#still I love metaphorical book ends and this one would have taken the cake

[angelosearch]

Ten years ago, when I finished my undergrad, we had a middle-of-the-road to outright offensive commencement speaker who was an alum. My graduation was a shit show for several reasons but the guy who addressed us was a real dud. I don't remember his name but I think he worked on Family Guy or something.

You know who gave the speech to the class of 2015?

David Boreanaz. (Also an alum)

David FREAKIN' Boreanaz. Angel. Bones. Bojak Horseman's house. But most importantly for me...

KINGDOM HEARTS ONE LEON.

As in, THE FIRST ENGLISH VOICE ACTOR FOR SQUALL.

As in, the version of Squall that made me say, "wait, I know that guy! Wasn't he in that videogame? Maybe I should try playing it."

THE SQUALL THAT STARTED IT ALL (for me anyway).

To this day, I am still seething. If I had just taken a goddamn gap year or something I could have been sent out into the world by the voice of my favorite fictional person. By a voice that had a tremendous impact on my life!!! Nope, instead boderline-homophobic comedy writer.

I will never not be mad about it.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

omg yes make a post about god (the song)

Hi anon! Here we go:

Thoughts on God by John Lennon

So my first thought, which I mentioned in my music live blogging post, is that the sentence "God is a concept by which we measure our pain" is worded in a very complicated way that is hard to understand and it's odd to hear John simply repeat it, in lieu of elaborating on this idea he's presenting. Ironically, this gives the line an effect of preachiness, reminiscent of some mantra or prayer, chanted without much thought given to the actual words.

Something that additionally irks me here, is the fact that he even says "Let me say it again" draws a lot of attention to himself as the narrator. Which is odd, given the fact that, with this song, he's, among other things, trying to demistify his own role as an idol in people's lives.

This is sort of the crux of my issue with the song; he's proclaiming himself as Not A Hero but there's this underlying feeling that he wants me to think the opposite. Why refer to yourself as the "dream weaver"? Who gives him the authority to proclaim that the "dream" is over? The song, to me, feels like it first has to set up a narrative of The Beatles/John Lennon As Saviours to even be able to deconstruct it.

I think a part of what alienates me from this song is the fact that I did not live through the 60s or witness Beatlemania. When I listen to it, I hear the words of someone I've long known to be a broken, deeply-flawed human. So for him to be proclaiming himself decidedly not an idol feels a bit "What's next, Captain Obvious?" to me, but I see how it may not have been at the time.

That being said, I skimmed a bit of Lennon Remembers (which came out nearly simultaneously with the album) again and found a few quotes in it that feel deeply contradictory to the song's purpose.

I mean to sell as many albums as I can, because I’m an artist who wants everybody to love me, and everybody to buy my stuff.

Well, I say fuck ’em, you know, and after working with genius [sic] for ten, 15 years they begin to think they’re it. They’re not.

Do you think you’re a genius?

Yes, if there is such a thing as one, I am one.

In the first quote he seems to still be very much enamoured with being a beloved celebrity and in the second he proudly proclaims himself as a "genius", some type of special person with heightened wisdom.

It kind of feels like he was trying to have his cake and eat it too, claiming idolatry to be useless, yet still wanting to be listened to and loved by the masses. It gives me the impression the only purpose of this song was to close the book on the Beatles. But painting a band, a group of people making music together, as a "dream" that can be ended and that one must "carry on" from, is in itself an act of mystifying them, if that makes sense?

There's something weirdly metaphorical about him using the title "walrus" here in such a serious fashion, when the two Beatles songs "the walrus" appeared in are largely tongue-in-cheek and according to John not to be taken especially seriously. Suddenly, in light of the band's disintegration, the word "walrus" is given a meaning and weight it never had when the band was together, and that feels deeply odd to me.

Does that make sense? If you have any additional thoughts or disagree with me I'd love to hear them :)

EDIT: I showed this post to a friend of mine who only has secondhand Beatles/John knowledge from me and had listened to the song once. He felt the song is actually just John proclaiming that he personally has lost faith in some older version of himself as well as various idols, without trying to actually demystify himself. I can see that POV but it's just really not the vibe I get, due to the preachy undertone of the song and with the full context of the type of things he would say around that time. But if that's someone's reading it is understandable.

[yujikuna]

when the night is over

summary: bucky comes home to you after a long mission

pairing: bucky barnes x reader

word count: 2k

warnings: fluff, angst, and like two lines of smutty action

a/n: i always said i would never post my stuff on tumblr, but here i am. also, i’m sorry in advance. inspired by when the night is over by lord huron.

The white house across the field is illuminated like a mirage in the desert. The scene is picturesque in the way that dawn has begun to take over the sky, and the large willow tree that sits by the pond east of the house flutters in the breeze.

Every light is on, and the sconce above the front door is lit as a silent invitation for him to enter. Small lanterns line the path leading from the driveway to the porch, beckoning him forward.

He strips himself of his gear before he ascends the porch steps. There was no place for it there. This was holy ground not meant to be tainted by the dirt and blood caked on his soles and his heart. Each piece he takes off feels like a layer of skin being pulled back until he is left with only a bruised and tattered soul longing for solace. His boots are left in the yard.

The second step creaks under his weight and the rusted hinges of the screen door screech when he opens it. He would have liked to remember to fix them later, but all of his worries and responsibilities are forgotten as soon as he steps over the threshold into the metaphorical Eden that he shares with you.

There’s no need to knock. This is their sanctuary. A safe haven far, far away from the terrors of the world.

“Bucky? Is that you?”

Of course it’s him. It’s always him. No one else knows that this place exists.

His bare feet pad across the cold hardwood, following your voice and the smell of breakfast to the kitchen. It makes him think of someone else, someone older with blue eyes and brown hair like his who sang as they cooked and made him their certified taste-tester. But the thought is fleeting, and he pushes it away.

You’re a vision standing there in front of the stove. A dream. But you have to be real. There’s no way a man as twisted as he could ever create something as ethereal as you.

Bucky takes a moment to watch you. You’re humming and swaying to the song coming from the radio sitting by the window as you flip blueberry pancakes and sizzling bacon and stir scrambled eggs. He can’t see your face from where he’s standing, but he doesn’t need to.

He’s happy. He’s so utterly, devastatingly, happy that he can’t contain everything he feels within his cracked heart and has to let it pour out of him. Has to let it go wherever it can find a home. It always ends up finding its home with you.

He found his home with you.

He doesn’t think twice as he crosses the kitchen to wrap his arms around your waist and bury his face in your hair, the strong scent of your shampoo tickling his nose. His titanium hand grasps your hip as his flesh one gathers your hair to push it over your right shoulder. You let out a soft sigh when you feel the tip of his nose trace a line from your shoulder up your neck, ending with a kiss behind your ear.

“If you want breakfast you’ll stop while you’re ahead, Sarge,” you tease. You don’t move away, though, just close your eyes and tilt your head back to rest on his broad shoulder.

“Don’t need food,” Bucky says, the words muffled by your neck. “Just need you.”

The song changes, slightly more up-beat than the one before, but he just presses his chest closer to your back. He feels seventeen again, swaying with you to the mellow jazz in the background. The hand that was holding your hair trails down your side, stops to give your hip a little squeeze, and then continues its journey to your leg.

His calloused palm is rough against the soft skin of your thigh. A hum falls from your lips when his fingertips dance across the peach fuzz there, leaving goosebumps in their wake. It travels upwards again, but stops at the delicate hem of silky fabric.

“This a new dress?” Bucky’s face is still burrowed in the juncture between your shoulder and neck, a grin on his face when he feels you try and fail to suppress a shiver at his lips moving across your skin when he asks the question.

“Mhm. Got it on sale a few weeks ago,” you say. The kitchen is quiet for a moment, only the sounds of soft music and sizzling bacon filling the silence before you speak again. “You’ve been gone so long, Bucky.”

“I know. ‘M sorry. ‘M here now, though.”

You turn in his arms to face him. Something warm that he hasn’t felt since he left bursts in his chest when he sees your face. He had been gone longer than usual this time. Mission after mission after mission-- they never seemed to end. But even after all that time, here you were, just as beautiful as always. It was like you never changed.

A smile takes over your face when you look at him. “Your hair’s longer,” you say, running your fingers through the tangled brown tresses before swiping your thumb across his cheek to remove a smudge of dirt. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up and breakfast will be ready by the time you get back?”

He wants to protest, wants to stay there in front of the stove with you and sway until the food is burnt and the sun finishes rising and sets again in the night. Wants to hold you until the house gives in on top of you and you both turn to dust and become one with the earth below.

He would be okay with that, content with the thought of his aching bones finally being laid to rest entwined with yours, but you just kiss the tip of your pointer finger and press it to the dimple of his chin before shooing him away and turning back to the food.

Breakfast is spent with you on his lap, his metal arm wrapped around your waist to keep you from getting up, the two of you basking in the first light of daybreak as it filters through the sheer curtains hanging on the window. In between bites he kisses your shoulder blade, and when you finish you cuddle against him while he goes back for seconds.

You’re so warm against him, and he can’t help but tuck his hand underneath your dress to feel the heat of your skin on his. He swears he can almost see his own breath.

‘S cold, he told you there in the kitchen. The furnace is acting up, you had replied. Another thing to add to the nonexistent list he was keeping.

Dishes are left on the table. Pans are left on the stove. The sink is so full that it’s overflowing to the counter. They’ll clean later. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. It can wait, but they can’t.

In the living room, a basket of laundry is taken from the couch and deposited on the arm chair instead. A stale cup of water from the night before is moved from the coffee table and poured into the overgrown pothos by the window and Bucky watches you sit the glass on the floor. It can wait.

It’s so achingly domestic, he thinks, coming home to a well-loved house and being well-loved by the woman in it. There are no false pretenses, no need for the two of them to pretend to be someone they’re not. It’s almost like he never left-- like time in the little white house in the field was frozen, allowing the two of you to pick back up exactly where you left off.

Bucky dutifully follows you to the couch, and the last of the tension in his body melts away when he opens his arms for you to fall in to.

He plans on staying there forever.

Soft touches and soft kisses and even softer words. The radio plays softly in the background as you tell him what he missed, and he listens diligently while you run your fingers through his hair. Eventually you pick up a thin book and a pen. You tried to show him how to solve the puzzle in front of you, but each time you looked at him you noticed the spaced out look and dopey smile he always got when he was watching you, and gave up soon after.

“…Six, seven, eight, nine.” The last number is nearly cut off by a choked giggle when you feel him start to kiss down your neck. He can tell you’re trying to ignore him, but he continues mapping his way down your body, looking up at you as he kisses the inside of your knee. “Bucky.”

The expression on your face is adorably stern, but the almost imperceptible quirk of your lips and the benign tone of your voice tells him everything he needs to know.

It’s there on the couch that he is given his final homecoming with your arms wrapped around him tightly and his hands, one warm and rough and the other smooth metal, grasping your legs. You’re a vision above him. A dream. Beautiful. Ethereal. He feels your warm breath ghost over his face and your eyelashes brush his cheek before you cum around him, a whispered ‘I love you’ and one final kiss urging him to follow. He would follow you anywhere. His beautiful girl. His home.

The air between the two of you is electric as you fall into his chest. He swears he can feel it in his fingertips, his toes, his brain, his heart. Every nerve in his body feels alive.

Another giggle and a slow, languid kiss is shared between you. “Do you think that was it?”

Bucky reclines on the couch, bringing you with him. “I hope so,” he mumbles into your hair. He pulls the discarded blanket over you to slow the creeping chill seeping into his bones. “We gotta get a move on if we’re gonna have four.”

You pinch his side and push yourself onto your elbows. “Four?” you ask, a teasing glint in your eye. “I’m pretty sure I agreed to one.”

“Nope, I vividly remember you telling me we could have as many as I want, and I want four.” The sun has set, but he ignores the darkness outside, instead focusing on your blissful smile and the way the soft light of the lamp on the table dances over your skin.

“Absolutely not. There’s no way I could handle four kids.”

“Okay,” he says, a cheeky grin on his face, “we’ll compromise and have six instead.”

“Six?” you squawk, your tone full of mirth. “Why stop there? We might as well have enough babies to fill an entire freight car.”

The electricity that runs through his body in response to your final two words is enough to make his jaw lock and his muscles seize. He can’t speak, can’t think, can’t hear your worried pleas for him to look at you.

Bucky wants it to stop. It’s too painful, too much, too soon, and he can see you above him still through the fog of his mind-- his shining sun. He can see you, can feel your hands on his face but you’re soon eclipsed by the current running through his body.

Too painful, too much, too soon. The night wasn’t over yet. He was supposed to still have time. Too soon, too soon, too soon.

Did he tell you he loved you? He knows he does, he knows you know, but did he tell you? He can’t see the sun anymore. Was it even there to begin with? He can’t remember.

Bucky closes his eyes, unable to move. He feels lost inside his own mind. Where was he?

When he opens them he thinks he sees the sun. But it’s not soft daylight being filtered through lace curtains or your warmth melting him down to his core. It’s harsh and white and he’s so, so cold.

A man steps in front of his chair.

“Доброе утро, солдат.”

“Я жду приказаний.”

[welllpthisishappening]

Only Live Forever in the Lights You Make

Hey, remember that time Killian met Meg in some tunnels in the Underworld and introduced himself as “Captain Killian Jones” before he called himself “Captain Hook”? Because I do and, surprise, I’ve got some feelings about it! As always, I am still on my season five ‘ish, so here is about 4.2K of name-based feelings, some out of place flirting and some, surprise, Captain Cobra Swan that I didn’t plan on until I typed it. I hope you guys got all the carbs you wanted yesterday. 

All credit always and forever to @shireness-says​ for constantly telling me to keep shoving words at the internet. Even before she reads said words. (I only listened to Arctic Monkeys and My Chemical Romance while writing this. Take from that what you will.)

----

The words are heavy on his tongue. 

Still, as if they don’t belong there, or never really did and the feeling makes him ache. Although most of him aches at this point. Killian is sure his gashes have scrapes and those scrapes have bruises and gaping wounds that are likely far more metaphorical than he’s willing to admit. Staring out at the expanse of Main Street doesn’t particularly help. Hazy air hangs low over cracked asphalt, thin branches and dead leaves that only swirl slightly against the barely-there breeze coming from the Gods know where. 

There’s no water here. No hint of salt-tinged air. 

Occasionally there are some strikes of lightning, leaving the sky bright enough that Killian swears he can see for miles. He wishes he couldn’t. None of it looks right, feels even more wrong, and he supposes that’s to be expected in a place like this, but it also seems like another metaphor of sorts and maybe the torture hasn’t ceased yet. 

Maybe it won’t. 

He deserves that, he’s sure. 

Darkness doesn’t scare him much anymore, at least the more literal variety — or so he will swear, but this is somehow even worse. Every flash of light that cracks across the sky dredges up memories of the kind of storms that threatened to capsize any of the ships he once called home, and he imagines it’s something about extremes. 

Complete darkness can blind a man, but so can light. Stunning him, until he has to blink away the dots that hang in front of his eyes and the dots never entirely disappear. 

He shouldn’t have told that lass his name. 

Foolish, that’s what it was. 

“I can hear you thinking from upstairs,” Emma murmurs, slumped against the side of the railing that should lead up to her room in her parent’s loft. Something similar exists in this place, of course. He can’t imagine the blankets on that bed are as soft as the ones he only barely remembers falling into, what now feels like several lifetimes ago and—

“Might be getting worse now, actually,” she adds, “surprised there isn’t steam coming out of your ears too. Y’know, just for good measure.”

Letting out a breath, he’s all too aware of how slumped his shoulders are when he turns. Emma lifts her eyebrows. 

“The streets are already steaming,” Killian says, “anything else seems like overkill, doesn’t it?” “Stupid word.” “Aye, that it is. In poor taste.”

“What are you thinking about?” He tilts his head. Strands of hair fall towards his eyes, but Killian doesn’t make any effort to brush them away. “Did he fall asleep?” “Yeah,” Emma nods, eyes flitting back towards her room and the space she’d marched Henry into nearly fifteen minutes earlier. “About time, too. I think he was half a second away from falling asleep standing, could barely keep his eyes open anymore.” “Stubbornness is an inherited trait.” She clicks her tongue. “You think?” “Rather pointed.” “Nah, definitely round,” Emma objects, “in a circle-type way that could bring us back to my question and what you’re thinking about and—” “—Henry shouldn’t be here.” “No.” Jerking his head up the way he does only guarantees that several muscles in the back of his neck almost audibly object to the movement, Emma giving him a tight-lipped smile that isn’t exactly his, but is at least getting there, and that’s something almost vaguely positive. 

Her hair is longer than Killian remembers it being. 

He tried to remember that. 

Before. 

Wandering — stumbling, more like — around those caves, blood dripping down the side of his face, caking the same strands of hair that now threaten to actually poke him in the eye, and all he could think about was the exact shade of gold Emma’s hair turned in the moonlight. Preferably when she was also sitting in the harbor, feet hanging above the waves as they passed his flask between them. Or on the deck of his ship. 

He didn’t allow himself that particular fantasy very often, though. Getting both felt distinctly like the kind of selfishness he’s now hoping to avoid. 

“Stubborn,” Emma shrugs. 

“Something about circles, love.” “And going in them, yeah. But I’m also legitimately worried about that pinch between your eyebrows, so seems like as good a time as any to fess.” “Fess?” “Confess,” she amends, “more slang.” Killian’s smile isn’t really that. Is more a grimace and twist of his lips, and yet the weight he’s only marginally worried has taken the place of his heart lightens ever so slightly. Nothing beats yet. He’s still dead. “I like that one, actually.” “When we get home I’ll make you a list.” “Of slang?” “Whatever you want.” Neither one of them move. 

He’d like to move. Would love to, really. To cross this space and pull Emma flush against him until she grumbles about the inevitably uncomfortable nature of her perched on either one of his thighs and how his chin digs into her shoulder when he tries to breathe her in, but something about the overall tension in her jaw and the weight of those yet-to-be acknowledged words keeps Killian rooted to the spot. 

Every one of those words came out quicker than the last, as if they were an admission Emma wasn’t entirely ready to make and he’s fairly certain the pinch between his eyebrows won’t ever disappear completely. He hopes she doesn’t cut her hair. 

He hopes to get his fingers in that hair eventually. 

“I mean—” Emma stammers, color rushing in her cheek. “Within—y’know, within...no, fuck that. Whatever you want. Lists of...I don’t know, movies and books and you’re a giant dweeb right? So you’ve got to like books.” “I do, in fact.” “Yeah, yeah, I figured. I just—do they have holidays in the Enchanted Forest? No Thanksgiving or Christmas, right?” Killian shakes his head. Gets the hair away from his eyes. And makes it easier to see the exact moment Emma starts wringing her fingers together. The railing is very likely digging into her shoulder now. “Yeah, that’s what I figured,” she continues, “but uh...shit, what about birthdays? That’s a thing, right?” “Do you think I get two now?” 

One side of his mouth tugs up. Despite any efforts otherwise and his own, rather intimate, knowledge of that edge Emma is quite obviously teetering on. 

Killian’s been balancing there for the better part of the last few days. Ever since she appeared in front of him again, magic wrapping around him and making goosebumps prickle on his skin, a low heat that felt as if he’d been put on simmer without any threat of boiling because he’s not all that capable of boiling anymore, just festering and stewing and—

“I told that lass my name,” Killian says, voice hardly loud enough to qualify as any sort of sound. One of Emma’s knuckles crack. “The one in the caves, another one of Hades’ prisoners. I can’t—Gods, I can’t remember her name.” “Megara,” Emma whispers. “Yeah, I know.” He quirks an eyebrow, a sudden retreat back to flirting that’s not entirely honest. It’s very likely he’s something of a cad. And it’s easier that way. To slink back into the role, and the person he was and that person deserves everything he’s gotten and may still get. 

Of course, he can’t keep it up for very long. 

Not with Emma staring at him like that — far too appraising and understanding, and the whole thing fails rather quickly. 

Completely. Immediately. A few other words that end in ‘ly,’ just to drive the point home. “Wow, you totally suck at that.” Laughter rumbles in the back of Killian’s throat before he can even begin to rationalize the sound, rubbing his fingers into the raw skin just above his brace. “Fraid you’ll have to be more specific, darling.” “Low blow.” “Endearments, or…” “It’s not going to work,” Emma objects, rolling her eyes when Killian’s mouth shifts in the very specific kind of smirk he knows has always worked. “You don’t just get to start playing pirate and think I’ll swoon enough to get distracted.”

“Suggests I’m still able to distract you.” “Like that would change.”

Heat ripples up his spine. Surprisingly, so. The flicker of normalcy catches Killian off guard, facade slipping for half a moment, and that’s far more time than Emma needs. His hair is greasy when he runs his fingers through it. “Are you something of a soothsayer then, Your Highness? Good at reading minds now?” “More circles, babe. Open books, and all that.” He hums. Can’t do much else, actually. Emotion claws at the center of him, threatens to take root in that stagnant heart of his, and maybe that will help, but it also feels like it could drown him if it had a mind to. The give and take of all this may very well drive him insane quicker than anything Hades could hope for. “How do you know that?” “Which part?” “About the girl,” Killian says, “did you find her?” Emma scrunches her nose. “Regina and I did. In the forest. There was blood and—” She shivers. Tries to hide it, but open book works both ways and he’s always been able to tell when she’s thinking too. Or being inherently stubborn. “I was...well, I wasn’t cool about it.” “Sounds suspiciously like a compliment.” “Ass.” Staying upright is becoming increasingly difficult. “I believe that’s been well-documented, m’dear. I’m sorry about that.” “My inability to insult you better?” “That you thought it was my blood.” 

“Presumptuous,” Emma grumbles, although that sort of misses the insult mark as well and he’s genuinely not sure who moves first. Creaking joints give way to a groaning floor, a tangle of limbs and hands that almost immediately search for skin. If only to remind the other that they’re here and real and at least partially alive. 

If Killian feels his pulse pick up, he’s sure he imagines it. 

That’s not possible. 

“And,’ he adds, Emma’s back against the nearest wall now. He has no idea how his head found her thigh. He’s not going to complain. She doesn’t when she inevitably notices how goddamn greasy his hair is. Fair is only fair, after all. 

“And?” Eyes fluttering shut, Killian briefly worries for the state of his muscles. Which appear to be unspooling the longer Emma’s fingers move, tracing over his temple and the furrows of his forehead and it takes all the self control he’s only marginally in possession of not to wrap his arms around her, bury his face in her stomach and sob. 

“And,” he repeats, “that you were ever uncool about any of this.” Her body shakes when she laughs — soft and disbelieving, which is another marker in the stubborn column, really. Killian doesn’t mention that. He closes his eyes. Breathes. Counts his inhales and takes his time on his exhales, only a little disappointed that the honeysuckle scent has disappeared from Emma’s hair. 

“Can I tell you something?” “Anything.” “Half the reason I think we should make a slang list,” Emma says, “is so you can say more of it. Might be one of my favorite things.” “A slang puppet, huh? Here to entertain you.” “Why are you freaking out about telling Megara who—by the way, was not nearly as snarky as her Disney counterpart would have me believe.” “I’m sure being chased around by the three-headed beast of the Underworld will do that to a person.”

Emma’s thumb taps his jaw. Three times. Exactly. “Ah now I feel like an ass.” “Impossible,” Killian mumbles. Turning his head isn’t easy, but he doesn’t have to worry about the rest of his body when he’s splayed out across the floor like this and the muscles in Emma’s stomach noticeably contract when he noses at the hem of her shirt. 

She squirms. Above him and below him, and there it is again. More metaphors. More dichotomy, or some other philosophical bullshit he’s not willing to think about now. When Emma’s breath noticeably hitches. As soon as Killian’s teeth graze her skin. 

“Distracting—” Gasping, Emma’s nails drag across his scalp. Which isn’t as unpleasant as it probably should be. “Ah shit, I can’t think of—” “Scoundrel? Miscreant? Blackguard?” “What century is that last one from?” “Not nice at all, love,” Killian chides, but Emma just widens her eyes and perhaps they’re both dancing. Without any music. “Probably around the time the first King George ascended the throne.” “There was more than one King George?” “Several, if memory serves. You know those royals. Can’t concern themselves with naming creativity, have to honor the past and whatnot.” “Whatnot,” Emma echoes with a smile. “You want to tell me now? About Megara and how she knew your name.” “I told her, we’ve been over this already.” “Yeah, but—” The rest of the sentence disappears on Emma’s shrug, her lower lip twisted between her teeth. Nerves radiate off her, falling in waves Killian can almost see and nearly remind him of the real thing. 

Time doesn’t mean much here. Days pass on loop, and exhaustion is a guarantee more than an occasional state of being. And yet, somehow — as the last few flickers of warmth continue to lap at the base of Killian’s spine, and Emma’s fingers return to their pattern through his hair, something almost like moonlight casts a welcome shadow across the floor. Stretching over Emma’s outstretched legs and bent ankles, it curls up her arm, lingering at her elbow before it drifts towards her hunched shoulders and the edge of Killian’s wrist and then—

It’s gone. 

Disappearing as quickly as it arrived, Killian wonders if he imagined it. He didn’t. He knows, he didn’t. Just as easily as he knows it didn’t happen simply because of him. 

He licks his lips once. 

“I found her,” he starts, “or she found me, I suppose. Not easy to keep your direction underground.” Glancing up, Killian finds Emma’s eyes on him. Wide, they don’t quite demand an explanation, but they want one and he supposes wanting is half the battle. At least metaphorically. “No stars underground, you see.” “Real confident in your navigational abilities huh, Captain?” “Only if you’ll keep saying that.”

She can’t be comfortable when she bends. Twists towards him, and kisses the top of his absolutely disgusting hair. 

There’s a shower upstairs. In the right version of it. He’s not sure what’s here. He can’t bring himself to go up there. 

An absolute coward. 

“Anyway,” Killian continues, “there was a three-headed monster, this lass, and I—we weren’t both going to get out.” “You let her go, though. Told her to go.” He nods. Talking is something of a challenge once more. “As if you’d ever do anything else,” Emma mumbles, a note of pride in her voice that makes every one of Killian’s internal organs clench. That’s all they can do, really. None of them are working all that great, after all. 

“That’s not true.” Tensing, Emma’s fingers still. “That wasn’t really you.” “Ah, that’s not totally true, either. It was at least partially me, all those deep-rooted desires given free reign. But I wanted...she was so scared, Swan.” He doesn’t bother mentioning the rest. Being more specific seems pointless, especially when Emma’s fingers stay exactly where they are. And she knows, anyway. He was terrified. Of what he’d lost and what he’d done and what he’d still be willing to do, if it meant she got out of here. 

Safe. 

He wants them all safe. 

“I told her to find you,” he rasps. “That—I knew you were here, could...feel it, almost. No matter where I was or—” This may be their least organized conversation. Full of tiptoeing and heavy words, unspoken meaning that neither one of them is entirely ready to give credence to yet. “Gave her my name, my—my real name.”

Hair brushes the top of his head, softer than it has any right to be and several things in Killian’s chest threaten to combust. “I was doing a lot of yelling of your name in that bloody forest.” “Joke, or…” “Fresh out of jokes, I think.” He noses at her jeans, not sure if he’s desperate to touch her or the opposite. Desperate to brand himself there, so she’ll remember. No matter what else happens. “I didn’t even think about it,” he admits, “just—I told her to find you, said I was Captain Killian Jones, like that was something I could say, and that you needed to know I was here.” Emma’s silent for a moment. 

Another. Two moments. That become three and four and then Killian’s counting his inhales again and doing his best not to stare too intently at her. She kisses his hair again. Luke she can’t help herself. 

“Had to use the title, didn’t you?” Killian exhales. “Haven’t in quite some time.” “Did you think I wouldn’t have known it was you?” Emma teases, so the joke-thing was something of a lie. A nice one as far as misplaced lies go. Making another noise, he finally burrows closer to her until it’s closer to snuggling and clinging and another round of goosebumps explode on his skin when her hand flattens against his back. “Or,” she says, “was it something else?” “Several somethings, maybe.” “Wanna ballpark for me?” “Not sure I understand that one, actually.” “I don’t need all the somethings, but a few would be good right now. We can get to the rest of them later.”

Those words don’t necessarily fall on top of him. They’re as heavy as the rest, all that meaning and the possibility for a future that seems as distant and impossible as the past or the overall softness of the bedding upstairs. So, while gravity does its best to pull the words down on top of Killian, there’s an ease to them that makes it feel as if they’re simply resting across his back, a reminder that helps keep him pressed to this plane and this place and Emma’s left thigh. 

Which is one of his favorite places to be, quite frankly. 

Usually without the jeans in the way, but dead beggars can’t be choosers. 

“I don’t know why I did that. The name, I—” “Liar, liar.” “Would you like to talk about pants, Swan? Because I have my fair share of thoughts regarding the ones you were wearing in Storybrooke.” “I didn’t pick that outfit.” “Rather good happenstance, then.” “Is deflection a required pirate characteristic?” she asks. “Distract your enemy with half-hearted compliments and—” “—Oh no, those are full-hearted, I guarantee.” “If nothing else, I did look stupid good in those pants.” “Hair left something to be desired, but the pants fit like a glove.” Her smile almost reaches her eyes. Obvious when light filters through the gauzy curtains, once more. “Flirt.” “Only with you.” Emma’s eyes widen. Not in surprise. Closer to frustration. A hint of impatience. The stubborn sort of determination that requires an answer. “And, I—I wanted it.” “Wanted what?” “To be that. Again, I suppose. After everything. All that I’d done, and how much I’d hurt you, I—”

“—You didn’t…” “Swan, let’s be honest that’s the worst lie either one of us has told.” “Ever?” “If not longer.” Huffing out a laugh, she slides further down the wall, a move that can’t feel good on her spine, but does ensure that she’s closer to Killian and he’s still enough of a pirate to want exactly that. “But I—a very long time ago, Captain Killian Jones believed in something. Wanted something, and thought he could get it. Even if some of it was distinctly lawless.” “Probably a requirement for your line of work.” “Ah, well that king deserved all the insults you could come up with. Stealing from him, destroying everything he’d built. That felt like justice, somehow.” “Should I mention the circular nature of time again or is that redundant?” “Unnecessary,” Killian agrees, his mouth inching further up Emma’s ribcage. The noise she lets out is closer to a giggle than he’s capable of dealing with. In a place that’s always tinged vaguely red. “I suppose part of me wanted to return to that. To the ideals, maybe not the laws or the uniforms, but certainly not the…” He swallows. “Villain. Evil. Wrong.” “I never thought you were wrong,” Emma says, soft enough that it’s difficult to hear. Over the ringing in Killian’s ears. And whatever rushes off her. Magic, of course. Responding to emotion and its innate desire to meet him halfway. 

Gods, but he loves her more than he ever believed he could. 

“I know that,” Killian promises, “even when I didn’t want to. Especially then.” “Make it sound less like an insult next time.” Tightening his arms isn’t easy when there’s this blasted wall in the way. Killian tries all the same. Emma doesn’t tell him to stop. “You were Captain Hook,” she adds, “when we found you. Buried under all those bodies in the Enchanted Forest.” “Eventually that’s really all that was left.” “I can make some more snide comments on pants, if you want. What’s the flammability of leather?” “I have no idea, honestly.” She smiles. He doesn’t check. Knows, can feel it in the very center of soul. “Ah, well, they can probably catch fire. Regina’s going to teach me how to do those ball things, anyway.” “Absolutely menacing, Your Highness.” “Don’t you forget it.”

The room is getting brighter. 

Or Killian’s finally fallen off that edge. Either one seems entirely reasonable and maybe even a little enjoyable and he’s not sure when, exactly, he decides to start talking again. Only that the words arrive without much thought and even more feeling and Emma’s eyes don’t leave him.  

“It was a mask. A reason for everything else, an excuse that I’d rationalized so I could fall asleep. Captain Hook was a product of his own misfortune, all those unfair hands he’d been dealt. The loss, the anger, the fury that grew every single time metal found skin. Being that, being him, allowed me to drift further and further into that darkness.” “But?” “But,” Killian repeats. “You found me under a pile of bodies in the Enchanted Forest.” “Oh, that’s kind of nice.” “It kind of was. After you got rid of the blade at my neck.” She flicks his chest. The knot of their limbs is another kind of miracle. “And then everything else that happened. Beanstalks, and Cora, and magic beans and—” “—You came back,” Emma cuts in. “Seems you’ve returned the favor several times over, love.” “That’s how it’s supposed to work, I think.” Maybe he’ll marry her.

The thought strikes him as suddenly as the lightning that flashes outside, a spark that’s eerily similar to the flames Emma was just talking about and there are far too many metaphors bouncing around his skull. He might just have a headache. 

And yet the thought doesn’t disappear. Not immediately. No, it settles. Threatens to grow at the forefront of his brain, where the institution of marriage has never been given much consideration. Until now. With his left shoulder close to popping out of his socket, and Emma’s fingers in his hair and her back contorted while half a dozen bruises on his legs refuse to heal. 

“I love you,” Killian says, unable to do anything else. Except propose, apparently. He should be alive for that. 

And sitting up. 

He can’t bring himself to sit up. 

Only pull himself closer to Emma, until it’s obvious how much he wants and possibly needs and something about a circle. Coming back. Over and over. 

“I know. Which is—” “—Good?” “Better,” Emma says. “I love you, too. Just you, you know that right?” Nodding leads to jeans scratching at his cheeks, but these pants fit fairly well too and both of them flinch at the noticeable creak coming down the stairs. Tufts of Henry’s hair stick up in every direction. 

“You ok?” Emma asks her son, only to get a teenage-type shrug and genetically inherited head tilt. 

Killian narrows his eyes. “What’s the matter, my boy?” The head tilt reaches an angle unaccomplished by anyone over the age of twenty-five. Killian isn’t even sure he could attempt such an angle. But it doesn’t seem to bother Henry and neither he nor Emma point out the use of those particular words in that particular order. “Couldn’t sleep,” he mutters, already stumbling forward. Falling is likely far too generous a descriptor for whatever Henry does next, another mess of limbs that adds to Killian and Emma’s knot, and there are a few more grunts than there should be. 

From all of them. 

Until they find something resembling comfort, Killian’s head still on Emma’s thigh and her legs stretched out so Henry can take advantage of her right one and— “Probably should have found a pillow,” Killian mutters, hoping it sounds like the apology he wants it to be. It’s not enough. Nothing ever could be, really. And he’s not all that surprised by Emma’s head shake, the way it makes her hair sway and brighten under the bit of light they’ve probably created just now and she winces when Henry’s chin digs into her knee. He starts snoring five seconds later. “I’m fine,” Emma says, and it’s impossible to argue with her. Even in this impossible place. “You’re comfortable like this.”

His heart thumps. 

With wishful thinking or more misplaced hope, but it’s there all the same and he kisses exactly where his lips land. 

[elephantinparis]

A Sky beyond a Storm Review

If I could give this book -∞ rating I would. This review won’t be spoiler free, so if you haven’t read the book don’t read further. Now that that’s out of the way let’s get into it.

First of all, I want to start by saying how sad and angry I am to be writing this because this series had become one of my favorites and it completely disappointed me in the end. I’m not sure disappointment is even a proper word for what I’m feeling at this point. I also want to mention that yes, I am a huge fan of Nightbringer, but I wasn’t expecting a hea for him. What I was expecting was an arc true to his character from previous 3 books. Instead, what I got was a complete character assassination. It all started from the very first chapter–Nightbringer kills a small child, but at that point I was still trying to defend the book and genuinely thought: yes, it fits his character since he despises scholars. So even though I didn’t like it I understood. But then the complete character destruction started. First, we had a moment when he saw a happy family and went: yeah, I’ll kill the mother and the kids out of nowhere because they remind me of my family and if I can’t be happy no one can. Now, let me explain why this is ooc behavior: The Nightbringer as we knew him always had a beef with scholars only. The family he randomly kills are not scholars. Another thing: why would he put someone through the same agonizing pain when he is always specific about the deaths having meaning to him and that he doesn’t kill in vain(scholar killings are not in vain for him) other people, however, don’t fall into that category. Another ooc behavior moment was when he put one of his jinn in chains (yes only for a second and yes the jinn tried to use her influence on him), but the Nightbringer I know would never put his people through that after them spending an actual millennia in a prison. He spent so long trying to get them out, he would never put them in chains again. Then the cherry on the top of the cake was that all throughout the book the author tried to drive it home how much Nightbringer wanted Laia dead and how much he wanted, and I quote: “Open her up.” Another inconsistency since in Reaper he saved her more than once and completely let her go (because we know he loves her). Yes, he wanted to know what magic she possessed since the moment in Torch, but he had multiple opportunities to kill her and he never did. But in this book, he more than once physically assaults her when she’s in no position to truly hurt him and from his previous behavior that’s ooc actions. And you can come and say: but wait a minute Laia is a real threat now and that’s why he wants to kill her after he “opens her up” and I’ll point you to the chapter where he finally learns of his wife’s betrayal and understands what magic Laia possesses. And what does he do? He walks away. The man who spent the entire book hunting her down has her vulnerable, alone, he finally figured out the mystery of her powers and I am to believe from all his previous actions that he’ll kill her, but he DOESN’T. Because, of course, it’s not in the nature of his character to kill someone he loves even if they’re trying to stop him. So, which is it Sabaa? The inconsistencies are jarring. It just drives it home how his actions in this book were character assassination. The final nail in Nightbringer’s metaphorical coffin (because of course in the end he gets no funeral, no established peace, nothing. Unlike Keris…but I’ll get back to that later) is the fact that his evil villain plan is to literally end the world…I’m sorry WHAT?! So, in the span of this book he went from wanting scholars dead, then wanting all humans dead and then wanting the whole world to end which would result in his people dying, too. What in the actual hell is this?? So many possibilities could’ve been taken with this character, even if the author didn’t want to give him a redemption arc, he could have been a much better villain with a good goal. Instead we get this. Please someone try to explain WHY would he do this when he just freed his people? They would suffer just as much from his plan, so it makes no sense at all. His entire character was about protecting the jinn, giving them a safe space once he freed them. Another thing I noticed is that in the previous 3 books Nightbringer was very much humanized, embers and torch focused on him feeling again, his growth once he fell in love with Laia and even in Reaper his actions were tied to her, but in this book it’s completely forgotten. He does monstrous things to other people who aren’t scholars which was never his goal before. He had a millennium to set his anger and hurt on others, but he focused on those he felt were responsible for his life being ruined – the scholars. And yes, he was wrong to try to take revenge on people who didn’t do anything, but the point remains the Nightbringer I knew would have never done anything to jeopardize the jinn’s safety. Even as a villain his story went in a very cruel direction. I never praised Leigh Bardugo’s depiction of her villain Darkling, but maybe I should’ve since she gave him the bare minimum and Nightbringer didn’t even get that. Funny that the author has said on more than one occasion he was her favorite character. I shudder to think what she would’ve done if she disliked him. 

Another character who was treated with cruelty all throughout the story is Helene. Now I’ve got to give credit where it’s due - Helene grew a lot throughout the series: she shed her prejudices, finally acknowledged she had been protecting the wrong people and that martials need to change, she also grew as an incredible leader and a warrior and when the people chose her to be their Empress I was so proud, but then…she made her vow. To never marry, to never have children (which is totally fine since it was even mentioned she didn’t want them earlier), to completely give herself to her duty to the empire. It rubbed me the wrong way immediately because a big part of her arc was love–love for Elias who rejected her, love for her family–who got slaughtered before her eyes, love for Avitas–who also was killed for no real reason other than to make her suffer even more. And what does this show? It shows to Helene that love isn’t her friend because it only brings her pain, she lets people in, loves them with every part of her soul and they end up dying. So, at this point we have a young woman who started the series thinking she wasn’t worthy of love end up thinking love itself wasn’t worth it. How messed up is that? Still as cruel as this arc was it was at least consistent or that’s what I thought. In her very last chapter, it’s heavily alluded she might have something with Musa. And if it was written as just two friends grieving their lost loves it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. But there were clear romantic undertones and then I was left thinking: what? I thought she chose only her duty. And though Avitas was barely a few weeks in the ground at that point I couldn’t even fault Helene for wanting to move on because I just wanted her to be happy again. But at the same time, I cannot ignore the inconsistencies. The cruelty she experienced was too much.

It’s ironic how two of my favorite characters got the short end of the stick.

I don’t really have much to say about Elias since he didn’t really have his own plot, he was just inserted into Laia’s. His ending was by no means earned and I know it’s hard to say that because he had gone through so much in the first 2 books. But ever since Torch he made a conscious choice to become the Soul Catcher. Sure, he only did it to save Laia’s brother, but he made a vow to serve and he completely disregarded his job after the fact. I think if the ghosts that got out in Reaper didn’t hurt anyone, he would have continued to ignore the duty he himself chose. Now in this book he could’ve had an interesting development since he didn’t remember his past life, but this was resolved in the very beginning when Cain somehow gave the memories back. Then in the very end for a quick resolve someone just took over his job and Mauth was okay with it. The person who took over was just brought back for plot convenience and it makes me so mad. He didn’t earn the freedom…

Then we have Laia. The problem I had with her character in general is the fact she disregarded her past with Nightbringer. She can be in love with Elias and acknowledge what she felt for Nightbringer. Alas, she only sees a monster, shows no compassion once she learns of his story and since she spent all the book trying to kill him and not just stop him the very end felt hollow when  she suddenly starts showing compassion to a suffering Nightbringer. Laia from Torch showed compassion and understanding in her own way toward Nightbringer and now it was just gone. She was still conflicted and in this she’s completely closed off. I don’t think her romance with Elias would’ve suffered if her very real past with Nightbringer was acknowledged properly.

I also want to talk about Rehmat (Nightbringer’s wife). We learn that she had a gift of seeing the future and once the war started and she lost their children she saw what Nightbringer would become. So, what does she do? Does she go to her husband and tell him what she saw, tries to change the future, show him that even when she’s gone, he can go on and be who he was always meant to be? Beloved. Hell no she goes to humans and uses blood magic to extract her essence and be put in the progeny of a random tribe. Then waits a millennium to kill her husband. What in the world is this?? The reason why she does this is never addressed. So, as a reader I must make assumptions that she never loved him. That she didn’t even try to change anything. She also could’ve told him of her plan so he could’ve found someone to awaken her sooner so they could once again be together. He was deeply hurt and alone without their people and she left him too. Tell me how you bring in this new force and you don’t even explain her actions? How is this good writing?

Now I want to talk about the death count and if the deaths had any meaning. Got to start by saying that only supporting characters were killed.  First, we have Darin. Killed by Nightbringer because he wanted Laia to kill him for his plan. See, the thing is Laia already wanted to kill him throughout the book, she got the weapon and she came there with the goal of killing him. Nightbringer didn’t need to “encourage” her by killing Darin. So, in my opinion the death was pointless and served no great purpose. It was a way to make the reader hate the villain, sympathize with the heroine and was done for shock value. Livia was another character to suffer a pointless death. She was the only person Helene had. There was no reason to do it same with Avitas. I guess for Avitas I could try to excuse it by saying it’s war and he did die on the battlefield. Keris had always been a great fighter and even Helene couldn’t take her on. But she already lost Livia and now this?? Too much. Too cruel. Livia’s ending could’ve also been written off as a war casualty, but she wasn’t actively participating in the war. Sure, she was the Empress Regent, but to me it’s just too much after her family. Both deaths only caused Helene pain and she didn’t gain anything profound from those losses. Lastly, I truly hated how the author tried to humanize Keris Veturia. And when I say tried, I really mean it because at least for me it didn’t work. The author suddenly had her saying she couldn’t kill Elias when time came even though she already had. She poisoned him and he died because of her. That woman first abandoned him, then tortured him throughout his time at Blackcliff and then in the end cost him his life. And Elias mourned her…She also had a lovely send off in the Waiting place where she found piece with her mother. So then if this villain deserved peace why didn’t the other one? At least Nightbringer had his reasons. We never knew hers.

In conclusion, I don’t understand how the story could’ve gone so wrong. As always everything you read is my personal thoughts and my humble opinion.

Tagging: @nightbringer @bookittothelibrary we suffered so much...I can’t.

[whirlybirdwhat]

deuce headcanons because i can and you can’t physically stop me

gay as fuck and his gay awakening was ace

okay now that we have canon shit established onto the rest

He keeps a copy of Brag Men on him at All times

He has no formal training in any weapon so he’s mostly hand to hand but as the spades journey he slowly gains proficiency in the rapier and pistols.

His mask sometimes slips off but he doesn’t always notice so crew members will either gently put it back in place for him (Ace) or slap at his face to make him put it back on (everyone else)

he’s a former rich boy and is constantly like “how much can a banana cost? Two hundred belli?” and Ace, who has never paid for anything in his life, is like sounds legit, while Mihar takes them both and teaches them about Real Money Adult Pirates Deal With, which means Deuce deals with Ace’s wallet from here on out.

Deuce is fantastic at gambling until the very last moment where he always does the worst thing possible. He blames Ace and his naming abilities, but eventually learns to team up with Ace, who only gets lucky at the end, and destroy everyone else.

Skull has a copy of Brag Men. Deuce talks with him about it sometimes.

Theres only Two People who Deuce respects on this ship and its Ace and Kotatsu who don’t fucking laugh at his writing. Banshee’s okay but she criticizes his metaphors.

Deuce runs very cold and therefore is an Ace magnet because Ace just wants to 1) get rid of nightmares and 2) not be smokin hot for once.

Skull, Deuce, and Mihar have a brain cell meeting once a week. Its with alcohol infused haki and sad expressions of having only 3 brain cells on the crew.

Deuce steals Saber’s cowboy hat so he and ace match

Deuce has two freckles under his left eye, covered by the mask. 

He has the worst bed head in the history of the world and will chuck random objects at anyone who mentions it

Ace came up with thhe Spades Pirates while Deuce came up with the Spadille for the ship name.

Former Society Man Deuce knows how to do the waltz and teaches Ace.

Despite his writing, he is the best at campfire stores when the crew comes to a deserted island.

All of Deuce and Ace’s heart to heart conversations happen at Sunset just as when they first talked post Devil Fruit Eating.

He didn’t want to be the Spades doctor. He was done with medical shit, he was a pirate writer now, not some nurse, but after the third time Ace nearly bled out due to his own stupidity Deuce started grabbing medical books at the islands they visited.

Deuce buys books at every island they visit, and helps Mihar (SOMETIMES) with his lessons - usually Aggie helps, but Aggie’s a bit scary for kids and kids like his mask so! Deuce helps it is.

Benn Beckman is Deuce’s favorite person in the entire world because he is the only one who knows how to deal With Stupid Stupid Captains (Who you may be a bit in love with.) 

Deuce leads the charge to get Ace back with the WB’s kidnap him and keeps on trying to get to Ace before finally running into him and making sure he’s okay.

The Rose is Deuce’s calling card (see his design, theres a rose on his pants or something like it) and it became so because he put a rose in Ace’s hair one day and had to back track because he couldn’t tell Ace he gave him the rose or ace would have feelings.

Deuce is the only Spade who knows about Ace’s dad and he always intervenes when the Spades talk about Roger.

I can’t remember if Ace had his tattoo before he set sail but if not, Deuce got a tat with him, a spade on his right shoulder, wreathed in fire. Ace cried.

Deuce writes back to his family only once and attached is his bounty. They write back, but the letter never reaches Deuce. 

Deuce is a crappy swimmer but still tries to get Ace out of the water. He fails. Cornelia usally does it, cause She’s Cool Like That.

Deuce hides away on the Spadille sometimes to just read some Brag Men when everything gets too much. 

For his birthday, the crew gets him a visual denden so he can take pictures of the places he goes to write about later. he would be touched if they also didnt smash his face into the cake.

His favorite food is pineapples. 

He is the only other person brave enough to go on Striker with Ace because he helped built it.

Deuce helps keep the Spadille together until they get a shipwright. 

The crew seems to have personal or paired cabins on the spadille so Deuce bunks with Ace. 

He hates his offical epitheth and wished he got a cool name like Fire Fist Ace. 

deuce dies at marineford 

Post-marineford, Deuce tries to track down the mera mera no mi so he can have it, like he would have if he had taken the first bite. instead, he finds sabo and they cry together.

Deuce is terrified of chickens which is revealed when Ace thinks its a great idea to bring chickens onto the spadille for an endless supply of eggs. Its horrible. Deuce cries. 

more to be added later lmao i love this man and his crush

[purplesurveys]

1147

Have you ever overflown a bathtub? Hmm, I can’t remember ever doing that.

Why did you ignore the last person you ignored? My new manager, Kata, messaged me a bunch of links to EXO’s videos to get me into them – I looooove that she’s friendly and we vibe super well so I have a feeling will be close soon enough, but I’m still a bit shy so I ignored her for a bit while I was thinking of a reply haha. I’ve since gotten back to her, though.

What's your favorite pizza place? Yellow Cab’s pizzas have never failed me. Mama Lou’s is good too, but they don’t deliver to my area so I haven’t had their pizzas and any of their food in over a year now.

What was the last stupid thing someone talked you into believing? That we can stay friends. I believed it for a while and it was so mentally and emotionally deteriorating for me, so I did the right thing and let go instead.

What's at the top of your to do list in life? Save. I’m superrrrr frugal with my money and hate spoiling myself. I’d rather enjoy everything in the future once I feel like it’s right to settle down.

What's a song that would describe your life at the moment? What Type of X by Jessi. Maybe not my life, but the song certainly matches my mood these days.

Do you ever scream at inanimate objects? Occasionally, if they’re not working or if I accidentally hurt myself with them.

What was the last thing that you shared? I just had lunch delivered to Angela’s place as a surprise, if that counts. I got her chicken wings and these chocolate chip cookies she’s always wanted to try. It feels really nice surprising people with gifts; I might start making it a habit :) I have to credit my director Bea for it - she’s been having food delivered to mine and Kata’s places recently and I just want to pay it forward.

What smell/s can you absolutely not stand? Fruits. We constantly have a stock of oranges because my parents and sister like having them after dinner, and the smell is nauseating. Spoiled food is also high up on my list, and the general smell in Manila is also very foul. Go to other places in the Philippines if you’ll ever visit!!!

Do you ever eat leftover pizza cold? Yessssssssssssssss. Idk why but I find it really good? like even if I eat it straight out of the fridge.

Where are you the most ticklish? The sides of my stomach and around my neck.

Would you put your life in danger to rescue someone? Someone absolutely important to me, yes.

When you're wanting a midnight snack, what do you normally get? I usually don’t really like the snacks we have in our pantry so unless I already had food delivered earlier in the evening I just let the hunger fade because I don’t like having food delivered that late anyway.

Which cartoon character would you want to keep as a pet? Buster from Toy Story. Or Maximus from Tangled but in dog form, because I don’t know how to care for a horse.

What color best represents you? Something peaceful like off-white, or a pastel shade.

Do you like marshmallows? I hate them.

What is your favorite flavor of candy cane? I also don’t like candy canes, or candy in general. Too sweet and I can always feel how unhealthy they are whenever I have to have them.

Do you have any shoeboxes full of old photos/letters/other memorable stuff? My mom has several plastic bags filled with photographs over the last few decades. As for me, I don’t own any memory boxes; but recently, I’ve been sticking up notes from my friends and co-workers up on my corkboard.

Are you in any way double jointed? Nope.

Have you ever considered a career in music/acting? Never. I never liked singing in public and I’ve never considered acting.

When was the last time you felt seriously embarrassed? A few days ago when I accidentally turned my camera on during a work Zoom meeting while I looked completely unpresentable. Luckily I knew I clicked the button and immediately un-clicked it, but my video still showed up for like 0.001 seconds lol.

Have you ever liked a song, looked up the lyrics to it, then hated it? I don’t think I’ve gone so far as to hate it. I have felt slightly disturbed upon hearing the lyrics of some songs I’ve taken a liking to though; and Cherry Wine by Hozier certainly ticks off this box.

Which is worse for you: being hot, or being cold? Hot, which is why living where I do doesn’t work with me well for the most part.

What would be the icing on the cake for you this Christmas? Get nicer gifts for my loved ones. I was able to get everyone presents last Christmas, but given that I had just received my first-ever salary then, I wasn’t able to go all out as much as I would’ve liked. I’d love to spoil my loved ones even more for next Christmas.

If you had the opportunity to live forever, would you take it? Probably, as long as I was guaranteed to live comfortably. I’d love to see how else technology can continue to improve.

Have you made someone happy today? I hope so, when I got Angela food earlier.

Do you generally watch a lot of television? I do watch my favorite shows a lot, but not on television. Most of my content I already consume online.

If your bedroom walls could talk, what would they most likely say? They’d probably go over all the shit I had to go through and the ensuing breakdowns they’ve had to watch from me over the years.

What's your favorite Christmas song? It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas, because it makes me feel festive.

Did you ever really believe in Santa Claus? Only for a brief moment when I was introduced to the concept, but kid-me never bought it because he never showed up.

Do you like the band Relient K? I’ve heard of the band name but I’m largely unfamiliar with them.

Have you ever seen a movie that was better than the book it was based on? Maybe, but for the most part I usually find the books to be better.

Do you like quesadillas? Yes, omg and with jalapeños and cheese *chef’s kiss*

Did you like the show Invader Zim? Nope.

Do you think tomorrow will be a good day? I feel like I’ll be sullen because it will be Sunday again, but I still plan on making the most out of it.

Do you ever talk to yourself? A lot.

Whose butt did you last slap? Idk, probably my ex.

Do you think that chivalry is dead? I don’t think so, but I also think it’s a bit outdated.

What's the greatest/most influential song you've ever heard? That’s a lot of pressure on a song... as much as I don’t really like The Beatles, I’d say Hey Jude has been pretty influential.

What's the weirdest thing you've seen in a grocery store? Not sure. If I had thought something I’ve seen was the weirdest thing ever, I would’ve taken a photo.

What is true love to you? Sacrifices.

Do you like chocolate milk? YES, lactose intolerance be damned.

Have you ever bought yourself a present on Christmas? Not yet. I hope to be able to this year!

Have you ever been on a mechanical bull? Nope, but I’d definitely get on one if I find one here.

Do you prefer to pull off band-aids slowly or quickly? Slowly. Actually, I prefer running water over it until it just slides off.

Have you made a mistake in the past week? I am constantly making tiny mistakes at work.

What was the last weird thing you said to someone? Idk, I feel like all the conversations I’ve had recently didn’t involve any inside jokes or general weirdness.

Have you ever met any bands/band members before? I got to work with one - Redd is the drummer for a local band but he’s since resigned to work with another company.

Have you ever sat on a copy machine and made copies of your butt? No. I’ve never even used a copy machine.

Are you a camera whore? Not at all, I hate posing for the camera.

Have you ever purposely dropped someone's toothbrush in a toilet? Never even considered it.

What kind of mood are you in right now? A little sad because it’s the weekend and I can’t even do my weekend coffee shop trips anymore because Covid cases are experiencing another surge (9000 cases a day!!!), protocols are everywhere again, and my parents already told me I can’t go out...those moments were my rare time alone where I can take walks and reflect and whatnot (and not to mention experieince air conditioning for a few hours), so it sucks to have to be stuck at home again. There’s not much to do at home to begin with, so now I’m just stuck in a cycle of taking surveys and finding videos to watch on YouTube.

What was the last thing someone told you that had you at a loss for words? I was ranting to Andi about how I started despising Diane from BoJack Horseman the moment she flipped out over Mr. Peanutbutter gifting her an entire library. I get where she’s coming from, of course, “understand people’s love language” and all that; but I felt like the very hostile reaction was super uncalled for and it reminded me a lot of my relationship with Gabie – I liked giving and giving, but it was either 1) never enough or 2) apparently the wrong way to show her love, and I was always the one punished for it in the end. I told Andi that because of my experience with her, I don’t even feel like giving a library (metaphorically speaking) to any future significant others anymore because of how hard I had it with her. 

Anyway, they gave me some advice about it and in the end they told me, “One day, someone will tell you, “Thank you for your library.’” It was very beautifully put and I struggled to find the words to reply.

What's something that always makes you smile, regardless of what’s going on? I’m not sure there is such a no-fail thing.

What was that last thing that you bought online? Food for Angela.

Do you enjoy riding around town looking at Christmas lights? Yeah, but the general mood for last year obviously wasn’t super festive and there weren’t as much lights, so it’s been a while since I’ve seen my village all decked out.

Is there someone that you're mean to for no good reason? No, that’s terrible.

What was the last thing you got out of the freezer? The coffee ice cream that I bought from Leigh yesterday! It’s crazy fucking good and I already feel a repeat order coming through.

Are you currently reading anything? No.

What's a good book you'd recommend? I don’t read anymore. I know child/teen-me would be very disappointed.

[d6official]

Meet the indie kings of K-town, DAY6

DAY6 prove that there's more than one way to cut the K-pop cake.

If you think K-pop and think all singing all dancing big budget with bells on, you’d be… well, you’d be right, but that’s not all the genre has to offer.

Enter DAY6, the indie kings of K Town, who’ve always stood out among their label mates for writing and composing all of their own music, and favouring playing their instruments on stage over tightly choreographed dance routines. They’re signed to JYP, a Korean entertainment company, also home to Korea’s favourite girl group TWICE, multi-talented Wembley conquerors GOT7, and fast-rising young ‘ens Stray Kids and ITZY, meaning DAY6 get all the fun of the K-pop fair without losing their own artistic freedom.

When Dork meets vocalist and guitarist Jae, and vocalist and bassist Young K – remaining members Sungjin (vocals/guitar), Wonpil (vocals/keyboards), and Dowoon (drums) are getting ready for show time – it’s the day of their massive Brixton Academy show, about an hour before they go on, to be precise. Judging by our slot, they’re extremely busy boys.

It’s not their first time over here, in fact it’s almost exactly a year since they last played London, previously packing out the Kentish Town Forum.

“We’ve definitely taken a step to become a little bit more live music orientated,” says Jae. “We focused on energy before, but we felt even more importance of getting the energy in our live show, especially with the ‘Gravity’ album, and we used the ‘Entropy’ album to kind of aid us in generating that energy I guess, you know, the back and forth with the audience, and just to make it a better night. That’s definitely been our biggest evolution as a group since last time.”

The Brixton show is part of their ‘Gravity’ world tour – although there’s been another full length (‘Entropy’) since, crikey K-pop moves fast – which means we’re not treated to many of the new songs live, but to be fair, we’re not sure they could fit them into the already two-hour long set.

‘Gravity’ and ‘Entropy’ make up the ‘Book Of Us’ series, an EP and and album focused around being in a relationship.

“The first one was ‘Gravity’, which was the beginning, and then ‘Entropy’ was anything beyond that,” Young K says of the record. “So anything beyond the beginning, any changes, good changes, bad changes, especially the title song, ‘Sweet Chaos’.”

The song is definitely a representation of the whole record, if only metaphorically, as ‘Entropy’ weaves its way through every genre you could think of, it’s chaotic at least. ‘Sweet Chaos’ is the most pop-punk they’ve ever gone (think old Fall Out Boy), ‘EMERGENCY’ is big retro bop complete with video game sounds and a horn section, ‘365247’ could’ve come straight off 5SOS’s ‘Youngblood’ album, ‘About Now’ is a lo-fi little bedroom pop ditty, and that’s only four of the tracks. The huge mix of genres is a result of the boys writing their own bits everywhere and bringing the songs together in the end to create the album.

“We went into a song camp session, which is like, all of the members split up into different rooms with a bunch of songwriters, and so we came up with a lot of different songs, different genres, anything that we wanted to try, and that all added up being ‘Entropy’,” explains Young K.

“I feel like for every song, most of them came from the song camp, so each member would do one song per idea, so we’d have like thirty songs at the end of one session right, so I feel like with that being the case, everyone had different inspirations,” adds Jae.

“We wrote parts of the album individually, and the hodgepodge of all those songs became the album, therefore there was no genre continuation,” he continues. “So with each song, the energy might be a little different but overall, our goal in the end is just to put out good energy and be able to bring our listeners along for our journeys.”

They’ve always experimented with different genres, namely on their ‘Every DAY6’ project, where they put out two songs every month in 2017. They’re just having fun with it and enjoying showing all of the different sides DAY6 have to offer.

“I would definitely say ‘Sweet Chaos’ is the one I’m most proud of writing,” says Young K, “because it’s the most recent title song, and I think it represents the most recent DAY6. That, and ‘Like A Flowing Wind’, ‘Mine’, I think a group favourite was ‘Not Fine’, and ‘How To Love’ from ‘Gravity’.”

As the group’s primary songwriter, Young K wrote ‘Gravity’ in its entirety, and eight of the eleven songs on ‘Entropy’, with Jae and Wonpil chipping in for the other three. It’s pretty rare in K-pop for a group to get that much input in their own songs, with most companies hiring teams to write behind the scenes (not that that is much different from the way we do things over here in the ‘West’), but it’s even sweeter that the boys would open up about their relationships in song too, especially considering dating a bit of a taboo in K-pop. What can we say, it’s proper Real Music stuff, Dear Reader.

As a company, JYP Entertainment seems to give its acts plenty of freedom and input in their music. Alongside DAY6, members of GOT7 and Stray Kids have been given the chance to produce their own tracks; knowing that the artists are given some independence and an opportunity to present themselves musically the way they’d want to be seen removes some of those ideas that K-pop is extremely regimented. That being said, when we ask if they have a hand in the creation of the videos and concepts that are so vital in K-pop, we’re met with a straight “nope” from Jae, and hefty laugh. “Yeah we just focus on the music and let the company expand on it,” explains Young K. Fair enough, they’ve probably got plenty on.

We were also curious as to whether they felt any pressure to go down the EDM/pop route, like many other groups, but it sounds like they’re pretty comfy doing their own thing. Plus, they still get to do fun things every now and again, like the music video for ‘EMERGENCY’, which they jokingly put a little dance routine together for, and being part of a huge company has never negatively affected the group.

“To be honest, in the beginning, a lot of people didn’t know we were part of JYP, so they didn’t expect anything from us,” says Young K. “To them, we were just a band in the beginning, then as it went on they realised we were from JYP, when we started doing more K-pop things.”

Jae adds, “In our first year, we went around the Hongdae area and got in the band scene, and after we played live for a while, the dudes from JYP were like what’s up, and we joined them, but at the start no one really expected us to sound any particular way.”

Since our chat, Jae has started releasing solo music under the name eaJ, working closely with 88 rising, an Asian-American collective of artists (Rich Brian, Joji, NIKI, ring any bells?) who he’s happy to big up. “There’s a lot of really good artists coming out, especially like with representation in the states,” he says. “There’s a lot of amazing artists coming up that we all listen to, and 88 has amazing toplines, a great vibe, they’re upping the standards for Asian representation.”

So with Jae experimenting with solo stuff, what’s coming next for DAY6 after they wrap this world tour?

He says, “To be completely honest with you, we’re not sure. We just keep on writing good music, but we’re just tryna make our path, make our next title song for our next album, so whether we complete the ‘Book Of Us’ concept or whether we do something else, we’re not sure. All we can say is that we’re focused on the music.”

Taken from the March issue of Dork, out now.

[morphedphaseblog]

The starless sea by Erin Morgenstern

Goodreads version

The introduction

This is just to warn everyone that I'm not a literature student, an English major nor a native English speaker, so I'm sorry in advance if this is a jumbled mess. I tend to ramble a lot but I've really tried to keep this as short as possible. (Short meaning a little bit over two thousand words for one review, I've never written a review this long.) I wrote this for self indulgence and for my lovely book club @readerbookclub

The first impression

This book pleasantly surprised me, it was like a very long dream that you don't want to wake up from. The moment I finished it I wished that I hadn't because I couldn't part from it just yet. It would feel almost like cheating, I wanted the intertwined stories to continue and for me to remain in its trance, lost in the beautiful writing and bizarre world.

I will be the first to admit that when someone says the story is written almost poem-like, in prose, and similar, I will immediately think of meaningless quotes that are there just to look pretty. Characters saying things just to sound deep, frilly writing that leads nowhere, and dragged on descriptions that had no place being that long and boring. Those are the first things I think of when I'm confronted with someone explaining those kinds of books to me, and that's completely my fault. This book was none of that, it was captivating from the first page to the last.

"There is a pirate in the basement. (The pirate is a metaphor but also still a person.) "

I can tell you, when I first read this, on the first goddamn page, I was hooked. This book has a strong bizzare sort of setting, one that almost reminds me of Neil Gaiman, distinctively Neverwhere with its underground society and twisted perceptions of reality, and yet this book stands out on its own as an individual. It's definitely a unique book, one that I'm still hesitant to part from.

The writing

This book has a very unique writing style, one that is extremely consistent throughout the book. There's nothing I hate more than an inconsistent writing style that changes without a reason. The author plays around with words and describes things simply yet poetically. There were only maybe two instances where I thought the writing was a bit pretentious, but ultimately the good outweighs the bad.

I don't know what exactly it is, but I will try and explain through the next few quotes:

"The book is mis-shelved in the fiction section, even though the majority of it is true and the rest is true enough"

(This really gives you the sense of vague foreshadowing in the book, where even though the description tells you sweet sorrows is mostly true you don't realise how true it actually is. I never saw the fact that the characters in that book would be actual people that interact with our main characters. Plus the writing is really pretty)

"It's binding has been cracked a handful of times, once a professor even perused the first few pages and intended to come back to it but forgot about it instead."

(Is it just me but these small detailed descriptions really give you a sense of real world happenings and that the story is really set in the real world. You can imagine people passing their fingers over the spine of the book before glancing around and getting distracted with something else. The professor taking it into his hands and skimming it but ultimately forgetting all about it later, and finally Zachary reading the whole book from top to bottom.)

"His dark hair is grading at the temples, framing a face that would be called handsome if the word rugged or unconventionally were attached to it."

(Now I'm in love with this kind of mental visual, it's fun and it almost plays with your expectations. I just really like small things like these, they immediately make my reading extremely entertaining.)

"Someone in the corner is dressed as a highly recognizable author or, Zachary thinks as he gets a closer look, it might be that highly recognizable author."

(Again as before, this is the kind of writing I like. It plays with your imaginary visuals of what's happening and making them ten times more fun, especially when we confirm a bit later that that had indeed been that highly recognizable author.)

"He walks over bones he mistakes for dust and nothingness he mistakes for bones."

(Yet another example of those fun visuals, I didn't even realise how many of these I had marked until I had to go through them for this review. I just adore this writing style.)

I have so many more of these so here are just a few more to really make this review even longer:

"A portrait of a young man in a coat with a great many buttons but the buttons are all tiny clocks, from the collar to the cuffs, each reading different times."

"His face is so much more than hair and eye colour, she wonders why books do not describe the curves of noses or the length of the eyelashes. She studies the shape of his lips. Perhaps a face is too complicated to capture in words."

"There are dozens of giant statues. Some figures have animal heads and others have list their heads entirely. They are listed throughout the space in a way that looks so organic that Zachary would not be surprised if they moved, or perhaps they are moving, very, very slowly."

"The figure in the chair is carved from snow and ice. As her gown cascades down around the chair the ripples in the fabric become waves, and within waves there are ships and sailors and sea monsters and then the sea within her gown is lost in the drifting snow."

"Allegra watches him with studied interest from the other end of the table, the way one watches a tiger in a zoo or possibly the way the tiger watches the tourists."

"It sounds strange and empty now, in her head. Rhyme can hear the hum of the past stories though they are low and quiet, the stories always calm once they have been written down whether they are past stories or present stories or future stories.

It is the absence of the high-pitched stories of the future that is the most strange. There is the thrum of what will pass in the next few minutes buzzing in her ears- so faint compared to the tales layered upon tales that she once heard- and then nothing. Then this place will have no more tales to tell." .

(Probably one of my favourites, it really highlights everything I like about this style of writing.)

Another kind of writing style I noticed in the book was an abundance of making things literally feel alive, giving human emotions to objects, personification. I don't come across this too often in other books, and when it happens it isn't repeated as often in that same book,since it tends to get old, but as we have already learned Erin Morgenstern never makes this boring. She plays around with this and never seems to stop, adding another layer to her writing cake. I love how she gives these characteristics to even the smallest of crevices hidden in shadows, something just people wouldn't even think of.

"He takes his torch and explores the shadows, away from the doors and the tent, among jagged crystals and forgotten architecture. He carries the light into places long unfamiliar with illumination that accept it like a half-remembered dream."

"Outside the inn the wind howls, confused by this turn of events. (The wind does not like to be confused. Confusion ruins it's sense of direction and direction is everything to the wind.)"

"The wind howls after him as he leaves in fear of what is to come, but a mortal cannot understand the wishes of the wind no matter how loud it cries and so these final warnings go unheeded."

"If the sword could sigh with relief as it is taken from its scabbard it would, for it has been lost and found so many times before and it knows this time will be the last."

One more thing that caught my eye in the writing was also the composition, where we technically start with in medias Res. We find out by the end of the book that everything that has happened was one big ass story wrapped in stories and overlapped with other stories. So Zachary literally comes in not even in the middle of the story, but at the very end that has been overdue for quite some time. This makes for a very interesting storyline as all the other storylines intertwine into eachother, it makes for an even more interesting read as our MC comes in only when the plot is at its end, tipping over the very edge.

(I also got the feeling that the entire book is almost told through the perspective of the story, if that makes any sense whatsoever. It's almost like the story, that is bound together like the most complicated twister game, is alive and is smiling over our characters smugly waiting for everything to run its course. Like an omnipresent god, that's at least the vibe I got reading the book. )

The world building

Now in my opinion the world building goes hand in hand with the writing in this book. Every detail I mentioned before builds the atmosphere and the base of all the world building in this book. The way the plot is written is written also contributes to the world building, as all the stories overlap and meet at the very end. The looping plot line is actually my number one favourite thing in the entire book.

There isn't that much to say except 'what the hell is going on?' in the best way possible, to the world building, because as confusing as it can be it's amazing to read and I think that it's one of my favourite aspects of the book.

The Characters

Now is time for the weakest part of the book, its characters, who even though I think are amazing, are definitely flatter than everything else in the book.

In my opinion most characters personalities I just can't pinpoint, and even though this personally doesn't take away from my enjoyment too much, I know a lot of people love well defined character personalities.

For some characters I can understand the constant change in character, like Mirabel, whose multiple lifetimes make it so it makes sense why her personalities overlap and make little sense. She constantly felt a bit inconsistent to me, but again I personally didn't think it ruined the book.

The most well developed personalities I could feel were Kat and the keeper, and at times Dorian. Zachary is a weird gray area for me, because even though I loved his character, I can't really tell who he is besides the son of the fortuneteller. I think that most of the character building was sacrificed to make the plot and the world feel alive. As I said before, it feels like the omnipresent god and the world is more developed than any of the characters personalities.

I usually love marking all 'character moments' where I feel like I can understand what kind of person the character is, their sense of humour, friendship, socializing, thinking and so on. But I found myself marking basically nothing of that kind in this book, just the beautiful descriptions of the world. The story was just more alive than the characters in it.

I liked all the romances even though they all lacked some depth, but the fairytale style writing of the romance definitely made them extremely enjoyable. If it weren't for the fairytale vibe all the romance would have been just flat, and I  wouldn’t be invested at all.

The Conclusion

I wouldn't reccomend this book for everyone, as I think great many people wouldn't be fans of the writing, and so the lack of character depth wouldn't help either and there would be no good to outweigh the bad. I truly think this book is a perfect 4 starts but to me personally it is 5 stars. I am just such a big fan of the looping storyline, I still haven't gotten over that. To finish it all off here are a few extra quotes that I liked:

"No one takes responsibility. Everyone assumes someone else will do it, so no one does."

"It is critical to steep the tests in ignorance to result in uncorrupted responses."

"They all have similar elements, though. All stories do, no matter what form they take. Something was, and then something changed. Change is what a story is, after all."

[marypsue]

who manifest their presences by shadows

This is just a short...experiment? Proof of concept? I challenged myself to write a take on some of the most popular fic tropes for Crimson Peak, just for fun. This one's 'OFC descendant of Edith and Thomas'. If I were to expand it to a full-length fic, it would involve ghosts (obviously), reincarnation and/or reincarnation-adjacent nonsense, and Laura (the OFC) finding Edith's novel and realising the past is trying to repeat itself, with some interesting and unexpected results.

The title comes from Angela Carter's short story 'The Lady of the House of Love'.

[on AO3]

...

It all started when Laura’s grandmother died.

They hadn’t exactly been close, but Grandmother Thomasina had been a lot closer to Laura than she had been to anyone else. Her husband had died before Laura was born, and she had no siblings. And Laura had been the only one who’d had any time for Grandmother Thomasina’s ghost stories.

Still, it came as a surprise to everyone when the will came out and they learned that, first, Grandmother Thomasina had owned a huge estate somewhere in England, and second, that she’d left it all to Laura.

Laura’s father advised her to just sell it all. It was a sizeable chunk of land. It likely would’ve taken care of her tuition. It was good advice. She should have taken it.

But somehow, Laura couldn’t bring herself to let Allerdale Hall go without ever seeing it for herself.

She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like the place had any particular meaning to her family, considering that most of them hadn’t even known it existed. Apparently Grandmother Thomasina had inherited it from her mother, who’d got it from her dead first husband – Thomasina’s namesake – and nobody’d been back to see it since he died. It sounded like there’d been some kind of scandal, maybe – he’d died pretty young. Or maybe after he died, the place had just held too many painful memories.

Either way, by all accounts, it sounded like kind of a dump. The title was not very descriptive, but Thomasina’s will called the estate ‘bleak’, and the hall itself had apparently had a hole in the roof and already been sinking when Great-Grandmother Edith had left, over a hundred years earlier. Laura wasn’t sure how a house could sink. But Grandmother Thomasina had always been prone to embellishment and artistic license, and according to her, Great-Grandmother Edith had been a writer. Between the two of them, Laura was pretty sure it was a metaphor. Somebody had read The Fall of the House of Usher one time too many.

Still, even if she got there and found nothing but a falling-down graffitied wreck in the middle of nowhere, Laura wanted to see it. There was something terribly romantic about the whole thing, about the idea of suddenly discovering she was the lady of a mysterious crumbling manor somewhere in a country she’d never seen. About how both Great-Grandmother Edith and Grandmother Thomasina had apparently kept it secret all these years. About the aura of mystery surrounding Great-Grandmother Edith’s never-spoken-of first husband.

So Laura had packed her bags, booked her flights, and, within a week, was face to face with what remained of Allerdale Hall.

There wasn’t much to come face to face with. Coming up the long drive, under the black wrought-iron arch and handful of tumbled bricks that apparently had once served as a gate, the place looked imposing and impressive up on the peak of the hill, all Gothic arches and jagged peaked roofs. Its empty windows struck Laura as staring eyes, taking in her approach. She knew it was just her imagination, but she couldn’t help but feel a cold dislike in that inanimate gaze.

But when Laura pulled the rented Range Rover up before the ruin, she saw two things in quick succession. One, why the locals had all called the place ‘Crimson Peak’. And two, what Grandmother Thomasina had meant by ‘sinking’.

It was no metaphor. Elaborate, lacy brick railings stood half-buried in the raw red ground as though growing up through it, little more than six inches showing above the earth. They partitioned off a wide, flat space around the door. Laura’s best guess was that the railing had once delineated a patio or drive that was now somewhere under the sucking red clay that clung to her boots. She was never going to be able to get it off, she could already tell.

The door itself might once have had stairs leading up to it, but now was packed close between the jutting brick constructions to either side of it with red earth. It stuck, badly, partly because it was sunk nearly a foot, if Laura had to guess, down into the clay. She could get it to jerk inward, in fits and starts, but something – maybe the dirt she’d displaced on the other side – always seemed to force it sharply closed again. Laura finally managed to force it just wide enough for her to sneak through, putting her shoulder against one ornately-decorated door and pushing with all her strength, her boots sliding in the dirt. And that was when she saw the third thing.

Allerdale Hall was gone.

The wind, howling through the shattered windows on either side of the short entryway, caught Laura’s hair and gave it a playful toss as she crossed the clay-drowned floor. She didn’t take more than five steps before she reached the crumbling remains of a stair, and stopped, staring out at the hilltop opening out before her.

The face of Allerdale Hall, so imposing and solid-looking as Laura had approached, was nothing but a hollowed-out shell. At the end of the entryway, the walls terminated abruptly in broken brick and torn wood, and where there should have been hallways and rooms and ceilings, there was only red earth and blue sky. Only a few hardy yellow grasses were struggling to grow over the vast, pitted red stain on the hilltop where the body of the manor should have been. A few jutting timbers, and the remnants of stone arches rising out of the clay like broken ribs, were the only sign that there had ever been a building there.

The sight filled Laura with an unexpected and unnamable emotion, somewhere between grief and triumph. At least now she didn’t have to feel bad about selling it and having someone knock it all down. But there was still something melancholy about those few pathetic, sinking pieces of debris. And Laura couldn’t help but feel like she’d just lost her last link to Grandmother Thomasina and her mother before her, the last thread binding her to them unravelling. As soon as she’d seen the jagged peaks of its roof, stark and black against the pale sky, Laura had known that this was the haunted house from every one of the ghost stories Grandmother Thomasina had always sworn her mother had told her were true. After Laura had come all this way, after all those long years – none of her family would ever see it now.

She wasn’t going to find any answers here. Allerdale Hall and the past would keep their secrets.

And, she wasn’t going to be able to stay in the manor house. It was probably a good thing, Laura decided, that she’d booked a room at the bed and breakfast in the village.

It took her less time to find her way back to the village than it had taken her to get out to the estate. She’d gotten lost three times on her way out, having to turn back and retrace her path more than once. For some reason, the locals had seemed reluctant to give her any specific directions. And they all relied on local landmarks, which Laura guessed made sense, but didn’t help a foreigner find her way around. Especially when she wasn’t used to driving on the left side of the road.

Laura stopped in the pub that night for dinner, deciding to give real English fish and chips a try. She wasn’t sure that what she got was real English fish and chips, though. The chips were hot but greasy, the fish a lurking whitish, pasty smear inside a proud – and nearly inch-thick – casing of batter. Laura couldn’t say she was impressed. At least the beer was decent.

“Excuse me. I couldn’t help but notice – you’ve been up to Crimson Peak, haven’t you?”

Laura looked over to the barstool beside her, and into a pair of the most intense blue eyes she’d ever seen. They belonged to a man who could, in fact, be accurately described as tall, dark, and extremely handsome. Laura hastily downed a mouthful of the adequate beer to cover her sputtering. “How -”

The man nodded towards her feet with a crooked grin. “Oh, I suppose I must be Sherlock Holmes.”

Laura looked down, saw the red clay caked on her boots and spattered up her jeans. She laughed, partly with relief. The hilltop was so open, and she hadn’t seen anyone else there. The idea of anybody – even this admittedly very magnetic guy – watching her up there, unseen, had left her feeling exposed and uneasy. “God, I’m never going to get these clean.”

The guy’s gaze really was intense, even over that charming, crooked smile. “American! Would you credit that. What brings you all the way out to our humble little village?” He canted his head a little to one side, his eyes narrowing as he said, “Please tell me you haven’t a camera crew in tow. It’s dangerous up on the peak – the ruin’s not stable. And I know television people have no fear for their lives. We can’t afford the lawsuit if someone with a camera decides they need to stand where the house was to get a shot and falls through to the basement, or if the façade comes down and crushes some poor sod.”

He seemed to noticed Laura’s uneasy glance down at her boots, because he grinned and winked. “And, the last time one of those ghost-investigation shows did an episode on Crimson Peak, it was near four years before you could walk down the high street without being stopped by some big-eyed American wanting to hear horrible tales about the clay spitting up skellies.”

Laura nearly snorted beer through her nose. There was a confused moment as she tried to fix her face without blowing snot all across the bar, a moment that ended with a broad, solid hand pressed gently against her back and another offering her a napkin. Laura took it, blew her nose, and then looked up. The guy’s eyes were even more arresting up close.

She couldn’t think of any reason to lie. “My grandmother just died. Apparently she owned Allerdale Hall. And she left it to me.”

The guy’s expression didn’t change. Actually, it was a little unsettling how much it didn’t change. Sometimes, the satellite on Laura’s TV would flicker and the image would freeze while the sound continued on, until suddenly the frozen image would fragment into movement again, briefly warping the image into the shape of whatever was moving before the screen righted itself. For the briefest of moments, Laura got the same sense looking at the guy’s face. Like it had frozen in place while something else went on behind it, some flicker of dark motion just visible behind his eyes.

And then he smiled, wide and inviting, and the raucous good cheer of the pub flowed back in, warming the air between them. “So you’re the lady of the manor now, is that so?” He stuck out a hand, but there was a twinkle in his eye that belied the formality of the gesture. “I suppose that makes you my boss. Tom Latimer. I look after the place.”

“Some place,” Laura said. “Laura. Laura Price.”

She took his hand and shook, firmly. Tom had a solid, reassuring grip, but his hand was curiously cool under Laura’s. She wondered if he’d just come in from outside.

“Laura,” Tom said, consideringly. And then, “Buy you a drink?”

“Please,” Laura said, hopefully not too fast.

She waited until Tom had ordered two more beers before asking, as casually as she could manage, “So what were you saying about Americans with camera crews and ghost shows?”

The grin Tom turned on her, this time, at least seemed to be deliberately unsettling. “Oh, has no one told you?” He pushed one of the foaming glasses the bartender set down before him towards Laura, raising the other to her in a mocking toast. “Your inheritance is haunted.”

…

Two days later

…

Somehow, the ruin of Allerdale Hall was even more unsettling at night.

Laura pulled the Range Rover in behind what remained of the gate and killed the engine. She’d shut off the headlights before she’d even turned onto the drive, inching through the moonlit dark with her eyes wide for any sign of anything living that might choose to dart into her path.

If there really was someone up there, she didn’t want them to know she was coming.

Laura tucked her flashlight – Tom had called it a ‘torch’, something Laura found unaccountably funny – into the pocket of her windbreaker, just in case, before she slipped down out of the Range Rover. She shut the door as quietly as she could behind her. But she shouldn’t have worried. The wind caught her almost as soon as she opened the door, tearing at her hair like it wanted to pull the blonde locks out of their messy braid and flipping her windbreaker’s hood up over her face. The ghastly howling it made as it swept across the hilltop was loud enough to drown out even the noisy metallic chunk of the door falling into place.

It was a long, dark, eerie walk from the gate up to what was left of the house. The clay stuck to Laura’s boots, clumping up on the soles and making it hard to walk. But when she tried to step off the road, the overgrown yellow grass seemed to tangle around her ankles and try to trip her up, dry, sharp blades jabbing her through her jeans. The wind battered and buffeted at her the whole way, swirling around her to slam into her first from one side, then the other, rattling her windbreaker’s hood against her ears.

Now and then, that rattle and the sighing and whispering of the wind in the grass combined to sound like human voices, somewhere in the distance. No less than three times, Laura spun around, half-convinced someone had just breathed her own name into her ear.

“No wonder people think this place is haunted,” she muttered, hugging her arms more firmly around herself, her hands tucked under her arms. She almost wished she’d thought to bring gloves.

Laura was about halfway up the drive when she saw it. Way up in one of the remaining peaks, in a tiny, pointed window stuffed under an eave, the briefest flicker of an underwater blue-green light shone, before disappearing as quickly and unexpectedly as it had appeared. It was gone so quickly that Laura wasn’t sure, for a moment, if she’d seen it at all.

She turned, looking back over her shoulder, but there was no sign of headlights retreating down the road behind her that might have glanced off the window. Besides, the angles were all wrong – even if there were glass left in the window for headlights to reflect off of, what was left of the house was much too far back from the road for the light to reach it.

Which meant that the light had to have come from behind the window. That, somehow, even though the whole building behind that forbidding façade was gone…someone was up there.

Laura quickened her pace.

The hollowed-out face of Allerdale Hall loomed above her, as dark and dead as a tombstone, heavy and oppressive, as she passed between the half-sunk railings and up to the door. The thick brick constructs – balustrades? Bollards? – on either side of the door turned the entry, in the dimness, into a gaping black mouth, opened wide to swallow her. Laura paused a moment before passing between them, feet slowly sinking, listening hard. But if anyone had been moving around, she wouldn’t have heard them anyway, not over the wind.

Laura just didn’t want to admit to herself how much she didn’t want to open that door.

Maybe she should have just called Tom. Asked him to come with her. Asked him to go for her. He likely would’ve been glad to – to watch the silly American wet her pants in terror of the wind and the occasional bat or sparrow, jumping at imagined ghosts. The unkind thought crossed her mind that he might even be happy to see how poorly she, the supposed lady of the manor, handled the house he was so familiar with, that had been his responsibility since long before Laura even knew it existed, that he had no fear of, that held no mystery for him. And, standing out in the middle of nowhere, with the cold wind blowing through her and playing tricks on her ears, far from anyone who might hear if she screamed, alone in the dark, Laura couldn’t deny that even if he were laughing at her, just his presence would’ve been reassuring in a way she couldn’t resist.

But there was…something. Something about his laugh when he’d been telling her stories about things people said they’d seen up on Crimson Peak. Something about how reluctant he’d been to give over the keys. Something about the way something behind his eyes seemed to flicker whenever Laura mentioned her ownership of Allerdale Hall –

No. Bringing Tom would have been a mistake. Laura had to come here alone.

She had to see for herself.

Bracing her quivering heart against that thought, Laura plunged into the shadows surrounding the door. She braced her feet as best she could against the clay, and put her shoulder against the door.

She was expecting a struggle, like it had been that first afternoon she’d visited the hall. But the door swung open so smoothly that Laura, really putting her back into it, overbalanced and fell, face-first, over the threshold.

She was expecting to land with an embarrassing and hideously messy splat right in a puddle of red clay mud. She was not expecting her shins to slam into and her chin to bounce off of hardwood.

Laura lay stunned for a moment, before gingerly pushing herself up. The wood – definitely wood, polished to a satin finish under her fingers, with clay oozing coldly up between the narrow boards everywhere she put her weight – stayed solid under her. She scrabbled in her pocket for her flashlight, giving up any pretense of stealth. If there was really someone here, her thumping arrival would’ve already announced her presence. No use in trying to be sneaky after she’d already yelled ‘FUCK! OW!’ at the top of her lungs.

She did pause for a moment in the dark, listening with bated breath for any sound of movement, and realized something strange. The wind, still moaning, seemed curiously muffled and distant. Almost like – almost like there were walls between it and Laura.

But that was impossible. Because Allerdale Hall was –

Laura clicked on her ‘torch’, and froze.

The flashlight’s beam revealed, in bits and pieces as she swept it back and forth, not only the beautiful, decaying inlay of the floor she lay on, but the elaborate Gothic carving of the stairs that wrapped around and down three floors in front of her before coming to an end a few feet from where she’d fallen, the narrow walls of the entryway opening out into a vast, high-ceilinged hall, rooms upon rooms opening out underneath and behind the stair, going so far back that Laura’s flashlight beam petered out before it could reach the far wall…

There was no other explanation. She was inside Allerdale Hall.

It couldn’t be here. It wasn’t here. Laura had seen the bare red stain on the hilltop where the body of Allerdale Hall had stood with her own eyes, not three days before. Had stood in this very spot, her feet mired in clay, and looked out at the pale grey sky, felt the wind, sweeping unimpeded over the moors, tangle her hair and clutch at her clothes. Had seen the last remains of the wreck, had seen the half-buried and broken shards of some of the arches and carvings that her flashlight beam now illuminated, whole and standing, set neatly and firmly into the walls as though they had never been anywhere else.

And everywhere the circle of yellowish light landed, it revealed only more encroaching, cobwebbed opulence. Everything was sleepily, patiently still and muffled with dust, frozen in the curious neglected way of something disused but sealed away. Like a time capsule. Or the pictures Laura had seen online of a Parisian apartment locked up in the twenties and forgotten, untouched, until the early aughts. From the heavy, pointed arches of the stair railings, broken away on the balcony above her, to the flaking gilding on the ornate frames of the portraits covering the walls, to the heavy, moth-eaten draperies that delineated rooms to her right and –

Laura leapt to her feet, flashlight sweeping wildly over the drapery-hung doorway to her right, heart pounding in her throat. The beam illuminated nothing but the soft dullness of velvet trimmed with dark golden tassels, glistening off the slow drip of clay bleeding down the walls, but she knew.

She’d seen movement.

When the impossible hall remained stonily silent and still, Laura managed to calm her jangling nerves enough to call out. “Hello?”

She’d half-expected the sound to bounce back to her from the vastness of the hall, but instead, the wide, empty space seemed to have a curious muffling effect. Almost like Allerdale was swallowing her voice whole.

As she’d expected, she didn’t get an answer. Laura took one ginger step forward, holding the flashlight in front of her with both hands like a sword. Something slithered coldly between her fingers, and Laura looked down to see that her palms were dripping red with clay from where she’d pushed herself up off the floor. In the dimness, her hands looked bloody.

She took another step forward, the floorboards squishing and oozing under her feet, and then, feeling braver, another. “Is anybody there?”

No answer. In the slowly-sweeping beam of the flashlight, nothing stirred except drifting particles of dust – and the flashing wings of a huge grey moth, startled off a wall and startling Laura almost right back out the door.

She laughed at herself, as the moth’s rustling wings retreated into the depths of the impossible hall. That must have been all she’d seen. Just a moth, or some other wild creature, startled by the light.

Still, though, Laura couldn’t quiet the nagging thought that what she’d seen moving had been, for a single instant, unmistakably a person.

She crept across the entry and up the shallow steps into the main hall, still waving her flashlight from side to side, looking all around her as she went. This place couldn’t be real. A building couldn’t just disappear in the daytime and reconstruct itself under the moonlight. And yet, when she looked up, Laura could see, storeys above her, the narrow sickle-blade sliver of the moon peeking down through the shattered timbers of Allerdale Hall’s roof.

As if in response to Laura’s thought, a horrible, shuddering, wailing moan seemed to fill the gaping darkness of the hall like the sound of an enormous, diabolical pipe organ. It rose like some infernal crescendo, somehow at once both inexpressibly sad and hollow with menace, went on and on and on and then, just as unexpectedly as it had begun, died gradually away.

But in the quiet that sound left in its wake, Laura could hear another sound emanating from out of the vast darkness before her. One that hadn’t been there before the cry.

It was faint, just on the very edge of hearing. But it was, unmistakably, the sound of someone playing a piano.

Laura stood frozen in place, no more able to turn around and break for the door than she was to take another step towards the source of that eerie, melancholy sound. It was a pretty tune, if a little sad, and it sounded like it was being played by an expert and experienced hand, one that knew the rises and falls of the song like its own heartbeat.

No matter how many times Laura passed her flashlight over the dark space reaching back under the stairs, she could see neither piano nor player.

“You can’t scare me,” Laura called into the dark, at last, when the relentless soft chime of the music became nearly unbearable, sounding braver than she felt. She hoped, to the tips of her toes, that she was telling the truth. With every word that fell from her lips, though, with every ringing, real sound of her voice in the howling quiet, she felt a little flame of anger flicker in her breastbone, its heat making her bolder. She thought of Tom’s crooked smile, thought again of his reluctance to hand over the keys, and felt it burn a little brighter. “Do you hear me? I’m not falling for this Scooby-Doo shit! I’m here, this house belongs to me now, and you can’t scare me away!”

From somewhere in the darkness past the stairs, there was a bang, like someone had slammed the cover abruptly over the piano’s keys, or kicked over its bench as they flew to their feet. With a discordant jangle, the music cut sharply off.

Laura stood perfectly still, listening, her fingers going stiff from how tightly she was clutching the flashlight, not daring to so much as breathe. The house was silent again, and perfectly still under its muffling layers of clay and dust, but there was something different about it. Something vital, active, wakeful – and watchful - that had been missing when Laura had first entered. Even the wind had died back to a low, throaty moan in the background, as though it didn’t dare disturb the silence.

As if the whole house was holding its breath.

Right on cue, Laura’s flashlight flickered, dimmed, then went out.

“Oh, come on,” she muttered, thumping its end against her palm, frantically clicking the switch back and forth, banging it against her leg. It flickered on once, for the barest sliver of a second, and then died again. The dark of the hall seemed suddenly as thick and viscous as the clay that squelched under Laura’s boots, pouring slowly but inevitably in around her to drag her gently but inexorably under, stop up her mouth, suffocate her slowly. “Come on come on come on -”

She had the flashlight raised to her face, peering in at its deadened reflective eye, when it suddenly burst back into brilliant light. Laura looked up, away from the blinding glare –

And directly into the twisted, wrathful, silent scream of a skeletal face the barest inch from her own.

Laura screamed, too, the sound of it ringing off the walls, and stumbled backwards. She barely managed not to drop the flashlight, but that didn’t make anything better. It only meant that she could see the clawed hands of the apparition as it grabbed for her, its fingers tearing at the sleeve of her windbreaker. It seemed to be shaped from solidified darkness, part woman, part skeleton, all horror. And its grip was like ice, like iron. Laura tried to pull her arm free, but she might as well have been trying to pull Allerdale Hall itself from its grave in the sucking ground.

The creature – ghost – whatever – ignored Laura’s struggling, drawing her left hand up towards its empty-socketed eyes. It seemed to stare, eyelessly, for a long moment, at Laura’s bare ring finger, before pushing her away with a gesture of disgust. There was an inexorable strength in the motion, and Laura found herself spinning across the floor, unable to catch her balance before she slammed down against the hardwood, catching the point of her elbow with a hiss of pain.

The ghost was on her as soon as she hit the floor. It leaned low over her, shoving its twisted face into her face again, what remained of its lips curled into something part sneer, part rictus. For the briefest of instants, with the clarity that comes with sheer terror, Laura had the slightly crazy thought that, in life, the ghost must have once been very beautiful.

Its voice was a whispering, rasping, rattling hiss that was somehow, also, heavy with contempt.

“Liar.”

It straightened, enough for Laura to get a glimpse of the flashlight glittering off the beetle-back embellishments of an old-fashioned dress, its train melting into the darkness that surrounded it. The ghost waved a hand in Laura’s direction dismissively, and Laura watched, fascinated with horror, as sparse flesh withered down to charcoal bone before her very eyes.

“Get out.”

Then the ghost turned its back on Laura, and was swallowed up in the darkness.

Laura didn’t wait for it to come back. She scrambled to her feet, slipping in the clay and falling back to one knee before she got her feet under her.

She wasn’t sure, at first, what she was hearing. It sounded like a distant roaring, like the largest whirlpool she could ever have imagined, like a wave breaking against the shore. Laura paused, curiosity overriding fear for one fragile second, and turned her flashlight back towards the dark space under the stairs.

Just in time to see it collapsing into the ground.

Walls groaned as they fell in towards each other, toppling with a thunderous crash, a crash that went on and on as rooms fell in on the rooms that had fallen in before. The balcony overhead caved in on itself, delicate embellishments snapping and popping away. The stairs gave an ominous moan and twisted, the railing splintering, masonry raining down and punching straight through the floorboards. The floor itself began to unravel around those pockmarks, slender inlaid board by slender inlaid board, to reveal glimpses down into a basement glistening red with clay, far below the growing hole quickly chewing up the suddenly-wobbling floor beneath Laura’s feet. Overhead, a long, drawn-out sigh of wood and brick and stone under stress rose from the broken roof, slivers and splinters pattering down on Laura’s head and rattling down towards the distant floor of the basement below. The walls to either side of her heaved and bowed as though they were breathing.

Laura turned and ran, full tilt, for the door, even as the floor splintered away under her feet.  

She barely made it out, breath half-sobbing with exertion and fear, throat raw, before the deafening roar of Allerdale Hall’s demise rose to a crescendo. With one final crash that shook the ground under Laura’s feet and sounded like it was splitting the sky in two, the remaining walls sheared away from the façade and went tumbling down, carrying its ghost with it, into oblivion.

The door slammed, like the period on the end of a sentence, on Laura’s heels.

…

“You almost make it sound,” Tom said, with the faintest glimmerings of a smile that Laura knew meant he didn’t believe her, “as though the house itself were the ghost.”

Laura sipped at the mug of tea he’d made her. She was still a little surprised that he’d even let her in after she’d shown up, covered in clay and nearly hysterical, at his door in the middle of the night. She’d been too scared to go back to the bed and breakfast alone, and willing to eat a little humble pie in exchange for the sound of a real human voice.

Thankfully, Tom hadn’t laughed. He’d taken one look and invited Laura in, regardless of the late hour, dug her up a robe, and invited her to take a shower while he ran her clothes through the wash. Nearly an hour later, Laura was clean and dry and warm, and starting to feel a little calmer. The tea was definitely helping.

Unfortunately, now that the immediate terror had ebbed, Laura was starting to have to think about it.

Between the ripples and the steam rising off of the tea’s ruddy surface, for a moment, Laura hardly recognized her own reflection. The face looking back up at her from her mug looked like someone – younger, maybe, but also somehow older, or maybe just someone who had been through more than Laura ever had. Wider-eyed, with loose blonde curls falling to frame the heart shape of her sweet face, a stray tea leaf cutting a sharp, ugly gash across one pale cheek –

Laura blew on the tea to cool it, and the illusion vanished.

“You know,” she heard her own voice saying, as if from very far away, “I almost think it was.”

[aion-rsa]

How Ginger Snaps Explored the Subversive Horror of Womanhood

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In 2000 Mission: Impossible 2 topped the box office, Gladiator triumphed at the Oscars, and the first X-Men movie ushered in a new era of superhero movies. Meanwhile in Canada, while no one was watching, a new hero was emerging. Her name was Ginger, she was a 16-year-old girl, and ok, she might have turned into a monster and killed a few people but, wow, was she a ferocious figurehead for females everywhere. 

“That’s what she’s about. She’s about fuck you, fuck the patriarchy, fuck the standard, fuck society, fuck the norm. And to me, that’s a hero,” says Katharine Isabelle, speaking with Den of Geek via Zoom from her home in Vancouver, 20 years after the film’s debut. Isabelle was just 17 when she stepped into Ginger’s very cool boots and she had no idea it would become a massive cult hit.

“When it first came out, no one fucking watched it. It did well with some critics at a few festivals, but no one cared. No one went to see it,” she recalls. “It wasn’t until it hit the VHS circuit in small town Canada that people were like, ‘Oh, Ginger!.’ Emily [Perkins, who plays Ginger’s sister Brigitte] and I thought we’d be the only people that liked it because we were weird and dark. We had no idea that through the generations it would continue to have an effect on people.”

Watching 20 years on and Ginger Snaps absolutely holds up. More than that, in fact, it looks positively progressive and even transgressive in a year where we were onto our third Scream, our second Urban Legend, and our first Final Destination. Glossy teen slashers were the thing, which didn’t often make for great parts. 

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“In the ’90s, as a 17-year-old girl it was ‘be hot, get murdered’,” says Isabelle. “There weren’t a lot of really interesting characters coming out of that, especially in my small Vancouver, Canada acting world. So to see this and be like, ‘Holy shit, this really speaks to me, I am this dark, insecure, troubled, deep, dark humored girl who feels outcast and misunderstood by everybody,’ I was just like, ‘Yes. 100%.’”

Written by Karen Walton who would go on to write for Queer as Folk and Orphan Black, and directed by John Fawcett (one of Orphan Black’s co-creators), Ginger Snaps was a fresh take on the werewolf subgenre and a brand new slant on teen horror. This was about girls for a start – sisters Ginger and Brigitte who are weird outsiders fascinated with death. Though there’s sex in the movie it’s really a love story between the two females while the only male character who we have any sympathy for is a drug dealer who has no sexual interest in either. There are dog maulings along the way, and as we head towards the climax with Ginger becoming more and more monstrous, there’s plenty of gore.

But the most scandalous splash of blood is Ginger’s own first period.

Period piece

“You never see that. The visual of bloody panties is so shocking,” says Isabelle. 

“It’s what, 2020 and we’re just seeing feminine hygiene products using red dye instead of this fucking blue shit? We’re always so mortified by this human experience that half of the people on the planet go through. And you know what? At the same time you should be, because being female is a fairly horrific fucking experience in itself. So guess what? Why don’t you fucking look at it once in a while? For it to be labeled as shocking is just so boring to me.”

It would be bold even in 2020. That color matching company Pantone only last month released a new shade of red inspired by periods as part of a campaign to end menstruation stigma shows it very much still exists. So to be this open in discussing it in 2000 in a horror movie – traditionally assumed to be the playground of young men – was a brave move.

“I remember a friend of mine, his older brother had taken his friends to see it and he was like, [Isabelle does impression of bro-tastic young man] ‘Oh yeah, we were all screaming and throwing shit at the fucking screen and then we walked out. All this fucking women shit.’ I was like, ‘Cool. Thanks, buddy. Awesome.’ Fuck you! They thought they were going to see hot girl tits and werewolf stuff and they weren’t prepared for an actual look into what the female experience is like. And they couldn’t handle it. Pussies.”

Suddenly it’s like I’m talking to wolf-Ginger, fierce, articulate, full of fire, the Ginger that punches the mean girl in the face for hurting her sister, the Ginger that isn’t going to stand for any of your shit any longer, the Ginger that could tear the flesh from your bones if she wanted to. 

The metaphor of werewolf transformation and puberty is a no brainer to Isabelle.

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“You’re going along your life perfectly fine, something happens to you, boom. In one day, you have all these strange urges, you have all these weird thoughts. Your body is completely abandoning you and morphing into something else that you are not comfortable with,” she says. “It’s a complete betrayal of everything you know and how you feel. And it creates this monster in you that you have to reckon with and deal with. It’s a brilliant allegory.”

Ginger Snaps is body horror. It’s a movie about a woman’s own body destroying her from the inside out. Before she knows what’s really going on Ginger is bleeding, weak, crippled with cramps. Weird hair starts sprouting – a shaving scene really hammers home the horror of teenagers taking razors to their legs.

But with this pain comes power. Ginger is suddenly confident, beautiful, strong, the boys at the school all desire her and she knows it. She will take who she wants and do what she wants – there’s some serious wish fulfillment going on at the same time as the trauma of her transformation.

Being Ginger

It’s not really surprising that Isabelle is so like this iconic character. She says she had an immediate affinity to Ginger – both sides of Ginger, the troubled outsider as well as the she-wolf.

“At that time, I wasn’t a good enough actor to have acted it. I just had to be myself,” she laughs, “They showed a pieced-together trailer halfway through to the cast and crew and I had a complete panic attack. It was my first panic attack, and I was like, ‘I’m fucking this up.’ This is the best character in the best movie and I clearly have no idea what I’m doing. I’m obviously the worst, this is terrible. I’m ruining this, I should just die. So all of the insecurity and the manicness…”

This just in: it’s shit being a teenage girl. Even more so when you’re 17, on location without your mother for the first time and working 18 hour days. 

“I nearly fucking died!” she says. “Towards the end, it’s like a seven hour prosthetic piece when I’m full blown werewolf. I was living off of Oreos, McCain Deep Delicious Chocolate Cake, cigarettes, and Coca Cola. It was not good. And honestly, I wasn’t a good actor. So everything in that was just me being manic and sleep deprived and upset and insecure.”

Whatever was driving it Isabelle is excellent, flitting from difficult outsider with an undercurrent of fury to a whirlwind of teenage angst, sex, hunger, and violence that feels absolutely authentic.

Becoming the wolf

The effects are practical rather than CGI, which helps Ginger Snaps not to look dated on a rewatch. Ginger transforms gradually from woman to full blown wolf over days – she’s not a traditional werewolf who only becomes a wolf during the night of a full moon, instead once she turns fully she’s not coming back. Her different looks in the movie are cool and iconic – unsurprisingly Ginger Snaps cosplay is a ‘thing’ – which pleases Isabelle. The prosthetics procedure was somewhat less pleasing, however.

“I didn’t understand what the process was,” she says. “You see it in your head like you do when you read a book or whatever, or how the movie is going to be. You don’t think of the six hours on top of your 18 hour shooting day that you’re going to be inhaling alcohol-based paint until you’re high out of your fucking mind.”

The transformation came with other obstacles too.

“The process of losing my senses was a first for me. By the time I’m in the very late stage werewolf with the hair, the contacts and the claws, I can’t see anything, I can’t hear anything, I can’t smell anything, I can’t talk. I have fangs. I had to ADR most of the movie when I have fangs in. Because I had a lisp, so I’d be like, ‘Ask Tham. He’th the exthpert.’” She says, mimicking a line from the movie. 

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“It’s just terrible. I couldn’t touch anything and there is blood all over me, and it’s drying and I was trapped in my own body nightmare. You don’t really realize that when you go into it. So now when I read scripts, ever since then, I’m very like, ‘What does that exactly mean for the physical torture I will be experiencing through the duration of this?’ Let’s take a step back and just really look at this more closely,” she laughs. 

Pain and gain

Isabelle is funny – like Ginger, she has a dark sense of humor and though we genuinely get the sense that the shoot was traumatic (“We were all fucking ill and we were shooting nights for about three weeks in a row, so you do not see daylight. You lose your mind. It wasn’t quite Apocalypse Now, but it felt like that to me when I was 17.”), she’s got great stories. Like the time she gave herself a concussion… 

“There’s a scene where I slam my head on a desk and I was like, ‘Ginger probably really slammed her head on the desk.’ So I really did it a bunch of times and then woke up the next day with a fucking full on concussion headache. They had a doctor come in because I was fucked. He gave me Tylenol T3s and I took them on an empty stomach. I’m vomiting on set and they’re holding the roll, and I’ve got a bucket I’m puking into. And then immediately I had to do the slow motion walk down the hall scene. I was so fucked they had to put tape on the floor. I couldn’t walk in a straight line. I’m so mad every time I see that. I’m like ‘Fuck, you only get so many slow motion walking down the hallway looking cool and hot in your whole career, and you really fucked this one.’” 

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Of course, it doesn’t play that way on screen. It’s a key moment in the movie and even 20 years on, Ginger’s look still stands out. Costume designer Lea Carlson put together her outfits from thrift stores to create a kind of indie/goth cool with spot on accessories for an aesthetic that matched Ginger’s newly awakened give-no-fucks vibe.

“When that infection hits and she’s got that fucking attitude, it’s like, don’t we all wish we could just walk around with that attitude like a hero?” says Isabelle.

She says she can watch the movie now and enjoy it, though she couldn’t for a while.

”I haven’t seen it in 15 years because I tend to not revisit my most awkward moments on film as a teenager,” she laughs. But she now speaks fondly of this “wonderful sisterly love story.” 

Ginger and B

She and co-star Perkins had known each other “forever” before filming began, having even been born in the same hospital and gone to the same elementary school so they auditioned for Ginger Snaps together. Perkins as the younger Brigitte (even though Isabelle is actually four years younger than Perkins) is sympathetic, awkward, vulnerable, and eventually heroic and there’s an obvious chemistry between the two. Isabelle recalls how between one of the auditions and the first time director John Fawcett came out to meet them Emily had shaved her head.

”I was like, ‘What are you doing? You’ve fucked this for us!’, I didn’t even recognize her in the room. And then thank God, we got the part. And that’s why she’s wearing this wig, this very offensive wig throughout the film…”

Why did she shave her head during casting for this movie? We can’t not ask…

“I don’t know. I don’t know. She was having a moment. She’s a very smart, progressive woman, and she was feeling her oats,” Isabelle laughs.

Despite the traumas of the prosthetics and the shoot, Isabelle has clear affection for the movie and a character who rings incredibly true even 20 years later, largely because of her authentic performance  “It connects still to this day with people who weren’t even born when it came out. And that’s always shocking to me,” she says.

So what would today’s Katharine Isabelle tell her 17 year old self, 20 years ago?

“Oh, God. Fucking suck it up, you whiny bitch.” she says, all wolf-Ginger before swapping back to pre-transformation Ginger. “No, I would be like, ‘Yo, this is good, and you’re going to be okay. You’re gonna be good, and you’re not going to hate yourself as much as you think you do. And eventually, in 17 years, you’ll be able to watch this without having a total meltdown about how obviously terrible and insecure you are.”

She pauses.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“Isn’t that what everyone says to themselves 20 years ago? ‘You’ll be okay, don’t be so insecure, believe in yourself, you got this?’ I think that’s what everyone would say to their younger self. Also, ask for more money.”

The post How Ginger Snaps Explored the Subversive Horror of Womanhood appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2ENE6yo

[nikachuwrites]

— && guests may mistake me as ( florence pugh ), but really i am ( charlotte carter + cis-female + she/her/hers  ) and my DOB is ( 01/17/1997 ). i am a ( first year law student & paralegal ) and would like to stay in suite ( 311 ). i won’t be much of a bother because i am ( + determined, hardworking, passionate ), but i can also be ( - obstinate , headstrong, competitive ) at times. personally, i like to ( ride horseback, learn languages and cooking ) when i have the time to relax, and my favorite snack is ( zebra cakes ) to have in my suite. thank you for checking in!

B A C K S T O R Y 

charlotte marie cater, born january seventeenth, is the only daughter and youngest of steven and margaret carter’s three children: avery, sawyer and dalton. she was born and raised in rosa, oklahoma--but she sure as hell didn’t want to say there for life. 

from a young age, the woman was a spitfire. she was loud, she was determined, and when she set her mind to something--there was no going back. come hell or highwater--she’d achieve her goal. her mother had always been worried about her tenacity--fearing it’d get her into trouble one day or that she’d alienate the people she needed in her life. you see, her mother was a bleeding heart kind of woman, someone who put feelings and others before herself. charlotte--well, charlotte grew up with three boys who didn’t give a hoot nor a holler about her gender or age, if they wanted a fight, they were going to get a fight. softness did not help her cause, ripping her heart open to people would not help her win. 

that wasn’t to say she did not love her brothers. of course she did--she had no qualms with any of her family. they were kind, caring folk who loved their children with their entire heart and then some. did they make mistakes? sure. but who didn’t? charlotte _adored her parents, _and she couldn’t imagine a family better than her own.

it was a different story for her hometown, though. rosa was small, quaint--two things charlotte was not. ever since she was young, she craved pounding hard concrete instead of soft gravel and running up and down busy boulevards instead of two lane country roads. rosa was not where her spirit was fulfilled--instead, her eyes were set on the city of chicago. new york was too popular, but chicago? chicago was her dream--life was more in a city like that. she thought to herself. so that was her goal--get out of rosa, whatever means necessary. 

rosa, however, had a different plan. charlotte, while headstrong, was also not immune to the pressures of high school and the desire to be queen bee. perhaps more arrogant than a fourteen year should have been, she quickly found her way to securing a spot on the varsity cheerleading team and into the hearts of all those around her. well, into their hearts might have been more of a metaphor than anything else. with great power comes great responsibility--and since the woman hadn’t seen any comic book movies, that lesson had alluded the blonde. at best, she was bossy and controlling--and worst, she could be down right manipulative. but high school had a way of bringing out the extremes in its students--and that didn’t mean the woman didn’t have a soft spot.

enter trevor haines, star quarterback and everything charlotte could want in a guy. charming, good looking, funny, sweet--instantly, she fell head over heels. perfect high school love story. star quarterback + head cheerleader = high school sweethearts, the end. her parents loved him, her brothers adored him (thanks to that state championship, heyo) and the town could think of nothing better than a sweet, perfect, happily ever after. roll credits, cue the sappy cute love song, right?

well...it looks like their might be a mid credit scene. 

charlotte loved trevor--truly, absolutely, and truth be told, he was the only one she ever let her guard down for. but charlotte craved control, enjoyed being the one in charge of her life and...trevor had other plans. the town had other plans. they were supposed to get married, have babies and live in rosa forever. she would be another line in however many generations and her life would be nothing more than...average. 

the thought scared her more than her worst nightmares, so one early summer--out of the blue to everyone around her--she packed her bags and moved to chicago. truth be told, she had been accepted to the University of Illinois Chicago months earlier, but she had hid the acceptance as it was the playoffs and she didn’t want to distract trevor--nor did she want to think about what might happen if she took the acceptance. but one cool, february day it had hit her that her life would be in neutral if she didn’t make a choice soon and secretly, quietly, she accepted the offer and then, a few months later, she was on the road with little more than her backpack and a suitcase full of her favorite clothes. she said goodbye to no one, thinking that if she disappeared, they’d forget about her soon enough and go back to their lives in the town. 

while in school, she learned she had a passion for debate and enjoyed to argue her points until the cows came home. a professor had taken her aside one day, expressing that she had noticed her fiery attitude in the course and suggested legal studies as a major. the idea stuck and soon charlotte could think of nothing else than getting up in front of that courtroom and proving to a jury that she--and her client--was right and everyone else was wrong. of course, she chose criminal law as her concentration, because, in the immortal words of elle woods, “i’ll take the hard one--i like a challenge”

charlotte still think about trevor and rosa from time to time--she misses her family and wants to go back and see them someday. as she’s grown farther from her high school self, she realizes her attitude wouldn’t get her far in life and has worked hard to change who she was to be a better human. she thinks that if she was a lawyer, well then maybe she could atone for some of her...more cruel days of past.

F A S T  F A C T S

charlotte loves to horseback ride--in fact, when she had a bad day, you could catch her riding her horse sweet cheeks for miles until she could feel the sadness no longer. 

she is also a pretty good cook, thanks to her momma. if charlotte had one hero, it’d be her. she would always admire the way her mother loved everyone so fully--in a way that charlotte never could growing up. 

she can quote legally blonde by heart--yes, she can say the whole courtroom scene in full--and knows all the songs in the musical. and it is her goal to become the best dressed lawyer in the court--though her signature color is certainly not pink (it’s marble--and yes, for her, it is a color thank you)

growing up with three boys meant that charlotte--for all her feminine tendencies and appreciation--can brawl with the best of them. she just never does because she has learned to use her words as her weapon--though she certainly has toned it down quite a bit since then. 

her favorite movie is love actually and no, she will not be taking any questions at this time. 

P L O T S 

Friends

Enemies

Flings, New Flames, etc. 

Squad goals

Mother-like friend

Sister/brother-like friend

Brothers (like, real brothers)

Literally, i am bad at lots so lets’ brainstorm together. 

[kurtty-drabbles]

The Omen au

N/A: Some world-building, I guess. Brotherhood is not like the animated version of EVO as they have a better relationship with the humans than the X-men, while they aren´t heroes, per se, they don´t have the mentality "let´s kill all the humans" and Mystique as the leader of this group can manipulate their image to fit their agenda so yeah no Sentinel here, also, this whole idea is a big finger to marvel that make Michael Darkholme be another Kurt in incest (so, big finger to Marvel as I rewrite the whole thing)

@djinmer4 @dannybagpipesarecalling @bamfoftheundead

"And that´s wrapped the interview with Magneto, the mutant is still living in his asteroid and refuses to come down to Earth to face justice as he believes Charles Xavier´s death was a sacrifice in partiality of mutantkind" the news anchor reporter the fact but if she would add anything to this important new it will remain to be seen as Terry Pryde turns off the TV.

"Mom?" Kitty asked phasing through the wall. The two women are in a hotel as Cameron Pryde and his relatives are having a hard time dealing with this revelation. "Am I a mistake?"

Terry is taken back by this and didn´t think twice before hugging her daughter and saying. "No, of course not, if your father does not understand how amazing you´re than is his loss" and she looks at Kitty´s face, already entering in teenagehood and have to deal with such problem. "Kitty being a mutant is not a problem, being ignorant it is. Never forget that, promise?"

Kitty dry her tears and nods. "I promise"

________________________________________________________________________ Raven Darkholme is a woman that interpret many roles and this one is a piece of cake for Mystique. Terry Pryde is visible worried and again, is not an uncommon scene for Raven, but, is rare to see parents showing so much concern for mutant kids.

"She can phase through anything and I don´t think I can protect her, a mother who can´t protect her kids is...the worst feeling" Terry confessed and now looks aghast as she realizes something. "you have kids on your own too..."

And this caught Raven out of the guard. How did she notice it? Raven is really a private person to the point the simpleton would call her paranoid.

"Yes, I´m a mother, how did you notice?"

"Your eyes may by golden but still held the same feeling any mother has for their children"

And Raven can say she does not hate Terry Pryde. ________________________________________________________________________

Unlike the X-men, they don´t accept kids right away, except for emergencies cases, so they have a legal procediment, and is salt that Raven loved to spread on Charles, metaphorically speaking, since the Brotherhood does everything in a legal way the media often show them in a positive or neutral light.

Wanda Maximoff is an Avenger now, but, she did start off as a member of the Brotherhood and has no problem in helping when Mystique asks for(that and Mystique did give a big spoiler for Scarlet Witch)

"You can do magic" Wanda realizes as Kitty manages to touch on the magical book, only those who have magic core can do it. And this seems to lighten the mood as now Kitty is asking too many questions. "Hey, calm down, one question at a time"

"Sorry, how can I do magic?" Kitty asked and she recalls all the Harry Potter´s fanfiction she ever read and the alternative that she get a blood fusion of a wizard is highly unlike.

"Magic is a gift that does have a pattern" Wanda explains recalling Agatha´s word, in reality, Wanda herself never really try to understand magic. It exists and that´s enough.

"Ok, do you read Harry Potter´s fanfiction?"

"Uhm, yes, but I must say...Harry Potter is not my favourite character in the series"

"Will you teach me magic?"

"Of course, if my agenda lets me, but, hey, there´s other magic users there too. Rogue, Raven´s daughter is one of them, but, between us" and Wanda looks a bit smug "I teach her most of her spells, they even ask me to do a seal in the attic to put their old belongings" ___________________________________________________________________________

In the end, Kitty is ready and the trials and tribulations are in the past as Kitty feels confident in her future. Terry is talking with Raven Darkholme as the women are setting the agreement.

Kitty is next to her mother, but, is looking at the house where she will be staying for the semester. Is pretty British and envokes a Howgrats like impression, but, as she looks to the last window she sees the white curtains and ...

Is there someone there?

She narrows her eyes trying to see better. The figure is opening the curtains just a crack and all Kitty can see is darkness. Her mother´s hand is now placed on her shoulder as she´s looking at Kitty.

"You´ll be in safe hands, Kitten, remember what we talk about"

"The greatest sin a person can commit is being ignorant. I promise I won´t be"

And Terry hugs her daughter and want Kitty to call her every day or else she´ll come to visit her every day to embarrasses. "MOM! I promise to call, I´ll be fine, trust me"

_______________________________________________________________________

Rogue is an adult now, well, 19 years old does seem like an adult to 15 years old and the gothic woman is leading Kitty to her new room and giving the details of the school.

"Oh that sounds really cool, but, what about the attic?" Kitty asked as Rogue halts her movements for a moment.

"What do you mean?" Rogue asked back not seeing the point of her question.

"Oh, I think I saw someone in the attic"

"THERE NO ONE IN THE ATTIC" Rogue lost her cool and mentally slaps herself as now Kitty is taken a few steps back, not a good start. "I mean, what´s there is personal, you know? Things me and my moms don´t want no one to see"

"Oh, I understand" Kitty does not get and Rogue feels this may be a problem later. She hopes for once she´s wrong.

__________________________________________________________________________

Irene is carrying a trail of food and no one asked why she´s going to the attic, well, no one is minding as the boys are busy being loud and hormonal and the ladies are doing something fun.

She uses a key to open the attic´s door and even a blind woman can navigate through this space.  She puts the trail on the desk and calls for the only person in the attic.

"Michael, come out, is me, your favourite mother" Irene jokes and out of the shadows, Michael Darkholme steps in. Irene light the room up and gesture to Michael to eat something. "Is your favourite"

"Trying to bride me with food? You really know me" Michael said taking a bite on his sandwiches and them asking 

Irene. " When will I get out of here?" his tone is sullen and Irene can´t fault him for that.

"Oh, Michael is not a question of when but who, remember that, plus, you know your other mother, she loves you too much"

"Yeah, of course I know she loves, why put me in the attic if she didn´t love me?" and Michael gazes upon Irene´s sunglass "And I can ask about this ''who'' and get an answer?"

"Oh that is something I can´t tell, but, rest assured Michael, there´s a who"

Micheal is silent as his mind is plotting. If there´s a  who then Michael needs to be ready. If he´s a Disney´s princess and this who is the prince...which Disney princess should he be? 

[asmodeusmorelikeassmodeus]

Shadowhunters 3x22 Commentary

Why do people in movies always think that yelling before attacking someone is the way to go?? You literally warn your enemy that you’re coming

I still don’t know what to think of Izzy Fire Hands

I really thought they’d kill off Meliorn for a second but good that we have two warlocks to heal him

Lilith takes an awful lot of time flying towards them extra slowly so they can try everything to stop her and fail

I don’t know why but this whole Izzy with Heavenly Fire thing is so stupid and lame I just can’t get behind it

Good that they know how to pull the fire from her I guess

Edom doesn’t feel so good, Mr. Stark

Wow Sizzy are not wasting ANY time now that Izzy won’t spontaneously catch on fire if she touches Simon

That Malec snippet is so soft I am melting. Also, Malec in gold sheets

So we only get actual Sizzy scenes in the extra episodes 21 and 22? For 3B being “Sizzy Heaven” that’s kind of weak and I feel robbed

Everyone who said that Malec talking about a location for their wedding was only a dream sequence can go f*ck themselves. Along with those that insisted the Malec wedding would be a dream.

The only Royal Wedding I care about

Seems like the directors saved all the light bulbs for this last episode because I think that’s one of the first sufficiently lighted Malec scenes since their first date

“I do like you in a tux” I am having the greatest headcanons about Malec ditching their own wedding celebrations to make out in Alec’s office

“I can think of one” did you really have to put that in there and ruin Clace for me after you’ve made me start to like it? Great, thank you.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww did they really have to give us Seelie QueenxJonathan?

I’m sorry but those claw-gloves look like they’re parts of a very low-budget Halloween costume and they kind of keep me from taking Jonathan seriously

I missed Lola this season :c

RIP Seelie Queen. That was a short relationship.

The writers giving us good parabatai scenes? In this economy?? Colour me surprised

You call it “courage” and “heroic”, I call it “stupid” but okay

Clary and Izzy becoming parabatai is something I would have wished for episodes ago but I’m glad they did it at all

I’m glad that everyone agrees that Alec is a bridezilla lmao I would have loved to see this conversation and Alec going like “mY wHoLe pLaNniNg is mEsSeD uP bEcAuSe of yOu bUt oKaY!!”

This whole scene is so cringey oh my god. So they really trying to tell me Jocelyn is an angel? Some kind of angelic messenger?? This is so stupid. But they had to give Clary the message somehow so…okay then.

People will probably say that this is unfair but Clary has really been stretching all boundaries with those runes and she mainly did it either for herself or to fix something she messed up by being stupid and selfish, so…she kind of deserves this lol and the angels giving her a last chance is actually pretty nice of them, they could have just taken her angelic powers away without a warning

Magnus cake-tasting for the wedding he never thought he’d have with a person who loves him at least just as much as Magnus loves them is a beautiful thing

So…Magnus has to thank Lorenzo for reluctantly being dragged along on the mission to save him but we’ll never get a Thank You from Lorenzo for fixing the corrupted leylines or an apology for how he’s been treating Magnus since he became High Warlock? Great.

So I’m supposed to feel sorry for Lorenzo now? Well, I don’t.

Give me all the Alec-Maryse scenes they’re so cute

Wow, Max grew a lot in three months

I can’t believe that they didn’t give us any Jonathan action during all 10 episodes of 3B and only NOW he actually DOES something in the extra episodes?? What a wasted potential. Jonathan did more when he was still Sebastian.

Can’t believe that Clary is moping over being unable to draw her own runes again. Like. That’s not a big issue. Just tell everyone “hey, the angels are mad because I’ve been using the runes a lot so we’ll have to find a way around it, because else they’ll take my powers away” and they would just be like “Okay, I get it, sorry to hear!” Like…it’s not that big of a deal

Yeah, Jonathan totally didn’t kill them so they can deliver his message and not because they are main characters.

This Clary-Jonathan scene is the best they had until now. The emotions are raw and understandable and seeing her sobbing at having to kill him, Jonathan begging for her to let him go like a little boy in pain, that was an amazing feat of everyone involved. I love. Right now I’m just sitting here like a huge :CCCC emoji

Everybody move it’s the Malec wedding

Catarina looks STUNNING

My babies are so happy

I love the wedding vows to death, especially the way they complete each other’s sentences and speak the end together, there’s probably a metaphor somewhere in here but I’m too busy grinning like an idiot to make one up

That was brief but lovely

You get a happy ending and you get a happy ending, everybody gets a happy ending!

Good that the angels are giving her a countdown and enough time to enjoy the wedding of the century

I’m sobbing over Heline, we deserved more of them

As much as I’m trying I can’t get behind this Underhill-Lorenzo thing It’s very ew

So I heard this super cringey Clary line is from the books and I’m not surprised lol

Kind of pissed we got more of everyone else than Malec at their own wedding. At least one scene where it’s just the two of them? Without slowmo and music? A little bit of loving banter? Jokes about being husbands now? Flirting about their honeymoon? Nothing??

So Clary suddenly stands in a park at night in a nice dress and has no recollection of anything that happened after her 18th birthday, no home, no money, nothing. And she just kind of…walks…somewhere and…keeps living her life as if nothing happened…when her mom isn’t there…and Dot…and her apartment is either still burned down or lived in by someone else…Simon is not home…his family isn’t there anymore…like, I get that they had to think of something and keep it simple but…at least put a little more thought into it

Oh NOW they can do time jumps???

I don’t know what to think of Inquisitor Alec but I’m happy if he’s happy

Malec living the married life and being happy husbands is my aesthetic

At least they brought Maia back to New York

Please tell me Maia and Bat are dating

Izzy is Head of the Institute!!

That Jace-Simon training scene is amazing. Boop Boop. We were robbed of this dynamic.

Boop Boop

I’m glad that Clace at least got a hopeful ending and I love the parallels to their first meeting in season 1. I’m liking them a whole lot more when they’re a cute down-to-earth couple

I’m totally not crying over the fact that this is all over now

The song choice is on POINT and I’ll download this so I can keep crying

[tessatechaitea]

The Extremist #3

I'm disappointed that this half picture doesn't match up exactly with the half picture from Issue #2.

It's probably good I didn't post any of the blurbs that tried to bribe him with a handjob in the backroom of the Portland Comic-con.

Anyway, let's see what happened in "July, Nineteen Ninety-Three"! I'll try to baby it up so Tumblr doesn't shit its diapers.

Peter Milligan begins this issue all Peter Milligany.

Remember that this was written in 1993 when Peter Milligan makes mention of how a person could, at some point, be alone in anything. But also imagine now how the death of an intimate would go in 2019. Back in 1993, Judy is surprised to find that she's whisked away from her grief for long interludes by the bureaucratic machinations of a death in a capitalist democracy. This same kind of thing probably still happens except with more texts and emails and less phone conversations and driving to speak to people in person. But also imagine the non-bureaucratic side of death. We probably have far less close intimate contacts in our physical space now than we had in 1993, at least by percentage when compared with all people we would consider contacts (intimates who now live in another part of the world, people we know only from online, friends of friends we've maybe met once but now sometimes interact with over social media). In 1993. it would be phone calls and personal visits with flowers and cake or cookies. In 2019, you probably receive a deluge of crying emojis and people replying "*hugs*" to your post about your world crumbling beneath you as you try to stagger on with your remaining years bereft of the person you thought you could never live without. I suppose there are plenty of apps where people could send you cakes and cookies so I suppose it wouldn't be too terrible. Should I create an app that sends cakes and cookies to people when they've lost a loved one? It wouldn't cost anything. You'd just have to send me a small cake and some cookies with every use of the app! I can't wait to get extraordinarily fat! The journey is going to be so worth it!

Grief is a savory, selfish feast.

Peter Milligan has a way of expressing potent, terrible truths in such a casual manner that most people probably don't even notice them. There's an almost expressible power in believing you're experiencing something that nobody else has or will ever experience. Or just in knowing that you lived a part of your life unknown to your closest friends and family. I cherish, greedily, the moments of my life spent alone and far from those closest to me and I parcel them out as stories in only the most meager of manners. Hell, I've probably told more about myself and my experiences here on this blog exactly because I know my friends and family don't read it. I might say this every commentary until this series is over but I still don't know if I understand the point of the overall plot. But I do understand that the plot is a way for Peter Milligan to be Peter Milligan. I understand the need for a framework to say things you want to say. Or to just put scenes out there that you don't want to bother encasing in some kind of larger whole that you're less interested in. So here's another scene Peter Milligan had to have thought about and then needed a place to mention it:

Of course people still get horny for their dead partner! But how often does anybody talk about it?! Maybe it's common and I'm just consuming the wrong kinds of media. Alex Trebek never once asked a contestant if they jerk off thinking about their dead spouse!

Netflix's Dead to Me has some pretty frank discussions about the loss of a spouse but while Christina Applegate talks about being horny and wanting to fuck somebody, I don't think she ever says she masturbates thinking about her dead husband. If the point of this story is about dealing with loss, I'm beginning to get it. And that would completely explain why I missed it at twenty-one. I'm only three pages into this issue and it's kicking me in the face with existential issues. Was I too dumb at twenty-one to understand any of this or just too sheltered to really feel it? Maybe I was just too fucking young. Judy finds the key to Jack's Extremist apartment. After looking around the place, she thinks, "It was like having Jack die all over again, but this death seemed more profound. 'I never knew you,' I thought." It's an easy statement to point out that nobody ever really knows anybody. But once, because Jim Starling wrote a terrible run on Stormwatch, I wrote an entire rant about how we all hide our innermost dark secrets from even the greatest loves of our lives. I was essentially asking how can we know anyone if we won't even let those closest to us know our most vulnerable thoughts and terrible crimes (I don't mean crimes in the law and order sense! I just mean like that time you put your finger in your ass and then made sandwiches for your friends and they all got sick and you didn't do it on purpose but you made the connection and nobody must ever fucking know! You know, those kinds of crimes. But not that specific one! I totally just made that one up for effect). So I could repeat myself or just link to the rant or just (and — Spoiler! — this is the choice I'm going with!) move on to page five of this comic book. Judy discovers an old diary written by The Extremist (but not Jack!). Then she finds some of the tapes he burned and salvages a few. She hears Jack speaking about murder and getting pissed on and, most appallingly, calling her "poor dull dead little Judy." She smashes the place up, finds The Extremist's gimp suit, and tries it on thinking, "What the fuck?! Maybe I'll feel sexy and start speaking in sex metaphors!" Then the phone rings. And I suppose the rest is history! And by history, I mean Issue #1! Except I'm only on page seven so maybe I'm jumping the gun. I guess we need to learn how Judy met Patrick and why she decided her life would be better by going out at night murdering people until she comes hard in a leather suit. Oh, I hope that last sentence wasn't too adult for Tumblr! A bunch of pages are taken up by the plot stuff that I apparently paid the most attention to in 1993 and which is the least interesting part of the story (so far!). Patrick "accidentally" runs into Judy and he pretends he doesn't know who killed Jack. He offers to help her find out if she'll pose as The Extremist and do murders and blow jobs for him. Judy is all, "What the hell! Maybe I'll understand Jack a little more! Maybe I'll know why he needed a boring piece of shit like me when he was having such fantastic fuck and murder adventures!" No wait. That's what I would say. Judy just wants to find out who killed Jack and to, maybe, feel a little closer to him. I don't think she's as amped up as I would be about the loads of indiscriminate sex and murdering of the most perverse perverts. The main story ends with Judy making her first kill. She learns that her problem was that she was always living in the past and the future. So even if she had wanted to kill somebody in the moment before, she'd be all tangled up in the past and whether the person deserved it and maybe some of it was her fault and perhaps she's been too hasty with her murder decision. And she'd also be lost in the future like how the person will stop existing and how she might wind up in prison and how the victim's guts are going to be hell to clean up off the floor. But in the moment, she can just satisfy the need without consequence or conscience! She discovers it's a thrill! Well, I could have told her that! I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was ten! Never worry about what the orc did or if it deserved it or if it has family or if you're actually the asshole raiding its lovely home! The actual issue ends with Tony, the black guy on the stoop, sitting in The Extremist's apartment listening to Judy's tapes. He's just finished the last one where she says she's going off to kill Patrick and he's completely caught up in the drama. He wants to know who killed who just as badly as, well, not me but I'm sure some readers were on the edge of their seat at this point. The Extremist #3 Rating: B. I don't find myself caring about the framework. But Peter Milligan has thoughts and those thoughts are well worth the admission price to this story. In a way, this is just an extension of his run on Shade the Changing Man. It's almost the same story if you squint your eyes and unfocus your vision and punch yourself in the genitals. Patrick is the guy on Meta who was pulling the strings to get Shade to go into the Area of Madness and eventually Earth (I forget his name! I bet it was Patrick!) And The Extremist is Shade and Kathy too (they both have similarities to both Judy and Jack, so I don't mean to say either Shade or Kathy is essentially one or the other). The Extremist has crazy missions where they kill and fuck just like Shade and Kathy had! I think. I mean, probably! And Tony is just Lenny in someway that I haven't spent any time thinking about but they were the only characters left!

[morbidoptimisim]

Alpha rose/condesce is really cool. Also may i suggest as a thing to think about alpha rose/condesce/roxy with a roxy who was raised in part by the condesce and didn’t find out about Rose until later so isn’t completely human in her culture (and thus sees nothing wrong with trying to get into her mothers bed for instance)

I see Roxy getting a new mom, and raise you,,

Roxy getting TWO new moms;;

~~~~

Rose held her breath as she felt a fluidic weight press and shift onto the bed followed by an insistent limb. 

She knew, without either Seeing nor looking, that it was not her beautiful Alternian Matesprite who was crawling into her bed, having adorned it with a flurry of fresh blankets. 

Kanaya was already sitting in bed beside her, reading by her own phosphoresce. 

Kanaya, likely just as surprised as she was, made no comment as Roxy started sliding her way under the covers. 

Her silence prompted Rose to roll into a sitting position and speak. 

“Roxy, while I hope that you know I am every ounce as eager and instant that we mold each other into our lives under our own terms, it is with my sincerest apologies that I must put my metaphorical foot down and insist that now is the time for resting and a cease to fraternizing chatter. Family bonding may continue at breakfast post hence.”  

“That’s fine with me,” Roxy replied unperturbed as she settled herself on the portion of the mattress without a pillow and shoved one of the blankets she had brought with her under her arm and cradled her head within the makeshift miniature nest; “I’m good at piling without knocking horns.”

Rose heard Kanaya’s breath catch in her thorax, causing her plating to shift and readjust.

Rose fought a blush in her cheeks; as she opened her mouth to speak, she felt Kanaya place a hand upon her thigh. Rose stilled herself.

“Roxy darling, may I ask you a personal question?” Kanaya asked gently, her cadence crisp; “Consider Rose’s ban on bonding momentarily disregarded, if you please.”   

“Sure,” Roxy agreed, shrugging her free shoulder. 

“I would say that I don’t mean to pry, but that is in fact what I am doing. Since meeting you, which for the proverbial record I am very glad that I have, I have noticed a strong Alternian influence within you that I cannot find semblance to explain in that your behaviors and mannerisms and dare I say, your speech, all reflect cultural norms that your other session’s players lack,” Kanaya began, her posture rightened; “If it’s not too culturally insensitive to ask, why is that?”

Roxy’s face maintained its odd smile for a moment long enough for Rose to realize that the reason for its uncanny appearance, was for the Alternian resemblance her face was trying to mimic; all at once her mind raced across the moments since their meeting, and all the tells and surprises that Rose had forgone investigating. 

Since spending three years with Kanaya and the other trolls, she had herself picked up the cultural phrase or custom or two, but her own habits were a far cry from the unabashed ease that Roxy had maneuvered through her greetings and subsequent discussions not only with Kanaya, but the other trolls as well. As if she had been doing it all her life; the pitches, the body posture, the slang and fossil phrases that Roxy routinely whipped out of nowhere for any occasion.

Kanaya, and the others, had taken to Roxy with such quickness, that it still seemingly surprised them when they visibly recalled that Roxy was in fact, a human. 

Rose felt an insatiable curiosity piqued. 

“I… Well,” Roxy faltered quietly; she looked from the bed, to Kanaya, to Rose; “The Condesce was my Lusus.” 

The silence of the room was permitted only by the sounds of the house and the fluttering Aumunal sounds of the world beyond their walls; Roxy, slowly, sat up. Still surrounded by silence, Roxy started to pull the waistband of her pajama bottoms down over her hip.

Rose watched in morbid fascination as a distinct scar was revealed on her mother/daughter’s thigh. 

Kanaya inhaled a breath in such as fashion that Rose was inclined to call it a gasp. She herself, was only omitted from such a reaction for the set of force she had locked into her jaw when Roxy had first entered their bed. 

“She was reely nice to me, ya’ know? Growin’ up,” Roxy murmured, more to her own memories than to either of them. “I splashed into the shallows of the beach the day my meteor landed, and sea was waiting there, for me. Sea picked me up and took me to her ship and that was that. She covered me in gold and pink glitter and taught me how to make fish puns.”

Roxy smiled sadly, her vulnerable posture illuminating her human physique, for the trollish posturing of her contortioning; “Sea’d always tell me shoreies of what Alternia had been like, of what the other planets in her empire were like, and everything; sea used ta’ bake me cakes.” 

She glanced at them both, her beautiful eyes wet and sparkling under Kanaya’s light. 

“Sea gave me almost everything I ever asked for, and sea never let anything reely hurt me. Then one day, I asked her what kind of troll I was, since I bled red and didn’t have any horns yet.”

Roxy looked back to the bed and bite her lip slightly before huffing to herself; “That night, when she took me to bed, she told me about my mother, about Earth, about Dirk.”

Tension shivered along Roxy’s shoulder’s; Rose’s hand shot forward. 

Unsure of herself, Rose let her hand hover near Roxy’s body; as human, Rose had been warned many times that her and Dave’s geed intention had been… promiscuous at best and downright uncalled for and nearly invasive, near their core. 

Roxy however, didn’t make any clicks or jolt away in recoil; she leaned thoughtlessly into the touch, sliding her shoulder along the outstretched palm until it was her neck and then her cheek resting against its cradle. 

Encouraged, Rose offered her other hand in what she hoped was an interspecies recognized gesture of welcome and wordlessly, Roxy crawled handfirst over her legs before gently collapsing her weight onto her. 

Kanaya pulled closer towards them; her book forgotten, Kanaya tucked her knees along Rose’s legs and shifted her torso so that the space between them all was smaller. 

Safe, Rose thought, before then thinking, more intimate.

“Did the Condesce… That is, when you…” Kanaya asked gently in the same tone Rose vividly remembered in the way Kanaya had on several occasions inquired about her estranged relationship with her own respective guardian and the resulting emotional fallout and resulting struggles with mood-altering liquids.  

“She told me once that only heiresses could fight the empresses and claim a title. So, after she told me about humans and she dropped me off at my mother’s house and left without looking back, I think we both kinda knew how things would end up,” Roxy muttered; “It sucked.”

Rose wrapped her arms around Roxy as best as she was able. 

“It’s alright though, ‘cause I have you molts now,” Roxy chirruped as she nuzzled against Rose’s neck and pressed herself along the contour of her body.

Rose shifted her gaze to lock eyes with her wife; Kanaya’s comforting smile assured her that their life was going to be a bit more complicated then she had anticipated.

“Rose dear.”

“Yes, darling?”  

“I do believe that come tomorrow, we should endeavor to procure a larger slumber rack; and sopor tub that seats four, instead of two.”     

“Naturally, my love.”

Rose closed her eyes and relaxed to the feeling of Roxy’s weight breathing peacefully against her chest. 

A few moments later, she felt Roxy reach up and tug a lock of her hair. 

Rose’s eyes flicked back to Kanaya, who returned her gaze with an amused chuckle before beginning to flick her internal flutter organ into a rythmatic hum.

Rose’s attention was broken when Roxy tugged her hair harder; annoyed Rose scowled at Roxy for all of a heartbeat before Roxy nipped lightly at her chin. 

Her memory sparking, Rose’s cheeks began to flush. 

“Goodnight, my Roxy,” Rose murmured, before giving her a chaste kiss.

“’Night Mom,” Roxy lilted; she waited a moment before shifting slightly to look up curiously at Kanaya. 

“You can refer to me however you wish, little empress,” Kanaya murmured, her Alternian accent thickening; she rested her head against her pillow and nuzzled into Rose’s neck; Rose was somewhat grateful for Kanaya’s habit of pilfering her body heat, now that Roxy was practically radiating it on top of her.  

A few seconds beat by, as Kanaya’s light began to dim; Rose felt the muscles along Roxy’s throat constrict and contract as if she too, were trying to produce the pulsing hum that Kanaya and their housecats happily produced when sedate.  

‘Night then, Kanama,” Roxy hazily murmured; “Can we have grubcakes for breakfast?”

Kanaya started to chuckle as Rose breathed a single, mournful groan.