#the text is just so fantastically bizarre

[thatneoncrisis]

god one thing I just didn’t understand. There’s like a THING in the text where you can assume people from certain houses have certain eye color or hair colors but somehow this doesn’t apply to race? Like this comes up a few times when it comes to describing harrow and Ortus as having the true dreaburgh black eyes and black hair but like does this preclude race or skin color or what?? Like Gideons Māori, the text makes a passing reference to her and harrows skin tone being similar, but she’s not supposed to ‘look ninth’ because her red hair is fantastically colorful and this inspires Silas to ask if she’s secretly third (WHAT does this imply. Redheads and blondes from the third? The third house is just white people house?). Like I think it’s hinting at some fantasy / sci-fi thing of people having bizarre hair and eye color (which they do cause Gideons hair is abnormal compared to other redheads like Gideon the first who is ostensibly a Polynesian man and the little kids in Nona who r white) but like it’s frustrating that it like sidesteps race I don’t get it. Also like tazmuir’s blogpost about ppl races and including stuff like harrow and gids and Camilla’s potentially being mixed race like what does this mean and why doesn’t this apply to other house heirs and necros does this mean there are certain houses with certain races like the fourth house having Chinese ppl like you said? Anyways. Thanks for bringing this up as always I didn’t rlly like the lukewarm and potentially obnoxious way this fandom dealt with race b4 and I still don’t after Nona

gonna go through this point by point under the cut bc i just kind of yap for a while all of this is pontification and me barehanded wrestling with watson and doyle

harrow makes a point of mentioning that ortus' eyes ARENT a true black. obviously on the mithereaum shes just looking at her own eyes and assumes theyre ortus' bc frankly its not like she spent a lot of time looking at the man with any actual scrutiny, but there are these two quotes

He had classical Ninth eyes: a tintless shade very close to true black, sharply ringed around the iris, very like her own

They were not true black, as she had usually thought: in the shadow she could finally see a deep earthy undertone, like the ploughed-up additive ground in the planter fields.

im gonna be a little mean here but taz really just loves going on about eye color to just fill space times. its not ALWAYS irrelevant but this is the exact same information given to us twice. almost black but not quite, and we know that harrows are just straight up black they say it a million times. we know that this isnt really Possible, basically everyone who says they have black eyes just have really deep brown eyes (like ortus) theres always SOME sort of shift in hue thatll give you brown in the mix, but the third is walking around with purple so real biology is right out the window

anyway i just said a lot of words to get to the point that ortus IS mixed. his mother is from the 8th, if we assume each house has a racial majority due to their seclusion, shes probably white. additionally, we have no word on what the other penitents of the ninth actually look like. we know harrow and gideon are "mixed" maori; we know johns maori, we assume wake is due to context with her name and facial features, its Presumed the reverend parents are maori, if one of them isnt the likely canidate is pelleamena BUT. we must remember

[Harrowhark] was named for her father , who was named for his mother , who was named for some unsmiling extramural penitent sworn into the silent marriage bed of the Locked Tomb. This had been common. Drearburh had never practiced Resurrection purity .

her unknown great grandparent Also was not born ninth. no clue where or what that means but at this point were getting into borderline blood quantum territory. the original point i was getting at is that the ninth often takes in pilgrims aka people from other houses aka making the gene pool more diverse. we have no clue what the ratio of pakeha to maori to anyone outside those two narrow categories are on a planet of like. what. 400 people. are there any black people on the ninth. are there any black people in that entire empire tamysn <--- i i genuinely dont care if black people are in these books i actually think judith or g1deons treatment is way worse if they had been black but its morbidly funny to me. john you did what 400 years of fucking with africa couldnt what the hell dude

gideon not Looking Ninth is always chalked up to her eyes and hair like you said. let us imagine a community comprised entirely of darkskinned black people. if they took in a baby, and that baby was inexplicably blond and blue eyed, while still being a darkskinned black baby, it would be Odd. however, due to the multiethinic nature of the ninth (much like the sixth, they can only go so long without taking in newbies before it gets incestuous lets be real), i am willing to believe that race/skintone isnt a factor for THEM specifically due to the ingrained culture. you just assume that anyone who looks different does not have bones on the ninth. so to speak. my shitty little metaphor about them not having ancestry there. so like, aiglemene could be fully white and it wouldnt be a problem.

now with gideon, as weve established the issue is with her eyes and hair. i will give them the eyes- while strange colors seem to be the norm, gold is just fucking unheard of. gold is what unquestionably proves her connection to alecto and alectos lyctoral connection to john. something being incredibly rare does not make it impossible, but this is just kind of batshit IF you have the context to appreciate why, which the lyctors do. harrow and her ilk do not. the bodys eyes were closed when she say it for the first time, and in htn she says this

He could not possibly know that in your youth her eyes had often been black, like yours were, but that ever since you had writhed in Lyctoral agony her eyes had turned a yellow that made you dizzy to behold: a bronzed, hot, animal yellow , as amber as the inside of an egg.

it is, frankly, unclear if her thinking the body had black eyes up until she became a lyctor is actually true or another rewrite- the body isnt JUST a halluciation, alecto is literally haunting her ass, o clue how gideons presence affects its physical manifestation BUT. lets all jsut say that until that point there is no way harrow could have pegged a conection between the body and gideon. to her gideons eyes are Weird but not like, an actual connection to literal divinity. as for gideons hair everyone is mad that she just doesnt shave it and thinks it looks stupid. it Is a weird ass shade of red (what do you MEAN a true red with no orange tamsyn what the fuck are you even SAYING) but gideon is just. weirdly saturated. everyone on the ninth is old and dusty and washed out, even if gideon and harrow are both brown harrow is still clearly. well to put it bluntly shes ashy as fuck.

i kind of hate that line in ntn about them being similar shades of brown. they straight the fuck up are not and i need the book to stop lying to me. you SAID gideon is darker, shes visibly darker on the cover

this is NOT. a lighting thing. and nona has been having harrows body out in broad daylight for months if anything this is the darkest harrows been in her life. gideon is darker these shades of brown are not the same and if you wanted that to be the case you should have communicated it better. and in what WAY is gideon lighter or is harrow darker than the covers imply. dont look at me

uuh im gonna be straight up the way taz describes people gives just. little regard to how thier race might influence how they look. what they LOOK like not just the impression we get from them. youll get lines about alectos "sweet dead face"

she knows if a character is like. brown and it begins and ends there. we know g1deon is Brown and has a creepy fucked up rawhide body hes like a walking flayed man. and we know hes darkskinned she sure mentions that alot. and thats it. we dont know what his face Looks like its just like. vibes. we know its serious and it gives an impression. we know harrow has a sharp pointed face with a shape thats closer to a triangular heart than an oval or diamond with a high brow. a "slanted a vicious little mouth" and a pointy nose. "Point chinned, narrow-jawed, ferrety person, with high hard cheekbones and a tall forehead. There was a little divot in her top lip at the philtrum, which gave a bowlike aspect to her otherwise hard and fearless mouth" we understand the actual individual elements of her face

and here comes my concession that this is unbalanced- not only is the one of the principle characters, one of the OTHER principle characters wants to fuck her so bad it makes her look stupid, so she is jsut canonically staring at harrow all the time and notices more things. even with someone like corona while there is an emphasis on her looks we dont get like. nose shape. any sort of physical arrangement of features its again just eye color and vibes. we know shes pretty but not what she LOOKS like. hell were still in debate on if shes fat or just like, kind of chubby/curvy. nona calls her big but the text has zero issue just telling you that, say, ortus is fat. but nobody wants to fuck ortus so its all. yknow. overall its a stylistic choice to eschew details for more like. more gothic sensibilities. but that leads us to

-that goddamn blog post

"of middle eastern extraction" haunts me. what on EARTH could that mean. what are they coptic? persian? kurdish? turkish? hell are they jewish? are they mixed? what does that MEAN. the book loves mentioning cams dead eyes and fuck ass bob but did we all just hallucinate her having a hooked nose. i mean i love it the nose suits her it looks good but i think we all straight up made that up. why is the sixth just inexplicably middle eastern. why was there no little footnote the way isaac got about being nz chinese- is he just kiwi or is he like mixed pasifika/chinese or pakeha/chinese or all three even? are pal and cam just like, culturally nz with zero relation from their ancestors? im vexed. and the fourth just being chinese is like. sure ok whatever. and then you remember that jeannemary is maori.

im jsut FASCINATED. its not that i dont think regions cant have ethnic diversity i dont care if Some people are white and some are samoan blah blah ect but i do want to know. how we got here. especially after 10000 years. it would have been so EASY for her to just say shit like "oh the third predominantly has people of northern european ancestry so theyre fairly lightskinned and taller than the average house citizen and tend to skew towards having x features (roman noses/hooded eyes/freckles, these are all just loose examples)" that like. satisfies the physical curiosity while leaving room for exceptions (babs is relatively short to aid him with using the rapier, and i assume not EVERYONE on the third is a freaky white guy).

i just think considering these elements as a living part of the world building rather than a set of half remembered traits could do a lot for immersion and just like, general thought put into it. it IS weird that harrow and gid are pegged as mixed like arent they all mixed at this point. youre telling me the majority of abigails lineage was pakeha. is that due to the population on the fifth? same question to magnus like what does it MEAN. its a very interesting question that was just never meant to be asked

[rei-ismyname]

Giant-Size Wolverine retcons

Marvel, famously, loves having Wolverine as a cash cow, to the point it has its own entry on TVTropes. This manifests as a LOT of Wolverine #1s being released as well as the clawed-one showing up on deceitful covers and guest starring anywhere they think they can justify it. Less common (but still frequent enough) is Forrest Gumping him into historical events or rewriting events he was there for as a character study cynical profiteering.

Sunfire is still great - 'banal prattle.' You tell em

This is the latter, foregrounding Logan in Giant-Size X-Men to the detriment of almost everyone else. In the original Giant-Size X-Men, Logan sits at the back and says very little. Here he takes charge and uncharacteristically identifies that the new squad lacks synergy and a sense of teamwork. He opens with 'it's your first day as new X-Men, people. I'm going to show you how this works.' Uh, isn't it yours too? Did I miss a meeting?

Poor Kurt. Eddie Munster is just mean

So he starts a fight, telling everyone there's one too many people. Colossus objects for sexist reasons (not objection to killing lol) and Storm puts him in his place. Sunfire and Thunderbird both have little patience for white people or bullshit and Logan catches a fireball...

... and an elbow to the spine. Ororo goes off with electricity and Kurt just doesn't want to die, so he BAMFs behind her and starts choking Storm from behind. Logan turns the tables on Proudstar and drops a one liner about metal conducting electricity. I'm no wizard, but I don't think it interacts well with human flesh, either, especially if they have a metal skeleton. Obviously he takes everyone down and has the biggest dick in the world.

Yeah... about Thunderbird.

Banshee bursts in and reveals Logan is acting against Chuck's wishes. I'm generally in favour of that but I'm not fond of its narrative function at all . He has an open shirt, a toothpick in his mouth, and looks oh so pleased with himself. I'm not some reactionary purist who worships the sacred texts and pushes back against retcons. Quite the opposite, in fact. Additive retcons are fantastic when done well - Magneto being a Holocaust survivor stands as one of the best in fiction.

I don't think that's what this is, or at least it's not successful. In Giant-Size X-Men #1 there's no time for this pissing contest because all the other X-Men need rescuing ASAP. Chuck rounds them up and handles the basics then defers to Cyclops, the field leader of many years. They leave immediately and nobody is getting along. Sunfire leaves then comes back. Scott is all business because he's worried about the folks on Krakoa and there just isn't time. If they respect the chain of command in the field that's good enough. Team building can come later.

What's achieved here besides sidelining everyone to centre edge lord Logan? Not a lot, in fact I'd say it minimises Logan's character arc most of all. He was a grumpy loner who eventually learnt to trust people, came to see the X-Men as family, and committed to the team. Logan knowing half this stuff already and having this degree of social confidence just undermines that, as well as Cyclops' leadership of this ragged band. Not sure what Whedon was thinking tbh.

That wasn't the end of it, though. Interestingly, this is Chris Claremont writing here. Again, I'm not a purist and I'm under no illusion about CC's later X-Men work. He'd worked with these characters for a long time but Giant-Size was Wein & Cockrum, so he's choosing to expand the origin story. Thunderbird is still alive so they're still pretty new here. Anyway, Cyke is running a danger room training session - Storm vs Thunderbird.

After some kinda bizarre ethnic posturing Ororo is pinned.

Unsurprisingly, she starts to wig out due to her claustrophobia. Logan picks it up with his advanced senses and jumps in. Scott owns the mistake and ends the training session.

I find it hard to buy Scott would feel like his authority was undermined here. Logan is being as paternalistic as ever, but Scott blames himself for failures. He doesn't externalise it and he understands he's not leading children anymore. It's Chuck who has difficulty adapting to this specific dynamic. Also, Logan had zero interest in leadership. None. It was Ororo who was a friendly rival to him and ended up succeeding him as leader. He also didn't especially trust or show respect to anyone. Everyone else has problems but the focus and Charles' confidant is Wolverine. That's silly as hell.

Okay, private insecurity and self-doubt, totally Scott's thing. I'm just going to ignore literally everything else that's happening, especially 'damaged goods.' Ugh.

The second story came out in 2005 in Giant-Size X-Men #4. Aside from the Wolverine oversaturation and other weird shit I've pointed out, I feel like there was a concerted effort to bring certain characters closer to their FOX movies counterparts. Chuck started looking like Captain Picard, Scott was Flanderised a bit but moreso deemphasized, and Logan started to look and act more like Hugh Jackman. He joined more teams, regressed in social growth yet became way more important to the X-Men. More important to the very fabric of the Marvel universe.

I get why it happened (capitalism) but I think it was executed poorly in many instances. These are particularly egregious, but Wolverine was and is fucking everywhere - under many different writers. There's always going to be a sense of asynchronicity under those circumstances. I've actually come to really dislike Logan lately. Obviously it's an issue for most long running characters, but his particular regression to the mean every new book bores the shit out of me. He's not growing at all, even when everything around him changes. On Krakoa he was mostly just gruff and stabby, monologuing about hell, beer, time, nature, poison, and being the best he is at what he does. 🙄

He'll usually find someone worse than him to point at and call out with transparency he never applies to himself. Magneto, Scott, Beast, Scott, Chuck, teenage Scott, Sabertooth, Omega Red, Beast, Chuck, and Scott again. Someone please deconstruct this guy! Send him to therapy, break him down to his base components and examine them. Fuck his moping or running naked with wolves or fighting the W-digo - give him a messy boyfriend and force him to get the fuck over Jean Grey.

He can still fight ninjas and mentor troubled teens and sulk about whatever his latest thing is - just have him grow! His books will still sell, people will still cheer when he says bub, and snikt isn't going away. Hire Al Ewing to do it like he did with Loki, Hulk, Magneto, Sunspot, etc. Some of those changes actually stuck and the characters are more popular than ever! Is that too much to hope for? Almost certainly, but one can hope.

Boy I got carried away on that outro, lol.

[onewomancitadel]

Major spoilers for Death's End, the final book of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy beneath the cut.

So about that terrarium...

My intial somewhat dismayed reading was that of an uncharacteristic, hackneyed sentimentality: even when the books took such an indulgence, there was always a cynical chaser. You don't get to experience the fantastical sense of romantic love without Luo Ji's understanding of women (or lack thereof) and the belief that people only love imaginations of each other and stay together so long as they don't conflict with reality. (This is probably key to the fact that the star-crossed lovers never meet in Death's End, neither of them being disabused of their fantasies. It's juvenile).

Suffice it to say, I really struggled with the ending. I struggled with Death's End in general; not necessarily the fundamental approach (I don't think undoing the victory was a totally bad idea, since I liked evolving that thesis past what it means to win) but the structure felt less whimsical and more directionless, a series of entries - quite literally - which felt disparate and never quite managed to hit that sense of dispassionate historical observation I think the text was trying to go for.

So the idea that there was this terrarium and message in a bottle left behind in a universe built specially for Cheng Xin was just kind of bizarre tonally. It felt silly.

I get it: the entries about Earth's past is right there in the trilogy title. But it felt very self-important; it didn't cohere with the overwhelming notion that humanity was 1. very irrelevant, 2. very bad at what it does, 2a. its women are very bad at what they do, and its men - if soft and weak - are similarly bad, 3. at every moment anything that isn't about pure survival is cut at the knees. Remembrance seems more like farce. Actually, the entire sequence on Pluto felt out of place, almost like we're meant to laugh at the little bugs trying to save their precious granules of sugar.

I was discussing the ending with my best friend and her family - actually I related all the events of the books to them, somewhat out of chronological order, because I know that they all collectively would fucking hate these books (I personally didn't, glimmers of brilliance make me all the more frustrated) - and she said this amazing thing which was like, well, you say there's all this umming and ahhing over whether the universe might not be able to reboot if there's mass left behind - and it seems alright just to leave something - what if this is Cheng Xin's final fuck-up, finally chosen in an active way?

It's actually her seeming passivity which would allow this final stunt at all. Nobody would dare assume - not her last companions - that she would intentionally do this at all. So far she's damned humanity once, and then effectively twice (at least I think she is implicitly damned), and she is, really sincerely, a complete fuck-up wastrel who never does or thinks anything interesting. Luo Ji gets to be a fuck-up wastrel who thinks interesting things and does interesting things, and fails once, twice, three times, probably more, as a Wallfacer, and has a moment of stunning success because he's a fuck-up wastrel. This is a great idea, which unfortunately suffers in the face of the fact that Liu Cixin is obsessed with strong men.

The idea that Cheng Xin looks at the face of the overwhelming loneliness of her universe, the cruelty and inhumanity of the dark forest thesis, the wars upon wars which ravaged multiple dimensions until they were folded into flatness, and then decides to weaponise a sense of sentimentality to finally damn that universe - to prevent it from being reborn, to escape samsara - when she would never be expected to be capable of such a thing, to finally actively choose this maternality she's passively carried and passively condemned humanity with - is maybe the thing which could redeem that ending for me. It's bleak - and I still don't agree with the overall attitude the books hold - but it is actually a real thesis! It does actually deliver on this threat that's expounded upon and seems like, in any other story, would surely allow for some small space to remember humanity. But how much mass is enough? If enough pocket unvierses all leave behind a few hundred grams, surely it would start to add up.

The alternative interpretation is that Cheng Xin once again fucks everything up but not on purpose, merely through an innocent-intentioned sentimentality. But I think the fact that she acknowledges the threat allows a bit of wiggle room. The argument here would be that Luo Ji's final Wallfacer plan against the Trisolarans is concealed from us until its reveal; this move has been pulled once before. The key difference is that we never see whether the universe reboots. I think this is very meaningful for the argument that it doesn't, and that we wouldn't see the payoff of Cheng Xin's plan, because there is no universe anymore. This really makes it a true twist ending to me which - most meaningfully of all - doesn't go against what the books were trying to do, but actually strengthens it.

But she put the effort into recording humanity's history, and I might go so far as to argue that she did that to explain her motivation to end it all, instead of slipping into it, but actually thinking about it.

The real conflict here, actually with any ending, is the sense of anthropocentrism which it otherwise sought to subvert. But I think reading against that, if we take it seriously that human beings are moral creatures who make moral judgements irrespective of our place in the universe (however small that is), I think that actually pairs better thematically with the idea that a graveyard remembrance of humanity also serves as the final, very small thing - this small living thing - which says 'no more'. The sense of reincarnation and enlightenment here, too, feels fitting, though I'd argue that its overly cynical view of the universe does the argument better.

I wrote all this out and then I went back to reread the last few pages. (I'm using an ebook version, so I don't have page citations). I'm going to see if this interpretation actually holds:

Cheng Xin asks if she can leave five kilograms behind, and then:

As long as the tiny sun inside the sphere continued to give off light, this miniature ecological system would persist. As long as it remained here, Universe 647 would not be a lifeless, dark world. “Of course,” said Guan Yifan. “The great universe isn’t going to fail to collapse because it misses five kilograms.” He had another thought that he did not voice: Perhaps the great universe really would fail to collapse because it lacked a single atom’s mass. [...] Ultimately, the great universe was certain to lose at least a few hundred million tons of matter, or perhaps even a million billion billion tons. Hopefully, the great universe could ignore such a loss.

So the sequence of events is this:

they're going to heed the call of the Returners

Cheng Xin wants to leave behind something to remember humanity by

Guan Yifan says of course she can, so graciously giving her permission

they acknowledge the general fact that others may do the same thing, or maybe even a single atom might be enough to prevent the universe rebooting, so it's a gamble anyway

Holy fuck this is terrible. Anyway, if we go through this with the perspective of the books - that every civilisation is interested first and foremost in survival at any cost, and short of that, to be remembered (survival in memory) - it is near-inevitable that there will be other mass left behind. But the flipside of this is that each individual choice matters; maybe with enough choosing to forego that, the universe could reboot. It's not definite. The ending is left open, the 'science' here is left imprecise. But we are reading between the lines of motivation. I'm not sure that my reading holds as an intended reading - because I do think the thematic compromise of the ending really does feel quite clear - but this is how I would make it more concordant with the series.

I much prefer it for the fact that Cheng Xin uses her contemplation in this lonely, ugly pocket universe to come to a conclusion of leaving mass behind to damn the universe. It would give her something to do. It would improve it tonally - haha, just rereading it, my God, I can't believe this is the ending to these books - and I think I like it just because it subverts that patronising treatment Guan Yifan affords her, like a little child asking for a lolly, concealing the truth of the potential cruelty of nature... which she is actually very well aware of.

I don’t know how much those catastrophes and the final destruction of the Solar System had to do with me. Those are questions that could never be answered definitively. But I’m certain they had something to do with me, with my responsibilities. And now, I’ve climbed to the apex of responsibility: I am responsible for the fate of the universe.

I would like Cheng Xin to abuse the trust in her sweet passivity. This would parallel neatly with Luo Ji's defense against the Trisolarans, the deception within deception within deception, against the ultimate enemy, suffocating it in the cradle.

[goatsandgangsters]

Book Review: Januaries by Olivie Blake

★☆☆☆☆ [1/5 stars]

DNF at 34% / after 4 stories / on page 133

This was a slog, with juvenile writing, flimsy storytelling, and nothing particularly interesting to say.

I tried. I really tried. But after thinking, "I'm not enjoying this. Maybe I'll try one more?" after every single story, I can't do it. I can't try just one more. I'm not strong enough.

The writing style was unimpressive. It alternated between unsuccessfully attempting a lyrical voice and (much more often) writing in what I've now termed "meme voice"—a quippy, modern-slangy, overly casual tone that often jarred with the fantastical fairytale setting. The two styles together clashed, and neither was wielded with much success.

The short stories themselves seemed to take a very long time to accomplish very little. There was a lot of needlessly convoluted setup, where the only payoff was the exact same cookie-cutter couple falling in love. Again. Seemed extremely roundabout. None of these stories are really "doing anything."

I picked this up because the cover is gorgeous and I thought the seasonal framing would make it a good pick for the start of the year. While the cover remains gorgeous and has thankfully not decayed Dorian Gray-style, even the seasonal framing seems arbitrary. Maybe it becomes clearer with later stories in the collection, but so far there hasn't been anything to tie these stories to their particular season thematically. There's no sense of temporality at all, which seems careless given this collection is structured around time.

I try really hard to finish everything that I pick up by choice. I don't DNF lightly. I can't even remember the last time I outright gave up. But my good will as a reader has been completely squandered and I don't think there's any benefit to continuing—either for myself or for this review, which would probably devolve into angry swearing if I tried to force myself through an insurmountable 200 more pages.

I haven't read any Olivie Blake before, though I know of her. Maybe her novels are stronger (short stories are their own unique skill set), but unfortunately I'm not very motivated to find out, as this was a poor first impression.

Below are my notes that I jotted while reading each story:

The Wish Bridge: 2.5 stars Writing is very juvenile. Alternates between attempting a lyrical fairytale voice (itself meh) and extremely modern slang-y phrasing, which is jarring. Feels like flash fiction on tumblr, but not in a good way (aka trying too hard to rules-lawyer a trope or genre convention, instead of telling an actual story). Not a strong start for a collection.

The Audit: 1 star Took a long time to do not very much, which is not a great quality in a short story. The whole setup seemed like a needlessly roundabout way to achieve what it wanted to achieve; I was expecting it to do More based on the premise. The meme-y voice still isn't my favorite, but it fit better for this story and this character. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around someone unironically writing and publishing this story In This Economy. It truly boggles my mind that this story has NOTHING to say about labor OR free will vs destiny. Truly taking the speculative out of spec fic.

TUMBLR EXCLUSIVE: I hated this short story so much that I had to text @opheliaintherushes venting about the bizarre pointless premise, and I think you'll all hate it too, so I'm transcribing my annoyed texts below so you know that I am Justified In My Ire once you understand the plot [editor's note: annoyed texts have been condensed for clarity]: so it's set in what I'm ASSUMING is a near-future sci-fi setting where using ~technology, they have this new pilot program where people in their 20s can find out how much money they're going to earn in their entire life, get the whole lump sum upfront as a loan, go enjoy their youth, and then when they're like 35 they go do whatever job they're "meant to do" that earns them all that money in the first place You might think the point of this setup is to explore something about work or wealth or youth or capitalism. You would be wrong. Our annoying 20-something protagonist finds out the ~terrible news that she now has 40 MILLION DOLLARS IN HER BANK ACCOUNT. She has to go to grad school when she's 30 so she can get the qualifications for her job at age 35, but otherwise she has a decade to enjoy HAVING 40 MILLION DOLLARS Also did the question of free will or fate factor into this ever? No. It did not. She spends the entire short story doing absolutely nothing. She said she was going to quit her job to travel. She doesn't do this. She repeatedly GOES TO WORK. (She works in, wait for it, a bookstore because of course she does of COURSE she fucking does. and it's a ~chill bookstore that makes all its money selling rare books so she doesn't have to do like, any work). It is so many pages of her just like, considering buying Nice Chocolate and then getting stressed and not buying it. And then continuing to go to work The thing that she DOES do is repeatedly hang out with her downstairs neighbor in his apartment that he never leaves ever. He only got several hundred-thousand dollars, because he's going to die young, which is why he's stopped leaving the apartment (again: do questions of fate come into play here? No) They fall in love, which apparently was the actual point of this short story. Seems like a whole lot of unnecessary setup to me just to write a story about falling in love with your weird neighbor So anyway, after doing absolutely nothing with her 40 MILLION DOLLARS for like twenty pages except think about how she doesn't really know what to do with it, it ends with her renting a bunch of famous paintings from museums and bringing them to this guy's apartment so that he can enjoy them without leaving his apartment. The end. hold onto your blood pressure, but her roommate is in law school (she chose not to find out her ~destiny) and the protagonist is like "do you want me to like, pay for law school" and the roommate says no (??) and the protagonist is like "I just want to make things easier on you" and the roommate says AND I QUOTE "things being easy isn't the point." which like WHAT. in this economy????? Why are you setting up a story about WEALTH AND FATE AND PREDESTINATION AND WORK to literally just bone your neighbor I'm literally staring at the wall of my cubicle and thinking "I don't know if I can do it. I'm not strong enough." Usually books that I hate take longer than this to go off the rails. It's been 51 pages. There's 300 more.

this was also the point when I came on tumblr and complained to you all about my suffering, but then I continued to read two more stories "just in case it got better." It didn't.

Sucker for Pain: 3.5 stars On a style level, the writing was worlds better than the first two. But in terms of plot and character, it was basically every YA paranormal fantasy that's ever been written condensed into 40 pages, so it wasn't really for me. At least that there was some degree of prose.

My feeling is again that we just sort of meandered around for 40 pages. There isn't a strong sense of purpose here, or that real kick that short stories are meant to have. So far none of these have been Doing Anything in a storytelling sense

The Animation Games: 2 stars Well, this one went in directions I did not expect, which is not the same as Doing Something. Again took too long to do very little of substance and unfortunately it devolved into meme-y-ness and a very typical couple dynamic that's been done to (ha) death. I kept looking at the number of pages and feeling deeply frustrated that there were more of them. Romantically murdering each other with weird antics like somebody decided they wanted Tom/Jerry instead of Tom & Jerry went on for an excruciating number of pages.

Shoutout to one of the worst sentences I've ever read: "He let the water coat his lips, seeping coolly onto his tongue, before it slithered gradually down his throat and settled conclusively in his stomach." Slithered? Settled conclusively?? Maybe I shouldn't have complained about the meme voice if this is what her attempts at being lyrical are like. But unfortunately this sentence lives in the same story as meme-voice dialogue such as "I sort of assumed you were the regular kind of dead." It's painful.

The only thing I felt after this story was exhausted relief that it was over.

In conclusion: I would recommend this book to people who want to look at the cover without ever opening it.

[elsternwick-rp]

“Gracious friend, you have been chosen to visit our lovely city… come to Wondrous Elsternwick, near the nexus point of the multiverse!”

No matter who, what, where, or when you are in the wider multiverse, you have received a fine written letter, inviting you to take a vacation to Elsternwick, a beautiful riverside town!

In this amazing place, Magic and technology have come together to make all sorts of fantastic inventions, and its proximity to the “Nexus Point” has caused all sorts of strange things to pop up in the nearby forest… you can choose to help with the research of these anomalies, go on adventures unrelated to them, go on your own journey to understand the bizarre things that populate these lands, seek your own fortune, or simply unwind in the beautiful town of Elsternwick as a place to relax! You’re free to leave and return home at any time as well, no strings attached!

The town is always changing with the seasons, and its many events, given all the strange things that can happen with the multiverse!

Given their pride, they have invited everyone, even rough types and villains are allowed in town! So long as they behave, of course...

Elsternwick is a Discord RP server, we allow all sorts of fun plots & events to happen, and there are many interesting places to visit and explore!  All the while you’ll be having your own kind of unique happenings with your character, be they an original character, a fan character for something already else set up, or a canon character!

We’re a group that focuses on the lighter aspects of roleplaying (as well as crossovers), the fun and adventure that can come about from unique interactions in a wondrous setting, while also allowing for the potential of some more serious plots, and allowing you take your own pace in both reply speed and plot progression! We are also very laid back, chill, and friendly to practically everyone!

Some other features include…

Canon characters, Original Characters & Fan Characters, and maybe even some self-inserts (if done well) accepted!

PG-13 Group!

Events ran by both players and mods/admins,  can feature original settings and stories, as well as visits or takes on canon plots & locations! You’re also free to DM regular threads if you want, just be sure to run it by the team first <:

Seasonal and Story Events for every season! Both Seasonal and Story focused events happen throughout the year!

NPCs can be played by the moderator team, or even just regular players as long as they fit and can have fun stuff done with them! You can even promote an NPC to a full player character if you like them well enough!

Get your muse a job! Elsternwick is always hiring with many jobs, some simple, some complicated, and some inspired by places from across the many different universes! You can do these to help inspire threads, get rewards for your muses, or simply add flavor to other RPs!

“Dungeon Runs” of varying flavors semi-regularly, have your character investigate the mysterious ruins for the thrill of combat and loot! You never know what might be lurking down there!

“Expeditions” that take you beyond Elsternwick, to other towns, and even worlds beyond your own, and other places beyond your wildest dreams!

Dedicated dice rolling bot allows for combat with some stakes, and outcomes one might not expect! (Dice aren’t used for every action!)

Not a fighter? No problem! There’s plenty of odd jobs around the city waiting for you! You could also always help with puzzles and negotiations!

All formats of Roleplaying Accepted! (Text/Script, Paragraph, even long form!)

Many types of plots & developments accepted, be it fun and carefree, or serious with some high stakes behind it!

New areas and locations being added constantly, some depending on characters coming in, and some being “unlocked” for completing events!

Buildings and new locations are added semi-regularly, and sometimes depend on player input and choices, be careful, you could help or hinder all player characters present!

Laid back environment with friendly people, while also allowing a wide variety of developments and changes!

Meet tons of new, friendly, and creative people!

Spectating is an option as well if you simply want to take a peek before joining! Simply send an ask

Plenty of options for OoC chatter and bonding!

Navigation | Master List | About Us/Premise | Rules |

(New Promo post with slight updates!)

[fluffysucker]

We paint the town blue

Bucky Barnes x Reader (AU)

Boxer/Biker! Bucky Barnes x Chef! Reader.

Part of the Miss Americana & The heartbreak Prince universe AKA Bucky and his princess.

ALL ONESHOTS COULD BE READ AS STAND-ALONE

Your first I love you.

Written in Third POV. No use of Y/N. However, the reader is referred to as a female. Likes, comments, reblogs are VERY VERY highly appreciated.

Main Masterlist

It was as cliche as movies. To say your first I love during your first fight.

It had been some time since your fantastic first date, and it had been wonderful ever since. You went on lots of other dates, and each one was more breathtaking than the previous. From beach days, picnics, fancy places, movies to staying over at the restaurant and midnight walks, everything was perfect. Bucky was perfect.

You found what people say about him, claiming him to be very bizarre. A big lie. He was the sweetest person.

He loved astrology and space. He loved the army's stories and knew everything about World War Two. He loved reading. He loved the 40th music. He loved to slow dance. He loved to take long walks around and outside the city. He loved to go to museums and exhibitions. He loved having deep conversations.

He was funny. He was caring. He was fiercely loyal. He was a family man. He was smart. He was passionate. He was compassionate. He was kind. He was good-hearted.

He was everything good. And he was yours. Your perfect boyfriend.

It didn't take him long to ask you to be his girl officially. Couple dates and he was attached. He couldn't imagine going another day where you weren't his girl.

After an amazing date, with his leather jacket draped over your shoulder, his hands wrapped around your waist, one of your hands around his neck and the other holding the flowers that he insisted to buy you mid-date, your lips connected in the most gentle loving kiss, he knew this was the moment. He wanted to stay like this forever. This was the heaven he read about and dreamt of

You broke away, your eyes never leaving each other, your sweet-tasting lipgloss lingering on his lips, your soft smile big on your face. Like everything with you, he let his heart take over. Words fell from him, unplanned.

"Please, be my girl"

Your smile got bigger, your eyes had a different shine, your heartbeats could be heard from afar, butterflies ran in your stomch, and your mind screamed one word over and over.

With your red cheeks, you stood on your highest tiptoe, kissing Bucky, your boyfriend.

And just like that, you were dating Bucky Barnes.

You understood a bit by bit why people thought that of him. He didn't show that side with anyone. The side he ofter let you saw was only for eyes.

When he would tell you about his day in more than three words. When he would respond to your childhood stories with little glimpses of his. When he would spend the night, his head resting on your chest, his body above yours without crushing you. When he would let you run your fingers through his hair. When he would listen to your talking for hours nonstop. When he would make you laugh and smile. When he would send you texts through the day, checking on you, despite being a wall apart most days. When he would walk you home every night. When he would wait for you at the restaurant's door so he would see your face first thing in the morning. When he would lay soft kisses on your hands when you served him and the guys whenever they stopped by.

All stuff that was reserved to you. All the efforts he put for you. Looking at you like you hung the moon and the stars. Treating you like a princess.

When your relationship became known to other people, especially those surrounding the gym and restaurant, people would warn you about how dangerous Bucky was, how he was to ruin your life, how bad he was for. You wanted to laugh out loud.

You had been on your own most of your life. You had known bad. You had seen bad. And Bucky was the farthest away from bad. The 6'1 "foot long muscular boxer made you feel safe. He made you feel loved and protected.

Yes, you were worlds different, but he had nothing to do with you. The sweet girl with colourful dresses next door. If he didn't want you, then he wouldn't be with you. So you didn't listen to people's words. You never let it affect.

You and Bucky were doing fine. So fine.

Until one day, you weren't.

You were storming to your apartment, Bucky following behind. You weren't going to have this conversation in front of anyone. You opened your apartment's door, throwing the keys aside.

"I'm still trying to understand why you're upset." Bucky was the first to start talking, closing the door.

You turned to him as you took off your shoes and cardigan, leaving you in your tank top and skirt.

"How would you feel if you saw a picture of me on social media with three men that you don't know at all, kissing my cheeks, when I told you I was at work."

You didn't expect the turn your day was taking when you decided to have a little break since business was slow today. You checked your phone and saw that Sam posted a story to his account. You pressed on it and regretted it immediately.

There was your boyfriend, surrounded by three very beautiful women, all laying kisses to his face. And he had a little smile on his face.

You could swear you heard the knife that went through your heart. Of course, you trusted Bucky. But this was too much. Too much for anyone. Too much for you.

"I was at work." Bucky tried to justify.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know your work as a boxer involved being showered with kisses by different women." Your voice almost broke. The anger and sadness running through your body mixed together.

You had no idea how to handle this. What to do?What to say? You were clueless. All you knew was that you hated how this picture made you feel.

"These are my friends. They were joking. They stopped by and stayed for a bit. They decided to joke around." Bucky didn't like the sight of you sad and angry. Because of him. He absolutely despised it.

"I swear to you, doll. There is nothing going on. They are just my friends." He added. When he saw that you still had doubts in your eyes, he walked towards you slowly.

"Okay, look." He said as he stayed a bit further from you than normal. He hated it so much, but he was trying to figure how to handle a situation when you were upset.

He brought his phone out, unlocking it and opening the story to see the picture. He had to admit the picture was questionable. If it was reserved, he would be very anrgy. He would've messed stuff up before trying to talk.

"This is Wanda. She is married to Vision. A nice British guy. This is Natasha. She had a sex only relationship with Steve until she met Bruce and fell in love with him. This is Yelena. She is asexual." Bucky explained to you as he pointed to each one in the picture.

"And they know I hate physical touch and affection. They thought it would be a funny way to mess me." You turned to look at Bucky as he talked.

"Except from you." He said quickly, pulling a small smile from you.

"It's all platonic. They are like sisters to me." Bucky let out a breath of relief when your face softened.

"I trust you, Bucky. But seeing this." You didn't know how to phrase your thoughts.

"I understand, doll. You had every right. I'm sorry." Bucky knew he was in the wrongs. Apologising seemed the right way to go.

Bucky was happy as he saw you nod your head as an acceptance of his apology. But his happiness was short lived as you spoke your next words.

"You know. All of this would have been avoided if you had introduced me to them."

"Not this again."

This was a topic you often found yourself disagreeing about. You felt you were going steady enough for you to meet the rest of his friends. You already met some of them. You got along very well with Sam and Steve. Along with the others who frequented the gym sometimes. How bad the rest could be? But Bucky turned the suggestion down immediately.

For Bucky, meeting the rest meant meeting the real him. The team knew him too well. They knew what he was capable of. What he could do. But they weren't so innocent either. They understood each other. That's what made them family.

You, on the other hand, didn't belong there. You were the sweet soul in his tortured world. You, who filled his days with your colours. You, who made him feel like a teenage boy with a crush. You, who guided him through the darkness. You, the sunshine of his life.

You had nothing to do near them. He was feeling guilty enough for being with you. You deserved better. But he chose to be selfish. He couldn't live without you. But that didn't mean tinting you more.

"Yes again and again. Until you tell me why you don't want me to meet them." You may be able to forgive the whole picture thing. But this, no. You needed answers.

"You have nothing in common. Why do you even want to meet them?" He knew why. Because you were so caring that you wanted to know everything about him. You wanted to be involved in the things he likes and loves. Because nobody cared about him like you.

"Because I should meet the people that my boyfriend spends most of his time with."

"And I said I don't want you to."

"Why? Are you ashamed of me or something?"

The question should have slowed things down, but it only made him more frustrated. You think he would be ashamed of you? Sometimes, he had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming. That you were really his girl.

You weren't always thinking like this. However, when your boyfriend refuses to let you meet the people, he calls family, every single time. Your mind wonders.

"My god, that's what you think? That I'm ashamed of you. "

"Are you?"

"Of course not. How do you even think of this?"

"Then why are you so insistent that I never even have a chance to meet them?"

"Because I love you."

Silence filled the room for seconds. Both of you looking at each other.

"You love me?" The whisper left you as moved back towards Bucky.

"Yes, I love you. I'm so in love with you that I can't believe it sometimes. I'm so in love with you that I would give up my life for you in heartbeat."

"Which is why I don't want you to meet the others. This means letting you see that side of me. The boxer who beats people with no mercy. Who spills blood without looking back. And I can't."

"Bucky..."

"You won't look at me again. You won't want to be in the same room with me. You will run away."

"Bucky.."

"And I can't let you go. God knows I tried. I couldn't. You are the best thing in my life. I can't handle you hating me."

"Bucky.."

"So let me have this. The time I have with you before you realise the big mistake you're making. Before you realise you deserve a better man. Before you leave me..."

The feeling of your lips smashing against his wasn't something Bucky expecting. You kissed him with force. With purpose.

"Would you stop talking, please?" You said, your hands wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer to you.

"I love you, Bucky."

For this first time in his life, Bucky felt his heart drop from happiness. Nothing made him want to shed happy tear up to this moment.

"I love you so much that nothing can ever make me hate. Nothing you say or show me will change it. I love you."

"You are all I have, Bucky. Nobody ever made me feel so happy, safe, and appreciated. For me, this is forever. I want you to be my forever. So, don't ever think there's a part of you that I wouldn't love."

This time, it was Bucky who leaned to kiss you. The kiss was deep. He was trying to pour all his love for you into it. To tell you how nobody mattered like you.

He moved his hands to your hips, lifting you to wrap your legs around his waist, still kissing you.

"I love you. I love you so much, princess." Bucky spoke quickly, still trying to catch his breath.

"I love you too, Bucky." You tightened your arms around his neck, nuzzling into his neck, wrapping yourself around him while he laid kisses on your hair

There was nothing like this

[theleechyskrunkly]

The Discussion.

Paige is angry, and Idia's a goner.

Finn Clearcove belongs to @thehollowwriter

Regular text for present time, italics for flashback.

Everybody seemed to be doing the right thing right now, and what was the right thing to do? Stay out of Paige's way. His dorm mates looked utterly baffled (and terrified) as he stormed past them, anger oozing off of him. The students who saw him prayed to the seven for whoever had angered Paige to such a degree, and wondered who'd been the fool to do so.

Paige was livid, his face contorted into a frown that no one had ever seen on his usually passive features. It had everyone wondering what could’ve possibly happened for him to be in such a sour mood.

Well, to begin with, the main culprit was Idia. Why was he angry at Idia? Well, you're bound to find out. Boy, was he about to give Idia an earful...

”So, I take it you're... friends with Idia?” Finn’s voice cut through the music playing in Paige’s earbuds. The two were in Finn’s private area of the school’s botanical garden, Finn painting what seemed to be a carnivorous plant eating a rabbit(with extremely gory detail, as was characteristic for Finn's paintings), while Paige laid on his back with his head resting on a tree branch, scrolling through Twstube. His hair, which was out of its usual braid for once and running loose everywhere, served as his only pillow.

Finn's question was rather random, not only because they had not even been talking about Idia, but also because the two rarely spoke much when they were together at the botanical garden. They just sat in silence, each doing their own thing while enjoying the others company. It was like a little routine they'd set together.

“Yeah? Why?” Paige responded, taking out one of his earbuds and rolling onto his stomach to look up at Finn. Paige preferred to pretend he wasn’t aware of the obvious mutual dislike between Finn and Idia, but he knew avoiding it was no use.

"No, nothing. He's just rather... peculiar, to say the least." There was an obvious distaste in Finn's voice as he attempted to find a not-so-obvious way to hide his dislike for Idia, yet he failed rather miserably at doing so. Paige catches on very quickly to the emotions of humans, mer plus beast people, and animals alike. It's a trait that comes with the horse instincts.

"Peculiar would be an understatement," Paige of all people knew Idia was extremely bizarre, but with the amount of traveling he's done? Boy, has he seen worse. "What exactly is it that you have against him? You two are not really doing a fantastic job of being friendly with one another." Paige was blunt. Everything he said was always upfront, he never held back. The guy had no filter whatsoever and it showed.

Finn narrowed his eyes and his eyebrow twitched slightly, as if the simple thought of Idia got under his fins. "He's obnoxious, rude, talks nonstop — ugh, his gamerlingo is unbearable —, he's selfish, and outright disrespectful! If I had to list the times he's made comments regarding my weight, the list would go on for an eternity." Finn looked like he wanted to say more, but held his tongue to prevent his words from getting out of hand.

However, he had already said the words that set Paige ablaze. He instantly sat up, his usually blank expression knotting into something that showcased incredulity. He knew full well Idia was a certified yapper, and he could seem highly obnoxious to most, but since when did he bodyshame others? "What do you mean by making comments on your body? What type of comments? Is he making fun of you?" By this point, Paige had taken off both his earbuds, which alerted Finn in some sort of way. Paige hardly removed both his earbuds, if even one, not even when he showered (he has waterproof earbuds), and when he did, things were serious.

Finn hesitated before confirming Paige's suspicions, after all, Paige looked like he would go off stomping the second he said the truth. "Yes, he did. Such unoriginal insults, you'd think he was proud of hims- Paige, where are you going?!"

Paige didn't need to hear another word. He did indeed stomp off (quite literally). And he was stomping off to Ignihyde.

Paige did not even knock before letting himself into Idia's room, already knowing the password by heart since Idia had given up on changing it (Paige figured out every time). Idia was in the middle of game, nearly flying off the bed when Paige came in and turned on the lights in his room.

"You and I have something to discuss."

ITS DONE RAAAAAAHHHHHH

Guys I swear I didn't procrastinate this for a whole month trust 🙏

Btw this is the first fic I've ever ever written so my apologies for it being trash 😍🫶

Tagging: @thehollowwriter @cyanide-latte @xen-blank (let me know if you wish to be added to the taglist)

[lueurichor]

Cellphone spying! TDA Edition (;TWP)

(I'll be asking this same question to respective other sub-fandoms in the Shadowhunter community so that we have a net-profit of fantastic phone snooping of our own favs)

What are their most used apps, their background photos, their favourite social media, and do they have a pop socket or a special kind of case? etc.! Let's get started!

This ask applies to each TDA cast member of note as well TWP (mainly just to emphasis that KiTy and Dru matter! haha)

❤️‍🔥 Type of Phone: Do they use their phone a lot? What brand is it? What type of model is it? Are they interested in a lot of gadgets or is it very outdated? Does it have a cracked screen? Do they splurge often to buy their phone? Why is it that model?

❤️‍🔥Type of Phone case- Is it utilitarian? Is it branded? Is it funny quirky and often changed up to match certain outfits? Or does it have a string around sometimes just to be useful for i.e. when they take shifts and are on patrol so they have and its very to have a case that wraps around them? What colour is it? Why is it that colour or design?

❤️‍🔥 Most Used Apps: I.e. is it Instagram, Spotify, Mail, Netflix, DC Universe Infinite?

❤️‍🔥 Favourite Random App: i.e. something bizarre like like Hiking trails or Vinted

❤️‍🔥Favourite Social Media App: Is it Instagram? Do they use instagram live a lot? Or reels? Or do they prefer using TikTok for live content?

❤️‍🔥 Favorite App Game: Could it be Candy crush? Or do they not not play games? Is it because of lack of storage?

❤️‍🔥Home & Lock-Screen Photos: What is their wallpaper right now? Do they change it regularly? If so to what? Or is it a generic wallpaper that never changes and it comes wit the phone? Or is it of family members? Maybe a wallpaper affiliated with a sports team or a favourite fandom? Or a fandom ship? Is it a different wallpaper from their home screen?

❤️‍🔥Group Chats (the most frequented): Are they in many different Group Chats? Or they absolutely refusing to be a part of group chats? Or at least a few? If so what, are the group chat's names and who is a part of it? Do they keep the group notifications on? Or muted?

❤️‍🔥 Organization: How do they organise their phone? Is it into sub-folders? How is it organised by theme? How frequently they reach for the app?

❤️‍🔥 Most Called: Who do they call the most? And how often do you say? Or does this person not need to call their person often bc they are often WITH them?

❤️‍🔥Prefers to Call or FaceTime: Video calls or phone calls?

❤️‍🔥 Most Texted: Who do they most text? Their siblings? Their love interest? Their best friend? Who?

❤️‍🔥#1 Emergency Contact: ?

❤️‍🔥Alarms: How many alarms does this person set? Do they use alarms solely for waking up? Or does they set reminders for different tasks or timers for assignments? How much backlog of alarms is there of alarms? Or do they keep only the few they use on the regularly?

❤️‍🔥What news apps do they get their current events?: Do they even check in on current events? Or do they get it from podcasts? Or do they get their news from social media? And if so which?

❤️‍🔥 Social Media Usage: Are they, 'popular' on social media? Thus having a high follower count? What do they tend to post to 'the public'? Are they gearing their instagram or TikTok for a more artistic angle or sharing private important moments to the public? i.e. what they eat, what their favourite show is right now? Do they curate it to a specific aesthetic? Or do they not bother at all? and can go a long time without checking their social media? Do they have a burner account they use to follow all their favourite things and spy on people? Or do they not play that game?

❤️‍🔥 Most Listened to Song (currently): ?

❤️‍🔥Most Listened to Podcast (currently):?

And that's it for now! Thank you thank you for indulging us with your detailed creatives, I hope you will find this as fun as I can anticipate when I go giddy seeing your lovely answers that are at this point as close to canon as real!

xoxo

Regarding the Cellphone-Spying

This is an Answer-Post to a really nice & intriguing question I received from @emmalovesfitzloved.

I really don’t know how freaking long this answer-post will be, so I hope y’all are in for this ride!

We’re starting off with Kit, since he's definitely one of my favorite characters and also one for whom I have lots of personal head canons & theories, which will make this a lot easier. He was also the first one that came to mind!

I also made some categories to please my perfectionistic, organization-obsessed brain. Hopefully, it’ll make everything look less long & intimidating.

The Outside

So, first of all, Kit definitely has an IPhone. I'm thinking maybe 11 or 12 model-wise, and for sure either a blue or silver one (though the light blue one is the most obvious choice for sure)

He would have one of these weird-ass clear cases with the circle thingy, the only reason being that everybody else uses those as well, and he didn't really feel the need to stand out (at least not through his choice of phone case??)

Also, he is one of those people who store absolutely everything in their phone case. Keys, money, hair clips (for Mina), chewing gum, guitar picks (my kit-attempts-to-play-the-guitar-headcanon is very strong), a paper heart (from either Ty or Mina, you decide) and random pieces of garbage

All his wallpapers, not matter if we're talking home- or lock screen, are always pictures of him with his loved ones. Always. Ty basically lives on his lock-screen rent-free at this point.

In terms of accessories, I will definitely stand by the fact that he uses very old, partly damaged wired headphones (instead of listening to his boyfriend!) and is very stubborn about it. He also uses a pop socket, either one of those black-and-white checked ones or one with some sort of comic or movie reference.

The Inside

Apps

He has an average amount of apps, mostly socials and unnecessary games he downloaded because of advertisements but never really uses.

There isn't really an organization to them (like color-coded or something); he just lets them be where they are.

Most used Apps: WhatApp, YouTube and Google (pretty basic)

Personalization

Alarms: He actually only needs like three alarms, the first one being the most annoying sound ever (summit), and the others just in case.

Ringtone: He definitely had a duck-one at some point, simply out of spite and to scare Jace.

People

The people he texts the most are Ty and Dru. I would actually even say that he and Dru have more messages together than he and Ty, for numerous reasons. One of them being the fact that their chats contain many many playful arguments which result in tons of short messages and emoji-spams. Also, Ty isn't really a texter in my mind, and the two of them are around each other the whole time anyway.

In terms of who he calls the most, it's definitely Ty and Tessa, who's also his #1 Emergency Contact. Kit calls Tessa a lot, not only to talk to Mina who does not have a phone, but also just to check in, get advice or just talk for a bit. Him and Ty do both normal calls and video calls, but only if they're away from each other, normally, which doesn't happen too frequently. But when it does, they'll be calling each other a lot!

Group Chats, whew. This is gonna be a long one😅 There is, of course, a family group chat with Jem, Tessa and Kit, that'll have Mina in it later. Just a basic one, I would say, where he always replies (like the good son he is). He's also definitely in a chat with the whole Blackthorn-Family (in which he's mostly active through weird emoji-reactions) and the TWP-Gang (which he keeps muted A LOT, mostly because of Dru). And then there's a really unnecessary Herondale Group Chat, which Jace thinks is very important (it only has him and Kit in it at the moment; they're waiting for eventual children to add😭).

That's it for now, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did! I know I did not cover every single question, there'll be coming more later, hopefully!

[cryptidvoidwritings]

Full text below.

A D.J. pawing through a carton of old LPs — Natalie Cole, Angela Bofill — comes upon a curiosity: the original cast album of “Cats.” When he opens the gatefold, glittery spangles fly everywhere.

That’s how “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” begins, and it’s basically what the Perelman Performing Arts Center’s drag remake of the Broadway behemoth does to the drab original. It sets the joy free.

Whether upper- or lowercase, cats never previously offered me much pleasure. The underlying T.S. Eliot poems, ad libbed for his godchildren, are agreeable piffle, hardly up there with “Prufrock” as fodder for the ages. The musical, instead of honoring the material’s delicacy, stomped all over it, leaving heavy mud prints. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, and especially the rigged-up story and original staging by Trevor Nunn, tried so hard to make big statements from little ditties and kitties that it wound up a perfect example of camp.

Camp, cleverly, is the new version’s base line, neutralizing that criticism. It turns out that the show once advertised vaguely (and threateningly) as “now and forever” — it ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000 — works far better in a specific past.

That past is the world of drag balls, which at the time of the original “Cats” was beginning to achieve mainstream awareness. Madonna’s appropriation of the participants’ style and dance moves in her videos and concerts, as well as Jennie Livingston’s celebration of them in her documentary “Paris Is Burning,” helped pave the way for the supremacy of RuPaul and dragmania today. But beneath that triumph lay a darker truth: that the thrill of ball culture depended on its drawing extravagance from destitution, meeting prejudice with bravery, and staring down death with style.

The key insight of this “Jellicle Ball,” which opened on Thursday at the new downtown arts cube, is that at least some of those themes could resonate with Eliot’s subtext and Lloyd Webber’s score. The directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch have thus transported Grizabella, Skimbleshanks, Rum Tum Tugger and the rest from a metaphysical junkyard to a hotel ballroom for a vogueing competition, accompanied by new versions of the songs that go heavier on the synthesizers, turn some lyrics into raps and add a distinctive house beat.

It’s often a good fit. The former felines — now fantastically attired humans — compete in traditional categories, like Opulence and Hair Affair, that are to some degree matched to Eliot’s descriptions. The song “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer,” for instance, pits those two “knockabout clowns” against the pairing of the balletic Victoria and the acrobatic Tumblebrutus in a showdown called Tag Team Performance.

Not that it is any easier to keep the cats straight just because they’re queer. The structure of the show doesn’t allow it. Hemmed in by the Eliot estate, Nunn could not add dialogue, making it difficult to flesh out any characters or encourage specific emotional investment. His solution was a bizarre framing device with late-1970s woo-woo overtones: The clan meets each year on the evening of the Jellicle moon so that their leader, Old Deuteronomy, can choose one lucky cat to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn.

That silliness didn’t help much. It remained difficult to keep Jellylorum and Sillabub apart or care about either. In revivals like the one on Broadway in 2016, let alone the dreadful 2019 movie, the material seemed fatally ludicrous.

And if “Jellicle Ball” doesn’t quite solve that problem, it succeeds in making it mostly irrelevant. The new frame allows you to feel something for the characters, at least as a group, even when you don’t know what’s going on, which is often. The design of the long, narrow room, with the audience surrounding a runway on three sides, is awkward in the way one imagines the balls were: You can’t see everything, you’re constantly craning, the sound (by Kai Harada) is blurry and some fuss or hilarity is always happening somewhere you missed.

Even so, we recognize Rum Tum Tugger (Sydney James Harcourt) far better now that he competes in the Realness and Body competitions. (He’s a smooth playah.) Gus, the theater cat, is a more instantly recognizable type as performed by Junior LaBeija, the M.C. of the “Paris Is Burning” ball, as a catty old queen who, though “no longer a terror” can still throw ample shade. And it takes little more than the arrival of André De Shields, with his unsurpassed ability to freeze attention onstage, to show us that Old Deuteronomy is a Moses.

It helps, too, that he’s given a glowing Ten Commandments-like set of tablets, and that he’s dressed (by Qween Jean) in royal purple topped by a gigantic matching lion’s mane (by Nikiya Mathis). Indeed, the wonderfully over-the-top design of the show is as important as the concept itself in filling out the vast blanks of the characters as written. Enjoyable as that is in itself, the chief benefit of the physical staging (on sets by Rachel Hauck, with lighting by Adam Honoré and projections by Brittany Bland) is that it grounds the performative mayhem on the runway in a real environment that suggests the struggles of real lives.

Among other things, this rescues the nominal star role, Grizabella, from bathos. A faded “glamour cat” seeking the reincarnation nod, she has no other function in the original story, not even suspense. (We know she’s going to be chosen because she keeps popping up to sing fragments of “Memory.”) But here, in smeary makeup, a ratty fur and carrying a tarnished old trophy, scrambling about the outskirts of the action, we see at a glance the pain of an outsider now exiled from the place she’d once been safe. Especially as played by Chasity Moore, known in the ball world as Tempress, that pain feels authentic.

That is not something that ever occurred to me in watching the old-school “Cats.” At best the Broadway show felt like a stoned oratorio about nothing, with a dog’s breakfast of song styles including ear-wormy music hall, grating electronica and the occasional Gilbert and Sullivan chorale. (The choral singing here, under the direction of William Waldrop, is gorgeous.) Likewise, the original choreography, by the Royal Ballet star Gillian Lynne, seemed totally random despite its supposedly catlike footwork. The athletic vogueing created for this production by Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles, sometimes blended with throwbacks to Lynne’s classical style, is instead perfectly tailored to its milieu, and thrilling besides.

I should say at this point that, no, I haven’t turned into a fan of the show itself, the one you can see at your community theater or license for your high school. I don’t believe musicals should need whisker consultants. But as happens occasionally, the right idea can transform the wrong material. If “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” has managed a Grizabella turn, reincarnating itself in fabulousness, do not expect an 18-year run or, pardon me, copycat productions. It’s a lightning strike: not now and forever but now and once.

(Honestly, I'd respect this guy more if he came out and said 'I'm taking money to pretend to review the new show but actually am just regurgitating 40 years of The Smart, Cultured Critics Hate CATS.')

[omar4982]

Weekly Reflection(Ⅰ)

(1)

I sat on my working area in a gloomy afternoon, not hopeful and excited, because I knew the reality was far away from the wealthy, though I sat in a wide and comfortable seat ostensibly. In an instant, an idea sparked from my exaulted spirit——writing. I may write something and record my life weekly, then post on Twitter. Gorgeous! A fantastic feeling went through extremities, then I went back to childhood memories.

When I was in primary school, my wirting was praised by teacher frequently, I don’t have language ability and a knowledgeable vocabulary, but creative thinking. I might inherit from my dad. He’s good at maths and phisics, but nothing about literature and language. According to this logic, he must have a shortcoming for writing. However, his articles are excellent, and he’s pround of that, even took the ability in his job. I and dad write a singular text, but we both are not in the general system.

Writing the life, feelings, emotions, ups and downs, something moving, something bizarre…Oh goodness, how joyful I was.

(2)

Nowadays, more and more population study English language for communication. And this language is more useful than which numerous people imagine. Not just a tool, but a kind of inventiveness and sophisticated system.

My English had always been fettered in a way until last week. The thing was that I’d like to use translation when the sentences seemed just a little bit difficult, whenever sending message or reading English materials. I thought I never understand entirely, so I should compare translation online every time for getting the most accurate meanings. Yes, I got the most accurate ones, but those English were not from me, but the computer and my smart phone. I made robot give answers and help it prove that it is perfect and high-class, but nothing related about my own English skills at all. Oh, I’d cheated myself for many years. Finally, I abandoned it and be myself.

Study is the thing that use a right way, rather than a method which always makes you comfortable.

[theswampghost]

can i be honest for a sec? i kind of don’t like the david tennant + catherine tate much ado.

truly just personal preference but i hate the direction of the confession scene, it takes all of the gravity and weight out of the previous scene, hero’s humiliation, claudio’s betrayal, beatrice’s anger…. i understand the intention: love is a funny, embarrassing, human thing! but i also think that the tone shift ends up being so jarring and bizarre and ultimately doesn’t work very well with the themes of the text.

anyways everyone go watch the 2019 shakespeare in the park Much Ado it’s on archive.org and it’s FANTASTIC!

[uncannychange]

Nu Ape Flu? How about a New Do?

Catherine Armstrong, co-president with her husband Richard of Nutrition Gems Health Bars, an up-and-coming health and energy product, had been negotiating a deal for barley and oats in Canada.

As usual for her, it had been a grand success, mainly due to her business skills, but also in no small part because of the charm and grace of the always perfectly attired, flawlessly applied makeup and coiffured honey-blonde hair of the businesswoman.

Then Richard got a text from her saying that her return to Oregon would be delayed due to her having gotten the rare and bizarre new flu showing up called RNA-23 Dex-Gamma 5, or as nicknamed by the public, the Nue-Ape Flu, which in some rare cases allegedly, affected the deep cells of the victim's body and causing avataric changes in the from long past ancestry, extremely long past ancestry.

Catherine, it seems, had one of the worst cases on record. So bad that she was kept isolated and incommunicado for two whole months, with Richard hearing nothing but what the hospital told him.

Then, at last, she contacted him.

“It was very rough there for a while.” read the first text from Catherine in 64 days. “but I am up and feeling as healthy as ever!”

“I’ll be right there right away to get you!” replied Richard.

“No need,” she typed. I was released two days ago, but I looked a total mess… among other things, and could not think of coming back without a new outfit and a complete makeover.”

“So you’re on your way home?” asked Richard

“No, I'm already here. I waited until I was back before I texted you. I’m standing outside the door, open it, and say hello…. I’ve really been missing you, dear! But there is something I must tell you first.”

Richard didn’t understand why she had not just come right in, but not waiting for another text, went straight to the door of their top-floor apartment and opened it.

Richard saw why she had hesitated to walk in.

“You smell fantastic!” said Catherine, sniffing in the direction of her stunned husband. "Yes, I know… very different, but you would not believe how much my senses of taste and smell have improved. I am going to really be able to improve our products.”

“Now, I already told you I’ve been missing you; take me in and show me how much you’ve been missing me.”

[blazescompendium]

Blaze's Compendium entry #2: Zhu Tun She: A pig? A snake? Both!?

This is a very mysterious creature, that supposedly has been spotted during the Song Dynasty, in China. (This being between 10th and 13th century)

Zhu Tun She (which means literally something like ''Snake Pig'' in Chinese) was described as a demon or monster snake, but it had four legs and behaved like a pig but violently, making squeaking noises. Some sources say it was covered in scaled and hair.

This specific creature caught my attention some years ago, and was one of the first Megaten Demons that i wanted to research by my own, because i found it very interesting. I ended up going to a Chinese Book Store in my city to research it, but it was relatively unknown even for natives. The internet has surprisingly few information about this demon, and since i do not speak Chinese, there's a huge language barrier. Still, i went on.

The most widely spread tale about Zhu Tun She in the west and Chinese web, is that it appeared during the Song Dynasty attacking peasants and soldiers, and (maybe) sometimes eating them. It was supposedly defeated by an officer who was also a magician, and managed to kill it.

From my initial superficial research in the topic, as well my more detailed one, it seems this creature is not a recurrent one. They are different from more recurrent characters, that have their own tales and whatnot. As far as i could pinpoint, at least, Zhu Tun She had just a small tale from a very specific time period. It's valid thought, that i affirm once again i am not a Chinese speaker, so if the creature appeared in other literary works, i was not able to read nor find it.

Zhu Tun She in Demi Kids. Sorry i stacked them...

The origins of the beast came from the Yijianzhi, a collection of folkloric and fantastic tales written during the Song Dynasty. This series of tales contained originally hundreds of chapters, which were complied by Hong Mai, a prolific writer from the time. Its believed that the first chapter was from around 1161, and the other ones from around 1198.

Hong Mai (1123 - 1202) was an author that decided to collect this old stories in a book. He gave the name Yijianzhi in honor to the author Yijian, which wrote according on tales he himself heard, according to Taoist Texts.

The Yijanzhi by itself is very interesting. It contains multitudes of texts, that travels around a lot of topics. From gods, to ghosts, to revenge stories, kings, fantasy, some bizarre stuff, and most important: Fantastical creatures that inhabit those legends.

In case you want to read the book... I have good and bad news: The good news is that it received a partial translation to English in 2018, i have read this version. It's called Records of The Listener and it's a simple and very rewarding read. There's also a 2007 version of partial translation. Both are properly archived and you can read it online.

The bad news is that, they are just a partial translation, many tales are missing and the Zhu Tun She one is among those missing. We do, however have a summarized version, this version was extracted from me from Chinese sources, but you can also find it on the western web. I used software to translate it, so please forgive me if i get something wrong. (See below)

But before, let's discuss it's origins a bit:

While the source mostly associated with the story, was the elusive Shigeru Mizuki book ''Dictionary of Chinese Demons'', and probably the same Kaneko took it from. There's hardly English sources about this demon, which made it very hard to research about it not being a native Chinese speaker, or at least knowing a bit of the language.

Me and some friends even pondered about it being made up by Mizuki, since it has happened before with other creatures. But with the help of the Chinese Web, i could pin down exactly where this tale was originally from:

-This was present in the book Siqu Quanshu. It's a compendium from the Qing Dynasty that contained some chapters of the Yijian Zhi including this one, you can read in it's entirety online here. (If you can read Chinese. If you can't, i will provide a translation below do not fear.)

The indexation in this book is as follows:

Siqu Quanshu -> Yijian Zhi -> 戊卷03 ( volume 3) - It's unclear how was it's original index in its original source.

(Thanks u/storiesti for helping me finding it)

The compendium in question was commissioned by the emperor Qianlong, and it's how this tales survived. That's important, because many Yijian Zhi chapters simply did not survived to the modern age, and the way some of them did was being republished in works such as that. So, at the very least it was not made up by Mizuki or anyone in the internet.

So... What was this story about then? What was our little piggy's tale?

Here's a brief version of it, translated via software, sorry it was the best i could do:

In the stationed army at Jiankang, there was a officer named Cheng Jun who was very experienced in the "forbidden spells" technique, especially in subduing demon snakes. This incident seems to have happened in the 23rd year of the Shaoxing period. (1130 AD) One evening, when the army was training outside the south gate, a snake suddenly appeared in a bamboo woods. The snake was as thick as a pestle, about three feet long, covered in fur, with four legs, just like a demon. When it appeared, it would make a sound like a pig and chase after people while making this noise, running as if it were going to devour them. People could only panic and flee with no way to deal with it. At this moment, someone nearby found a horse stable and quickly used it to trap the snake, then reported the matter to the commander. The commander immediately sent someone to investigate and also commanded Cheng Jun, who was famous for subduing spirit snakes, to take care of the snake. After a while, Cheng Jun arrived; as soon as he saw it, he recognized the shape of the demon snake under the horse stable. He said, "This is called 'Zhu Tun She', a type of demon snake that kills people once they get entangled by it." After that, Cheng Jun blew air from above the horse stable and began to use his spells. Soon, Cheng Jun commanded someone to open the horse stable, and they saw the demon snake curled up and motionless. Cheng Jun then closed the horse stable again, deeply inhaled as if he was absorbing moonlight, and then blew air from above the stable three more times. Afterwards, Cheng Jun commanded someone to open the horse stable again, and they saw that the demon snake had turned into a puddle of blood.

A.. lot happened here as you can see.

Shigeru Mizuki's depiction of the Zhu Tun She.

It's unclear how common this demon was supposed to be in that tale, since Cheng was able to identify it pretty easily, and was known to defeat monsters like that all the time.

But that is how far it goes, the creature was (to my knowledge) never mentioned again, and made brief appearances in popular media. I don't know how it ended up in Mizuki's table, but he helped to popularize it since most of sources end up in his book. This is of course because it's way more accessible to read a book from the 1990s than an old scroll from 1130s.

Zhu Tun She differs from other critters i'v researched about, because there's few to no nuance in its existence. There's no moral to the tale, there's nothing to explain it as well, it seems like a cryptid from the old world, or just an elaborated fictional tale to amuse the emperor.

My personal theory is that: If it was not made up to amuse the Emperor, it was probably a very weird capybara or something like that. Who knows?

Still it's a very fascinating demon, a creature that would be terrifying to find alone in a bamboo forest for sure. But the best part of this study was to find more about the work where it came from, the Yijian Zhi. This books are simply amazing.

It's a collection of tales from old China, some supernatural, others just common tales. Still, they are very brief and entertaining also shedding some light into old China, full of myths and stories. As i said, there's a partial translation to English available to buy, or read online! Go check it out.

As for our pig friend, i could not find out if it had other apparitions in Chinese folklore, as mentioned before. It seems Zhu Tun She was an very isolated incident, and has only known by us because someone republished the tale many years later.

You see, snakes are beings very present in Human collective consciousness. Snakes were natural predators to early humans, many of us are born with innate fear of snakes. Snake monsters, demons and gods are part of lots of cultures around the world. The Quetzalcoatl in Central America, the Hydra in Greek Mythology, Orochi in Japanese mythology. In Northeastern Brazil there's a tale of a Feathered monster Snake called ''The Lapa's Feathered Snake''. This is just some of them, while many other exist.

As our ancestral predator and a very dangerous creature, snakes ended up taking a lot of space in our minds.

It's possible that other creatures similar to Zhu Tun She have been written, but could be lost to time. Who knows? There's indeed many other snake demons around the world, so our pig friend here is not alone!

I'd like to thank sorenblr for helping me getting attention to this research, and also Atmaflare for literally accompanying me during this research. @sorenblr and @atmaflare thank you!

Hope you all enjoyed!

Sources: -Siqu Quanshu: Some Yijian Zhi tales (Original Chinese book where the tale is currently available, brought from the Yijian Zhi books)

-The Dictionary of Chinese Demons (Shigeru Mizuki, could not find it for buying but its the source parroted throughout the web.)

[siphersaysstuff]

so I was musing in chat about the silliness of the BAH GAWD THAT'S STEVE AUSTIN'S MUSIC gimmick in pro wrassling, how the mechanics of it make zero sense (are they sending text messages to the sound booth? Are there people paid simply to see if a wrassler is approaching the ring and they text the sound booth? Do the wrasslers just manifest music all on their own?) and yet, and yet, it is such a fucking great gimmick and an unbelievable hype-producer that it took me until... today to even realize how little "real world" sense it made, that it slid right into the absurd hyper-reality of kayfabe so neatly, so cleanly, that not only did I never question it, I NEVER WANT IT EXPLAINED. That would be the one of the worst things wrassling could self-inflict on itself.

And then I was introduced to possibly one of the best examples of this fantastic stupidity and amazingly wonderful unreality... AEW's "Timeless" Toni Storm.

motha

fuckin

silent film star character gimmick

in 20fuckin23

I ain't gonna pretend pro wrasslin' hasn't been... problematic, to put it way too politely, the 90s were especially dire, XTREMEly dire, really vile shit, but like

When it lets loose, when it doesn't get all self-important and up its own testosterone-tightened ass, when it embraces the unreality and plays to those strengths to just have fun of these cartoon characters of human beings walloping each other in this bizarre pocket universe where our laws, be they scientific or societal, do not apply...

Wrasslin' can be really good.

[television-overload]

Wait since your a chiefs fan what do you think of the Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift relationship? A

I'm so glad you asked 🎤 *ahem*

I've never been that into Taylor Swift, I listened to her early stuff as a kid, her country albums and early pop, but her newer stuff for the most part isn't my jam

That said, I find the whole thing hilarious and adorable and I wheeze laughing for like 5 minutes anytime I see something new pop up in the news, because it's just so wild to me

The Chiefs were so so bad at football throughout my childhood, you'd think Kansas City didn't even have a football team with how little people talked about them. They were forgettable, one of those teams you can't even remember the name of unless you're actually a football fan.

Of course, for the last few years they've been on fire and it has been so exciting! I love all the players, have had a Kelce jersey since their first Super Bowl. But my brain still hasn't processed that they're actually good and known on a national level now, so it almost feels like my cousin or something is suddenly dating a world famous pop star 😂😂😂 surreal

All that to say, I love it, I hope it genuinely works out, she seems like exactly the type of woman he's been looking for. I love seeing the Swifties learning about football too. I genuinely laughed for like 10 minutes when I got the idea to see if tumblr had caught on and saw the fanfiction 😂 there was one that started out with him and his brother's podcast and the way they wrote his voice and common phrases was fantastic and hilarious. "Alright nah!" Love their podcast, and his brother. Last season was fun, but this is the most fun NFL season I've experienced, thanks to Taylor Swift, the Kelce brothers, and trying fantasy football for the first time.

Also the video of her running up to kiss him after her concert had me grinning ear to ear. Even my brother texted me a link to it and said "kicking my wittle feetsies at this" 🤣

The news has been such a dumpster fire lately, it's nice to have something sweet in it. I think at the beginning the broadcasters were leaning a little too hard into it and I hope people can respect their privacy outside the spotlight, but sadly that's probably unlikely with all the paparazzi. The fun killers who comment hate everywhere need to let people enjoy things

Tl:dr, it's so bizarre, I feel like I'm in an alternate timeline, but I absolutely love it

[nrowesims]

Yeah, so, September came and Natasha began university. She got a student loan, a small scholarship and enrolled in the economics program. Then one morning on her way back from her early shift as a barista, Natasha collapsed.

Ryan was devastated.

He went through the motions in his new job as a dishwasher. Played a little ball, alone. Though his heart wasn't really in it. He felt empty inside without his Tasha.

As people sometimes do, he turned to drink. He'd sit at the bar, his face like a storm cloud and barely tasting what was put in front of him.

It was here, at the hangout made of old shipping containers, that his friend Grace found him. She was shocked at the news.

They sat and they talked. Grace asked probing questions about Ryan's past. He was so sunk in the grief of the present that he only numbly and half-consciously answered. Ryan didn't know his mother, or her family. Some of the questions Grace asked were really odd. Childhood memories, reactions to everyday phenomena, his favourite foods. As the conversation progressed, Grace seemed to become more and more animated. She smiled broadly.

Two nights later, Ryan received a text from Grace.

Meet me at the old quarry building at 11. Don't be late.

How bizarre! Well, Ryan made the rendezvous at the appointed time.

Next thing Ryan knew, Grace was leading him through an archway which shimmered very peculiarly. They stepped out together into a nightscape with a completely different quality of light than that they had just left. The air even smelled changed.

Before Ryan could ask what was going on, or where they were Grace pulled something from the pocket in her skirt. She backed up purposefully, made some nonsensical exclamation and there was a fantastic burst of light. Ryan was knocked completely over. Had Grace attacked him?!

In short, Grace explained that they had crossed into a magical realm. One which few people knew about and even fewer had seen. Ryan had the unmistakable attributes of magic and Grace had just "kick started" his abilities, as it were. With a little training, he would be able to do many things, not the least of which was talk again with the spirit of his beloved Natasha.

She introduced him to the rather enigmatic Morgyn. A sage old in years though young in looks. Morgyn heard Ryan's story of loss and agreed to train him.

Ryan was sent to what was the retail district of this strange place. At first he thought the shop was manned by a ghost! However, he was told (in mildly disgusted tones) that the proprietor was an astral projection, thank you very much.

The snippy shopkeeper supplied Ryan with a broomstick and a wand (could this get any weirder?) made of what seemed to be bone.

As Ryan woke in his darkened bedroom, he was almost certain the whole thing had been a very peculiar, if vivid, dream. Feeling something hard under his pillow, Ryans hand caressed the long smooth surface of the bone wand!

Game Mechanics:

Natasha died of cardic explosion (from her high maintenance trait). Ryan was specifically created in CAS as a spellcaster but had never used any magic. Upon socializing with Grace, she autonomously invited him to a duel (where she promptly knocked him on his rear end of course).