was a case of resisting every step along the way, grudgingly accepting one thing after another. Just as Rand has crossed lines in the sand, trying and failing to set boundaries that he can stick to, and always in the end violating them down to ‘the last that could be done’, Mat has followed a path of crossing one line and then the next, taking one step and then the next, fighting it all the way but still ending up there. The difference, of course, being that Rand’s crossing of lines has largely been down a moral slope towards the point where he believes himself irredeemable, whereas Mat’s path has been one of gradual acceptance of his role. But the concept is the same, of resistance but then movement.

Now, he’s more freely admitting all of this. He’s not fighting it so much, anymore. He has almost reached the end of that path, the point where he can step into his place for the ending, as the person he needs to be, accepting it fully.

It’s what they’re all heading towards, now, one way or another. Moving into their final positions, completing their final arcs, taking on their roles for the ending. Accepting who they are and who they must be, and what that means.

(I mean, Rand is still very obviously struggling on that one, but in a way he’s also drawing closer – there’s a breaking point coming. He’s hit what seems like an absolute low; he’s broken and dark and tearing himself apart in an effort to hold himself together, under the pressure of everything that has been building and building and building towards the point where he has to finally…either accept his role in truth, or not).

“Lies never make things easier in the long run. […] When you tell them to yourself, you just bring more trouble.”

Wise words, Thom. And Mat’s finally at a point where he’s maybe ready to hear them; to accept that he has been lying to himself at each step along the way. Denial and self-deception layered on top of itself, peeling some away at every step. And now he’s having to face the last of those lies, and to leave himself without the comfort of those denials to shield himself.

That’s one he absolutely shares with Nynaeve. She, too, has had to peel away the denials and lies she tells herself in order to protect herself, to bring down those walls step by step.

“It strikes me that the people were expecting this. Or something like it.” “How could they have been?” Mat said. “If this had happened before, they’d all be dead.”

GOOD FUCKING QUESTION.

Aw, Mat’s got his very own wanted poster. Our little rogue’s all grown up and worth a bounty.

“Handsome fellow. Good nose, straight teeth, dashing hat.”

Um.

The prisoners are just…gone?

Is there some kind of groundhog day shit going on here?

There is some kind of groundhog day shit going on here.

“You!” he said, pointing. “I killed you!”

I have to say, it had more impact when it was Rand saying that to Moridin. Still, it’s always a good line when you get a chance to pull it out.

So it’s groundhog day meets zombie apocalypse. How…delightful. Murder spree every night with no consequences!

“The oddities were small, you see. A broken door here, a rip in someone’s clothing they didn’t remember. And the nightmares. We all shared them, nightmares of death and killing.”

No consequences, that is, except extreme trauma for the entire population. That is creepy as fuck.

Though they seem to be dealing with it as well as they can, all things considered. I’ve got to hand it to the mayor; the guy does his best to maintain rationality in all circumstances. He’s sort of the classic badass NPC – he’s probably not all that important to the overall story and we only see him for a brief moment, but he’s just making do as well as he can in a story that’s well above his paygrade: standing up to a protagonist, calmly discussing the fact that his entire village murder each other every night, and standing firm by the rules that you don’t talk about fight club.

But now I’m wondering what purpose this serves, in the grand scheme of things. Narratively, I mean. We’ve seen ghosts, we’ve seen So Habor ruined by them, we’ve seen a town appear and vanish, we’ve seen bubbles of evil…why two chapters on this? Why this weird recurring zombie apocalypse? It seems like an odd thing to include just to highlight how completely fucked the world has become; we have plenty on that already that isn’t quite so…involved. Or is this just Sanderson having fun for a chapter or two? It’s the sort of concept I can imagine he’d enjoy playing with – what happens when the fabric of reality and time begins to unravel…

“So just leave,” Mat said. “Leave this bloody place and go somewhere else!” “We’ve tried,” the mayor said. “We always wake up back here, no matter how far we go. Some have tried ending their lives. We buried the bodies. They woke up the next morning in their beds. […] We were curious to see where you’d wake up. Most of the rooms in the inns are permanently taken by travellers who are now, for better or worse, part of our village.”

That’s interesting…so people can be dragged into this and trapped there. Huh. Okay. Hmm.

The mayor continues to be his badass NPC self, by declaring that he’s not going to sell Mat out to whoever put up the wanted posters. The man has his principles and he sticks to them, come hell, high water, or a larger storyline.

Who was looking for him and Perrin, and what did they want?

Do you really have to ask?

But I suppose we’re off to find out.

Next (TGS ch 29) Previous (TGS ch 27)

[theycalledmecrazy]

It's strange to say, but I'm one of the last people to shop in the wee hours of the morning at a Walmart. I finished my shopping and approached the cash register right around midnight. The cashier had just clocked in and had just been told that was her last night working the late shift as a cashier. Starting tomorrow, all the Walmarts across the nation will close at 11 PM. Third shifters like my cashier will be in charge of cleaning and sanitizing a store and assisting in restocking for the next day.

It's a strange thing to think about. Our lives are so convenience based. Anytime day or night, if you need something, there was probably a store within a reasonable driving distance that you could go to and find what you need, barring any specialty necessities. 

I wonder to myself if this move won't be slightly counterproductive to containing the virus. As it stands now, shoppers are spread out in the major big box stores over a 24-hour period. Now, with many stores taking 8 or so hours off in the middle of the night, shoppers will only be able to access the store within a 16 to 17 hour timeframe, naturally leading to a higher concentration of people during those times.

It's been a week of interesting firsts. Just the other day, Mike Dewine, governor of Ohio made the announcement that Ohio schools would be closed for 3 weeks. For the first time in history, every Disney park on Earth is closed at the same time. And for the first time in my knowledge, my job has authorized people who don't normally work from home to do so.  

I digress from my point. First, I suppose some backstory will be due. This is being written on the Ides of March in the year 2020. I am in Columbus, Ohio, United States. I am 37 years old. The country, state, and city have all declared states of emergency in the wake of the spread of the Covid-19 virus pandemic. As I dictate this to my phone, I'm driving home from Sidney Ohio, having just completed a route delivering medicine to nursing homes. I work two jobs.

I began researching this disease and the spread of it well before it hit American shores. I've been watching the John Hopkins 'heat map' since the second week of January, a time when the only mention of coronavirus you heard was your coworker telling a joke involving it going best with lyme disease. I've learned about its capability of spread in an urban populace, and I watched the drone footage of the "ghost city" of Wuhan several weeks ago, long before it went viral (ha!) via Facebook. A booming urban metropolis reduced to how London looked in 28 Days Later. I learned about the term 'Community Spread' before it was ever uttered on American live feeds. My productivity at work, my attention to friends, my normal functioning bottomed out as I became hyperfocused on the menace that I begged the universe in vain to keep overseas. I should have known, and should have been preparing. But, as humans are prone to be, I was a product of my environment. That culture of convenience and procrastination. But now there's no more convenience and no more procrastination.

I now know that things are going to get worse. These kind of rushes on product like we've been seeing is just the beginning. We are going to face days of true scarcity. I fear that even with my recent stockpiling, that my "preparedness" has come too late. I remember my father teaching me how to stockpile and prep for days when there would be scarcity, and I've failed to do so effectively. Over the last week or so, I've done my best with the small amount of resources I have. As things stand now, my shelves are stocked. I know how to ration in emergency situations, and although it will suck, I know that I can ration much smaller amounts because I have a lot of fat on my body that my body will live off of for extended periods of time. I always joked that being overweight was just a surplus Y2K survival kit. Turns out, that's truer than I'd like it to be. I thought keto was my path to losing weight. Turns out the coming days will be much more effective. 

The scenarios that we had always gone over in are prepping drills involved an attack on the United States or some uprising within. All that boogaloo horseshit you hear, or heard. Ways to make sure that your food was secure from people that might be looking for it. Making sure that you had weapons to defend yourself and those in your care. Safeguards against basic things like frostbite or heat exhaustion. Basic first aid. Foraging. Boy Scout shit. The drills never included anything like Covid-19. At first we were told that the illness was little worse than a common cold, just a little easier to spread the people. Now, we are getting reports that it creates a fibrosis in the lungs, and even if you recover from your bout of the illness, you can be left with up to 20% reduced lung capacity. People in Hong Kong are now reporting that healthy adults that have recovered from the disease now get winded by a brisk walk. In Japan, a recovered patient has tested positive for the disease again, making the medical community wonder about the antibodies that the bodies of recovered SHOULD be producing. Dad and I never prepared for anything like that. I think the best hope in the situation that we prepared for would be that any human we come in contact with will have also been similarly reduced in  capacity, since this disease looks to be one that will spread to a majority of the populace. I'm glad that part of preparedness is adaptability, but I'm still sitting here rambling.  

I've tried to focus on purpose in the last several days. I keep telling myself that it's important to stay positive and to still do the things that I love doing. Indeed, I still play cards with my roommate and my gaming group of friends, all aware that we may wind up having to quarantine once 'things get bad'. I watch people that I love still doing the things that they love, seemingly unaware of the world that's collapsing around us. What I like to go see a movie? Would I like to go to the mall? Would I like to go see a show in a theater? Absolutely. But while many do not notice, we don't live in that world anymore. Well, some still do. They'll live in that world until the very last moment they can - which is why I had to live in this new one so soon. Even now, when it's becoming apparent that the world as we knew it is over, social media is alight with blissful ignorance and vapid resistance to the world we find ourselves in. 

When the first cases were reported in the state, it was on a day I found myself financially unstable. I couldn't have prepared for anything that day if I'd wanted to - I had victoriously paid off two large pieces of debt and was done with an 'only has money' week until next payday, and even the next paycheck had obligations. Instead of writing a plan, I wrote letters to my loved ones with advice for the upcoming hard times, and an apology for leaving them(before you all sound the alarm, that's not what this is, and that feeling has long since passed). Reading the letters to myself, I realized the cowardice behind the words, and despised myself for a few days after deleting them. Though, admittedly, even now as I watch the heat map and watch the numbers rolling in, I somewhat long for cowardice, but steel myself and square my shoulders for the task ahead. 

Now this.

Some friends have asked me to promise to get their loved ones to them if I'm closer to them than they are, or even to keep them with me and keep them safe. For all my misanthropy, I guess people still see me as some kind of fringe guardian in many respects. I suppose it's because they know I'd die before letting someone I care about die. I wonder if it makes me exploitable, or if maybe that's just my purpose. It makes a lot of things make a lot of sense. Sometimes in the horror movie of life, you're the one that distracts the monster so the others can get away. I have no illusions of being the hero, but I won't turn down the opportunity if it happens. Ugh, this paragraph was self serving as hell, but I'm not deleting anything at this point. Watch me ramble. Maybe there's something valuable in it. 

That time is a bit off, but I know that I'm going to see loved ones die in this, and I know that my friends in my time that read this will think I'm being overdramatic(I'm sure some of them haven't even made it this far and have either called me or forwarded this to authorities - both unnecessary, I assure you). I know that I may not survive what's coming. So I think the best thing I can do is do what I've always done. Write. I will write and hope that my words will create a culture among those that read my words in a distant future. My goal is to make you, the reader, not make the same mistakes we made, the mistakes I made, the mistakes anyone made. I won't have an editor, most likely, so forgive my rambled mess of a memoir. Maybe someone in the future will edit and make sense of it all. 

I hope that this is all just me ranting and raving about something absurd and in the future this will embarrass me and we'll all laugh about it. If you're in the future and reading this, however, that means that scenario isn't what happened. I hope things are better for you. I hope that I'm talked about with good words. I hope some of my loved ones are the ones who saved these words and shared them with the world. It would be really great if it was me, but I'd probably edit out this whole paragraph, so probably not. That's ok. Either way, it's now 2:30am and I must unload groceries and get them shelved. Tomorrow is another day, and I'm going to play some video games while I can like the old millennial I am to escape for a couple hours before my nerves finally let me sleep. See? Rambling run-on sentences. You'd never guess I was an English major. Ms. Somers would be so disappointed (lol). I told my friends in February that we'd be ordered to stay at home soon. They called me crazy.

I didn't realize until just this moment that if anyone ever reads this aside from those I send it to in order to preserve it, I'll essentially have been writing my own eulogy. That's fine. I'll take that.

I decided to create this Tumblr on March 30, 2020. In the two weeks since writing this prologue, things have progressively gotten worse. I will write more tomorrow.