#this is douglas ghastly ghost

[woosh-floosh]

Me: What was that noise?! Sounds like it was coming from the attic! Hmmm, it was probably nothing..

The Ghastly Ghost:

[doyouhavethisplush]

Do you have this plush?

Ghastly Ghost, by Douglas

[plushieanimals]

Ghastly Ghost by douglas 🤍

[amygdalae]

What kind of plushie is the wayward ghoul ? Its sooo adorable :')

It's the Ghastly Ghost from DOUGLAS :^)

I had to get it cuz at the bookstore we were packing up halloween display stuff to return to the warehouse and its beady little eyes called to me...it was the last one in stock.....

My other favorites of the Halloween plushes we got in were these ones (also from douglas) which sold out earlier last month

[the-howling-wind]

Nuzlocke - Ultra Moon (Part 5)

Chapter 8 - This is the end, my only friend

<<Prev - Next>>

As I predicted, my team was desperately unbalanced and in the long run I payed it dearly. For the Electric Trial I had to recruit Cinzia to the team and evolved her in Dugtrio: she wasn’t my first choice, being a rather glass cannon Pokémon, but I had no choice and in the end I breezed through the Trial. It was the rest that screwed me up.

Back in Malie Town I met Guzma, the boss of Team Skull: it was my chance to take him down! The battle was fierce and in the end he got Soma with a Critical Sucker Punch, going over his defenses. As I mourned the fall of my comrade, the scum took the chance and ran away!

I collected my bearing and rushed in Guzma’s pursuit; a bloody battle ensued with a herd of wild Mudbray and I had to trade Cinzia and Ashido’s lives to catch Reinhardt. But I was exhausted and broken by the many, many losses. Never I could be prepared for what fate had planned for me.

An anonymous trainer, nobody important (although he believe he was the Kahuna of Route 12) wiped out my whole team with a Pinsir powered up by two Sword Dance and that outspeeded my whole team.

It was the end.

Chapter 9 - I came up from the bottom and into the top

I really thought about giving up. Many do at this point. But I had still Pokémon in my boxes and, more importantly, I could no let go to waste all the lost lives. I HAD to see it through, with a new team, carrying on an important legacy.

In those months that I trained, I was encouraged by words that Oliver once told me: 

I need to believe that no matter what happens in our lives, no matter how much darkness infects us, I need to believe that we can come back from that.

It was hard getting back on my feet, both physically and emotionally. Many had died. Sometimes it was my fault, sometimes it was an inavoidable tragedy. And it was bound to happen, hell as I was training the new team I had losses again.

But now it was my time to take back what my own stupidity and a cruel fate desperately tried to destroy.

In the months of my absence I still kept a line open with the Professor and I learned that Hau stopped the Challenge to protect people and Pokémon from Team Skull... Glad somebody picked up the mantle I left.

I therefore hoped to resume my Challenge without having him biting at my heels. I found Acerola and started the Ghost Trial: Mimikyu proved to be a formidable opponent, my initial plan of swooping in with Judith’s Steel Wing went to hell, as my opponent was stronger thant expected and to make things worse he summoned a Banette that burned and cursed my Pokémon. I swapped in with Ivan, gave him a Defense X; he was cursed as well, but at least that killed Banette. I played the long game with Mimikyu and he called a Jellicent; luckily Ivan had Discharge, so in the end I managed to take them both down.

I found my wat to Aether Tower, where I found Hau and Plumeria; so much for staying under the radar... I jumped into the battle, but once again she went down dragging one of my own with her: Ivan was hit by a Critical Sludge Bomb, leaving him with 1 HP and Poison in his body; his attack against Salazzle was not enough to KO her, so he died, poison burning in his veins. 

I later learned that Team Skull stole some Pokémon and retreated to their HQ, Po Town. It was time to pay them a visit.. They owned me three lives.

- - -

Info & Rules

Trainer: Howling Wind

Time: 41:47

Deaths: 23

Rules (I know I seem to be adding them as I go, but most of them I forgot to put there in the first place)

Random Starter

Double Clause

Battle Mode Set

No Exp Share

No Rotom Power Ups

TMs can be re-used, but there can be only one Pokémon that learned the move in the team at one time

No Pokémon Care (at least to the point of getting free crits and resisting the KO)

UltraNecrozma doesn’t count as Nuzlocke Battle (they told me you either over level and trample everything after that or you’re in for a team wipe, so I’m not to keen on these options)

Team:

Cobblepot (Golduck ♂️ Lv 40; Ability: Cloud Nine; Nature: Impish ; Moveset: Water Pulse, Aqua Tail, Psychic, Disable)

Judith (Fearow ♀ Lv 42; Ability: ; Nature: Docile ; Moveset: Drill Peck, Steel Wing, U-Turn, Focus Energy)

Ada (Lurantis ♀ Lv 40; Ability: Leaf Guard; Nature: Jolly; Moveset: Leafblade, X Scissor, Brick Break, Petal Blossom)

Yuri (Absol ♂️ Lv 38; Ability: Super Luck; Nature: Gentle; Moveset: Nightslash, Psycho Cut, Sword Dance, Detect)

Paul (Scraggy ♂️ Lv 33; Ability: Moxie; Nature: Rash ; Moveset: Chip Away, Brick Break, Payback, High Jump Kick)

Pamela (Floette ♀ Lv 36; Ability: Flower Veil; Nature: Bashful; Moveset: Magical Leaf, Grassy Terrain, Petal Blizzard, Wish)

Pokémon Caught:

Route 1 - Dammek (Grubbin ♂️ Lv 4)

Route 1 (Outskirts) - Krillin (Wingull  ♂️ Lv 5)

Route 1 (School) - Lupin III (Zorua  ♂️ Lv 5)

Hau’oli City - Monoma (Mime Jr ♂️ Lv 6)  

Route 2 - N/A (Abra that got away)

Hau’oli Cemetery - Gabriel (Ghastly ♂️ Lv 8)

Sandy Cave - Cobbletpot (Psyduck ♂️ Lv 9)

Verdant Cave - Jiro (Noibat ♀ Lv 8)

Route 3 - Judith (Spearow ♀ Lv 9)

Melemele Meadow - Weiss (Petilil ♀ Lv 10)

Seaward Cave - Platinum (Delibird ♀ Lv 12)

Ten Carat Hill - Raiden (Mawile ♂️ Lv 12)

Ten Carat Hill (Meadow) - Bastion (Carbink Lv 13)

Route 4 - Akande (Pikipek ♂️ Lv 14)

Paniola Ranch - Ivan (Mareep ♂️ Lv 15)

Route 5 - Ada (Fomantis ♀ Lv 14)

Gift - Soma (Eevee ♂️ Lv1)

Brooklet Hill - Gwen (Dewpider ♀ Lv 15)

Route 6 - N/A

Diglett Cave - Cinzia (Diglett ♀ Lv 22)

Route 7 - Buttercup (Wishiwashi ♀ Lv 14)

Wela Volcano Park - Douglas (Fletchling ♂️ Lv 18)

Route 8 - N/A

Lush Jungle - Glimmer (Steenee ♀ Lv 19)

Memorial Hill - Garruk (Phantump ♂️ Lv 23)

Akala Outskirts - Raine (Natu ♀ Lv 22)

Hano Beach - Ashido (Tentacool ♀ Lv 24)

Malie Garden - Natasha (Ariados ♀ Lv 25)

Route 11 - Mako (Komala ♀ Lv 28)

Route 10 - Ribrienne (Raticate ♀ Lv 29)

Mount Hokulani: Elvis (Elgyem ♂️ Lv 28)

Route 12 - Reinhardt (Mudbray ♂️ Lv 32)

Route 13 - Mileena (Bruxish ♀ Lv 32)

Blush Mountain - N/A

Tapu Village - Yuri (Absol ♂️ Lv 32)

Mount Lanakila - Nora (Snorunt ♀ Lv 32)

Route 15 - Kami (Gumshoos ♂️ Lv31)

Route 16 - Paul (Scraggy ♂️ Lv 32)

Ula’Ula Meadow - Pamela (Floette ♀ Lv 36)

Pokémon Dead:

Gabriel (Ghastly, Lv 8->14, Route 2, Pursuit by wild Spearow)

Lupin III (Zorua, Lv 5->16, Route 3, Silver Wind by Ace Trainer’s Butterfly)

Krillin (Wingull, Lv 5->19, Totem Aquarinid)

Bastion (Karbink, Lv 13->21, Tomem Marowak)

Monoma (Mr Mime, Lv 6->24, Totem Marowak)

Raiden (Mawile, Lv 12->29, vs Plumeria)

Douglas (Fletchinder, Lv 18->30, Thunderbolt by Trainer’s Raichu)

Oliver (Dartrix, Lv 5->32, Aurora Beam by Trainer’s Octillery)

Mako (Komala, Lv 28->28, Mirror Move by wild Fearow)

Raine (Natu, Lv 22->24, Pursuit by wild Crabrawler)

Ribrienne (Raticate, Lv 29->30, Critical Slash by Trainer’s Absol)

Elvis (Elygem, Lv 28->31)

Soma (Vaporeon, Lv 1->37, Critical Sucker Punch by Guzma)

Cinzia (Dugtrio, Lv 22->33, Wild Mudbray)

Ashio (Tentacool, Lv 24->24, Wild Mudbray)

Dadmmek (Charjabug, Lv 4->37, double Sword Dance rampage by Trainer’s Pinsir)

Jiro (Noibat, Lv 8->37, double Sword Dance rampage by Trainer’s Pinsir)

Weiss (Petlil, Lv 10->27, double Sword Dance rampage by Trainer’s Pinsir)

Reinhardt (Mudsdale, 32->34, double Sword Dance rampage by Trainer’s Pinsir)

Gwen (Aquarinid, 15->35)

Natasha (Ariados, 25->31)

Akande (Trumbeak, 14->18)

Ivan (Ampharos, 15->41, Critical Sludge Bomb by Puleria’s Salazzle)

[fanfictionlive]

Seven Reasons Not to Write

This is not my content, I just don't know how to crosspost! I read this over on /r/writers and thought you guys would get a kick out of it, too. All credit to /u/newfriend999

​

1. Jacksickle

You're Jack Torrance, a frustrated writer, husband, father and recovering alcoholic, who takes the job of winter caretaker at the remote Overlook Hotel, hoping to break your dry spell. But the hotel is haunted and you're plagued by visions that you deal with less well than your twitchy six-year-old boy. Next thing you're getting drunk with ghost bartenders and terrorising your family with an axe. In the book you get blown up along with the hotel for failing to tend the dicky boiler, but in the movie you freeze to death after chasing your crafty kid into a maze. (The Shining, by Stephen King)

2. Wrung out

You're Bilbo Baggins, hobbit of the Shire, bachelor about town, proud of your home in a hole and its well-stocked larder. But you're pals with notorious stoner Gandalf the Grey, who tricks you into an adventure that nearly gets you killed by trolls, elves, dwarves, a dragon and a malevolent former hobbit called Gollum. And to make matters worse you forget your handkerchief. Your only bit of luck – finding a ring of invisibility – turns on you when it's revealed as the ultimate ring of power and transforms you into a wraith-ish addict. You write 'The Hobbit', aka 'There and Back Again, A Hobbit's Tale', and pass the ring to your nephew Frodo. Which ruins his life into the bargain, but he does manage to knock out 'The Lord of the Rings'. (The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien)

3. Demolished

You're Ford Prefect, writer-at-large for 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy'. On assignment to Earth you're nearly run over and name yourself after a car, initially believing automobiles to be the dominant species. Given the Ford Prefect was discontinued in 1961, the joke implicit in your name is incomprehensible to anyone under 50 (at a pinch), plus your best friend is an errant man-from-out-of-space, a character more 1970s than the band from The Muppets. You're nearly demolished on Earth, thrown into space, attacked by missiles and trapped on a spaceship aimed at the sun. Worse still, your sidekick is a whining Brit in a dressing gown and your comprehensive review of Earth is reduced to the words "Mostly Harmless". (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams)

4. Hounded

You're John H Watson, known as Dr Watson, and your best pal and flatmate Sherlock Holmes is a cocaine-addled egotist. He drags you into mysteries at great risk to your own life but doesn't let you in on his stratagems, including fake sickness and fake death. He generally dicks you around. Even in your own accounts of the adventures you share, you seem like a fool, and you must endure being patronized daily, not to mention Holmes' squalid untidiness. Frankly, it's a miracle you don't empty your service revolver into his face while screaming "Deduce this Motherfu....!" (The Sherlock Holmes series, by Arthur Conan Doyle)

5. Humiliated

You're Bridget Jones and you have a perfect relationship with a grape called Chardonnay, but your interfering mother insists you get off with dull Darcy from next door, because your life is a weird echo of Pride and Prejudice. Lust is your guide and you're defiled by a two-faced cad, played by "Huge Gland" (as the 'Four Weddings' actor is known in Japan) in the movie adaptation. Your attempts at betterment in the world of media lead to national humiliation and, worse, your ghastly cheating mother was right all along about the man of your dreams. In a humiliating twist, you're played in the movie by an actress significantly shorter and fatter than your byline photograph. (Bridget Jones' Diary, by Helen Fielding)

6. Duped

You're Samson Young, an American writer living in London, suffering from writer's block and terminal illness. You meet smoking hot sexpot Nicola Six, who's got a date with death on Bonfire Night... plus ghastly small-time crook Keith Talent and nice-but-dim Guy Clinch. You're staying in the flat of famous-for-being-famous English writer Mark Asprey, who shares initials and wankerishness with author Martin Amis. Half in love with Nicola you turn into her appointed monster, while Mark Asprey steals your story, her story, the story. (London Fields, by Martin Amis)

7. Hobbled

You're Paul Sheldon, writer of pulp romances. You've just finished the novel of your life, a balls-out work of true literary merit, but you crash your car in a remote part of snowy Colorado, only to be rescued by "number one fan" Annie Wilkes. The good bit is that she loves you and is game for tending you back to health. The bad is she's madder than a badger, burns your novel and chops off your foot – or smashes your already auto-wrecked legs with a sledgehammer if you're watching the movie. Finally you bash her skull in. It's ok though, you're able to rewrite your good novel AND publish the pulp job she's encouraged... so critically and financially you're aces, it's just the old walking's a bit tricky. Not to mention the nightmares. (Misery, by Stephen King)

submitted by /u/SkylerBleu [link] [comments] from FanFiction: Where Magical Ponies battle Imperial Titans https://ift.tt/3cUpPvh

[bk-lostintranslation]

ESSAY: The Shōjo Heroine - Vaulting Geographic Barriers in Japan & Beyond

...The shōjo heroine, despite exemplifying fluid, nearly ephemeral identity, holds a multicultural allure seldom seen in Western works—one that allows her to straddle different cultures and continents while remaining quintessentially Japanese.

X-Posted at Apollon Ejournal

Within the dynamic realm of Japanese pop culture, the mediums of animanga have burgeoned into a fascinating contemporary phenomenon. What began as an obscure niche met with disparagement at best, dismissal at worst, has since then permeated markets on an international scale: from the cutesy craze of Pokemon to quintessential girl-power staples like Sailor Moon to critically-acclaimed masterpieces like Miyazaki's Spirited Away. The genre enjoys colorful permutations, raunchy or artistic, violent or thoughtful—sometimes in the same breath. Yet one of its most salient aspects is its recurrent use of young girls as both storytelling motifs and cultural icons. Their manifestations are nearly as kaleidoscopic as the source material they spring from: doe-eyed lolitas in frothy Victoriana, spunky schoolgirls in sailor uniforms saving the world, flame-haired spitfires wielding outsized swords, magical girls whose psychedelic transformation sequences carry the visual fanfare of a butterfly erupting from its chrysalis—the list goes on, often coexisting and overlapping in a disjointed medley that functions in equal parts as a paean to, and a pastiche of, femininity. Sometimes these girls serve as one-dimensional eye-candy within the mise-en-scène. Other times, they are the protagonists and the key players upon whom the plot itself pivots—at once powerful exemplars of gender-identity and Derrida-esque deconstructions of it.

Of course, one might argue that Western media is steeped in similar portrayals of femininity that either defy or mold themselves to patriarchal presuppositions. What, then, lends the figure of the archetypal animanga girl such transnational allure? Some argue that she represents female empowerment in its most multi-layered and triumphant form. She subverts pervasive stereotypes of Japanese women as submissive and sweet, while resonating with female audiences globally by shedding light on uniquely personal facets of 'girlhood' left unexplored by Western media. Others argue the opposite: that she holds such salacious sway largely because she is so fetishized and objectified as to become a ghastly chimera of borderline, if not outright, pedophilia—not to mention a damaging perpetuation of Japan itself as a bizarre wonderland of sexual vagaries.

However, one might just as easily argue that her appeal is rooted neither in gender boundaries, or their subversion. Rather, it is in the shadowy lacuna she occupies in the middle, as a liminal fantasy-figure of both transformation and possibility, whose struggles toward selfhood are at once uniquely Japanese and universal. At home she embodies the attractive nexus of nostalgia and hope: the bittersweet stage of girlhood that must yield inevitably to adult responsibilities of marriage and motherhood. Abroad, she epitomizes the classic stage of youth that is the threshold to something greater, but which in itself can never be recaptured—the ideal metaphor not only for coming-of-age, but for finding within that ephemeral space the freedom to discover oneself in a globalized sphere.

By themselves, of course, anime and manga increasingly occupy a critical space within the larger framework of non-diasporic globalization. Surfing a wave of popularity across different peer-to-peer platforms; fervently discussed and dissected on public and private forums across the Internet; pirated, scanlated, fansubbed and widely shared across networks—the mediums have engendered their own subcultures within a free-flowing landscape unbound by both legal and geographic constraints. According to Japan's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, anime outrivals the rest of the nation's TV exports at a shocking 90%. Similarly, manga sales in the US alone have witnessed exponential growth, skyrocketing from $60 million in 2002 to $210 million in 2007 (Suzuki, 2009). The sheer saturation of these mediums across global markets has lent them the term "meta-genre," raising compelling questions about the crux of their appeal (Denison, 2015). 

A number of scholars have weighed in on the subject, with many arguing that the je ne sais quoi of animanga lies beyond conceptual occurrences such as synecretism and (pop) cultural osmosis. Rather, it is in the vacuity of the genre itself, not as a quirky emblem of 'Japaneseness' but as its total negation. Koichi Iwabuchi, in his most celebrated monograph Recentering Globalization, refers to this as "cultural odorlessness," or mukokuseki. In Iwabuchi's view, the critical markers of 'Japaneseness'—whether racial, cultural, symbolic or contextual—are absent from animanga, allowing for their easy diffusion throughout the world (2007, p. 24). Similarly, in her work Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society, sociologist Sharon Kinsella equates the ubiquity of manga to 'air,' owing as much to the diversity of the genre as to its scope of dissemination—one that nearly verges on cultural dilution (2005, p. 4). 

Charged within the non-quality of 'odorlessness,' however, are compelling historical undercurrents. Scholars such as Hiroki Azuma argue that the cultural nullity of manga and anime is rooted as much in Japan's humiliating defeat in WWII as it is in its desire to reinvent itself on the global stage. Similarly, Joseph S. Nye equates the easy circulation of animanga with the careful crafting of a frictionless "soft power." Indeed, he speculates that the strategy proved imperative for a nation that had renounced its militaristic ambitions, and whose past was already embroidered with rich narrative threads of cultural eclecticism and fusion (2009). Similarly, in his article The Other Superpower, journalist Douglas McGray remarks that, "At times, it seems almost a strange point of pride, a kind of one-downmanship, to argue just how little Japan there is in modern Japan.  Ironically, that may be a key to the spread of Japanese cool" (2009). Of course, the very notion of "soft power" belies the apparent frivolity of animanga's commercial success. After all, Nye avers that the concept of soft power is entrenched in two-thirds statist influence, in particular political ascendancy and the assertion of foreign policy. The underlying purpose is to enhance the nation's scope of influence by lulling foreign audiences with appealing values, whether genuine or simulated, that the nation allegedly embodies. 

Naturally, this is no guarantor that the strategy will prove lasting or effective. As Nye notes, "Excellent wines and cheeses do not guarantee attraction to France, nor does the popularity of Pokemon games assure that Japan will get the policy outcomes it wishes" (2009, p. 14). However, there is no denying, either, that the mediums of anime and manga, while perceived as 'odorless,' are nonetheless imbued with a distinct whiff of Japaneseness. This proves apparent in everything from their production to their absorption. Despite transcending national borders, their characters attractively packaged in ambiguously 'Western' skin-tones, hair-colors and attitudes, their realms of storytelling blatantly divorced from superficial signifiers of Japan, they still carry within them undeniably Japanese themes and ideologies.  Series such as Blood+ blend trenchant international intrigue with a vampiric appetite for gore, yet tie the value of family to a poignantly Okinawan catchphrase—Nan-kuro-naisa, or It will all work out (2006). Similarly, the technologized labyrinth of Ghost in the Shell boasts a polyphonous, fragmented and multi-ethnic universe that practically embodies the liminal edge of cyberspace itself, yet within which Japan asserts its presence as a shadowy nation state, as well as through characters with patently Japanese monikers such as Makoto Kusunagi, Batou, Saito etc (2002).  In his work, Paradoxical Japaneseness: Cultural Representation in 21st Century Japanese Cinema, Andrew Dorman stresses that such narrative elements of Japaneseness are not accidental but deliberate, remarking:

As a method of successfully adapting films for a wider, more diverse audience, cultural concealment softens the impact of Japan's cultural presence in the global marketplace. Yet this does not constitute an erasure of Japaneseness, as indicated by Iwabuchi's concept of cultural 'odorlessness.' In anime's case, Japaneseness is inherent rather than explicit... Rather than disappearing, Japan asserts its presence in ways that are paradoxical, contradictory, and, as anime demonstrates, disorienting. 'Japaneseness' is very much fluid... there can be a distinctly Japanese method of appearing culturally ambiguous with Japanese exports (p. 45).

Similarly, in his book, Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America, Andrew C. McKevitt points out that, "...Cultural odor is relative to the nose of the smeller, what seem[s] denationalized to a prominent anime director could smell a lot like Japan to a young person in California" (p. 182). Indeed, even a cursory examination of Japan-centric scholarship—both among Western academia and otherwise—yields a fascinating oeuvre concentrated entirely on animanga: proof in itself that despite being lauded as hybrid marvels of transnationalism, within these works lingers a manifestly Japanese identity. To alight upon the genre as a stillborn phantom of Japan's ambitions for global leverage, only to then trivialize it because of the chameleon-like mutability of its nature, is missing the point entirely. The more Japan sheathes its cultural specificity within an aestheticized facade of multicultural ephemera, the easier it is to forget that this decontextualization is deliberate, and that it is part of Japan's broader efforts to re-situate itself within a fluctuating globalized sphere—on its own terms.

What better figurehead, then, for a metaphoric yacht of such intangible yet undeniable force than a young girl on the cusp of maturity?  Her faces and personalities are kaleidoscopic; yet in her essence she is singular, precisely because she is always amenable to transformation and transmutation, accretion and erasure—much like modern Japan itself. Anime and manga abound with her image: whether as a dreamy Miko resplendent in a white kimono and red hakama, the breeze stirring her hair alongside delicate drifts of cherry blossoms, to a bratty Yakuza princess complete with a chauffeur-driven car and a Chanel handbag, to a shy high-school girl with a pleated sailor fuku and tragic secrets lurking behind her guileless eyes.  From warrior to idol singer, magical girl to maid, she has no fixed personae. Instead, she enjoys numberless variations of tropes, numberless ways of veering between cute and cutthroat, dark and light. Her character design is often seamlessly entwined to a target audience: a playful vixen from a bishōjo, or "beautiful girl," series aimed largely at men, a voluptuous sidekick from a seinen (young boys) manga, or a cutesy superheroine hailing from the shōjo (young girls) demographic.

The treatment of the shōjo heroine in animanga is of particular interest, owing as much to the wild popularity of works such as Sailor Moon as to the prevalence of young female leads in renowned films such as Princess Monoke, Kiki's Delivery Service, Blood: The Last Vampire, and The Girl that Leapt Through Time.  Embraced by audiences both in Japan and abroad, she appears to be as much a national emblem as a state of being. In her work, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination, Anne Allison notes that, "...The shojo (as both subject and object) has come to stand as counterweight to the enterprise society: a self indulgent pursuer of fantasy and dreams... shojo have been given a cultural and national value of their own (p. 187)."

What, however, does the term shōjo encompass? At its simplest, the word is used in Japan's publishing industry to refer to a female target-demographic, typically pre-or-post adolescent. However, at its most complex, shōjo has evolved as a genre unto itself, spanning multiple styles, from romance to sci-fi, as well as accruing viewership both young and old. Far from a notch on the proverbial totem pole of social development, the shōjo protagonists of animanga have come to represent an intriguing hybrid space. They are defined as feminine, yet not: the badge of true womanhood naturally bestowed upon wives-and-mothers, with their would-be lofty goals of childbearing and nurturance. The shōjo heroine, however, is unfettered by such constraints. She exemplifies within herself the endearing nativity and brash independence of childhood. 

The history of the shōjo's intriguing cultural construct can be traced back to the Meiji period, when the nation's efforts to promote female literacy led to the creation of the Higher School Order in 1899, and the subsequent establishment of all-girls' schools.  The era also saw a plethora of text-based and illustrative magazines aimed specifically at young girls—originally to enculture them on government-sanctioned ideals of chastity and domesticity. With the passage of time, however, these girl-oriented communities increasingly became a space to explore femininity through a polychromatic lens, as opposed to a narrowly monochrome beam of patriarchy. Freed from the masculine aegis, this was one arena where young women could unlock otherwise stymied voices and discover their true selves. 

Novelists such as Yoshiya Nobuko gained particular renown for heroines who wore the fabric of empowerment so daringly yet delicately, celebrating rather than denying their femininity. The theme of Nobuko's works seldom revolved around marriage; rather, they cast a soft focus on the hidden worlds of the feminine, from navigating the complex waters of sexuality to bittersweet lessons in friendship and heartbreak. Indeed, a number of Nobuko's stories, such as Hana Monogatari (Flower Tales), have wielded considerable influence on contemporary shōjo classics, from Chiho Saito's Revolutionary Girl Utena to Ai Yazawa's Nana, both of which chronicle, not the protagonists' relationships with men, but the curious and complicated lives of the women at the heart of each narrative (Abbott, 2015; Robertson, 1998). 

As expected, the shōjo genre's blithe subversion of gender standards did not sit well with Japanese society.  In her work, The Human Tradition in Modern Japan, Anne Walthall remarks that, "The treatment of ... the shōjo period by the popular media in turn-of-the-century Japan reveals a Janus-faced object and subject of scrutiny... [It] began to grow into a life-cycle phase, unregulated by convention, as more and more young women found employment in the service sector of the new urban industrializing economy" (2004, p. 158-159). By the time of the Taishô democracy, the ranks of shōjo were graced by another, more contradictory feminine aesthetic— the flirty, flapper-esque "modern girl," or moga. Outgoing and brazenly occidentalized, the moga was cast by popular media as the antithesis of ryōsai kenbo (good wife and wise mother). She represented, in many ways, Japan's uneasy, almost bipolar relationship with Western modernity. With her sleekly bobbed hair and the swish of her short skirt, she trod carelessly over the sacred orthodoxies of gender and tradition. In spurning the conventions of marriage and motherhood, she was deemed aimless, vapid, and, in her own way, deviant. Indeed, it was not long before the very notion of shōjo, originally a benign emergent space within a modern but quintessentially Japanese framework, became perceived as its Ruben-Vase opposite: a symbol of Western decadence and disorder. The shōjo heroine, toppled from her pedestal of pure and timorous girlhood, came to occupy a freakish position outside the gender binary.  In her work, Transgendering Shōjo Shōsetsu: Girls' Inter-text/Sex-uality, Tomoko Aoyama likens the shōjo girl to almost a third sex, describing her as "free and arrogant, unlike meek and dutiful musume [daughter] or pure and innocent otome [maiden]" (2005, p. 49). 

Both daughter and maiden are, of course, patriarchal determinants. By providing a rebellious counter-note to these traditional roles of sweetness and submissiveness, the shōjo heroine distinguishes herself on yet another level—she is so profoundly Othered as to become an abstraction. This makes her nearly the ideal mascot of any genre in animanga: action, horror, comedy, romance. It is easy to either deify or eroticize an abstraction; like a blank slate, she can be inscribed with whatever values, or lack of them, that her creators (or the nation itself) wish to promulgate. Similarly, audiences can project on to her dreams and desires, whether empowering or exploitative, depending on their lens of scrutiny.

This duality of interpretation has been observed frequently, with the shōjo heroine being lauded simultaneously as a feminist icon, and as a lurid object of fetishization. On the one hand, many have argued that, far from being powerful assertions of the female body's agency, these girls are merely trapped within misogynist narratives. Even in instances when they appear to wield force against their foes, the angle and framing render them objects of male desire, rather than subjects with the freedom to pursue their own (Brazal & Abraham, 2014). Series such as Cutey Honey and Kill La Kill, for example, feature fierce warrior girls battling against insurmountable odds, yet are peppered with cheeky fanservice; diegetically, the girls may be the 'stars' of the show, but in terms of textual construction, they serve as the prurient centerpiece of a visual buffet. On the other hand, it has been argued that, far from depersonalized chess pieces within the plot, such characters are the embodiment of the modern girl's dreams, with the freedom to be both strong and self-indulgent, both desirous and desirable. If they flaunt skin or flout the maxims of modesty, it is because their interpretation of empowerment is a playfully Sadean paradigm, with desire as an act of transcendence.

Whether one interpretation deserves merit over the other is beside the point. The fact remains that animanga's treatment of the shōjo heroine is too self-reflexive to pigeonhole as sexist or feminist, largely because her portrayals play intensely with narrative traditions of reality and fantasy, strength and subjugation. In his forward of Saito Tamaki's book, Beautiful Fighting Girl, J. Keith Vincent notes that people often assume that the animanga heroine is " ...in some sense a reflection of the status of girls and women in Japan... What these analyses often miss, however, is that [she] is also a fictional creature in her own right, and one capable of fulfilling functions other than straightforward representation" (p. 4).  One might argue, of course, that the same can be said of any character in popular culture.  Good fiction, after all, necessitates a degree of abstraction; characters must be hyper-specific and nuanced enough to seem human, yet deindividualized enough as a walking vacant space so that audiences can slough their skins on and off, say the things they are saying, do the things they are doing. When done correctly, these characters resonate across different social and cultural spectrum, while remaining firmly rooted in their own particular narratives, enabling the audience to achieve a twofold sense of safety and discovery. When done wrong, these characters become bland placeholders who dissolve as little more than white-noise within the narrative itself. 

Yet the shōjo heroine, despite exemplifying fluid, nearly ephemeral identity, holds a multicultural allure seldom seen in Western works—one that allows her to straddle different cultures and continents while remaining quintessentially Japanese. In that sense, she almost personifies the essence of Japan's 'soft-power:' disarmingly sweet yet imbrued with all the fluid symbolism of the nation's past, and all the hopeful reinvention of its future. Certainly, Japan's national identity has often seemed a paradoxical blend of East and West, technology and mythology, tradition and innovation, apocalypse and rebirth. The shōjo heroine reflects this cultural propensity by amalgamating within herself these disparate elements in order to create a fresh and unexpected identity of her own.  In his work, Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential: How Teenage Girls Made a Nation Cool, Brian Ashcraft remarks that she represents:

...both gruff samurai, strong and powerful, and demure geisha, beautiful and coquettish. Decked out in her Western-influenced uniform, she brings these elements together into a state of great flexibility—the ability to be strong or passive, Japanese or Western, adult or child, masculine or feminine. At home and abroad, she is a metaphor for Japan itself (p. 3).

However, one might argue that, beyond a metaphor for Japan, the archetype of the shōjo heroine proves effective as both a cultural exemplar and an international ambassador because she gives center stage to the realms of fantasy and freedom. This goes considerably beyond puerile leaps of fancy or shallow substitute worlds; she is neither a proxy nor an escape hatch, and for all her trappings of feminism, her narratives are often noticeably depoliticized (although there are exceptions). 

Yet within that conspicuous absence of political semiotics, she is hailed as an icon of free-flight on a multiplicity of levels. Part of it has to do precisely with her femininity; otherwise, it could be argued that a young boy would function just as well as a diegetic symbol. Essayist Carmen Maria Machado remarks that being a woman, for better or worse, is intrinsically tied to the uncanny. "Your humanity is liminal; your body is forfeit; your mind is doubted as a matter of course" (Kuhn, 2017, p. 1). This unfixed and mutable image allows for a platform of reinvention and dissolution wherein anything goes, and where dreams or nightmares can be made or unmade.

The shōjo heroine takes full advantage of this transformative capacity. Her different personae allow her to bring something meaningful to extant social reality, by inviting audiences to delve into multifaceted territories and unfamiliar modes of being. Through her, mundane reality acquires a sheen of novelty and mystery; once-unshakeable truths are challenged as the porous constructs they are. The human condition itself is thrown into riveting relief against a larger backdrop, both global and cosmic. Her diverse manifestations offer, as Roland Kelts states in his book Japanamerica, an "increasingly content hungry world with something Hollywood, for all its inventiveness, has not yet found a way to approximate: the chance to deeply, relentlessly and endlessly immerse yourself in a world driven by prodigious imagination" (2006).

The shōjo heroine's cutesy facade does not hinder this approach, but instead enhances the experience for audiences, largely because her character becomes a nucleus of empathy. The formula is successfully employed in several renowned shōjo-genre works. The heroines in series such as Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu and Revolutionary Girl Utena, for instance, approach with insightfulness and sensitivity the agonies of growing up, using their female leads as loci of identification. Equal parts naive and resilient, these heroines exude an endless capacity for hope; although superficially childlike, their warmth becomes a source of strength for other characters, and by proxy the audiences. At the same time, each series employs magic as both a narrative vehicle on the journey toward selfhood, and as a leitmotif of covert psychological meanings.  In her work, Magic as Metaphor in Anime, Dani Cavallaro notes that anime employs fantasy tropes, magic and the supernatural as a stylistic vehicle of communication, revealing,

... an increasing tendency to articulate subtly nuanced psychological dramas, pilgrimages of self-discovery and, fundamentally, mature speculations about the nature of humanness and the meaning of living as humans... magic ... by recourse to a paradox, [becomes] a form of obscure illumination: the revelation, by cryptic means, of powerful but often unheeded forces swirling at the core of existence (2010, p. 1-5). 

Of course, in Japanese tradition, magic and the human condition have never existed as binary opposites, but as facets of a single quantum spectrum. The fact can be evinced in the nation's culture, both contemporary and historic, within which both Shinto animism and Buddhist values dance hand-in-hand, absorbing into themselves the more recent rhythms of Western occupation, the better to compose astonishing fusions of both indigenous fantasy and fluctuating global trends. The animanga heroine, by virtue of her 'unformed' and 'incomplete' shōjo status, neatly functions as a meta-triage of these forces. However, her true talent is for fusing her self and the audience together through an honest exploration of human experience at its simplest—and its most vulnerable—as well as in her ability to embrace the deficiencies, cracks, and inconsistencies as part of a reassembled whole (Chee & Lim, 2015).

Taken in that sense, one could almost describe her as a microcosm in feminine wrapping. Through her, audiences worldwide witness a smooth synthesis of overarching global vicissitudes and personal instabilities. Sometimes this is achieved lightheartedly, almost hilariously—such as in Cardcaptor Sakura or Kill La Kill, both of which employ a visual extravaganza of mess and mayhem to tartly parodize the everyday pathos of coming-of-age. Other times, her character occupies an ontological penumbra that spans both individual griefs and grave social issues, such as in Madoka Magica or Hell Girl, both of which highlight the particular dangers of transitioning from girlhood to womanhood in a modern era.

Considering the shōjo heroine's history, there is a certain delightful irony to this fact. Originally, as mentioned, the very premise of shōjo arose out of rigidly parochial system in Meiji-era Japan. Yet, within the very space meant to subdue her, she has paradoxically been transformed into an icon of magic and mystery, transgression and self-discovery. At once a pop-cultural emblem of Japan and an international superstar, her true appeal, however, lies in the shadowy lacuna she occupies in the middle—as a liminal figure of possibility, whose struggles echo the more universal themes of reinvention and imagination. At home she is the sprightly figure of a girlhood lost, an epoch of innocence that seems at once eternal yet eyeblink-brief. Abroad, she is imbued with the fleeting transience that practically epitomizes the traditional Japanese aesthetic: a stage of youth that is the threshold to something greater, but which in itself can never be recaptured—the ideal metaphor not only for coming-of-age, but for finding within that amorphous space the freedom to dream, and to grow both roots and wings in a volatile globalized backdrop.  

References

Abbott, L. (2015). Shojo: The Power of Girlhood in 20th Century Japan. Honors Theses - Passed with Distinction, Washington State University. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from http://hdl.handle.net/2376/5710

Aoyama, T. (2005) ‘Transgendering Shôjo Shôsetsu: Girls’ Inter-text/sex-uality’, in McLelland, M. and Dasgupta, R. (eds.). Genders, Transgenders and Sexuality in Japan. London: Routledge.

Allison, A. (2006). Millennial monsters: Japanese toys and the global imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ashcraft, B., & Ueda, S. (2014). Japanese schoolgirl confidential: how teenage girls made a nation cool. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing.

Azuma, H. (2009). Otaku: Japan's database animals. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Brazal, A. M., & Abraham, K. (2014). Feminist cyberethics in Asia: religious discourses on human connectivity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cavallaro, D. (2010). Magic as metaphor in anime: a critical study. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.

Chee, L., & Lim, E. (2015). Asian cinema and the use of space: interdisciplinary perspectives. New York: Routledge.

Denison, R. (2015). Anime a critical introduction. London: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.

Dorman, A. (2016). Paradoxical Japaneseness: cultural representation in 21st century Japanese cinema. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fujisaku, J. (Director and Producer). (2006). Blood+ [Television Series]. Tokyo, Japan: Production IG.

Iwabuchi, K. (2007). Recentering globalization: popular culture and Japanese transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Kamiyama, K. (Director and Writer). (2002). Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. [Television Series]. Tokyo, Japan: Production IG.

Kelts, R. (2006). Japanamerica: how Japanese pop culture has invaded the U.S. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kinsella, S. (2005). Adult manga: culture and power in contemporary Japanese society. London: Routledge Curzon.

Kuhn, L. (2017, September 27). 'Being a Woman is Inherently Uncanny': An Interview With Carmen Maria Machado. Retrieved October 13, 2017, from https://hazlitt.net/feature/being-woman-inherently-uncanny-interview-carmen-maria-machado

McGray, D. (2009, November 11). Japan’s Gross National Cool. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/11/11/japans-gross-national-cool/

McKevitt, A. C. (2017). Consuming Japan: popular culture and the globalizing of 1980s America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Otsuka, E and Nobuaki, O. (2005) "Japanimation" Wa Naze Yabureruka [Why Japanimation should be Defeated]. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. 

Richie, D. (2007). A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press.

Robertson, J. E. (1998). Takarazuka sexual politics and popular culture in modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Saitō, T., Vincent, K., Lawson, D., & Azuma, H. (2011). Beautiful fighting girl. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Suzuki, Y. (2009) "ROK promotes TV dramas." Daily Yomiuri. June 20: 4.

Walthall, A. (2004). The human tradition in modern Japan. Lanham, MD: SR Books.

[reekierevelator]

Crime and Punishment

a short story by Brian Bourner

‘Can I have a word, sir, what’s your name?”  The officer’s expression, under his flat chequerboard patterned cap, was serious. His appraising dark eyes met mine as his thin lips posed the question.  He was younger and fitter than me, self-confident and authoritative.

           ‘Douglas Shevlane,” I replied without thinking, aware of my cheeks colouring, my nervousness just at the idea of being directly addressed by the police.

           It was late Saturday morning and I’d been at an office leaving do the previous evening.  It was a great party: loud chatter, music, even dancing, and inevitably too much to drink. I regretted it even as the taxi was carrying me home in the early hours, not so much because I'd drunk too much but because I knew I shouldn’t have gone in the first place.  I should have stayed on at work and finished the presentation for a potential major new client, Lightning Connectors. They were coming to see it on Monday.

           So on Saturday morning I’d woken up, thrown on some casual clothes – an old grey polo shirt, trainers, jeans, and a sort of donkey jacket I usually only wore to outdoor sports events - and hadn’t bothered shaving. I still felt sickly, green about the gills. The mirror confirmed that apart from some dark stubble my face was a deathly grey.

           By the time the bus reached the office I felt marginally better. Some pills, aspirins and pick-me-ups for late night work when I was flagging, were in the desk drawer. They relieved the headache somewhat and helped me gather together enough energy to get on with the task in hand. In fact I cracked the job after a couple of hours. As I left I picked up a piece of mail from my pigeon-hole that must have arrived after my early getaway for the party. I walked round the side streets for some distance aiming to clear my head.  When my legs tired I joined the queue at a bus stop on Leith Walk and stood silently in the drizzle, watching the traffic rumble by as I waited for my double-decker to arrive.

           Then the two-tone siren was coming closer, an almost everyday occurrence, people in the queue barely looking up as the blue lights came bouncing round the corner and raced past the bus stop.  But a hundred yards up the road the police car suddenly braked, its driver unceremoniously executing a swift U-turn that no normal driver would have dared, and brought the car to a screeching halt alongside the bus stop.  The faces at the bus stop lit up. They focused on the two men who jumped out the car in hi-vis jackets, hats in hands, and anticipated some light entertainment. But my bus was already drawing up behind the patrol car and I boarded along with several others, taking a seat upstairs.

           Yet the bus remained stationary.  A low rumble of voices on the lower floor recognisable as the police officers talking to the bus driver.  And then the officers emerged at the top of the stairs, their heads stooped low under the bus’s roof, and came towards me. Some passengers looked straight ahead and others glanced towards me, suspiciously, before quickly looking away.  As one officer took the seat beside me the other, bigger built, sat behind. You could hear a pin drop.

           The one beside me spoke, his steady baritone asking for my name. My own reedy voice replying.

           ‘Do you have any identification?’ he brusquely enquired.

           ‘Not my driving licence or passport if that’s what you mean.  I’ve got a credit card with my name on it.’

           The officer pursed his thin lips into a sort of sneer. I could imagine how many stolen credit cards he’d had to deal with. Then I remembered.

           ‘Oh, and there’s a letter I’ve just received.’ I pulled the unopened envelope from my pocket and handed it to him.

           He held it up so the officer behind could see it too. And I watched as he read the mailing address – Dr Douglas Shevlane BA(Hons) DipCIM, PhD, FCIM.  c/o Blue Angel Agency.  Room 405 Blue Angel House. 14 Bernard Street.  Edinburgh.  EH6. The professional association’s return address was printed in small writing on the back.

           The officers exchanged glances which seemed to say ‘You just can’t tell who anyone is these days, can you?’

The officer seemed friendlier as he handed the letter back, his thin lips attempting a smile. He spoke more quietly, like a priest taking confession. ‘I’m sorry about this sir but you fit a description we’ve been given. For the record, would you mind telling me where you’ve been in the last hour?’

           Being cornered by a policeman in a public space where there is silence but you know others are listening is an unpleasant experience, even if they seem the epitome of understanding and politeness. Visions of white tiled police cells and slopping out in primitive Victorian prisons like Peterhead still swim through your head. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts.

           ‘I was at work,’ I said, ‘finishing off a job.’

           ‘And you work at the Blue Angel Agency?’

           ‘Yes, I’m a writer and graphic designer, leading a marketing team.’

Again, the exchange of looks. At twenty-nine I was still often mistaken for a student.

           ‘The Blue Angel Agency’s building is on Bernard Street?’

           ‘Yes, that’s right.’

           ‘That’s some way from here.’

           ‘I went for a little walk after I left the office.’

           ‘I need to ask where you walked to Mr, er, Dr Shevlane.’

           Although the policemen were proceeding competently an atmosphere of silent animosity was unmistakeably growing on the bus. There was some sighing and rustling of feet. People wanted the bus to move off, they were keen to get going.  They had places to be and wanted to get there soon. But I paused to think about the route I’d walked.

           ‘I, er, turned left out of the office, along to Constitution Street, er, over on to the Links, up through Easter Road and then I, er, turned right on I think Albert Street to come back and hit the main road again to catch my bus.’

           ‘You’re sure you didn’t turn right out of the office? Maybe headed up Henderson Street to Great Junction Street? Maybe turned up Bonnington Road to Pilrig Park?’

           ‘No, as I said, I was on the other side of Leith Walk. What’s all this about anyway?’

           ‘There’s been a serious assault’, he told me quietly, ‘near Balfour Place, off Pilrig Street.’

‘A serious assault?’

‘A man died.’

‘Oh, - that’s awful.’ It made me feel sick to my stomach.

‘Can you tell me where you live sir?’

           ‘Morningside.’

           ‘Where exactly sir - just for the record?’

           ’37 Cluny Crescent.’ Just saying it drained me, like making a confession.

           ‘You have family there?’

An image of Janis in the lemon yellow dress she was wearing when we first met floated though my head. But after three years of marriage she was bored and took up with someone else. The mortgage hung round my neck like a millstone.

           ‘No, I live alone.’

           Then he looked from me to his colleague for confirmation.

When his colleague offered a cursory nod he said ‘Well, thank you for your help, Mr, er, Dr Shevlane. That’s all we need to ask.’ Then louder, to calm all the itchy feet on the bus, he called downstairs ‘That’s us driver.  You can let us off now and carry on your way.’

           The bus doors wheezed open. The policemen exited. As the bus pulled away a mild collective sigh passed among the passengers, one or two still glancing accusingly at me as the cause of their delayed journeys.

           I found my eye developing a tic and my knees trembling. After we’d travelled along Princes Street and up Lothian Road towards Tollcross my hands had begun shaking too. The accusatory looks of other passengers served to remind me only too clearly of that man’s face.

Alighting the bus before it reached Morningside I drifted like a ghost over Bruntsfield Links. The man had been rushing, not looking, not caring. He’d crashed into me as I turned the corner on to Balfour Place, his burly chest hurling me against the wall. And yet he simply strode on, oblivious or indifferent. What with the sore head, having to work on Saturday, the pills, my estranged wife divorcing me, the stress of pitching for a contract from a potentially big new client on Monday, - suddenly it was all just too much.  It coalesced in my brain into an urgent need to hit out. There was no-one else around. He wasn’t expecting it. One fierce punch to the side of his face felled him. He toppled like a tree and I heard his head crash down onto the kerb. But fear welled up in me that he would immediately rise from the pavement and start beating me. A discarded wooden baton lay in the gutter; the very tool to exorcise stress and frustration. I picked it up and had it above my head ready to strike before registering that the man wasn’t moving. Blood was pooling under his head. And then a figure appeared in the distance, walking down towards me from the top of the road. I dropped the weapon and hurried off, dream-like, down a side street towards the bus stop on Leith Walk.

So now I rush around the Meadows in panic, the prisoner of ghastly daytime nightmares bursting with public shame and prison horrors. Dr Jekyll has become Mr Hyde. I recognise the tiny spots of blood on my trainers that the police didn’t see. But the description fitted perfectly. They’re bound to come again. They’ll know I lied. Go on the run? Hand myself in? Plead ‘mitigating circumstances’, not, not, not murder? The dark Crags of Holyrood Park look remarkably inviting. People are always falling from those cliff-faces. For even if I’m never caught, never enclosed by stone walls or cages, yet I’ll always be a prisoner.

And the calculated deceptions of marketing expertise offer no solutions as they stir and boil in my mind alongside the shocking guilt and dreadful fear.  There’s a desperate need for any kind of hope and forgiveness as I stumble blindly into George Square and find the doors of St. Albert’s open and beckoning.

[wayward-wheels-blog]

I've Been Waiting for This Part

She’s My Rider - Chapter II

(I know this is a switch, but hell it’s been a year and writers find new ways at going about things so … this is all in third person. Too many personas to balance and I thought Gabriel’s part came out best in the original anyway. Sorry this took so long. I hope it was worth the wait.)

Word Count: 4401

Read Chapter I and Chapter III

THEN

To say the last year had been a pivotal one in the book of Winchester would be an understatement, but also somewhat disrespectful to everything that had come before it.

When Gabriel woke Baby up, Dean had just put an end to Death and the Darkness had been unleashed on the world. Looking back now, the brothers are almost certain, Gabriel didn’t expect any of them to survive another year. They’d spent countless hours on back highways discussing that night … the angel’s shifty movements and cryptic messages about keys and kingdoms.

It was Sam that suggested it first. “I think he thought we were all gonna die.”

“And what?” Dean glanced across the cab at him. “She was our parting gift?”

“He did always have a soft spot for you two,” Castiel said. When Dean cut his eyes at him the angel glanced back out the window. “Or so it seemed.”

“Or she was our last ditch effort,” Sam shrugged. “He said she had power.”

Dean’s eyes had flickered to Baby in the rear view mirror, oblivious to their conversation. He’d bought her an iPod and a set of headphones and the girl could disappear for hours into her music. She was staring out her own window, hair half-pulled back in a clip, looking perfectly normal.

And that was just the problem.

For all intents and purposes, aside from a head full of years and memories she looked too young for and a bloodhound’s nose for danger, Baby was a normal, human woman. If she got hit, she fell down. If she got cut, she bled. She’d never thrown any furniture across the room with her mind or scared a demon out of its stolen skin. Sometimes she knew things, like knowledge had simply been instilled in her upon creation, but it wasn’t anything to write home about.

The year rolled on. The Darkness became Amara who became God’s sister who turned out to be Chuck. Dean still couldn’t make himself call him God. It was both too big for the strange little man and too intimate at the same time.  

Chuck had taken one look at Baby and said, “Oh! You’re here,” with a quirky grin. “I’ve been waiting for this part.”

Then the siblings of creation and destruction had disappeared leaving behind another Winchester in their wake and new questions to ask and, more importantly, a new normal to find.

NOW

Chicago, Illinois

It was after hours at the Field Museum and Bill Cunningham was making his first rounds of the night. He always swept the building of trash first before he went back the other direction with the cart loaded full of cleaning supplies to give the place a thorough scrub.

The janitor didn’t notice as he rolled his cart down the hallway, long oblivious to the obnoxious squeak of one of the wheels, that something moved inside one of the exhibits. He didn’t notice the strange smell that wafted in the air, a bi-product of too many chemicals stinging at his nose for years while he cleaned.

It was only when he walked past the exhibit of two lions prowling dangerously over a rock that he thought he saw something twitch. One of their tails, maybe. Bill turned and stared at the lions, but their dead coats lay dusty and still. He chuckled at his own foolishness and even waved the big cats away as he turned back to his cart.

Then a low, menacing growl stalled him in his tracks. The sound rolled over itself like a giant rattle in a deep, tumbling box. Bill Cunningham turned back to find one of the lions had stepped forward … right up to the fucking glass.

The lion met the janitor’s eyes and when he looked back, he saw a depth of evil that turned his blood to ice water in his veins. A fear like he’d never known swallowed him almost completely, numbing every nerve in his body so that only his eyes were wide in stark, ghastly terror. The lion’s lips drew back and it let loose an unearthly roar just before his brother leapt over his back and straight through the glass, cutting short Bill Cunningham’s screams with his massive jaws.

Blood splattered across the sign that hung to the right of the exhibit, engraved with four words in brass: The Tsavo Man-Eaters

Sam was frowning at the story of the janitor’s mysterious death in Chicago when he saw Baby appear in the kitchen doorway over the top of the laptop screen. She was wearing one of his t-shirts, which swallowed her like a baggy dress and the neck was so wide it hung off her shoulder. She’d stolen several of them to sleep in. The girl yawned and shuffled in her slippers towards the coffee pot.

Sam chuckled, wondering if she’d even noticed he was there. “Morning, B.”

“Morning Sammy,” she said groggily.

Dean was the only one who called her Baby anymore. Sam had been right, of course. A girl that looked like her in a public place with three grown men calling her “Baby” came off a little weird. The looks irritated Dean and made him want to punch people. Sam found them embarrassing. Cas was oblivious to the whole thing. So, they’d taken to calling her “B.”

Sam clicked to the next article, looking for something a little more concrete. Dean plodded into the kitchen and went straight for the coffee pot, too. He didn’t think twice anymore when Dean kissed the side of B’s head and they mumbled mornings to each other while they made their coffee. It was just understood that the bond Dean and Baby had was something sacred.

If Sam had been a betting man, he’d have been certain his brother would have tried to get her into bed by now. He was much more affectionate towards her than he’d ever seen Dean be towards anyone, but there was nothing selfish about the way he touched her either. He wasn’t looking for anything. He’d never tried to kiss her or even cop a feel that Sam had noticed, though he did stare at her sometimes. But then again, it wasn’t that normal covetous stare he turned on other women.

In the end, Sam had decided it was very simple. They loved each other. There was nothing complicated about it. He loved her, too. Even Castiel had come to see her as one of their own. Their mother was still a little weirded out by her, but Mary hadn’t been around much so it hadn’t been much of an issue.

When Dean and B made it to the table, Sam turned his laptop around. “Think I’ve got a case.”

Dean grunted.

She reached out to drag the laptop closer so she could read.

“You remember that movie, Ghost in the Darkness? About the lions that killed all those men?”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Dean motioned with his coffee cup. “Kirk Douglas played Remington.” He looked at Baby and did his best Douglas impression. “Everyone has a plan until they’ve been hit.”

She smirked.

Sam chuckled and kept going, “Right, well, it was actually based on a true story. Two lions really did kill all these people when the British government was trying to build a bridge through Tsavo. They eventually killed the lions and had them stuffed and they’ve been on display at-”

“The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois,” B read from the laptop, finishing his sentence.

Dean was actually reading now. “Wow. They found the guy torn to pieces.”

“Hinky,” she muttered.

Sam lifted a finger. “Gets hinkier. The lions? The actual lions from the display?” He lifted his chin a bit for effect. “No one can find them.”

He watched Dean and Baby exchange a look and then his brother shrugged. “Okay. So let’s go lion hunting.”

—–

One twelve hour drive and three hours of sleep later, the 65 Mustang they’d taken to driving since Baby showed up pulled into the parking lot of the museum. Sam was continually surprised by the fact that Dean never lamented the absence of the Impala. The only time he ever brought the car up was to make note of how much better she handled than whatever else he was behind the wheel of.

They met a short, gray-haired man at the door, still taped off with caution tape, who introduced himself as Detective Schrader.

“I’m Agent Kristofferson,” Dean flashed his fake badge and motioned at Sam and Baby. “This is Nelson, and Joplin.”

Then, with a bright grin, “We hear you have a stray cat problem.”

The crime scene had been cleaned, and obvious construction had already been made to the metal frame in preparation of a new plate of glass for the display. The very empty display.

“So-” Sam frowned. “Let me get this straight. He was lying here, right?” He motioned at the floor and quirked his head down the corridor at the display case where Dean was bent down over one of the fake rocks and B was watching with her hands on her hips.

“What was left of him,” Detective Schrader said.

“Hm.” Sam muttered.

“What?” Schrader asked.

“Just … not really lion behavior,” Sam said. “They kill and they eat. They don’t play with their food.”

“You telling me you think this was actually done by lions?” Detective Schrader cast him a pitiful look, like he almost felt sorry for him.

Sam looked up curiously. “You don’t? The autopsy seemed pretty conclusive.”

“So did my last prostate exam,” Shrader huffed. “Still got cancer. Look, are we done here? I don’t really see what you expect to find around here, anyway. Like I said, you can read everything we found in the report.”

“Yeah,” Sam forced an irritated smile and slipped his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t fond of law enforcement that treated a person’s death like another day that ended in Y. “We’re done.”

Dean and Baby wandered over while Detective Schrader let himself out. Dean rubbed his fingers together, gave them a sniff and jumped his brows at Sam. “Sulfur.”

Sam looked confused. “Really? Demons?”

“That surprises you?” Baby asked.

“No. I mean …” Sam looked past them at the empty display. “Kind of. I was betting money on some kind of Hoodoo thing.”

“Why?” Dean asked, thumbing over his shoulder. “Cause Africa?” His brows lowered in sarcastic accusation. “That’s racist, Sam.”

Sam’s face dropped, annoyed. “No. Because it tends to be used to bring things back to life, Dean.”

“Uh huh.” Dean smirked. “Racial profiling then.”

“Whatever.” Sam rolled his eyes up then back to B. “Any of those spidey senses tingling?”

Baby frowned, her heels clicking against the floor as she circled around to the other side of Sam, staring at the spot where Bill Cunningham’s body had been found. “Not really,” she said. “But I think you’re right. This isn’t a normal demon thing.”

“Well.” Crowley’s voice lifted up behind them from out of nowhere. “You’re not wrong.”

Sam and Dean pivoted on their respective heels in an instant, the youngest Winchester tugging Baby behind him.

“Relax,” Crowley rolled his eyes. “I haven’t tried to kill you for months now.”

The brothers exchanged a look. Did he know about Baby? Had he seen her?

“Then what do you want?” Dean quipped.

The lapels of Crowley’s peacoat flashed outwards with a shrug of his hands from inside his pockets. “To be of humble service.”

“Right,” Dean said. “Cause you’re always so helpful.”

“Helped with Lucifer, didn’t I?”

“Yeah?” Dean chuffed. “Where were you when they tossed us in a hole and threw away the key?”

“Like I told Wings, I didn’t know where you were. Still working on getting a demon into the oval office,” Crowley sneered. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Fine,” Sam said. “Then why are you here?”

“To let you know you’re in way over your heads on this one,” Crowley said. “The Cwn Annwn? They’re Lucifer’s personal lapdogs.”

Dean arched an impatient brow. “The coonan-what?”

“Kun,” Crowley emphasized the phonetics. “An-wynn. It’s Welsh.”

“Okay fine, whatever,” Dean said. “Explain the coon hounds.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know why I even bother.”

Dean growled Crowley’s name, signalling his loss of patience.

The demon king sighed like a long suffering, and very bored girlfriend. “Fine. The Cwn Annwn aren’t lions. They’re the original hounds of hell. The first breeding pair. The two that came for you?” Crowley quirked his brow at Dean. “Those were puppies in comparison.”

Real fear flashed across the eldest Winchester’s face in a single split second, but Crowley caught it and smiled. “These two were made specifically for hunters.”

When the boys exchanged another look that managed to hold an entire conversation, Crowley spotted a slender hand slip out from behind Moose’s hulking figure and catch the side of Dean’s jacket. He watched Dean’s head snap to the side like he’d suddenly remembered she was hiding there and shake his head at whoever was back there. He watched him grab the delicate hand curled around the army-green corduroy and push it back down in an attempt to conceal it.

It didn’t work.

“Well well,” Crowley mused, rounding out a step to try to get a look behind Moose. “Who’s this?”

Sam flexed his jaw at Crowley and side-stepped to obstruct his view. It only served to deepen the demon’s curiosity. Sam shut his eyes against the inward scolding he gave himself for his mistake and cursed under his breath.

It was futile anyway.

They couldn’t hide her from him forever.

Baby peeked out around Sam’s arm from between the two boys and Crowley’s eyes went wide … could he really be seeing what he thought he was seeing? The beautiful brunette stepped into full view, Sam stepping aside with a relenting sigh.

The Winchesters watched Crowley like hawks while his face went slack and his jaw dropped open. “Oh … my,” he shook his head in, what looked to Dean, like a certain flavor of awe. “I haven’t seen you in a very long time.”

“Wait-” Dean started, and Sam joined him when he said, “What?”

“You know her?”

Baby was staring at Crowley the way a little girl might stare at a massive gorilla at the zoo … with that look when it dawns on a kid that what they’re seeing is just a little too scary and yet, a little too much like them to be okay with it.

Crowley’s voice was almost reverent. “Of course I know her,” his eyes ticked up to meet Dean’s. “Do you?”

Dean’s eyes narrowed at Crowley like he was assessing which punch to throw to break the man’s nose. Then, after a few seconds, his entire body abruptly kicked into gear. “Alright, Sammy, let’s go.”

The boys split to move past him, Dean yanking Baby tightly into his side, trying to unsee the wonder in Crowley’s face when he watched her go by. He could practically feel the demon thinking about how he could use her.

“… Don’t you want to know about the lions?”

Dean dropped Baby’s hand in time to pivot back and charge like he meant to beat the ever loving shit out of the King of Hell, but somehow managed to reign himself in before he got within swinging distance. “Crowley, you have thirty seconds!”

The demon managed to pull his eyes away from Baby, a little too slowly for Dean’s liking and smirked. “Matilda of the Night,” he said. “She controls them. It’s her punishment.”

Worry clouded Sam’s features. “… Punishment for what?”

“Well,” Crowley shrugged. “The woman once said if there was no hunting in heaven she’d rather not go. That might have had something to do with it.”

“So she’s a hunter,” Sam said.

“One of the oldest,” Crowley said. “She was a viking once upon a time, and very nearly brought down Lucifer himself. He created the hellhounds to return the favor and when he finally caught her, he granted her wish. She would hunt with her hounds for all eternity … hunt people like you.”

The more he spoke, the colder the room seemed to get. It was Sam’s turn to reach for Baby and pull her back, swallowing a tight dread that had formed in the back of his throat. He wasn’t necessarily worried about himself or his brother, but she was still learning how to fight.

“They say she cries out in misery when she has to kill them,” Crowley added with a hint of whimsy. The demon king cast one last, lingering look at Baby. “I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you again, sweetheart.”

Then his form blinked out in a split-second you could never see with human eyes and he was gone.

Sam, Dean and Baby trotted quickly down the stairs of the museum and made for their car.

“Do you think he was telling the truth?” Sam looked across the hood at his brother who was opening the back door for B.

“About Matilda?” He slammed the back door and jerked open his. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he turned the engine to life. “I think I actually read about her in dad’s journal a while back. He called her the traitor.”

“From the sound of things, it wasn’t her fault what she turned into,” Baby said, slouching down in the back seat.

Dean caught her eyes in the rearview before he turned back onto the feeder road. “Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. If those things are Lucifer’s pups and she’s got the leash …”

“Yeah, but how do we find her?” Sam asked.

“Far as Luci’s concerned we’re the big bads,” Dean shifted gears a little harder than he needed to. “I’m betting she finds us.”

They didn’t stay in Chicago. “It was too damn crowded,” Dean said. And anyway, it was best to keep to back roads and small towns, especially now that half the government had it in for the boys. Instead, they shot down I-57 to a town called Champaign and stopped at a rundown Super 8 for 41 bucks a night.

An hour later, Sam was propped up on one of the beds with his legs stretched out and his laptop in his lap while Dean sparred with Baby in the space that the small kitchenette jutted out to provide. He glanced up just in time to see B duck a swing but miss Dean’s opposite fist when it came in at her ribs. His older brother had an uncanny ability to bring a punch mostly to a stop before it hit her too hard.

“Keep your fists up,” Sam offered. “Block him with your forearm.”

The girl lifted her fists, concentrating, determined to get better. Dean darted down to pat the back of her leg, “Weight on the ball of your foot,” before he came back up to throw the same combination without warning.

This time, Baby blocked the sucker punch.

“There ya go,” Dean nodded, bobbing out of the way of her next swing before smacking her upside the head. Not hard, but it got her attention. “Fists up.”

“Hey,” Sam said, sitting up. “Hey, I think I got something.”

“What?” Dean said, crossing the room to look over his brother’s shoulder.  

“They moved quick,” Sam said. “An entire campsite just got wiped out next state over. I bet it’s on the news.”

Baby snatched the remote up off the end of the bed and flipped through the channels until she found a 24-hour news channel. They caught the tail end of a story about the President getting out of the hospital and exchanged nervous looks at the reminder.

Oh yeah. There was still that to deal with.

A few seconds later, the screen jumped to flashing lights in the darkness and a view of police walking through picnic tables in the background. One bent down and looked inside a body bag.

“Park Rangers have verified this was some kind of animal attack, but there’s still no official word on what kind of animal it may have been. What we do know now is there are multiple dead and, as of yet, there are no survivors. From Ft. Wayne, Indiana, I’m Sarah Smith.”

“Shit,” Dean turned from the TV and pushed a hand back through his hair.

“We need help,” Baby said. “Where’s Cas?”

“With mom on a werewolf hunt in Mississippi,” Dean huffed.

“We could use them both,” Sam said.

“No,” Dean said. “She needs to work some stuff out. Let her do it.”

Most people, even Sam, had assumed Dean took after John. He didn’t. He was much more like Mary on an emotional level.  

“You realize that leaves Rowena and Crowley,” Sam said.

“Uh uh,” Dean shook his head sharply. “Nope. He’s not getting within a ten miles of Baby again.”

“Dean-”

Dean motioned at Baby, looking half pissed and half horrified. “He was looking at her like she was food. No, Sam!”

“Does Baby get a vote?”

The boys both looked at her, Sam with an open mind, Dean immediately irritated.

“Yes,” Sam said, at the same time Dean barked, “No!”

She lifted her hands to her hips and looked pointedly at Dean. “Call Rowena.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Not Crowley …”

“For now,” she said. The man had entirely creeped her out but she wasn’t about to tell either one of them that. “If she thinks we need him, then we need him.”

Dean stared at her for a beat, forced himself to take a deep breath, and admitted defeat. “Okay,” he rolled his eyes, fishing his phone out of his pocket. “But I’m not calling Crowley. You can bat your lashes at me all you want. No.”

“We need Fergus,” Rowena said, leaning back in her bar stool and casting a disgusted look over at a table full of rednecks laughing about their exploits. “Honestly, this was the best place you could find to rendezvous?”

“Yeah. Cause, whiskey,” Dean said, immediately downing the rest of his glass.

“Why,” Sam interrupted, “do we need Crowley?”

“Because,” Rowena’s brows lifted at him as if it were simple. “He’s the King of Hell. He’s the only one aside from Lucifer who can see to it that the hounds are locked back in their kennels. I can’t imagine how Lucifer woke them up in the first place, truth be told, given his state. It’s quite difficult to conjure that level of magic without a proper vessel.”

Dean pointed a finger at Baby the second her mouth opened. “No.”

“Dean, you’re being ridiculous,” she said.

“She’s right,” Sam shook his head at his brother. “We’ve gotta send these things back to hell and if there’s only one way to do it …”

Rowena sat back watching in utter amusement, with a smile that said she knew something they didn’t. Neither of them noticed. But Baby did.

“Fine,” Dean shrugged and sat back, locking his eyes on B’s. “Then you’re not coming.”

Her amber eyes flashed at him. Sam didn’t think he’d ever seen her look at Dean like that … let alone yell at him. “Like hell I’m not!”

“The stitches just came out of that shot to your shoulder last week!” He snapped back at her.

“Ya know what, Dean?” The legs of her chair scraped against the wooden floor, scooting away when she lept to her feet. “Maybe it’s time you remember that I’m the one who’s protected you for the last 39 years. Not the other way around.”

Baby turned on her heel and headed for the door, finally putting Dean on his feet. “I’m 38!”

The girl whipped back with clinched fists at her sides, “Fine! 38 years and nine months!”

The door slammed behind her, leaving several patrons staring at the Winchesters’ table curiously and looking at Dean sympathetically because they assumed he’d just had a fight with his girlfriend. Sam was staring at his big brother wondering if he had.

“Oh, I like her.” Rowena’s Scottish brogue crooned, eyes floating up at Dean. “She certainly knows how to put you in your place, doesn’t she.”

Sam shook his head, completely disappointed, and pushed to his feet. “That was great, Dean. Real classy.”

The guilt of yelling at Baby finally seemed to make its way through Dean’s features after Sam turned away, watching his brother head for the door to go calm her down. It occurred to him that if he were the one headed out there, he’d have no idea how to calm her down because he’d never seen her that angry. And that was his fault.

“Shit,” Dean muttered and dropped his ass back into his chair, reaching for Sam’s leftover whiskey.

Rowena was watching him with her chin propped atop her fingers. “Do you even know what the poor lass is?”

Dean shot a look at Rowena, warning her he wasn’t in the mood for games.

The woman simply stared at him. Like he was an idiot. “She’s the burning bush, Dean. The dove with the olive branch. She’s the very breath of God, himself.”

The glass was halfway to his lips but it stopped on route. “She’s … what does that even mean?” In the back of his mind he was scolding himself for humoring her, but .. she sounded like she knew what she was talking about.

“It means, dearie, that she’s as powerful as they come,” Rowena smiled that sweet, yet twisted little smile she had, put her palm against the table and pushed to her feet. “If she wants to be. That really all depends on you.”

Dean’s brows twitched trying to put that together and when he couldn’t, he looked back up at her. “So … what am I supposed to do?”

“That’s between you and her.” Rowena tipped her eyes up as if an answer had suddenly come to her from the ether before dropping them back to Dean with a wave of her hand. “Try sex. It worked for the pagans.”

Dean’s eyes widened and his face dropped blank, staring at her while his brain tried to catch up. It made Rowena toss her head back with her laugh. “Dean Winchester, proper scared … Now that was worth stepping out for.” The overly sensual witch turned and sauntered out the door, leaving Dean thinking about things he shouldn’t be.

[vintage1981]

Doctor Who Spinoff Novelisations from Telos Publishing

Olive Hawthorne and The Daemons of Devil’s End

Olive Hawthorne is the sole guardian of the sleepy village of Devil’s End. She protects the world from the incursion of demons, vampires, aliens and all manner of otherworldly creatures. But she is getting old … and they keep coming …

This is the story of Olive’s life. From her earliest days, through teenage years, middle age, and now old age. Tales of her adventures with monsters and evil … forever battling against the forces of darkness … and forever seeking to keep the world safe.

Written by Suzanne Barbieri, Debbie Bennett, Raven Dane, Jan Edwards, David J Howe and Sam Stone, and edited by Sam Stone, The Dæmons of Devil’s End is the story of one woman’s exciting and emotional life.

With a Foreword by by actress Damaris Hayman and an Afterword by producer/director Keith Barnfather.

Also features a special ‘Dossier’ section, compiled by Andrew-Mark Thompson, looking at some of the artefacts held in the UNIT vaults relating to the strange events that have happened in Devil’s End through the years.

The Dæmons of Devil’s End is based on, and expands upon, the Reeltime Pictures drama production White Witch of Devil’s End released on DVD by Koch Media and available from www.timetraveltv.com. It also spins off from the 1971 BBC Doctor Who adventure ‘The Dæmons’. All characters are used with permission of the relevant rights owners. This book has not been licensed or approved by the BBC or any of its affiliates.

The special edition is an A-format paperback release, sized and designed to fit in with the Target Doctor Who novelisations. It features a retro-art cover by Andrew-Mark Thompson, and includes an 8 page full colour section of previously unseen photographs from the filming of ‘The Daemons’ back in 1971.

Also available as a standard, B-format edition.

212pp. A-format paperback short story collection/novelisation. ISBN 978-1-84583-969-7 Published November 2017

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

PROLOGUE, THE INHERITANCE, EPILOGUE

Horror and fantasy writer Sam Stone began her professional writing career in 2007 when her first novel won the Silver Award for Best Novel in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards. Since then she has gone on to write 15 novels (Including The Vampire Gene Series, The Jinx Chronicles), five novellas (The Kat lightfoot Mysteries, The Darkness Within), two horror collections (Zombies in New York and Other Bloody Jottings, Cthuhlhu and Other Monsters) and over 40 short stories. She has since expanded her writing to audio, stage and screen. Stone’s works can be found in paperback, audio, screen and e-book, and she is the commissioning editor of Telos Publishing’s Moonrise digital imprint. www.sam-stone.com

HALF LIGHT

Writer and musician Suzanne Barbieri‘s first published written work was an analysis of the mythological and occult themes of the work of Clive Barker entitled Clive Barker: Mythmaker for the Millennium from the British Fantasy Society. Since then she has had numerous short stories published, including ‘Its Secret Diary’, which was nominated for a BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) award. As a singer and musician she has provided vocals for many artists and companies, and also produces solo work under the project name of Beloved Aunt. suzannebarbieri.wordpress.com

THE CAT WHO WALKED THROUGH WORLDS

Debbie Bennett tells lies and makes things up. Sometimes people pay her for it. She mostly writes dark and gritty crime thrillers and claims to get her inspiration from the day job – but if she told you about that, she’d have to kill you afterwards. www.debbiebennett.co.uk

THE POPPET

Jan Edwards is a Sussex-born writer now living in the West Midlands with her husband and obligatory cats. She was a Master Locksmith for twenty years but also tried her hand at bookselling, microfiche photography, livery stable work, motorcycle sales and market gardening. She is a practising Reiki Master. She won a Winchester Slim Volume prize and her short fiction can be found in crime, horror and fantasy anthologies in UK, US and Europe; including The Mammoth Book of Dracula and The Mammoth Book of Moriarty. janedwardsblog.wordpress.com

DÆMOS RETURNS

David J Howe has been involved with Doctor Who research and writing for over thirty years. He wrote the book Reflections: The Fantasy Art of Stephen Bradbury for Dragon’s World Publishers and has contributed short fiction to Peeping Tom, Dark Asylum, Decalog, Dark Horizons, Kimota, Perfect Timing, Perfect Timing II, Missing Pieces, Shrouded by Darkness and Murky Depths, and factual articles to James Herbert: By Horror Haunted and The Radio Times Guide to Science Fiction. Another notable work of fiction is talespinning, a collection containing David’s many short story pieces and screenplays. www.howeswho.co.uk

HAWTHORNE BLOOD

Raven Dane is an award-winning fantasy author whose published works include the highly acclaimed Legacy of the Dark Kind series of dark fantasy/sci-fi vampire crossover novels (Blood Tears, Blood Lament and Blood Alliance). Raven’s skills in fiction don’t end there: her comedy fantasy The Unwise Woman of Fuggis Mire – a scurrilous spoof of high fantasy clichés – was met with great enthusiasm by the reading public. In more recent years Raven has met with critical acclaim for her steampunk/occult adventures Cyrus Darian and the Technomicron and Cyrus Darian and the Ghastly Horde which are being republished by Telos in their Moonrise imprint Steampunk Visions.

DOSSIER

Andrew-Mark Thompson is a freelance graphic designer based in Derby. At various points over the past few decade he has found employment as a shop assistant, actor, special effects designer, stuntman, writer, museum guide, radio presenter, puppeteer, dancer, call centre operator, cowboy, graphic designer, drop-in centre co-ordinator and theme park rides manager. He also edited and wrote for a handful of Doctor Who and cult TV fanzines during the ’80s and ’90s. He is currently one of the organisers of Whooverville, which takes place in Derby every year around September-ish. He is single and was recently adopted by a stray cat. andydrewz64.blogspot.co.uk

Daemos Rising

In the void between time the devils waited … patiently … to be summoned again … to pass judgement on the Earth …’

Kate Lethbridge-Stewart is summoned by an old friend, Douglas Cavendish, to help him with a problem he has with ghosts and voices in his head. But when Kate arrives, she finds more than she expected. Aided by a time-traveller from the future, Kate must outwit both the ancient race of Daemons, and the Sodality, a human cult-like organisation from the future, which is intent on gaining control over time.

Daemos Rising is based on, and expands upon, the Reeltime Pictures drama production Daemos Rising originally released in 2004 and available from www.timetraveltv.com. It also spins off from the 1971 BBC Doctor Who adventure ‘The Daemons’, and is a prequel to the Telos Publishing Time Hunter novella ‘Child of Time’. All characters used with permission. This book has not been licensed or approved by the BBC or any of its affiliates.

The special edition is an A-format paperback release, sized and designed to fit in with the Target Doctor Who novelisations. It features a retro-art cover by Andrew-Mark Thompson, and includes an 8 page full colour section of photographs from the making of Daemos Rising in 2004.

Daemos Rising is written by David J Howe, noted Doctor Who collector and historian who wrote the original script for the film.

138pp. A-format paperback novelisation.

ISBN 978-1-84583-977-2

Published 13 August 2019

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David J Howe has been involved with Doctor Who research and writing for over thirty years. He wrote the book Reflections: The Fantasy Art of Stephen Bradbury for Dragon’s World Publishers and has contributed short fiction to Peeping Tom, Dark Asylum, Decalog, Dark Horizons, Kimota, Perfect Timing, Perfect Timing II, Missing Pieces, Shrouded by Darkness and Murky Depths, and factual articles to James Herbert: By Horror Haunted and The Radio Times Guide to Science Fiction. Another notable work of fiction is talespinning, a collection containing David’s many short story pieces and screenplays. www.howeswho.co.uk

SIL and the Devil Seeds of Arodor 

Written by Philip Martin.

A novelisation of the original drama produced by Reeltime Pictures and released on Blu-Ray by Koch Media.

Sil is worried, very worried, which doesn’t keep his reptilian skin in the best condition! Confined in a cold detention cell on the Moon, awaiting a deportation hearing for trial over drugs offences on Earth, he faces a death sentence if the application is successful and he is found guilty. And his employers at the Universal Monetary Fund aren’t pleased either. Not at all.

As time runs out and friends desert him, Sil must use all of his devious, vile, underhanded, ruthless and amoral business acumen to survive.

Can he possibly slime his way out of this one?

Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor is based on, and expands upon, the Reeltime Pictures drama production Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor, originally released in 2019 and available from www.timetraveltv.com. It also spins off from the 1985 BBC Doctor Who adventure ‘Vengeance on Varos’, and 1986’s ‘The Trial of a Time Lord’ parts 5 to 8. All characters used with permission.

This book has not been licensed or approved by the BBC or any of its affiliates.

The special edition is an A-format paperback release, sized and designed to fit in with the Target Doctor Who novelisations. It features a retro-art cover by Andrew-Mark Thompson, and includes an 8-page full colour section of photographs from the making of Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor.

Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor is written by Philip Martin, who created the character of Sil and wrote the original script for the film.

185pp approx. A-format paperback novelisation. ISBN 978-1-84583-979-6 Published November 2019

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip Martin was born in Liverpool in 1938 and started his career as an actor, training at RADA in the early ’60s. He made many television and stage appearances including in the film The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner. In the late ’60s he was writing for series such as Z-Cars, and in 1974 he wrote the series Gangsters for the BBC. In 1977 he was resident dramatist at the Liverpool Playhouse and his work there included the plays Dead Soldiers, A Tide in the Affairs of Women and Sambo. Also in 1977 he won the Imperial Tobacco prize for best original radio play. He has written extensively for television and radio, including several Play for Today contributions and episodes of Star Cops, Shoestring and Tandoori Nights. For Doctor Who he wrote ‘Vengeance on Varos’ for the twenty-second season and ‘The Trial of a Time Lord’ parts 5 to 8 for the twenty-third. He was also scheduled to write a story called ‘Mission to Magnus’ involving Sil and the Ice Warriors for the abandoned, initial version of the twenty-third season. He continues to work in radio drama and on television and was the Senior Radio Drama Producer at BBC Pebble Mill at the end of the ’80s. More recently he wrote for the Virtual Murder (1992) series and was involved in Thirty Minute Theatre: A Scent of Myrrh (1995).

[nervouspeaceland]

Halloween Quotes and Sayings 2018

 Halloween Quotes and Sayings

Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen, Voices whisper in the trees, “Tonight is Halloween!” ~ Dexter Kozen.

‘Tis the night – the night Of the grave’s delight… ~ Arthur Cleveland Coxe.

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it makes him landlord to a ghost.

~ Lloyd Douglas.

Hark! Hark to the wind! ‘Tis the night, they say,

When all souls come back from the far away – The dead, forgotten this many a day!

Halloween Quotes and Sayings

You wouldn’t believe On All Hallow Eve What lots of fun we can make, With apples to bob, And nuts on the hob, And a ring-and-thimble cake. ~ Carolyn Wells.

Halloween Quotes and Sayings

… we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus.

Charlie Brown is the one person I identify with. C.B. is such a loser. He wasn’t even the star of his own Halloween special. ~ Chris Rock.

                                                                        Halloween Quotes and Sayings

This Halloween the most popular mask is the Arnold Schwarzenegger mask. And the best part? With a mouth full of candy you will sound just like him. ~ Conan O’Brien.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. ~ H. P. Lovecraft

          Halloween Quotes and Sayings

What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted specter, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! and how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scouring! – Washington Irving (a quote from “The Legend of Sleep Hollow”)

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s 

sting, Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. -William Shakespeare (a quote from “Macbeth”)

                                                                       Halloween Quotes and Sayings

There is a sacred HORROR about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling. -Victor Hugo

   Halloween Quotes and Sayings

For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. -Titus Lucretius Carus [99-55 B.C.], De Rerum Natura, bk. III, l. 87

                                                                    Halloween Quotes and Sayings

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. -Sir Francis Bacon, Essays [1625], “Of Death

Men say that in this midnight hour, 

The disembodièd have power To wander as it liketh them, By wizard oak and fairy stream. – William Motherwell

Halloween Quotes and Sayings

From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us! – Scottish saying

Hark! Hark to the wind! ‘Tis the night, they say, When all souls come back from the far away- The dead, forgotten this many a day! – Virna Sheard

‘Tis the night – the night

Of the grave’s delight, And the warlocks are at their play; Ye think that without The wild winds shout, But no, it is they – it is they. – Arthur Cleveland Coxe

“Those seemingly interminable dark walks between houses, long before street-lit safety became an issue, were more adrenalizing than the mountains of candy filling the sack. Sadly Halloween, with our good-natured attempts to protect the little ones, from the increasingly dangerous traffic and increasingly sick adults, has become an utter bore.”

– Lauren Springer

Halloween Quotes and Sayings