#the one exception to this is probably Moby dick which i ALSO need to read in which the filler is very much intentional and necessary to read

[vamptastic]

i think when i read the picture of dorian grey i got way too into trying to understand and form a defensible argument for the philosophy in it because i was very much in my debate team reads the stanford encyclopedia of psychology for fun phase. i mean obviously hedonism is an interesting ideology and the book does talk about it a lot, but i think the prime appeal of the book and why it's a classic is not the philosophy whatsoever it's definitely the drama and the art discussion, and i was so caught up on keeping notes on hedonism that i kind of neglected to pay attention to the characters in the literal and not subtextual sense until the tail end of the novel.

[sshbpodcast]

Tough as a Tardigrade: Space-dwelling lifeforms in Star Trek

By Ames

Star Trek spends a lot of episodes going where no one has gone before (except where someone definitely already has), and that includes just floating around in the vastness of space itself. But time and again, we find creatures who can survive even out here in the void, who don’t need a ship, a suit, gravity, oxygen, air pressure, or really any resources at all. And also who can survive cosmic radiation and all the other death traps even the Enterprise has trouble dealing with.

These are some resilient critters, so this week A Star to Steer Her By is shining a spotlight on the extremophiles of the cosmos! From lowly amoebas to much bigger amoebas, space-dwelling lifeforms come in all shapes, sizes, and tangibilities. Prepare to spacewalk with us as you read on below or listen to our chatter on this week’s podcast episode (discussion starts at 1:29:44) as we befriend these noble creatures and run away from the scary ones.

[images © CBS/Paramount]

Spore flowers – “This Side of Paradise”

You almost miss this reference in an early episode of The Original Series, but it’s stated that the spores of the motivation-draining flowers traveled through space until they settled on paradise planet. Make them a mint julep for their tenacity!

Dikironium cloud creature – “Obsession”

Kirk’s white whale… er, cloud in “Obsession” definitely travels about through space on its own, even getting into the Enterprise itself through some duct or other. You may want to keep your hemoglobin to yourself if you come across this sucker.

Space amoeba – “The Immunity Syndrome”

We almost lose Spock to this massive version of a lowly single-celled organism, which drains the energy from the ship. Unlike the Moby Dick cloud above, this one seems to have a taste for Vulcans! Must be that tasty green blood.

Beta XII-A entity – “Day of the Dove”

The angry little pinwheel we meet on Beta XII-A also likes to flap around in space to follow the crew back to the Enterprise and piss everyone off. No really, all it wants to do is piss everyone off and feed off their hate. These things should get into politics.

Zetarians – “The Lights of Zetar”

Another flashy flashy light that follows people around through space, these colorful beings are just looking for a place to live… and that happens to be inside crewmen of the Enterprise. If they’d succeeded, they probably would have gone on our character possession list!

Matter-energy cloud – “One of Our Planets Is Missing”

I remember really liking this episode from The Animated Series, which is a rarity, because of the big sentient cloud that Spock gets to mindmeld reminding me of A Star to Steer Her By’s first fanfic day! And happily, both live on today!

Q – “Encounter at Farpoint” et al

When we first meet Q in the TNG premiere, he’s just a chain link fence in space. Shortly afterwards, we see him chase the ship as some kind of translucent ball. Basically, the Q are so powerful, they can exist wherever, whenever, and as whatever they want.

Space Jellyfish – “Encounter at Farpoint”

One of my personal favorites because of just how alien these things are. Kicking off The Next Generation with a pair of space jellyfish at the center of a mysterious test got things off to a great start. The rest of season one on the other hand…

Beta Renner cloud – “Lonely Among Us”

This highly forgettable episode did at least feature some interesting creatures who bring Picard’s essence with them to live in space and do whatever it is they like to do. It doesn’t last long, but it did happen.

Crystalline Entity – “Datalore” and “Silicon Avatar”

There are few creatures as spangly and stunning as the crystalline entity. Like all the pretty ones, it just happens to also like mass murder quite a bit, and also hanging out with psychopaths like Lore. Who can blame it though?

The Child – “The Child”

When Troi gets knocked up in the season two premiere of TNG, it’s by none other than some kind of space-dwelling light being. Little Ian Andrew just wants to learn more about the human race, from the inside out.

Nagilum – “Where Silence Has Lease”

In literally the next episode, yet another space-dwelling weirdo also wants to learn more about the human race, though this one is less innocent in how he goes about it. Let’s count how many different ways people can die. You know, for science!

Subatomic bacteria – “A Matter of Honor”

Our Benzite friend Mendon spots some subatomic bacteria on the hull of the Klingon vessel Pagh and doesn’t report it until another batch is found on the Enterprise. Who knows how many other infestations of this space-dwelling scum he hasn’t reported!?

Calamarain – “Deja Q”

Many of the lifeforms in space whom we meet are just incorporeal, and that includes the Calamarain who hold a grudge against Q for some infractions over the years. They nearly get their revenge in the brief time Q is human too.

Gomtuu – “Tin Man”

Megafauna in space is less common, but we do see some good ones. Like Gomtuu, a perfectly sentient creature living out the rest of his days with his Betazoid inhabitant. Sadly, it does seem that he may be the last of his kind.

Two-dimensional beings – “The Loss”

When Troi loses her empathic powers, she’s unable to sense the two-dimensional beings that the ship comes across. They’re a fairly interesting alien race, since you can’t even perceive the dimension they live in whether you’ve got a functioning empath or not!

Junior – “Galaxy’s Child”

Picard wasn’t the only one devastated to see the Enterprise accidentally kill a space-dwelling mega-ravioli since it was a very cool critter to meet. Luckily, her child, dubbed “Junior,” survives, just a little bit al dente.

Quantum singularity lifeforms – “Timescape”

The aliens we meet on the Romulan ship are so hardcore that they raise their young inside a singularity. And like a typical outlandish Romulan scheme, Romulan ships are so convoluted they’re powered by an artificial singularity. Talk about a Black Hole Son! (Rimshot.)

Wormhole aliens and pah-wraiths – Deep Space Nine

We move on to the space hoppers in Deep Space Nine, starting with the series-wide plotline of the prophets who live in the wormhole and the pah-wraiths who live in the firecaves. But when they’re summoned, they basically go where they want.

Vash’s artifact – “Q-Less”

Quark and Vash try to sell what turns out to be the egg of a creature from the Delta Quadrant. When it hatches, it’s incredibly beautiful, but I gotta admit I don’t know what I’d do either if a million bars of gold-pressed latinum were on the line.

Rumpelstiltskin, et al – “If Wishes Were Horses”

Boy did we (as usual, mostly I) not like this episode, and most of that has to do with how contradictory these aliens are. Like some of the previous instances of aliens learning how humans work, their agenda is convoluted at best and confounding at worst.

Changelings – “Chimera” et al

Since Changelings can form themselves as whatever they want, that includes beings and objects you can find in space. We specifically see Laas swimming through the void as some kind of space whale, but certainly other Changelings must do it too.

Nucleogenic cloud being – “The Cloud”

Let’s now visit some of our outside pets of the Delta Quadrant. Early in Voyager, we meet the titular Cloud being that the ship accidentally ends up inside, and learn that, if there’s a cute animal in danger, Janeway must save it!

Komar – “Cathexis”

Another incorporeal alien we also brought up in our character possessions discussion, the Komar also can live outside the ship in space somewhere. These parasites usually reside in a nebula until a tasty-looking snack like Tuvok happens along.

Space sperms – “Elogium”

While Kes is having a sexual awakening in this rather uncomfortable episode, the Voyager herself is trying her best not to have one with these space sperms that are in the middle of a mating frenzy. What’s a nice ship like you doing in a quadrant like this?

Matrix species – “Coda”

We don’t get a good look at this actual alien species other than in the guise of Janeway’s dad, but it is insinuated that their matrix dimension they are trying to lure her into is in some kind of ethereal space. Captain, don’t walk into the light!

Species 8472 – “Scorpion” and “Prey”

Species 8472 is truly alien in many ways, including all the places they’re able to live. Normally natives of fluidic space, they can also survive in the vacuum of space, as we see when they get onto the Voyager in “Prey.”

Bioplasmic organism – “Bliss”

Like Captain Kirk’s cloud in “Obsession,” the big space pitcher plant proves to be a white whale to our new friend Qatai. This thing is huge and actually impressive to see since its CGI holds up pretty well! That is, when you can see it for what it is of course.

Bevvox – “Think Tank”

A similar (though smaller?) example of a bioplasmic organism is Bevvox, who we can only assume is some kind of space brainbox. He floated around in space for millennia before having the bright idea to form the Think Tank of the episode of the same name.

Species GS84 – “Context Is for Kings”

We now jump straight into Discovery, and season 1 had a whole bunch of space-dwelling lifeforms to appreciate. In an almost throwaway scene, these little light leeches start draining the energy of the shuttle and get the pilot killed before the Discovery picks everyone else up.

Ripper – “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry” et al

The standout star of season 1 of Discovery, of course, is Ripper and I’ll not be hearing any arguments otherwise. This massive tardigrade, first thought to be a menace, turns out to be a great pilot before being freed from the slavery of the ship and straight into space to thrive.

Gormagander – “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad”

Unless you’re Jonah, you don’t typically travel via whale. Harcourt Mudd, however, travels in style inside an endangered Gormagander. The space cetacean is a beautiful creature, though it does make me wonder why whales have come up so much in this blogpost?

Ephraim – “Ephraim and Dot”

We see another tardigrade in one of the Short Treks, though this one is neither massive like Ripper nor microscopic like tardigrades we may find on Earth (or on the moon!). What Ephraim is is adorable and colorful, much like her entire animated episode!

Larval space creature – Lower Decks opening credits

Another animated lifeform we see out in space comes in Lower Decks. We’ve agreed that the opening title sequence of Star Trek’s comedy cartoon show has some of the best jokes of the whole series, and the big space bug sucking on the nacelle is one of them! Ha!

Verugament – “Grounded”

In the most recent season of Lower Decks, there’s a swarm of another space-dwelling organism, the verugament. And because it’s a silly jokey show, as soon as they come in contact with the Cerritos, it triggers a mating response and things get... squishy.

Murf – Prodigy

Last but certainly not least, we have everyone’s favorite mellanoid slime worm from Prodigy! Murf can survive pretty much anything! Little seems to be known about his species except that they will swoop in and save the day whenever called upon.

—

Come back inside before you get eaten by a space monster! As always, keep following this space for more great Trek topics, jetpack along with our watch through of Voyager on SoundCloud or your favorite podcasting application, tap the glass on our Facebook and Twitter pages, and save the space whales!

[penig]

So I don’t write smut, as a lifestyle choice, and I don’t go out of my way to read smut, but I don’t go out of my way to avoid reading it, either, except insofar as I want something else to be the A plot. I’ve run across it incidentally quite a lot  since joining AO3, as you do, and most of it I skim because most of it isn’t really adding to the story. If it advances plot or characterization of course I’ll read that, but otherwise I treat it like fight scenes (which have the same problem) and the boring parts of Moby Dick. If you get the gist you don’t have to get every word to know if it matters to you or not. (For E-rated stuff that has a job to do and is eminently readable, as an example of what I don’t skim, I recommend Charlotte Madison’s GO Human AU, Or Be Nice, feuding neighbors to lovers, in which the first sex scene is part of a long conversation that goes through multiple means of communication, before and after the act.)

By and large I don’t think about the stuff I’m skimming, but in the case of M/M scenes specifically,  mostly but not entirely in fanfic, I have evolved some questions, which by their nature I’m not about to put into comments, but I can’t help running through sometimes, sometimes in terms of writing quality and technique but also in terms of societal and technological changes that have happened since my life became more domestic and monogamous. I will mix them up together here. Quite probably many of the fics I don’t read because the explicit material is the A plot would address these concerns, but that possibility is not enough to tempt me to read that widely without guidance. And I need something to distract me from worrying about my cat and the discomfort of the foot (and the head; I’m getting lots of positional vertigo, which is scary as well as nauseous when you can’t put weight on one foot.) Anyway, in no particular order, I wonder:

Do gay men not keep tubs of Crisco by their beds anymore? What is this magic lube that comes in packets and is never too cold and apparently is never nasty-tasting or grainy and never makes a mess on the sheets or leaks on the headboard or gets the container sticky and therefore dusty? We did not have this in my day. It sounds wonderful. Where can I get it? I keep forgetting to look in the family planning aisle and am not sure I’d recognize it anyway. We used to have to buy lube in the first aid aisle and in a certain kind of novelty shop, where it was called “massage oil.”

Are cock rings passe? I can see how that might happen when they became mainstream as accessories to rave wear, but the chrome things were never the only option and it’s been long enough for them to cycle back.

Where are these men’s testicles? Even most of the scenes I don’t skim seem to take place between guys who don’t have them. I get that not everybody likes to play ball but aren’t they in those cases at least in the way?

Why is the bottom never making a bathroom run as soon as their legs function again? (This applies equally to women and men but I notice it most strongly in M/M.) In the case of rear entry in particular, this BS about the top bringing a damp washrag back to bed to clean up with will not do the trick, absent a preliminary enema. I know enemas aren’t sexy but nobody seems to even own the pumps anymore and if you haven’t planned ahead and regulated your food intake, believe me, you do not want to clean up that wet spot much less wake up in it - you head to the can ASAP. This is distracting and gross, y’all, please just take advantage of the glories of indoor plumbing!

That seems to be the bulk of it.

[the-insomniac-emporium]

i stumbled upon ur writing looking for lady d x non-binary reader fics and ur work has just been a godsend i’m obsessed. it’s inspired me to start writing my own even though i’ve never written for fandoms before. i’ve never written for other actual characters before either so i was wondering if u could spare any tips for writing for lady d and her daughters? 🙏🏻

:D

I can certainly try! I'll divide the tips into lil sections for each characters. Might be less tips, more character observations that help me figure out how to write them? Putting under read-more for length. Also! If you ever want someone to look over what you write before you post it, I offer my services! I can't guarantee how fast I can respond, but I've been editing/proof-reading/giving general feedback for my friends for years, with everything from fanfiction to college level essays.

Alcina:

Large and in charge, literally. Regardless of the situation, Lady D wants to stay in control, or at least look like she's in control. Okay, minor exception being anything involving Mother Miranda, since she's the one person Lady D has any real respect for. Otherwise, Alcina maintains a good grasp on any situation, looking for ways to put herself in control.

For example, she often uses her height as a means to establish dominance, even within RE8 canon. If you watch a video of the Four Lords meeting, Alcina stands up once she starts arguing with Heisenberg, towering over him in an attempt to intimidate. We also see the aforementioned exception in this scene, as Lady D sort of "shrinks" a little when Miranda responds.

As much as Lady D wants to be in control, she's not always actually capable of it. In the game, we see her struggle to contain her emotions, and often releases them in outbursts. Such as the infamous vanity throwing scene (god I love that so much). It can provide some nice contrast in scenes, having Lady D be so in control one moment, then as soon as she's behind closed doors she's letting it all out.

Uses the most old-fashioned language out of her whole family. It's kind of hard to describe how one goes about writing this way, but I recommend trying to find some journals that were written in the early 1900's and reading them. Or just some classic novels (not Moby Dick, tho, that one's a bit much, in my opinion). One thing I can say is occasionally swap contractions (can't, don't, I've, etc) for the full version of the word (cannot, do not, I have, etc). Something about that always makes dialogue feel older, though I can't really explain why. Whatever you do, just don't rely too much on using synonyms. Replacing common words with their cousins can make dialogue feel "fancier", but you often run the risk of unintended connotations (feelings, positive or negative, associated with a word) messing with how a text is interpreted.

Puts up a front/facade around most people, as part of her noble background and need for control, with words like "stoic" and "composed" coming to mind. Very rough with troublemakers, no mercy. But!!! So very incredibly soft with her family/loved ones. I've seen some people accuse her of "faking" her love for her daughters, but these people either played a different game than I did, or they can't read emotions as well as I can. Gentle touches when she's checking if her kids are okay, little glances and gentle nods for reassurance, pausing a chase just to help her daughters, etc.

Bela:

Wants to make her mother proud. Legally obligated to make her mother proud, because she's the eldest daughter. Not that I know how that feels, being the younger of two children. Regardless, Bela is the most well behaved of the daughters, even when her mother isn't around. However, she does resent this position to some degree, based on in game dialogue/dialogue files that are in the game but aren't used. Personally, I see her as someone who's willing to let certain things go in exchange for favors/blackmail ammo.

Cleans up after her sisters a fair bit, sometimes literally. Feels responsible for them, to the point where their mistakes are her mistakes, and she's forced to compensate on their behalf. Because of this she ends up complaining a lot, though almost only when her family isn't around.

Still very protective of her family, she simply does most of her protecting behind the scenes. Knows how to manipulate a situation, which she probably learned from her mother, and can be quite convincing when she wants to be. Less likely to use violence to solve a problem than anyone else in the family. Will she use violence if need be, or if someone fucks up enough? Yes, absolutely, but she'll focus more on efficiency than misery (unless someone really fucks up).

Generally speaking she's more eloquent than either of her sisters, though not by much unless she's trying to impress someone (usually her mother).

Cassandra:

Two words: Angry. Horny. To her, they might as well be one word. Horngry. Cassandra struggles with her emotions more than either of her sisters, being a pressure cooker ready to pop basically all the time. It's not hard to set her off, but it can take ages for her to cool back down. Let's her frustration (of any variety) build up until she can bludgeon someone to death with it. Harshest on the servants, and spends the most time toying with others in the dungeon.

Like Bela, Cassandra wants to make her mother proud, but it's less of an obligation and more of a "I'm the middle child and feel like I don't get enough attention" type deal. Is more than willing to stoop to "tattle telling" activities in order to get the attention she craves. Usually sticks to obediently following her mother's orders or hunting down enemies, though.

Bit of an artsy type, and the most likely to take trophies from her victims. Gross ones, usually. Okay, well, that's debatable, but I'm talking about general consensus rather than my specific tastes. Personally, I don't care if she's got some weird blood paintings. Hell, I've got extra blood, and also am clumsy and bleed a lot anyway, she can have mine!

Hides her non-anger emotions as best as she can. Hates talking about her feelings (even if it helps), to the point where it's usually impossible to tell how she's feeling deep down. Remember, anger is a secondary emotion! No one is ever just angry, there's always something else hiding underneath, such as: Sadness, disappointment, loneliness, jealousy, etc. Keep this in mind when you're writing her. Make sure you pinpoint the center of her anger, and hint at it, letting her actions show her true goal.

Swears the most, easily. Tends to speak in shorter sentences than her sisters, and prefers being blunt to being eloquent/flowery.

Daniela:

Love, love, love, love, love, ahhhh deep breath... love. Loves love, or at least what she processes as love. Would do anything for romance. Except she also craves "natural" romance, creating a sort of paradox that adds to her delusions, as she engages in the pursuit of unintentional romance (not to be confused with "The Pursuit of Unintentional Humor", a song that I very, very much enjoy). Wants to be loved for who she is at the same time that she attempts to mold herself into a more lovable shape. Struggles with intimacy, wanting to feel vulnerable without actually being so.

On some level she understands that draining people of their blood, and then drinking said blood, is not equatable to a healthy relationship. But seeing as this is the most common form of supposed "intimacy" that she experiences, she refuses to acknowledge the true nature of what she does. Instead she clings to the idea of "forever bonding" with her partners, pretending that each one is still with her, even when she no longer remembers their names.

Hates being rejected, no matter how gently. "Ugly" cries, but only if she's alone, often turning her pain into anger, just like Cassandra. However, her outbursts don't seem to last as long. In reality, her breakdowns simply occupy the inside of her existence, rather than the outside. Sure, she's giggling and causing chaos, like usual, but on the inside she's breaking a record for most depressing internal monologue.

Reads a ton, but not always "quality" books. Goes through a dozen books or more a week, often rereading her favorites several times, mainly within the romance genre (obvs). This affects her speech a fair amount, making her both cheesy and occasionally smooth as hell.

[redrobinfection]

(16) Graveyard

SociallyAwkwardFox’s Spooktober (2018) - Day 16 “Graveyard”

Tim & Damian | Implied JayTim | Implied DickDami | College AU | No Capes | Crack | actual discussion of literature | Dick Grayson was adopted by the Drakes instead of the Waynes | Want to write/create with me? Find the prompt list here!

~*~

"How about four out of seven?" Tim asked with a shrug, winding up the toilet paper roll again.

Damian, his fellow barista, threw his roll at Tim's head, missing wildly. He glared. "You cheated, Drake!"

Tim rolled his eyes as he retrieved Damian's roll and began winding it up too. "How could I cheat at coffee cup bowling, ‘Wayne’?"

"You wind your roll too tightly. It doesn't unravel as much when you pitch it and thus has more mass by the time it hits the cups."

Tim raised his eyebrows. "What are you now, a physics major? That just sounds like strategy, dude. You are free to roll your roll as tightly as you'd like. That isn't against the rules."

Damian fumed. "The rules you made up! This is why I said we should use the rice crispy ba--customer."

Tim whirled on the spot, seeing that, indeed, a paying customer had entered their little, semi-enclosed coffee shop. Outside, a few students sat or sprawled over the sectional couches that filled the large basement of the university student union in which the shop was located.

Tim turned and vaulted over the counter. He heard a quiet "-tch-" from Damian as he walked to the hinged raise-able section of the counter and let himself in.

Tim straightened his apron and stepped up the register with a smile. The customer stood about five feet from the register, head tilted back, studying the menu board over Tim's head with bleary eyes. The guy was like a zombie, he was that exhausted. Tim cut his eyes over to the clock on the wall. 3:45 am. Hell of a time for coffee.

Tim glanced over his shoulder at Damian, who was reawakening the cranky espresso machine with deft fingers. Seven hours and forty-five minutes with Damian "the Demon " Wayne down, only four hours and fifteen minutes to go. Tim turned back to their customer and sighed. This was going to be a loooooooong morning.

At second glance, there was something familiar about the guy, but Tim couldn't put his finger on where he knew him. The guy had pretty teal eyes, but they were reddened and dull, like he hadn't closed them except to blink in way too long. He was also pretty well cut, Tim noticed, with clearly muscled arms and pecs so defined that Tim could clearly see them through the man's sweater. Maybe that's how Tim knew him? Maybe he'd seen him in the UREC weight room?

The guy's most eye-catching feature by far was the white forelock that curled down over his forehead. He was the third person Tim had met to have a whitened forelock like that; the other two were fraternal twins who had had small patches of albinism right at their widows peaks which affected both the skin and hair. Tim idly wondered if this guy's white lock was natural too. In any case, it looked frickin' cool, a lot cooler than his own; the best thing he could say about his own hair was that he could pull off the 90's curtain cut plus semi-mullet well enough that he could go an entire semester on a single haircut.

Tim was drawn out of his thoughts when dude finally stepped up to the counter and began to speak.

"Uh, hi, could I get a large, double-shot caramel latte?"

"Absolutely. How many pumps of caramel do you want?" Tim asked cheerily.

The guy looked up from digging through his overly stuffed messenger bag. "Uhh…the normal four should be fine."

"Okay, that will be $6.47. Can I get a name for the order?"

The guy didn't look up this time. "Uh, Jason. Gimme a sec', I know my wallet is at the bottom of this thing somewhere."

"No problem, take your time. It's not like we have a line, anyway," Tim joked.

This guy looked so dead right now--inside and out--that if he didn't find his wallet, then Tim would probably just buy the coffee for the guy himself. He understood better than anyone the sudden need for caffeine at odd hours of the day. He's not sure how he would have finished half his computer science projects this term without a much-needed double-espresso every couple of hours, to be honest.

The guy--'Jason' apparently--finally fished out a small money clip then handed over a student ID card. "Put it on my Dining Dollars, please."

"Yeah, no probl- wait a minute!" Tim cut off, staring. Suddenly, it had hit Tim where he knew this guy. "Aren't you that kid who always sits at the front of Professor Hyatt's nine-fifteen, Tuesday-Thursday, Modern European Literature and answers all the questions?"

The dude raised an eyebrow. "Uh, yeah. Why…? Wait…" He squinted and leaned in. "Aren't you the kid who once tried to sit all the way back in the AV booth, since, and I quote, 'the back wasn't far enough back'?"

Tim grinned as he swiped the ID card through the register. "Haha, yeah."

Damian moved as if to step up to the counter, the guy's drink in hand, but stopped dead about a foot away. He stared.

"Wait. Aren't you the guy who always comes in, gets tea, and sits in the window over there and reads romance novels?" Damian asked, eying him appraisingly.

The dude huffed. "Yes. My name is Jason--by the way--and they're not romance novels, it's classic lit. Now can I get my coffee?"

Damian handed the coffee over the counter, but raised an eyebrow skeptically. "You mean to tell me Rebecca is not a romance novel?"

"Wait, what!? Do you mean Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca?" Tim asked as he handed Jason's ID card back over the counter.

Damian nodded wordlessly. Tim snorted, then said, "That's not a romance! That's a totally a murder mystery! You must be confusing it with Jane Eyre. I get those mixed up too."

Jason nodded in agreement, tucking his ID away before taking his first sip of coffee. He moaned, his eyes fluttering for a moment as he savored in the sweet bliss of piping hot caffeine at 3:49 in the morning, then he looked at Damian and said, "Well, actually, I'll give you that one, uh…" --he paused to squint at Damian's name tag-- "...'Damian'; Rebecca is a modern romance novel by classification, but it's also a crime thriller just like--whazzatsay?--'Tim' said."

He turned to Tim. "I'm not surprised you'd confuse it with Jane Eyre, considering that a lot of scholars believe du Maurier adapted it from Jane Eyre."

"Wait, really?" Tim said with a laugh. "I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking that! Rebecca is like the less boring version of Jane Eyre."

Jason froze halfway into sitting down in one of the arm chairs that lined the wall closest to the door and looked up at Tim as if he had just suggested burning down the library or something similarly unthinkable. "Whaaaaaat?! I can't believe you just implied that any of the Brontë sisters' works is boring!"

Tim laughed again. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I was only twelve when I read Jane Eyre, so maybe I'd enjoy it more if I read it again now--with a mature perspective--but I remember Rebecca being a blast for thirteen-year-old me so…" He smiled, then shrugged.

Jason stared. "Twelve? Thirteen? Jeez. What else were you trying to read that young?"

"I mean, I read Moby Dick the year before that, in sixth grade," Tim admitted, shrugging until his shoulders hit his ears.

Jason gave him a flat stare. "Moby Dick? Moby fucking Dick? You've gotta be kidding me. And lemme guess, you also thought Herman Melville's masterpiece was a load of crock?"

Tim laughed, but shook his head and waved his hands placatingly. "No, no, no. I only understood, like, every fifth word--so.many.whaling.terms!--and it took me four months to get halfway in only to realize there was no way I was going to finish it by the end of the school year--I ended up skipping to the end and guessing for a lot of the AR test questions--but I definitely got the sense that it was a seminal work and that I was just too young to appreciate it. I've always meant to go back and try it again, but I still haven't gotten around to it."

"Why the hell were you trying to read Moby Dick at the age of twelve?" Jason asked incredulously, leaning back in the chair and taking a long sip of his coffee.

"Eleven, but, ah, well, my mom was convinced I had to be The BestTM in everything, so she pushed me to max out my Accelerated Reader level by the end of sixth grade and demanded that I always get the most AR points of anyone in my class, so I read a lot of the 20 point-and-up books." Tim tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I think Moby Dick was 47 points...Rebecca was 25...Jane Eyre was 33..."

Jason stared, shaking his head slowly. "So…what? You're fine with Moby Dick, a romance of the American Renaissance, but a gothic romance of the British Victorian era like Jane Eyre isn't good enough for you? Next you'll try to tell me you think Wuthering Heights is a snooze fest!"

"Well, I mean, I never could get into it, so…"

Jason slammed both hands down on the arms of his chair, incensed. "Okay, Mister, get your butt over here and sit down, we need to have a talk about Victorian Gothic and why, hands down, it is some of the best literature ever written."

Tim laughed again, then bit his lip, considering the offer. He glanced around the nearly empty coffee shop. Then he leaned over the counter and looked out into the lounge--there were exactly four people there and only one of them wasn't completely asleep in their books. Yeah, he could probably afford to humor the man.

He turned to Damian. "Hey, Dames, I'm going to make myself a coffee and take my break. You good to hold down the fort?"

"I told you not to call me that," Damian snapped, but there was no real heat to it; he liked to pretend that he hated the guts of all his coworkers, but Tim knew that he was Damian's favorite. "However, yes, I think I can manage. Go take your damned break, but when you come back I fully expect a rematch in bowling…and don't you dare cheat this time!"

Tim rolled his eyes and groaned, then turned toward trying to coax Ol' 'Spressolino--their affectionate name for the cantankerous espresso machine--into spitting out a double-shot for him. "It's not cheating, but fine, we'll do it your way," Tim replied. "But I'm telling you, you have to buy those rice crispy balls. I definitely don't want to have to explain to Barbara why some of the food on sale looks like it went through the spin cycle in a dorm washer."

Damian grinned smugly. "My pleasure. It will be a small price to pay in order to ensure your swift defeat."

Tim shook his head, grabbed his espresso in one hand and two biscotti off the front counter in the other, ducked under the counter drawbridge, then slid into the armchair across from Jason. He offered one of the biscotti to the other man and Jason accepted the free food with an appreciative smile. He already looked ten times less zombie-like, thanks to the caffiene, and he was honestly pretty damn attractive.

"Okay," Tim said, peeling the wrapper off his own biscotti and dunking it into his bitter cup of joy, "Educate me."

Between sips of coffee and bites of biscotti, Jason began explaining his thoughts on the romantic period of literature, but barely a minute into his lecture, a plastic-wrapped, ball-shaped rice crispy treat about the size of a cantelope whizzed by their feet and crashed into the ten extra-large paper coffee cups arranged in a bowling triangle at one end of the coffee shop, scattering them in a definitive strike.

Jason jumped in his seat and looked around wildly. "What the fuck?"

Tim sighed. "Daaaaaaamiaaaaaaan…"

"Shut up, Drake! I'm practicing. I need to hone my skills and adjust my form so I can thoroughly crush you in our next round," Damian called back. He marched from the counter to the end of the shop to retrieved his plastic-wrapped projectile.

Jason blinked in confusion. "I repeat: what the ever-loving fuck?"

Tim sighed again, then explained, saying, "It gets pretty boring in here during the graveyard shift, so we invented a game, coffee cup bowling. Normally, we'd sleep or study, but Damian finished his exams two days ago and I don't really study for exams, per se-"

"And sleep is for the weak," Damian finished, nodding as he walked past them carrying his sweet, gooey ammunition.

Tim nodded sagely, in agreement. "Sleep is for the weak."

Jason glanced over Tim's shoulder at the coffee cup bowling 'pins' and then over his shoulder at Damian as he lined up another throw. "You guys are insane," he declared.

Tim made a dismissive gesture. "I mean this is my third graveyard shift in a row and Damian here is almost 20 hours into a 24-hour stint. After that much sleep deprivation, you'd lose your sanity too."

Jason tilted his head in acknowledgement. "Fair enough."

"If you want, you're welcome to join us after we finish our coffee and literature talk," Tim offered amiably.

Jason watched as Damian threw another strike, sending one cup so far it landed in the pot of the ficus in the corner, and raised his eyebrows. "You know what…why not." He turned back to Tim with a grin. "I could use a bit of fun before I go back to work on my Native American Lit paper."

"Are you a lit major?" Tim asked curiously.

"I am."

Tim nodded. "That makes sense."

"And you?"

"I'm a CS major--computer science."

"That makes sense," Jason echoed, grinning.

Tim grinned back at him and waved a hand. "Okay, so as you were saying…?"

"Yes, as I was saying…"

Jason continued his little lecture while they continued sipping their coffee and nibbling on the biscotti. When they had finished--the coffee, not the discussion, because Tim was pretty sure Jason would go on for hours about literature once you got him started--they joined Damian in a game of "ten-cup."

It was in the middle of this heated battle of cups and marshmallow-bonded puffed-rice cereal balls that their next customer found them fifteen minutes later. The man, dressed in flower printed leggings and a black hoodie with "Gotham University Aerial Arts" printed across the chest in blue, took one look at them and grinned.

"Oh, hey! Coffee-cup bowling! I love that game! Do you think I could interrupt you guys for just a sec to get some hot chocolate?"

All three of them--the two baristas plus their customer--turned and stared.

"Hot… wait, what?" Jason said, laughing a little. "Man, it's like 4:30 in the morning. Why are you getting a hot chocolate at 4:30 in the morning?"

The man laughed, too, shrugging before he explained, saying, "I don't like tea or coffee all that much, but I just finished a 20 page paper on ethics in police enforcement and I need a pick me up. I need to get my warm fuzzies going again."

Tim rolled his eyes and sighed, moving back toward the counter to get the man his drink. "You're going to end up being the cuddliest cop on the street, Dick."

"You know it, Timmy!" the man--'Dick' apparently--exclaimed, pulling Tim into a bear hug when he made the mistake of passing too close to Dick on his way to the counter. The hug escalated into a full on octopus hug as he lifted his legs to wrap around Tim's hips. Tim, for his part, ignored the grapple, opening the leaf in the counter and hobbling over to the drink bar with the human cephalopod still attached.

Damian and Jason stared. Damian cleared his throat and eyed Dick with poorly disguised interest. "Wait, do you know this man, Drake?"

Tim blinked dully as he turned around, a cup in one hand and a packet of instant hot chocolate in the other. "Yes. He's my brother." Dick made a squeeing noise and nuzzled his head into Tim's neck. Tim sighed. "My adopted brother," he amended testily.

Dick laughed, dropped his feet back onto the floor and stood up. He nearly wrung Tim's neck as he tried to hug him around the shoulders. "Awww, don't be like that, Tim. We haven't seen each other in two whole weeks and I needed my Tim-hugs! Gotta meet my cuddle-quota."

Tim shook his head and handed the hot chocolate back over his shoulder. "You're insufferably, insatiably clingy when you're this tired, Dick. Go home and sleep."

Dick finally released him to take the drink. He took a sip of the hot chocolate, sighing in appreciation. "Thanks, Tim, and yeah, but, only if you do the same. You're just as bad as me when you haven't slept, if not worse."

"Can't. Working," Tim answered curtly, vaulting the counter to escape before Dick's grabby hands could reach for him again. His brother wasn't wrong; Tim was always up for a good cuddle after a long stint without proper sleep, but he didn't like public displays of affection.

Dick took one look at the nearly empty coffee shop, the three of them, their game, and then laughed out loud. "Ahhh, the days of getting paid to drink coffee and make up games at 4:30 in the morning. I kind of miss it."

"Would you care to join us," Damian asked abruptly. Dick brightened.

"Absolutely!"

And so that was how the four of them ended up bowling for empty coffee cups with rice crispy treats the size of spaghetti squash while blasting ABBA’s greatest hits--Dick's terrible, wonderful idea--until the sun rose and their shift ended, at eight AM.

By the time the four of them walked out the door, Dick was trying to convince Damian to join him in the aerials gym before breakfast, and Damian, clearly eager to do anything with the handsome college senior, accepted readily. Jason and Tim, on the other hand, were back to discussing literature over coffee--now focused on the merits and downfalls of contemporary science fiction and fantasy as an art form--and making their way to the East Campus Dining Hall, so they could continue their discussion over breakfast.

Tim snorted softly as he listened to Jason list all the ways Dune defined an era of sci-fi/fantasy, then smiled at the way Jason took his hand--without seeming to realize it--to pull him forward after the crosswalk light changed out of Tim's line of sight. Oh, yeah, this one was totally gay/bi/pan and he was definitely asking him out the minute he saw the opportunity, Tim decided.

He smiled. Who would of thought he'd come out of last night's graveyard shift not only having seen his demon coworker and his older brother hit it off--of all things!--but having met someone for himself too! He laughed, thinking, you never know what crazy things you might see, or the people you might meet, at the campus coffee shop at 4 o' clock in the morning!

[janiedean]

Hi! I'm the Plato anon for before. First of, thank you so much for your offer, but I think I managed on me own. Second, could you elaborate on the "analysing as YA" vs "analysing as an adult" approach? I assumed that "discourse people" on this website generally don't go beyond "antagonist is bad because they are against the hero!" out of ignorance/lack of interest except to score Internet Fame Points, not that it was due a specific mindest. I also don't really read YA (except Tiffany Aching)

TIFFANY ACHING!! T_T ANON LET ME HUG YOU it’s like the only YA I actually liked in my entire life apart from nick hornby’s one book but that wasn’t typical lmao

THAT SAID, well your discourse people point is pretty much part of it but since I’m here and I can rant have the entire thing I was too tired to hash yesterday ;) so, in order:

first thing, we need to establish that ya books and **adult** books generally have different target audiences which is fine and good because obviously if you want to write a thing you’ll do that for An Audience That You Have In Mind; this doesn’t mean that adults can’t read ya or that teenagers can’t read **adult books** because everyone can read what they want (and personally for one I never cared for ya in my entire life not even when I was the target audience), but it simply means that some books are meant to be liked by one category first and eventual others later and they need to be talked about in that specific context first and everything else later - then there might be books that are aimed for kids/young readers or sold like that or that can be read on more than one level which can be appreciated for different things later in time (for example I read huck finn at sixteen and I absolutely loved it but it was a book that here is seen as good reading material also for eight year olds, and at eight I wouldn’t have liked it for the reasons I did at sixteen, and if I read it now I would still like it, while a bunch of the books for kids I read when I was seven is stuff I enjoyed then but forgot now and probably was good for that age but didn’t stick with me);

second thing, that means that when I discuss a young adult book aimed at teenagers I will never hold it to the standards I would hold a book aimed at a general adult audience, especially if it’s the kind of ya like dunno as stated the vampire diaries aimed at teenage girls which is obviously the kind where you have the fantasy world with the hot dark guy who swoons the high schooler protagonist off her feet etc because that stuff is basic teenage girl fantasy 101 and like... I’ll expect a bunch of romance tropes, the usual push and pull, the guy eventually being into her, the protagonist being someone a fourteen year-old can see herself in, probably a few sexual elements thrown here and there and so on, because that’s the shit marketed at fourteen year-olds who want to read that and like... it’s really not that deep. I can’t ask the vampire diaries to be moby dick because it’s not meant to be. or, if I read percy j/ackson - which is another thing I have zero interest in but I know about because I see tweets from the author - I expect to have a bunch of teens coming into their own coming from different backgrounds because the author wants to represent properly a lot of categories so most of his readers can have someone they can see themselves in and like if a thirteen year-old who suspects being lgbt or whatever sees themselves in the gay kid from per/cy jackson guess what that’s what that book is for, so I won’t judge it on like... being a faithful representation of greek myths or how good the style is or whatever, because even if to me it’s not top notch writing or has a plot idc about it has to be for teenagers and pre-teens, not for me, a thirty year old who again didn’t even like pre-teen aimed literature when she was a pre-teen;

third, I can extra clarify it using the damned hp discourse, as in: when I say I’m tired of people not reading anything else or reading everything like hp, it means that they read it when they were growing up/were teens and it was aimed at them which is fine, but then twenty fucking years later when the people in question are way beyond their twenties (guys I’m almost 32 and I remember when the first one came out come on) when talking about any single piece of media in existence (movies, comics, other books) use hp characters/situations as the terms of paragon - like guys I had to read sn/ape comparisons with theon and ky/lo ren on the basis that THEY’RE GREY CHARACTERS as if sn/ape is the only grey character that ever existed, people keep on talking about vold/emort as the only bad guy that ever existed and so on, and like... you can’t talk about, idk, asoiaf or any book aimed at an adult audience like you’d talk about hp, because at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if I read comparisons between sn/ape and ivan karamazov and I think I don’t need to specify how completely nonsensical that would be;

now, with all of this explained, what I mean is: ya in general - which is not a fault per se of the genre since it’s aimed at teens and pre-teens - tends to have... very fixed narrative schemes depending on which teens it’s addressing - like, stuff like tvd or twilight is obviously the romance teenage girl fantasy where you have the girl fighting to be with the dark beautiful supernatural creature in question, per/cy jackson is more like I’ll give you a bunch of relatable characters having cool adventures against bad guys with the occasional redemption so we can see that people are redeemable but you still have right vs wrong, hp is sort of like that in the sense you get relatable-ish protagonist with relatable friends growing up throughout the entire thing and fighting on the good side vs the evil side including the usual death of the mentor plus people who seemed bad actually not being bad™ except that PJ has more povs and better rep from what I gather but that’s not the point so it’s basically the growing up journey for the young protagonist(s) the kid sees themselves in, then there’s stuff like hunger games where you actually have the dystopian worldbuilding just written to be enjoyable by younger people who don’t want to get too depressed (and ngl I haven’t read the books but I’ve seen the first two movies and guys the way everyone ignores the classist commentary in thg to discuss the love triangle is... a staple of the problem tbh) but still try to introduce deeper themes and have more nuanced characters and at the same time are still written to be enjoyed maybe by the more adult side of the target, and at the same time I can’t say that thg is the same as 1984 when it comes to target audience because 1984 doesn’t make the ugly dystopian themes more accessible using the love story/teenage protagonist etc;

at this point the problem is: if you only ever read ya and nothing else in your life (which is what a lot of people here do - guys again when I got here in 2011 if people didn’t discuss hp they discussed john gr/een, the only *adult*-aimed book I see discussed on tumblr is asoiaf... because of got X°DDD) then you end up seeing every other piece of literature expecting what you do out of a young adult and then you expect adult literature out of young adults/ya to approach certain implications the way an adult novel would, which is... frankly ridiculous;

specific examples: I see blogs which are principally about like ya fantasy books ie acotar or shadow/hunters or whatever shitting on grrm because AAAAH HE’S PROBLEMATIC/MISOGYNIST/HE HAS VIOLENCE AND RAPE IN THE BOOKS BLAH BLAH and like... spoilers: if I wrote a fantasy series aimed at fourteen year-olds who want their fantasy romance with the hot dark guy who is maybe a tiny bit problematic but turns their leaf for them I would hold back on blood and violence, if I wrote a fantasy for adults where I want to be realistic about misogyny I will not, and the fact that grrm gets judged on what happens and not how he writes it (and again, saying that a guy who has 1/3rd of his pov characters female except that it’s actually 50/50 because there are no throwaway povs except for mel while guys have a lot more of them and all the female povs have narrative weight [and mel has it before she gets one] and all of them have a different personality and he also has the same trope [brienne and arya] in two people with wildly different personalities and needs which is basically a goddamned miracle is a misogynist because there’s misogyny in his fantasy world is ridiculous imvho) which is.... exactly expecting of asoiaf what you’d expect out of acotar, when grrm and acotar’s writer write for wildly different audiences. now, if I had read acotar at 15 and asoiaf at 15 I’d have had no doubt re asoiaf being more my thing because again the subgenre acotar goes for is not my thing because I never related to that fantasy while brienne is my rep, but in general a 14yo girl who likes the acotar-like stuff will not care for grrm.... which is normal because grrm writes for adults of both genders, not teenage girls (I mean teenage boys also have their own subgenres for which the same rules are valid), and someone who likes percy jackson (aimed at both genders but like... pre-teens early teens) who doesn’t gaf for grrm won’t because it’s not aimed at them unless they like grrm for other reasons ie idk they realize that they relate to jon snow idk but you see my point, so like tldr that’s what I mean with if you only read ya you’ll expect adult writers to handle their themes like ya writers would and like... sorry but if I write stuff for adults I won’t feel the need to specify that the bad guy is B A D with neon lights because an adult should grasp that from the narrative, I don’t need to make sure it’s obvious bc it’s aimed at kids;

reverse: when I see people saying ‘the vampire diaries is problematic because it’s about people who are a hundred years old preying on teenage girls so we need to stop teenage girls from reading that kind of thing because it makes them think it’s okay to go with someone that much older than them’, we’re at the opposite problem in the sense that you’re asking a young adult novel what you would ask of AN ADULT NOVEL when there’s no point in it. like, a teenage girl knows perfectly that damon salvatore doesn’t exist and vampires don’t exist and werewolves don’t exist - the entire point of tvd is that she gets to fawn over the hot supernatural dude who changes for the better thanks to the female protagonist she most likely sees herself in and she gets to have a few nice fantasies about that which is like... normal for people who are developing their sexualities, most people wouldn’t actually want damon salvatore the way he’s exactly in canon irl because they know it’s a fantasy and so it should stay. like, sorry but as someone who watched the show because ian somerhalder is hot in her twenties and tried the first book and gave it up at page 30 because I couldn’t do it, I can 100% assure anyone that the biggest issues with tvd books are that the writing is really fucking bad (for my standards at least), with the tvd show that from S4 the writing spiraled downwards and no one wanted the magical vampire pregnancy witch twins ridiculousness, but none of the content actually was shit that anyone would take seriously like that and I wouldn’t expect tvd to approach that subject realistically. if I read a vampire book aimed at adults who actually wants to write such a relationship as creepy WELL YES OF COURSE I’D EXPECT IT TO BE OBVIOUS ABOUT IT BEING CREEPY, but if it’s aimed at freaking teenagers... it’s a fantasy and not really that deep, take it for what it is and let teenage girls enjoy thinking about smooching damon salvatore (or stefan or whoever) without assuming they need to be protected from Horrible Vampire Fiction™, same as no one goes bitching about unrealistic sex scenes in serialized romance books because people read them because they’re unrealistic and escapism, not because they expect nobel prize worthy exploration of themes from them;

now, ^^^^^^ would not happen if people actually read variedly and studied some decent lit analysis in school - but like, after I had to read I think at some point that of mice and men is ableist... THAT’S the damned point - with ya you can take a lot of the plot at face value, with adult lit you can’t and you have to see motivation beyond the action of the characters and you can’t do that if you only read books aimed at pre-teens/teenagers where obviously that’s... more spelled out than it would be in a book aimed at an adult audience;

that by the way also means wildly missing actual adult themes discussion in ya, because again, I haven’t read thg but from the two movies I’ve seen it’s fucking obvious that the whole thing is an anti us-classism commentary from how the districts are built to how the games are rigged to pretty much everything in the worldbuilding, but all the discourse I see on tumblr is about either the love triangle or katniss being miscast or president snow being a jerk and whatever else, but I never once saw anyone saying ‘heeeeey the people in katniss’ district are an in your face metaphor of poor people in the us of a belonging to certain categories while the first few districts are absolutely the 1% and the entire point of it is that she wants to tell you A CLASSIST SOCIETY IS BAD AND WILL LEAD TO REVOLUTIONS’, which to me was... like, glaring, it was literally what 90% of the entire thing was about and no one ever discusses it in a fandom-wide sense (I mean... I saw a bunch of hg posts back when the movies came out, I never saw this brought out), which... is a problem because it means that the moment people are put in front of a ya product that actually tackles that kind of issue.... they go and worry about the love triangle (which seemed to me the excuse to draw the people in the story) not about the social commentary, and like, maybe a twelve year-old won’t catch on the social commentary, a twenty-year old especially from the us should, and I don’t see that happening;

and sorry but that is because if you only engage with content aimed at a younger audience than your target first you assume that every piece of literature should be consumable/readable/enjoyable by a younger audience (and sorry but no, some of us don’t want to write stuff making sure teenagers like it) and then ask of actual ya media to cater to their *adult* needs and not to the needs of the target audience because wow obviously if you’re 25 you won’t want out of literature what you wanted at fourteen;

and this also is valid for children’s media because again, I’m cutting it short, but adults watching st/even universe and sending people death threats because they don’t agree with their opinion of a cartoon aimed at an audience that’s at moooostttt eight years old is a thing that shouldn’t even fucking exist, and if you think steven/universe is that important at an adult age you need to re-assess your priorities;

tldr: adults should not expect media aimed at kids/teens to cater to their interests and shouldn’t analyze it the way they’d analyze a piece of media aimed at an adult audience and should not presume that every piece of media should have the scope/schemes of medias aimed at kids/teens because some of us don’t want to read that.

now, I’ll leave you with a nice short anecdote which hopefully will further clarify what I mean and add to another point which would be, kids and teens don’t give a fuck about what you, an adult, do: when everyone was in a frenzy about my little pony back in 2013 or so I had to see a ton of posts like ‘AAAAAH MEN/BOYS WHO ARE INTO MLP ARE STEALING THE SHOW FROM YOUNG GIRLS HOW DARE THEY ENJOY IT WE NEED TO KICK THEM OUT’ with added people saying that a ten year old male kid who tried to kill himself bc his friends bullied him bc he liked mlp deserved it and the likes, my only thought was that... when I was 8-10 in elementary school and was actually the target for cartoons and stuff, sailor moon was the rage between all girls my age me included, we’d spend recess playing pretend (and I’d get stuck playing sailor mars bc no one wanted her, sad) and our hugest first world problem in existence was that we needed technically a mamoru and of course no self-respecting boy in elementary school would have admitted under death threats to watching sailor moon because it was a girls’ thing (aaaaah gender roles in the early-mid 90s, how fun) so everyone despaired because ofc no one wanted to play mamoru... and the few times any guy actually showed up like HEEEEY I WANNA DO IT BUT PLEASE DON’T TELL MY FRIENDS I LIKE SAILOR MOON we’d all be like OMG YOU’RE OUR NEW FAVORITE PERSON PLEASE YOUR SECRET IS SAFE because we couldn’t believe we found the magical boy™ who wanted to do it, and if anyone had told us that the kid in question was stealing sailor moon from us we’d have laughed in their face.

like.

kids don’t ask of media what you, an adult do, and it’s unfair of you, an adult, to ask children’s/ya media to cater to your damned interests, which are amply catered to by the tons of adult literature around which also forces you to push on your views and read more challenging things and to not read/watch stuff at face value, which is why I would really appreciate it if the amount of 20yo people on here who I consider adults engaged with more adult media and let themselves be challenged instead of just going back to ya/kids’ things, which are good for teens and kids and can be enjoyed by everyone but should not be the only goddamned genre you measure all other literature against because then you get people saying that lolita is pro-pedo when it’s exactly the goddamned contrary, but if you think that pov character = protagonist = good guy (which is... staple kids/ya stuff for obvious reasons) then you decide that humbert humbert is someone you’re supposed to root for. too bad that you’re not and the author was an actual csa victim so it’s a completely ridiculous reading that wouldn’t happen if you didn’t read lolita the way you read hp.

... okay, I’m done, sorry for how long this was, I hope it cleared things for good xD

[365days365movies]

January 4, 2021: First Blood (1982) (Part I)

War. War never changes.

OK, so, going into this movie, I know a few things.

Sylvester Stallone plays John Rambo, a Vietnam veteran with massive PTSD, in one of his most famous film roles.

Rambo wages a way against a group of local cops after being arrested for some reason.

There’s a bunch of badass antics and cool stuff.

That’s all I got. Well, I also always had the impression that this is one of those college frat boy douchebag movies, where said demographic will always espouse how badass Rambo is. So, those are the expectations I have going in. But then...I do have to wonder why this movie is also lauded as one of Stallone’s best. It’s also one of the earlier action film dynamos of the 1980s, and it couldn’t have just earned that through pure badassery, right? Well, in any case, I’m ready for some mindless violence! WHOOOOOOLET’SGO!!! SPOILERS!

Recap

Just watching the opening, I’m realizing how surprisingly calm it is compared to the action movies that I’ve already watched. Even Cliffhanger, for what it is, started with Sylvester Stallone clinging to a goddamn mountain. But this view of a calm pristine lake and a content-looking Stallone watching families play...it puts me at ease immediately. Which is probably going to seem ironic in a few moments.

John Rambo (Stallone, of course) is looking for an old friend from his unit in ‘Nam, only to find that he died of exposure to the insiduous Agent Orange. And it is at this point that I realize I am NOT PREPARED for this film. Immediately cuts the goodwill I had from the calm opening with the Knife of Sobering Reality. And that’s a Legendary item, I tell you what.

Rambo makes his way to a mountain town called Hope, and the sheriff (played by Brian Dennehy) immediately makes it clear that he’s the villain of this picture, as well as being a massive asshole. I also immediately want to see him get punched. So very hard. The sheriff immediately shows a hatred for those he calls “drifters,” and I actually think it’s a specific hatred for veterans. Why? Never truly explained. In any case, he tries to get Rambo out of town, but when he comes back just because he wants some food, he’s immediately unjustly arrested.

What follows is...unexpectedly and extremely uncomfortable, given various events during the hell-year that was 2020. I’m not kidding when I say that the scene when the Sherriff arrests the innocent John Rambo gave me...shivers. And wow...I didn’t expect this. I know I should be trying to be funnier here, but..watch that scene again, with fresh 2020 eyes. You’ll see what I mean.

Rambo’s disarmed and brought to the station, constantly being insulted by the Sheriff and other shitty policemen. And as he’s being treated poorly, our first Vietnam flashback happens! And it’s triggered by...police brutality...

I...uh...HEY LOOK IT’S HORATIO (DAVID CARUSO) FROM CSI: MIAMI

Seriously? That’s the second time a CSI: Miami actor has shown up in a Sylvester Stallone film! Neat. Gonna be on the lookout for them now. Anyway, my discomfort grows as Rambo continues to be treated as less than human by the police of this little nowhere town. And I’m aware that there will be an extended fight sequence against them in this movie. And lemme tell ya, I’m looking forward to seeing Brian Dennehy get punched in the face, MAN.

And then Galt (Jack Starrett) hits Rambo in the back with the police baton, and they spray him down with a high-powered fire hose, and...

I’m sorry. I, uh...I wasn’t expecting this. I had to pause the movie and walk away for a minute. I knew that the cops were involved, and I expected Vietnam War flashbacks, but…yeah. I’ll explain later why this affects me so much, if you haven’t already guessed.

Whew. OK.

Back to the movie, with renewed expectations, the cops forcefully hose him down and are about to shave him, with Galt showing his extremely sadistic nature. This unsurprisingly leads to a psychological break caused by PTSD flashbacks to torture in a POW camp, because...YEAH. VIETNAM JUST HAPPENED, YOU GUYS. AND YOU KNOW HE’S A VET. DON’T WAVE KNIVES AT THE MAN, YOU IDIOTS.

Rambo escapes the police after literally fighting his way out, in a much needed cathartic sequence for me, then rides away on a stolen motorcycle, while Dennehy follows in high pursuit. And at this point, I realize two things. One, Dennehy is obsessed with getting this man who, prior to his interference (read: prejudiced bullshit), did absolutely nothing wrong. And that obsession proves self destructive as he crashes his car into a ditch, and Rambo escapes. And the second thing? Rambo’s running on instinct at this point. And my hunch is this: the last thing you want to do is make this man run off of PTSD-fueled impulse. Pretty sure that that’s gonna lead to trouble.

As Dennehy abuses his power and becomes Captain A-hole, his Moby Dick is improvising an outfit from fabric and immediately proving my point. Horatio, on the other hand, shows that he might be the only good apple in this particularly rotten bushel. A particularly well-funded bushel with access to a helicopter for a manhunt of this one dude. And in that helicopter is the psychopath Galt, who is making me think of the last year of this country’s existe-NOPE. PUSH IT DOWN, MAN, WATCH THE MOVIE.

Rambo escapes by going The Way of Sarah (Blessed Be Her Fall; check out the last review for that one), and lands in the trees, injuring himself on the way down. Galt continues to shoot at this guy, and Rambo throws a rock at the helicopter in self defense. This accidentally leads to Gant ALSO going The Way of Sarah. Which, wow, karma is an angry, ANGRY force in this film. One corrupt sociopathic asshole down. Woof.

Rambo surrenders, rightfully stating his innocence, and he gives himself up. AND THEN THEY ALL FIRE ON HIM ANYWAY. NOT TO MENTION THAT THE SHERIFF CALLS HIM BOY AND I NEED TO STOP THE MOVIE FOR A MINUTE.

OK, so after these absolute ASSHOLES shoot Rambo, it’s revealed that Rambo is a Green Beret and a war hero who fought for our country in Vietnam! And instead of acknowledging that he’s a piece of shit who’s over his head and did something that he ABSOLUTELY SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE, THIS ASSHOLE DOUBLES DOWN. Fuck these guys, wow. Except for Horatio...I guess.

See you in Part II! Of this review, not the Rambo franchise.

[starbuck]

Terror Notes: “Go For Broke”

well… I guess I’m really doing this! Some proper, bullet-pointed notes for each episode of The Terror, starting with ep 1: Go For Broke!

I wrote these out last night (and edited them this morning to make them readable - you’re welcome!) so I hope that y’all enjoy my thoughts and assorted nonsense! I tried to save my comments for points I actually wanted to make because I feel like they bring something to the table but I still ended up writing A Lot lol

I love that Crozier couldn’t even be bothered to be present in welcoming Sir John and Fitzjames onto Terror, making Little and Hodgson do it by themselves. One could argue that he had important captain-y things to be doing at that time or something but I’m not 100% sure that wasn’t the case. 

idk if it’s just the angle, but I paused the episode just as the shot of the officer’s mess is coming in from above and Hodgson’s hands make me so uncomfortable. They look so bone-y and weird. (Just what you came here for, I know. Hand commentary.)

Cannot tell you how uncomfortable it is, after many rewatches, to listen to Fitzjames recounting in a casual, lighthearted manner 1) shooting people 2) people catching fire (and burning to death), and 3) their burning flesh smelling “like roast duck” (so, like something edible) and it’s even more uncomfortable to have the closeup be on Hodgson’s face as he laughs at the ‘roast duck’ comparison.

On a lighter note: I love that Fitzjames felt the need to remind everyone what size cherries are by illustrating it with his fingers. In case they forgot, I guess? As someone who occasionally speaks unnecessarily with my hands, big mood tbh.

I LOVE it when Fitzjames gives Little that affirmative tap on the arm after he compares Fitzjames’s injury to Lord Nelson’s. My friend Eli and I refer to it as The Fitzjames Arm Tap. I would like a Fitzjames Arm Tap, pretty please.

God, Sir John loudly setting his hands on the table to try to dispel the tension from the ‘birdshit island’ debacle as he attempts to change the subject is so funny. I’m gonna stop just pointing out things I find funny soon, I swear, but I just cannot handle this scene.

Between Hodgson looking horrifically embarrassed by Crozier’s outburst at Fitzjames and Little looking nervous when Crozier shoots him a look as Sir John says that there’s no reason to be concerned about the ice, it really does seem that they were having to ‘manage’ him even back in ep 1 when his alcoholism wasn’t completely out of hand.

Personal sidenote about this: My Pop-pop is often rude to workers in stores and restaurants (he doesn’t drink thank goodness but he has Alzheimer’s coming on which has worsened his temper) so I very much understand the feeling of being on-edge that an outburst is going to occur and trying to deal with the fallout when it does. Just going by my own experience, I can imagine Little apologizing to Fitzjames for Crozier’s rudeness as soon as they were out of Crozier’s earshot (not that anything Little could say would heal the deep psychological wound that Crozier created but hey, it’s something).

The way that Sir John brushes aside Dr. MacDonald’s and Crozier’s concerns about moving Young when he’s in such bad shape never fails to upset me but also ~foreshadowing for hauling the ill on boats oooohhh~

I said I was done pointing out random things that amuse me but the speed and agility with which Des Voeux pops out of the hatch and onto the deck after Orren falls into the water is just so funny. I could watch that two second clip on repeat all day. Might gif it so I actually can.

Is this a good time to point out that there’s also a scene in Moby-Dick where someone falls from high up on a mast and drowns? It’s in a chapter all about bad omens experienced by the crew of the Pequod and The Terror definitely has some similar vibes going on with the sun dogs displayed in the establishing shot of Erebus in that scene and David Young, a “warning of things to come,” on his way over.

The second(?) time I watched the part where Young tells Stanley that he didn’t think anything of getting headaches since he’s always gotten them, I had this thought pass through my head that was like “oh god, I had chronic migraines for years so I’d never have known if I had lead poisoning either!” but then I realized that this probably was not a relevant concern I should have.

Not sure I have any deep commentary on this but as Gore informs Sir John and Fitzjames about the blocked propeller, he’s standing in the same spot, in the same room as Goodsir will stand next episode to tell them about his death.

Also regarding this scene, I love how Gore waits for Fitzjames to give him the go-ahead to leave before actually going. I know that Fitzjames is his superior officer too but, since Sir John already dismissed him, it seems like waiting for Fitzjames’s approval isn’t really necessary, yet a nice thing to do. Perhaps this is a legitimate formality, but something similar happens later in this episode in the command meeting when Crozier asks Gore how many sun dogs he’s seen; he looks to Fitzjames and waits for his nod before answering Crozier. He doesn’t look to Sir John, he looks to Fitzjames. I know that we know essentially nothing about Gore but like.. underrated ship???? Just saying…

Ten nights ago, I was unable to get to sleep for at least an hour because I started thinking about David Young’s saying “I want to go to my grave as I am” and, of course, that ultimately doesn’t happen for him but also, this, like all things about him, is a “warning of things to come.” I’m pretty sure that no one else was properly buried until, arguably, Fitzjames and ironically, that was explicitly not what he wanted done with his body (and, since his grave was later looted by Hickey, similar to the way that Young’s autopsy ultimately achieved nothing, it didn’t really matter anyway).

I know that this happened exactly ten days ago because I forced myself to wake up and write it down in my notes app, lest I forget, which only prolonged my sleeplessness. I suffer for my analysis. 

Ah yesssss Tozer’s lesbian haircut. We love it! Why does my hair not look like that when I take a hat off? I’d like to file a complaint.

Was just thinking the other day about how Hartnell being the one to notice that there was something up with the ice in ep 1 is followed up on with Blanky complimenting Hartnell’s ability to read the ice to Crozier in ep 7. I wonder if Blanky ever gave him like. ice-reading lessons after becoming aware of his interest and natural talent at it in ep 1? That makes me happy to think about.

The two people who we’re shown awoken by Young’s screaming are Sgt. Bryant and Morfin and like. Do I even have to explain why that’s an Oof?

The way that Goodsir hesitates before knocking on Stanley’s door and Stanley irritatedly closing his book before answering the knock in an exasperated voice would be comedic in any other context. If I’m being honest, it still makes me laugh. As does Stanley’s “As if that weren’t plain.”

I’ve pointed this out before but mmmmm... that shot of Stanley in profile with the open candle flame in the background… the foreshadowing in this ep is thicker than the smoke at… Oh alright, I’ll stop. 

God, the autopsy/dive scene…. Collins being lowered down and entering the water paralleled with Goodsir’s initial cutting into Young’s corpse, the breaking up of the ice paralleled with the cutting of the bone-saw. But most significant to me is the parallel of what is seen/not seen and the long-term effect that this has. Collins sees Orren’s corpse (and then presumably never tells anyone about it), reinforcing his guilt over Orren’s death, the beginning of his mental health decline. Goodsir doesn’t see the cause of Young’s death in his autopsy and this not knowing about the lead poisoning until it’s too late to do anything about it is the cause of many of Goodsir’s later problems as well. And, to finish it all off, both the autopsy and Collins’ dive were ultimately for nothing (considering a spinning propeller is useless when your ships are frozen in). 

Crozier and Blanky’s simultaneous face journeys as Sir John rambles on about how there’s nothing to worry about and they’ll find the passage any day now are truly legendary.

I wrote some pretty extensive tags on this already but man… Crozier’s comment about how not all of Sir John’s men returned from one of his previous arctic expeditions is just so nasty and awful. Like, yes, Sir John is wrong to undersell the danger they’re in and Crozier is advocating for the correct position here, but that was completely uncalled for and horrible to say, particularly in a command meeting, in front of so many people. And Sir John looks legitimately upset by it too. He gets over it quickly, at least on the outside, but I still feel really bad for him (and I NEVER feel bad for Sir John so this is weird for me).

“But of course we will not be abandoning Erebus, or Terror…” Let’s check back in six episodes and see how that’s going! 

Crozier slamming his fist on the table to prove he’s not being melodramatic reminds me of this one post (that I sadly can’t find rn) about Jesus Christ Superstar that’s like “‘CUT OUT THE DRAMATICS’ Judas hollered dramatically.” It’s such an Overall Mood.

I don’t have a developed commentary on this at the moment but it’s an interesting reverse-parallel that Sir John had no concern for Young’s well-being when he was alive, ignoring Crozier’s concerns about moving him from ship-to-ship when he was in such poor health, yet now that he’s dead, Sir John is the one to recommend that Young be buried which Crozier is surprised by, and seems to feel is unnecessary.

There’s been so much amazing commentary already made about Young’s burial scene so I’ll skip it except to say that Hickey’s irritated sigh when he hears footsteps coming towards the grave is SO funny. That’s exactly how I feel when I know that someone is about to tell me something that will annoy me.

Goodsir was really getting into the emotion of Sir John’s “eulogy”/motivational speech before he remembered the promise he made about Young’s ring. Also, what triggered his memory was Sir John saying “We shall earn our loved one’s cheers and embraces,” so no doubt a reminder of the traumatic “Your loved ones will be there in Heaven to welcome you! :)” “I never knew my mother or father” exchange (or maybe just a reminder of the fact that he was supposed to get Young’s ring to his sister but just let me scrape a little humor out of this. God knows I need it).

The shot of Bryant praying in his hammock the night before they get completely frozen-in is honestly deeply upsetting to me. Especially considering he’s a marine so he Did Not Ask To Be Here, yet there he’ll die.

According to Melville, ship’s compasses occasionally spun round-and-round when a ship was caught in a severe storm and this was an incredibly upsetting thing to behold because of how disorienting it was. So, considering that, Fitzjames keeps his composure pretty well but he clearly has some reservations about how things are going and Sir John has no comforting-sounding remark about ‘Magnetic North’ to offer him now.

The bit where Sir John “sees” Crozier, on Terror, turn away from him with a half-smirk on his face is interesting because there’s no way he could have possibly seen Crozier’s expression at that distance and I’m doubtful that he’d even have been able to make out the identity of anyone he might have been able to see on Terror’s deck. So really, it speaks mostly to Sir John’s mental state; his seeing their getting frozen in as a loss against Crozier and imagining that Crozier would see it as a victory for himself.

Ugh the final shot is making me think about @catilinas’s post comparing a shot of the two ships stuck in to the shot of the ink drops from ep 3 and I am LOSING IT but I was losing it anyway because it’s 2AM now and my entire body feels like gelatin. 

THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT! 

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

[portgas-d-ace-of-hearts]

Take Me Down (To Paradise) Chapter Two

Chapter Summary: In which Ace gets to punch someone and the group returns to the ship.

Notes:  Small trigger warning for a brief mention of sexual assault in conversation, nothing shown either explicitly or otherwise.

Violet eyes wide, Nym’s lips parted. She licked her dry lips and replied with the only words that came to mind. “I guess you won’t mind if I tag along with you, then?”

  …

“Tag along with us?” 

  Ace cringed inwardly. He could have hit himself when the only thing he could do was echo Nym’s words back to her. Then again, he felt numb. Somehow he’d found his second soulmate getting noodles and sake at a pub during a night at port. A soulmate who seemed to be in a bit of a bind, considering the reason that brought her to their table in the first place. Whoever that shady-ass stalker was, her sitting down between him and Marco had been enough to send him scurrying. The sudden surge of protectiveness he felt startled him, at once both familiar and foreign. He’d felt similar instincts with Marco, even when they’d only first gotten to know each other. 

  “Yes, tag along with you, ya know? Leave town together?” Seeing as they’d just been revealed as soulmates, he grudgingly gave her the rest of his udon, motioning at the nearest family member of the pub owner to bring two more bowls. Judging by how she wolfed down the rest of his cooling portion, she’d need more as much as he did. 

  “What, just like that? You don’t have a life here? What about your family?” As irrational as it made him feel, the longer he looked at her the more he wanted to touch her, if only to see if she were real. When Marco’s mark had revealed itself on his arm as the man held a dish of food out to him like a peace offering, he’d wanted to do the same—he had done, before long. Once soulmates were revealed to each other they were damn difficult to keep apart. 

    How could this be happening?

  Nym slurped up the last of the thick noodles and wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist. Her strange violet eyes alighted on him, and the inappropriately-timed thought of how many kisses fit between them reared its head. “Yes, ‘just like that’, and no, I don’t. My family doesn’t live here. I was just passing through.” Her nose wrinkled playfully. “I’m what they call a wayfarer.”

  Thatch leaned towards her with interest, though careful to keep his shins far out of her range. “Oh, so you’re just a traveler, then? You go where the wind takes you?”

  Nym propped her chin on her fist, her elbow resting on the table. “Exactly. Sometimes I travel with folks, and sometimes I travel alone. Since me and Ace here just found out that we’re soulmates and I’m not doing anything else, it stands to reason that I might see where the wind takes us when it blows us in the same direction.”

  Ace found that deeply amusing for some reason. A cheeky grin curled his lips. “A thirst for adventure and nothing holding you down to one location? You might as well be a pirate.”

  Nym eyed him curiously. “Is that an official invitation?”

  “Well, you did say you’re not doing anything else—”

  Thatch’s head thunked onto the table, his fist smacking against it emphatically. “Oh good god,” he moaned.  “Not again. Not more of this fucking soulmate flirting bullshit.”

  Nym flushed a rather fetching cherry red—in Ace’s opinion—and then in the next moment Thatch swore and bent down to rub at his shins. “Fucking hell do you kick hard for such a small woman!”

  Marco let loose a raucous bark of a laugh. “It’s what you deserve. Payback for all the times from before when you gave me and Ace shit.”

  “Fuck you, man, you two were un-fucking-bearable,” Thatch insisted as he continued rubbing furiously and muttering curses. 

  Nym looked between Ace and Marco with interest as two bowls of steaming udon were laid in front of her and Ace. “You two are already soulmates?” Ace watched as she connected the dots, then held still as she studied him. “So you have two soulmates, then, Ace.”

  Ace found himself gifting her an easy smile, voice soft and almost drawling. “Apparently I can’t help myself. I have to find double the trouble wherever I go.”

  Nym laughed, then sobered, clearly intrigued. “Does he have a second one as well?” 

  “He’s right here,” Marco chimed in then, taking the opportunity to steal a bite from Ace himself, “And the answer is yes.”

  She hummed. “Hmm. I wonder…”

  “What?” Ace’s brows creased in concern, trying to picture what might be bothering her. 

  She extended her opposite wrist in front of her on the table, baring a secondary, dormant soul-mark. “Is your other mark active or dormant?”

  Wordlessly Marco slowly offered his other wrist as well, revealing another dormant mark. “You’re not thinking—?”

  “One way to find out,” she murmured, pressing her wrist into his. Not being on either end of that match, Ace couldn’t feel the burn of activation, but he could observe as Nym’s mark appeared on Marco’s flesh the way it had on his own, mirrored against Marco’s Phoenix flashing into existence on her. 

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” Thatch blurted, watching them with wide eyes. “Double mutual soulmates? A bonded set ?”

  Ace’s stomach twisted itself in knots. Outwardly he appeared smug, but inwardly the turmoil might suffocate him. How could he safely love his soulmates without hurting them? How could he be everything they needed without also being his father’s son? He felt, almost, a rising sense of panic, one that abated suddenly, and when he looked up from glaring into his udon he found Marco’s hand in his, and Nym’s on his wrist. As his soulmates they’d instinctually felt his distress and moved to comfort him.

  “It looks like now I have two reasons to leave,” Nym shrugged, sounding upbeat. 

  Marco chuckled, amused both by her demeanor and the expression evidently on Ace’s face. “Face it, Ace,” he teased him, “you’ll just have to get used to twice the love.”

  “Twice the annoyance, you mean,” Thatch muttered, dodging the elbow aimed his way by Marco. 

  Ace flipped off their blonde friend and dug into his new udon, unable to take his eyes off of Nym—or off of Marco, for that matter. Despite having eaten before she arrived, he still finished before her, sending his bowl away with coins to settle their tab. As soon as she finished eating and her bowl left the table as well, he stood, readjusting his hat. “Time to go. Do you have your things?” 

  His friend and two soulmates got to their feet. Nym picked up a small pack he hadn’t noticed before and nodded resolutely. “Yep.” She’d looked short before when she slid in next to him and changed his life irrevocably, but now standing next to her with Marco he could observe how truly tiny she looked next to them. Despite her wide hips and not being particularly thin, she seemed almost delicate in her features, elf-like in some way. The name Nymphadora certainly suited her, even if she found it distasteful. 

  “Let’s go then, babe.” 

  Her reaction to the endearment was lost in the murmur of the crowd around them.  Without conscious thought, Ace took her hand in his, twining their fingers together. When he looked over his shoulder as he led them toward the exit, he saw Marco holding her other hand, Thatch trailing behind them like a sulky duckling. He slipped outside with his ears pricked for danger. A good thing, as when they emerged onto the street they found the man from before lurking in the shadows nearby. 

  He made as if to grab at Nym, the motion aborted halfway through as he realized she had company with her. Before he could change tactics properly, Ace decked him with his free hand, sending him sprawling onto his back and out cold. He lightly stepped over him, tugging the others along with him. He noticed with no small sense of satisfaction that Marco had stepped on the man’s nose when passing over him. 

  “You’ll like the ship,” he told her conversationally as they walked through the streets hand in hand and abreast to Thatch. “It’s called the Moby Dick. ”

  “Is it now? Your captain must have a fondness for old novels,” she remarked. She didn’t seem at all fazed by him laying out her would-be attacker. In fact, she had a definite spring in her step as they made their back to the ship. 

  “Guess so,” Marco mused. “Pops has read a lot of books in his time.”

  “Pops?” 

  “Yeah, the Old Man,” Ace explained. “Whitebeard.” 

  “He treats us all as his sons,” Thatch added. 

  “Ah, I see.” Nym paused. “Does that mean—do you think—are there women onboard?”

  The three men slowed, Ace and Marco sharing one of their loaded glances that had more than once earned them gentle ribbing from the crew. Marco sounded as uncertain as Ace felt. “A few. As a general rule he doesn’t typically allow women combatants, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any in the crew.”

  Ace’s hand tightened on Nym’s, not willing to let her go for a second. “There’ve been exceptions. When he takes a crew under his command, he’ll usually give the old members a choice of joining him or starting over again. Banshee and Cornelia were some of my old crew that he allowed to stay.”

  Thatch continued their reassurances. “And he’s accepted a few exceptionally gifted women into his forces for other roles—trackers, spies, messengers, healers…”

  Nym seemed a bit upset. “So why does he have that rule, anyway?” 

  The docks came into view, an array of ships of varying shapes and sizes moored up and down the row. 

  “Probably to avoid conflict in the crew,” Thatch guessed. “To avoid fights over relationships. Or, ah, children on board.”

  “Or to protect them,” Marco offered. “I wouldn’t fancy being a woman captured by an enemy crew or the marines.”

  Nym made a disgusted noise. “Some of the crews allow rape?”

  “Some—not all, and not ours,” he hurried to reassure her. “Not any halfway decent crew, for that matter. Pirates don’t have many laws, but we’re strict about the ones we keep.”

  “He’ll make an exception for you.” Ace’s voice wavered, his confidence not absolute even to his own ears. The way he said the words, it was clear he wanted to believe them, but that even he couldn’t be sure. “He has to. You’re our soulmate.”

  “And I’m useful.”

  Ace and Marco shared another glance. “You don’t have to be useful, babe.” Ace squeezed her hand to offer what comfort he could muster. 

  “But I am,” Nym insisted. “Marco’s right about my family, about our haki I mean. I’m a Swan, so I’ve trained to use it. Plus, I speak a few different languages. I could serve as a ship translator.”

  Ace felt a small bloom of pride in his chest. He and Marco may not think she had to be useful, and he knew his first soulmate agreed with him on that, but she bloody well would be . The translation abilities alone would make her an incredible asset, but with training in how to properly wield haki, it made her all the more valuable. If only the Old Man would see it that way. 

  “And.” Her voice dropped to below a whisper, and Ace had to strain to hear her speak. “And I’ve eaten a Devil Fruit.”

  Well then . 

  The conversation cut short as the Moby Dick came into view. Ace pointed out which ship it was to Nym as they approached. She let out an awed, breathy chuckle. “It’s huge.”

  Firmly trying to steer his mind out of the gutter, he agreed. His hold on her hand tightened briefly before he disentangled their fingers so they could board. He turned to Nym and carefully tucked her long hair into the hood of her cloak, which he then drew until it shadowed her face. Less than five minutes later, they found themselves aboard. A few of the night sentries called out friendly greetings to their group as they passed. Ace, Marco, and Thatch returned them as politely as possible without stopping. They kept to the shadows until they reached the room Ace shared with Marco, then Thatch wished them luck and split off to turn in for the evening. They slipped inside with Marco shutting the door firmly behind them and latching it from the inside. 

  “You can put your things on my desk for now.” Ace pointed toward the far corner as he unstrapped his dagger and laid it on his nightstand. He sleepily removed his hat and necklace, a little drowsy from his interrupted nap. 

  Out tumbled Nym’s hair as she discarded her cloak, the night-black curls completely unruly. She draped it across the back of his chair and set her pack on top of his desk as suggested, shucked off her boots, then flopped onto their bed lazily, looking between the two of them expectantly. “So what’s the plan? I assume I can’t hide away inside of here forever.”

  Marco finally moved from where he’d been hovering by the door to stand in front of Ace’s shelves of belongings and souvenirs. “No, that’s true. All the same, you should stay here until we can speak to Pops about this.”

  “Right.” She sighed. “It’s going to be rather awkward if he says no to you two.”

  “He won’t.” Ace swallowed thickly. “He can’t.”

  “He can ,” Marco disagreed, “but he probably won’t. There’s no real reason to.”

  Ace sat on the edge of his bed with a sigh and leaned over to discard his boots as well. “It’s times like these I wish I was still captain of my own ship.”

  End notes: I'm fully aware that we aren't clear on what happens with Cornelia and Banshee, so I took liberties there with the wiggle room I had considering he did seem to adopt the entire crew of the Spade Pirates. That, and we have Whitey Bay to show that despite his rule, there were a few exceptions to the female combatants stance. I also took that statement at face value and assumed that many of the women who DID work for him did so under a different capacity. As for his reasons, it seems like folks can only speculate, so I added a few of my own. I've also, ah, put in a lot of ideas about Soulmates.

“You don’t mean that.”  Marco’s soft chastisement sounded slightly muffled, as he’d balanced against the wall and bent in half to get out of his sandals. 

  Ace sighed. “No, I don’t.” He allowed himself to fall bonelessly back onto his bed, turning his head to look at Nym. “You should take the bed. Marco and I will sleep on the floor.”

  Nym rolled onto her side to face him. “Why?”

  Ace blinked at her, perplexed. “Because you don’t really know us well.”

  “Fair, but I’m pretty sure I can take on both of you if I have to.” She reached out and hesitantly touched his hand. “Besides, I know you won’t hurt me. I can read both of you and you don’t have any…let’s say nefarious plans. Besides, soulmates can’t harm each other. Doing that would hurt us all.”

  Ah, yes. The fail-safe of being a bonded set, regardless of number. Injuries inflicted by one soulmate on the other would be mirrored on the offending party unless they were done in self-defense, and outright killing your soulmate would only end in one's own death. It did serve as a deterrent toward physically harming your match, though it also seemed rather inconvenient if your match were an evil prick you wanted to be rid of. Soulmates could also harmlessly share memories, emotions, and sensations with each other. Now that particular soulmate ability had various applications, many of which didn’t bear thinking of with the inappropriateness of the moment. 

  Ace couldn’t fight off the smirk that threatened to take over. His other soulmate had fire. “I don’t know that you can take both of us on at the same time, but you’re right, we can’t hurt you.” 

  “But you might still want time to acclimate.” Marco dropped down on Ace’s other side to avoid boxing in Nym and making her feel trapped. “You went from having no soulmate to two in less than an hour and now you’ve agreed to skip town with us. It’s all a bit much for anyone I would think.”

  Nym shrugged. “Maybe. If you were up for it we could always just talk and get to know each other a bit more, but I think you two want to rest.”

  “No kidding.” Ace yawned then got back up, snagging one of his pillows on the way. “We’ll just take the floor. We’ll straighten out the details after a few hours of rest. We’re not set to leave port for another day or so, so we have plenty of time to get to the Old Man before we cast off again.”

  Marco took another of the pillows and set up a makeshift bed next to Ace, pulling him close so that his soulmate’s warm back pressed into his chest. Nym gazed at them as they quickly fell asleep, their quiet breathing filling the room. Despite not knowing each other for long, the inexplicable tug she felt toward them didn’t fade. Soulmates often found themselves drawn to each other even before they touched and their marks activated, though not all met under such strange circumstances. Once their marks activated, an irrevocable link would form between them and there would be nothing and no one that would be able to keep them apart save their own efforts, as they would find a way to stay together. Separating them would be the height of cruelty. Soulmates felt an inborn desire to speak to each other, to touch and be touched by each other, to see and smell each other and be in relatively close proximity. They craved intimacy from each other, whether it be as simple as a kiss or running their fingers through their match’s hair. 

  As much as her two soulmates were strangers, as bizarre as their situation was and as much as she really did wish to know them more, she also felt a longing to join them where they cuddled on the floor, bury her hands in their soft hair and press her face into each of their necks. She fidgeted, trying to get comfortable and eventually falling into an uneasy sleep. 

  Surely things would work out with their captain.

    Surely . 

...

End Notes:

I'm fully aware that we aren't clear on what happens with Cornelia and Banshee, so I took liberties there with the wiggle room I had considering he did seem to adopt the entire crew of the Spade Pirates. That, and we have Whitey Bay to show that despite his rule, there were a few exceptions to the female combatants stance. I also took that statement at face value and assumed that many of the women who DID work for him did so under a different capacity. As for his reasons, it seems like folks can only speculate, so I added a few of my own. I've also, ah, put in a lot of ideas about Soulmates.

[tanadrin]

I've never watched any Star Trek (except for one of the movies a few years ago and a couple scattered halves of TOS episodes) but I've always kind of wanted to get into it and you've been making DS9 sound really good; do you recommend starting with it or some other series? If some further aesthetic preference information is needed, I really like everything I've read of your writing.

DS9 is often considered the Best, for a lot of reasons. I think some of those are that it has long, multi-episode arcs, especially later in the series, and explores some pretty complicated political and moral themes around insurgency/occupation/war--all this for a series that debuted in 1993, no less--and was able to do more with developing a recurring set of characters and locations because the cast wasn’t off to a new planet every week. Also, TNG, especially in its early season, was still a little too constrained by Roddenberry’s creative control, and some of the things the writers were clearly ready to explore already in TNG were shot down by Roddenberry who had a couple of very specific things he didn’t want to make part of his version of Star Trek. Roddenberry wasn’t super interested in war stories or interpersonal conflict for its own sake (and considering some of the shit that gets passed off as Star Trek now, between the Nu-Trek movies and Discovery, that second point looks pretty smart in retrospect), but more in super-high-concept hour-long stories that stood on their own. That was fine as far as it went, and I actually think TNG has some of the best episodes of TV SF of all time: (Inner Light, Darmok, Frame of Mind, and--I realize this is an extremely controversial choice for some--Masks. But if that’s not your bag, TNG is probably not for you. Like, TNG is very much TOS, with a slightly tweaked concept and better effects, but it’s filling the same niche in the genre.

TNG and DS9 are both really good, and I think you’d do well to start with either if you want. Their biggest flaws are things that are common to all 90s TV--they feel a little dated, the sets are small, the shots are framed in specific ways, they don’t have the huge effects budgets of modern TV, and DS9 sometimes struggled to show the big space battles that were important to its plot as a result, and so on. TNG also does the planet-of-the-week premise better than its successor in that regard, Voyager, which had really uneven quality. Plenty of great episodes; Year of Hell is a fantastic two-parter, with a Moby-Dick style alien captain who’s really interesting and, for once, a plot about time travel technology that doesn’t suck ass; Course: Oblivion is a SUPER bleak episode with an ending that is 10000% my jam; but also plenty of stinkers: Threshold, infamously; and the Kazon were super irritating recurring villains that never worked, as was Seska; some characters like Janeway, Kes, and Seven of Nine were played by great actors but the writers didn’t always write them consistently, and in the case of the latter two, sometimes it seemed like they didn’t even know what to do with them at all).

Enterprise struggled to figure out what it wanted to do with the Star Trek format, and at first tried to follow in the vein of TOS/TNG/Voyager, and didn’t really get its footing until season 3, and didn’t get really properly good until Season 4, and then got cancelled, and Discovery... sigh. Discovery can’t stop reminding the viewer at every turn THIS IS STAR TREK! and the dialogue is bad, and the high-concept SF elements are rushed and sloppy, efforts to deal with the encrusted years of continuity are dealt with hamfistedly, and it’s pretty to look at, but other than the cool ships and the way Anson Mount’s ass looks in that TOS uniform, there’s not much to appreciate relative to older Star Trek.

If you actually enjoy retro SF, not merely “can appreciate it on an intellectual level,” I would start with TOS. It’s fun, it’s kinda campy, and the sets are cheap, but it’s clearly lovingly crafted, and genuinely well-acted. I think a lot of people think they know TOS because they’ve osmosed it from the culture generally, but I think the genuine article is always going to be more interesting, Kirk especially [insert your own link to the Kirk Drift essay here]. But if that’s not your cup of tea, or you’re more interested in newer entries, the choice of TNG or DS9 is down to whether you want high-concept planet of the week SF, or less high-concept (though it still has its share of godlike aliens and energy blobs), more character driven (in the original sense of “has really interesting characters,” rather than what it has come to mean now, “an endless churn of juvenile-ass high school-type drama and bad dialogue;” cf. Discovery) stories.

If you’re going to watch Star Trek movies, the general consensus is: avoid Nu-Trek like the plague, and only watch the even-numbered ones. That order holds up once you get into the later movies only if you include Galaxy Quest as a Star Trek movie (which it is, obviously), and I want to particularly recommend Wrath of Khan because I re-watched it recently and there really is no substitute for Ricardo Montalban hamming it up with his waxed pecs lovingly displayed.

[mobydickmusical]

Dave Malloy’s descriptions of the Moby Dick musical

- All of the following are interview quotes and similar, relating to what the show will be like 

- Clearly, not every detail of this may necessarily follow through or be 100% up to date, but I haven’t included anything when I’ve been given an impression it’s no longer relevant

- To make it a bit more readable, I’ve sorted the quotes into:

What does he want from this adaption? What does he think is important in adapting Moby Dick?

The structure of the show

Themes and focus

Other (song and character specific details)

- In summary, though:

Dave’s main goal in writing his musical is to create an adaption that he feels honours and appreciates the novel in its entirety - formal quirks, whale minutia and all - not one that just tries to extract a plot. 

Currently the show has a four-part, two act structure. The first part is the most Broadway-style, and sets the narrative in place. The second part is more cabaret-style, and focuses on the whaling-related scenes. In the second act, part three is a jazz-based song cycle dedicated to Pip. Part four is a “dream ballet” section that wraps up the ending of the novel. The book of the show is still strongly based in Melville’s text, but less text-heavy than Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. Like Comet, it’s mostly sung-through. 

Dave is very focused on using Moby Dick to reflect on modern life, especially to discuss issues of race in modern America, and how this context compares to Melville’s own (he also expresses interest in metatheatre regarding the role of Ishmael/Melville as the writer). Whiteness is highlighted as an important motif. He also states that Pip’s story of being stranded at sea has become “the heart” of his musical. 

What does he want from this adaption? What does he think is important in adapting Moby Dick?

“My challenge is to adapt the novel on its own terms rather than extracting story. The novel is a very bizarre beast of a thing; it has all of these tangents and digressions, a bunch of different forms, and I wanted to embrace all of that.” 

Baryshnikhov Arts Center article by Lydia Mokdessi, April 8 2016

 “I’m really drawn to that, people playing with the form, and so I try translate that into musical theatre. How can I play with that form of musical theatre? That’s so much more compelling to me than just telling a story. I like telling a story and there’s an extra meta-layer of how are we telling the story.”

“There’s been so many adaptations of Moby Dick and I think they all kind of fail, because they all just tell the story. The story, there’s not much too it.  This guy is crazy about a whale and he goes and hunts it down and everybody dies. What makes Moby Dick an amazing novel is actually not just the story, it’s all the playing with form, and the idea that this writer, this Ishmael (slash Herman Melville) is basically trying to encompass what all of humanity and life is, within the story of a whale.”

Interview at The Dutch Treat, June 6 2018

“Especially giant epic novels I have a real affinity for. I love that amazing sense of reading something that was written two or three hundred years ago and thinking, ‘that’s a thought I had yesterday!’ Seeing how humanity doesn’t change that much. I am looking at these classics through a very contemporary lens with the hope of rescuing them from their bad reputations.”

Baryshnikov Arts Center article by Lydia Mokdessi, April 8 2016

The Structure Of The Show

NOTE: The most recent tracklist (from The Public Theater workshop) can be found under the “extra content” link on this blog 

“Originally we had imagined that Moby Dick would be […] seven hour-long theatrical pieces that could be seen in any order [...] now it is just a single evening’s entertainment that’s basically broken into four parts. The first part is kind of the traditional musical theatre narrative, getting the story underway. The second part focuses on all the whaling chapters and just on the minutia of whales. Part three is about Pip, and part four is the culmination of the narrative, and is almost like a dream ballet, in a weird way. It’s a very weird section”

“Pip’s story feels like the core of the piece”

Interview at The Dutch Treat, June 6 2018

“The first act is like a Broadway-style musical, the second act is more of a vaudevillian cabaret, and the third act is a jazz song cycle, and […] the fourth act is a movement-heavy ballet-type section. […] The idea is definitely to use the form of Moby Dick, and to tell the entire story, not just the plot, but also include those chapters on whaling, and tell those parts through different styles of music.”

American Theatre Wing’s “Working In The Theatre: Adaptation”, 2017

“I am such a huge fan of using things in the public domain [...] so there’s a fair amount of Melville’s original words in it. I think it’s definitely less than Comet. Great Comet was probably like seventy to eighty percent Tolstoy, and Moby Dick is probably more like forty to fifty percent Melville. So a lot of it is his text”

[...] “Melville is such a poetic writer. He is thinking about every single word he’s using, and so many of his sentences are so, so beautiful, not because of rhyme, but certainly he is dealing with alliteration and assonance and some of these other poetic devices. So for me, revelling in that is enough. The musical forms take their cues from the writing, from Melville.” 

Interview at The Dutch Treat, June 6 2018

“My intention is to have the majority happen as song. I’m really drawn to the sung-through form; the few things that are spoken can resonate all the more. Spoken text is good for language that we want to really pop and for cumbersome exposition. Sometimes we just need people to say the lines so we can get to the song.” 

Baryshnikov Arts Center article by Lydia Mokdessi, April 8 2016 

Themes And Focus

“Originally we had imagined that Moby Dick would be […] seven hour-long theatrical pieces that could be seen in any order. Then what happened was one of those seven pieces became so much the heart of the show that I didn’t want anyone to see anything without it. And that was specifically a section about the very small character, Pip. He’s literally the smallest character, he’s nine years old. He’s this boy on the Pequod, and he has this experience where he gets stranded in the middle of the ocean. He gets thrown off of a whale boat during a chase, and gets stranded in the middle of the ocean for an hour or so. In that hour of just seeing nothing but the water and the sky, he goes insane. That character, reading the novel, was the most compelling character to me. So one of these seven acts was just “The Ballad Of Pip”, and it was the first piece I wrote. Then in trying to go and visualise what this thing would be with these other six pieces, I was like, well I don’t want to tell any story that doesn’t include Pip’s.”

Interview at The Dutch Treat, June 6 2018

“But then the larger thing we’re trying to do in this telling of Moby Dick is actually just talk about race in America. In this particular casting of Moby Dick, we’re casting everyone as people of color, and women of color, except for Herman Melville and Captain Ahab, who will played by white men. I think Melville was grappling with the same sort of things: what is America, and how does America deal with race? So in Moby Dick, it addresses the same thing. I think in context it’ll be clearer with [Cetology], but a lot of that song really is about race, and about how it feels to be a white person writing words for people of color to say, and what that means. And for Herman Melville to be writing the “The Whiteness Of The Whale” which is one of the huge chapters in Moby Dick that people love analysing to death, cause it’s such an amazing and beautiful chapter. Like, what was Melville thinking? What was Melville’s awareness of the racial problems of America, of this very young country that he was living in? We’re interested in dissecting all of that”

Interview at The Dutch Treat, June 6 2018

Other

“Ishmael is not really a critical part of the story of Moby Dick. He’s just the guy who was around and happened to see all this stuff. And then, weirdly, he becomes this omniscient voice who sees scenes that he’s not there for. It’s a very bizarre thing! Also, that’s one of the things that I love about theatre: the meta-theatrical element that comes with me not just as an actor playing those roles but as a writer playing those roles. I feel very much drawn to those roles that are contingent upon being the writer of the piece”

“As Melville, I’m telling this tale that I feel attached to but also feel reservations for how I’m attached to it”

Interview at The Dutch Treat, June 6 2018

“[Cetology] will be the song that opens part 2 of Moby Dick, which is the whaling section. So this song is an adaption of chapter 32 of Moby Dick which is called Cetology, which is famously the most hated chapter of Moby Dick, for people who don’t like Moby Dick, cause it’s the chapter that’s basically an encyclopedia entry about whales. Or rather, it’s Ishmael’s attempt to write an encyclopedia entry about whales, and he fails, ultimately. Thinking about this meta-theatrical element of play-writing, this song has become a piece about the task of writing a play based on Moby Dick and knowing that I will inevitably fail. So it is a song about failure.” 

[...] “I think in context it’ll be clearer with [Cetology], but a lot of that song really is about race, and about how it feels to be a white person writing words for people of color to say, and what that means.”

On Ishmael’s solo, Cetology. Interview at The Dutch Treat, June 6 2018

“[…] There is a lot about whiteness woven throughout the show that will (hopefully!) make more sense in the larger context”  

In response to me asking about lyrics from Cetology, on Twitter, December 24 2018

“...Cutting In, that’s like the big cutting apart the whale section, that’s gonna be like 15 minutes song-and-dance, that’ll be big. And then I’ve gotta do Sextet, which is kinda a trick cause it looks like it’s one song but really it’s six simultaneous songs that happens towards the end...” 

Great Comet Instagram takeover, August 31 2017 (I take this with a grain of salt because in the same takeover he described The Sermon as 10 minutes long, which it obviously isn’t anymore). 

NOTE: a diagram Dave posted on Twitter, presumably pertaining to the song Sextet, can be found on this blog. It is, however, quite old and not especially easy to make sense of. 

[reallyawesomecostumes]

Dean Winchester in his Coffin

A comparison between Queequeg’s coffin in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Dean’s coffin in Supernatural

(screencap from Home of the Nutty)

In Supernatural 14x11 ‘Damaged Goods’, Dean Winchester builds his own coffin. 

It’s not really a coffin, it just looks like one. The box is a ma’lak box designed by Death herself to secure Dean and AU-Michael at the bottom of the Pacific for all eternity*. We as viewers of a long-running episodic television show are pretty sure the  Winchester boys will find a way out of this mess in the next couple episodes, but Dean built it, so we have to talk about it. 

There are closet metaphors inherent in this coffin-building (I recommend @drsilverfish here); there are show-internal parallels to Amara being locked away, Adam’s current fate in The Cage, the wall in Sam’s mind in season 6; the list goes on. I wanted to talk instead about how Dean’s coffin-building compares to some coffin-building in classic American literature: the story of Queequeg’s coffin in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.” 

Moby-Dick, published 1851, is a book that many of us were forced to read in high school or college. I escaped this fate but had to read “The Scarlet Letter” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” instead. I did watch the Patrick Stewart TV miniseries version as a teenager, of course. For some dumb reason** I became a Moby-Dick reader because I was a Queequeg/Ishmael shipper, so know that I have a fairly biased perspective on the book as a whole.

In Moby-Dick, our narrator Ishmael (a depressed unemployed Yankee) meets Queequeg, a cannibal

(Queequeg as a character is a jumble of noble savage tropes, the author’s own knowledge of Pacific Islanders met during his whaling experience, and ideas pulled from other contemporary books both fiction and non-fiction), when they become accidental bedfellows at Peter Coffin’s inn (Coffin is a prominent name among the whalers of Nantucket, in real life and in the world of the story). Ishmael wants to go whaling, and Queequeg’s a guy who is very good at whaling. They have similar life goals, if not similar life experiences . They’re textually married***. 

Queequeg catches a chill crawling around belowdecks on the Pequod moving barrels to find a leak (the hold is described as an ice-box). While he’s dying Queequeg says he doesn’t want his body to be wrapped up in his hammock before being thrown overboard like an ordinary sailor, but put in a canoe-style coffin like the harpooneers from Nantucket use. He convinces the ship’s carpenter to make one for him. Queequeg kits the coffin out with food and water and his (most precious possessions) harpoon and paddle, and puts earth from the hold at the foot of it . He lays in it, and Pip the cabin boy sings nonsense briefly (a la the Fool in King Lear). Ishmael sort-of suggests that watching this guy die would make him start a religion. But then Queequeg decides not to die. He throws off the fever with his own will, and recovers (for plot reasons, but also so Melville could add more Noble Savage tropes). He uses the coffin as a clothes-chest. He starts carving the lid with the pattern of the tattoos on his body (these tattoos are religious in nature, but are unknown and unknowable, ‘a complete theory of the heavens and the earth’), making it into a sort-of body double for him.

Some time passes. A guy falls from the rigging, and the stern life-buoy is thrown to him, and both the man and the old, rotting cask that serves as a buoy sink and drown. It is suggested that the nice new well-built no longer needed coffin can be made into a new life-buoy. This re-purposing is lampshaded in text:

“Here now’s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver! I’ll think of that.”

-Captain Ahab, in a theatrical aside, Chapter 127: The Deck.

After the whale drags Captain Ahab down and sinks the Pequod, the very well-made coffin/life-buoy shoots to the surface, and the only surviving crewmember (Ishmael, our narrator) clings to it until another ship picks him up. 

While Queequeg’s coffin is intended for mundane use (to preserve his body from sharks after death) and is eventually used for mundane purpose (Ishmael’s life preserver), Dean’s pseudo-coffin-building serves a more esoteric purpose - to lock himself and his angel double away from the world said angel wants to destroy (“for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned” - Fleece the cook, Moby-Dick). The ma’lak box is Dean and Michael’s “immortality-preserver”. We have two pairs of characters, and two death-coded vessels that serve to preserve them.

Remember that time Ishmael and Queequeg got married? Some authors have characterized this wedding as "the first portrait of same-sex marriage in American literature". That it causes some readers 'uneasiness'. The line 'our heart's honeymoon', describing the time post-marriage, was censored in the original publication. Other readers have taken the marriage esoterically, relating Ishmael and Queequeg's earthly marriage to the internal marriage of the self to the Jungian shadow-self.

Shadows**** follow the two protagonists of Moby-Dick, Ishmael and Ahab. Ishmael accepts and marries his shadow, Queequeg the cannibal, and learns the customs of the whaling-ship from him. He admires the unknowableness of the ocean and sky as well as Queequeg's unknowable tattoos. He frees himself from his initial depression, and is literally saved at the novel's conclusion by Queequeg's pseudo-body. Ahab, conversely, pushes away Pip the cabin boy (who serves as Lear's fool through the story, and speaks unknowably) and turns towards Fedallah the Parsee (described as Ahab's shadow in the book) who speaks concrete but awful truths. Ahab rejects reality and stays on a path of revenge even though warned multiple times that he will fail. He eventually dies, and brings most of his crew down with him. His lack of acceptance of his good shadow and of his true place in the world brings about destruction. Self-actualization results in being saved.

The (current) protagonists of Supernatural have shadow selves as well. Again @drsilverfish has an excellent post about this. Castiel's shadow is The Shadow/The Empty, which has appeared in his own form, and wishes only for sleep and nothingness. Dean's shadow, AU!Michael, only wants to destroy the world that Dean keeps sacrificing himself to protect. Sam's shadow, Nick, went through the same dark experiences Sam did, but unlike Sam wound up horribly twisted and murderous. We haven't seen Jack's shadow-self yet, but I suspect current sweet and kind graceless!Jack will have a foil in future uncaring soulless!Jack. The idea of marrying oneself to one's shadow, in Supernatural, is nearly unthinkable: they are destructive, inhuman entities. However, in 14x11 Sam managed to accept the reality of his shadow self and release himself from responsibility for Nick.

At this point Dean's plan is to death-wed himself to Michael for eternity, sharing one body and one coffin-bed at the bottom of the Pacific. We know from Jung and from Melville that the only way to survive the confrontation with the shadow is to accept it - to 'Know Thyself', without misconceptions about your place in the world. 'Gain[ing] the perspective on [your] soul and the universe that will make balance possible.' The coffin will become a life-buoy.

I suspect the ma'lak box will be used to trap something other than Dean or Michael (soulless!Jack, probably) at the end of this season. Even if it's current purpose is untenable, it is a tool that can be used in the future.

Comparison between Moby-Dick and Supernatural can occur on a number of different levels. Ishmael and Dean (and Castiel whose human vessel, Jimmy Novak, is of the line of Biblical Ishmael) are the heroes of the bildungsroman part of the story and are hangers on to Ahab/John/Sam's Shakespearean revenge quest. Each story is a very American depiction of a masculine world. Each mirror the world in a smaller vessel, a ship and a car. Jung's concept of the shadow self, however, holds as the key to this season through all of these eleven episodes, and the shadow self is one of many keys that promote understanding of Melville's Moby-Dick. Self-actualization saves the day.

* Note that geologists cry whenever people suggest indestructible things sent to the bottom of the ocean will stay there for all eternity.

** It was Yuletide, and I’d just binge-read the entire Aubrey-Maturin series.

*** I wrote about this last year when Yockey dropped Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick into the story. Moby Dick, song, has nothing to do with Moby-Dick, book, except their mutual length, but Supernatural and Moby-Dick share quite a few themes. 

**** yes, Melville does make the shadows of his white protagonists literally dark-skinned

References:

@drsilverfish, “A Fridge-Locker, An Enochian Puzzle Box, a Ma’lak Box… and the Closet (14x11 Damaged Goods)”, http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182296360214/a-fridge-locker-an-enochian-puzzle-box-a-malak 

@drsilverfish​, “The Shadow (14x08)”, http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/180906003584/the-shadow-14x08

Brashers, H.C., 1962, "Ishmael's Tattoos": The Sewanee Review, v.70, n.1, p.137-154, http://wwww.jstor.org/stable/27540756

Halverson, John, 1963, "The Shadow in Moby-Dick": American Quarterly, v.15, n.3, p.436-446, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711373

Horton, Margy Thomas, 2012, "Melville's Unfolding Selves: Identity Formation in Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre": doctoral dissertation, Baylor University

Melville, Herman, “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale”, project Gutenberg ebook, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm

[just-fic-already]

Extract from ‘Au Cafe Pequod’ by @sunflowerseedsandscience

This AU has become a beloved classic AU, taking our heroes and dropping them squarely into a tension-filled setting that piles on the angst as they both fight for justice during traumatic times.

You can read the entire story here.

The other big change is that now, when the cafe is empty at the end of the evening and Scully locks the front door, Mulder is no longer on the other side of it. Each night, she removes her apron and hangs it behind the counter, fixes a cup of coffee for herself, and joins him at his table. Some evenings they share a sandwich, and once or twice, they’ve enjoyed a glass or two of wine, when a bottle opened for a customer went unfinished and won’t keep much longer.

Every night, for hours, they talk.

Mulder has learned that Scully’s parents met in 1917, when William Scully’s ship was docked in Calais during the Great War. They had married less than three months later. Scully was born in 1919 in California, and not in France, and lived in America until she was eight years old.

“So you speak English as well, then?” Mulder asks her, and she nods.

“I don’t have much opportunity to use it these days, but yes,” she says.

“No, I wouldn’t imagine you would come across many English speakers in such a small town,” Mulder answers- in English. His accent is quite strong, but his grammar is perfect, and Scully is delighted.

“Where did you learn to speak it?” she asks.

“I attended Oxford University,” he says. “I very nearly stayed in England when I was finished, but my mother wanted me to come home.”

Mulder learns that Scully’s mother returned to France with her four children shortly after losing her husband to a heart complaint in 1927. Both of Scully’s brothers, one older and one younger, returned to America in 1938, where they promptly joined the navy, just like their father. Scully has an older sister, whose free-spirited lifestyle, Mulder gathers, is something of a scandal around the town. Scully has no idea where she is; the last postcard her sister sent was over a year ago, from India.

“What about you?” asks Scully. “Any brothers? Sisters?” Mulder studies his coffee intently.

“I had a sister,” he says. “Samantha. Four years younger.” He pokes his spoon around in his cup. “She died when she was fifteen, the same year I left for Oxford.” Scully’s face is full of gentle sympathy.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. She does not ask how Samantha died, nor does Mulder expect her to. He hasn’t known Scully long, but already he knows she is a private person, who respects others’ need for privacy as well, and she will not ask for more information than he wants to give. Part of him really does want to tell her the story… but not yet. He spends too much time dwelling on it already.

Her mind is a marvel to him.

In addition to being fluent in French, German, and English, she also speaks Spanish, and enough Dutch and Italian to get by. Her American primary school moved her up a grade, and her French school moved her up another. Though she was forced to leave university before completing her medical degree, she has continued learning on her own, in hopes of resuming formal studies after the war. She reads books to educate herself on all manner of subjects and seems to retain nearly everything she learns. Her brilliance astounds him.

“Why Cafe Pequod?” he asks one evening. “I mean, I know where the name comes from, but what’s the significance?” Scully smiles.

“It’s an homage to my father,” she explains. “‘Moby Dick’ was his favorite book. He read it to all of us when we were little. The cafe was owned by my mother’s uncle, originally, but he passed away the same year as my father. He was childless, so he left everything to my mother, and with my father gone, coming back here to take the place over seemed like an opportunity for a fresh start. She re-named the cafe, and my siblings and I made the sign for her.”

He spends every day coming up with new things to ask her that evening. He is hopelessly in love with the sound of her voice. Its sweet cadence is a balm to his wounded soul.

————

It’s two days before Christmas when he begins to notice the pies.

Most of Scully’s clientele, as a rule, consists of German officers and enlisted men these days. Times being what they are, not many of the townspeople have money to spare for eating in a restaurant. So when a local does come into the cafe, Mulder notices. And the few he’s seen today stand out particularly in his mind, because none of them have actually stayed to eat. In each case, a man has approached the counter, where Scully has addressed him by name, made some small talk, and then retreated into the kitchen, returning in short order with a pie, which she places into a white box. Each time, she has handed it to the customer with a flourish and a smiling, “Thank you for your order,” and the customer has left without another word.

It wouldn’t stick out in his mind so much, except that he hasn’t seen any money change hands.

The most logical assumption he’s been able to make has been that, with ingredients being as expensive as they are, Scully probably took payment when the orders were placed, so that she would be able to afford the extra flour and sugar that making the pies would require. He’s never seen anyone place an order, it’s true, but he reminds himself that he’s only here in the evenings.

Hauptmann Skinner stops by tonight, right before closing, and much to Mulder’s surprise, he takes a seat at Mulder’s table. Mulder starts to get up to salute his captain, but Skinner waves him back down brusquely.

“You must be single-handedly supporting this establishment at this point,” says Skinner. “How do you manage to spend your entire evening drinking coffee without being wide awake the rest of the night?”

“Who says I’m not?” says Mulder. “I don’t require much sleep. Never have.”

“You must have been a delight for your mother as an infant,” says Skinner.

“Oh, I think we can agree I’m a delight for anyone, at any time.” Mulder says wryly, and Skinner smirks. Across the room, Scully emerges from the kitchen and catches sight of Skinner at Mulder’s table. She smiles, backs into the kitchen, and returns a moment later with yet another pie, which she boxes up and carries over.

“Your order, Hauptmann Skinner,” she says, placing the box before him.

“Thank you, Miss Scully,” he says. “And please, call me Walther.” She smiles.

“Well then, Walther, I insist you call me Dana.” She glances up as the last customers stand and leave their table. The cafe is now empty, save the three of them. “Mulder and I were about to have something to eat, once I’ve locked up. Would you like to join us?” Mulder is startled at the invitation, and more than a little relieved when Skinner immediately declines it. He likes his captain well enough, but he likes his evenings alone with Scully more.

“That’s kind of you, but no,” says Skinner, pushing back his chair. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.” He stands, picking up the box containing his pie. “Goodnight, Dana. And Obersoldat Mulder, try not to break any noses tonight, all right?” Mulder grins.

“I’ll do my best, Sir,” he promises.

Scully follows Skinner to the door and locks it after him. She unties her apron, hangs it up, and sets about making their coffee. When she returns to the table, she carries a tray laden not only with their mugs, but with two slices of cherry pie, as well. “I had some left over,” she explains. “You’ll help me make sure it doesn’t go to waste, won’t you?” Mulder’s mouth is already watering as he accepts his slice.

“I will selflessly consume any and all leftover pie you find yourself burdened with,” he says, taking a large bite. The crust is buttery and flaky, and the filling, cherry preserves no doubt put up last spring, is the perfect balance of tart and sweet. “This is amazing. Did you make all these pies yourself?”

“No, my mother and I made them together,” says Scully. “She and I thought perhaps we could bring in a bit of extra money by selling them for Christmas. I took orders last week, and we spent last Sunday baking them.”

“It’s an excellent idea,” says Mulder. “I think I’ll need to find out what Skinner’s doing with his and see if he’s willing to share.” Scully laughs.

“Speaking of Christmas, and of my mother,” she says, “I’ve been instructed to invite you to join us for Christmas Dinner.” Mulder freezes, a forkful of pie halfway to his mouth.

“Your… your mother?” He swallows. A Frenchwoman, the widow of a man who fought Germany in one war, and mother to two boys who are fighting Germany in this one, inviting a German officer into her home? It doesn’t seem likely. “Why would she do that?”

“I’ve told her about you,” says Scully with a nonchalant shrug. “I told her all about your Lancelot impersonation, how you defended me even though it could have gotten you in trouble. She knows you were conscripted, she knows you don’t want to be here. And I mentioned that I was sorry you’d have to spend Christmas in the camp, since the cafe will be closed. I get the impression you don’t have many friends there.”

“What makes you think that?” It’s absolutely true- Skinner is the closest thing he has to a friend in the entire German army, perhaps in all of Germany- but he wants to know how she’s arrived at that conclusion.

“You wouldn’t be spending every night here with me, if you had friends in your unit to spend your off hours with.”

“Scully,” he says, “no matter how many friends I may or may not have in camp, I would still be spending every night here with you.” Now it’s Scully’s turn to freeze, her wide blue eyes fixed on him. A blush spreads across her cheeks as she smiles softly.

“So will you come?” she asks, and her voice is hopeful. “I can promise there will be more pie.” Mulder laughs.

“It would be an honor,” he says.

[joking-mr-feynman]

A Fiction Writer’s Guide to English

Tips, tricks, and complaints on how to make your story sound a lot better

By a five-year-old someone not qualified to talk about writing

Disclaimer: By no means am I a writer, a linguist, or an expert on any of the subjects discussed below. However, I do read a lot (a lot), published and unpublished works alike, and this post is made to address certain syntactical, structural, grammatical, aesthetic, and linguistic issues that irk me whenever I come across them. The following is my personal opinion (albeit a well-researched one), and if I've said something horribly wrong, by all means tell me and I shall fix it post-haste. Probably.

Again, this is by no means fully comprehensive, and I doubt it is fully accurate, but from what I've read, this list could do a lot, with a few simple tips, to ameliorate fiction and fanfiction stories a thousand-fold; because, to be honest, a spelling mistake or a grammatical error is one thing that will infallibly take me out of a story and will get me to look at it with a much more critical eye. 

Note: the grammar and punctuation rules below (mostly) follow the American set of rules as standard, since I am American, and most fanfiction stories use this standard as well.

I will probably, once the initial post is out there, come and update it when I come across something that would be a helpful addition; feel free also to shoot me a message or an ask if you have a question or need clarification on anything.

These tips are ordered in no specific way whatsoever, and credit goes to all the original creators of the images and posts I reference herein.

Use the passive voice wisely. You'll hear a lot of English Teachers tell you that the passive voice is bad bad bad, and should never ever ever be used. This is not the case. While one should shy away from using it too frequently, there are some cases where the passive voice is acceptable, and even preferable. As a reminder, the passive voice is when the subject of the clause receives the action:        "The ball was kicked." Use the passive voice sparingly; it is best used when "the thing receiving an action is the important part of the the sentence—especially in scientific and legal contexts, times when the performer of an action is unknown, or cases where the subject is distracting or irrelevant". (For more info, go here.

Pay attention to the setting and the time period of your story. While this may seem self-explanatory, I have seen far too many stories where everything is going perfectly until the student who is supposed to be in a London primary school asks his "Mom" to help him with his "math" homework. (The correct words are, of course, "Mum" and "maths”.) Similarly, a gentleman living in 1880's New York will not greet his friends with "Yo, what's up, man? You good? Cool." (Yes, that is an actual line I have actually read.) I know that this can be hard, especially for authors who don't live in the country their story is set in, but a little bit of research goes a long way in making your story sound better. (This doesn't apply to writers who use anachronisms and the wrong words purposefully, for humor or otherwise).

Accents and dialects. When you want a person to speak in a certain accent or dialect, research that accent or dialect a bit to understand the most prevalent words and grammatical form, and use them in your dialogue, and, if in first person, your narration as well. You can also think about adding certain regionally-specific words, spellings and grammatical structures. If imitating a work written in that region, definitely watch the spellings and alternative words, and incorporate them in both your dialogue and your narration. ( “mom” vs. “mum”, “math” vs. “maths”, “color” vs. “colour”, etc.).    e.g., in England:         I was sitting there, laughing --> I was sat there laughing.         curb (street), jail, tires, tv --> kerb, gaol (sometimes), tyres, telly, etc. 

Beware punctuation with dialogue. Use commas. (NEVER EVER EVER CLOSE A DIALOGUE QUOTATION WITHOUT SOME FORM OF PUNCTUATION! There must ALWAYS be either a period, a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point, or an em-dash before the quotation marks close.) The following image perfectly illustrates the proper ways of punctuating dialogue: WARNING: Use em-dashes instead of en-dashes for interruptions. See below. 

Dashes vs. hyphens "-":  hyphen, used to separate parts of compound words and last names. (e.g. five-year-old; pick-me-up; short- and long-term; Lily Evans-Potter) "–":  en-dash (because it has the width of an "N"), used in number and date ranges, scores, directions, and complex compound adjectives. (e.g., he works 20–30 hours per week; the years 1861–1865 were eventful; FC Barcelona beat Real Madrid 3–2; Ming Dynasty–style furniture is expensive) (Note: when you use "from" before a range of numbers, separate the numbers with "to" instead of an en-dash.) "—": em-dash ("M"), can be used instead of parentheses, commas, colons, or for interruptions in dialogue, thought, or narration. (e.g., I know I'm right, and you're — stop throwing things at me!) (For more info, go here.)

Vary sentence lengths. When your sentences are all the same length and all the same complexity, your story starts to sound monotonous. Experiment with length, clauses, commas and semicolons, etc.: “This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important.” — Gary Provost For more on sentence and paragraph structure, see thewritersguardianangel’s post.

Don't be afraid of contractions. Contractions are common in everyday speech and in everyday writing. Use these, especially in dialogue, since contractions will be used almost all the time, unless the character is older, teaching, or speaking intentionally formally. (A college student is not going to tell his friend "You have got to do this homework assignment, or you will fail the class, and the teacher has caught on to you. He will not be lenient." It'll look more like "You've got to do this homework assignment, or you'll fail the class, and the teacher's caught on to you. He won’t be lenient.")

Avoid overly verbose and complex wording, especially in dialogue. Don't use words that are very grandiose and complicated, especially in dialogue with younger people. A teen might use "merely" once or twice, especially in more formal speech, but will very probably use "just" instead. It makes dialogue more realistic too; real conversations don't often have very hypotaxical, full-of-dependent-and-subordinate-clauses language.

Use italics. Italics are, fortunately, available in all softwares and formatting when writing a story, so one mustn't shy away from using them. They provide a very good way to indicate emphasis, as well as to show anger or frustration without the use of capitals, which just make sentences sound like a petulant child throwing a tantrum. Compare "'I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!' I yelled." and "'I can't believe you,' I hissed." Much more effective, no? (A good rule of thumb is: italics for everything except someone blowing their top. Think the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.)

Narrative Perspective. Unless using third person omniscient, stick to one narrative point of view for one section of text, and don't change the perspective style in the story. Don't start in third person close (like Harry Potter) and end in first person (like Percy Jackson). A note about third person close: you can change whose perspective the story is told in throughout the story, but separate those perspective changes, either via a new chapter or a scene break ("******"). Perspectives: First Person: usually singular, occurs when the narrator is telling the story. (Moby Dick, Percy Jackson). Can sometimes be plural (A Rose for Emily). Third Person Close/Limited: the narrator is separate from the main character but sticks close to that character’s experience and actions. The reader doesn’t know anything that the character could not know, nor does the reader get to witness any plot events when the main character isn’t there (Harry Potter). Third Person Omniscient: features a god-like narrator who is able to enter into the minds and action of all the characters (Little Women, The Scarlet Letter).

Use the subjunctive for conditionals and hypotheticals. This might be a bit of a controversial topic, so i'll make this optional, but strongly recommended. The subjunctive mood is what characterizes verbs in conditional and hypothetical situations, so wishes, dreams, hopes, predictions, etc. One should be wary of it in dialogue, though, because it isn't widely used. Use it freely in narration. Usually comes after if or that (e.g., I insist that he leaves leave now; If I was were there, I would be happy.)

Write out numbers. Don't use digits, use words. The man doesn't have 200 dollars, he has two hundred.

The verb "said". Unlike many who tell you never again to use the word "said" when constructing dialogue, I won't. "Said" is a good word, and should be used, but not over-used; find synonyms when it starts to get repetitive, and you can also use it with different adjectives to spice it up. Sometimes you don't need a dialogue tag at all. However, don't try to come up with a different synonym for "said" for every dialogue tag, since it just sounds excessively wordy and extremely trite.  A mistake a lot of writers make is the above, which is to replace every single instance of the word "said" with some outlandish synonym. Also, be wary not to replace a dialogue tag with an action verb (which can also lead to a comma splice) (e.g., "I can't believe you," Mike raged, "you're such an idiot!" vs. "I can't believe you!" Mike growled. "You're such an idiot!")

Connect independent clauses correctly. Independent clauses are sentence fragments which have a subject and a verb, and can stand alone as sentences. If one wants to join them into one sentence, however, there are three ways of doing so: One can use a semicolon (as discussed in the punctuation section below), or one can use a comma + coordinating conjunction. A coordinating conjunction is a word that can, after a comma, join two independent clauses, and they are FANBOYS (For, And, Nor, But, Yet, So). (e.g., Alex went to swim in the pool, but Max couldn’t come.) The last way one can connect two independent clauses is with a conjunctive adverb. Conjunctive adverbs look like coordinating conjunctions; however, they are not as strong and they are punctuated differently. Some examples of conjunctive adverbs are: accordingly, also, besides, consequently, finally, however, indeed, instead, likewise, meanwhile, moreover, nevertheless, next, otherwise, still, therefore, then, etc. When you use a conjunctive adverb, put a semicolon (;) before it and a comma (,) after it. They can also be used in a single main clause, and a comma (,) is used to separate the conjunctive adverb from the sentence. (e.g., There are many history books; however, none of them may be accurate.; I woke up very late this morning. Nevertheless, I wasn’t late to school.) These words can be placed pretty much anywhere in the second clause after the semicolon as long as they’re separated by commas on either side (e.g., Mark was happy to have finished his essay; his dog ate it, however, before he could hand it in.)

Punctuation, Punctuation, Punctuation. Watch your punctuation closely, because it can make or break your story. Dialogue punctuation has already been discussed above, but that is for formatting quotations, not for narration and the content of the quotations themselves.

Every sentence or sentence fragment, even it it’s a single word, MUST end with either a period ("."), a question mark ("?"), or an exclamation point ("!"). It can also end with an em-dash ("—") if and only if the thought or sentence is interrupted.

Commas are for separating sentences into more manageable chunks, to separate dependent clauses, and independent clauses with coordinating conjunctions (see below), and to mark off lists. (e.g., I wanted to talk to her, but she had to go shopping for milk, eggs, bread, and cheese.)

Use the Oxford comma. For those who don't know, the Oxford comma is the last comma in a list of things, just before the last item, usually before an "and" (e.g., milk, eggs, and cheese). It helps reduce a lot of confusion, and, while this is a topic that can be controversial, use it to be safe, and to avoid sentences like this: I dedicate this to my parents, my editor and Random House Publishing.

Beware the comma splice. Never ever ever separate two independent clauses (i.e., full sentences with subject, verb, and object) with just a comma. Use a period, a semicolon, or a coordinating conjunction instead. (e.g., A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves. (for this example, make the comma a period or a semicolon, or eliminate "it" from the sentence.))

Colons (":") are for denoting lists and setting up quoted text (not dialogue. Use commas for that.) (e.g., What I need is this: eggs, flour, and milk.; In Moby Dick, the main character, in the beginning of the book, says: "Call me Ishmael.")

Semicolons (";") are for separating two independent but related clauses, as discussed in the comma splice section above.

Tenses and tense agreements. This is a big one. When writing a story, choose a tense for your narration and stick with it throughout. If you start in the past, as a lot of fiction does, stay in the past until the end. Also, make sure all the tenses in your narration agree with the main tense of your story. (For flashbacks, one of two ways are possible: a blocked off section in italics, with the same tense as the main story, or within the narration, in the tense past the tense of the story (i.e. has -> had; had -> had had)) If events A, B, C happen in order, and we take B to be the "present" in the story (i.e. when the events are unfolding):

Present: B is happening. C will happen. A happened. (I walk down the aisle, happy. Hopefully nothing bad will happen. I wasn't able to cope when the incident last year happened.)

Past: B happened. C would happen. A had happened. (I walked down the aisle, happy. Hopefully nothing bad would happen. I hadn't been able to cope when the incident last year had happened.)

Give your story to someone who hasn’t read it yet. Writing and editing a story is a very comprehensive process, and both you and your beta reader will probably have read it so much that your and their eyes will be jaded and will slide over mistakes. A fresh pair of eves will always be beneficial in sussing out mistakes, typos, plot holes, and the like.

Watch for homophones, misspellings and incorrect word usage. This is the one that is most obvious, and the one that the most people catch and the most people hate. For this reason I will list the most common errors I have seen in hopes of helping those lost souls find they’re way. (See what I did their?) I’ll put in a break to not make this post any longer than it already is: 

Index: v. = verb; n. = noun; adj. = adjective; prep. = preposition; adv. adverb; conj. = conjunction.

There vs. their vs. they’re There = In, at, or to that place or position (Look over there! Who’s in there?) Their = third person plural possessive pronoun (my, your, his, our, their) (This is their car, that one is mine.) They’re = contraction for they are (They’re window shopping.) ex: If you look over there, you can see the Simpsons. They’re looking for their car.

Your vs. you’re Your = second person possessive pronoun (This is your card, that one’s mine.) You’re = contraction of you are (Stop shouting! You’re so loud!) You’re insufferable when you get your report card back.

Too vs. to Too = adverb: to a higher degree than is desirable, permissible, or possible; in addition, also (It's too hot in here; You love the Beatles? I love them too!) To = (prep): expressing motion in the direction of; identifying the person or thing affected; concerning or likely to concern something; identifying a particular relationship between one person and another (walking down to the mall; he was very nice to me; a threat to world peace; he's married to that woman over there) (infinitive marker): used with the base form of a verb to indicate that the verb is in the infinitive, in particular. (He was left to die.)

-'s vs. -s  vs. -s' (and similar apostrophic conundrums) -'s = a contraction for is, has, or us; possessive indicator for nouns. (it's = it is; let's = let us; he's = he is; a car's = of a car; she’s done it = she has done it); NEVER A PLURAL -s = indicator for plural nouns; with it, a possessive indicator. (phones = more than one phone; cars = more than one car; its = of it, owned by it) -s' = indicator of possessive plural nouns, and possessive for words ending in -s. (cars' = of multiple cars; Iris' = of Iris) Come on, let's go, he's not gonna come anytime soon. Iris' car's broken down, and the car's tires' air pressure is almost zero, and its exhaust pipe is clogged. The towing company workers are going to come soon. 

Were vs. we're Were = plural past tense of "to be"; subjunctive of "to be" (We were really happy; If I were rich, I would do this.) We're = Contraction of "we are" (We're going out tonight!) If I were you, I would have made your announcement when we were all together. Now we're all doing our own thing.

Who’s vs. whose Who's =  contraction of who is (Who's doing this?) Whose = belonging to or associated with which person (Whose pen is this?) Who's drawing on the board? Can you tell whose handwriting that is?

Who vs. whom Who = what or which person or people, the subject of a verb; used to introduce a clause giving further information (Who ate my apple?; Jack, who was my best friend) Whom = what or which person or people, the object of a verb (By whom was my apple eaten?) Who left this jacket here? To whom does it belong?

X and I vs. X and me X and I = (= we) used when both subjects are the subject of the verb. (Mike and I went to the mall.) X and me = (= us) used when both subjects are the objects of the verb. (My father took Mike and me to the shop.) A good way of figuring out which one to use is to get rid of the second person altogether, and see which pronoun you would use in that case: Mike and I went to the shop –> I went to the shop; He took Mike and me to the shop –> He took me to the shop.

Wary vs. weary Wary = (adj.) feeling or showing caution about possible dangers or problems. (Be wary of strangers.) Weary = (adj.) feeling or showing tiredness, especially as a result of excessive exertion or lack of sleep; reluctant to see any more of; (v.): to cause to become tired (He looked at me with weary, sleepless eyes.) His long day’s march had made him weary, but, wary of possible dangers, he made himself stay awake and keep watch.

Affect vs. effect (for our purposes, excluding obscure definitions) Affect = (v.) to have an effect on; to bring a difference to (The US foreign policy greatly affected European trade.) Effect  = (n.) a change that is a result or consequence of an action or other cause (The US policy's effect on European trade was largely detrimental.) Judaism's effect on Christianity largely affected the New Testament.

Could of, would of, should of THESE ARE NOT WORDS. They sound like real ones, but they're not.  The correct forms are: could have, would have, should have. (You can also contract them to could've, would've, should've.)

Lose vs. loose Lose = verb; to be deprived of or cease to have; to become unable to find something; to lose a game (I always lose my keys; If we don’t score soon, we’ll lose; I can’t keep losing people) Loose = adjective; not firmly or tightly fixed in place; detached or able to be detached (These pants are too loose; Let loose! You're too strung-up!) Loose shirts and pants are comfortable, but don't wear them to interviews or you'll lose your reputation and respectability.

Except vs. accept Except = (prep.): not including; other than (everything except for my socks) (conj.): used before a statement that forms an exception to one just made (I didn't tell him anything, except that I needed the money). Accept = (v.) consent to receive; give an affirmative answer to; believe or come to recognize (an opinion) as correct (he accepted a pen as a present; he accepted their offer; her explanation was accepted by her friends.) He accepted every one of her excuses, except for her claim that her dog had eaten her homework.

Peak vs. peek (vs. peaked/peaky) Peak =  (n.): point or top of a mountain; point of highest activity; (v.): reach a highest point (He climbed to the peak of Mt. Everest; I peaked in sixth grade) peaked (US), peaky (UK)= (of a person) gaunt and pale from illness or fatigue. (You look a bit peaked/peaky. Are you ill?) Peek = look quickly, typically in a furtive manner; protrude slightly so as to be just visible (Faces peeked from behind the curtains; his socks were so full of holes his toes peeked through) Don't peek through the curtains!, he said, then climbed to the peak of a nearby hill.

Advice vs. advise Advice = noun: guidance or recommendations (e.g., He's in dire need of some relationship advice.) Advise = verb: offer suggestions about the best course of action to someone; to recommend; to inform. (I often advise my friends regarding their scholastic endeavors; I advise you to take this class; you will be advised of the requirements) Go, advise him about what to do for his relationship; he'll heed your advice.

Suit vs. suite Suit = (n.): outfit, set of clothes, men's outfit with jacket and pants (He's wearing a very nice suit.) (v.): be convenient for or acceptable to; act to one's own wishes; to go well with. (He lies when it suits him; suit yourself; that hat suits you.)    to follow suit = conform to another's actions. (James started eating and Lily followed suit.) Suite = a set of rooms designated for one person's or family's use or for a particular purpose; a set of instrumental compositions (I rented out the honeymoon suite; I love Gustav Holst's The Planets' Suite) The man, dressed in a sharp suit, stepped out of the honeymoon suite, and his newlywed wife followed suit.

Curb vs. curve Curb = (n.): a stone or concrete edging to a street or path (He parked his car on the curb) (v.): to restrain or keep in check (Curb your enthusiasm) Curve = noun: a line or outline that gradually deviates from being straight for some or all of its length; verb: to form or cause to form a curve (The parapet wall sweeps down in a bold curve; her mouth curved down) He parked his car on the curb, just where the road started to curve into the suburbs.

Ladder vs. latter vs. later Ladder = a structure consisting of a series of bars or steps between two upright lengths of wood, metal, or rope, used for climbing up or down something (He climbed the ladder.) Latter = situated or occurring nearer to the end of something than to the beginning; denoting the second or second mentioned of two people or things (The latter half of 1946; Arthur and Richard were friends, and the former died while the latter lived.) Later = comparative of late. (I was late, he was later.) Frank and Emma, while friends, had a falling-out; the former went into the ladder-making business, and, two years later, the latter moved to France. 

Lay vs. lie (re: the reclining or putting down definitions)

Break vs. brake Break = (v.): separate or cause to separate into pieces as a result of a blow; to interrupt (If you pull on the rope too much, it'll break.) (n.): an interruption; a pause from work (You're way too tired! Take a break!) Brake = (n., with equivalent verb) a device for slowing or stopping a moving vehicle. (If you want to stop your car, you have to press on the brakes.) Don't step on the brake so hard! You'll break both our necks!

Taught vs. taut Taught = past tense of "to teach" (I taught middle schoolers in Boston for three years.) Taut = (adj.) stretched or pulled tight, not slack; (of muscles) tense and not relaxed (The rope was pulled taut; all his muscles were taut and straining) In the fitness class my friend taught, he said that you shouldn't keep your muscles taut all the time.  

Through vs. threw Through = (prep.): moving in one side and out of the other side; continuing in time toward completion of; so as to inspect all or part of; by means of (a process or intermediate stage) Threw = (v.) past tense of "to throw" I threw the ball straight through the doorway.

Retch vs. wretch Retch = (n., v.) make the sound and movement of vomiting (When I saw the blood, I retched.) Wretch = (n.) an unfortunate or unhappy person; a despicable or contemptible person. (the wretches were imprisoned; ungrateful wretches) I almost retched at the thought of being nice to that ungrateful wretch.

Ring vs. wring Ring = 1. (n.) a circular band; a group of people or things arranged in a circle. (Her engagement ring was beautiful; the men stood in a ring.) 2. (v., associated n.) make a clear resonant or vibrating sound; (of a place) resound or reverberate with (a sound or sounds) (Church bells are ringing; the room rang with laughter) Wring = (v.) squeeze and twist (something); break by twisting it forcibly (I wring the cloth out into the sink; I wrung the animal's neck) If you don't stop that alarm from ringing, I'm gonna wring your neck!

Bear vs. bare Bear = 1. (v.) To carry; to support; to endure. (He was bearing a tray with a tea service on it; weight-bearing pillars; I can't bear it!) 2. (n.) a large, heavy, mammal that walks on the soles of its feet, with thick fur (Polar bear) Bare = (adj.) not clothed or covered; basic and simple (He was bare from the waist up; the bare essentials of a plan) Apparently, men can't bear to see women's bare shoulders.

Pose vs. poise Pose = 1. (v., w/ associated n.) assume a particular attitude or position in order to be photographed, painted, or drawn (She posed for the camera). 2. (v.) to present or constitute (a problem, danger, or difficulty); to raise (a question) (This storm is posing a threat to our summer plans; a statement that posed more questions than it answered) Poise = (n.) graceful and elegant bearing in a person. (Poise and good manners can be cultivated.) Poise is not just striking a haughty pose; it's about how you hold yourself.

Pore vs. pour Pore = 1. (n.) a minute opening in a surface (this opens up the pores in your skin) 2. (v.) be absorbed in the reading or study of (I spent hours poring over my physics textbook). Pour = (v.) (especially of a liquid) flow rapidly in a steady stream; to cause a liquid to do so (The water poured off the roof; I poured myself a glass of milk). As I was cleansing my pores with a face mask and poring over my favorite book, I accidentally spilled the water I had poured myself all over my pants.

Breech vs. breeches vs. breach Breech = the part of a cannon behind the bore. Breeches  = short trousers fastened just below the knee Breach = an act of breaking; failing to observe a law, agreement, or code of conduct, or the action of doing so (A breach of contract; the river breached its banks) (Come on, guys, no one wants to hear about an army trouser-ing the perimeter.)

Rend vs. render Rend = (v.) tear (something) into two or more pieces (teeth that would rend human flesh to shreds) — Note: the correct term is heartrending, since whatever does that rips the heart in two. Render = (v.) provide or give (a service, help, etc.); cause to be or become; represent or depict artistically (A reward for services rendered; the rain rendered my escape impossible; the eyes are exceptionally well rendered) The artist's rendering of the wolf's fangs, which would easily rend human flesh to shreds, was amazingly realistic.

Damnit It's either dammit or damn it. The "n" disappears if it merges into one word, but stays if it's two.

Conclusion: Look. Writing is hard. I know. Some of the above tips seem fairly obvious, and I know that mistakes, errors, and typos happen and go unnoticed. That being said, if you apply these tips regularly, and devote a bit more time to proofreading and editing, the quality of your story and the satisfaction of a lot of your readers will increase tremendously. Authors, I know writing is a thankless job, and many of you are sacrificing your own time to satisfy your followers and your readers; and for that, on behalf of your readers, and even on behalf of those that read and don’t leave reviews, thank you. Do not ever think that this post is meant to belittle you or your devotion to your craft; it is just a list of hopefully helpful suggestions that can help you and, with it, please those readers — like me — who are unfortunately too picky for their own good. And again, use these tips freely (I take credit only for putting them together), good luck, and know that you are universally loved for your efforts, past, continuing, stopped, or postponed. Thank you.

[allbestnet]

100 Best First Lines of Novels

Call me Ishmael. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)

A screaming comes across the sky. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (trans. Gregory Rabassa) (1967)

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett) (1877)

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 1984 by George Orwell (1949)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859)

I am an invisible man. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)

The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (1933)

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1885)

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. The Trial by Franz Kafka (trans. Breon Mitchell) (1925)

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver) (1979)

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (1938)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916)

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1759–1767)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1830)

One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1966)

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. City of Glass by Paul Auster (1985)

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)

124 was spiteful. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (trans. Edith Grossman) (1605)

Mother died today. The Stranger by Albert Camus (trans. Stuart Gilbert) (1942)

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. Waiting by Ha Jin (1999)

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)

I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (trans. Michael R. Katz) (1864)

Where now? Who now? When now? The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett (trans. Patrick Bowles) (1953)

Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. “Stop!” cried the groaning old man at last, “Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.” The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein (1925)

In a sense, I am Jacob Horner. The End of the Road by John Barth (1958)

It was like so, but wasn't. Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers (1995)

—Money . . . in a voice that rustled. J R by William Gaddis (1975)

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

All this happened, more or less. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)

They shoot the white girl first. Paradise by Toni Morrison (1998)

For a long time, I went to bed early. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (trans. Lydia Davis) (1913)

The moment one learns English, complications set in. Chromos by Felipe Alfau (1990)

Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. The Debut by Anita Brookner (1981)

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962)

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1911)

Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation. Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish (1974)

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis (1952)

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952)

It was the day my grandmother exploded. The Crow Road by Iain M. Banks (1992)

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)

Elmer Gantry was drunk. Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis (1927)

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. Tracks by Louise Erdrich (1988)

It was a pleasure to burn. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien (1939)

I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson (1988)

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1872)

It was love at first sight. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino (1971)

I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham (1944)

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (2001)

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton (1904)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

You better not never tell nobody but God. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)

“To be born again,” sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, “first you have to die.” The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988)

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace (1987)

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. Herzog by Saul Bellow (1964)

Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor (1960)

Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. The Tin Drum by GŸnter Grass (trans. Ralph Manheim) (1959)

When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin (1971)

Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World. The Origin of the Brunists by Robert Coover (1966)

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (1902)

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (1929)

“Take my camel, dear,” said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. The Towers of Trebizon by Rose Macaulay (1956)

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (1900)

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley (1953)

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban (1980)

Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis (1994)

Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. Crash by J. G. Ballard (1973)

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)

“When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,” Papa would say, “she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.” Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (1983)

In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (1960)

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley (1978)

It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner (1948)

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (1934)

Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. Middle Passage by Charles Johnson (1990)

I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)

The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)

I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. Second Skin by John Hawkes (1964)

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini (1921)

Psychics can see the color of time it's blue. Blown Away by Ronald Sukenick (1986)

In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)

Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen. Double or Nothing by Raymond Federman (1971)

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (1988)

He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)

High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. Changing Places by David Lodge (1975)

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)

[ozma914]

Reading Potato Books to Your Pink Flamingo

This was originally on our newsletter, which you can check out and sign up for here:  https://us10.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=02054e9863d409b2281390e3b&id=f39dd965f0

You may have also seen it on Humor Outcasts. But I'm putting it out to everyone because it's about reading, which is important (trust me), and also because I had a lot of fun writing it, and we could use some fun right now. (And also because I've got my first sinus infection in more than a year, and I'm not feeling very creative.)

By the way, the newsletter version has a crazy cute photo of my granddaughter on it.

--------------------------------------------------------

September is a month dedicated to reading. I’m not sure why. Reading months should be in the dead of winter, when it’s too cold to do anything but curl up on the couch under a mound of blankets, pour hot chocolate over your head, and whimper about the weather. Or maybe that’s just me.

Or you could read, which seems more constructive.

But they didn’t ask me, and in fact they didn’t even tell me who “they” is, so September is both Adult Literacy Month and Read a New Book Month, which certainly do seem to go together. I don’t need to explain those, do I? If you don’t already know how to read, you’re probably not reading this right now, anyway.

September is also, according to the mysterious Them, Be Kind to Writers and Editors Month. Also related. As it happens, I’m a writer (thus this writing), and so I approve of Their decision. Since my fictional works have now been officially bought by editors, I also approve of editors.

So September is a month in which adults should read books written by writers, of which I am one. We writers shouldn’t let this go to our heads: It’s also Pink Flamingo Month, National Potato Month, and Save the Tiger Month. So They say.

Therefore, I’m going to start writing a new children’s book about a Tiger who gives up his Pink Flamingo diet and becomes a vegetarian devoted to potatoes. It’s working title:

Potato Tiger Picks Pink Feathers From His Teeth

That title … well, it’s a work in progress. Anyway, I recommend celebrating Read An Edited Writer’s Adult Literacy Month in October. Why not? It’ll be colder then anyway, and for those who’ve already read one book, this will be your chance to read two.

I recommend my books. Still available, mostly. 

Even Beowulf has a favorite book.

 In fact, I carry around a backpack full of copies, going door to door like a literary Jehovah’s Witness, only without the snappy tie.

Okay, fine– read whatever book you like, but please read one. I don’t get why I even have to ask people to read. I don't understood why people wouldn’t want to spend most of their time reading, with the possible exception of the late Hugh Hefner. And let’s face it, reading is way cheaper than sex, especially when you factor in certain prescriptions for someone who lived as long as Hugh. Not to mention alimony.

The irony is that I haven’t had much time in recent years to read; I’ve been busy writing. Stacks of books around the house tower over my head, ready to bury me in the most ironic death scene ever, and I’m not talking about just my own product. But by the time I’ve worked my full time job, then my second full time job of trying to get a fiction writing career going, I run out of time for my favorite relaxation activity. (I’m talking about reading – get your mind out of the gutter.)

So I dedicated myself to reading one new book every month, in addition to catching up on my magazine reading. (No, not one of Hef’s magazines … mind. Out of gutter. Now.) Frankly, I need the relaxation, and I began with a book my wife got for her literature class: Strong Poison, a 1930 mystery starring some guy named Lord Peter Wimsey.

Well, it was new to me. And more to the point, it happened to be on the coffee table when I learned this was Read a New Potato Novel to a Pink Editor Month. It’s shameful, really. I used to go to the Noble County Public Library and load up on the limit of books I could check out –

every month

– but that’s just another example of how grown up life lets us down. One book I can manage, these days. I challenge everyone else to do the same, and although I’d prefer it be one of mine, make it something you enjoy, something fun.

Stay away from Moby Dick, unless you’re a fishing fan.

Read to your pink flamingo, or read while feeding a potato to your tiger, or your editor, or whatever – but read. Let’s make this world literate again, in the way it was back when reading was fun instead of a chore. Oh, and be kind to the writers; maybe with a review, or a cup of hot chocolate. Be kind to editors, too … if they buy my stuff.

http://www.markrhunter.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Mark-R-Hunter/e/B0058CL6OO

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R. Hunter"