#look they were cooking for 70 odd men there had to be some sort of regime

[jacksoldsideblog]

what do you think they were feeding those Project Mayhem monkeys? reconstituted astronaut food? slop? mass cooked simple ingredient summer camp meals like burgers and pasta? gel diet?

[impala1967dwinchester]

Sam Winchester: Thoughts

*Credit to the gif owner* 

Pairing: Sam W. x reader 

Pov: Sam 

Warnings: Fluff, Sam can hear the readers thoughts, Sam falling in love with the reader, Dean is here to help the plot

Summary: Sam gets cursed after the Dean, Y/n, and Sam hunt a witch. The next morning when he wakes up all he can hear is Y/n thoughts, and he’s slowly start to fall in love with her. 

A/N: Using @firefly-graphics Sam Winchester divider for this fic. This fic is sorta based on "What women want" with Mel Gibson. A good ol' Romantic Comedy.

Word Count: 2.3k

Main Masterlist Sams Masterlist 

Taglist: @sweetdetectivequeen​

A witch hunt couldn't possibly go wrong, right? Especially with the Winchester boys.

"Look lady, sit down before I shoot," Dean shouted, causing Y/n to flinch. Just enough of a flinch that I would be having a conversation with Dean later about no yelling so much.

The witch sat down, but what nobody noticed she was casting a spell under her breath. Dean, Y/n, and I had huddled together trying to figure out what we were going to ask this damn witch.

My back facing the witch. Dean looking over my shoulder looking angrily at the lady. Y/n had her game face on. She sometimes followed us around like lost puppies, but damn was she a fucking awesome hunter.

Sometimes better than Dean and I put together.

When I say that she followed us around like lost puppies I mean she never said what she thought. Dean or I would come up with a plan and she never put input in. Just kinda did what she was told. Reminds me of a younger version of Dean and myself.

Working our asses off for John, all for it to be for nothing. A good little soldier and that was all we were to him.

In the end, Dean just ended up letting the witch go since she hadn't any information. We all pilled back into the impala for the drive back to the bunker.

Y/n fell asleep in the back seat curled into a ball and looking rather peaceful. "Y'know I was thinking lover boy that maybe she could stay permanently with us," Dean said referring to Y/n in the backseat.

I just rolled my eyes before turning to look out the window. The drive was shortened by the fact that at one point my eyes were open and scanning the passing environment.

And the next minute I was dreaming a nice dream. I had a family a beautiful wife standing on our front patio, and watching our daughter and I play with our puppy.

It was nice, it was peaceful. But when I was looking around my dream, I noticed that every face was blank. Well, there goes the normal dream.

The shaking of my body woke me up. "Yo, wake up. Get your shit and go the bed." Dean said, pushing me closer to the passenger side door.

Stumbling out, I walked groggily to the back of the impala and grabbed my bags. Slinging them over my shoulder, I saw Dean try to pull Y/n from the back.

"Sweetheart, we made it home." Dean whispering. His hands falling underneath her knees, carefully picking her up out of the impala. "Open the door would Ya, instead of just standing and staring," Dean said still whispering.

I ran over to the door opening it. "Dude get some sleep, I'll get Y/n settled in, kay," Dean said passing me. Shrugging my shoulders and yawning as I walked to my room.

Stripping down to my boxers I collapsed into bed, loving the coolness of my sheets. Within minutes of my head hitting the pillow, I was out like a light.

Dreaming wasn't something that always happened for me, not since I first started hunting with Dean. But those weren't dreams those were more like nightmares, of people that I couldn't save.

I fell back into the same dream as before, still no faces. But the woman I assumed was my wife as a familiar voice, our daughter was what seemed like she was tops five or six.

Cute little thing, long brown hair like my own, wearing a cute sundress that was blue with green flowers printed on it. ' Dear, are you guys ready for dinner?' the woman asked me. I tried to not stare at the fact that she had no face, so I just hummed. Picking up our daughter.

'Tank you for playing with me daddy!' my daughter said to me bringing her small hands and arms and hugging me around my neck. Besides having no faces everything else seemed normal, my wife's voice seemed all too familiar and it was honestly getting at me. Before I was able to ask her something I was pulled from my dreams.

Waking up was a bitch. My neck was sore, and so were my shoulders. Deciding that today I wouldn't take that mile run, I opted for staying in bed just a bit longer this morning.

Finally getting up when I smelled coffee being made in the kitchen. Grabbing a pair of sweats that were laying around, I slipped my slippers on and went to go get some coffee.

The first thing I saw when I walked in was Dean dancing along to his horrible 70s and 80s rock. Flipping pancakes and sizzling bacon. 'God, why'd he choose no shirt this morning' "Huh? Did you say something Y/n?" I asked her, looking at her for the first time since last night.

She had her hair up in a messy bun, wearing a flannel of Dean, and a baggy pair of shorts. "No, I didn't say anything, Sam," Y/n said pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, continuing reading her book.

Okay Sam you have to admit that was odd and kinda creepy. Not that I mind being complimented, but still weird. "You gonna get your cup of coffee or just stand there looking like an idiot!" I heard Dean crack.

"No," I answered back grabbing a coffee cup that was next to the machine. 'Jeez Dean way to be an asshole towards Sam.' There it was again Y/n voice.

Turning around rather quickly which only hurt my neck even more. "Did you just say that?" I asked panic starting to overtake my body and instincts. y/n looked over at Dean, causing Dean to look over at me.

"Dude what are you going on about?" He asked me... eyes big I just waved his question off, "Never mind I think I must have hit my head last night." I said just wanting my morning coffee more than anything.

The rest of the morning went by fine. No hearing Y/n voice, but then again, she wasn't around for the rest of the morning. "I'm heading out to the shops; I need a new pair of jeans. If either one of you wanna head out with me that's fine too. If not that's okay too guys." Y/n said mostly talking and looking at me.

'Please come out with me Sammy' I heard. Ignore it, rolling my eyes before speaking again. "No, it's okay. Dean?" I spoke. "Nah, I'm fine dear. But thanks." Dean said using his signature wink.

As Y/n walked away I heard her voice again, 'Jesus Dean, stop with the nicknames, and the winking. Obviously, it's not working.' That was the last I heard the sentence.

Dean wants to be with Y/n. I don't, I can't see that going very well, Dean sees Y/n more as a sister than anything else. What does that mean it's not working?

Hours later Y/n came into the bunker carrying a few bags. "I thought you only needed a pair of jeans, Y/n?" Dean snarked. "I did, but you guys were running out of some things, so I grabbed some other shit." Y/n countered.

Well, I can't deny that Dean and Y/n do have a certain chemistry, one that she and I just don't have. "what did you get?" I asked moving the conversation along. "I umm... I got you guys some t-shirts, some more socks, and just something fun for both of you." She said shyly.

"That's great, thank you. Did you have an okay time?" I asked, 'No, Sam I didn't that's why I wanted you to go with me. So many gross old men hit on me.' I heard Y/n's face was only scrunched up for a few seconds.

"Yeah, I had a perfectly fine time. Really did enjoy the alone time." Y/n said winking at us. Dean just rolled his eyes and jumped up to go through the bags, but Y/n swatted his hands away.

Digging into the bag she pulled out pie for Dean and he took off with it like he was a squirrel. Y/n looked back over to me and then started to look through the other bags. "Here Sam. I didn't know if you already had this book, but I thought why not." She said, shrugging her shoulder in a cute sort of way.

"Here for a gift return, a Winchester hug, yeah?" I said laughing a little bit. "I don't see why not, I heard that they're hard to come by," Y/n said back rounding the table in an effort to get on a very one-sided hug.

I hadn't realized until recently how much shorter Y/n was compared to me. I could fully rest my chin on her head. 'God I could use this more often' I squeezed her in my arms. 'God, he smells so great' I heard again, she nuzzled her face into my chest. 'He gives much better hugs than Dean.' I heard.

Y/n was the one to let go of the hug, not me. I was starting to realize that it was in fact Y/n I was hearing just not the words coming out of her mouth, it was her thoughts.

That night I convinced Dean that I could make dinner. For the time I was at college and dating Jessica I had learned some good enough cooking skills. "Fine whatever you do just don't ruin my pans and pots!" Dean screamed from his bedroom as I walked away.

That night I cooked a shrimp alfredo, and chicken alfredo with noodles. Something simple but it was mostly all the food that we had left in the bunker kitchen.

"Dinners ready you two!" I hollered from the library, Dean running from the garage, and on the other side of me was Y/n walking down the hallway. 'Look at him, damn chiefs' apron' I looked down and saw that the apron said "kiss the cook" Damn Dean.

'I'd definitely kiss that cook.' I heard as she walked past me. I just followed her with my gaze, mouth slightly open. Hoping that it wouldn't fall straight to the floor.

"Well dig in. It won't kill you, Dean." Y/n said. Dean just put his hands up in defense it's not like he had said anything but we all know he was thinking it instead.

Dinner went by quickly, few words from any of us, and not many thoughts passing through Y/n's mind. Besides 'Damn, he's got skills, 'So much better than Dean would ever do' I snorted when I heard that thought. Dean looked over at me, "What's so funny Samuel?" He spoke.

I rolled my eyes, "It's Sam, Samuel sounds like an old fashion name" I said. "Nothing is wrong Dean." I finished. 'If nobody thought you guys were brothers, they should spend at least a few hours with you.' I heard.

"Can we not fight at the dinner table, please Dean," I asked. I was trying to lean into what Y/n was saying, or more thinking. By the end of dinner Dean had eaten another serving and was now on his second piece of apple pie and a glass of hard crown apple whiskey the Y/n had bought earlier that day.

"Good night you two love birds. Tweet tweet. I'm heading to bed." Dean said kissing Y/n's temple, and patting my shoulder he walked out of the library.

"I'm sorry about him, Y/n. He doesn't have a sensor." I said apologizing for my older brother. Y/n got up waving him off and grabbed the leftover dishware.

I followed behind her grabbing what she couldn't. "He's fine. He should know better, but he's okay Sammy." Y/n said. Not many people called me Sammy besides Dean and Y/n, but it always seemed sweeter coming out of her mouth.

Y/n started to wash dishes. "Can I ask you a question Y/n?" She hummed, so I continued on. "Why do you never say anything while we are on a hunt. You don't always have to follow out stupid ideas...." I said noticing that Y/n had now turned around and was facing me.

"Look I didn't mean it like that. I'm just saying that I'd like to know what you're thinking for a while. especially when we are on a hunt. Your opinions matter to me. I hope you know that." I said, crossing my arms across my chest.

'Shut up would Ya'. You don't know how much that means to me.' "I know that you can hear what I'm thinking." Well, that went south very quickly and my stupid facial expression doesn't help the situation. "How long have you known?" I asked.... We stood in silence beside the water in the sink running. "Since before dinner when I was thinking about kissing the amazing chef that made dinner. Because I would still kiss the chef." Y/n said. setting the plate down on the kitchen island.

'Do you want me to kiss you, Samuel?' She said in her thought. I hummed. Shaking my head, licking my lips in anticipation. 'Words Sammy Dear.' She thought. "Just come over here. If this is what happens when I can hear your thoughts, I may be okay with being cursed by a witch ever so often." I said before our lips crashed together.

Our kiss was short-lived when Y/n left mine. "What are you talking about the witch from last night's hunt?" I shook my head. "We need to go get that witch, kill her, get her to remove the curse. Whatever, because as much as it's cute somethings a girl wants to keep to herself." Y/n said, coming back up to my lips and pecking them.

"You're gonna be the death of me," I said, before following her over to the sink to help wash dishes. I think I might have fallen in love with you Y/n. I thought.

"Hey... I heard that." Y/n said. I rolled my eyes, "No you didn't." Confusion replaced Y/ns soft features. "Okay, what did I say then, Y/n?" I asked. "I think I might have fallen in love with you Y/n" Y/n answered.

"Damn it. We really gotta find that witch, Samuel." Y/n said.

Completed on: 04/11/2021

[robbyrobinson]

Stephen King Villains: Most Evil to Least Evil

Stephen King is considered the master of horror best known for his prolific writing career that in itself takes place in a multiverse of sorts. Besides monsters and supernatural beings, there are also very, very evil humans that also antagonize the protagonists. 

Most Evil

Most Evil would go to Randall Flagg. He is probably the closest thing to the Devil that exists in King's works, though Nyarlathotep is also said to be one of his many titles. He appears in several of King's novels sowing chaos wherever possible. He was apart of many violent tragedies such as race riots, lynchings, you name them. In The Stand, he sets himself up as some sort of god for those who also had penchants for violence. In The Dark Tower series, he works alongside the Crimson King and gets into even more acts like destroying a city and driving a woman insane by having a dead man recount to her what he had seen in the afterlife. Ultimately, his plan is to topple the Dark Tower itself which would spell destruction for the multiverse. 

 Bronze goes to It. An ancient, primordial evil, It was originally from the Macroverse before crash landing to the area that would eventually become Derry, Maine where it establishes a cycle of awakening every 27 years to kill and devour Derry's children even though it is implicated that It doesn't need to consume the flesh of its prey as it could live off their fear alone. But it is their fear that makes their meat tastier to It. It is an egotistical, narcissistic being who views itself as being superior above humans and its archenemy Maturin the Turtle. It is first defeated by the Losers Club back in the 1950s after it had killed the young brother of Bill Denbrough only to return 27 years later to settle the score.

Silver...it's a tough one, but I ultimately decided that William Wharton from The Green Mile earns this spot. He is not the most powerful being in the books nor is he anywhere close to the first two's level. Simply put, he is a disgusting piece of human garbage that should've gotten fried to death in the electric chair for what he had done. He is first taken to the Mile after killing two people, one of which was a pregnant woman. When he arrives, he pretends to be in a near-drunken state only to then attempt to strangle one of the wardens. That in itself is bad, but what pushes him further is the fact that he was the one who raped and killed those two girls that John Coffey is being sentenced to death over. He used the sisters' love for each other to coerce them not to scream lest he kill one of them before leading them out of their house.

Patrick Hockstetter. A pure solipsistic psychopath, Patrick was a member of Henry Bowers's gang but he was especially nasty. He took perverse delight at killing animals but that is not his main claim to infamy. As a solipsist, he believes that no one exists aside from himself...essentially the world revolved around him. When he learned that his mother had given birth, Patrick felt threatened. So much so, he smothered the baby to death with a pillow.

Norman Daniels, the main antagonist of Rose Madder. A corrupt cop, he domestically abuses his wife Rose and in one instance sexually assaulted her and later caused her to suffer a miscarriage. When she leaves him, Norman pursues her, murdering and torturing those in his way his preferred method being biting them to death. 

Leland Gaunt of Needful Things sets up a novelty shop in Castle Rock where he has his victim's greatest desires in stock, but they had to pay a sum and additionally stage a prank. A magical charm that drives the residents to madness one instance being when two women killed themselves in a madness-inducing stupor leading to a young boy killing himself. 

Rose the Hat. A little lower on the list. A True Knot (quasi-immortal vampiric beings), she feeds on steam, as in the dying breath of children who have "the Shining." This is of course done through torturing children to death. Despite committing serial murders, plausibly in the hundreds depending on how long she and her clan were operating, she nevertheless greatly cares for her fellow True Knots and becomes increasingly incensed by Danny Torrance and Abra Stone killing them.

Going to King's first novel Carrie, we have several trash. Chris Hargensen bullies Carrie White relentlessly climaxing in her staging a terrible prank where she drops a bucket full of pig's blood on Carrie's head at the prom after forging fake votes for Carrie. Following her is Margaret White , Carrie's mother. An insane religious zealot, she emotionally and psychologically abuses her daughter as she saw it as her fault that Carrie received telekinetic powers because of her perceived mistake. After the massacre, Margaret attempts to kill Carrie.

The Overlook Hotel. At first it seems odd that I would include what is basically an inanimate object. But in the book The Shining, it is made apparent that the hotel is alive and is greatly evil. It drives those who visit it to madness ultimately resulting in them killing their families and then themselves. Once it completely possesses Jack Torrance, it fully has its malevolent intentions out in the open. 

The Shawshank Redemption. Kind of more leaning towards the film adaptation, but here goes: Samuel Norton is the warden of the Shawshank prison. Initially coming off as a kind man with that rich Southern Christian rhetoric, Norton is truly a greedy man ruling Shawshank with an iron fist allowing rapes and other evils to happen on his grounds. He uses the prisoners for cheap labor in a money laundering scheme which he forces Andy to assist him with. Unlike in the book, when Tommy has information proving Andy's innocence, Norton sends for Captain Byron T. Hadley to kill Tommy. 

Next would be Bogs Diamond. The leader of a group of men called The Sisters, he enjoys violently raping his victims one of his favorite being Andy. But it isn't because he's gay, but more because he derives disgusting glee from raping them when they were at their lowest state. 

Henry Bowers, the secondary antagonist of It, is a racist, Anti-Semitic, misogynistic, fat-shaming lunatic who graduates to murdering his own father before deciding to go to kill the Losers Club when they enter the sewer system to face off against It/Pennywise. But it is shown that his father was abusive and he likely learned a lot of his prejudices from him. But he also stands as a trope of King's where you have insane bullies.

Lastly, we get to Percy Wetmore the secondary antagonist of The Green Mile. Somehow coming off as more reprehensible than the real villain of the book, Wetmore is a low-functioning sociopath who primarily came to the Cold Mountain Penitentiary to watch the death row inmates die. 

Especially despising Delacroix, he kills Mr. Jingles by stepping on him out of spite, and he later deliberately leaves the sponge dry leading to Delacroix's excruciatingly botched, prolonged execution where he literally cooks in Old Sparky. He's kind of lower on the list mostly because of his film counterpart looking horrified. Something tells me that he probably was only thinking that by not wetting the sponge it would give Delacroix a little more pain, but he wasn't anticipating for the events to ensue the way they did. Though him being forced to watch is cathartic as was what became of him in the ending.

Least Evil

Cujo takes the first spot. All he wanted was to be a good boy, but all that changed when he was bitten by a rabid bat. Now he kills those that he miscontrues as being responsible for his pain. 

Carrie White was the protagonist of Stephen King's first book. Born with telekinetic powers, Carrie was bullied by her peers; mistreated by her fundamentalist mother...ultimately she was driven insane when that horrible prank at the prom befell her. She committed horrible acts, but ultimately, it is understandable. It was only a matter of time for her to snap. 

Jack Torrance: While he tries to kill his wife and son, part of it largely falls on the Overlook corrupting him. He was abused by his father ultimately becoming an alcoholic who unwittingly dislocated Danny's arm. At the least before the Overlook's destruction he had a moment of clarity. 

Christine: A sapient possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury vintage vehicle who acts like a envious girlfriend when it comes to its owners. Worse, it is fully able of numping people off if need be.

The Wendigo: In Pet Sematary, it is a wendigo that is responsible for the cursed grounds that whatever was buried in its soils, an evil, undead version arises. This happens to Church the cat and especially to Gage. However, the Wendigo is presented more as a force of nature than truly evil.

Annie Wilkes: After saving Paul, it seems at first Annie was a kind woman...at least until she found out that Paul killed off her favorite character and becomes hellbent on forcing him to rewrite the ending where she was alive again. She holds him hostage and even breaks his legs as punishment (though it's much worse in the novel). Worse, it is revealed that Annie is a serial killer with a body count in potentially the 70s with multiple infants dying under mysterious circumstances while under her care. More patients end up dying but they were mostly ignored as the patients were already deathly sick prior. But with all that being said, Annie does have severe mental issues to the point where she is unable to discern reality from fiction. 

[lexiwhittenburg-writer-blog]

A Family Mystery

There's always been something off about my family. Our maternal side is sort of a mystery to all of us except for my mother. We moved to Atlanta, GA when I was around 6 years old, and my sister was 2. I have no idea where we lived before that. I never knew the family outside of our household, and my mother intends to keep it that way. Our father's parents died before we were born, but he always shares stories and memories of them with us. Any questions asked of my mother, however, is answered, "Curiosity killed the cat!" The constant charade she keeps up simultaneously intrigued and scared me. What's so strange that she feels the need to hide our family from us? What secret is buried so deep?

​We take a family vacation every year – somewhere new and exciting each time. This year was odd, though. Our mother received news that our maternal grandmother had passed away.. She left our mother a cabin in the swamps of Louisiana, so that is where our next family vacation was. We left on a Sunday afternoon after church, something our mother insists we attend as often as possible. I'm not much of a believer, but I attend to appease her.

​Around nine o'clock in the evening is when we arrived at a docking area with a small motor boat. There was no one around, yet our mother just steps into the boat like it's hers. Maybe it is. She starts the boat up after tugging the string a few times, hearing the blubbering sound meaning it probably hasn't been started in quite some time. My sister and I looked at each other in awe of our mother, of the unknown. We stepped into the boat and took off towards a small island about three miles off the mainland. It was connected, but there was no possible way to drive down the thin strip of muddy land.

​When our mother finally stopped the boat, she stepped out, pulled the boat onto the shore, and tied us off. I never knew she could drive a boat, but looking at her now seems like she's been doing this her entire life. We stepped out of the boat with our sleeping bags and backpacks of food and water onto the muddy island. We were faced with an old, unsteady cabin that seemed to be hundreds of years old. My father sighed softly and started towards the cabin. Thank goodness, I wore my hiking boots, I thought. We all grabbed our flashlights out of our bags as it started to get darker, not knowing if there would be any electricity. The yard surrounding the cabin was overgrown and neglected. It didn't seem as if a lawn mower was ever used on this land. My sister pulled out her camera and started taking photos. I'm not sure how they would turn out, but the flash seemed to be enough to show what she needed. As we inched closer to the cabin, the musky smell of mold overwhelmed my senses. I flashed my light over the porch of the cabin. The light caused bugs and rodents of all kinds to scurry away. My stomach turned.

​We all stopped before the stairs to the porch, looking the cabin over. My sister eventually joined us and made the mistake of asking a question, "How long has this place been empty?" Surprisingly, an answer came from our mother, "Sixteen years or so." Her eyes never left the cabin. Looking in her direction, we all saw in her eyes a look of hurt and disappointment. None of us dared ask if she was okay. She wouldn't tell us anyway.

​Walking carefully up the stairs, we realized the cabin may be sturdier than we thought. It is in the line of hurricanes, after all, and is still standing. My mother was the first to walk into the cabin, and her breath caught in her throat. She suddenly stopped and slowly moved her head from side to side. My father ran up behind her, "April, is everything al--" Before he could finish, he was mimicking her movements. Around the house were papers covering the floor of the living room. There was old food sitting on the dining room table, and the refrigerator was turned off, which could be included in the horrible stench radiating from the cabin. My mother's hand slowly reached for my father's shirt, "Ron, I think this is how it was left sixteen years ago." I gulped. Sixteen-year-old food? Disgusting.

​My sister and I followed our parents into the cabin to see the full extent of the damage done. There was a desk in the living room area. The drawers were opened and scavenged. The dark cherry wood was scratched to hell. The chair of the desk didn't seem to fit. It was a black, rolling office chair. It seemed clean and relatively intact compared to the rest of the place. As I spun around, taking in the environment, I noticed stairs without a railing. Along the stairs, there were several boards missing. I was surprised they were still standing. I was making my way over when I felt a tug at the back of my shirt. My sister, Joan, stopped me with a look of worry and confusion on her face. "Want to go up with me?" I motioned for the stairs. She nodded slowly, looking back at our parents who had busied themselves picking up the scattered papers.

​The stairs creaked loud enough that there would have never been a worry of intruders without someone knowing. As we got to the top, we saw two bedrooms to either side of us, and a bathroom directly in front. The one on the left was closed, but the room on the right was open and full. There was mostly trash, but the few items that were visible were antiques along with norms of the 70s. I looked at Joan, "Do you want to see what's behind door number one?" She smiled at my attempt to lighten the mood. We headed for the room to our left. The door was jammed, but a few blows with the shoulder, I was stumbling into the room. Newspapers were stacked all over the room, as if a hoarder had started on their journey to filling up the cabin. I looked through the first few stacks and they all had something in common – the headlining story. They were all about a serial killer loose in New Orleans between the late 60s to early 70s. The stories were brutal. Women being mutilated, prostitutes being raped and beheaded, even men being killed. As I skimmed the pages from one newspaper to the next, the connection was never quite clear. There were natives, recent citizens, and tourists.

​A loud clap behind me made me jump. I swirled around to see my mom and dad. My mom had a huge, forced smile on her face. "Now then. As you know, this cabin was given to me in my mother's will. We are here for a couple of days to clean it up, and then I will be putting it on the market." Joan and I were baffled. She chimed in first, "But why? This place is so cool!" My mother's face dropped as she turned on her heels and headed down the stairs. I looked at Joan and shrugged. Better not to ask questions. My dad shook his head towards Joan, “You two get ready for bed. Sleep wherever you’d like.” He followed our mom’s footsteps.

​I woke up in my sleeping bag on the floor with the newspapers the next morning. Joan and I had the rooms upstairs and my parents had the living room. When I trudged downstairs to hopefully find some food, my mother was already up and cleaning. She probably had been for hours. I wiped my eyes and yawned, "Good morning, mom." She looked up from the floor and smiled, a real smile, "Good morning, sweetie. Would you like some breakfast? The stove is a gas stove, so I was able to get something cooked!" She pointed towards the dining room table. There were beans and canned potatoes. Better than nothing. I sat with Joan as we ate our breakfast, then went straight to work. The sooner we get this done, the faster we get out of here.

​As I was cleaning the newspapers, I tore the headlining page from each day, to research this infamous New Orleans killer when we got home. I had already filled three trash bags, and started on my fourth when Joan half ran, half snuck into the room with a box. It was like a tackle box without the separators for the different lures. She was trying to hide it with her arms, but it was much too big. I raised one eyebrow, "What are you trying to do? Lure me in?" I laughed, but Joan didn't. I started to feel concerned. "I know you've been tearing those newspapers and saving them in your bag. Maybe this can help with your research," she opened the box to show cassette tapes and a player in the tackle box. My eyes widened as I read the handwritten titles. Barbara. Jeanne. Nancy. Prostitute #1. Lucy. "What is this?" I looked at Joan, whose mouth was turned down in a concerned frown. She lowered her voice and whispered, "I think the killer lived here, Leland." My heart sank. I stepped back into the wall behind me and sighed, never looking away from my sister. She pushed the box towards me, and I picked up my bag where she dumped the tapes and the cassette player.

​After three days of cleaning the cabin, it was finally complete. Well, as complete as we could manage. My mother decided to have the cabin remodeled with the money she also inherited to make a profit. As we were packing our things, I heard my parents talking in low voices. I stopped to hear what they were saying. "I didn't find the tapes," my mother said. "He probably destroyed them before he died, April. Maybe this can finally be behind us," my father replied. I gulped and pushed the contraband to the bottom of my bag. .

​

​We arrived at our hotel in New Orleans at around two o'clock in the afternoon. We had four days to have a real vacation. I kept my backpack in my sight or on my person everywhere we went. I was hoping to be able to get away from my parents to see if I could speak with anyone who might have been here during the late 60s to early 70s to get some insight on the serial killer who fed off this city. No such luck. Joan and I were beginning to get antsy knowing the tapes were in my backpack and how they would possibly connect our family to this killer.

​After two days of being in New Orleans, I finally asked my mother if Joan and I could take a walk by ourselves. We made up an excuse to go see this fortune teller down the street from our hotel, which was a five-minute walk. She paused for a few seconds and finally gave her approval. I grabbed my backpack and Joan, and we were out the door. Joan asked if we were really going to see the fortune teller. "No, she isn't old enough," I smiled. Her eyes filled with excitement as she realized what we were doing.

​We caught a trolley to the cemetery we spotted earlier in the day as we were walking around. The tour guide was an older, voodoo-looking woman. Hearing the little bit of the tour she was giving, she seemed very knowledgeable of New Orleans. Probably our best start. As we stepped off the trolley, I saw her locking up the tour building. Joan almost ran to her side and asked in excitement, "Were you here in the late 60s to early 70s?" The woman was caught by surprise, but her expression softened when she saw Joan's face. I caught up with Joan and put my arm around her waist, "I apologize ma'am. We are here visiting with our parents, but we ran across something very interesting, and we were just trying to find some people who lived here in that time frame to see if we could connect some dots." The old woman nodded and spoke with a heavy creole accent, "Absolutely, I was. I lived off Main Street, a time it wasn't so busy. What is it you are trying to figure out?" I smiled wide and brought my backpack to my front, "Our mother was inherited a cabin, and I found these newspapers stacked in one of the rooms. All of them had this same story," I pulled one out and showed her the headline. Her face dropped in horror. "I'm sorry, but why are you looking into this?" Her question caught me off guard. "Like I said ma'am, we found newspapers all with this same headline in the cabin our mother inherited from her mother. I'm just wanting to know if this has something to do with our family." She nodded slowly, but didn't say anything for a long time, looking at Joan and me with odd intensity. "Come inside," she finally said as she unlocked the tour building.

​"The man's name is Connor McElroy. He plagued our city with fear and death from the time he was born," the old woman explained. "I don't know if he's a part of your family seeing as the cabin you described has been vacant for sixteen years. Could have been squatters, or someone with an odd obsession." She motioned for us to sit at a table in a room behind the front counter. "When was he captured? The newspapers don't go as far as figuring out who he was," Joan inquired. The old woman leaned back in her seat and sighed, "He was finally caught in 1973. He had been causing chaos for eight years." Joan and I both sat back and looked at each other, then back at the old woman. "How did you escape being a victim, if you don't mind my asking," I pushed. Her smile was sly and mischievous, almost mocking, "I’m black."

​On the trolley back to the hotel, Joan and we came up with readings from the fortune teller we never saw. There was an uneasy feeling in my gut. This killer was only targeting white people. That was such an odd concept for me to accept. If this cabin my mother inherited was her family's, then why were the newspapers and tapes hidden away there? It's time to listen to the tapes. Outside of the trolley were tourists walking along the strip, having the time of their lives. I wondered if that was the same for the tourists during the time of these killings...

​

​

​We arrived back to the hotel, pulled ourselves together, and gave our parents the elaborate fortune we made up on the way back. "I'll marry the love of my life soon," Joan beamed. Her giddy excitement was well acted. Much like a fourteen-year-old who's been told this future event. We were sitting at the dining room table eating our dinner when my mother piped up, "Leland, you've hardly touched your food. Are you okay?" My head snapped up, away from my thoughts, "Oh, yeah. Sorry, mom. I was just thinking." I picked up my fork and began eating fast. I need to listen to those tapes.

​Once dinner was finished, our parents were retiring to bed. Joan and I said we were going to watch some television in my room, which was on the other side of the section in the middle, where Joan's room was. "Its nice you guys are getting along so well," my mother smiled. We nodded and smiled as she walked to their bedroom.

​Dumping the contents of my backpack on my bed, we arranged the newspaper stories to be in chronological order. This way, we could listen to the tapes as the serial killer emerged. There were 34 newspaper articles, 34 tapes. My heart was racing, I could feel the blood pumping in my temples. Joan and I sat next to each other with one headphone on each of our ears, as I slid the first tape into the cassette player. I took a deep breath and pressed play with shaking hands. The cassette player crackled for a moment, then a man's voice started speaking in a thick Creole accent like the voodoo woman:

"Kill number one. Karen Daley. October 15, 1968. She was tough. Her screams were hard to mask. I picked her up on Bourbon Street at around 3 o'clock this morning. Stinking prostitutes think they can dirty up this town with their sins."

Joan reached over to stop the tape, "We're related to Connor McElroy." Sighing deeply, I looked through the tapes and matched them with the newspaper articles for each victim, wrapping them neatly. I placed them into a shoebox I found in the hotel. We've got to tell mom what we found out, but how?

​Joan made her way back to her room. We had one more day in New Orleans. I wanted to find out more. Why did he target white women? Was he white or black? I need an article from when he was caught. I need to go back to the voodoo woman. Sleep was not coming to me that night. I was almost tempted to continue listening to see if there was any indication as to why this all started. What we did hear, "...prostitutes think they can dirty up this town with their sins," was a clear indication that this was a religious man. Was his motive fully religious? My eyelids were getting heavy, then, but sleep was still a distant goal.

​I heard my parents exit their room the next morning. I rolled over to see the bright digits read 7:00 AM. I gave myself a realistic thirty more minutes, then rolled out of bed to meet them in the kitchen. "Good morning, mom, dad," I yawned. "Well, aren't you two up early?" My father looked from me to Joan slinking out of her room. Giving a small laugh, I explained, "We must have slept good." The smell of biscuits, gravy, and sausage filled the kitchen. My stomach growled. The one thing I loved most about our vacations was that my mother still loved to cook almost every day. We would make a grocery stop before getting to the hotel to make sure we got everything we needed, and to make sure we knew where the grocery store was just in case we forgot something.

​After eating our breakfast, our parents let us know that we were free to do whatever we wanted that day. They were planning on staying in and enjoying our last day on the balcony taking in the scenery of New Orleans. I almost jumped out of my chair with excitement. I told Joan to get ready, and we were to head out on the town. Grabbing my backpack, we headed out the door to the trolley taking us to the voodoo woman giving ghost tours.

There weren't very many people wanting a ghost tour this Monday morning, so we were able to walk in and ask for her specifically. When she stepped out of the back, she stopped in her tracks, giving us a look that said what now? I smiled and held up our tickets for the nine o'clock tour. She seemed to relax a little, but knew we weren't there just for the tour. She gave us a rundown of what we would be seeing and how long the walk was – which I'm sure she gives to everyone – and we headed out the back of the building. About two minutes into this tour, she turned her head slightly and asked, "So what else is it you need to know?" Joan looked at me and smirked. "We just have a few questions to see if there is any way we can connect this man to our family. Why these tapes were in our cabin." The voodoo woman stopped, me slamming into the back of her. She twirled around so fast, I didn't realize she was facing me when she said, "You have the tapes?" Her voice was a low hiss. I stepped back and nodded slowly, looking into her flaming eyes, "They're in my backpack. I have them each wrapped with their corresponding newspaper article. We are just missing the last ones, when he is identified and caught."

​She led us into a graveyard, which was a stop on the tour, and asked to listen to one. I was taken aback, but I didn't argue. I pulled out the shoebox and tape player. She listened all the way through the first tape, her face growing grimmer by the minute. "I had no idea," she whispered. "What do you mean?" I slowly pulled the tape player out of her hand and situated everything back into my backpack. She signed heavily and began the tale of a horrific man:

"Connor was someone I went to school with. He was born and raised here in New Orleans. As I'm sure you know, this town is predominately African American," she motioned her hand as if to show us something. "Growing up with Connor, there was an underlying uncomfortable feeling I got when around him. He constantly seemed angry or bitter towards something. No one knew what. When we learned he was the serial killer behind these events, we weren't necessarily surprised. He made comments along the lines of, 'These whiteys will get what they deserve one day,' which didn't make any sense to us. He was white. I finally asked him what he meant by this when we were in high school. He explained to me that he was raised by his nanny, who was a black woman. She taught him everything he ever needed to know about living on his own, about what areas to avoid when he would wander around town... She was always there for him. His own parents borderline abandoned him, leaving him to be raised by this woman. He had come across the knowledge that when his parents were going on 'business trips', they were actually attending lynching events in the surrounding towns. I don't see why they didn't just move, but that's neither here nor there. It was a terrible childhood to have, his only caregiver being someone who was hated by her employers. By the late 60s to early 70s, he had grown up in the mindset that white people were to blame for all his problems. He had the mindset of the minority. He started small – prostitutes, tourists. Then he made his way up to well-known citizens who had started building their lavish homes in New Orleans. 1968, he dropped out of college and moved out of his parent's house to the lower income side of town. We called it the valley then. We lived on the same street. He married a white woman, but that was because she had the same type of childhood. She was also raised by a black woman. They had a child. It was a beautiful baby girl. He felt he had to protect her from the white people in town to keep her from becoming what he loathed – his mother."

​I was in shock. I looked at Joan who had tears pooling in her eyes. "What was his daughter's name?" The question was in a cracked voice that I didn't realize was mine. "April," she said, "April McElroy." Joan's breathing became shaky. She was crying now. The voodoo woman gently rubbed Joan's arm and gave us a look of sympathy. "Thank you... What is your name?" She smiled softly, "Joyce." I nodded, "Thank you, Joyce." She stood, "Would you like to continue the tour you paid for, or would you like to go back to your mother?"

​Joyce took us back to the building the long way, to make it seem like we took the tour so she didn't get into trouble with her boss. Joan had pulled herself together to get back onto the trolley and make our way back to the hotel. We entered the door to my room. We had to figure out how to tell our mother what we had learned, that we knew her father was a maniac. Joan reached for my backpack and dumped the tapes out onto the bed, "Mom!" I looked at her in a panic. "We won't do it unless we just do it," she whispered. Our mother entered the room and gasped, "Where did you find these?" Joan held a hand up, "Save it, mom. We know everything. We met a woman named Joyce who was a friend of Connor's. We know it all. Why did you feel like you had to hide this from us?" Our mother glided to the chair at the end of my bed and slumped down. "I didn't know how to tell you. I never wanted you to find out. He was someone I looked up to for a long time, but finding out that he was behind these murders put a loathing in my heart. I wanted to forget."

​We sat in my room and talked about the events leading up to Joan and I finding out. Our mother sighed and slumped farther into the chair the longer we went on. "I know you kids may be upset with me, but in all honesty," she stood from the chair, "I just wanted to know how you would turn out when you got older." Her voice turned cold. Joan and I looked at each other, then back at our mother. "What do you mean?" Joan squeaked, holding in her fear. "What I mean, sweetheart," she turned towards us with a switchblade in her hand, "I was hoping I had raised you two to be accepting creatures. I was hoping I had raised you to appreciate all walks of life. The way you're speaking of my father is not a reflection of that raising. I am very disappointed." The knife danced between her fingers menacingly. My heart was coming out of my chest, "Mom, we were just telling you what we were told. That's why we brought this to your attention. We wanted to know the truth. Right, Joan?" Joan was in the fetal position on the end of the bed. Her breathing was staggered. Her anxiety had set in, and she was not with us anymore. I stood slowly with my hand out in front of me, "Please, mom. I don't know what you're doing, but you're scaring us both. Look at Joan. She's gone into an anxiety attack. You know how long it takes for me to get her out of those." Our mother looked at Joan with disgust, "She's the worst of the two of you. You should have seen what she was saying about a girl in her class with her so-called friends," she spat towards Joan.

​"Now, Leland. I had such high hopes for you. You reminded me so much of my father when you were younger," she stepped closer, "So forgiving, loving, caring... I see the way you look at some people. I see the way you react to those who are supposedly 'less than' us. It's such a shame." She leaned over Joan. In one quick motion, her blade glided across Joan's throat. Blood was rushing out of her neck like a river. I choked, falling beside Joan, "No!" I held my hand on her throat, "Dad! Help!" My father stepped into the room, looking satisfied. "Your father would be proud, honey. They got what they deserved."

​"What," was all I could spit out before my mother's blade reached my own throat. "Goodbye, sweetheart," she murmured before mimicking the motion that killed Joan.

[chrysaliseuro2018]

In-Side

When my brother Dougal married Genevieve in 1982 who would have thought it would indirectly lead us to the Turkish beach city of Side (pronounced Sidday) on the Mediterranean 36 years later.

The link? Genevieve’s sister Barbara and her friend Penny when travelling in Turkey during the late ‘70’s met and went on to marry Turkish men. While Barbara and her husband Hasan spend time in both Tasmania and Side, Penny and Ali live permanently in Turkey.

As luck would have it Dougal and Gene’s house renovations, yes they are crazy enough to embark on two, are currently affected by the usual permit delays. So being opportunistic travellers they decided to squeeze in a month’s worth of travel while the local council bureaucrats twiddle their thumbs. As luck would have it their dates in Turkey coincided with ours so a rendezvous in Side was planned.

Doug and Gene stayed in Side a few years ago but for Chris and me it was a wonderful opportunity to share the experience. Side, while not exactly your quiet beach getaway, is a tale of two cities.

Firstly there is the new section cluttered with over development of the worst kind. Not unlike our charmless Surfers Paradise, it’s dominated by huge monolithic hotels. In a laughable attempt at authenticity some have been topped with faux Mosque-like domes. They are the palaces of package tours. Apparently Russians in particular subscribe to all-in resort packages which apparently suffered during recent years of unrest and the odd terrorist incident in Turkey. Now the tourists are returning and in our mind’s eye we could only imagine the morning bun fight for pool lounges.

Secondly there is the quaintly named ‘Antique Side’ which is where Penny and Ali run their little beach front hotel The Beach House. In contrast to the vast new developmental expansion of modern Side, Antique Side is perhaps realising what an unrealised gem it has right under its nose. It occupies an entire small peninsula which was clearly Roman given all the artefacts, pillars, foundations and mosaics to be found there. In recent years developments which were built on the ruins have either been compulsory removed and replaced with glass flooring over the ruins, or glass flooring has been installed in shop floors to expose the ruins. Further excavation is still underway and with some cooperation and planning the entire peninsula could be a major Roman site for visitors.

Apart from the hotel Penny and Ali also have traditional stone house and an apartment on the other side of the peninsular to the hotel. This is only a 5 minute walk through streets dense with shops selling t-shirts, soccer shirts of every variety, jewellery, bags, Turkish delight, nuts and all kinds of souvenir dross. First two nights were spent at the hotel followed by another 2 at the apartment. Originally we all planned to stay at the house but with a disco not 100 metres away pumping out door doof until the wee hours we all, even our resident disco king Chris, thought better of it.

The hotel offers a certain quaintness with a location right on the little beach. It has particular appeal to Poms of a certain age demographic - Chris had no trouble striking up conversation. Many have been returning for a number of years enjoying a relaxed and familiar environment. Penny and Ali were congenial and generous hosts who let Chris and me ride on the familial coattails of Doug and Gene offering us free accommodation. We were very fortunate indeed.

So how did we spend our 4 days at Side......

# The weather was hot so many an hour was spent on the hotel sun lounges or bobbing in the warm Mediterranean. We took to the beach umbrellas unlike the Poms who thought nothing of laying out all day in the blazing sun (judging by the brown leathery skin this has been their habit through the decades).

Generally in the morning the sea was flat but as the day went on the choppier it got. Making the most of the calm sea were several party boats in the guise of faux pirate ships complete with artificial rigging, a sliver of cloth purporting to be sails, a statue of a captain with eye glass at the bow and a plank to walk off at the stern. Amusingly on closer inspection one was a catamaran - a very modern take on a pirate ship indeed. Dougal thought they looked so unsturdy that it would only take one decent wave to capsize the whole contraption sending 100% pirates overboard. I confess to spending 4 days secretly wishing for that rogue wave.

# Gene, Barbara and I went to Manavgat the neighbouring town to do some shopping at the warehouses with Hasan as our driver. Unfortunately it was a Sunday meaning many were closed. Still we found a few open and got a few odds and ends. Highlight was a visit to a shop selling spices, grains, dried fruit, nuts, pastries and Turkish Delight of all colours and flavours. Generously they encouraged us to sample whatever we wanted and even some things we didn’t even know we wanted. If only weight and customs restrictions didn’t limit overseas purchases. But when a whole box of Turkish Delight (well over a kilo) costs 8.30 Turkish Lira, about A$2.50 which is less than the cost of one piece in Melbourne, it became a must-have even if i can’t get through it all.

Finally we paid a brief visit to Hasan’s 80+ year old mother. Mum sat quietly in the corner chatting to her sister and niece until Barb put her son Michael on FaceTime to speak to his grandmother. The transformation from quiet little old lady to excited and animated little old lady had to be seen to be believed.

# Penny’s husband Ali has a farm at Akseki just over one hour’s drive north east of Side. Fortunately Ali frequents the farm regularly so we all joined him for a day. Took 2 cars as Ali was staying overnight (we considered it but decided to make it a one day trip) so we had Dougal at the wheel. Turkish drivers have scant regard for road rules....step out on to a pedestrian crossings if you dare, stopping at red lights is optional and double white lines on the road are treated as decorations. Needless to say the drive was a little hairy at times.

First stop, the local market at Akseki. If one were looking to buy fresh market veggies, fruit, grains, nuts and pulses of all varieties, undies, clothes circa 1970, pots and pans, oversized wooden spoons, little sewing kits or even nail clippers this was the place to visit. A few nuts were purchase along with some strawberries which while tasty were a little over the hill and disappointing.

Next stop lunch. Nothing like a local to take you to a restaurant. Feasted on meat pides and like their Italian cousin the pizza, the serves looked enormous. But what you think at the outset you’ll never finish, somehow seems to go down a treat. Add to this a simple but delicious salad and a view over the valley....perfection.

Then onto Ali’s house in the town to admire his menagerie. A summary: 2 English setters, a cat, dozens of laying chooks, a couple of roosters, pheasants, bantams, hatching eggs, chicks, budgies, two quails and a partridge in a pear tree! Then the mini orchard of apricots, cherries and sour cherries. Not done with yet we then drove to their farm. Largely it has been planted out with walnut trees as a crop. Along with those was Ali’s veggie garden of onions, melons, beans, garlic and more fruit trees. It has to be said he is a man in touch and in love with nature.

Headed back towards Side but stopped at Sarihacilar a sleepy one horse town. The old if-you-blink-you-miss-it sort of place. It’s unlikely many tourists make their way to this town but Doug and Gene had recommended the museum. Totally overpriced in the scheme of things but actually worth every penny in a weird and wonderful way. Exhibits were largely routine; lots of butter churns, cooking pots, rusty old tins and a random collection of firearms, musical instruments, clocks and of all things, radios ranging through the decades. The two highlights were (1) the ‘curator/guide’, himself a rusty old relic, who escorted us around trying embellish the tour by bringing his artefacts to life with his several words of English. (2) the wooden baby’s cot complete with inbuilt potty. This worked by strapping on one of two funnels to baby, ingeniously designed to accommodate genitalia differences of males and females, so the pee was funnelled into the potty. Only design fault was baby had to always be asleep on its back. Otherwise genius and a big saving on sleep time Huggies.

Museum done, complementary chi enjoyed we were then given a tour by the proud owner of the renovated hotel. There are some walking trails around here one of which Doug and Gene had previously walked. (Mid 30 degree temperatures discouraged us.) In the heat and dryness the Nordic feel of the pine lined lodge-like hotel seemed totally incongruous. But apparently it gets bitterly cold in winter which would make this an ideal bolthole to bunker down in with a pack of cards and a few bottles of wine.

Having seen the ‘major’ sites and heading back to the car, the Mosque caught our eye. Well more accurately we caught the imam’s eye. With the help of his young son’s schoolboy English, of which the imam was glowingly proud, we did a little tour of the Mosque. It was unremarkable yet lovely. As always a beautiful chandelier, modest decorations but some lovely framed versus of the Q’uran. Chris formed the strongest connection with the imam who gifted him a copy of the Q’uran Abridged. (Conversation rate 0 to date). Just as we were leaving the call to prayer started so Chris and I whipped off out shoes, I re fitted the supplied headgear and we ducked back inside....was it the imam calling live or a recording? Happy to report it was the former.

All in all a wonderful day out.

# Hasan generously invited us all to the Turkish night at his cousin’s multi storeyed hotel (everyone seems to be everyone else’s cousin in Side). It was a glorious night on the open air rooftop and Hasan secured a table in the corner to take advantage of the view. Dinner was a buffet and advice was to get into it before the locals arrived at 8.10 starving after a day of Ramadan fasting. So we all ate well and lots, a particular highlight of the savoury spread was the smoked trout, while those with a sweet tooth, rated the Baklava highly.

After dark the belly dancer appeared shimmying and shaking her way though a routine to more contemporary music than we were used to hearing nightly when we lived at York Place. When it became time for audience participation I was grateful to be so blocked in as to be unavailable. Chris was the most likely candidate but Miss Nubile had enough willing participants before getting to our table. We all enjoyed watching the various efforts of tight shoulder and tight hipped conscripts however I suspect Chris was just an incy wincy bit disappointed he wasn’t up there strutting his stuff.

So after 4 days of hanging with the locals it was time to move on making sure not to overstay our welcome. We had been thoroughly spoilt and indulged. As we left for for our next adventure we couldn’t help but think sometimes you just get lucky!

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: Gay Panic Roadtrip to Albany/Hell

That title sounds like the world’s most amazing concept album.

CONTENT WARNING: Homophobia, transphobia, animal abuse.

Anyway! When last we left our hero, his entire life had been ruined yet again: he had cheated on Karen with Typhoid Mary, lost his home and place of employment, and had the shit kicked out of him by basically all of his rogues. He’s still floundering around at rock bottom when he decides to drink his woes away at a bar (not Josie’s, but very Josie’s-esque), and is joined by a Mysterious Stranger:

Though Matt doesn’t notice anything odd about the stranger, everyone else in the bar very clearly gets a bad vibe off of her. They also all seem to perceive her differently.

As the stranger speaks cryptically about the nature of good and evil and the terrible things she’s witnessed, tensions in the bar rise. Two brothers who were having a friendly conversation at a back table start fighting. As the fight escalates, Matt is inexorably drawn to the stranger:

Matt sort of dazedly realizes that something has gone terribly wrong, but it’s too late - a man is dead. “You could have stopped it if you weren’t busy making out with that guy!” some rando accuses.

“A guy???” Matt asks.

Well, yes and no:

This is Mephisto, who is basically Satan in the Marvel universe. Mephisto generally presents as male (so I’ll be using male pronouns from here on out) but doesn’t really have a gender per se, being the embodiment of evil rather than a living being. That said, there is definitely a strong element of homophobia/transphobia in this encounter. Like. “You hook up with a hot chick at the bar but she turns out to be a dude and also the actual devil???” That is vile transphobia. (This comic is 27 years old, but still. There’s using dated terminology, and there’s playing out harmful tropes that get people killed.)

This also picks up on a lot of the themes we’ve seen with Typhoid Mary, with Matt as a relatively passive figure who is deceived and violated by a gender-bending/gender role-flouting woman. This is his rock bottom, though: from here on out, conventional gender roles start to reassert themselves.

Anyway, this is the last straw for Matt. He burns all of his and Karen’s remaining belongings (excuse you, Matthew, not all of those are yours) and hits the road, traveling upstate towards Albany. Along the way, he witnesses a private plane crashing, and springs into action to rescue its pilot. However the pilot, a wealthy farmer named Skip Ash, turns out to be hella shady:

Curious about Skip’s strange behavior and illegal cargo, Matt decides to abandon his aimless northward wandering in favor of looking into this guy a bit more.

Meanwhile, Mephisto has created a demon “son” named Blackheart to torment the people of upstate New York. As if they don’t have enough to deal with already. #newyorkjoke

Blackheart attacks Matt (and randomly appearing guest star Spider-Man) for an issue but it’s boring so I’m skipping it.

Meanwhile Skip Ash has returned to his factory farm, run on ill-gotten drug money and dedicated to getting the most profit possible out of his stock, no matter the cost to the animals:

This is Skip telling his scientist to bioengineer legless pigs so that they can just sit in their overcrowded cages to be force-fed until they’re slaughtered. Skip is a fucking monster.

But that’s just the tip of his monster iceberg, because Skip is also experimenting on humans. Specially, young women and girls who have been made insecure by the beauty-industrial complex and come to his farm/lab to be “perfected” - and he’s selected his favorite to be his future wife:

SKIP YOU ARE A CREEP AND SHOULD BE IN JAIL

One person in complete agreement with me on that is his daughter, Brandy. When she realized what kind of man her father was, she stormed out, but still lives on the money he sends her. She’s also become an animal rights activist, and Matt - who has been following Skip around - catches her planning to set off some (harmless to humans and animals) explosions at Skip’s farm to draw media attention to his inhumane practices:

Matt is sooo smug here, which is especially rich considering that his whole attitude during this arc is “ugh it’s hard to care about people and things, why won’t everyone with problems leave me alone?” Yeah, Brandy’s activism is more about anger at her dad and there’s no follow-through that actually helps the animals, and yes, she’s arguably a hypocrite for living off her father’s drug money. But one could just as easily say that Matt’s heroism is more about thrillseeking and there’s no follow-through that actually reduces crime, and that he’s a hypocrite (and in violation of his own professional oaths) for getting paid to try cases in which he has a conflict of interest as Daredevil. So.

Brandy is something of a straw activist (and later, we’ll see, a straw feminist) - shrill and angry but not actually effective, and with very selfish and personal motives. It’s notable that she shows up around 1990, on the cusp of the capitalist 80s and disaffected 90s - her character would’ve been treated very differently in the 70s.

(It’s also interesting that Nocenti's run is fiercely environmentalist, between Kelco’s pollution and Skip’s factory farm, and yet actual environmentalists are consistently portrayed as ineffectual idiots. Not totally sure what her point was there besides nihilism.)

Anyway, Matt rides along with Brandy as she sets off her explosions, which have the unintended effect of freeing the human experiment we saw earlier, Number Nine. However, Skip’s scientists and guards have no intention of letting their prize go that easily:

Luckily, Number Nine has a healing factor, so she’s okay. Matt and Brandy take her back to Brandy’s house to recuperate, where they discover that she’s...well, very odd. She’s been programmed to cook, clean, primp, and fawn over men, to the point of being manic about it, and also keeps having flashbacks to the traumatic things she witnessed while being experimented on.

Brandy, of course, has no patience with Number Nine’s “perfect woman” behavior:

“Haven’t you ever heard of feminism?” “No, but it sounds awful.” Woof. I mean, Number Nine isn’t exactly a reliable narrator either, but she’s certainly more pleasant than abrasive Brandy. (Who I fucking love, I WILL FIGHT YOU.) Matt certainly enjoys Number Nine’s fawning. What a relief after Typhoid Mary, huh, tough guy?

Skip, meanwhile, wants his property back, so he hires this guy, who is a precursor to literally everything about 90s comics:

Look at that ridiculous gun! Look at those shades! Look at those spiked gloves! This is so silly. Also this character is called “Shotgun” even though that is DEFINITELY NOT A SHOTGUN.

Anyway, a couple dangerous skirmishes with Shotgun ensue, but Matt manages to keep Number Nine safe, though he can’t keep her and Brandy from fighting:

As annoyed as I am by The Reasonable Man rubbing his temples and soothingly saying “Girls, girls!” as Those Crazy Women scream at each other, I am genuinely amused by “GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN!”

Anyway my best guess is that the Brandy/Number Nine conflict is some sort of embodiment of the conflict that women still have between being independent/feminist/liberated and performing femininity to an acceptable level, but which was especially difficult to navigate at a time when more and more women were getting divorced and/or working outside of the home and/or keeping their maiden names, etc. Like. I do think that Nocenti was trying to tell a feminist story here, especially since Number Nine was driven to subject herself to Skip’s experiments because of unreasonable beauty standards in the media, just like I think she was trying to subvert gender roles with Typhoid Mary. But it gets muddy.

After a few battles with Skip and Shotgun, Matt and Brandy basically tell Skip they have access to his various stockpiles of contraband and will turn him in if he doesn’t leave them - and most importantly, Number Nine - alone:

Skip gives up and sort of wanders out of the story at this point...but here’s where it takes a trippy turn:

So some of Skip’s illegal contraband is from Attilan, a city on the moon. Attilan is the home of the Inhumans, who, if you don’t watch Agents of SHIELD or read the comics, are very similar to mutants - a genetic variation from humans who each have their own superpower and sometimes a very visible mutation. Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan is probably the best known Inhuman these days.

The Inhumans are ruled by King Black Bolt and Queen Medusa, who at this point in continuity had recently had a son, who was taken away from them and sent to Earth because of his potentially dangerous powers. Two cousins of the royal family, Gorgon and Karnak, decide to go to Earth and look for the child so that they can return him to his parents.

So Gorgon and Karnak turn up basically out of nowhere, and Matt, Brandy, and Number Nine are like “Sure, superpowered strangers, we’d love to go on a road trip with you in this pickup truck to find a missing space prince.” It’s bizarre.

It’s on this road trip that they encounter Blackheart (remember Blackheart?), who has taken human form so as to fuck with humans more subtly. He’s hitchhiking, so they give him a ride, and he immediately starts playing up the tension between Gorgon and Karnak and their mutual interest in Number Nine:

That’s Gorgon driving the truck and Karnak in the weird hat in the backseat. Gorgon, by the way, has goat legs and the power of stomping, which is 100% not what the gorgons of mythology were. Karnak has the ability to see - and hit - the weakness in anything. They are some of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s more ridiculous creations.

Anyway, Blackheart - the balding dude in the turtleneck - spurs them into a fight that wrecks the truck. Matt, who can’t see Blackheart’s disguise, picks up on the fact that there is something seriously wrong with this dude, and attacks:

Blackheart, you creepy.

The humans - and Inhumans - manage to calm themselves down and make up, and Blackheart, frustrated, moves on to fuck with some other people. Specifically, the people in the small town that our missing Inhuman prince - currently going by the name “Pope,” though his real name is Ahura - has landed in. Pope, as we’ll see, is kind of an odd and creepy kid:

Yeah, Pope’s power is the Evil Eye. He didn’t mean to kill the sheep, but...shit happens, I guess?

The town, somewhat understandably, decides he’s a demon and they need to kill him, but Matt shows up OUT OF FREAKING NOWHERE - seriously, I have no idea how he found Pope - and stops them:

Blackheart, frustrated by his failure to corrupt anyone, turns to Mephisto for help, and Mephisto pulls all of our major players at this point - Matt, Brandy, Number Nine, Gorgon, Karnak, and Pope - down into Hell.

Yes, actual Hell.

They’re separated into groups by the fall. Brandy and Pope find themselves trying to climb out of a vast canyon, and they meet an angel:

The angel wakes up and is lovely and wonderful and kind, but Brandy is so shrill that eventually just peaces the fuck out of there, leaving Brandy and Pope to make the climb alone.

Number Nine, meanwhile, finds herself in a “Heaven” that is actually her version of Hell:

She winds up being dazzled by hunky angels but befriending a nerdy one named Lucifer? The metaphors are all over the place here.

Gorgon and Karnak are boring, so I’m skipping them...and Matt? Well, he finds himself in a snowy wasteland with nothing in it but a confessional. He breaks off the cross on top and uses it to start a fire:

Only Mephisto is permitted to make fire in Hell, so Mephisto LOSES HIS SHIT. He attacks Matt with demons, and for a while Matt fights off wave after wave of them before realizing that the only way to win is to stop fighting. Sure enough, this stops the attack on him and his friends, and he makes plans to walk out - but an enraged Mephisto proves that he still has power:

That’s Brandy in the last panel, and yes, she’s dead. :(

Then the Silver Surfer shows up out of nowhere to fight Mephisto??? SURE, JAN. Whatever, it gives Matt & Co. the necessary cover they need to get out of there and they return to the mortal world, shaken and grieving but alive.

And Brandy?

I...guess that’s a happy ending for her? I’m still pretty troubled by how the straw feminist doesn’t get to be loved by an angel because of how shrill she is until she ACTUALLY DIES, but again, the metaphors are so incoherent that it’s tough to suss out exactly what the message here is. (Also, Gorgon and Karnak take Pope home, and we never see Number Nine again.)

Anyway, that’s the end of Romita’s run on the main Daredevil book, though Nocenti’s got one last arc to go. Tune in next time when Matt returns to New York, confronts Bullseye, and finally reunites with Foggy!

[mulliganisms]

Himself Alone 1970

In the thin air of the Azteca Stadium in the 1970 World Cup Final Pele hovers majestically over his Italian prey - Himself is similarly airborne as his ten year old derriere has been launched towards a Western Irish sky by a bolting horse.

In the next few moments gravity will work on both and Himself will attempt to match the cacophony of 107,412 and will come pretty close. Life is flashing before him, At ten his life is as watchable as a reality TV spin off on a cable channel  - thin content which Himself tries to stretch out by endless previously ons recaps and in next week’s show...He had recently sat through Love Story - will he die before his own has ever tasted love? Never to skate in Central Park? Never having to say sorry - and not even the drawn out death where Ali Mcgraw looks more glamorous as the end nears but an instant hit of body on Connemara marble. At least he would die with as clean a conscience as Bobby Moore post diamond necklace scandal.

The nag that had inched forward like a non league crowd following a triumphant cup tie vs higher placed opposition who wanted to savour the relative luxury of the away ground now moves with energy and purpose as speedily and unexpectedly as the appearance of the roundel insignia on Japanese fighter planes over the Pearl Harbour skies.  Not like in the Michael Bay travesty but as in the epic war fillum he's just seen at the ABC Essex Rd: Tora Tora Tora - surprise surprise surprise - like all 70s boys he was multilingual - provided there was a war on.  feuer achtung Banzai hande hoch. And this is war: man vs horse - all about personal survival.

Fortunately Himself had bronze, silver and gold badges acquired thro many hours of perspiration starting with Mum’s dexterous use of a safety pin when she somehow retrieved the elastic swimming trunk cord - as much a wonder to Himself as the third of the working class consistently voting against their own interests or the touting  of £100k Peter Marinello as the next George Best. The swimming lessons in the Tibberton Rd Public baths - always busy as very few folk had bathrooms at home relying on the Saturday night tin bath. That would be followed by climbing into the blue and white cotton pyjamas warmed in front of the coal fire in readiness for the Andy Williams Xmas snowbound belatedly screened in April.

Finally the inflating and tying off of said blue and white cotton sleepwear and the desperate drying of them with dressing room hairdryer which had been recently installed owing to demand from men growing their hair longer. This had resulted in the wolf whistling of certain players at football grounds- obviously only visiting or especially former heroes especially Jimmy Robertson  at the Lanewhen he scored for Arsenal. The skills  these medals acknowledged were of no use on land.  If only his bolting mount had been a giant sea horse... 

Himself has never ridden before but he has seen the Grand National on the telly so The pose is pure Pat Taafe - Mum’s fave Irish jockey who won the grand national that year  resulting in her annual bet paying off with jubblies all round.The horse is no Arkle the champion horse much less Champion the Wonder Horse star of Saturday Morning Pictures - a communal cinema going experience where the largely junior crowd heckled the Government Information films watched rapt at key moments in Z for Zorro and cheered at Flash Gordon - all behaviours far more endurable than the Vue/Cineworld going adult munching supersize tacos swimming in collagenous red , loudly predicting plot outcomes and turning their phone screens up just in case they miss an update from their co-worshippers of WKD, Lynx and cuffed sweatpants who style themselves as the whatsapp group lethal banter squad

The horse is one of a team too - some of his mates bearing  Aulfella and da brudders others pulling a trap navigated by Mam with dasisters. They have names tho none as resonant as 

Tostao, Gerson, Jairzinho - Brazil 1970 the greatest team ever - and the highlight of their play wasn’t even a goal but an outrageous dummy and miss vs Uruguay by the totemic Pele. Pele’s opening goal and Carlos Alberto’s clinching fourth meant  Brazil won Jules Rimet three times and got to keep the trophy. Perhaps that’s what drives Mark Francois and Rees Mogg towards urging constant war on Germany - a hat trick of victories would give them world domination in perpetuity - the natural order of things. 

The rarity of sightings of these yellow and green shirts enhanced their allure. They were only glimpsed every four years and the white clad Germans and Orange dutch every two. Contrast that with the attention mega trawler supernet net of todays’ neverending news  - transfer deadline day is more exciting than most games. No such problem in 1970 midweek - we got Sportsnight with Coleman - which did feature football but only after you had sat through all sorts of things boxing, figure skating but the one most pertinent to the crisis - showjumping

 Following exposure on the telly kids would head to the park to attempt to copy their newfound Gods - the Willie Carr  flick, the Best robbing of Banks at wembley - scandalously ruled out for ungentlemanly conduct, The Denis Law sleeve grab (does anyone still make long sleeve shirts?). 

Rosemary Gardens cinder pitch was their Highbury, their Lords (with matting rolled out and stumps on springs) even their Wimbledon when anyone cared to play (two weeks in June) but it was never our Hickstead-  our Wembley stadium never the Empire Pool Wembley

The only pools that mattered were the centrepiece of early Saturday night ritual. The football results delivered to kitchens steaming with anticipation of life changing news and perfectly cooked potato flesh - invariably just like the clocks that year of nothing in our lives and others changed. However, one of Aulfella’s friends, Old Docherty, actually won the pools and grew beardier, scroogier and unhappier with each occasional visit -never once bringing anything with him. For Irish kids the visitors from Home - and most of them were in the same boat as us, ie a barely afloat dinghy - were always good for a few bob. It was considered good luck to give the kid some silver. Yet this man whom fortune had shone on never once shelled out to us. In fact he spent one whole day complaining that the imminent decimalisation of the currency meant penny for the guy was now  prone to hyper inflation and nothing but a profiteering shameful scam perpetrated on the unknowing  and donors should be handing over 0.471new pence. God knows what he did during bob a job week. Bob a job week was where uniformed kids washed cars, cleaned windows, ran errands - known collectively as odd jobs. They ain’t odd tho are they? Night time Czar is an odd job as is innovation sherpa at Microsoft and eBay curator - here is a Crying Boy print in cracked frame contrasted with a chipped babycham glass tight against the cracked  soda stream  bottle - and they all earn more than a few bob.

Being Catholics Himself and crowd were always a bit self conscious during bonfire night possibly cos of the burning of effigies. Anyway he had All Souls day - Halloween - then to Church all souls - Old Docherty cme  one year and the highlight was his reaction to the  collection plate: a dummy worthy of Pele followed by a Barry John pass or if the row was very empty - he demonstrated real potential in the new sport of Frisby. 

Always happier as player than spectator, Himself enjoyed the privilege of altar serving which often yielded significant coinage. The tariff was clearly signposted -  weddings, baptisms - then the biggest payers:  mourners.  We used to pray for  for a big funeral not the old miser Docherty of course - even tho he had promised Aulfella he’d get his newish telly in the will

Telly was the talk of the summer for the cinder pitch in the park was also the scene of filming the TV show Budgie. This starred Adam Faith who was an actor/ pop star and managed his own career as well as other artists. It’s not easy doing that - only Louis CK really handles himself and look where that’s got him. When the show was aired one local geezer was rechristened as Budgie because of his feathered cut - the Rachel of its time. Until the 90s such references were pretty universal but the market led fragmentation of broadcasting reflected the times of greater social inequality especially in broadcasting. Food banks remain a shock to us children of the 1970s - then we had Adam Faith, Bob Hope but no Charity - too much Charley Pride. Thanks to the proliferation of channels TV has lost its role as cultural glue. Back then Cultural glue was, well, glue - sniffed from a crisp packet. Now football is the cultural glue though it seems far more one way than in the past

Old stadiums are demolished to be replaced by what look like PFI prisons  - do you think real supporters care about their new stadia? If they did you’d hear new songs - we have a craft beer concession in our stand/ we followed carbon neutral building practices/ four figure sums our tickets cost four figure sums.

He  pines for the old Highbury, the Lane , the Den. There used to be alphabetically ordered boards on the side of the pitch with a key to the code supplied in the programme  intended for half time scores - Himself’s crowd always bet upon the initial of which of the neighbours teen sons would be turfed out. In their flared wrangler belt loop they wore their red and white wool scarf knitted by loving aunties (no doubt she’d be sued for copyright by the club now). The offender would be escorted out by a hopefully helmet free copper- if there’d been a pitch invasion - their perp walk taking them past a raucously cheering Northbank to a warholian fifteen minutes - of fame not that is not the wait for VAR. 

As football grew into the monolith it is today other sports were forced into the shadows - after all you can recreate the epic Celtic vs Leeds European Cup Semi -Final the two legged Battle of Britain - see it wasn’t just kids who were obsessed by war tho even the ten year olds knew the actual Battle did not feature Scottish pilots in Mescherschmidts.  You could even recreate speedway in the bombed out church with some soil at the corner and the bike - the Ivan Mauger skiddy turn at corner. But showjumping ?

Its rural and/ or upper class credentials meant it never really caught on in London as a participation sport - how could it? The  horses in the area were  totter or rag and bone man and the coal carthorse.  Undeterred Himself devised a game where he would jump over paving stones which hosted street furniture - lamp posts, beacons - obviously  any failure to clear the slab would deduct faults. In truth this was the  steeplechase a la Alf Tupper in the Victor whose every win would see his thought bubble read “I’ve run him” sparking huge moral panics about comics ruining kids English - 

So as his mount charges towards a Dry stone wall Himself searches for showjumping knowledge that might help - Princess Anne who went on to winning medal in 1976 - only athlete not required to undergo a sex test - typical class privilege; David Broome; Lucinda Prior Palmer - just one person - the only double barrelled name Himself knew was Ian Storey Moore-  who kept winning at  Badminton -now he’s really getting lost...Himself suddenly knew he could be  saved and weirdly his Gordon Banks turned out to be Hughie Greene.

In those days beer was delivered by horse - called dray carts  On Opportunity Knocks that year the Dray King for Thwaites Star brewery had been declared Britain's champion beer drinker. Using the technique he’d seen Tonto use Himself directs the horse towards the stream. It stops to drink and he dismounts and does the full Harvey Smith  - futile but made me feel better - gesture politics they call that now. Himself recreates the Central Park scene from Love Story there is no snow but sweet connemara rain turning the earth into mud…(falling up/ snow angels / eating snow build snowman) 

No horses were harmed in the making of this story...

[filosofablogger]

Hey folks!!! It’s Saturday, a weekend, and a holiday weekend at that!  And to top it all off, it is spring!  I have been notably unmotivated this year, so as of this writing, I still have no Easter decorations up, have no idea where the Easter baskets are hiding, and don’t know what we are doing for Easter.  We made no plans with anybody, I am lethargic when it comes to the thoughts of cooking a turkey (our usual Easter fare) and for all I care, we can fire up the ol’ Weber grill and throw some hamburgers or brats on it.  (No, I am not threatening to grill the neighbor kids … not yet, at least).  I did, at least, buy some food colouring and eggs.  It’s a start, yes?

Yesterday afternoon I found myself wandering aimlessly around the ‘net, kicking at cookies and gifs, making faces at trolls, and trying to find “a good place” to settle in for a bit.  As I rounded a corner, the story of a brief interlude in the life of a child, who has since become a woman even older than I, pulled me in for a closer look, and as she shared her story with me, I knew I had my focus for this post.

The year was 1950 and the child was 13-year-old Kay Johnston of upstate New York.  1950 – women were housewives, very few worked outside the home.  Sports was a man’s game.  And real men didn’t eat quiche.  But young Kay often played baseball in the backyard with her younger brother, and when he went off to practice with his team, Kay cried, for she loved the sport as much as he, and yet … and yet she was “just” a girl, and girls didn’t play Little League.

One spring afternoon, as she sat at the kitchen table letting her mother braid her hair, after seeing her brother walk out the door with bat over his shoulder, mitt dangling from his hand, she broke into tears.

“I started crying. And I said to my mother, ‘I’m just as good as him. I wish I could play.’ “

You gotta love Kay Johnston’s mother, for instead of giving her the “now, now, girls play with dolls and learn to cook for their menfolk” talk, Kay’s mum said, “Why don’t you just go and try out?”

“And I said, ‘OK, well, cut off my braids.’ And she did.”

Kay ran upstairs, grabbed a pair of her brother’s pants and a cap, and off she went to sign up.  She chose her name carefully:  Tubby Johnston, taken from the character Tubby in the then-popular Little Lulu comics.

Kay tried out for the King’s Dairy Team and, after a series of three tryouts, made the team!  Tubby Johnston was in, and Kay Johnston was living her dream.

It wasn’t long, however, before Kay realized the odds were not in favour of her keeping her gender a secret for long, so she went to the coach and ‘came clean’.

“His reaction was, ‘You’re such a good player and we’re going to use you at first base.’ I played the entire season. It was an absolutely thrilling time.”

Even with the cat out of the bag, the kids on her own team treated her well and she was truly “just one of the guys”.

“It was the other players that would push me down or call me names, and the parents initially booed when I went out to play. They could see that I was a better player than some of their sons.”

Sadly, Tubby’s Little League career last for only one season.  Before the next, Little League officials wrote a new rule, a rule stating that no girls under any circumstances, will be allowed to play Little League ball.  I know the reasons and so do you … it was all about “male superiority”, “male dominance” and is the same mentality that has enabled so many men to harass women through the decades.  But for Kay, it was a win in another way …

“And it’s known as ‘The Tubby Rule,’ because I was the reason why they put that rule in.”

The ‘Tubby Rule’ would remain in effect for almost 25 years, until being overturned in 1974.

“You know, I have to tell you, when I went out pretending to be a boy, I had no idea I was setting some sort of a record. That was the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted to play the game.”

Kay remembers telling her father, ” ‘You know, Dad, someday I’m going to play first base on the New York Yankees.’ And he just gave me a big hug and he said, ‘I know you will, Kit Kat.’ “

Well, Kay never got the chance to play first base, but … on Sept. 27, 2006, at the age of 70, Kay Johnston Massar walked out onto the field at Yankee Stadium and threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

And now you see why I stopped by when, in my internet wanderings, I heard Kay say, “psssst … over here”.

Have a lovely weekend, friends!  Enjoy your holiday, spend time with friends, family, and above all, find something to smile about.  Love ‘n hugs.

Saturday Surprise — ‘Tubby’ Johnston Hey folks!!! It’s Saturday, a weekend, and a holiday weekend at that!  And to top it all off, it is spring!