#the night parade

[hersurvival]

"..when I wake, I am weary, lashed with emotion that no one understands. No one wants to hear about your dreams. Dreaming vividly is a little like living a second emotional life.."

The Night Parade, Jami Nakamura Lin

[jellyfishjuliet]

started a new horror novel by ronald malfi

[phantoms-lair]

Will Sissel discover the secrets of his past? How did Lynne die this time? Will streamlabs randomly disconnect my mic AGAIN? Let's Find out!

[judgingbooksbycovers]

The Night Parade: A Speculative Memoir

By Jami Nakamura Lin.

Cover art by Cori Nakamura Lin.

[inkskinned]

it's extremely critical that you see the photo of the perp walk for luigi mangione as being propaganda. i've seen so many people wave it off and instead fawn over his looks. and trust me, i know it ended up being kind of pathetic and weird - but please don't brush it off as a "modelling opportunity" for him. it's a fucking terrifying message the police are sending.

i want to make a few comparisons here, in case you're not from the US or familiar with why the perp walk thing is something to pay attention to. just to set the groundwork for why this is a purposeful, unusual, and cruel act by the nyc police - for why this is not a common occurrence and for why that matters.

the prosecution alleges the show of force is due to the charge of "terrorism." for comparison, in june 2015, tsarnaev was found guilty for the boston marathon bombing, which killed 3 people and injured hundreds. his actions are considered to be an act of domestic terrorism. i have spent the last hour looking through google for pictures of similar to mangione's perp walk - and so far, i have found zero. i also just do not personally remember a moment like that, despite living in boston at the time.

they allege that luigi is a stone-cold killer who carried out a longterm plan, making him particularly dangerous. again for comparison: in nyc, recently cory martin was found guilty of the killing of brandy odom. the murder was planned and premeditated to steal insurance money. and yet no staged perp walk. why didn't her life matter enough for a "show of force"?

but mangione gets paraded by a veritable army of police officers as if he is a rabid animal. for a single citizen who allegedly killed one other single citizen, the "largest perp walk ever" occurs.

so what is the "strong message" that the mayor and the police were trying to send here? the mayor speaks as if mangione is already convicted of terrorism. there is a very thin number of people who feel threatened by the CEO's death. none of us felt like mangione needs to be under massive armed guard.

the message is that you shouldn't resist. they are trying to "make an example" of him - that if you behave badly and kill a single rich person, you'll be treated as if you killed hundreds of people. you will be treated worse than a man who was found guilty of terrorism. you will be considered guilty without trial. the message is that the rich are a protected class, and you cannot touch them without massive punishment. they are trying to prevent a revolution by showing dominance and force against you.

the message is that the police are a puppet of the wealthy and that the law is not equally applied across class disparity. it is "some are more equal than others." it is "one life is more precious than another."

the show of force wasn't for luigi. it was for us. it was a warning. they are trying to remind us who is really in control.

[battlinghugetbr]

2989 (+1)

I added 'The Night Parade' by Jami Nakamura Lin, because I am not immune to propaganda and neither are you (I wanted a video, where this book was described as everything that I could ever want)

The video that made me do it 👇

[tanuki-kimono]

Final artpiece by Acotama for their youkai project, based here on Utagawa Kuniyoshi's The Origin Story of the Cat Stone at Okabe. You can find here the presentation of this piece and here the WIP of the big nekomata.

I already share two of those doll monsters (depressed pumpkin ghost / fox-deer-faced discarded hakama), but Acotama made 140 of those creatures, and some will be sold this Winter, so be sure to follow their page if you are interested :D

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

Finished THE LONELY CITY, starting this.

[minecraftcoalblock]

[grimalkinscribbles]

I’d be that smug too if my face was in that kinda proximity to Ais’s perk tit

[hersurvival]

What it is like: To doubt yourself. To always doubt. To doubt the beginning of it and the end. Is this me, or is this my illness? Am I sick, or am I lazy? Am I happy, or am I manic?

The Night Parade, Jami Nakamura Lin

[alphacentaurirunaway]

🖤

[digitulart]

(night parade au by @/staticcl1ng on twitter) i got way too excited by the concept and im just doing whatever with it now. its like The Guy Who Didnt Like Musicals but with clowns instead of songs

concept art belowww. designs are not official but character interactions are

[dailyfigures]

Lilith Aensland & Morrigan Aensland ; Darkstalkers ☆ Max Factory

[brian-in-finance]

Photos: Screen Rant

⚠️ This post is ridiculously long. It includes three passages from Bees that relate to Season 7’s surprising cliffhanger ending, and an explanation from Diana Gabaldon on what put that crazy idea in the scriptwriter/showrunner heads.

From “the book”

"This is all I have," she said, her voice hoarse as a young toad's. "Just this and her wock — locket."

"This?" Jamie stirred the little pile gently with a big forefinger and withdrew a small brass oval, dangling on a chain. "Is it a miniature of Jane, then, or maybe a lock of her hair?"

Fanny shook her head, taking the locket from him.

"No," she said. "It's a picture of our muv — mother." She slid a thumbnail into the side of the locket and flicked it open. I bent forward to look, but the miniature inside was hard to see, shadowed as it was by Jamie's body.

"May I?"

Fanny handed me the locket and I turned to hold it close to the candle. The woman inside had dark, softly curly hair like Fanny's — and I thought I could make out a resemblance to Jane in the nose and set of the chin, though it wasn't a particularly skillful rendering.

Behind me, I heard Jamie say, quite casually, "Frances, no man will ever take ye against your will, while I live."

There was a startled silence, and I turned round to see Fanny staring up at him. He touched her hand, very gently.

"D'ye believe me, Frances?" he said quietly.

"Yes," she whispered, after a long moment, and all the tension left her body in a sigh like the east wind.

Jemmy leaned against me, head pressing my elbow, and I realized that I was just standing there, my eyes full of tears. I blotted them hastily on my sleeve and pressed the locket closed. Or tried to; it slipped in my fingers and I saw that there was a name inscribed inside it, opposite the miniature.

Faith, it said.

…

Faith. Our mother, Fanny had said. I'd looked more than once at the miniature in the locket — but it was too small to show anything more than a young woman with dark hair, maybe naturally curly, maybe curled and dressed in the fashion of the times.

No. It can't be. I rolled over for the dozenth time, settling on my stomach and burying my face in the pillow, in hopes of losing myself in the scent of clean linen and goose down.

"It can't be what, Sassenach?" Jamie's voice spoke in my ear, sleepily resigned. “And if it can't, can it not wait 'til dawn?"

I rolled onto my side in a rustle of bedding, facing him.

"I'm sorry," I said, and touched him apologetically. His hand took mine automatically, warm and firm. "I didn't realize I'd said it out loud. I was... just thinking about Fanny's locket."

Faith.

"Ach," he said, and stretched himself a little, groaning. "Ye mean the name. Faith?"

"Well... yes. I mean — it can't possibly... have anything to do with—”

"It's no an uncommon name, Sassenach." His thumb rubbed gently over my knuckles. "Of course ye'd... feel it. I did, too."

"Did you?" I said softly. I cleared my throat a little. "I — I don't really do it anymore, but for a time, just—just every now and then — I'd think of her, of our Faith — out of nowhere. I'd imagine I could feel her near me."

"Imagine what she might look like — grown?" His voice was soft, too. "I did that, sometimes. In prison, mostly; too much time to think, in the nights. Alone."

I made a small sound and hitched closer, laying my head in the curve of his shoulder, and his arm came round me. We lay still, silent, listening to the night and the house around us. Full of our family— but with one small angel hovering in the calm sweet air, peaceful as rising smoke.

"The locket," I said at last. "It can't possibly have anything whatever to do with—”

"No, it can't," he said, a cautious note in his voice. "But what are ye thinking, Sassenach? Because ye're no thinking what ye just said, and I ken that fine."

That was true, and a spasm of guilt at being found out tightened my body.

"It can't be," I said, and swallowed. "It's only…” My words died away and his hand rubbed between my shoulder blades.

"Well, ye'd best tell me, Sassenach," he said. "Nay matter how foolish it is, neither one of us will sleep until ye do."

"Well... you know what Roger told me, about the doctor he met in the Highlands, and the blue light?"

"I do. What…"

"Roger asked me if I'd ever seen blue light like that — when I was healing people."

The hand on my back stilled.

"Have ye?" He sounded guarded, though I didn't know whether he was afraid of finding out something he didn't want to know, or just finding out that I was losing my mind.

"No," I said. "Or not — well, no. But... I have seen it. Felt it. Twice. Just a flash, when Malva's baby died." Died in my hands, covered with his mother's blood. “But when Faith was born, when I was so ill. I was dying — really dying, I felt it — and Master Raymond came."

"Ye told me that much," he said. "Is there more?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "But this is what I thought happened." And I told him, about seeing my bones glow blue through the flesh of my arms, the feeling of the light spreading through my body and the infection dying, leaving me limp, but whole and healing.

"So... um... I know this is nothing but pure fantasy, the sort of thing you think in the middle of the night when you can't sleep..."

He made a low noise, indicating that I should stop apologizing and get on with it. So I took a deep breath and did, whispering the words into his chest.

"Master Raymond was there. What if — if he found... Faith... and was able to... somehow bring her… back?"

Dead silence. I swallowed and went on.

"People… aren't always dead, even though it looks like it. Look at old Mrs. Wilson! Every doctor knows — or has heard — about people who've been declared dead and wake up later in the morgue."

"Or in a coffin." He sounded grim, and a shudder went over me. "Aye, I've heard stories like that. But — a wee babe and one born too soon — how…”

"I don't know how!" I burst out. "I said it's complete fantasy, it can't be true! But — but —" My throat thickened and my voice squeaked.

"But ye wish it were?" His hand cupped the back of my head and his voice was quiet again. "Aye. But... if it was, mo chridhe, why would he not have told ye? Ye saw him again, no? After he'd healed ye, I mean."

"Yes." I shuddered, momentarily feeling the King of France's Star Chamber close around me, the smell of the King's perfume, of dragon's blood and wine in the air — and two men before me, awaiting my sentence of death.

"Yes, I know. But — when the Comte died, Raymond was banished, and they took him away. He couldn't have told me then, and he might not have been able to come back before we left Paris."

It sounded insane, even to me. But I could — just — see it: Master Raymond, stealing out of L'Hôpital des Anges after leaving me, perhaps ducking aside to avoid notice, hiding in the place where the nuns had, perhaps, laid Faith on a shelf, wrapped in her swaddling clothes.

He would have known her, as he'd known me...

Everyone has a color about them, he said simply. All around them, like a cloud. Yours is blue, madonna. Like the Virgin's cloak. Like my own.

One of his. The thought came out of nowhere, and I stiffened.

"Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ." What if — all right, I was insane, but too late for that to make a difference.

"What if he — if I, we — what if Master Raymond is — was — somehow related to me?"

Jamie said nothing, but I felt his hand move, under my hair. His middle finger folded down and the outer ones stood up straight, making the sign of the horns, against evil.

"And what if he's not?" he said dryly. He rolled me off him and turned toward me so we were face-to-face. The darkness was slowly fading and I could see his face, drawn with tiredness, touched with sorrow and tenderness, but still determined.

"Even if everything ye've made yourself think was somehow true — and it's not, Sassenach; ye ken it's not — but if it were somehow true, it wouldna make any difference. The woman in Frances's locket is dead now, and so is our Faith."

His words touched the raw place in my heart, and I nodded, tears welling.

"I know," I whispered.

"I know, too," he whispered, and held me while I wept.

— Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, Chapter 24, Alarms By Night

"Ian — I wanted to ask you a favor." One eyebrow went up.

"Name it, Auntie."

"Well... Jamie said that you plan to stop in Philadelphia. I wondered.." I felt myself blushing, much to my annoyance. His other eyebrow rose.

"Whatever it is, Auntie, I'll do it," he said, one side of his mouth curling. "I promise."

"Well... I, um, want you to go to a brothel."

The eyebrows came down and he stared hard at me, obviously thinking he hadn't heard aright.

"A brothel," I repeated, somewhat louder. "In Elfreth's Alley."

He stood motionless for a moment, then turned and put the cheese back on the shelf, and glanced down at the clear brown water of the creek rushing past our feet.

"This might take a bit of time to explain, aye? Let's go out into the sun."

— Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, Chapter 59, Special Requests

IAN CAME BACK from his visit to Elfreth's Alley in something of a brown study, oblivious to the shouts of dairymaids and beer sellers.

He'd thought he might have to expend considerable time and money in order to get the inhabitants of the brothel to talk, but the mere mention of Jane Pocock's name had opened floodgates of gossip, and he felt as one might after being washed overboard from a ship and carried ashore in a flurry of foam and sharp deb-ris.

Now he wished he had paid more attention to Fanny's drawing of her sister.

The loudly stated opinion of Mrs. Abbott, the madam, was that Jane Pocock had been strange, plainly very strange, demented and probably a practitioner of Strange Arts, and how it was that neither she nor any of her girls had been murdered in their beds, she did not know. Ian wondered why a young woman with such skills would have been working as a whore, but didn't say so, under the circumstances.

It took some time for the talk about the murder of Captain Harkness to die down, but Ian Murray did ken his way around a brothel, and when the flow diminished, he at once ordered two more extortionately priced bottles of champagne.

This altered the air of accommodation to something more focused but less vituperative, and within half an hour, Mrs. Abbott had retreated to her sanctum and the whores had reached their own silent accommodation amongst themselves. He found himself on the red velvet sofa common to such establishments, with Meg on one side and Trixabella on the other.

"Trix was friends with Arabella — Jane, I mean," Meg explained. Trix nodded, doleful.

"Wish I hadn't been," she said. "That girl hadn't any luck at all, and that kind of thing can brush off on you, you know. What are those things on your face?"

"Can it?" lan touched his cheekbone. “It's a Mohawk tattoo."

"Ooh," said Trix, with slightly more interest. "Was you captured by Indians?" She giggled at the thought.

"Nay, I went of my own accord," he said equably.

"Well, me too," Trix said, with an uptilted chin and a wave of the hand presumably meant to draw his attention to the relatively luxurious nature of her place of employment. "Not Arabella, though. Mrs. Abbott got her and her sister off a sea captain what didn't have the scratch to pay his bill. Those girls were indentures."

"Aye? And how long ago was that? Ye canna have been here more than a year or two yourself." In fact, she looked to have been in the trade for a decade, at least, but minor gallantries were part of the expected pourparlers, and she laughed and batted her eyes at him in a practiced manner.

"Reckon it would have been six — maybe seven — years ago. Time flies when you're havin' fun, or so they say."

"Tempus fugit." Ian filled her glass and clinked his against it, smiling. She dimpled professionally, drank, and went on.

"Mind, I wasn't but two years older than Jane..." Bat-bat. "Mrs. Abbott wouldn't've bothered with them, save they were pretty, both of 'em, and Jane was just about old enough to... um... start."

Ian was counting back; six years ago, Jane would have been about the age Fanny was now. Old enough...

After a few accounts of harrowing initial experiences in the trade, he managed to drag the conversation back to Jane and Fanny.

"Ye said a sea captain sold the girls to Mrs. Abbott. Do either of ye by chance recall his name?"

Meg shook her head.

“I wasn't here," she said. "Trix...?" She lifted a brow at her friend, who frowned a little and pressed her lips together.

"Has he come back here — since?" Ian asked, watching her closely. She looked startled.

"I — well... yes. I only saw him twice, mind, and it's been a long while, so I maybe don't recall his name for sure."

Ian sighed, gave her a direct look, and handed her a golden guinea.

"Vaskwez"" she said without hesitation. "Sebastian Vaskwez."

"Vas — was he a Spaniard?" lan asked, his mind having smoothly transmuted her rendering to "Sebastiàn Vasquez."

"I don't know," Trix said frankly. "I've never had a Spaniard — knowin'-like, I mean-wouldn't know what they sound like."

"They all sound the same in bed," Meg said, giving Ian an eye. Trix gave her friend a withering look.

"He sounded foreign-like, no doubt about that. And no talking through his nose or that gwaw-gwaw sort of thing Frenchies do. I've had three Frenchmen," she explained to Ian, with a small showing of pride. "Was a few of'em in Philadelphia while the British army was here."

"When was the last time Vasquez came here?" he asked.

"Two... no, maybe close to three years ago."

"Did he go with Jane then?" Ian asked.

"No," Trix said unexpectedly. "He went with me." She made a face. "He stank of gunpowder — like an artilleryman. He wasn't one, though; they've all got it ground into their skin and their hands are black with it, but he was clean, though he smelled like a fired pistol."

A thought occurred to Ian — though thinking was becoming difficult. He wasn't bothered by the fact that his body was taking strong notice of the girls, but arousal seldom did much for the mental faculties.

"Could ye tell if he was still a sea captain?" he asked. Both girls looked blank.

"I mean — did he mention his ship, or maybe say he was taking on crew, anything like that? Did he smell of the sea, or — or —fish?"

That made them both laugh.

"No, just gunpowder," Trix said, recovering.

"Mother Abbott called him 'Captain, though," Trix added. "And 'twas clear enough he weren't a soldier."

A few more questions emptied both bottles, and it was clear that the girls had told him all they knew, little as it was. At least he had a name. There were sounds in the house, opening doors, heavy footsteps, men's voices and women's greetings; it was just past teatime and the cullies were beginning to come in.

He rose, arranged himself without shame, and bowed to them, thanking them for their kind assistance.

— Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, Chapter 80, A Word For That

From “the author”

“They actually did get the (general) idea from me, though,” she admits. “When chatting with [showrunner] Matt [Roberts] about All Things plot wise, I mentioned that if I had written a second graphic novel (I didn't, for assorted reasons), I would have shown what actually happened after Faith's presumed death at the Hopital des Anges, and how/why Master Raymond resuscitated and nurtured the baby secretly, but wasn't able to come back with her before Claire and Jamie left France. So, they liked that idea and ran with it.” — Diana Gabaldon, Parade

Remember… Claire is only one of more than a dozen time-travellers in the story… Brianna was conceived in 1746 and born in 1948… Family Beardsley is a threesome… it’s Outlander, anything can happen.

@marian4456 @saint-hildegard-of-bingen @kiaora45 @dlansing53 @young2evans @gotraveltheworldluv @krisrose16 @frenchyses @bcacstuff @pinkblizzardgladiator @thetruthwilloutsworld @its-moopoint @stellarpuffin @outlanderfandomfollies @loveisloveislove76 @castlemaine123 @dragonflydreams47

[fuzzpetalz]

your memory