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malecsecretsanta · 5 years ago

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Merry Christmas, @KaijuusandKryptids!

*****

Just Another Family Dinner

Alec smiled to himself when he stood in front of the mirror. Family dinners were never appealing to any of the Lightwoods, but that was in the past. The Lightwoods finally became the family they were supposed to be. Every sibling, except for Max who was still young, was heading to the dinner with their lovers. It was a beautiful sight, and all the gang was happy because finally they got to be a normal family, well, ignoring the fact that said family dedicated to erase evil and fight demons. Alec’s mouth curved up, he didn’t care if they weren’t normal, all he cared about was that he had all of his beloved ones by his side.

Evil defeated once again, the Lightwood’s decided to make a family dinner on one of the fanciest restaurants in the city. Of course it was Magnus’s suggestion.

Magnus was sitting at the bed, watching his boyfriend getting ready to go to dinner. It was a beautiful sight, and Magnus felt so lucky to be the one who Alec loved. His boyfriend was wearing a stunning black suit. Magnus did know that all men looked so much better in a suit, but hell, Alexander Lightwood was in another whole level.

A well fitted suit and a white shirt beneath it with the first two buttons unbuttoned. was everything Magnus needed to be drooling. He caught Alec’s gaze in the mirror and smiled. Now that he had admired his shadowhunter, Magnus went to the dressing table to apply his make-up. Once he was done he got up and took his boyfriend’s hand in his. It was a beautiful night and they decided they had the time to go to the restaurant like mundanes. Maryse, Robert, Max, Izzy and Simon were already sitting at the table laughing and talking.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” Magnus said once they took their seats.

“Hi, mom, dad, guys, what are you talking about?” Alec asked.

“We were just guessing what couple would be the last to arrive.” Maryse said.

“We decided to arrive in the mundane way. We had time. And I’m a little offended because I have a perfect timing.” Magnus said.

“Right. Like when you got to the institute just in time to stop Alec’s wedding.” Everyone laughed at that. Even Alec. He really had been so wrong.

“I still remember that movie scene.” Simon said. “That was the day I began with the shipping.”

“Like I said, perfect timing. On the other hand, where are my biscuit and the annoying blond? You weren’t talking about that, am I right? Because I don’t know about you but my guess is that they are doing some reckless stuff.”

“Or naughty.” Izzy said.

Robert and Maryse just closed their eyes. Too much information. They all remembered that time almost two weeks ago when Izzy had found the couple in a very compromising situation. Of course she had to tell everybody. Now every time someone goes to the weapons room accompanied, they get suspicious glances. Jace and Clary appeared by the door and took their seats after saying hello to everyone.

The waiter came and took their orders. It was Magnus’s turn to warn Robert about the ingredients in his plate, he wasn’t going to like them. Robert changed his order, after thanking Magnus for his advice.

The food arrived and so did the drinks, all the family made a toast because once again they had defeated the enemy and were safe and secure with all the people they loved. Everyone was glad they could have a little time of peace for themselves.

The night passed with mockery and laughs and soon all the conversation went to the child memories.

“Yeah, but seriously, you think you have your smart boyfriend and everything, you see him like that and think he has always been like this, what you don’t know is that he was the one who slept in history’s class.” Jace said to Magnus. Magnus snorted.

“Yeah, I might have been asleep a few times, but at least I wasn’t trying to impress the girls.”

“Well, it isn’t my fault that girls found history so attractive.”

“You didn’t exactly were showing of your knowledge, more like your new movements with a sword.”

“Uh, what sword?” Simon asked.

“Simon!” All the Lightwood’s whispered-shouted.

“Hey, relax. I’m joking. ” Simon raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t know what age we are referring to, I guess I was just trying to figure it out if this was the beginning of the...”

“Book club?” Clary complemented. Clary already knew how Jace got his conquests; the book club was full of girls.

“Fun fact,” Max said, joining the conversation. “I really don’t know a person who doesn’t ask ‘do you read?’ to Jace when he mentions that.”

“You traitor! I do read.” Jace said, feigning betrayal.

“That’s a joke that never ends, you have to understand that.” Izzy said, sipping her drink. Jace looked at her with a mischievous smirk, Alec saw that and immediately knew what was about to happen.

“You mean like the joke about your cooking skills?” Sadly, they all had to laugh, including Isabelle.

“You are paying for that, you know that, right?”

“It was worth it.”

“But seriously, who can actually cook in this family?” Asked Magnus.

“I mean, there’s a difference between a person who cooks and one that literally burns everything.” Maryse said.

“Mom!”

“Sorry, dear. Magnus is right, we aren’t chefs but hey, you scared me more than once when you were at the kitchen.”

“Fair enough.” Izzy said.

“I know for a fact that I can’t cook, Maryse is a decent cook as well as Jace, Clary, Simon and Magnus.” Robert said.

“What?” Alec asked.

“Does that count? Magnus literally has magic in his hands.” Clary said.

“Yes, that’s what Alec says all nights.” Jace said, winking.

“Jace!” All the members of the family reprimanded him, except for Magnus and Alec, the latter was busy blushing while Magnus just stood there with an incredulous look. That reckless blond was so going to pay, but that would be for another day.

“Oh, right but when you eat my food I don’t see you guys complaining.”

“We wouldn’t do that but what’s fair is fair.” Simon said.

“I still can’t believe I’m not in that list, though.” Alec said.

“Bro, we are cut from the same cloth, don’t question the Lightwood DNA.” Isabelle said.

“Damn it.”

Magnus put a comforting hand on Alec’s knee. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, you have me by your side, we are never going to die of starvation or poisoning.” Alec chuckled.

Life was good. He had a wonderful family, there was mockery instead of just politeness, and his parents had finally accepted their kid’s partners. Simon, Clary and Magnus were part of the family now, a family that each day seemed to know more mundane stuff. Alec was happy to learn, it seems that the little annoying mundanes weren’t actually annoying and had a lot to offer, and Magnus was just so glad that he could introduce Alec to this culture.

For Max’s disgrace all of his siblings remembered his childhood. He ended up with his hands on his eyes and red ears. Yes, one could be a charming and funny baby but why did all have to remember that time? However, he had seen plenty of photographs. “Clary, have you ever seen a picture with Jace running scared because of a rubber duck that mom was holding?” Everyone, except Jace laughed at that. It was even funnier because Jace had more than 10 years.

“Young man, they are little beasts, and I didn’t know it wasn’t real.”

“By the angel, I knew about that but I didn’t know there was a photo. I need to see it.” Clary said, laughing. “Oh, come on, it’s something I need.” She insisted when Jace just stared at her. Finally, he gave up and started laughing.

Alec smiled and thanked the angel that Max didn’t talk about him and Izzy, they had a lot of embarrassing photos. Why do all moms love to take photos of their children while bathing them? He didn’t get it. But he was glad Max seemed happy with just making fun of Jace.

The night was finally coming to an end. Everyone took their glasses and said cheers. They celebrated being together and being safe. All of them went to the Institute, except for Magnus and Alec. They took a portal home and collapsed on the couch.

“Well, the restaurant was fine, right?” Magnus asked.

Alec smiled. His boyfriend was a perfectionist and even more if all the Lightwoods were involved. It has been a while since they accepted him in the family and yet, the warlock was always trying to make everything perfect. “Of course it was. You are perfect.” Magnus just liked a little of reassurance. He knew the family loved him but still, it was very new to have a family like this. It made his heart flutter.

“Are you tired?” Magnus asked.

“Nope.” Alec answered, even if his body was feeling a little heavy. They had planned a movie night just for the two of them and he wasn’t going to miss it. “Come on, let’s see this movie you’ve been talking all week.”

“It wasn’t all week.”

Alec raised one of the eyebrows that Magnus loved so much. And the warlock went to find the movie. When he was done, he came back to the couch and snuggled close to Alec. The shadowhunter’s head rested on Magnus’s shoulder when the movie began. Magnus waved his hand and a cup of hot chocolate appeared in their hands.

A romantic movie. Sappy, funny and, in Alec’s opinion, amazing. He would be damn if he admits to his fellow shadowhunters that he actually liked the movie, but it was just Magnus and yes, by the end of the movie Alec felt light, happy and so lucky. He laughed when Magnus made jokes about calling him by a nickname. All the options were awful. And he asked Magnus if would’ve liked to be courted the way it was made almost fifty years ago. Magnus’s eyes sparkled when he said he thought it was something beautiful. Perhaps Alec could do something like that for him. For example, he never wrote a love letter, could he do it now? Maybe.

“What are you thinking about, sweetheart?” Alec shook his head. “Nothing.” At Magnus’s incredulous expression he continued. “I was thinking that I really liked the movie, and how much I love you.”

“Aren’t you adorable? Attacking me with that sweetness of you, it should be illegal.” Magnus kissed his nose.

“Me? Adorable?”

“Yes, mighty, brave and bold shadowhunters can be adorable, Alexander.”

“All right, but you are adorable too.”

Magnus thought, not for the first time, how lucky he was. If someone had told him ten years ago that a shadowhunter would find him adorable and be his boyfriend he would have laughed and declared them out of their mind, and yet here he was, feeling happier than he ever had. Magnus kissed him slowly. Alec smiled into the kiss, making Magnus smile too. The warlock really enjoyed all the kind of kisses they shared, because behind them there was love. It was Magnus who broke the moment.

“Next time you are picking the restaurant.”

“What? No.”

“You’re telling me that after all this time we’ve been together you didn’t learn anything from me.”

“If I recall, you were the one who just two hours ago was asking if the restaurant was fine.”

Magnus kissed Alec’s lips, silencing him.

“Just a warning: next time we go to the institute I’m so going to find all the pictures of you as a child.”

“You’ve seen plenty of them.”

“I said all of them.”

“I’m almost sure you indeed had seen all, it’s not like we had tons of pictures.”

“It’s for science.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. And hey, I don’t know why you are so afraid. We’ve seen the pictures together.”

“I’m glad Max didn’t tell more of the stories behind the pictures.”

“Why? I’m almost sure Clary and Simon already know enough.”

Alec chuckled. “More than they need to. I need to keep the mystery.”

“Shadowhunters.” Magnus said, as if that explained it all. Perhaps it did.

“Shut up, mister ‘I survived the Big Bang’.”

“I’ve never said that. And I am not that old.”

“And yet, you go around telling people that you’re 500, 600, even 800 years.”

“You know what? Once, my shadowhunter boyfriend told me something about ‘mystery’, maybe he was right?” Alec smirked. He loved the teasing. He loved the playful relationship they had. The seriousness they could have. The competitiveness. The laughs. He loved everything. He loved Magnus.

“He is always right.”

“Mm. He is also funny.”

Alec snorted. “He sounds like an awesome guy.”

“Yeah, he is. I’m so lucky.”

“I think he is the lucky one.”

Magnus pecked his lips. Alec barely suppressed a yawn. Magnus laughed.

“Let’s go to bed, darling.”

Magnus got up from the couch and offered his hand to Alec. Alec let himself to be led to the bedroom. Sleep had taken over Alec’s body. He sat on the bed and watched his boyfriend undress. He liked that Magnus didn’t use always his magic. If he had time, he would do things like every other human. Alec’s lips were forming a little smile, from the moment he saw Magnus get dressed for dinner he thought he looked breathtaking. His cobalt suit along with the black shirt had him sneaking glances at him all night. Oh, how much he liked his man in a suit. His man. Every time he said that was as good as the first time, he was so happy that finally he could say that out loud. It was amazing. When Magnus finished he came to see his boyfriend.

“I am the one who’s getting you out of that suit, am I right?”

Alec’s smile told him everything.

He exaggerated his movements, that had the Nephilim smirking. When he was done he helped Alec to climb on the bed and covered them with the sheets. He took his boyfriend in his arms and Alec just snuggled closer to him while humming.

“Good night, Magnus. Love you.”

“Sleep well, darling. Love you too.”

Magnus kissed his temple and smelled his Alexander’s hair. He was finally at home and he knew this life with Alec was his happy place.

#KaijuusandKryptids #malecsanta19 #*fics19 #*gifts19

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ayearofpike · 5 years ago

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Strange Girl

Simon Pulse, 2015 413 pages, 19 chapters + epilogue ISBN 978-1-4814-5058-4 LOC: PZ7.P626St 2015 OCLC: 936552329 Released November 17, 2015 (per B&N)

There’s a new girl in school, and something about her is unbelievably interesting to Fred Allen. Maybe it’s the way she carries herself. Maybe it’s the way she refers to herself as merely a vessel for conveying the knowledge she seems to have about our greater nature. Maybe it’s the remarkable power she commands, the way that happiness and healing ride in her wake everywhere she goes. Or maybe it’s her sweet ass. Whatever it is, she seems to connect with Fred just as quickly, elevating him to a greater happiness than he’s ever known. Of course, as with any powerful girl that people don’t understand, this happiness is fated to flee just as quickly when she pushes herself beyond what her body can handle.

Or, shorter: It’s Sati. It’s Sati set in high school with teenagers. It’s Sateen.

Part of the reason I took on this project is that I felt like my own writing was stagnating. Time was I couldn’t sit down without pumping out a thousand words of my own universe, my own characters and plots and desires and ideas. But at a certain point, I started to try to focus on bettering and refining one of my main tales, one I’d revisited off and on since sixth grade ... and I just burned out. I realized that I simply could not rework this story again, that it wasn’t ever going to be what I wanted or do what I wanted, or at least not in this fifth attempt in ten years. I couldn’t keep talking about the same thing again.

This might be indicative of why I’ve had a hard time pushing through as A Year (And A Half Now, Almost) Of Pike has approached its end point. There’s no denying that the man is a killer storyteller, and that some of his ideas and worlds were stunning and even revolutionary within the genre. But thirty years is a long time to stay in the game, especially when you’re pumping out more than three books a year for the main part of your popularity. It’s admirable that he was able to keep that up for so long without resorting to the James Patterson model of hiring someone else to write the books that have his name in large type across the top. But then, when you’ve only got one brain working on all these extensive ideas and under these onerous deadlines, you’re invariably going to start to repeat yourself.

Almost everything Pike wrote after the start of Spooksville (I can’t even be charitable and say after his car accident) has repeated or revisited some major theme from an earlier work (mostly his own; I see you, Black Knight). And as I’ve pushed through and read every single one of his published works, I’ve started to feel that same fatigue that I had when trying to rewrite and repair something I’d spent so much time on of my own. See, this is why I can never actually be an academic despite being a composition teacher: so much of studying English is finding your niche and continuing to write about the same topic for your entire career, and I don’t think I could ever devote that much of my professional life to writing about the same thing. I just got tired of my ill-researched writing about the complete works of my favorite childhood author, for fuck’s sake.

Still, if any book was due a revamp, Sati fits that mold. It was his first adult novel, it kinda got buried to all except his most devoted fans, and maybe it would be timely to publish a book about kindness and introspection and acceptance just as the muckrakingest American election in recent history was getting underway. But most of all, it’s still a relevant look at how we act and what we think about when we consider faith and religion and God. Considering how audiences and the book market have so drastically changed in the last thirty years, it totally makes sense that Pike might want to revisit the concept for a new generation. And honestly, I’m a victim of my own age and literacy here — nobody else who might be interested in this YA book in 2015 is reading its spiritual predecessor from 1988.

I’m mostly going to blast through the summary, because it’s been more than three weeks since I finished the book and I don’t actually want to reread it to remember specifics. Fred is a high-school musician living in Elder, South Dakota, and just like any other teenager in a small town is dreaming of escape. His parents own a hardware store and just barely maintain a rocky marriage, though all we know about that is what Fred specifically tells us. His best friend Janet, the presumptive valedictorian, has her own messy home life, but they always have each other’s backs, which is why Janet pushes Fred toward the new girl.

This is Aja, a beautiful Brazilian who relocated to South Dakota for some reason three months ago but didn’t start school until today. The teacher in the class they share is unreasonably mean to her for apparently no reason, but it doesn’t put Fred off buying her lunch and trying to learn more about her. He’s unsuccessful, largely, but she does learn about him and his band and their work before she takes off. They’re doing a gig at a nearby Air Force bar on the weekend, and everyone knows Fred is the real talent and pressures him to perform a little more of his original and quieter work at the show. This here is Fred’s difficulty: he wants it, he has the talent and the drive, but he second-guesses how much people actually want to hear his voice.

Aja gets kicked out of the class they share when she’s accused of cheating on her entrance exam (what?), so Fred doesn’t see her again until after their gig. The crowd is getting raucous and angry, and the drummer doesn’t take well to that, so the evening is just starting to devolve into a brawl when Aja stands on a table and tells everyone to calm the fuck down. She also helps out one of the servicemen, who has taken a whiskey bottle to the head but now isn’t even bleeding. Weird, right?

A local reporter sure thinks so. She posts a video of the event, with a suggestion that maybe Aja is more than she appears to be. Can she heal people? The folks at their next gig have the same question, surrounding her and generally pestering until Fred manages to pull her away. They drop her off at home, the biggest house in town, and Fred finally asks her out, sort of, by responding to her question about his unhappiness by saying she should stop accepting dates with other dudes. Like, possessive much already? But on his way to work the next day, he sees the teacher in the cemetery, near her son’s grave, and decides to talk to her about Aja. This opens a floodgate: the teacher blames herself for her son running outside and getting hit by a car, and apparently Aja knew more than she should have, which was why the teacher was so salty with her before. So what else does this girl know?

Fred goes to pick Aja up for their first official date, and ends up talking to her guardian, where he finally learns more about her past. It seems that Aja was a feral child living near a village in the Amazon, and she had a reputation as a magical healer and talent. The guardian was compelled to the village for some reason, and appointed herself the caretaker of the girl, and only uprooted them to South Dakota because Aja said they needed to go there. The guardian only has a vague idea why, but she’s pretty sure it’s related to Fred.

They go back to his house, because his parents are out, and he plays her a song almost off the top of his head that she’s inspired. Before they can start gettin’ freaky, Fred’s phone rings, and apparently his hot-headed drummer has gotten into it with some drug dealers and cops in a nearby town and is in critical condition in the hospital. So Fred and Aja go there, but when he calls the guardian’s valet (or whatever this dude is; it’s kinda muddy) to tell her what’s up, he gets pissed and freaked out and orders Fred to make Aja leave the hospital. Only he can’t find her. And when he does, she’s all dizzy, and passes out on the ride home, and when he drops her off the valet screams at him and slams the door in his face.

But the drummer wakes up, and when Fred goes to see him, he hears a story of two beings visiting him, and his realization that this was the end, only he wasn’t ready to go because it would cause too much pain. This is the only real mention of the subplot that the band’s bass player is gay and in love with the drummer, and even though the drummer is straight (I mean, I guess he could be bi, Pike doesn’t really go into details, but the point is they don’t end up together) he cares too much about his friend to just kick the bucket. So the smaller of the beings picked up on that and touched him, and then he woke up.

There’s also a reporter there trying to talk to Fred and his best friend about the miracle that Aja performed, and they do their best to brush her off only she isn’t giving up. In fact, she’s using a YouTube channel to promote the idea that Aja is a goddess or something, with a video of the way she ended the bar brawl and testimony from a nurse in the hospital that she touched the drummer not long before he arose from life-threatening injuries. Fred agrees to meet with the reporter and actually gets more information than he gives up: namely, Aja has been curing and healing people since her days in Brazil and that she spoke with all of the villagers about her decision to leave for the US, saying there was an important reason to do so.

Before he can confront Aja and her handlers about it, her guardian dies. The valet says she’s written a letter to Fred, but he can’t seem to find it. So while we wait, let’s go on a date! Only someone in the restaurant recognizes Aja and insists she heal her daughter. And this is where we find Aja’s limitations: she can’t help this girl; her fate is to live for a short time.

In blasting through the summary I might be glossing over Aja’s description of her connection to the cosmos and how her powers and abilities work. A lot of it ties back to the same things Pike loves to revisit when thinking about metaphysics: the oneness of Buddhist nirvana, letting go of desires and selfishness to connect to the unity of humanity, and being able to tap into superhuman powers once you’re linked. Aja calls the overarching all the “Big Person,” and her abilities come from what the Big Person tells her is necessary. She can act out of her own human desires, respond to the Little Person, but when she does it takes a toll on her health, which is what happened with the drummer. But how does someone so young get tapped into a consciousness so vast and lose her childish selfishness? We’ll get there.

Anyway, Fred goes to a band rehearsal the next day and is stopped on the way by a family who has another sick kid in the hospital, desperate for him to put them in touch with Aja. He doesn’t want to do it, knowing what he knows, but his friends accuse him of being overprotective. The best friend compares a lot of what Aja has said she does with practices she’s learned through yoga and meditation, to draw an explicit line for those in the audience who haven’t just read 94 other Pike books and didn’t look more deeply into Eastern religion because of it. And then Fred’s phone rings, and it’s the family, and they already talked to Aja and their daughter is feeling better so he doesn’t have to put himself out. What? The kid was in the hospital in another state. Aja explains that she’s not actually the vessel: the Big Person does the work, and all she’s doing is making it aware and asking the question of “can we?”

The will reading for Aja’s guardian comes up, and in addition to splitting her (holy crap immense) wealth between Aja and the valet, she has also left instructions with her lawyer that Fred should get an audition with a record label in LA. The laywer also has the letter, which basically says that Fred can’t protect Aja from the infirm and ill, and he shouldn’t try. I guess this lady would know, right, having taken care of the girl for something like ten years. But word is getting out, more and more people are asking Aja for help, national reporters are starting to show up, Fred has a weird encounter with a spooky fortune teller in a graveyard, and he can’t help but be concerned. So he helps the valet hire a private security firm to keep these people away from Aja, which (when they follow her to school on Monday) prompts an emergency community meeting about the disruption of education by these horrible rumors.

As it turns out, this is actually a racist move by the principal, who has a reputation as an evangelical Christian and has unfairly targeted minorities (especially our drummer, who is Mexican) for years. He’s trying to get a lynch mob together without exactly saying as much. Only too bad for him a lot of people in the community (the more open-minded ones, the ones who have actually spoken to her) already support Aja, because of their own first-hand experience with her help. But enough people are screaming about Jesus that they’re just about ready to light up torches and drive Aja out of town. Until she reveals the racist principal’s big secret: he had a child with a black woman, and could never reconcile his love for them with his love for pointy white hoods or whatever, and then the kid died and he has always regretted it. And Aja holds his hands, and talks to him, and suddenly here comes the creepy fortune teller who it turns out was the mother of Racist Principal’s child, and they embrace and apologize and forgive, and the meeting is suddenly over.

Somewhere in all the Aja hullaballoo, the best friend took off to New York to live with her mother. She won’t answer Fred’s calls, she won’t respond to texts, and Aja (the last one to see her before she left) insists that she can’t be the one to reveal her confidences. So Fred goes to see her dad and try to get more info. Now this isn’t the first time Best Friend has left with the mom: the first was right after they got divorced, only she moved back a year later without any explanation. And the divorce was just as sudden and explanation-free, only the dad just accepted it. And Fred realizes, while he’s standing there in the living room and picking up hints from the dad and looking at old pictures where both women look uncomfortable: he’s a sexual predator. He touched his daughter inappropriately, because his wife and her mother was somehow loveless (leading to the girl coming back the first time) and so he partook of some fucked-up urges. Only the girl has never been able to accept that it wasn’t her fault, and in talking to Aja and exploring herself is she just getting there. So of course she needs to not LIVE with the motherfucker while she’s coming to grips.

Fortunately for Fred so he doesn’t stab a bitch, the trip to LA is nigh. Aja goes with him, and he plays his demos live, finishing with the new song he’s still writing for her. Of course that’s the song they want, and they hustle him into a recording session with an engineer to lay down a single. On the way back, Best Friend calls and asks if she can stay with him and his parents long enough to graduate high school with her friends, and as their flights land within a couple hours of each other in Sioux Falls, they plan to drive home together. Fred and Aja get there first, and he has to intimidate the dad away from the airport before his friend gets there. Only that can’t work for the whole state: he’s waiting for them to drive out of the parking lot, and attempts to run them off the road to take back his little girl.

Did I mention that it’s winter in South Dakota? The interstate is a sheet of ice, and these assholes are playing chicken at 100 mph. Of course they wreck the cars, and the kids get off with minor bumps and bruises. The dad isn’t so lucky: his car has overturned and trapped him inside. Now the best friend is upset with him, but she’s not a sociopath and he’s still her dad, so they work to pry him out of the car before it explodes. But the way he’s bleeding and choking, he’s probably going to die anyway, so she wants Aja to heal him. And this is Fred’s great test of faith: do I argue against this and risk losing my best friend, or do I go along and risk losing my girlfriend? He finally agrees to let her listen to the Big Person.

Of course Aja collapses immediately upon laying hands on the molester. But by the time emergency response gets to the accident, he’s feeling better and Aja is fading fast. She can now finally tell Fred about her childhood, her past, which she has long avoided. It turns out that her dad was a drug dealer who stole from his bosses, and as punishment they sent three strongarms to kill the whole family. Only when they murdered Aja’s mother, her soul fled her body, leaving a gap for connection to the Big Person. The female enforcer sensed this and took the kid and ran ... and this female enforcer ended up being Racist Principal’s baby momma. No, I don’t know how it works, get your own globe.

But now she’s given her all to Molester Dad and is on her way out. Still, her reason for coming to South Dakota was a good one: love. She knew that Fred needed her, and she knew that he would benefit from the connection she might provide to the Big Person. And even though her time was fated to be short, she feels happy that she completed her mission of love, and trusts that Fred will continue to spread the message. One last kiss, and she’s gone.

They end up at a hospital, and of course they want to do an autopsy on Aja to see why she died so suddenly and unexpectedly. The valet is firmly against it, and manages to get custody of the body and take it home, where he and Fred say one last goodbye before he lights the shit on fire. It’s a good thing she already filled out a will, that gave all her money to Fred, and that the lawyer has a copy of it!

There’s a long-ass epilogue that talks about what happened to everyone. The best friend has kids of her own and almost never talks to her dad, the two other band members founded a holistic medicine company in San Francisco and got married but to other people, and Fred himself was never able to leverage his meeting and audition into his own performing career but now writes hit songs for other people. But I guess none of them are about Aja, because now he had to write a book about it? And it’s done! The end!

See what I mean? This shit has been done before, almost beat for beat, and by the SAME AUTHOR. Now I’m not averse to reading a book again (cf. this whole goddamn project), but at least I’m going into the book knowing it is what it is. I’m not expecting to see something that is labeled a new work that actually retells a previous story that I literally just read. Maybe James Patterson can get away with that, but I don’t read his books either.

At any rate, this post is finally done. I have this monkey off my back, and maybe now I can reflect and give some closure on the whole project. But I’ll save that for another post.

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roundtableknight · 5 years ago

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Morning after ‘The Outsiders’

In which Reagan never interrupted that precious scene of Cath and Levi after they finished ‘The Outsiders’ before Levi had to screw everything up in the next chapter. This may be horrible, and I suck at Levi’s personality, because I’m not a bubbly person, and also some parts (like Wren talking in her sleep) I made up because not that much info is given to us, but enjoy!

Also this is starting from a scene in ‘Fangirl’, and all characters are of course from the lovely Rainbow Rowell!

Cath had been in quite a few precarious positions waking up into during her short duration of life she had been allowed so far. You don’t get normal mornings living with a twin sister who tends to be so outgoing, she transfers that energy into her sleep.

By talking in her sleep.

Or having a father, one who you so love but desperately wish would go to sleep rather than stay up during the night and question if one could put a fireman’s pole through you and your twins room in order for a quicker way to the bathroom.

All in the name of efficiency.

This was how it had been for too many years to count, since Cath’s mother walked out on them when they were merely eight, because she quote, ‘Needed to figure things out’ and didn’t know how to be a mother. Cath thought that was a load of rubbish. What mother has twins, surrounds them with love, (not as much as their father) and then just decides that she’s had enough when their in third grade, when they needed a motherly figure then more than ever to lean on.

Cath was still angry at her sister Wren for speaking to their mother again, but that isn’t why she woke up.

If you asked Cath, she would probably recall the last things before she went to bed that night in her shared dorm with Reagan would go along the lines of something like this;

Brushing her teeth earlier that night, so not to disturb herself while writing.

Eating a Blueberry bliss energy bar because she was hungry gosh darn it.

Getting a decent amount of Baz and Simon fanfic written since they were getting to the good part (all the parts were good to Cath, but some were just a notch or two higher than others).

Falling asleep writing said Baz and Simon fanfic because everyone knows a laptop keyboard is as comfortable as a pillow (well maybe a wooden one, or one with all those weird feathers in it that people slept on during the 1900s.)

This routine to Cath was becoming as normal as waking up to Wren talking about her latest boyfriend that she getting ready to dump (Alex, or Alfred?) in her sleep. Not that anyone could take her sister’s place. Reagan was barely in the room to count as a roommate, and when she was asleep she was practically a rock, making no noise until she woke up, and then the dam broke (not a literal dam, though with how hard she opened their door, Cath wouldn’t be surprised to hear about one breaking down from the shockwaves).

So the fact that she not only heard someone in their room, but that said person was currently encompassing her in their arm, she was a little more than surprised, and also to be completely honest, freaked out.

It’s okay, calm down, just...recite the facts of last night, then if they lead to something disastrous I have permission to freak out.

Cath thought this was a good plan, since she usually freaked out in her head, and no one seemed to notice, well, except Wren, but she wasn’t here at the moment, and they weren’t on speaking terms since she didn’t come back for Thanksgiving, but instead staying the day with Wren’s backstabbing mom. Their mom in reality, but Cath didn’t like to think of her like that, she didn’t deserve the title of it.

She lost that when she never came back.

Inhaling a scent different from her own, one of cigars and a hint of coffee, brought her back to reality, and resumed the pounding in her chest and tingling in her limbs from being caught up in someone else’s body parts during the night.

Oh god, thought Cath, trying to remember the night before. She had a hint of Gingerbread Mocha in the back of her mouth, and a Blueberry Bliss Energy Bar flavour on the tip of her tongue.

That can’t be right, I haven’t had one of those since before Thanksgiving, Levi ate them all.

Levi.

Oh god.

Cath immediately remembers the late night session of ‘The Outsiders’ that Cath read to Levi as a thank you for… well, everything he’s done. And also because Reagan was out again partying, and forgot she promised Levi the study session so he wouldn’t fail his Lit. Class exam on the book. Cath thought maybe Levi was dyslexia, but didn’t they get diagnosed before the age of College? Cath didn’t know, and she did care, but two things popped into her mind before that strand of thought could harbor any more room in her mind.

Levi is in my bed.

I’m sleeping with Reagan’s maybe boyfriend.

Reagan could come home at any time,

Shit.

Okay, make that three thoughts.

The last two were obvious encouragement to what she was supposed to do, which was to get out of the bed, her bed, and wake up Levi. Or maybe she could just leave him here and go get a coffee at Starbucks and come back feigning that nothing happened, because nothing did happen.

But there were two things wrong with that statement.

One, Levi made the best Mochas and nothing would compete, so it would be an utter waste of money to spend. And two, something did happen.

We kissed.

Cath remembers it now. It’s funny how the human brain works. When we want don’t want to remember something incredibly painful or not possible, it tends to block out said memory, but one thing about memories were that they connected to other memories, and unless she wanted to forget the whole last night, she was stuck with the memory.

But to be completely honest, Cath quite liked the memory.

Cath remembered the way Levi had hooked her to his side as she read ‘The Outsiders’ to him, and how her drowsy and impaired mind (she blamed it on the mocha) attached all her thoughts not to the book, which wasn’t half bad, but to the feel of Levi’s flannel against her skin, or the passing look of seeing his lips before she quickly looked up to see if he was still awake, which he was.

Watching her with his startling blue eyes.

Now in the morning, Cath had to be reasonable with herself. Which she did sometimes, once or twice.

A day.

Look, he probably thought I was Reagan. Or remember that the first time he saw Wren he said with complete factuality that she was the hotter twin, and that was just by a passing glance. I’m just a quick kiss. Okay, yeah, quick. Kiss.

But Cath realized she didn’t want to be a quick anything. She deserved way more than that. She wrote dozens of Baz and Simon scenes of their love, wasn’t it time for her to get something like that? A love that isn’t fictional and based on a wizard and (presumably) a vampire.

Cath like the idea of sharing these stories with Levi. He seemed to enjoy them (at least tolerate them) and he always had his opinions and questions on them, which Cath actually liked to answer. It wasn’t everyday you met someone who hasn’t read Simon Snow (because watching the movies don’t count).

But she also had to admit one fatal flaw in her plan, she hasn’t even asked Levi if he liked her the way she did, and also Reagan.

Shit.

Cath heard the intake of breath, well, deeper breath, and felt Levi move. Now was the time. Was he going to slowly take his arm that he had encompassing her back and leave without so much as a glance, or was something else going to happen, something more magical.

Cath didn’t know what was going to be scarier.

But what Cath didn’t think of was Levi kissing her on the top of her head, and pulling her closer to him.

Oh Shit, Oh Shit, Oh Shit

She was completely and utterly screwed.

Though at that moment she didn’t know exactly why. There was no menace to the name Reagan, or thought of impending doom if she missed her morning classes. No.

All she could think of was the way he kissed her on the head, with that small but cute mouth of his, the one hours earlier she was questioning if he could easily eat an apple with. The one that caused her whole body to go flush and red just by that little move.

She felt more than saw (because her head was still by/on his chest persay, and couldn’t see him) him smile. The muscles coordinating it gave him away like a whale breaching the water for all to see, it was very obvious.

Cath looked up, and got a bruise on her forehead.

Holding her head, she reopened her eyes and saw Levi, looking a little less beaten and smiling quite a bit more than her, more than anyone really, at her as she felt around her skull for adjustments to her temple area.

“Ouch” Cath said, and mentally scolded herself.

‘The first thing I have to say after we slept together, well...not like that.’

“Sorry, I didn’t know you were awake.” Levi said, putting his one hand on the bruising temple as Cath brought her hand back down.

“It’s fine, just if I was sleeping, why were you tilted downward, since I did not hit your chin. The area I hit was definitely smoother.”

“Ah, so are you a chin expert as well as a Simon Snow lover?” Levi asked with a smile on his face, a continuing smile.

“Of course, one must be knowledgeable in all types of things.” Cath waved her arms vaguely around to show all the types of things.

Also, Cath wanted to point out that they were still laying together.

On her bed.

Oh Shit?

“So are their any other area of the body that you and that brain have been studying?” Levi shifted, but still kept one arm under her around the waist while the other was free, watching her contemplate the question.

She had, and the answer didn’t need verbal response. She turned red. Again.

“I’m going to deny all wrongdoing to the court.” Cath mumbled and she shielded her face from Levi, instead putting it against her pillow, but he had already seen her face, and had started to giggle, giggle and not chuckle.

Cath felt him stretch again and reach for his phone.

“Oh.”

“What?” Cath said, a little more nervous than she was before. Not knowing what Levi had seen on his phone. Had Reagan walked in on them and saw the precarious position they were in, and had left fuming and given a threat to Levi that whatever they had was over, done with?

Cath also realized that she picked a good major to go into, since it seemed she was always so dramatic.

“I’m an hour late to work, I better go before the customers start to get angry that no one knows their order.” Levi untangled their limbs (which caused Cath to finally be able to feel hers again) and rose from the bed. Grabbing the empty Starbucks cups, he maneuvered between her and Reagan’s bed (Cath had a conspiracy that their room was just a walk in closet converted over to a dorm room, but that’s for a different discussion) and brought them over to the trash by the door to be thrown out.

Cath really didn’t know what to do in a position like this. Did she start to say goodbye to him? Tell him that she had a nice time reading (and the things that came with it)? She didn’t know, but what she did know was that he was opening the door to leave, and they barely had a civil conversation, and that was only about various studying of body parts.

Wait, reading!

“Levi, you forgot your book!” Cath said as she starts to fumble around the bedsheets, and finally produces the same copy (albeit a little dented) of ‘The Outsiders’ that she read him the night before.

“You might need this to study from for the exam.” Cath got up, saw her shirt was riding up a little too high, and fixed it. She continued her trek to Levi when he held up a hand for her to stop.

“I don’t need it.” He said, smiling at her again like she just said something funny.

Did I say something funny? Did I look funny fixing my shirt?

“Well, I might be a good reader, but even I can’t remember everything in this book, and we just read it last night.” Cath was really grasping for straws here, or needles, but straws hurt less. She started to recite what she had done ever since she woke up, and didn’t find any (too) mortifying as why Levi stopped her going to him.

Why doesn’t he want his book?

Would it bring back painful memories of last night, of them together. Him (maybe?) cheating on Reagan with her, but they just kissed. And tangled limbs. Did he not like her, and given her that kiss in the head as a friendly gesture, but then why did he watch her sleep?

Sometimes boys are so confusing.

“I don’t need it.” Levi says, sounding like he’s been saying this for awhile but Cath hadn’t heard him at all.

“Why not?” She questioned, she wanted to get to the bottom of this before heading off to her classes, so her head wouldn’t be stuck in the clouds (well any more stuck than usual).

“Because I’m going to work and I don’t think my coworkers will want me to be reciting ‘Stay Golden, Ponyboy’ to them.” He looked at her however like that would be a fun endeavour, and told herself to warn Levi’s coworkers about him and classic novels.

“So what do you want me to do with it.”

“Keep it”

“Really, why?” She figured this was the question to get the answer they had both been swimming around for the last two pages, oops, last two minutes.

“Because then I have a reason to come see you again, not that I need a reason.”

Cath starts to speak out of habit from this conversation, then realizes what he means, and starts to go red for the third time that morning. Cath think she broke her record.

“Oh, Okay.” Cath looked down at her socks that she left on from the night before (with ‘Carry On, Simon’ on the tops of them. A gift from Wren for her birthday one year).

She realized Levi had said something. Again. And that she had missed it. Again.

“What did you say?” She asked as he was about to shut the door, about to end the conversation, one of her favorites to date.

“I said six o’clock I’ll be done at work.” Levi said, moving his blond hair back from where it fell in front of his face to look at her. A face full of cute eyes and lips. Oh boy.

“Great” Cath replied.

“Oh, and also expect the best Gingerbread Mocha to date.” He said, and shut the door, but not before seeing his smile, and heard him walking down the hallway.

“Even better.” Cath replied to no one in particular, but maybe to the Baz cutout that was currently peeking out from her closet area.

And that’s all she wrote folks!

-Also are Simon Snow Socks available? Because I need so badly!! I also figured out that writing scenes in a characters mind is my favorite, because the two talking isn’t my cup of tea!

#rainbowrowellbooks #fangirlbook #leviandcath #fanfic #thisprobablysucks #but enjoy #thatonescene #ilovecath #andlevi #okayimdonenow #ireallydontlike #theoutsidersbut #theirsocute

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personalcoachingcenter · 3 years ago

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Research Paper: Claiming Your Influential Power

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/research-paper-claiming-your-influential-power/

Research Paper: Claiming Your Influential Power

Research Paper By Isobel Phillips (Leadership Coach, IRELAND)

Maureen Simon is an acclaimed consultant, teacher, and speaker with 25 years of experience in international business consulting and community development, including serving to mediate political conflict in Northern Ireland and Eastern Europe.

Maureen is the author of Awakening the Essential Feminine: Claiming Your Influential Power and has worked with tens of thousands of women worldwide. She bases her work on the strong belief that our world cultures now need, more than ever before, for women to step into their rightful power and leadership roles, and that that advanced skill development in the areas of communication, confidence building, and leadership and career development are all essential for women in business to fully contribute. Maureen is also a friend and colleague and kindly agreed to spend some time with me discussing coaching and women’s empowerment.

I began by asking Maureen about her history with coaching, and with coaching women in particular. Maureen explained:

My history with coaching began in London in 1997, when coaching came to London. I was asked by Coach U to be a part of the launch there because Tom Leonard, the head of the school at the time, was there and he was getting massive spreads in the Times, to get the idea that there might be another way to go about personal transformation other than the psychiatrist’s or the psychologist’s chair. And that was really important back then because, as you know, England can have a conservative nature. So, opening up and revealing a lot of really deep personal things would work for some, but not for everyone.

There were about five of us, and we were the first trained in Europe as coaches, and we discussed the idea of creating more publicity, more interest, so my whole mission was to get the word out. Vogue, and Red magazine, and all these places were like, what is this? Of course, you know, it’s a very different, nice medium that doesn’t really make us have to go back into the deep dark, nor does it make us reveal everything about ourselves, to move forward. The idea of coaching was a clear pathway to discovery. And on that clear pathway to discovery, people could give as much as they wished, as you can in therapy, as well, but it’s an easier way to come to self-knowledge and knowing thyself, as Socrates said than the expectation that we need to bare some of our soul.

Sothen as this whole thing launched it just took off like wildfire, because the concept was so innovative, in 1997. I was going all North-South and East and West for interviews, TV, and radio, and it just ended up becoming something that people just wanted to know more about. It was the perfect fit for the culture. So, then, of course, Ireland is next door and Europe. And people looked to London for innovation and it just went through the whole area and, as you know, continues to do so. So that was the early time of my involvement. And there were five people, and I know them and have great respect for them. We bought businesses and practices, and, to this day, I do some coaching and a lot of consulting. It’s always been a part of my tapestry and my fabric, really. It’s core to my being. I learned a lot in the process of setting it up and becoming a coach, and I learned a tremendous amount about myself.

I shared that one of the things I love about coaching is that you don’t need to reveal everything about your past to move forward, and Maureen picked up this point:

We want to encourage the people that we work with to integrate more of who we are because we’re whole. We need to integrate the past, the present, and where we want to go — that’s the whole being. We aren’t standing there saying, “Now, I need to know this to move forward”. The difference between coaching and therapy is that we’re really integrating as much as we can from the past but we’re also building on what we have in front of us.

I next asked Maureen about the benefits that coaching can offer women in particular.

I am such a women’s advocate that I would almost have to say that I think it benefits everyone so much that that’s an area that I haven’t particularly pigeon-holed women. I’m strongly an advocate of certain attributes and brain differences, and a lot of my work stems from the differences between the male and female brain, and that’s a controversial area, today, in science. But I do still think that women are relational, and have the ability to connect intuitively, and through the connection with another, we have the ability to create something quite magical, perhaps even immeasurable. And that’s where the coaching relationship, being so personal and one-on-one, is a high advantage.

I don’t want to separate people too much, but the question does ask me to do so, and if I’m going to go in that direction, I’d say that a lot of decisions have in the past been made by men on the golf course, and while golf clubs are not so much exclusive to that, anymore, the tradition still does live on. We have to be honest about that. So, women, instead of having that environment, can take that personal dialogue of questioning and introspection, and they do very well in gathering themselves in particular, in more intimate environments, in my opinion after working with hundreds of women.

I’m watching our current state of affairs and seeing that because we’re working online because we’re so focused on the absolute distant connections instead of the intimate connections, women are going to suffer a little from that. That’s one of the areas that I really want to focus on now, looking at how can we create these environments, these mentorships, these dialogues, particularly online so that women can have that intimate connection because we thrive there. Coaching, and the work that we’re both doing, can actually still greatly benefit women. Online isn’t best, but if we have to work online, we will. Keep women talking. Keep women connected. Keep mentoring programs going online. Keep things happening. They don’t have a golf course. They won’t have the golf course, but they still need that intimate environment to make up for a lost time, to move forward, and to be able to be much more of who they are, in their work environment, on or off-line.

In her book, Awakening the Essential Feminine: Claiming Your Influential Power, Maureen talks about the intrinsic powers that women hold. She explained more:

I’ve been reconnecting with the book recently because I basically launched it and it sold around the world, and I’ll give you a sample and speak to them.

Relationships. Women collaborate at a very high level. We can hear each other and move forward through support. It’s a very, very positive way for women to connect. They have inter-connectedness, the ability to connect deeply, and value communication, care, compassion, and empathy. A woman who inspired me to think about that is Helen Fisher, who wrote “The First Sex”. She’s a Rutgers professor and has done tremendous amounts around the world about the relationship and the attraction principle.

She gave an example that some of this was formed back in the day, when we would be together, say, by a lake, and your children and my children were there, and I would be watching all the children. I would be taking in the whole environment as I really mothered because it takes a community to raise a child. Anthropologists have studied the way the female brain is more developed between the right and left hemispheres, with a 14% thicker tissue connecting both hemispheres. Helen Fisher discusses that whole area, as an anthropologist, looking at what really created that area connectivity, and it comes from that environment. These are natural attributes from the feminine, within the female, that relate to the female. There’s plenty of others. I’m just really getting exciting going back into this with you.

And language. The language that we speak is often connected and cooperative. So, if I were talking to you, I might ask, “Can I get an idea of what you need right now?’ And you’d be, “Well, yeah, you know, I didn’t sleep. Or the baby was…” There’s connectivity that’s natural within the feminine. Now, we have to go back if we’re going to talk about the book and make sure that we clearly say that both men and women hold the masculine and the feminine, it’s not just one. So, the idea is that it’s in both, it’s in all of us. But sometimes we’ll have a dominant set of attributes. Feminine attributes that will guide us sometimes need more masculine. These are the really pure ones that I think are so powerful. The way we think is often known to be more mentally flexible because of the cortex tissue formation. Women think more flexibly and use a lot of verbal agility and big descriptions.

There are two reasons, really. It’s socialization and it’s brain biology. Probably one of my favorite traits is that we work with power from a place of contribution and connectivity. In the book, I talk about “power with” as opposed to “power over”, and that’s because we care for the whole and we’re focused on community. I look at NGOs and say, “Why are there so many women leading NGOs?” Even if it was massive amounts of money to lead an NGO, which it isn’t, you have to care for the community. These things are linked in our cultures, and that’s just a handful of them. There are 26 attributes in “Awakening the Essential Feminine – Claiming Your Influential Power”, in nine areas of life. It’s something I just kept seeing and did a lot of research to make points to hold that and then wrote the book.

Maureen has been revisiting her book, in light of current views on sex and gender. I asked how she has found that process:

You know, I’ve had a journey on that, and it tested me. Consulting in corporations, you really do need to be very open on the playing field, and very, very empathetic about where everyone is in their lives, and what their experiences are, particularly when working with leaders. I’ve learned that for some people, considering brain difference isn’t comfortable. I had to go back into my research and look at it and go back and read the research on the male and female brain, like Brizendine’s work from San Francisco. And I brought myself back to see that I do really, truly, stand by the book and the brain differences. One thing I’m not here to do is create a difference, but I’m here to create unity.

It’s just part of who I am. The three top values that inform my work are equity, truth, and unity. If I’m focusing on someone it’s often around the depth of connection to get to know them, to understand them, or to guide them. But when it comes down to the book, I still believe that the brain is different. And I’ve come back now, after a summer of really looking at it, and going into other books, texts, and I think there’s a place in the world for us to be united, but to still hold different opinions. Rather than changing the book, what I am deciding to do is to see these attributes as whatever you want to call them, or whatever you see them as. They basically will be the universal principles of good living that need to be carried out. You can file them, however, but how can we get to them? Some of the courses I’ll be offering will be for women, getting them to own that.

And the reason I still do that work, although I thought I’d be done with it by now, is because I think women still don’t own the natural power that they have been predisposed to and born with. To answer your question about the book, I would say that there are many theories, and I hold this one. I’m universalizing a little bit more by bringing in men and women, and bringing them to the attributes, and saying, “You have masculine and feminine. What attributes would you like to build on?”

I observed that Maureen spoke about empowering women and helping them to own their powers, and asked how we go about that:

If you need to make a change, the first thing you need to do is understand a couple of things. What is that change? Is the pain for you making that change better, or more comfortable than the gain that you will have when you make the change? And specifically, what will that affect your life? As we frame change, the most important thing is to get us to understand where we are within the spectrum of change, and then to move towards specific steps.

The first part is to understand, from the core of the being, where the change needs to be. If they say, “I want to be powerful,” Power comes from a source of knowing ourselves, what we value, and who we are. The second thing to evaluate is, are you motivated to make this change? And then the third thing is getting them to even envision, ahead of time, what it would be like to be this clearly defined vision of a woman holding power. And what would be the benefit to them? It gets into some cognitive work. It gets into some very clear workaround choices and values. It moves into pain versus gain. It may not always be a pain, but is there a reason? And then envision that outcome so that we can begin to see it, and then we make it real in the world. So, it’s a process of knowing myself, first, and committing to change, crystallizing the vision, and moving out in the world with the vision. Those are the four steps that I would generally bring someone through.

We joke a little about how straightforward it sounds when life is not so straightforward. However, it does summarize the coaching process of self-discovery but to move forward to where you need to be. Maureen observes that it’s also designed by ourselves as we bring people through, as support, and then they infiltrate their part into what becomes a unified process.

Maureen works a lot with women in corporate roles and works to promote equality and equity in the workplace. I ask what she feels are some of the main issues facing women in the workplace today?

Right now, the biggest issue that I’m seeing on calls, with women, and reading is the inability to be relational in the work environment. It’s not like we haven’t been online. We’ve been online. But there’s something about minimal contact that’s coming up a lot on the calls. In their teams, women can do quite a lot. Like here, in this environment, maybe there’d be two others with us on a call, and there’s an intimacy of sorts. But when it comes to now moving from our team to understanding the whole organization, the water cooler talk, the dynamic connection, the intuition that women use when they’re present with someone, their career paths are hindered. They don’t have that whole dynamic picture. So, I’m seeing that’s a key issue, which is a concern that I’m working on in as many ways as I can.

The other thing is that people say that the glass ceiling is of the past. And I work often in finance, where I’m seeing significant holdback on women from actually achieving equal positions at the top of organizations, even higher when we look at the executive pool. Women right at this moment need to hold their vision for their career path and continue to work towards it. A couple of clients I have are putting in their marketing at high levels and they’re doing more training on digital marketing. But I’m also working with them to find their own ways, strategically, in their organization, as if we were in person. The main thing is, don’t give up on the vision that you have for your career.

Secondly, it can be challenging, but it’s really important to decide the place that your work fits into your life at a given time and to not beat yourself up if this is a phase where something different is required. Time will pass and things will happen. A lot of women feel like they’re slipping back, so, where I’m working with them is, OK. If you’re going part-time now because it’s become a different environment. And let’s face it, a lot of obligations for children, childcare and children’s care and education, is falling on the mother. So, my thought is, let’s just see this as a temporary sort of pause, but don’t give up on where you’re going and keep making entrees. Build those networks and know that this too will pass. Kids will get old enough and they’ll have their own lives.

And then the third thing I work with women on is often to get a tandem track. And they don’t see themselves clearly enough to know that they can move specifically towards something by design, right now, that will be a part of their future. We have to be future thinking. This is the third point. I think we take on, “Oh my God. The children are on my lap and I’m on a meeting”. Ah! And so that’s what freezes us. But it’s not only the women with children. It’s the women without children. They’re going in the other direction, often, of when they’re working at home that “I’m isolated and the whole world is out here, but I’m over here”. So, we have all kinds of stories in our lives. The most important thing to know is that we’re basically here to make a difference, to contribute, to create something bigger than ourselves. In my opinion, with my work, the third track is to work a tandem track and to look to future growth, to procreate. This is my now and then, here’s where I’m going. And be clear enough to take daily steps towards that so that you actually are moving specifically towards something. Otherwise, it will all become a big bundle, you know, yarn that’s tied up in a big knot.

Finally, I invite Maureen to share what gives her hope right now.

I think humans are amazing and I think there are all kinds of humans, and in the heart of each human, there is an amazing spark. And potentiality is really interesting. I think we’re in a very disruptive time, on the planet. There are disruptors in different aspects of our lives, which I think is a good thing, and I think we need it. I think we can get complacent and fall asleep. I think we need a shake-up to say, what do we value? What are our lives about? Why am I here? That’s the crux of the work I do. Why am I here? It’s not just to feed the corporations, or whoever. It’s to really be somebody bigger than myself in those environments. And I get excited about the potential side because I spend a lot of time working with people to have them understand the bigger picture of their lives. I believe that we are here for a reason.

One of the many teachers who have been guiding me to that, from many years back, John O��Donohue, a famous Irish poet and writer, put a whole lot of time of his life in teaching us that we’re here for something bigger than ourselves and that it may not be a religious experience but it’s absolutely something that we know we’re here for. It’s about the meaning. So, I put a lot of time into that. I also love nature. Being here in Ireland is just really and truly phenomenal. And I love to be connected with art, and music, and dance and movement. There are so many things that can feed us, no matter how our mood is. We will always be able to find some upliftment. And I’m also very big on that. I have days where I question things and say, “You always loved those four or five things. But what is it that you’re not seeing about the world?”. because sometimes I do feel as though I have such great hopes that I need to make sure I am empathetically feeling what others are feeling. We all have those moments, but I feel like I see the greater good and I see that we’re on a good trajectory and a lot is going to get shaken up on this planet as it is. And I think it’s going to end up landing in a good place, and that gives me hope.

I’m so very grateful to Maureen for sharing her time and thoughts with me. Maureen can be found online at www.maureensimon.com and www.empoweredwomenconsulting.com.

Reference

Simon, M. (2011) Awakening the Essential Feminine: Claiming Your Influential Power. Essential Feminine Publishing

Original source: https://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/research-papers/isobel-phillips-interview-with-maureen-simon/

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parkertorrence-blog · 7 years ago

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NecroManIcon part 1.2

Book of the Black Dragon

Part One chapter two :: Tiamat

According to Assyro-Babylonian mythology, at the beginning of the world there were two primordial beings-Apsu, the male incarnation of fresh water and space; and Tiamat, the female incarnation of the sea and chaos. [Dragons A Natural History by Dr. Karl Shuker, Simon & Schuster 1995]

The coming of order-the division of light from darkness, of the heavens and the earth from the waters-required that the first dragons be conquered, since they were demons of disorder. Their foes were gods, not men, for these leviathans existed long before humankind appeared. [DRAGONS (The Enchanted World) by the Editors of Time-Life Books 1984] On that very day when the Unicorn drew forth from barren rock a gushing spring of life, the seeds of doom were sown as well. For even as those shining waters spread their fertile mosture, they poured into unlighted fissures and trickled down to secret, burning caverns that wound among the mountains' roots. There, in those abysmal chambers, the sacred waters' life-bestowing charge was first expended in raising up a living thing. And thus in fire and in darkness was the Dragon born. Her nature bears everlasting testimony to the uneasy birth, and ever after, no other creature has possessed the same measure of strength and cunning. Now the first dragon was Yaldabaoth (though she is called Tliamat as well, and many other names besides). She was fearsomely wrought, with darting, lidless eyes; and the first sight caught in her unblinking gaze was her own image, reflected in the dark waters. She worshipped the sight, and a secret lust for that selfsame image consumed her heart for all time since. And Yaldabaoth grew great and spawned others like herself: Nagamat and Kaliyet and Orkus, Tarasque and Serpens; and many more besides. Now while dragons are of many sizes and shapes, all are swift and sharp of intellect, and thirst after knowledge. While the Unicorn seeks to divine the secrets of creation that he may more perfectly know the Creator, the Dragon desires the same that it may gain dominion over all the world, and thereby conquer death. [Quest: In Search of the Dragontooth by Michael Green, Running Press 1994] Poets of every ancient land spoke of the titanic patterns of their conflicts. From the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, formed by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, came the earliest tales. There, thousands of years ago, an unknown scribe in the land of Babylon set down on seven clay tablets a story of creation that had already descended through generations of his people by word of mouth. In the beginning, wrote the scribe, when all was dark and formless, two primal beings came into existence. One was male, the spirit of fresh water and the void, and it was called Apsu. The other was female, the spirit of salt water and chaos, and it was a dragon, composed of elements of dangerous creatures yet to come: It possessed the jaws of a crocodile, the teeth of a lion, the wings of a bat, the legs of a lizard, the talons of an eagle, the body of a python, the horns of a bull. The dragon's name was Tiamat. The union of these two creatures, wrote the scribe, spawned the gods, and one of them killed his father, Apsu. [DRAGONS (The Enchanted World) by the Editors of Time-Life Books 1984] ABSU rose up to slay the Elder Gods by stealth. With magick charm and spell ABSU fought, But was slain by the sorcery of the Elder Gods. And it was their first victory. His body was lain in an empty Space In a crevice of the heavens Hid He was slain, But his blood cried out to the Abode of Heaven. [Necronomicon by Simon, Avon Books 1980] Then in her dragon's fury, Tiamat gave birth to a new kind of offspring, a menagerie of monsters to afflict her first brood. She brought forth scorpion men and demon lions, giant serpents and-lesser versions of herself-glittering dragons. Chaos reigned in the formless void. In order to defend themselves, the gods called one of their own number as a champion. [DRAGONS (The Enchanted World) by the Editors of Time-Life Books 1984] MARDUK was chosen of the Elders to fight KUR and wrest power from the Great Sleeping Serpent who dwells beneath the Mountians of the Scorpion. MARDUK was given a weapon, and a Sign, and Fifty Powers were given to him to fight the awful TIAMAT. [Necronomicon by Simon, Avon Books 1980] This was Marduk, who would become lord of the universe. Armed with a net and a club, with poison, with bow and arrow and a quiver of lightning bolts, the god Marduk mounted a storm chariot drawn by four swift and violent steeds. He was escorted by the four winds and a mighty hurricane. Thus arrayed in terror, Mardruk searched the universe for Tiamat, his dragon mother. [DRAGONS (The Enchanted World) by the Editors of Time-Life Books 1984] Transported by the power of a tumultuous, raging tempest, he swiftly reached the appointed battlefield, and at once the massed forces of Tiamat arose to destroy him. [Dragons A Natural History by Dr. Karl Shuker, Simon & Schuster 1995] She summoned the Viper, the Dragon, and the Winged Bull, The Great Lion, the Mad-Dog, and the Scorpion-Man. Mighty rabid Demons, Feathered-Serpents, the Horse-Man, Bearing weapons that spare not Fearless in Battle, Charmed with the spells of ancient sorcery, ...withal Eleven of this kind she brought forth With KINGU as Leader of the Minions. [Necronomicon by Simon, Avon Books 1980] But as Tiamat approached, with her troops in her wake, Marduk flung his net over this vast monster, enveloping her in an inextricable tangle of mesh that bound her so tightly she was unable to break free. Immediately, Marduk directed the wild fury of the hurricane into her face, and as expected, Tiamat opened her colossal jaws in a frenzied attempt to engulf her persecutor. The hurricane surged into her moth, exerting the full force of its raging power to prevent her from closing her jaws again, gripping her heart with chill fingers of ice and inflating her belly with its vigorous breath. [Dragons A Natural History by Dr. Karl Shuker, Simon & Schuster 1995] Then, taking aim with his bow, Marduk shot an arrow between Tiamat's open jaws, straight down into her heart. "Her inner parts he cleft," wrote the scribe. "He split her heart. He rendered her powerless and destroyed her life. He felled her body and stood upright on it." The death of Tiamat threw her beast-brood into confusion, and they fled for their lives. But Marduk caught them all in his net and put them in chains and threw them into the infernal regions. [DRAGONS (The Enchanted World) by the Editors of Time-Life Books 1984] The old order was no more. Once he had annihilated all her panic-stricken followers, too, Marduk set about creating an entire world from the carcass of Tiamat. After cleaving her body in two, he fashioned one half into the heavens, and molded the other into the earth. He set the stars in the heavens and garnished the earth with fields, forests, rivers, and mountains, populating them with a teeming myriad of wildlife. [Dragons A Natural History by Dr. Karl Shuker, Simon & Schuster 1995] From the Blood of KINGU he fashioned Man. He constructed Watchtowers for the Elder Gods Fixing their astral bodies as constellations That they may watch the Gate of ABSU The Gate of TIAMAT they watch The Gate of KINGU they oversee The Gate whose Guardian is IAK SAKKAK they bind. All the Elder Powers resist The Force of Ancient Artistry The Magick Spell of the Oldest Ones The Incantation of the Primal Power The Mountain KUR, the Serpent God The Mountain MASHU, that of Magick The Dead KUTULU, Dead but Dreaming TIAMAT, Dead but Dreaming And shall their generation come again? [Necronomicon by Simon, Avon Books 1980] The world turned dark and I believed I swooned, though somehow I did not fall. Mind reeling, I gained my wits, and saw that I stood no longer above a hissing sea, but in a craggy wilderness overlooking a shadowy plain! The ramparts above us were gone; there was not the slightest sign of human habitation. I turned in utmost confusion to my host, and he responded with a look of grave intensity. "Behold Magh Dá Cheo, the Plain of the Two Mists," he said. "Follow, if you wish to know the beginnings." I followed. The ground was moist, and a rich damp fragrance filled the air. Wild mountains rose beyond the plan, and the sun hung at the horizon just as in the world we had left behind us. My host moved quickly forward down a narrow defile, for light was waning. We threaded our way along a path between jagged outcroppings, all overgrown in places with a rich cloak of fern and moss glowing like jewels in the last golden rays of the sun. There seemed to be ancient languages writ in the delicate wrinkles that adorned the rocks, but I cannot say for sure. My spirit rose in gladness, for I had found my way into the magic hidden realm! The dying light illuminated a great and convoluted thing hanging in the darkness. Along moment I regarded it in puzzlement, until with a start I saw it was a monstrous skull unlike any creature that I knew. Its forehead was fully three spans in width, and armed with horns and tusks. Yet it was also a thing of fierce and efficient beauty, and I knew suddenly that through the flesh was gone a refined and ancient will remained. Like a shining sword, it was both supremely rational and mystical. It would accept no obstacle; it would penetrate every opposing strategy in pursuit of higher purpose. [Quest: In Search of the Dragontooth by Michael Green, Running Press 1994]

#NecroManIcon #necronomicon #tiamat #dragon

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bazypitchandsimonsnow · 7 years ago

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Locked Away in a Tower

Rating: T

Genre: Angst and fluff

Word Count: 6576

Summary: Prince Simon of Watford has been kidnapped and guarded by a dragon for a year. Sir Basilton is sick of watching others fail to rescue him. Based on "supernatural kiss" prompt.

Read on AO3

AN: Hoooo boy is this long! Once again, Theo let her fic writing spin out of control. I wrote this in one sitting and murdered my eyeballs but it was worth it. I don't exactly know what supernatural kiss means, so I hope this is correct. Either way it was fun. Enjoy! :D

Everyone knows the story. It’s spread throughout the land.

In the kingdom of Watford, there’s a wizard king named David. He rules his people with an iron fist. Everyone fears his wrath. Though he had made good reforms to the kingdom, he’d hurt many in his way. But his son is another story. Prince Simon was kind where his father harsh. He used his great strength to help others rather than demand respect. He became a knight at only 17, a feat only achieved by one other; The son of the former royal family, Basilton Pitch, his bitter rival in school.

But there were those who wished to hurt King David. At age 20, someone kidnapped the Prince, and locked him away in a distant castle, leaving the King only a map and a note as a means to taunt him. To keep Simon from escaping and prevent brave men from attempting to rescue him, a terrifying dragon was on guard at all times. The kingdom was outraged to lose their beloved prince. Many blamed the Pitch family, claiming they took him because they wanted the kingdom back. But there was no proof. Only rumours and panic.

King David kept the true location of the castle to himself so his enemies would not go after his son. Knight after knight was sent, all returning unsuccessful. It became the impossible quest. The great trial for all knights of Watford. Though the King would not send one of his greatest knights, the only one who matched his perfect son. Me, Sir Basilton, and I’m damn well sick of it.

I yell as I plunge the sword into the practice dummy. I don’t know who I want it to be. King David, for once again refusing my request to be sent out. My father, for being even remotely happy about the Prince’s disappearance. The dragon, for keeping Simon hostage for a year. Simon, for getting himself bloody kidnapped. Myself, for being so bloody useless.

“What did that poor thing ever do to you, Basil?”

I turn to the snide voice. Penelope stands in the doorway, wearing her ridiculously bright coloured clothing to match her hair. Her patchwork cape waves behind her in the breeze. She thinks being a court magician means she has to look as eccentric as possible. As a magician myself, I thoroughly disagree.

“It pissed me off,” I mutter, using my left foot to violently kick off the hole-filled straw man from my blade.

“I didn’t know dummies were capable of causing so much rage.”

I sheath my sword. “What do you want, Bunce?”

She walks towards me. “I’m worried about you, Baz. You haven’t been sleeping again, have you?”

I growl, walking briskly past her into the castle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh come on, Baz!” She follows behind me. “It doesn’t take magic to see that you’re a complete disaster.”

She’s right. I have bags under my eyes, my hair's a mess from tossing and turning, and I generally look like shit. A year of unending worry certainly does a number on someone.

“I’m just concerned about the kingdom. Without the Prince’s tempering influence, I’m worried King David will go on the warpath.”

“Those aren’t your worries, those are your father’s.”

She’s right again. Mine are more along the lines of “terrified the boy I’m in love with is going to stay locked in a tower for the rest of his life, or get burn to a crisp by a temperamental dragon.” But I haven’t told Bunce that. And I’m going to keep it that way.

I whip around to face her. We’re standing in the stone hallway. My voice is very loud in the empty cavern. “Why are you interrogating me? Have your ideas about Pitches changed? Trying to find out if my family really did kidnap the prince? Going to report back to your King’s Champion brother?” I'm spitting vitriol, like I always do when I'm scared.

Penelope shakes her head, making her purple curls rattle. “No. Just concerned for a friend.”

My resolve softens slightly. Ever since Simon’s disappearance, Bunce and I have gone from enemies to mutual respect to tentative friendship. Despite my outburst, I know she’s one of the few people who truly believes my family has nothing to do with all of this. (She's smart enough to know we've gained nothing from it expect more ire from the Court.) We’re both scared for Simon too. Bonding through fear, I guess.

I reach out to place a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Bunce. But I’m perfectly alright.” Just terrified about the safety of the man I love. No problem there. I try to convey with only a look for her not to ask further. I can’t bring myself to say it out loud.

She sighs, knowing to back off. “Alright. To be honest, I’m a mess too. I’ve been pouring over my mother’s books about dragons. All of them say they’re non-violent creatures. They only attack as a last resort. Someone must be controlling it, making it guard Simon and attack knights.”

“So it’s under a spell. Know a way to break it?” Bunce is the most brilliant witch I’ve ever met. If anyone knows, she does.

“Without knowledge of the specific spell, no, definitely not. There’s universal curse breaking stuff, but those are a long shot.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Like what?”

She scoffs and throws me a smirk. “Well, there’s always true love’s kiss. But I don’t think you want to snog a dragon.”

I scoff myself, and start walking down the hallway again. “I would prefer not to have my lips burned off, thank you very much.”

We laugh together and keep moving forward. But my mind is far away. It’s at a desolate castle, where a now 21 year old man with blue eyes and bronze curls is being kept, guarded by a terrifying dragon. I just hope he’s okay.

“We need to launch a large scale assault. My subjects are getting very restless. They're threatening not to pay taxes now!” Lord Wellbelove shouts.

They’re all sitting at the large table in the King’s war room. King David sits at the head, elbows on the table with fingers locked together. His golden circlet is askew, and there are stress wrinkles all over his face. The constant state of panic in the kingdom has not helped to King’s mental or physical health.

“And what, have our entire army burned to the ground?” My father retorts.

“Oh be quiet, Malcolm. You just don’t want your scheme to fail. Everyone knows you stole the prince.”

“And where’s your proof? Because all of you have been accusing me for a year without a shred of evidence.”

“Then why shouldn’t we send the whole army, hm?”

“Because we shouldn’t leave the city unprotected! What if our enemies get word that Watford is unguarded? The vampires will overrun us.”

My father has a point, of course. But since it’s coming from him, they all assume it’s a plot. It’s infuriating. We love this kingdom just as much as they do. Just because we dislike the king doesn’t mean we’ll destroy Watford in the process.

“We’ll send another knight, if you all insist,” the King mutters.

Everyone turns to look at him. His expression is as hard as stone. I resist the urge to jump from my spot at the door and throttle the bastard.

“Who can we send?” Lord Wellbelove says. “Every knight has tried and failed.”

“I haven’t.” I step forward. Everyone turns to look at me. Both Father and King David glare at me for completely different reasons.

“Sir Basilton, what do you mean?” A lord interjects.

“I mean that I have not been sent to try and save Prince Simon. Which baffles me, considering I am one of the best knights.”

Premal, Bunce’s infuriatingly smug brother, steps forward from behind the King. He sneers at me. “The King has been cautious because of the suspicion of you and your family. You and the Prince have never got along, not since you were children. Why would you want to help him? And what if you kill him for revenge? How many times has your aunt accused our ruler of causing the late Queen Natasha’s untimely demise?”

I tighten my grip on my sword handle. My blood is practically boiling. “Do not assume I share my aunt’s views. I serve the kingdom, and rescuing the heir would be in service to the kingdom. So please, allow me to go.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise-” the King starts. But he’s quickly cut off by another lord.

“Why not? Sir Pitch is correct, he’s one of the best knights in Watford.”

Lord Wellbelove stands up. “Also he’s a fire mage, like his mother. I think that would be quite useful against a dragon.”

There are mumbles of agreement among most of them. King David’s lip tightens. He glares at me, but he knows he can’t refuse me now. He sighs angrily.

“Very well. You shall set out tomorrow at first light, Sir Basilton.”

I bow gracefully. “Thank you, your highness.”

The meeting ends shortly after. I receive mixture of nods and glares as they all exit. Father pats my shoulder. As I leave, Premal grabs my arm. His stare would’ve caused weak people to shiver. Luckily, I’m not so easily intimidated by the likes of him.

“If you hurt Simon, I swear to Christ, Pitch, I’ll-”

“Don’t worry, Sir Bunce,” I say, snatching my wrist away from his grip. “I could never hurt him.”

I saddle my horse at dawn. Premal reluctantly gave me a copy of the map. Father wished me luck (he probably thinks a Pitch saving the Crown Prince will help our status). The king merely shook my hand and mumbled good tidings. Mordelia gave me her favourite toy, saying it would protect me. I promised to come back. I hope I don’t have to break that.

“There, all set, Ivory,” I murmured to my stead. “We’ve got a long road ahead.”

“Don’t I get a goodbye, Basilton?”

There’s Bunce again, dressed in ridiculously patterned pyjamas. (All her clothing is terrifying).

“Depends. Are you going to insult me?”

She rolls her eyes. “We always insult each other, it’s our thing.”

I cross my arms with a sly smirk. “Then I don’t need to give a goodbye to a stupidly clothed bespectacled witch.”

She walks to me with her hands on her hips, staring up with a frown. “Well, I don’t need one from a freakishly tall asshole knight.”

We both stare for a bit, then break out into giggles. It takes my mind off the situation for a second. But when we stop, reality sets in. Bunce looks scared. I can’t blame her. She’s lost Simon and I don’t think she wants to lose me either.

She throws her arms around my torso, crushing her face into my breast plate. I make an oomph sound before hugging her in return.

“Find him, please,” she whispers, “and don’t die.”

I stroke her hair. “I will, and I’ll try not to, I promise.”

She pulls back and sticks hand in her robe pocket, pulling out a long white wand. “Take this.”

“Bunce, I have a wand-”

“I know. But you’ll want this one more. I, uh... acquired it from the royal vault. It was Queen Natasha’s.”

My eyes widen. I remember it now; Seeing my mother wave that wand, making fire dance all around the throne room for me. I’d giggle and clap at all the pretty lights. I cautiously take it from Bunce and put in my saddle bag. I clasp her hand one last time.

“Thank you, Penelope.”

She squeezes my palm in return. “Now go bring our boy home.”

I don’t verbally acknowledge what she says, but I know what she means. Of course she’s too smart not to notice what I feel. I nod and mount my horse, riding off into the distance.

I make camp in a forest that night. Ivory is tied to the tree. I lay my pallet out, next to a makeshift fire pit. Cautiously, I take my mother’s wand out of the bag. It’s a gorgeous thing, crafted from fine ivory and covered in swirled carvings, a smooth black leather handle at the thicker end. I point it at the wood pile and barely whisper the spell.

The fire roars to life. I chuckle. Of course it’s a powerful tool, especially in the hands of a fire mage like me. Like my mother was.

I remember the first time I set something on fire with magic. It was in school, in my first class of second year. We were all supposed to light a small twig. I did it without problem. But Simon made the stick explode. His magic was always powerful yet volatile. I thought he was an idiot then, unworthy of being the Crown Prince. Though deep down, I felt my stomach turn at the way he smiled sheepishly and blushed from embarrassment. I miss his smile.

“You better still be alive, you wonderful git,” I mutter.

After a light dinner, I tuck into bed for the night, still worrying as I nod off.

“You absolute idiot!” Simon shouts at me. “You unleashed a chimera?!”

“It wasn’t me! It was already here!” I roar, hoping he’ll believe the lie.

“I don’t have time to argue with you, Pitch. Just pick up your damn sword!”

I growl, but do as he says. We launch ourselves at the beast. Simon’s technique is frantic but effective. He slashes and cuts, spilling the monster’s blood. I try to be more precise, looking for a single weak spot.

“Stop dawdling and just hit it, Baz!” he yells.

“I’m trying to be effective!”

“Well you aren’t help- ah!” The chimera gets him in the side, sending him to the ground. He groans and clutches his head. The beast stops attacking me and goes straight for him. My heart seizes. I just wanted to scare Simon, not actually hurt him. It hits me like a ton of bricks in that moment. I don’t want anyone, including myself, to cause him any harm.

But I don’t have time to sort through my feelings. The chimera gets closer to Simon. I charge at it, burying my blade in it’s neck to the hilt. I pull down and blood spills out of it in one large gush. With a last wet gasp, the beast collapses. Simon blinks rapidly and groans as he sits up. I’m panting, covered in chimera blood.

“You saved me,” he says. For once, he doesn’t look at me like an enemy. His gorgeous blue eyes are wide, pink lips hanging open. He looks admiring and in awe. I realise how much I want him to always look at me like that. But, for someone scared of so little, I’m terrified of what he’d say if I told him.

“Don’t kid yourself, Princeling,” I sneer. “If you died while I was here, your idiot father would most assuredly blame me and my family. I don’t need another reason for him to hate us.”

The look goes away, replaced with a scowl, and my heart breaks. He gets up and starts to walk. “Fuck you, Pitch.”

As I watch his back move farther away, I know one thing to be true. I’m in love with Prince Simon, heir to King David, impossible golden boy, and my sworn enemy. My life is a living hell.

I wake up with a gasp. The sun is rising in the east. The fire has died. My face feels wet. I touch my cheek, and see tears on my fingers. Of course I’m thinking about that day while going off to save Simon. Six years later and it’s still fresh in my mind.

What if I do rescue him? Will I tell him then? The prospect makes my heart stutter.

“No,” I say to myself, “no time for silly feelings.”

Most importantly, I have to save the Crown Prince. Not Simon, the boy with a big heart and an even bigger smile. Because I’m a knight and it’s my sworn duty to protect this kingdom. My stupid undying love comes second to that.

That’s what I’ll keep telling myself.

The castle is enormous. A large crumbling fortress sitting on a cliff side. Crows and ravens caw as they circle it’s tallest tower. I leave Ivory tied up in a nearby wood. I make one last check to make sure that my armour is secure, my sword is at my side, and my mother’s wand is up my sleeve.

“Don’t worry, Simon,” I say, “help is on the way.”

I cautiously walk across the rickety old drawbridge, hand ready on my sword. The only sounds are the birds above. I enter the front door as quietly as possible. The whole room is pitch black. Pulling out the wand, I light a small fire in my hand. It illuminates only the first few feet in front of me. The floor is cracked with vines growing through. No one has truly lived here for ages, obviously. I walk more towards the centre.

“Hello?” I whisper. “Anyone in in here?”

I hear no response. Not a human one anyway.

The growl to my left of me is guttural, certainly animal. I freeze in place. Slowly, I expand the fire as I turn on the spot.

It’s hanging on the wall, Large, scaly, and bright red. I can only see part of it’s face. That long reptilian snout poking out in front of me. It’s lips pull back to show sharp white teeth, barely visible slit pupils narrowing under the firelight.

I back up a bit. “Oh god.”

Smoke pours from it’s nose holes, mouth starting to open. I hear it take in a breath.

“Shit-”

I dive out of the way just as the column of flames shoots out, hitting the ground with a thud. The dragon’s breath lights a series of old torches along the opposite wall. I see the beast more clearly now. It’s bright scarlet with a bit of a metallic bronze sheen. Large bat wings with sharp joint tips extend from its back. A pointed tail slashes back and forth angrily.

I unsheathe my sword and assume battle stance, slipping my wand into my belt. “Come on you overgrown lizard! Give me a real fight!”

The dragon roars, shaking the foundations of the castle. It launches forward with claws bared. I barely dodge the attack. It slides across the floor and growls. It tries to hit me again and again with it's front claws, but I parry each attempt. This beast fights with no technique. Just desperately hoping it’ll get me with a stray slash. But it’s absolutely relentless. I feel my lungs beginning to ache and my arms getting sore.

It backs away. I take a moment to breath, sword falling. The dragon opens it’s mouth, and I see fire building in it’s throat.

I whip out my wand as the fire barrels towards me. When it hits the ivory tip, the flames burst out to surround me. My arm wobbles slightly as I hold the massive amount of fire back. I can’t do this for long. It sucks away too much of my magic and strength.

The onslaught ends. I wave my wand to clear the remaining flames. Just in time to see the monster jumping towards me.

It tackles me to the ground. I hold it’s front talons away from my face with the flat of my sword, using both hands to push with all my might. It’s scaly head turns to stare down at me with one reptilian blue eye.

Wait. I know that blue.

It’s not special. Not navy or cornflower. Just, blue. The same blue I’ve spent years studying and committing to memory.

My voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. “Simon?”

The dragon’s eye expands. It stops pushing against me. Slowly, it lets me sit up. My head is spinning. My heart is pounding. It can’t be, right?

“Simon, is that you?”

Impossibly, the dragon’s face softens. It’s pupils expand and its lips hang a bit open. I fully sit, watching the beast back away slightly. It stares at me with wide, wondering eyes. That only confirms my fears. I’d know that look anywhere.

No wonder the knights before always found a dragon but no prince. They were one and the same.

“Oh god,” I whisper, “it’s really you.”

I go to my knees and drop my sword. The clanking noise rings in the otherwise silent room. I tentatively reach out towards him. He pulls back with a growl.

“It’s alright, Simon. It’s me, Baz. You know who I am.”

He calms down, and walks towards me. I carefully place my hand on his face. He turns into my touch, nuzzling my palm. His scales scrape against my rough hands.

“Who did this to you?”

He whimpers, eyes big and pleading. He looks so sad, so broken. A few tears leak out onto his face. I run my thumb across his cheek, wiping them away as best I can.

“I’m so sorry, Simon,” I say. “Who would do this? To you, of all people?” I hold the other side of his face, cradling it softly. “I wish Bunce were here with her brilliant spells. She’d know what to do. She’d know how to break this awful curse...”

My voice trails away, mind flinging back to only a few days earlier.

“There’s universal curse breaking stuff, but those are a long shot.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there’s always-”

“True love’s kiss,” I whisper.

Simon looks as close to confused as he can manage. I stare at him straight in the eye, clutching his face tighter.

“Simon, for both our sake’s, I hope this works.”

I scrunch my eyes close, hold my breath, and snog a dragon.

His lips (really just the very tip of his huge dragon mouth) are hot and scaly. They’re scratchy against my closed ones. I hold him in place, but he doesn’t really move. He’s completely frozen. Bit by bit, I feel the rough scales dissolve under my touch, replaced with soft skin. His head becomes lighter and smaller, until I’m cupping his jaw. Before I know it, a warm mouth is moving against mine. I tangle my fingers in his rough curly hair. I love the way they feel against my touch. Because they feel like only Simon could.

I pull away, blinking rapidly. There he is, kneeling right in front of me, naked save for a long red cloth bunched around his waist. His tawny skin is covered in filth, bronze curls all matted and tangled, and lids heavy over his tired blue eyes. He looks beautiful. He looks so alive.

“Baz?” he rasps out. "I-is it really you?"

I smile, salt water stinging my eyes. “Yes, Simon. It’s me. You’re safe now.”

“Oh, Baz!” He throws himself around me, burying his face in my shoulder. I feel his tears soak my tunic. One of my arms is tight across his back, the other smoothing his hair.

“It’s okay, it's all okay now,” I murmur into his ear. “It’s going to be okay. It’s all right, love.”

It takes awhile for Simon to calm down. He cries in my embrace on and off for what feels like hours. But when he regains most of his composure, I wrap him in my thick cloak and gently carry him bridal manner. He clings to my neck like he’s scared I’ll vanish if he lets go. I make sure to take my sword and wand as we leave. (Don't want to be defenceless if I have to protect him.)

I go to where I left Ivory. Grabbing my pallet with one hand, I lay it on the ground and place Simon on top. As I pull back, he tugs my sleeve.

“No,” he whines, “please don’t go.”

His voice is so small, like a terrified child’s. I shed my armour quickly. The pallet is not meant for two. But I don’t care. I lay next to him, holding his side with one hand and tangling our legs together.

His face is all scrunched up, like he’s still in pain. There are still some stray tears. I rub them away.

“You’re alright now,” I say softly.

“I was there for so long,” he sobs. “I-I was so scared. I was horrible. I was an animal, a beast, a monster, I-”

“Stop it, Simon. That wasn’t you. That was the curse.”

He opens his eyes slowly with that awe filled expression. “Which you broke.”

I freeze. We’re both magicians. We both know about the power of true love’s kiss, and certainly what it means. There's no point in denying it now. I sigh heavily. “Yes, I did.”

He tentatively brings a hand onto my side. I shiver as he traces me with his fingers. “For how long, Baz?”

I cup his cheek. I can fit most of his face in just one hand. “A long time. Almost since we met.”

He gasps and tenses slightly. But I can feel as he slowly relaxes. He smiles. I’ve really, really missed that smile. He moves closer, tucking his head under my chin. He tentatively kisses my chest, making me shudder.

“Thank you,” he mumbles into my tunic. “F-For finding me, for saving me, for... everything.”

My heart almost beats out of me. I’m overwhelmed with relief and love. I lean down and press my lips to his hair. “You’re welcome, Simon.”

We fall asleep like that, tangled together on the dirty old pallet. And I couldn’t be happier.

Simon wakes up sometime in the afternoon, when the sun is bright in the sky. Saying he was beyond exhausted is an understatement. He sits up with a start, panting and sweaty.

“Baz!” He shouts.

I run over to him. “I’m right here, Simon. It’s okay.”

He grabs my hand and breathes deeply. “I dreamt I was back in the castle. T-That I was still cursed.”

“You’re not cursed. Not anymore. You’re out of there and you’re okay.”

We hear a low grumble. Simon groans and clutches his stomach. I raise an eyebrow. “Hungry?”

He nods vigorously. “Very. I think I only ate birds as a dragon.”

I chuckle and stand up, not letting go of his hand. “I’ll cook something up for us. There’s a stream nearby to the west if you want to wash up, and there are some clean clothes.” I gesture to pile next to the pallet.

He squeezes me once and nods. “Okay.”

His hand slowly falls from mine. I watch over my shoulder as he picks the garments up and walks away. He flashes me one last soft smile.

Simon returns just as I finish cooking the rabbits I’d caught. He rolls up the sleeves on the brown tunic (I am three inches taller). His damp curls stick to his forehead. I watch his mouth water at the sight of the rabbit.

I slide one off the spit and hand it to him. He sits down next to me and bites into it greedily, moaning in delight. I chuckle, just happy to see him like this. It reminds me of our days at school when he’d devour whole plates of sour cherry scones.

“God this is good,” he groans with his mouth full.

“Glad you approve of my mediocre cooking skills,” I reply.

“Well, I’ve just missed food without feathers.”

We both laugh, but quickly fall into awkward silence. I cautiously put my rabbit down.

“Simon, do you know what happened? How you were cursed?”

Simon scowls, fingers digging into the meat of the animal. “It’s one of the few things I do remember clearly.” He puts his meal down, picking at his pants angrily. “It feels like so long ago. I got in a fight with my father. I found out that he wasn’t just harshly taxing the rich, but the townspeople too. I told him it was too much for them. Then it all just, spun out of control. He accused me of undermining him, of trying to usurp his throne. I tried to reason with him but he was beyond it. He put me under a sleeping spell. Next thing I knew, I was in that bloody castle. He told me it was time for me to disappear so he could do his work. Then he, he... changed me.”

I reach out and grab his bicep. He’s shaking so badly. I steady him as best I can. Little by little, the shaking subsides. His head falls onto my shoulder.

“It’s all a bit of a blur after that. I remember the constant urge to attack anyone I saw. Lots of swords and fire and blood. I ran on pure instinct. Sometimes, my consciousness would take over, but only a for a few minutes. Like little glimpses of reality through the haze. It was so awful!”

I wrap my arms around him in a side hug. “I know, I know. But it’s over now. You’re safe. I’ll never let him or anyone else hurt you ever again.”

He grips my forearms. “What I don’t understand is why. Why would he do it?”

“Why else? Control. The people love you, Simon. They’d choose you over him in a heartbeat. He needed you gone in case they decided to rebel and rally around you. But I guess just killing you and saying you vanished wouldn’t have been good enough. So he made it seem like you’d been captured. Panicked over their beloved crown prince being taken by an unknown enemy, the people and nobility would need a strong ruler, like him.”

“But, he sent knights after me.”

I sigh, tracing circles on his shoulder. “Yes, he did. He needed to make it look like he wanted to rescue you, I guess. Maybe he thought we’d all give up after the first few tries, but he underestimated your popularity among the people. The lords never stopped demanding he send knights because their subjects never did.”

He looks up at me, expression filled with astonished hope. “They... never stopped?”

I brush some of his soggy hair away from his eyes. “Never. Neither did I. I asked to go after you all the time. I guess King David knew I was a skilled enough magician to break the curse, so he prevented me for as long as possible.”

He turns so we’re facing each other, caressing my bicep with one hand. “I doubt he thought you’d break the curse like that, though.”

We both break out in giggles. I cradle his soft face, covered in those beautiful freckles and moles. “As did I. Nor did I think you’d feel the same way.” An awful fear bubbles in my stomach. I pull back slightly, hands falling away. “Do- Do you feel the same way? It’s alright if you don’t, I’d understand. I’m not going to force you.”

He shakes his head violently. “No! I mean, yes, I-I do. When I think about it, I have for awhile. I mean, maybe not as long as you. But when I look back, at all the things I thought about you, they were angry, but also admiring. I’ve always admired you, Baz. More than I was supposed to.” He moves to hold my jaw in his warm hands. “I like this, Baz. I like you. I like being near you, knowing that you’re okay. Every time I resurfaced, I thought about how much I missed Watford, and Penny, and especially you. So... yes, I’m pretty sure I feel the same.”

I smile so hard my face nearly splits, moving to grip his shoulders. We lean together until our foreheads are touching. “Thank you for telling me.”

He giggles. “Thank you for saving me.”

We both move forward and kiss for the second time. It’s a thousand times better than before, because it's wanted, not needed. I know how he feels, know that he cares about me. I snake my arms around his back and press him to me. I never want to let him go.

We only separate when the need for air takes over. Simon places his head in the crook my neck, hugging me tightly. “I missed you so much, Baz.”

I stroke his hair, inhaling the scent, smoke and cinnamon. “Me too, Simon. Me too.”

We ride back to Watford as soon as possible. It only takes a day and a half at the speed we go. Simon wears my hood and cape to hide his face as we go through the outer city. He doesn’t need to be swarmed by crowds now. He needs to see someone in particular.

Using the hidden stairway and servant’s passages, we arrive at the doors of the throne room. I can hear people talking inside. Another council meeting. Simon pulls down his hood. He straightens his back and holds his head up high, looking like the powerful royalty he is. He takes a deep, shaky breath. I grab his fingers.

“You don’t have to do this now,” I say.

He squeezes my hand, but nods solemnly. “Yes, I do.”

He lets me go and pushes the double doors open. The room goes silent. Everyone turns to look at Simon. There’s some gasps and a lot of dropped jaws. Father is stunned. Lord Wellbelove seems primed for a heart attack. Bunce stands near the back, grinning ear to ear. And King David looks like he’s seen a ghost.

“S-Simon?” he squeaks.

“Hello father,” Simon says coldly. “We need to talk.”

Simon paces back and forth in our quarters. He’s mumbling to himself, running a hand through his hair repeatedly, the other picking at the hem of his embroidered tunic. His long green robe trails behind him on the dirty floor.

“What if I mess up? What if I get the words wrong?”

I sigh from my spot sitting on our bed, trying to rub off a stray scuff on my new wrist guard. (I just polished it yesterday!) “You won’t. You’ve practised it a hundred times.”

“But I’ll get up there and get tongue tied and the Lords will realise I’m too young and I can’t do this and-”

“Simon!” I stand and grab his wrists, halting him in his tracks. “Stop panicking! You’ll be a wonderful king. You’ve proved that already so many times. The whole court is behind you. Perfect words or no words at all, they will crown you.”

Simon sighs and nods. “I know. I’m just... really scared.”

“And that’s natural, love. But no matter what happens, be assured that your King’s Champion will protect you.” I pat the hilt of my sword. Simon chuckles.

“You can’t use your sword to solve all my problems, Baz.”

I shrug. “Well, I could try kissing them away. Worked six months ago.”

Simon breaks out laughing. I love his laugh. It’s so happy and cheerful. Even after everything he went through. “I think that was a one time thing, love.”

We lean forwards until foreheads tap, fingers intertwining. “You’re going to be great, Simon,” I whisper. “I know it.”

He rubs his nose against mine. “Thank you.”

He kisses me softly. I move my mouth slowly against his. It's long and languid, utterly filled with love. It makes me feel a bit drunk, and very happy. I’ll never get tired of kissing this man. He pulls away but keeps our lips close together.

“I love you, Baz,” he says.

“And I love you, Simon.” I move back so I can look at his beautiful face. “No matter what you are. Prince, wizard, knight, dragon, king. Whatever you are, wherever you are, I’ll always love and be there for you. I swear on my sword.”

He smiles, making his blue gaze sparkle. He grips my hand. “Thank you, darling. I promise the same, you know. To love and protect you from all that would want to hurt you. For the rest of my bloody days. I swear on my throne."

I trace a finger down his jaw to hold his chin. He swipes his thumb over the back of my hand. Though we are not married, and may never be, it's okay. These are as good as any wedding vows. “Thank you, my love.”

There’s a knock on the wooden doors. Simon turns to them. “Enter,” he says.

Bunce pops her head in. She’s in her most subdued formal outfit, a navy robe with stars on it. Very classic wizard. The silver forehead tiara (signifying her position as Head Court Magician) is slightly off kilter in her mound of purple hair.

“It’s showtime, boys.”

Simon takes a deep breath. I hold his hand tightly. He looks at me with a soft smile, speaking under his breath.

“Let’s do this.”

Two members of the King’s Guard push open the throne room double doors. The trumpeters sound their instruments through the grand hall. Everyone stands and turns. We walk forward slowly. Simon is at the front of course. Bunce and I stand behind him, forming a moving triangle. That’s how it’s supposed to be. A king, his champion, and his magician. The three pillars that hold up Watford. I’m so glad to be a part of it, especially for Simon.

Everyone watches us. Father and Aunt Fiona nod to me with subtle smiles. Mordelia waves wildly until Daphne stops her. Lord Wellbelove is grinning, Lady Agatha right next to him. Even Premal, who rejected former King David when he learned of his deception, looks beyond pleased. He trusts Simon to rule well, and he's very proud of his little sister. He wasn’t even mad when I took his job. (I may actually grow to like him.)

We arrive at the throne. Simon walks up the few steps, while Bunce and I stay at the bottom. The royal priest stands there.

“Prince Simon,” he says, “do you come here to take up the throne of Watford?”

“I do.”

“Recite the oath of kings to accept the crown.”

Simon straightens. “I, Prince Simon, do swear to uphold the laws of this land, rule the people kindly, defend it from enemies, and make sure it prospers under my watch. From this day until my dying breath, I promise such.”

I smile slightly. I knew he wouldn’t mess up.

“Kneel before the throne.”

Simon takes one knee, bending his head forward. The priest takes the large gold crown, covered in green and purple gems, from the satin pillow. He slowly places it on his head. It fits like it’s meant to be there. Simon carefully stands, and I see him breath out slowly.

He turns to face the court. I turn as well. My eyes flick to him. He smiles and nod.

“All hail King Simon,” I shout. “Lord Protector and one true ruler of Watford. Long live the King!”

“Long live the King!” Everyone yells back. “Long live the King! Long live the king!”

They erupt into cheers and claps. Simon steps down to my level. I feel his hand slip into mine. He’s grinning so wide. It makes my heart race.

I swore to be by his side no matter what. To love him no matter what. And I certainly meant it.

AN: Got you with that twist there, huh? Yes, I'm very sneaky, I know. Like M. Night Shyamalan before he was shit, haha. Seriously this was so much fun to do. I loved writing it. I really hope you all enjoyed it. I certainly did :) Feel free to request more kiss fics here. Though I have a lot right now so there may be a wait.

PS: I had no idea what Natasha's wand is supposed looked like. I gave my best guess. PPS: This is how I imagined Penny's tiara, except with a green gem in the centre.

#snowbaz #carry on fanfiction #simon snow #baz pitch #penelope bunce #the mage #royalty au #fairytale au #mysnowbazfic

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newsjerk · 8 years ago

Text

How Google Book Search Got Lost

Google Books was the company’s first moonshot. But 15 years later, the project is stuck in low-Earth orbit.

Books can do anything. As Franz Kafka once said, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

It was Kafka, wasn’t it? Google confirms this. But where did he say it? Google offers links to some quotation websites, but they’re generally unreliable. (They misattribute everything, usually to Mark Twain.)

To answer such questions, you need Google Book Search, the tool that magically scours the texts of millions of digitized volumes. Just find the little “more” tab at the top of the Google results page — it’s right past Images, Videos, and News. Then click on it, find “Books,” and click on that. (That’s if you’re at your desk. On mobile, good luck locating it anywhere.)Google Book Search is amazing that way. When it started almost 15 years ago, it also seemed impossibly ambitious: An upstart tech company that had just tamed and organized the vast informational jungle of the web would now extend the reach of its search box into the offline world. By scanning millions of printed books from the libraries with which it partnered, it would import the entire body of pre-internet writing into its database.“You have thousands of years of human knowledge, and probably the highest-quality knowledge is captured in books,” Google cofounder Sergey Brin told The New Yorker at the time. “So not having that — it’s just too big an omission.”Today, Google is known for its moonshot culture, its willingness to take on gigantic challenges at global scale. Books was, by general agreement of veteran Googlers, the company’s first lunar mission. Scan All The Books!In its youth, Google Books inspired the world with a vision of a “library of utopia” that would extend online convenience to offline wisdom. At the time it seemed like a singularity for the written word: We’d upload all those pages into the ether, and they would somehow produce a phase-shift in human awareness. Instead, Google Books has settled into a quiet middle age of sourcing quotes and serving up snippets of text from the 25 million-plus tomes in its database.Google employees maintain that’s all they ever intended to achieve. Maybe so. But they sure got everyone else’s hopes up.Two things happened to Google Books on the way from moonshot vision to mundane reality. Soon after launch, it quickly fell from the idealistic ether into a legal bog, as authors fought Google’s right to index copyrighted works and publishers maneuvered to protect their industry from being Napsterized. A decade-long legal battle followed — one that finally ended last year, when the US Supreme Court turned down an appeal by the Authors Guild and definitively lifted the legal cloud that had so long hovered over Google’s book-related ambitions.But in that time, another change had come over Google Books, one that’s not all that unusual for institutions and people who get caught up in decade-long legal battles: It lost its drive and ambition.When I started work on this story, I feared at first that Books no longer existed as a discrete part of the Google organization — that Google had actually shut the project down. As with many aspects of Google, there’s always been some secrecy around Google Books, but this time, when I started asking questions, it closed up like a startled turtle. For weeks there didn’t seem to be anyone around or available who could or would speak to the current state of the Books effort.The Google Books “History” page trails off in 2007, and its blog stopped updating in 2012, after which it got folded into the main Google Search blog, where information about Books is nearly impossible to find. As a functioning and useful service, Google Books remained a going concern. But as a living project, with plans and announcements and institutional visibility, it seemed to have pulled a vanishing act. All of which felt weird, given the legal victory it had finally won.When I talked to alumni of the project who’d left Google, several mentioned that they suspected the company had stopped scanning books. Eventually, I learned that there are, indeed, still some Googlers working on Book Search, and they’re still adding new books, though at a significantly slower pacethan at the project’s peak around 2010–11.“We’re not focused on shiny features and things that are very visible to users,” says Stephane Jaskiewicz, a Google engineer who has worked on Books for a decade and now leads its team. “It’s more like behind the scenes work and perfecting the technology — acquiring content, processing it properly so that we can view the entire book online, and adjusting the search algorithm.”One focus of work has been a constant throughout Google Books’ life: improving the scanners that add new books to the “corpus,” as the database is known. At the birth of the project, in 2002, as Larry Page and Marissa Mayer set out to gauge how long it might take to Scan All The Books, they set up a digital camera on a stand and timed themselves with a metronome. Once the company got serious about ramping its scanning up to efficient scale, it started jealously guarding details of the operation.Jaskiewicz does say that the scanning stations keep evolving, with new revisions rolling out every six months. LED lighting, not widely available at the project’s start, has helped. So has studying more efficient techniques for human operators to flip pages. “It’s almost like finger-picking on a guitar,” Jaskiewicz says. “So we find people who have great ways of turning pages — where is the thumb and that kind of stuff.”Still, the bulk of the work at Google Books continues to be on “search quality” — making sure that you find the Kafka passage you need, fast. It’s an unglamorous game of inches — less moonshot and more, say, satellite maintenance.

To understand how Google Books arrived at this point, you need to know a few things about copyright law, which essentially divides books into three classes. Some books are in the public domain, which means you can do what you want with their texts — mostly, those published before 1923, as well as more recent books whose authors chose to release them from standard copyright. Plenty of more recent books are still in print and under copyright; if you want to do anything with these texts, you have to come to terms with their authors and publishers.

Then there’s the third category: books that are out of print but still under copyright, known informally as “orphan works.” It turns out there are a whole lot of these — “between 17 percent and 25 percent of published works and as much as 70 percent of specialized collections,” a study by the US Copyright Office suggests.

How many books is that? No one knows for sure because no one can say with any certainty exactly how many total books there are. The statistic depends on how you define “book,” which isn’t as easy as it sounds. In 2010 a Google engineer named Leonid Taycher wrote a blog post that examined Google Books’ metadata and concluded that the number (then) was about 130 million. Others looked at this work and called it “bunk.” The actual number is probably somewhat lower than Taycher’s figure yet considerably higher than Google Books’ current 25 million-plus.

Some large chunk of that large number, then, are “orphan works.” And until recently, they weren’t much of an issue. You could borrow them from a library or find them in a used bookstore, and that was that. But once Google Books proposed to scan them all and make them available to the internet, everyone seemed to want a piece of them.

The legal battle that ensued was, essentially, a custody fight over these orphans, in which Google, publishers, and authors each sought to control the process of ushering them into a new home for the digital age. The three parties eventually agreed on a grand compromise known as the Google Books Settlement, under which Google would go ahead and make the orphan works available in their entirety and set aside money to compensate rights holders who stepped forward. But in 2011, a federal judge rejected the settlement, ruling in favor of advocates who feared it would forever ensconce a private for-profit company as the registrar and toll collector of the universe’s library.

Once the settlement collapsed, Google went back to its scanning, and publishers pursued the burgeoning business of selling e-books, which had leapfrogged Google’s lead in the future-of-books race due to the success of Amazon’s Kindle. But the Authors Guild continued to press its lawsuit, charging that Google’s arrogation of the right to scan and index books without the permission of copyright holders was illegal. Google is wealthy, but not so wealthy that it could ignore the threat of multi-billion dollar copyright infringement penalties (thousands of dollars per book for millions of books). This was the proceeding that dragged on until the Supreme Court put it out of its misery last year — establishing once and for all that Google had a fair-use right to catalogue books and provide brief excerpts (“snippets”) in search results, just as it did with web pages.

That ruling represents a foundational achievement for the future of online research—Google’s and everyone else’s. “It’s now established precedent — everyone benefits,” says Erin Simon, Google Books’ product counsel today. “This is going to be in textbooks. It’s supremely important for understanding what fair use means.” (Simon also notes with a chuckle that when the suit was originally filed, she hadn’t yet started law school.)

The Authors Guild may have lost in court, but it believes the fight was worth it. Google “did it wrong from the beginning,” says James Gleick, president of the Guild’s board. “They plowed ahead without involving the creative community on whose backs they were building this new thing. The big companies have a droit du seigneur attitude toward creative work. They think, ‘We are the masters of the universe now.’ They should have just licensed the books instead.”

You’d think a Supreme Court victory would have meant a renewal of energy for Google Books: Rev up the scanners — full speed ahead! By all the evidence, that has not been the case. Partly that’s because the database is so huge already. “We have a fixed budget that we’re spending,” says Jaskiewicz. “At the beginning, we were scanning everything on every shelf. At some point we started getting a lot of duplicates.” Today Google gives its partner libraries “pick lists” instead.

There are plenty of other explanations for the dampening of Google’s ardor: The bad taste left from the lawsuits. The rise of shiny and exciting new ventures with more immediate payoffs. And also: the dawning realization that Scanning All The Books, however useful, might not change the world in any fundamental way.

To many bibliophiles, Google’s self-appointment as universal librarian never made sense: That role properly belonged to some public institution. Once Google popularized the notion that Scanning All The Books was a feasible undertaking, others lined up to tackle it. Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive, which stores historical snapshots of the whole web, already had its own scanning operation. The Digital Public Library of America grew out of meetings at Harvard’s Berkman Center beginning in 2010 and now serves as a clearinghouse and consortium for the digital collections of many libraries and institutions.

When Google partnered with university libraries to scan their collections, it had agreed to give them each a copy of the scanning data, and in 2011 the HathiTrust began organizing and sharing those files. (It had to fend off the Authors Guild in court, too.) HathiTrust has 125 member organizations and institutions who “believe that we can better steward research and cultural heritage by working together than alone or by leaving it to an organization like Google,” says Mike Furlough, the trust’s director. And of course there’s the Library of Congress itself, whose new leader, Carla Hayden, has committed to opening up public access to its collections through digitization.

In a sense each of these outfits is a competitor to Google Books. But in reality, Google is so far ahead that none of them is likely to catch up. The consensus among observers is that it cost Google several hundred million dollars to build Google Books, and nobody else is going to spend that kind of money to perform the feat a second time.

Still, the nonprofits have a strength Google lacks: They’re not subject to the changing priorities of a gigantic technology corporation. They have a focused commitment around books, unencumbered by distractions like running one of the largest advertising businesses in the world or managing a smartphone ecosystem. Unlike Google, they’re not going to lose interest in seeking new ways to connect readers with books that might, a la Kafka, melt a frozen mind.

In popular mythology, interminable lawsuits turn into hungry maelstroms that drown the participants. (The archetype is Dickens’ Jarndyce v. Jarndyce from Bleak House, the generations-spanning estate fight whose legal fees eat up all the assets at stake.) In the tech business, court battles like the celebrated antitrust suit that plagued IBM for years tend to pinion giant corporations and provide new competitors with an opening to lap an incumbent. Google itself rose to dominate search while Microsoft was busy defending itself from the Justice Department.

Yet the Books fight was never as central to Google’s corporate being as that kind of all-consuming conflict. And it wasn’t all a waste, either. It taught Google something valuable.

As the Authors Guild’s Gleick points out, Google started Books with a “better ask forgiveness than permission” attitude that’s common today in the world of startups. In a sense, the company behaved like the Uber of intellectual property — a kind of read-sharing service — while expecting to be seen the way it saw itself, as a beneficent pantheon of wizards serving the entire human species. It was naive, and the stubborn opposition it aroused came as a shock.

But Google took away a lesson that helped it immeasurably as it grew and gained power: Engineering is great, but it’s not the answer to all problems. Sometimes you have to play politics, too — consult stakeholders, line up allies, compromise with rivals. As a result, Google assembled a crew of lobbyists and lawyers and approached other similar challenges — like navigating YouTube’s rights maze — with greater care and better results. It grew up. It came to understand that it could shoot for the moon, but it wouldn’t always get there.

It’s possible that Google might someday take another run at solving the orphan works problem. But it looks like it’s going to wait for others to take the lead. “I don’t know that there’s anything that we could do without a different legal framework,” says Jaskiewicz.

As I worked on this piece, I kept thinking back to a book I’d read a few years ago called Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, a whimsical, nerdy novel by Robin Sloan. It’s about a secret society dedicated to solving a centuries-old Name of the Rose-style mystery that’s rooted in bookmaking and typography. Google plays a critical supporting role in Penumbra, as the protagonist attempts to unravel the riddle at the story’s heart. As it turns out, even the company’s unrivaled informational prowess isn’t enough to do the trick. That takes a chance encounter between the protagonist and a particular book that provides an illuminating insight. It takes, in the phrase with which Sloan closes his tale, “exactly the right book, at exactly the right time.”

Penumbra reminds us that Google’s engineering mindset isn’t omnipotent. Breaking a challenge into approachable pieces, turning it into data, and applying efficient routines is a powerful way to work. It can carry you a good distance toward a “library of utopia,” but it won’t get you there.

And even if you get there, it isn’t utopia, anyway. The hard labor is still ahead. That’s because when you turn a book into data, you make it easy to find quotes and search snippets, but you don’t make it fundamentally easier to do the work of reading the book — that irreplaceable experience of allowing one’s own mind to be temporarily inhabited by the voice of another person.

To date, the full experience of reading a book requires human beings at both ends. An index like Google Books helps us find and analyze texts but, so far, making use of them is still our job. Maybe the quest to digitize all books was bound to end in disappointment, with no grand epiphany.

Like many tech-friendly bibliophiles, Sloan says he uses Google Books a lot, but is sad that it isn’t continuing to evolve and amaze us. “I wish it was a big glittering beautiful useful thing that was growing and getting more interesting all the time,” he says. He also wonders: We know Google can’t legally make its millions of books available for anyone to read in full — but what if it made them available for machines to read?

Machine-learning tools that analyze texts in new ways are advancing quickly today, Sloan notes, and “the culture around it has a real Homebrew Computer Club or early web feel to it right now.” But to progress, researchers need big troves of data to feed their programs.

“If Google could find a way to take that corpus, sliced and diced by genre, topic, time period, all the ways you can divide it, and make that available to machine-learning researchers and hobbyists at universities and out in the wild, I’ll bet there’s some really interesting work that could come out of that. Nobody knows what,” Sloan says. He assumes Google is already doing this internally. Jaskiewicz and others at Google would not say.

Maybe, when some neural network of the future achieves self-awareness and find itself paralyzed by Kafka-esque existential doubts, it will find solace, as so many of us do, in finding exactly the right book to shatter its psychic ice. Or maybe, unlike us, it will be able to read all the books we’ve scanned — really read them, in a way that makes sense of them. What would it do then?

#books #google book #google books #search

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 7 years ago

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16 book recommendations for when you have absolutely no clue what you want to read

There's a funny thing that happens when you tell someone you write about books. Almost always, they immediately ask, "Do you have any book recommendations?"

The short answer is yes, we always have recommendations.

The long answer is *internal panicking* WHERE DO WE EVEN BEGIN?!

SEE ALSO: 21 books you need to read this spring

That's why we invited a panel of past guests — Mashable deputy science editor Miriam Kramer, social good editor Matt Petronzio, commerce editor Nicole Cammorata, and culture reporter Chloe Bryan — to the latest MashReads Podcast to help us line up a list of really great book recommendations.

No idea what you want to read? We're here to help.

Without further ado: the podcast. Read on for a list of 16 books we heartily recommend to anybody just looking for a really good book.

16 book recommendations for when you have absolutely no clue what you want to read

Image: G.P. Putnam's Sons

The Immortalists

Chloe Benjamin

Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists is the perfect book to pick up if you don't know what to read. It features a page-turning, propulsive plot mixed with great writing, unforgettable characters, and true human wisdom. The novel starts off with a fantastical premise — what would happen if you found out the exact day of your death — and explores the raw, painful, and unexpected consequences of what happens when a person has to live with that knowledge.

Recommended by: Martha and MJ.

Image: Haymarket Books

Electric Arches

Eve L. Ewing

If poetry is your thing, check out Eve Ewing's collection Electric Arches. Her writing merges elements of reality, afrofuturism, and magical realism to craft unforgettable poems about race, womanhood, and Chicago. But what's especially striking about this collection is its inventive storytelling. Whether she's imagining a time-traveling LeBron James or waxing poetic about black hair, Ewing is as creative as she is thought-provoking.

Recommended by: Martha. "Everyone uses the word 'magic' to describe it, but it really is. It’s beautiful."

Image: Penguin Random House

teaching my mother how to give birth

Warsan Shire

Many people know poet Warsan Shire as the artist who wrote the interludes featured in Beyoncé's Lemonade, but if you haven't read her poetry collection teaching my brother how to give birth, you're truly missing out. The book is an eloquent meditation on love, war, and everything in between.

Recommended by: Martha. "It’s one of those books I read when I need to get punched in the gut. It’s beautiful. It’s moving. Sometimes it's super hard to read. Sometimes it's really straightforward and sometimes really painful, but also, I think, really necessary."

Image: Random House

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas has been called a postmodern masterpiece, and for good reason. The book tells six separate stories, each in a different genre (including historical fiction, pulp crime novel, and dystopian tale). The stories themselves are enjoyable separately, but they also tie together thematically in ways that are charming, thoughtful, unexpected, and greater than the sum of their parts.

Recommended by: Miriam. "If you're looking to start with David Mitchell, read Cloud Atlas because it sets up his thing, which is genre-bending. He doesn’t ever write a book that’s in same genre twice, and he’s actually really good at it. Cloud Atlas has it all."

Image: Random House

Black Swan Green

David Mitchell

If you're looking for a coming-of-age story, check out Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. The book follows a year in the life of Jason Taylor, a 13-year-old boy living in England during the Cold War in 1982, and the misadventures he gets into. But what stands out is the incredible amount of heart with which Mitchell writes about growing up.

Recommended by: Miriam. "It’s one of the most affecting books I’ve ever read. It’s exactly what it feels like to be a kid."

Image: Graywolf

Wade in the Water

Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith’s poetry collection Wade in the Water is a beautiful, harrowing book that looks at the historical treatment of black people in this country, and the racism, xenophobia, sexism, and other marginalization people continue to face in America today. Smith enters these topics as a black woman, a mother, a poet, and as someone living in this world at this moment time.

Recommended by: Matt. "Smith has this really urgent, inquisitive nature throughout the book, which I think is characteristic of her work at large."

Image: Nancy Paulsen Books

Brown Girl Dreaming

Jacqueline Woodson

Brown Girl Dreaming is Jacqueline Woodson's memoir in verse. The book documents Woodson's childhood growing up in the '60s and '70s. It's a deep dive into Woodson's personal history — and a universal story about the complex emotions we all feel as kids. Need further reason to read? It won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2014.

Recommended by: Nicole. "It's beautiful, and it may be a gateway drug to poetry, because the form is really cool, and the book does work as a memoir and as a complete narrative, but the chapters themselves are short verses."

Image: Hyperion

Delicate Edible Birds

Lauren Groff

Many people know Lauren Groff for her acclaimed book Fates and Furies (which Obama recommended as one of his favorites of 2015), but be sure to check out her short story collection Delicate Edible Birds. Whether she's writing about a small town reeling from a sex scandal or a girl with polio learning how to swim, Groff explores womanhood, discontentment, and the way we grapple with violence against women.

Recommended by: Nicole. "I think, in general, we all need to get onboard with short stories. They're the perfect way to consume great literature."

Image: Simon and Schuster

The History of Bees

Maja Lunde

The History of Bees sounds like scientific non-fiction, but it's actually an incredible debut novel that follows three beekeepers at very different points in human history: 1852 England, 2007 United States, and 2098 China.

Recommended by: Nicole. "It's these three separate stories and they all come together in the end, it's just so satisfying."

Image: Riverhead Books

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

Sloane Crosley

If you're looking for a book that'll make you laugh, pick up Sloane Crosley's 2008 essay collection, I Was Told There'd Be Cake. Her writing depicts the absurdity of real life, from a woman who finds herself with a drawer full of miniature ponies to the Natural History Museum.

Recommended by: Chloe. "It's so funny. It's an interesting take on relationships and the way we reinvent ourselves in relationships and what parts of ourselves we take with us."

Image: RandoM House

The Tenth of December

George Saunders

The fun thing about a George Saunders short story is that you never know where his adventures, with their many twists and turns, will go. In his collection The Tenth of December that's more evident than ever. Some stories are grounded in realism, like "Victory Lap," which looks at what happens when a teenage boy sees someone trying to abduct his neighbor. Others are more sci-fi, like "Escape from Spiderhead," in which Saunders imagines a facility that's able to chemically control people's thoughts and feelings.

Recommended by: MJ. "The stories have this sci-fi twist to them, and George is such a good writer."

Image: Random House

The Rules Do Not Apply

Ariel Levy

It's hard to describe Ariel Levy's memoir The Rules Do Not Apply and feel like you've done the many narratives any justice. The book is part coming-of-age story, as Levy goes from inquisitive child to New Yorker writer; part meditation on love as Levy details her relationships; and part dive into grief and heartbreak as Levy outlines the death of her child and the dissolution of her marriage. No matter what Levy is writing about it, she pours her heart and soul into her prose in way that's truly unforgettable.

Recommended by: MJ. "It will break your heart many times over."

Image: HaperCollins

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda

Becky Albertali

Maybe you've seen the movie? If you're looking for a great YA novel, grab Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertali. The book is about Simon Spier, a closeted gay teen who begins an online romance with someone who goes only by the pseudonym "Blue." But when his emails to Blue are discovered by a classmate, Simon is blackmailed, prompting a series of schemes to protect his relationship and to keep his identity a secret until he is ready to come out. (Check out the full MashReads Podcast episode about the book here.)

Recommended by: MJ.

Image: Knopf

Wild

Cheryl Strayed

Part travelogue and part meditation on grief, Wild traces Strayed's journey along the Pacific Crest Trail in the aftermath of her mother's death. What stands out is not just the distance that Strayed travels, but the love and wisdom emanating from each page.

Recommended by: MJ.

Image: Penguin Random House

bone

Yrsa Daley-Ward

Yrsa Daley-Ward's poetry collection bone is another standout. The collection was self-published in 2014, steadily gained a fanbase online, and was finally picked up by Penguin Random House in 2017. Touching on race, religion, love, and more, the poems are passionate reflections on what it means to be a human in the world.

Recommended by MJ. "It fits the trend of some of the short affirmations you see on Instagram, but I think Yrsa's poems are a little bit more complex, the voice is more refined, the perspective is a little more defined."

Image: Graywolf

On Immunity: An Inoculation

Eula Biss

Sometimes you put down a book and just think, "Wow, I had no clue I was so fascinated by [insert seemingly mundane topic we interact with all along]." That is the exact feeling you get when you finish On Immunity. The book is a deep dive into the history of immunization, and the way that our conversation about the topic has shifted over time. It turns out our history with immunization is waaaaayyy more complicated than you think.

Recommended by: MJ.

Next up, we're reading Daniel Mallory Ortberg's book Merry Spinster. We hope you'll join us.

Happy reading, everyone!

WATCH: Apple's recycling robot rips apart old iPhones to recover valuable materials

#_author:MJ Franklin #_uuid:cc228ef1-fd38-352d-9fd6-6242cf11c987 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 7 years ago

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Girls’ Last Tour 1 - 2 | Juuni Taisen 4 - 5 | Ancient Magus’ Bride 2 - 3 | Idolish7 1 - 2

The only one I’ve properly kept up with out of my 5 shows this season is Juuni Taisen, so I’m going to roll out the tag for that show first. Also, the Idolish7 first two episodes became free recently so I cover them here too.

Girls’ Last Tour 1

Pipes…grunge…hey, doesn’t this look familiar? *glares at Princess Principal*

I’ve only seen one episode of Made in Abyss but I get a bad feeling about these character designs…

I’m worried about this falling into the Yuri Divide. Sure,the fandom can do what it wants, but please don’t ship the lolis.

Oh right. Wind, meaning there’s an opening somewhere.

That dramatic eye opening made the outside world seem like an anticlimax. C’mon, show. You can do better than that.

I feel like Chito says “shut up” a lot, even though she’s only said it twice. I get how she’s kind of relatable, but this show’s not on the level of MMO Junkie or even Juuni Taisen. It’s just kinda…average.

Did Tangled ever teach you how to use a pan, Yuu?

Everything’s kinda WWI-esque. It’s kinda unsettling for a person who’s never properly seen war.

Even in this snowy world, you could still learn to hunt and cook, right?

If you kill your friend in a post-apocalyptic world, you’ll be lonely by war. Don’t kill each other, kiddos. Lives are precious.

This is serious, kiddos! C’mon!

Eating snow is meant to quench your thirst, but it’s not any good for hunger. Apparently.

Well, I’m quite lukewarm on this. I’ve already found my seasonal hits and I study globalisation, so it’s no surprise I find this stuff a lot like my weekly content. Nonetheless, whoever decided to put Classicaloid behind a paywall’s gonna have to pay (pun not intended)!

Girls’ Last Tour 2

I half expect a “hey you!” joke but they don’t work in Japanese…

What are the wiggly things on the ground next to Chi and Yuu in the OP??? Leeches???

Oh geez. Now they even draw cleavage on the lolis. Meaning these guys are just drawn young. That’s both a good and a bad thing.

Those letters seem to be…no language in particular.

Book burning. What a thing to throw in.

Oh. The blocky writing is actually hiragana or katakana. You just need to look at it closely.

I think that was meant to be comedy…but it was so cruel. Poor book.

I think what they’re saying is “don’t burn history”, but I think we learnt that a long time ago when the Chinese burnt books.

Maybe if these gals had Bear Grylls they’d survive a bit longer…?

Lemme guess: either Yuu burnt them all, destroyed them all or read them all.

The original joke was gomen wa, where ne is similar to wa. At least, I think it’s a wa. It could be a re.

The red circle said Yuu wrote the me wrong, so it’s actually probably gonun ne.

Well, someone funded a sakuga ending. Like the one from ACCA with dancing Lotta.

Juuni Taisen 4

I find it heavily symbolic that Nezumi likes eating eggs. Eggs represents chickens…and conundrums…

Ooh…bam. Nisio Isin’s going the Middle Eastern proxy route.

Hmm. Interesting, it’s basically Bystander Effect: the War.

The anime’s currently ahead of the manga, so I got slightly startled by Boar’s appearance. However, I’ve read some spoilers elsewhere, so I knew she was going to be in Monkey’s story somewhere else. I just didn’t think it was this soon.

Recycled footage…bad show! Bad!

LOL, CGI tank. Sorry for ruining the mood, but that stood out a bit too much for my liking.

“…participation is mandatory…” – Huh. I never saw that detail coming.

“Ow. I thought you were against violence.” – (LOL.) Yeah, but apathy isn’t good when something’s coming to get you in the sewers, so I’m with Monkey on this.

Wa-wait! Y’mean, Rabbit can use Chicken to use Eye of the Cormorant…so Monkey will die this ep??? [Monkey dying]’s exactly what I’ve been fearing for the duration of this episode. Update: If you want the spoiler version from the end of the ep…she didn’t die.

Notice Monkey uses moves that use the strength of her opponent against her. It’s a very pacifist touch, so to speak.

There are a series of images that flash by before the casual clothes part of the ED. If you observe them closely, you’ll see a lot of them involve the number 12. (Example: the cubes have lines on them that read “12”.)

LOL, I think I only just now spotted the bodyguard behind Boar. He’s hard to spot behind all the splatter.

Home boy and his T-bars make me laugh every time. Then of course, there’s Mr Floofy Jacket.

Oh, it’s Duodecuple who’s doing these next ep previews. I couldn’t figure out who it was last time I tried.

Juuni Taisen 5

Genius, with a capital letter? They keep calling him the Genius of Slaughter in his backstory, so I guess that’s where it’s from.

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing is the same in Japanese as it is English, so at least the pun is there.

LOL, this episode is pretty much all “stuff goes kaboom!”, and that’s pretty much the way of the Sheep. Haha.

Of mice and men, eh??? (I read enough spoilers to know who the victor is…but I don’t know how they win.)

Whoa, yeah, baby! Bring that action! (That happens to be exactly the way I imagine my own action stories – from the front seat, so to speak.)

The snake’s winking! So cute! I want me some plushies like those!

Old-Timer. Haha, great pun on so many, many levels.

Ancient Magus’ Bride 2

I started doing a productivity blog and got caught up in it so much, I neglected anime! Imagine that – me, neglecting anime!

Oh, there’s a little “open” sign near the door.

It’s anime Hogwarts! Only the train is more colorful…LOL. (Actually, Little Witch Academia is anime Hogwarts, so scratch that.)

Ooh, Elias has a good taste in faces. Not that I’m complaining or anything. (Looks like En-chan, to boot.)

Elias is like the NEET genius of the magic world here. It’s kinda funny.

What’s a Gem’s Bee? (No spoilers, I’m not a manga reader!)

Angelica’s like her (Chise’s) mother, LOL. Seeing Elias properly emote is hilarious, hilarious! (Why I procrastinated on this show? Because it’s a slow mover that should be appreciated in its own time, but I’m not good with binging so…that’s why I’m only watching it now.)

Oh! No wonder Angelica seems like a mother. She is a mother.

Ooh! Ice flowers. Pretty. I’ve already gotten way too many screenshots for my own good out of this show…As a writer, I feel like I could never make a story like this.This is a story best fostered under someone else’s hand.

Poppies, eh? To me, poppies symbolise war and sticking out, but that’s just a product of where I was born. In the case of war, poppies represent the blood of the fallen and those who rise above that.

Speaking of stories I couldn’t write, I’m currently bringing Next to Me to a close. I feel like that’s my best match to AMB, which is why my thoughts dwell on stories so much right now. Next to Me is one of those stories where the world matters just as much as the character building, if not more, which is why the understated majesty of AMB is a good match.

Seeing a blonde Englishman use –kun like a Japanese is a bit disorienting.

Simon really treats Chise like a child, eh?

The “open” sign now says “close”. What is this house, an apothecary?

The CGI door was a bit weird…

Whoa! That was a bit of a fast approach into the dragon scene, but apparently the dragon part of AMB was really hyped…

Ancient Magus’ Bride 3

How does skelly-man see like that?

The dragons look like…Pokémon! (That was my first thought, LOL.)

This blonde is Lindel from the promo material I’ve read. He looks like zaShunina (Kado), so it’s best to be wary of him.

Ooh, now there’s an application of shadows I’d never be able to think of!

Holy flame spirits, Batman! Elias has a tongue! (I got spoilered on that by ANN, but it’s crazy seeing it in context.)

Ancient mages shouldn’t be hot like zaShunina! Where are the real old fogeys like Kiku(hiko, SGRS)?

Uncle Nevin! I found it extremely charming this uil has a name beyond “Uil”.

Can these dragons read minds? Or is it just the power of Dragon Knowledge (TM)?

When they say “Anime saved my life”, I guess they never meant it this literally…or at least, Chise never meant it this literally.

That dragon has way too many eyes!!! Yipes.

Huh. I haven’t felt this feeling since SGRS. The feeling of a masterpiece on my eyeballs.

羽鳥チセ <- That’s how you write Chise’s name, so they did another “Western creature uses Japanese knowledge” thing…

D’aww. That was beautiful! No wonder people like it, now I like it too. Nothing short of majestic, guys, nothing short of majestic.

Hey, the guy who voiced Nevin is called Ryuuzaburo. Ryuu means dragon in this case. (Meta pun!)

Idolish 7 1

Crunchyroll really tried to hype this thing up! Wow. So, here I am at what could pretty much be called a premiere event of the simulcast commentary. Enjoy, friends.

By the way, I’ve tried a bit of the Idolish 7 game (but since it was on BlueStacks, I couldn’t do the “rhythm” part of the rhythm game very well and subsequently couldn’t get too far) and of course, there’s a vested interest through Shirai, Masuda and Nishiyama. Update: There’s no Nishiyama in sight. Sorry, guys.

Oh wow. This is exactly as I remember it in the game, right down to the word!

Yay! I was looking forward to seeing the basketball scene adapted, since it’s possibly the only scene I got to experience in the game in its (Japanese) entirety. Bring the dang game to the Western world, Bandai!

Riku is such a pure cinnamon bun when he gets the basketball back.

LOL, Nagi is such a flirt, kyaa~ (semi-sarcastic).

I don’t remember them dropping Trigger’s name so early…geesh, my memory must be sketchier than I thought it was.

Just as a reference, Iori (black) is 17 while Riku (red) is 18.

Ooh, I just spotted a Trigger ad on one building during that cut.

Ooh, good sense of drama these guys have got going.

Idolish 7 2

Expressiveness for a grump like Yamato, LOL.

LOL, there’s a shark in the back…

Iori has a cat shirt, hahaha.

Cool and sharp…stationery? Like a compass?

Iori’s so sarcastic, I can’t tell f he’s ever being serious or not.

I don’t know who’s my favourite so far out of these i7 boys. Probably the one similar to my husbando, Tamaki.

Ahh, gotta love me a good, honest hardworking anime gal. You don’t see them very often, y’know. It’s refreshing.

That was a great Iori impression Mitsuki did, even visually (note: I didn’t listen to Mitsuki do the impression, I only read the subs…hence my comment). Troyca really captured the style of the game, to boot, which is another cherry on the cake.

Notice Iori stands in front of the D.C. (da capo) and leaves to reveal it.

I researched who Riku’s brother is while I was watching ep 1 and…(spoilers for the uninitiated!) the brother is Tenn of Trigger!

There was a soba ad in the back in one lingering shot…

Hey, I get the feeling there’s CGI involved in this dance segment, but it’s…hardly detectable! Amazing! These guys seem to have gone a long way since the horribly animated Monster Generation MV.

Notice they (Troyca) only use CGI in (mostly) shots which don’t involve closeups.

Of course Nagi winks in the middle of his performance…

Whoo, yeah. That was a bold move by Crunchyroll, and of course that would grab me more than just leaking the first ep. I wonder if any critics covered this on their blogs…? Or would it not matter, since critics wouldn’t cover this “uncritical slop” anyway? Nonetheless, I covered it, and that’s what matters! (Update: Yeah, all the critics – Frog-kun, Lauren in Space, Mage in a Barrel etc. - passed on it. As expected of those critics…)

#simulcast commentary #girls' last tour #ancient magus bride #juuni taisen #zodiac war #idolish7 #shoujo shuumatsu ryokou #Chesarka watches Juuni Taisen #mahoutsukai no yome #Chesarka watches MahoYome #Chesarka watches Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou #Chesarka watches Idolish7

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