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hogwartsfirebolt · 4 years ago

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Hello everyone! I’m back for my (omg time flies) third yearly drarry rec list, in which I share with you my 30 favorite drarry fics I read in the year, divided in three parts. What a year 2020 was. It was challenging, scary and confusing, and it was also an amazing reading year for me, I read so, so much more than I ever had before, and I’m really excited to share these masterpieces with you! The banner art is by @dragontamerdame who is one of my favorite artists and was kind enough to let me use this beautiful piece, which you can (and totally should) reblog right here. Now, with nothing else to add and in no particular order, here’s my

FAVORITE FICS I READ IN 2020 PART ONE

1. Who we are in the shadows - @quicksilvermaid - 100k - E - What happens when you’re forced to become the very thing you despise? Ex-Auror Harry Potter, tossed out of the Ministry for something he had no control over, has been looking for a way back to his former life. When he comes across Draco Malfoy in the criminal underbelly of Wizarding London and in need of protection, Harry figures bringing him in to face the Ministry's justice is his ticket back to everything he's lost. But nothing is exactly as it seems. Not even Harry himself. And as he gets drawn further and further into Malfoy's world of honour and deception he finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew—about his childhood nemesis, the Ministry job he misses so much, and most of all, about himself. What happens when you’re forced to see that you were wrong?

THIS FIC!!! It was the first one I read in 2020, and it immediately became my favorite fic of the entire year, and one of my favorites of all time. I have since read it two more times, the entire 100k of it. There are absolutely no words to describe how amazing it is, how much it floored me to read their characterizations, their jobs and the roads life took them on to end up where they end up, the connection between them in a time when they don’t even know how to relate to anyone, their sorrow and struggles which, despite being so rooted in the magical world, are painfully human, just... wow. It’s a masterpiece. It changed the way I view their characters, forever, and I suspect I will read it many, many more times in the years to come. It’s that kind of story. If for whatever reason you haven’t read it, this is your sign to take that chance and embark on this amazing journey.

2. Every Kingdom - @thistle-verse - 7k - E - Every kingdom needs a prince. Every prince needs a good and useful knight. Draco and Harry play their parts and renegotiate some borders while they’re at it.

So, so lovely. Even though I don’t read them very often, alternate universes fascinate me so much, and I am in awe of the author for being able to pack so, so much story, so neatly into 7k words. This features a princely, lonesome Draco, a charming, golden Harry, and a blossoming love that could change everything. It’s beautiful, and I recommend it deeply.

3. The Bucket List - GallaPlacidia - 32k - Draco will die in six months if he can't get Harry Potter to fall in love with him. Since that's not going to happen, he might as well spend his last days working through his Bucket List. Tap-dancing lessons? Rock climbing? Poetry-writing? Threesomes? Cocaine? Getting to know his adorable cousin, Teddy Lupin? Draco will try them all! Feat. Cheerily pessimistic Draco, devoted bitch queen Pansy Parkinson, and a Harry who can't help but notice that something seems DIFFERENT about Draco, these days.

I’m positive that many, many of us got acquainted with GallaPlacidia’s writing this year, and I, too, fell in love with it. This story aches in the most beautiful of ways, the humor happens to be somehow light in such a difficult circumstance that it ends up hurting when you laugh, it hurts when everything is right because it’s also wrong, it aches when it’s supposed to be a happy moment and feels tender and sweet when it’s not. I can’t even imagine the challenge of writing this kind of story, and they pulled it off beautifully. It’s a lovely story, one you will take with you long after you finish it, and, personally, I think it’s a great introduction to the author’s writing.

4. halcyon days - @the-starryknight - 1.3k - T - Sleepy mornings caught while the sun rises are reserved for silly word games and soft touches and feelings.

Oh my god, the amount of tenderness in such a low wordcount made me weak in the knees. I almost couldn’t take it. Being able to convey such a deep emotional connection in a short story seems like such a daunting task, and the author makes it seem almost effortless. I guarantee that this will make you bring your hands to your chest and sigh with how lovely it is. Reading it will be the best ten minutes of your day.

5. Clouds That Veil the Midnight Moon - @drarrytrash - 37k - E - According to Harry’s personal narrative regarding the incident, he’d hooked up with Draco Malfoy for purely self-destructive reasons, or out of convenience, or by some unlucky accident. Looking at him, sprawled in the moonlight, Harry is devastated to recall that he’d hooked up with Draco Malfoy because he’s hot. Draco is a secret werewolf and Harry is doing his best and they've got criminals to catch, darn it.

Reading this, I found myself laughing out loud, nodding profusely with how freaking spot on the characterizations are. The dialogue is amazing, so hilarious and real and Harry’s inner monologue is so, so him. I love everything about this story. I have a soft spot for werewolf fic, and this one hit everything I love about it, the case is interesting and engaging, the incidental characters, the OCs, Ron and Hermione, everyone and everything is absolutely perfect and I had an absolute blast reading it. You HAVE to read this and see for yourself what I’m talking about.

6. Sex Ed for Aurors - curiouslyfic - 8k - M - Some things, you need to learn on the job.

Oh my god this is so freaking good. The premise is, basically, that Harry is accidentally doused with a lust potion while in the vicinity of Draco, and suddenly wants him more than anything. I loved this take on that trope, we’re in Harry’s head, and it’s absolutely hilarious and endearing to experience the near childish glee he feels whenever Draco looks his way, when he smiles, when he feels he’s made him happy, meanwhile Draco and Ron are horrified and doing whatever they can to correct it. This is so funny and such a good time, I can’t recommend it enough! While you’re at it, you should definitely read megyal’s remix of this, which is also a blast.

7. plasticine porters with looking-glass ties - @bonesliketambourines - 15K - E - Lately, Harry thinks things don’t seem the same between him and Draco. His head is in the clouds when he thinks about what their relationship is now, and where it might be headed—he’s happy with their friendship, but he wants something else. A potions accident over a lunchtime visit to Draco’s lab (what does he get up to in there, anyway?) changes things, though, and accelerates their relationship faster than either of them had ever expected. How are they going to get through this new development together?

Atmospheric, beautifully-written and delicious. Their relationship is tender, just on the edge of something more, when they’re forced to quarantine together and face the effects of a potion that makes them see and feel things differently, which makes for the most intense, visual, gorgeous sex scene I think I’ve ever read. It’s just absolutely phenomenal.

8. i wake up falling - warmfoothills - 9k - M - Draco’s always leaving, one way or another. Harry’s usually 240 thousand miles too late.

In trying to come up with a way to summarize this story, I’m feeling the overwhelming urge to cry again, just like I did when I read it. It’s just so, so, beautiful, every single word of it aches in the best way, the longing feels deeply authentic and just, the setting and the jobs and everything is so unique and gorgeous. Every single work by this author is beyond beautiful, but especially this one is incredibly close to my heart and I think everyone should read it. It’s a gem.

9. In Every Universe - @skeptiquewrites - 27k - M - They sent Professor Harry Potter to search for Unspeakable Draco Malfoy. Draco has stolen a Firebird, an experimental magical device from the Department of Mysteries that lets you enter parallel universes as yourself. As Harry traverses from universe to universe, he begins to think Draco might be the one searching for him. A story about whether knowing what's possible makes it possible.

Stories where the characters find themselves somehow hopping from one reality to another are always so, so fascinating to me, and this one is incredibly creative and well-written, so entertaining all around. The mystery of it kept me on my toes, and every single reality was a joy to read. 10/10

10. Life goes not backward - @shealwaysreads - 8k - T - Harry still isn’t used to gifts, but this one is different. A story of coming home, finding safe ground, and the wild courage of putting down roots. Leaving one life behind isn’t always a sacrifice, and sometimes the greatest good comes from embracing the people you love.

My god, there are not enough words to describe how much this story means to me, how beautiful it is, how every single time I’ve read it, I’ve cried. Bella has undoubtedly become one of my absolute favorite writers in fandom. She has such a way with words, there is not one of her stories that hasn’t touched me, that doesn’t feel like an actual, full-length novel no matter the word count. I read so many of them this year, so many of the masterpieces she’s gifted us, but this one especially is so tender, so dear, that I ended up choosing it as my favorite of hers this year. Harry’s charactertization, the unbelievable warmth of their relationship, absolutely everything about this is gorgeous. Go read it, right now, and then binge all her other works!! You won’t regret it.

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

Each of these fics is incredibly close to my heart and I enjoyed them immensely. In the midst of everything changing, I really found comfort and solace in the amazing works of the people of this fandom. I hope they give you the same amount of warmth and comfort they gave me, and I’m ALWAYS here to gush about any of them ❤️ Happy New Year!

#drarry #drarry fic #drarry fanfic #drarry fic rec #2020rec #ficrec #draco malfoy #harry potter #drarry rec list

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werezmastarbucks · 4 years ago

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Interlude: Kai Parker falls in love

Whitmore Guy masterlist

word count: 2710

music: down by blink-182, famous last words by my chemical romance

Y/N stood her back to the car on one foot, rubbing the other against the ankle.

“What about the picture? You showed me the picture of you and Martha”.

“Spell”, he said casually. She raised her head.

“I thought you were a vampire”.

“I’m both”, Kai shrugged with pride, “they call me a heretic”.

“And the whole bleeding then… I watched you, precisely because I wasn’t sure, I was watching how quickly you’d heal after the attack on the bar…”

He nodded.

“Kai, did you turn all those people?”

Another nod.

“I had a very elaborate plan which you will have to figure out for yourself. We gotta go”.

“Why’s the rush?”

He puffed like he didn’t want to say.

“Ma-.. Kai, I can’t go away with you for good, you know that, right?”

Interesting how about five hours ago she thought the opposite.

“We’ve had this conversation before. And then you went away with me. I take over every time, don’t waste your energy, baby”.

He opened the door of the car with the motion of his hand. Y/N was used to seeing Bonnie do that, so it looked eerie. Lie, the whole three months she’s known him, were a lie. But then again… who’s gonna throw a stone at him?

“Why did they decide to get rid of you?”

He was getting annoyed again. This guy had a very short fuse. True, he was much nicer when his mouth was glued to hers. Y/N moved her shoulder uncomfortably.

“Do you want my jacket?”

“What happens to my friends now?”

“Oh god, the interrogation again”, he moaned.

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know, a long kiss, passionate sex, us running into the raspberry sunrise, the town burning, something like that”, he crowed.

“I don’t know you, Kai, and they’re my…”

Not to blow up, he took a deep breath of night air. The night air is sweet and nice, not quite like lemonade, but still. He tuned out for a second, only catching the ‘I don’t know you’ part.

“I can fix that”, he said, putting the hand on her neck. His palm was warm against her skin covered in goose bumps. August was wearing out slowly, and, though it’s generally mild in the south, occasionally cold nights happened.

She fell down into the car and onto the seat as if something pulled her. Kai lifted her feet and tucked her in carefully, and closed the door. Y/N was asleep, drowning into the vivid vision he cherished, perhaps his favorite memory of her.

They drove in the car. She sat at the wheel but she had no idea where she’s going. Oh, wait, it’s the Whitmore again! What the hell? But it’s daytime. Y/N looked down on her hands holding the wheel and it didn’t really feel like a dream; it was something in between sleep and reality. She just drove, realizing slowly that there was somebody next to her, talking. She turned her head and saw Kai. As soon as he came into her vision field, she heard his voice.

“…you know? And turned out, it was so easy. You literally go online, click this one thing, and you’ve got an acc. Wow. And then followers just…” he made a funny face, “swarmed me. You should follow me, too. They find me hilarious, and when I post selfies, girls, they start messaging me!”

“I’m not on twitter”, she said, or rather, the meat suit she was stuck in, said for her. She felt her lips move and heard her own voice. But the sentence wasn’t formed in her head. She was a mere, silent, helpless spectator. She looked at herself into the rearview mirror. And saw her own eyes, completely calm, joyful, even. She realized she was in a good mood. The car was happily speeding down the road, past the college. Kai (this name was still new) was wearing a childish blue and white tee which made him look years younger.

It was past. It wasn’t a dream. Kai must have inserted one of his memories in her when he touched her.

“You are, now”, he shook his head and waved her phone in his hand, “I just created you an account”.

“Kai, leave my phone alone”.

She stopped the car at the brink of the forest where she’s been thousands of times. She left the car, and suddenly, she said,

“Great idea, by the way, with the blue and white shirt”.

Kai widened his eyes, not understanding.

“What do you mean?”

“What if something goes wrong, and you will be all covered in blood”.

Just as she said it, she felt a sting on her right forearm. She looked down and saw a fresh cut, the type they usually made for a location spell.

Her feet carried her into the forest. Kai was walking behind her with a coil of rope over his shoulder, and he looked very energetic. The way even Mal never looked. He was pretty, lively. He smiled, looking around, he had that kind of a happy smile that a kid has when it knows that they’re going somewhere exciting.

The old her also noticed it.

“What are you so happy about?”

He shrugged, stepping over a knot of green moss,

“I love me some outdoor activities, if you know what I mean”.

“I really don’t”.

Her foot got caught in a root, she grabbed on a thistle and cursed. Kai hummed. They walked on, and then she stopped abruptly, again, to her own surprise.

“You have no idea where to go, do you?”

Kai leveled with her and made a thinking face. He seemed so nonchalant, and she felt the same. She knew this version of her was way more careless. He took her hand and suddenly there was a zip she already knew too well. This time she felt it very clearly: something weird was happening. It felt like energy was streaming right from her body, and into his, like he was sucking the life force out of her. Only, it didn’t feel painful, and it wasn’t wrong. More like, she was feeding him.

A vision inside a vision: she saw through somebody else’s eyes. A cliff, falling down in a sharp turn, the waterfall and the forest below; it was the Nine Brothers’ Waterfall not far away from where they stood.

Kai pushed her away quite rudely.

“Don’t ever do that again!”

In a second his face changed. She looked at him, a capricious boy, and felt the familiar (for the old her) irritation fill her.

“Do what?” she snarled.

“Sneak on me!”

“You’re the one who grabbed me! You know I can’t control it, prick!”

Kai looked her up and down and closed his mouth. He was genuinely worried about her reading his mind. The witch was super concerned about the safety of his pot. There must be some awful things residing there. Finally, apparently after some inner monologue, he let go of it.

“He’s at the waterfall”.

“Yeah”, Y/N snapped, “I know”.

Kai didn’t know how to hold a grudge – now she, the new variant, could throw her fists up victoriously, because she knew something the old her didn’t: Kai is very good at holding grudges. Anyway, he started chatting in five minutes again. He was talking about what he dreamt about last night, and the plants he saw as he went, and how back in Portland he tried to take care of their garden, but they kept interrupting him and soon wouldn’t let him out of the house – and it’s so hard to do gardening when you’re inside! LOL. He talked and talked, until they came out into the clearing they’d seen previously – and she finally remembered the day.

It was the day Shane Atticus died. She remembered vaguely this place in the forest. She even knew where the Waterfall was because she’s been there that day. But she had no other recollection of what’s happened.

She turned to look at Kai. He was the reason she hadn’t. They took it all away. The sound of the water, and the smells of the forest, the prick of thistle, and the cut on her arm.

Atticus was walking around in the clearing, and then he bowed to a big sports bag, taking out a huge ass hunting knife.

They produced sounds simultaneously: Kai gasped, impressed, clearly instantly desiring the knife for himself.

She hummed, annoyed. She hadn’t seen a single Predator running around.

“What’s he doing?” she asked.

“Looks like he’s about to sacrifice…”

At that moment she heard a loud scream. It was animal: Atticus lifted a cat, tied like it was a freaking sausage, yelling for its life, slapping its loose tail on his hands. She saw red. Even though Kai tried to stop her, and even grabbed her by the hem of her jacket, she ran out, yelling,

“LEAVE IT ALONE, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

Funny thing happened. She ran out, but then again, she stayed where Kai was. Because it was his memory. It was like she floated around next to him, but not inside his body. She could see her own back, and how she hopped as she ran. Jesus, is that how I look when I attack somebody? Like a mantis! she thought, cringing.

“That was about the time I fell in love with you”, Kai said, to nobody. She saw everything without turning her head; she didn’t have any. She wanted to ask him to put her back into her body, but she had no mouth, either. She could only observe, locked away, spread everywhere, until the vision was over.

They charged at Atticus (Parker had no other choice than to follow her), and tied him to a tree. Kai knocked him out with a powerful throw and knocked him out. As she was untying the cat, crying with fear and pain, it bit her right hand through. That fucking scar! She was looking at it, from time to time, and had no idea where it came from! It was the cat in the forest!

She saw herself cradle her bitten hand, pale with pain, trying to keep it cool in front of Kai. And him, his eyes, crawling slowly over her, as he expected her to cry out, too. He was like a slow insect, when he was like this, almost inhuman in his delusional obsession with pain. He wanted to see every second of her agony and not miss anything. He almost forgot about Shane.

“Get the water”, she hissed, wincing with pain, and finally, Kai walked over to the bag and pulled a bottle out.

He poured some over the bright red bite, and she moaned quietly.

“You do something good and that’s what you get”, he muttered musingly. “That’s why I never do good anymore”.

She found it in her to snicker.

“You’re doing something good right now”.

Kai’s face lit up with amusement.

“You call this good?”

“You’re helping me, and I’m a good person. Sorry to bust your super villain party”.

He smirked, charmingly, the corner of his mouth went up. He looked so nice.

Then they tried to make Atticus talk. She had no idea what they wanted. She remembered, about five or six years ago, when her dad died (was killed), she was in a car accident. Maybe it was about that. When you think about it, the whole summer of that year was extremely blurry, she just didn’t think that far back. It was horrifying. It meant Kai was there all the time. Her memory of that year was all but a big gaping hole.

Shane rolled his eyes out and cursed at Parker.

“You’re the boy with no powers”, he smiled with his bloody mouth. Kai tilted his head,

“Do I look like I don’t have powers?”

He made Atticus yell out in pain.

She didn’t know why she stood there and just watched them. Pressing her hand into her stomach, she approached them.

“Just get inside and look. We don’t have that much time, Kai”.

Shane was wailing.

Kai clicked his tongue.

“I don’t have enough magic”, he admitted, and looked up at her. She sniffed impatiently.

She put her hand on his shoulder and nodded. This time she couldn’t feel anything, floating around. She could as well be a leaf slowly falling down from a tree. But she saw them two together, crouching next to Atticus, like two weasels. Shane quietened down as Kai penetrated his mind, accelerated by the force her touch brought to him. His shoulders shook a little as he chanted under his breath. It was effortless, she didn’t seem bothered in any bit. The only thing that unnerved her was her own hand.

Shane opened his eyes and moaned,

“Taurus!”

“No way”, Kai jeered. “No! Fuck you!”

“They will come for you, they mustn’t know she left the town if you want to keep her alive…”

Then something happened to him, and his head snapped on his shoulder.

There was a moment of silence, and she removed her hand from Kai. The boy turned to her very slowly, his face full of unreadable expression.

“Oh. You killed him”.

“I killed him?” she yelped. “What… how?”

“I think you shot too much magic through me, and his heart stopped”.

He was sitting, one knee to the ground. She stood up, like she wanted to jump away. Her bitten hand was shaking violently with pain, but the rest of her seemingly went numb. The second Y/N was waiting, watching them both. The noise of the waterfall filled everything.

“Cut off his head”, she said finally.

Kai’s eyebrows went up.

“You want me… you wanna… cut his head off?”

“Yes, make it look like it was a ripper. Whoever they are, they can’t know we’ve been here. And if Damon learns I was here, he’s going to kill me”.

Kai looked at her for a second more, and then turned and gazed straight at her, again. Like he could see her in the air. Like he knew exactly where she was.

“Yeah, I definitely fell in love with you then”.

She blinked with the eyelids she didn’t have.

They were sitting in the car again, and she drove with one hand.

“Remind me again”, she panted, “why the hell I am driving?”

She looked at Kai, and if she could, she’d scream. He was covered in blood from the top of his head to his ass. All his blue and white shirt was soaked in it, like he was running under the rich splatters of it. Her mind wondered, but her old self just winced.

“Because I don’t drive, I told you”, he moaned.

“Jesus, Kai, stop touching everything! Put the phone back!”

“I want to change the song! This one is good”.

The drops of rain they fall all over This awkward silence makes me crazy The glow inside burns light upon her I'll try to kiss you if you let me

“Aren’t you too old for blink?” she asked.

Kai shrugged and rubbed his cheek.

“I knew Mark by the way. Yeah, when I was studying in Cali”.

“You liar!”

“Pfft. I don’t lie to you, you know that”.

“No way you knew Mark fucking Hoppus when you were studying in Cali!”

“Yeah, he had green hair back then, I remember telling him he has to ditch that drummer if they wanna be famous one day”.

Kai motioned towards one of the speakers as if saying, and there we are.

“This is…”

“Yes, I am very cool, I know. You’re welcome”.

It was the first time he didn’t feel like he was showing off, strangely. He sounded pretty sincere. Because he was all covered in Shane’s blood, it was hard to concentrate.

“How did you even get so dirty while cutting off a head?”

“Have you ever cut off someone’s head?”

“Nope, I usually have people do it for me”, she smirked.

You’re already into him, she thought. Kai smiled back.

“No further questions. I must say, it was pretty hot. How you were like, cut it off. I even got a little bit of a…”

“I know Kai, I was there”, Y/N interrupted.

I was there

I was there…

#kai parker #kai parker imagine #kai parker x reader #vampire diaries #vampire diaries imagine #legacies #tvd imagine #whitmore guy

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hayscodings · 4 years ago

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Been thinking abt this ask for a bit, what is your take on Penelope's sexuality?

whew, okay, this is something feel very strongly about so i apologize for the length in advance.

there tend to be two camps of people in this fandom when it comes to interpreting penelope’s sexuality and they are: (1) antis/cheryl stans who consider her to be heterosexual because they refuse to entertain the idea that she might be gay since they hate her; (2) people who have never given her character a second thought but listened to her red dahlia monologue and missed the entire point of it decided it somehow made her a lesbian.

then there are the handful of people in the parentdale fandom who know neither of those interpretations have any merit. because here’s the thing: penelope has canonically been shown to be attracted to men, and at the very least it has been implied that she’s attracted to women.

so let’s start with the former: her attraction to men.

if we think about her timeline in chronological order, the first thing we have to take into consideration is the fact that she slept around quite a bit in high school. see: “oh, it’s not that different from when i was younger and i had my pick of gentleman callers lining up every evening”. it’s important to note she says this very fondly, to the point where she does that whole looking-up-dreamily bit that one does when reminiscing about the past. keep in mind that at the time she was already aware that she was promised to clifford, and that the blossoms surely wouldn’t have approved of her going around with other boys.

there is no reason to believe she was hooking up with these guys for any reason other than she enjoyed it. she obviously wasn’t encouraged to date by her parents, she didn’t have anyone to impress considering the fact wasn’t popular, and it’s not like she could have gone around advertising these encounters anyway since she would have had to have kept them a secret from the blossoms. so that throws out any “she was pressured into it”/“she was trying to convince other people that she was attracted to boys” possibilities. the fact that she happily recalled these memories to cheryl alone casts serious doubt on them.

why excitedly bring up the memories at all if they were just reminders of a time when she was suffering as a result of heteronormativity? it’s not like cheryl encouraged her to share, or gave any indication that she would be impressed by such a revelation. penelope has nothing to prove to cheryl, anyway. the most logical conclusion is the one you get when you take her words at face value: she experiences attraction to the opposite sex and had fun exploring her sexuality in her youth. we’ll circle back to this later when we get to the subject of how comfortable she feels with sex.

so after high school she marries clifford. it’s a forced marriage, and one neither she nor clifford consented to-- but it’s what their parents groomed them for since they were children and something they’ve known was inevitably coming for years. now, for the purposes of keeping this as short as possible and not veering off topic, i won’t get into a whole analysis of their dynamic. all i will say is this: they were depicted as being entirely comfortable with one another in season one. they may not have come across as passionate or romantic, but you could tell they were partners (always on the same page, experts at nonverbal communication, trusting of each other, etc.). and what’s more than that, is they were constantly initiating affectionate gestures with each other: linking arms, putting their hands on each other, standing close together, hugging, etc.

their marriage may have been forced, but penelope genuinely cared for and felt safe with clifford. even after he died, there was a lingering attachment to him. nevertheless, that doesn’t make their situation any less traumatic. no matter how comfortable they felt emotionally with one another, the fact that they were groomed to be life companions and eventually forced to have sex with one another and raise children together, remains a very traumatic experience regardless. and we know penelope is still traumatized by it because she’s talked about it time and time again. if she was only attracted to women, that would add a whole other layer of trauma to the situation.

because if she was only attracted to women, she wouldn’t want clifford anywhere near here irrespective of the fact that they were raised together. hell, she couldn’t even close her eyes and pretend he was someone else while they were having sex. and she certainly couldn’t attempt to get to a place where the sex wasn't so awkward and uncomfortable. every encounter would be an unpleasant, pained, and traumatic experience. to the point where i can’t imagine she would want to be the recipient of any physical contact from clifford, much less frequently initiate it. in this scenario, it wouldn’t just be clifford’s relation to her that she would have to cope with, it would also be the fact that he was a man. even just going through the motions of being his wife would make her feel isolated and miserable.

which brings us to her job in s2 and probably the most solid indication of her attraction to men. in s2, we learn that the blossoms are broke and penelope is faced with the reality that she needs to get a job. let’s start with what she does to pay for the christmas tree cheryl bought: sleep with vic. was it necessary for her to do this? was it the only avenue she could have possibly taken to come up with some money in those circumstances? of course not. christmas trees aren’t that expensive-- she could have easily pawned any number of valuables in thistle house to come up with the money. hell, she could have chosen some cheryl owned to teach her a lesson. or something nana owned. or she could have simply...returned the tree. there was absolutely no reason for her to decide to sleep with vic if it wasn't something she was perfectly comfortable doing. why would this be her go-to solution if she was only attracted to women? her options were plenty.

then after this, what does she do? gets a job as a courtesan. which she delightedly describes as “providing comfort and companionship to the lonely men of riverdale”. and, as cheryl notes in that scene, she seems quite proud of herself for it. i have a very hard time reconciling how any of this would make sense if she wasn’t attracted to men. you can’t argue she was solely in it for the money, because when cheryl offers her an out via the second nick st. clair check, penelope declines to quit. in her own words, “oh, but cheryl, why would i stop, when i’m having such a good time?”. what, pray tell, would be the good time she was having if she didn’t enjoy the sex she was having with these men? keep in mind that, at this point, she wasn’t even doing any dominatrix work. at this point it was very much implied that she was focused on providing the “girlfriend experience”. so you can’t even argue that her enjoyment came from feeling empowered by dominating these men or whatever.

furthermore, not only did she hand-pick this very specific job herself and refuse to quit it when strongly encouraged and given the chance to, but she also had other options, same as she did in the situation with the christmas tree. she could have turned to hiram like cheryl suggested, she could have worked at pop’s like hermione did in s1, talked to weatherbee about a position like alice, looked at the listings in the register, or asked around about any job opportunities at highsmith, you know, the very prestigious college she graduated from and donated tons of money to and apparently sat on the board of?? the point is, penelope didn’t have to turn to sex work to pay her bills if she didn’t want to. and even if she had, she could have stoped the second cheryl handed her that check and begged her to. penelope went into sex work because she wanted to. and she's vehemently voiced how much she enjoys her work continuously and consistently since then.

then there’s her relationship with hal. this is the second strongest indication of her attraction to men. why? because she genuinely had feelings for him. when cheryl approaches her about the affair, assuming it to be a transactional encounter, penelope explains that, “it’s different, with hal. he’s not a client. it’s real”. if you pay attention to her facial expressions in that scene, you can see that there’s a certain softness and vulnerability to them. the way she delivers the line is especially vulnerable-- and penelope so rarely shows vulnerability in front of cheryl, so that alone says a lot. she then asks cheryl to “please stay out of it”. now, we don’t get to see much if any of penelope’s relationship with hal, but the bits we do see let us know that it’s not just some salacious affair. at least, not on penelope’s end. after cheryl drives hal away penelope is visibly upset and accuses cheryl of driving away her “one decent chance at a better life”.

we don’t need to unpack all of that, because penelope feeling like she can’t be happy without a man is an entirely separate issue, but the point is: she sincerely cared for hal and saw herself being happy with him. when cheryl dismissively fires back with “if that’s your idea of love”, penelope defensively snaps, “what would you know about it?”. that’s not the reaction she would have had if she had simply pursued hal because she was bored or wanted to cause some drama or was merely trying to mess with alice or something. you can’t say she was with him for money either, because: (1) she already had money at this point, (2) hal isn’t wealthy, and (3) she wasn’t getting any money out of him anyway since he wasn't a client. and if she was just looking to get hitched and settle down with a man for money, she certainly wouldn’t have gone after a married, middle class one with kids. that would not be a sensible strategy.

it’s also worth noting that nat stated in several interviews back in s2, while the affair plot was airing, that she believed penelope had real feelings for hal. she explained that penelope was lonely and, thus, “looking for a bit of warmth from somewhere”. so that’s how she was playing it.

then there's the maple club. just in case it hadn’t been established enough how much she adores her job, she had to go ahead and open a kink club. there really isn’t any need to drive the ‘she actively enjoys sex work’ point further, as i feel it’s been made explicitly clear already, but i do want to make one note, and that is that penelope was still taking clients while she was a madame. we saw her holding props in like, every other scene, and she was shown wearing nightgowns. so if anyone, for whatever weird reason, assumed she only opened the maple club so she wouldn't have to participate in the sexual encounters herself, i am here to burst your bubble.

and finally, we come to the scene that launched a thousand bad takes: the scene of the red dahlia monologue. in that scene, penelope utters the infamous words, “not people betty, men. they are the true poison”. in context, it is very clear that she is speaking from her many personal experiences with shitty men, seeing as before she delivers that quote she categorically details some of the traumas she has endured at their hands-- the murder of her son by her husband being one of them. that’s all that quote is about! the pain and betrayal she’s experienced from shitty, morally reprehensible men! it has nothing to do with her sexuality, and to make it so is to ignore and take away from the seriousness of her trauma. nothing frustrates me more than to see people misinterpret that scene and reduce it to some man-hating lesbian narrative bullshit. y’all can save that nonsense for cheryl.

also, the fact people were so quick to ignore penelope’s attraction to men in favor of calling her a lesbian feels very biphobic to me, and i will not have it. rip to everyone who thinks being bisexual is just Gay Lite™ and refuses to even consider the possibility when a character is indicated to be attracted to the same sex, but i’m different. not that that scene was any indication that penelope is attracted to women-- it was not. mistrusting men and being disgusted by their actions does not a lesbian make. that is literally just being a woman. but anyway.

the last thing i want to say before i get into penelope’s attraction to women is that there is no way she would be so comfortable with sex, or so confident expressing her sexuality, if she was a lesbian whose sole experiences with sex had consisted of meaningless high school hookups and over two decades of forced marriage to her brother. that just doesn’t add up. if she were a lesbian, s2 would have gone very differently. clifford’s death would have been liberating in more ways than one, and the last thing she would have done after finally being free of having to endure a heterosexual relationship is sleep with a random man to pay for a christmas tree, get into sex work, and pursue a relationship with a man. and go on to open a kink club. that just doesn't make sense.

so onto her attraction to women. this doesn’t require as much of an explanation, so i’ll try to keep it short and sweet since i’ve already written an obscene amount of words trying to answer this ask. i honestly can’t remember when i first started headcanoning penelope as bisexual, but i know i had been entertaining the idea of her being attracted to women long before the flashback episode aired. i’m not sure what it was, the ~vibe was just there. when i first got into the fandom i followed several people who shipped penelope and alice, and, while i didn’t care for the ship at the time (embarrassing, i know), the idea of penelope being interested in women felt very natural to me. maybe it was the violently sapphic schoolteacher/librarian aesthetic she had going on in s1, maybe it was the fact that her whole energy screamed ‘repressed’ to me. actually, i do think the latter is what initially got me wondering.

and then nat starting theorizing that penelope was attracted to women and that was very validating. i was briefly hopeful they would go in that direction in s2, but of course it never happened.

but then the flashback episode aired and bitch ?????? that one scene with sierra was gay as hell. i’m still very confused about why they played up penelope’s crush on sierra only to never go anywhere with it in present time, but i’ll take my crumbs. all of the looks penelope gave sierra in that episode, the way she ignored her vandalizing the bathroom mirror while she grilled alice and hermione for their hall passes, the way she set up a quest just to get everyone out of the room so she could be alone with sierra, the subtle scoot towards her and “looks like it’s just you and me for a little bit, sierra” line with that dorky ass grin, the linking arms and smiling at her in the hallway??? there was nothing heterosexual about that.

and then there was the random, low-key coding in 3x12 where we learned that penelope graduated from a college named after patricia highsmith, referenced the price of salt, and used the word sapphic.....i still have questions about all of this. are we just supposed to believe she reads lesbian novels for science? and casually references them in conversation? where did she learn the word sapphic? if i asked my mom what the word sapphic meant she would have no idea what is was talking about. some food for thought.

also....her scenes with alice. that’s all i have to say.

i’m probably missing some things here, but that’s the bulk of it. i apologize for letting this get away from me...i just have a lot of thoughts lmao. anyway, i hope this was at least somewhat insightful and coherent. i appreciate the ask!

#the way i nearly wrote 3k words about this...#my one shots aren't even this long #ask #message #fandom ask #riverdale ask #moretvforyou #penelope blossom #riverparents #riverdale headcanons #riverdale meta

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 4 years ago

Text

Witness State & Coup de Grâce | Feeding Habits Update #3

Hey People of Earth!

Before we get into this update, TRIGGER WARNING that this chapter discusses attempted suicide, mental health issues, animal cruelty, toxic relationships, and some nods to starvation, so if these are topics you’re sensitive about, I would skip out on this update!

This chapter was a slight nightmare to draft as it went through many, many iterations due to a real struggle to attain the desired emotional arc, and also because of a few logistical problems. In total, it’s about two and a half months of work as it combines some scenes from the old chapter two while also patching areas I cut with new content. Despite the difficulties, I am so happy I pushed through because the final product is quite strong. Here’s a scene breakdown:

Scene A:

We start at the “beautiful place” AKA the cove Lonan and Eliza frequently visit. The last time we’ve seen Lonan was at the end of chapter two, when he had his mild “public freakout moment” on the steps of a cathedral.

On the beach, he rests on the shoreline while reflecting on all the things he’s been tormented by since chapter two (wicked children, fathers, parenthood etc).

He sees an illusion of his father who is obviously not there (he’s very dead!) which propels him to converse about him with Eliza (remembering that Eliza and Lonan’s father were once romantically involved).

This conversation goes south as Lonan is able to unpiece some of Eliza’s mistruths until Lonan finally admits he wants to see his father again, insisting he’s still “alive” through the darkroom abandoned in Oregon him and Harrison failed to destroy in ch. 1 of Moth Work.

Scene B:

Lonan watches a moth through the window (that moth motif tho). Here he recounts what occurred at the hospital in ch. 2--the mother and her three kids taking him there, and then eventually being whisked away by Eliza.

Lonan heads to the kitchen to drink an acetaminophen but quickly realizes he’s not alone in the main apartment. His father sits on the couch looking over photo albums, each leaf holding the same photo: the postcard of Eliza that Harrison initially finds in chapter one of Moth Work. This vision obviously does not exist and is prompted by sleep deprivation but he doesn't know that lol.

Seeing this photo and his father prompt him to believe that he can only get away from this feeling of being haunted without Eliza in his life and further bad decisions ensue which I won’t get into!

I explained the meaning of the title HERE.

Excerpts:

Here’s the opening bit which is the most recent addition to the chapter:

The water is never murky, but today it doesn’t sparkle. Like it’s taken a low dose of cyan, it foams pale against the shore, an offering that wets the tips of Lonan’s shoes. He sits under the cove with one hand pressed into the current, each singular wave like a finger tottering over his veins. Today, their beautiful place is only an arched wall of stones and roily ocean.

Eliza is sunbathing. She lies on her back in the centre of the cove, where its mouth opens to a ceiling of sun. On the drive from the hospital, they both remained silent, Eliza’s hands taut like leather around the steering wheel, and Lonan’s head soldered to the cool window. Even when she pulled into the lot of a diner, named after a vague Canadian city or perennial flower, she said nothing, exiting the car to return to it with two crayon-coloured slushies, his red, hers orange. By the time she pulled up to the beach, her drink was half empty, his fully melted, urging against the brim of the cup. He followed her when she exited the car, parked against a row of pebbles, and placed his hand palm-first against the water the moment she lay against the sand and closed her eyes. Now, water puckers over the shoreline and between each of his fingers, a sort of absent massage. The water is a dull, vitamin-like blue. Warmer than he’s expected for the middle of February, pleasantly pruning his fingertips.

This is a direct continuation of that:

The sun has started to set. It flares against the horizon, its orange singeing the water’s blue. Like in front of the church, it fills him, its heat a comfortable grip around his throat. Though it should remind him to keep awake, its warmth lulls him closer to the sand until he rests his head just where the water laps. He knows it says nothing. He knows he has not slept in days. But to him, its rays nurse his skin like the loop of a nursery rhyme, and when he is parallel to the sky, he closes his eyes and welcomes the sun like it’s an infection. As colours pulse underneath his eyelids, water soaks the crown of his head, and it truly is like being buried at sea, just him, the sun, and the water at his perimeter.

The next chapter in this update is chapter four, aka Coup de Grace. This chapter was an absolute joy to write after struggling to get a handle on chapters two and three, and I’d consider writing this chapter to be, by far, the best writing sessions of my life. In this chapter I feel I really figured out the “crux” of Lonan’s character/his darkest secret, and that’s essentially that he believes all children are the wicked stems of adults, a belief he actually doesn't want to have, and actively combats until he sort of becomes absorbed by it. I learned a lot about my boy in this chapter and learning such important details about a character I’ve been writing for five years feels like a gift!

This chapter plays with form/the timeline a bit because we jump around on the timeline, almost like a movie that begins at the end. This was difficult to do in fiction, but I think I pulled it off, and am really happy with the chapter. Bear with me tho as this breakdown may be confusing:

Scene A:

We start with Lonan rapidly making his way to his father’s darkroom which sits in the middle of a forest. He’s brought supplies with him to destroy it.

The first line of this chapter mimics the first line of Moth Work, which you’ll see below.

Scene B:

We jump back in the fictive past to the morning that would’ve occurred right after the end of chapter three. Lonan goes about his morning routine but is disrupted by a loud thud from outside. Anya, the woman he’s befriended from chapter two, has jumped from the roof of the apartment complex. This attempt is unsuccessful.

His first reaction is to run to Anya’s apartment to see if her son, Joey, is okay.

Scene C:

Less of a scene and more of an internal monologue of Lonan reflecting on Anya’s attempted suicide, and that he feels in some ways, she’s administered her own “death blow”.

Scene D:

Eliza takes Lonan to his father’s cabin to “get him away” from what’s happening at the apartment since he’s really taking the news badly.

Eliza tries to get Lonan to eat something because he hasn’t eaten much since Anya’s news, and they have a conversation about Eliza’s motives in volunteering Lonan to help Anya in the first place.

Scene E:

A flashback where 14-year-old Lonan and his father are at the cabin, about to kill a fish using the ikejime method. His father has informed him the fish is dead, but Lonan knows this is very much a lie.

Scene F:

The fictive present, where Lonan lies on a couch inside the cabin, Eliza tending to a fire. He has a bad feeling (he’s right about that lol)

Scene A2:

We continue the events from scene A as Lonan enters the darkroom, only to find out it’s been cleared out save for three pictures hanging that tell a story and reveals a lot of Eliza’s secrets.

All you need to know about these photos is that it makes their romance feel somewhat like a lie lol.

Eliza finds him at the darkroom despite telling him not to go alone, and Lonan tries to process the new info/secrets revealed.

Scene G:

In the fictive present, Eliza cuts off Lonan’s hair and together they burn each weft. They discuss a few things (his father, the women he’s befriended, future children, mating habits of the praying mantis)

Scene E2:

Back to the flashback where Lonan and his father have killed, cleaned, and eaten the fish. They rinse their hands off in the lake before his father knocks them both into the water.

Excerpts:

This is the opening, ft. the mirroring first line which makes me a lil too giddy:

The darkroom isn’t haunted, but a dead man owns it—and he knows exactly where to find him. Through the woods, Lonan brushes past bushes of gooseberries and wild rhubarb, a gas can sloshing rhythmically in his hands. In his teeth, he holds his flashlight so its beam brightens the pathway. It is not yet dawn.

This is a description of the darkroom that leads to the end of the scene:

He shouldn’t know where he’s going. The forest is so dense and unanimous, a duplication of itself, nothing more than repetitions of the same tree, same flower, same stream. But he doesn’t need to see to know where his feet take him—he doesn’t even need the flashlight. He’s memorized the direction to the darkroom like the pattern of veins on his own arm.

He is not surprised to see it still stands. As if protected from rain, thunderstorms, the fallen trees that crisscross at the walkway; it’s always been a divine place. The air is damp, and particles of mist cling to his throat.

He sets the gas can in front of the steel panelling that makes the door with urgency. He does not need to rush but cannot take his time.

Wildflowers burst from in between the cracks of concrete the shed sits on and he knows each species like they’ve been bred in his blood. Wax flowers, thistles, clusters of asters he’d sometimes gather as a boy and leave as offerings in the heart of the forest’s most prominent clearings, like an offering, or a ransom.

Lonan kneels once the first thread of sunlight leaks between the whisper of trees. He is familiar with this forest, the cabin not too far away, the messages the water speaks to him when he sits at its edge most nights, why the darkroom was his father’s favourite place and why it always will be. So when sunlight hits his eyes, he presses his fingertips against his lips, and looks to the sky for mercy.

Lonan watching his fave TV show that leads into Anya’s jump:

He turned the television onto its usual program while on his last three mandarin segments and looked on as a herd of caribou dotted a waterway. They moved like the current, pattering along the prairie, worriless. He should have heard the part where a wolf caught up to the herd, the same wolf that would later go on to single out a young fawn and silence it with two teeth in its throat like bullet wounds. He should have seen the part where the prey was consumed, its flesh a desperate shade of red. But the thud distracted him. Maybe not even a thud, more like a crash. A sound he felt in his temples, a ringing in his ear, like a chickadee. Lonan set the skin of the mandarin onto the coffee table and stood slowly. It’s his body that moved him, no force of the mind, toward the balcony. In one movement, he unlocked and shoved open the glass sliding door, rucking it forward with his body weight when it stuck. On his lip, he tasted citrus and salt, a mixture of fruit and sweat.

He heard death before he saw it. The way each identical sliding door of the apartment units around him shook open, just like his. What a woman on the sidewalk declared, her tone so shrill, he couldn’t tell if she was delighted or horrified, something like, “I thought she was a bird—I thought she was a gift from heaven.” The garbled sound of an infant, confused by the sound concrete makes when a human batters it.

We get Lonan’s first response and some Joey and *that stunning motif tho*:

Lonan did not deescalate the stairs to the ground floor to join the growing crowd. He did not call an ambulance or rush to perform CPR. He ran upward, scaling flights of stairs as if airborne, with little effort. Once he reached her unit, it was the tin of madeleines he noticed first, sitting unopened, untouched, dare he thought, neglected on her welcome mat. It’s this that lulled him, freezing him in place for a moment. He recollected nothing of bringing the madeleines to her the evening previous, of leaving them neatly tucked against her straw welcome mat. Innocently idle there, his gift unrecognized.

Joey sat on the couch. The television was on, projecting technicolor polygons onto the boy’s face. Lonan did not register what it was he watched, which animated shapes pounced and danced on screen. Joey did not cry at first. He sat, staring wondrously at the screen like it was a trap door to a different dimension. The socks secured around his miniature feet looked freshly ironed, and his hair smelled like his mother did when Lonan first met her—like coconuts.

The buzzing of onlookers and neighbours sounded like the caribou running. A constant drumming of a snare, a guttural kind of ambience. He thought of Anya the day previous, her desperate excitement to paint over the wall, the way she mixed that orange juice drink, incredulous, experienced. He thought of the sourdough he never picked up, and there on the counter they sat, one torn down the middle like it was ripped bare-handed, the other skewered with a chef’s knife. He thought of Anya’s hospitality, her coy excuses to help them both avoid embarrassment, the way each part of her apartment transformed into gold. He thought of their conversation, Anya’s initial instruction when she left him alone with her son. So when Joey cried, Lonan knew exactly to reach for the remote and tick the volume up until his sobbing quieted, like the last few minutes of a rainstorm, passionately loud, then stunningly silent.

Here we briefly reference 2 Kings 21:6: “And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.”

Anya will never be the mother she once was, in the capacity she longed to be. Joey will grow up without a father and with a mother who cannot mother him in the ways she’d always hoped; he’ll have no one to recreate. That is the real loss—what could have been. Anya burned herself into an offering, administered her own kill shot, provoked her own fate; either life or death, and her fate chose neither.

The following mirrors something Lonan’s sister, Reeve, says in Houses With Teeth about hunger:

The day Anya jumped from her balcony onto the sidewalk below, Eliza took Lonan to his father’s cabin. In a daze, he watched her pack a bag with enough things to tide them over for a month, and in that same daze, they reached the cabin before sunset. That night, Eliza rifled through the cabinets to put together a meal, and her findings assembled as a can of tuna topped with crumbles of saltines—cheap take on a deconstructed pâté.

She served him his dinner on a set of plates he vaguely recognized—terrazzo with a scalloped edge, maybe held a scrambled egg or halved tomato when he was a child. He stared through the French doors, down to the water that padded below. Even when she tried some for herself, putting on her enjoyment in exclamations like “It’s a culinary masterpiece. Refined. Daring. A little spectacular,” she couldn’t convince him to eat. His appetite disappeared when Anya fell from the sky; there would be no hunger as penance.

This is the fish flashback:

Lonan knows the fish is not dead. He is fourteen but not naïve. Sun warms the back of his neck; maggots shimmer over the gummy slick of the water’s surface. Today is what someone would describe as the perfect day. Trees whisper secrets amongst the spines of their leaves. Birds teeter on the neck of birch trees. A butterfly dusts its wings of the shore’s sand and nips at his childish knuckles.

The fish is not dead. This is fact. In his palm, it expands, its gills like the crescent cut of the moon. The fish is not dead. Its mouth kisses the air like it’s a divine thing, each blip of its lips greedy, like the air tastes of gold. The fish is not dead. Its scales grate against Lonan’s palms, shimmering, its prettiness its last defense mechanism. The fish is not dead.

More with this fish memory:

“It’s dead. It does not even know the taste of life. Why save it?”

“I don’t want to save it,” Lonan says. His father’s wedding band digs into his forehead. To an onlooker, it may look like he’s about to dip him forward into the water, not a drowning, but a baptism.

“What do you want to do with it?”

Mourn it, he wants to say. Pity it. Sacrifice it.

The water whistles ahead of them, all the uncaught sunfish gloriously slashing naively in the water. They are unaware of their future demise, and the current demise of their loved ones, bodies all piled into the net as if on display. Lonan’s eyes sting with lake water, a streak of it dripping onto his lip so when his father reaches over him and secures his hand like a marionette around the screwdriver, he tastes salt and doesn’t stop tasting it.

And the end of part A of the fish memory that gets a little gory:

“It dies for us,” his father says, his voice dampened, like the distant blip of the lake. “So we give it mercy in return.”

As the screwdriver’s tip lowers closer to the fish, Lonan licks his top lip and asks, “Why do we need to show it mercy if it’s already dead?”

“Le coup de grâce. A death blow. To end the suffering of the wounded.”

“But it’s already dead.”

“Even the dead still suffer.”

Lonan does not register when the screwdriver impales the fish’s brain. He does not register when his father uses both their hands to slit the fish’s gills with a hunting knife or register the warm spurting of its blood up their knuckles. He stares at the fish’s glasslike eye, and as he and his father gut and scale the fish, puppet and puppeteer, he imagines the way he’ll feel with its head in his mouth.

Here’s a section from the fictive present:

Seven days after Anya jumps off her apartment’s balcony, Lonan lies on a pig’s leather couch his father once towed in from the city, a damp washcloth doused in eucalyptus essential oil pressed to his forehead.

At first, he fears the blinking comes from stars and that the cabin’s roof has been removed. But as he comes to, he smells it, the earthy crack of wood, the wisp of smoke, and he knows the light that pulses is a fire.

Lonan opens his eyes. As he’s thought, he lies on his father’s couch, essenced water dribbling down his temples from the washcloth. Eliza sits hunched on the stone of the fireplace’s ledge, her shoulders ripening under the orange heat. She’s burning something. The scent of scorched film is not unfamiliar to him. Like his mouth, it is dry and acrid, like the lick of a battery.

“You promised,” she says, as if sensing he’s awoken. Lonan does not move, even as the eucalyptus soak drizzles into his eyes.

Eliza no longer wears the parka. She’s stripped to a pearl-coloured camisole, her feet bare and propped flush against the brick. Glossy red lacquer colours her toenails, reflects the light in ovular patterns along its surface.

“A false witness shall be punished, and a liar shall be caught,” she says. “Proverbs.”

Going to leave this tea here casually:

The darkroom was misplaced. This was Lonan’s first thought when he yanked open its steel panel door and entered to reveal its contents. He did not need the glimmer of a flashlight to confirm his instinct. This was not the same darkroom he’d known as a child, or the darkroom he found his sister in, or the darkroom him and Harrison tried to destroy. Everything was slotted away, puzzled back into a configuration so unknown to him, so wrong to him, that the organization felt more like war.

Unlike when he and Harrison had last stepped foot inside of the darkroom, lugging the gas can along with them, not unlike what he did then, the photos that used to string clothespinned in no justifiable order were now taken down. The bricks of photo paper forming a maze around the developing tables, the amber bottles of chemicals—all of it, meticulously put back in places Lonan knew they never had. Under his boots, he did not feel the crunch of glass or slip of forgotten negatives. The darkroom had been swept clean.

Lonan dropped the gas can at the darkroom’s entrance, and removed the flashlight from between his teeth, thumbing it off. He worked his way around the shed like he’d been wounded, staggering, stopping to hold himself upright. Nothing was in its rightful chaos. Expired film lay stacked in a waste bin he’d never seen before. Bad paper cuts had been shredded. The photos he’d been so accustomed to not looking at, all gone, except for three, evenly clipped on the last three lines.

In the distance, an eagle cawed. The stream trilled. Tadpoles cricketed along the embankment.

Lonan approached the remaining photographs like they’d electrocute him. They were displayed one after the other, each on its own line. The first, a picture not unfamiliar to him. Eliza standing in front of a colourful street of vendors. Her loopy signature on the back a jagged indication of where she signed it, most likely wobbling on a train, or in the back of a taxi. He picked it off its clothespin and held it up to a hole in the roof where sun bled through. Nothing had changed from the photo since he’d taken it last year, and he was almost grateful she’d left it fossilized when she took it from his pocket. His gratitude did not last by the time he saw the second photo, so unexpected, he had to glance twice.

His father stood arced slightly behind him, his hands not visible. Lonan knew where they were—one secured around his forehead, the next urging a screwdriver up a stone. Sun scalded the water’s surface, wrinkled it with light. He remembered the song his father whistled as he fried the sunfish on a birch branch, truly less of a song and more of a reminder as he hummed up and down each minor scale, not once stopping to check his work, like he knew better than any instrument.

Lonan plucked the photograph off the line and held it closer. Though he was shaded mostly by his father’s back, he knew they were both in it. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he turned it over to find that same looping signature inked onto the back, smudged, like she’d forgotten to let the ink dry before handling.

It would’ve been easier to think about the second photo’s implications had he not seen the third. He could’ve excused it—a shot taken by a neighbour, though the cabin was remote. A shot that fired itself, the camera discarded on the ground, though it was taken at eye level. A shot signed with familiar initials E.L.K, as if those letters could stand for anything but Eliza Louise Kiang. It would’ve been easier to excuse her presence. To excuse her knowledge of him, to forget she’d ever told him she didn’t know his father had children, that she swore she’d never have been with him had someone informed her. It would’ve been so much easier.

The last photo was not a photo at all, not in the same capacity at least. The ink had gone purplish from the elements but swirled, almost horror-like around the photo’s frame. He could have pretended the white swishes of colour were strands of lace, or the awkward scratch of photo blur. He could’ve pretended to not understand. But there it was. The light funnelling down on the black and white shape so he understood it was not a photograph he looked at, but a child.

I have already shared this line a few times, but it’s my favourite thing I’ve ever written oops!:

When she looked at him, she grinned, and he turned his face to the ceiling where a hole in the roof caved around a branch. The sun’s eye disappeared behind the bullet of the wood, leaving only its outer edges to skirt the sky, a veiling that felt less like an eclipse, and more like evidence of an exit wound.

Obligatory “I’m the grass” shoutout:

“All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field,” he says without once reading what’s actually written on the page. “Isaiah.”

“Isaiah was onto something, don’t you think? Poor grass, poor flowers—they all die in the end, but they have their God. They have their saviour. Everything dying except for God and his word.”

Eliza cuts another clump of hair. The fire welcomes its feed with haste.

“What does this have to do with children?”

“Do you feel you’re the God of these women, Lonan? Are you their saviour?”

Lonan shakes his head. “I’m the grass.”

And to finish:

After they eat the fish, Lonan and his father rinse their hands in the lake. This is respect. This is self-ordinance. This is a holy act.

His father stoops farther into the stream than he does, water nipping his knees. The sun has disappeared beyond the horizon, the sky now coloured periwinkle, silvering his hair. The taste of sunfish coddles Lonan’s tongue, oiled and briny with saltwater. They share a bar of orange glycerin soap, its scent cloying, like a rotting fruit basket. His father peels the bar between his palms, scrubbing until his fingers disappear under suds.

That’s it for this update! Hope y’all enjoyed! :) I’ll be back soon to update on chapter 5!

--Rachel

#writing #amwriting #writeblr #writerblr #writingupdates #fostered #mothwork #feedinghabits

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damienthepious · 5 years ago

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NOTHER ONE HAPPY 🦎💋

thorns that burst from my skull in the night (chapter 3)

[ch 1] [ch 2] [ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Lord Arum, The Keep, Sir Damien, Rilla

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday, Canon Compliant, Prophetic Dreams, Alternate Universe, canon typical Arum ignoring feelings, (very mild suicidal ideation or at least. canon typical arum being reckless with his own life)

Summary: Arum has always seen glimpses of the future in his dreams. This gift is sometimes useful, but more often than not it leaves him with more questions than answers. The dreams of the flowers are particularly unhelpful.

Chapter Summary: The prelude to their second duel.

Chapter Notes: This fic is shockingly hard to write for how short these chapters are. Is it just Current Circumstances? or is it just that canon compliant retellings are difficult for me as a rule? who knoooooooooooows. Anyway! happy lizard kissin' tuesday, i hope y'all are keeping well, i love you!!!

Arum should throw himself into the task of using the scarf the foolish knight gave him to work on his weapon. He has no reason to honor his proposed duel, no further goal that returning will serve-

He washes away his own blood, folds the silk, re-wraps his wound while the Keep chastises him gently for his recklessness, and Arum is tired but he cannot afford to rest. He does not wish to see what the dreams will show him now, now that he knows the face of his flower, now that he knows the curve of that smile.

The scrap of silk will do, he thinks. The grubs attune to it easily, and Arum knows the most pressing challenge in their growth (throbbing, screaming, at the edge of the world) has not been solved, but he has done as much as is in his power. The Hermit may influence life, may encourage it, may imbue its own eagerness (it's contagious, too?) into that which surrounds it, but it is not a panacea. It cannot accelerate the growth of the grubs. Arum sighs over the writhing mass as they tickle the mind of the Queen, and he calls this task sufficiently executed. He wills a promising mass of the creatures to cocoon, and he sends them off with a coded missive explaining the intent of the creature, and its shortcomings. It must be enough. It must be. The Senate knew the scope of his skill; they cannot expect him to solve the problem that is time.

So. He has done all he may do, for the moment.

There is no reason for Arum to fulfill the challenge Sir Damien set for him.

(sunbeams loose on his tongue, laughter and bells and song, indistinguishable)

Regardless. Arum leaves the Keep, leaves behind further contemplation of the task set by the Senate for the latter half of the day. He weaves his work into the jungle, his most clever machinations and his most devious traps and his creations that should prove most effective against the little archer. He prepares, his tail and anticipation coiling as the chiming of the bells nearby (familiar) mark the quickly passing hours, as they mark the approach of their duel.

And if these trees seem familiar too, if he is sure that he knows the shape of them, if he is so certain that he recognizes a gap in the underbrush and knows that the thistle-cage belongs exactly there-

Well. It is an advantage, even if it rankles. The little honeysuckle wants him at his best, does he not? The dreams are a part of him; using them is only giving the knight what he desires. And if- when Arum wins, tonight, and he takes the life of this little human as his prize, that will be the end of it. The end of these ridiculous soft dreams, and he will tear out the roots burrowing into the soil of his greenhouse, and he will never think of this again. That is what this vision is meant for. He is certain, now. He is meant to destroy this little human and all his foolish softness and all his surprising skill, meant to pluck this bloom and devour it.

(may I say a prayer before you)

He does not wish to dream again, but-

If he intends to perform at his best, he will require the rest. When he is content that he has set more than enough traps in motion among the jungle foliage, when he has planned potential routes for chase, when he is satisfied with his preparation, he finds a safe place among the high branches of Rakschakala. He curls in a crook of bark, surrounded by soft, breeze-blown (familiar) leaves, and he sighs and relents and allows himself the briefest of rests, allows the influence of the magic in his mind to take him as it will.

His augury fails to be useful even now. Blood and cloth, drifting petals, amaryllis bright and distracting at the edge of his vision, and a racing heart so hot and vivid he can nearly taste it. And the other taste, of course. Honeysuckle on his tongue.

(heart should swell the mind race the pulse quicken)

Symbolism so familiar it has lost all meaning, and the sorts of violent moments that would be perfectly at home in a duel, a hunt. All to be expected. Nothing he can use.

(you are very close to)

(kill you but I)

(you, monster, must be the cause)

(I do)

It is dark when he wakes again. His mind is not settled, but it is clearer. All is set, and the knight will fall beneath his knives and his claws or, more anticlimactically, his traps and creations.

Arum finds his perch by the first of those traps and settles to wait, listening for Sir Damien’s footsteps, listening for the tolling of the bells.

Sir Damien is punctual. He arrives a few brief moments before the bells chime, their echoing musicality filling the jungle, magic rippling out, and Sir Damien's voice follows just as Arum lights the wick.

Arum realizes with a warm curl of shock that Sir Damien's words are as familiar to him as the pealing bells. They had not stuck in his memory, not properly, but- they have whispered through at the edges of his dreams for many long years.

(my mind spins with thoughts of)

"Lord Arum, ruler of the Swamp of Titan's Blooms, with the cunning eyes and deadly claws-"

(a greater rival I have never met)

The echo is almost too much to bear. The familiarity, the way Arum knows, and it is so difficult to understand precisely what the poet is even saying, because Arum is distracted by the way the words are bouncing between his own half-understood dreams and the true fluting of Sir Damien's voice in the open air.

It is difficult to understand it. But there is more than one echo, and Arum's frill flares higher every time Sir Damien summons to voice the peculiarity of Arum's eyes.

(I swear, I saw something human in)

"-his eyes, his violet eyes…" Damien trails off, and even from high above him Arum can see the strange fragility in the way the knight clutches his bow to his chest, almost as if he has forgotten it entirely.

(I will fulfill my duty - and cut)

Arum can taste the tension coiling off of the knight as his strange dreamy tone shifts, his already-quickened heart speeding further, his panic swelling.

"No, no, Damien, you've-"

(merely confused yourself)

Arum shivers at this particular echo, his own feelings from the day before pulsing again in the knight, the pheromones of fear and- something else, bright and familiar on the air.

Sir Damien settles himself, or attempts to at the very least, and Arum knows there is very little time before his trap springs, now. It would be entirely too anticlimactic to let the little creature be simply crushed, of course, would defeat the point he is trying to prove with this rematch, so-

"Who is that you plan to slay?" he taunts as he drops down beside his foe, and the gasping, shocked noise that Sir Damien gives at his appearance makes Arum's claws flex. He flicks his tongue in the air, feigns nonchalance, aggressive and just on the edge of too close.

Sir Damien is cool, now, though. Reserved. Intentionally so, but Arum still feels the deliberate distance like a pane of fogged glass, and he feels-

Cheated, somehow. The little blatherer can monologue to himself and his ridiculous Saint for ages before he knows he has an audience, but now he does not wish to annoy his opponent with his words? Absurd creature, impatient for his own death-

More words hover at the edges of Arum's memory. There is more that Sir Damien will say, before Arum cuts his stem. It is troubling that he is stifling himself now. It does not bode well.

He draws his own phrases out, threatening and taunting the poet with the doom he has sown for himself, with all the ways that Arum skill may destroy him, tone predatory and indulgent.

"And all of them," Arum purrs, tail flicking, "for you."

"A present? Why, Lord Arum. We hardly know each other." Sir Damien smiles, and Arum does not step closer, no matter the way the muscles of his calves tense with the urge, and then he registers the poet's words, in addition to the bouncing musicality of his tone.

A present.

(weaving through the jungle with the most delicate care, the best work of his hands)

(teeth but no blood)

(an offering)

Arum splutters. He snarls and spits and slithers back a step, the mirth in Sir Damien's eyes too familiar and bright to stand.

The knight (honeysuckle) may say whatever he likes, regardless. They are out of time, for banter. Arum set the duel in motion already, inexorable as the gravity that will bring his trap down. Arum forces his frill to settle, hisses something scathing, and he cackles as his foe is nearly crushed by the first blow.

"Catch me if you can," he crows, his heart already racing as Damien sprawls in the dirt, and he slips out of sight before the poet rises again.

He will win this duel. He knows he will.

(pinned beneath my claws)

He will slay this human tonight, and that will be that.

#elle's fanfic #the penumbra podcast #second citadel #rad bouquet #lizard kissin' tuesday #oneiromancy au #lord arum #sir damien #HI I LOVE YOU

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optimist-pine · 5 years ago

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Thistles || TMR Newt

Prompt: I was pulling weeds today (unwisely) without gloves, and my hands are all sliced up.

Warnings: Secondhand embarrassment?

a/n: I just tried to imagine how ridiculous I would be in this situation if it were happening to me. So just beware of major awkwardness...

---

"You know, if you wore the gloves I actually like walked all the way over to you this morning, you would be in a significantly lesser amount of - "

Newt hissed, his face scrunching up in a semi-cute sort of way.

" - pain..." You rolled your eyes, failing to prevent the edge of your mouth from quirking upwards.

"Ah, but then we wouldn't be sharing this wonderful quality time together." He said smiling like a giddy child.

You held his bloodied hands in yours. "You think this is wonderful?"

"Well, time away from the others always is."

"I guess some peace and quiet is pretty amazing." You hummed in agreement, but quickly noticed the drop in his expression. "That is what you meant, isn't it?"

"Actually, I uh... Well..." He wouldn't meet your gaze. "I meant it's wonderful because it's just me and you. That we're together? Yeah..." He rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

Oh. Oh.

"I'm sorry. It's just..." He shook his head sharply. "Are we done here?" His lips were pulled tight, and by the look in his eyes you could tell he wanted to bolt.

"Wait, Newt, hold on a second. Please don't leave before telling me what's on your mind. All of it." You sat down on the cot next to him before he got the chance to leave. "Like you said, it's only the two of us."

In silence, you felt the matress beside you shift with his movement. Your nerves were on absolute freak out mode at the moment, and your inner monologue was telling you that he could surely feel the way your body was buzzing with nervous energy. You fought to meet his eyes, and once they did you could see him inhale shakily.

"This is going to sound ridiculous. You're the only girl in the bloody Glade, and it's obvious that every shank here has some sort of crush on you. But... I like you, (y/n). And I know there's dozens of other guys out there and chances are you'd rather choose one of them. Or none of us, you're strong, I know you don't need to be with anyone. But every time you're around all I can think about is knowing what it's like to hold your hand, or what it's like to... to kiss you."

He shook his head once again with a wry smile. "I don't expect you to -"

So you kissed him. It was shaky and short and the smile you gave him probably seemed forced but you wanted to do it again. Badly.

His eyes searched yours, and apparently found whatever they were looking for. "Can I?"

You nodded, probably too quickly, but he didn't seem to mind.

His lips met yours slowly and softly. You could taste the salt on him, a result of working in the sun all day.

The two of you pulled away, but only slightly, and only long enough to catch your breath before leaning back in. His hands came to sit lightly on your hips, and the slight shake to his touch reassured you that you weren't the only one who's heart was racing. Your fingers carefully made their way to tangle in the soft blond locks at the back of his head. He smelled of grass and dirt, like walking through a forest.

"GAH! What the shuck are -"

Suddenly you weren't holding Newt, but instead were facing Minho who's mouth was hanging open. Heat rushed to flood your face with red, and a quick glance at Newt revealed that he was in a similar boat.

"I was going to let the two of you know that dinner is ready, but it looks like you already found a way to satisfy your huger..."

"Minho!" You buried your face in your hands, willing the past thirty seconds to erase themselves from existence.

Newt grabbed a roll of bandages and chucked them at the intruder. "Get out of here you bloody pile of klunk!"

He quickly threw his hands up in surrender, an ornery grin stretching across his face. "Fine, fine! Alright! But I'll tell you now that there's going to be some extremely juicy dinnertime gossip this evening!" He disappeared from the doorway, leaving you and Newt standing around blushing like a couple of idiots.

Newt cleared his throat; an extremely loud sound within the awkward silence. "He ruined the moment, didn't he?"

"Sure did."

---

Thanks for reading, and be sure to request some more Newt content!

#the maze runner #tmr #tmr newt #newt #the maze runner newt #tmr x reader #the maze runner x reader #newt x reader #tmr newt x reader #the maze runner newt x reader #tmr imagine #the maze runner imagine #newt imagine #tmr newt imagine #the maze runner newt imagine #themazerunner #optimistic-pine

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kazuwhora · 3 years ago

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ofc bb you deserve a break and we like hearing about who’s doing all the writing! How many tattoos do you have? Where and what?

weee I love talking about my tattoos LOL

I have 38 total as of right now I think!

From top to bottom:

- taurus constellation on my neck

- a quote from sam’s monologue in lotr down my spine

- a meadowlark on a thistle (arm)

- a vase with flowers and a chain (arm)

- a string of flowers on said vase on other side (arm)

- a portrait of my cat (arm)

- a band of cherry blossoms (arm)

- magnolia flower (arm)

- 2 clusters of abstract flowers (arm)

- luna moth (above elbow)

- manatee (above elbow)

- more cherry blossoms and flowers (arm)

- an orca (wrist)

- a uv reactive mushroom (wrist)

- 13 separate bunches of stars and planets and sparkles (fingers)

- sparkles and stars (hand)

- snake wrapped around an amethyst root and a daisy (sternum/underboob and ribs)

- a fox (thigh)

- a peony (thigh)

- large cluster of flowers and berries (other thigh)

- boba (ankle)

- a patch of crystals (ankle)

- my cat again (ankle)

- a cactus (ankle)

- a bunch of wild roses (ankle)

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ren-c-leyn · 3 years ago

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For The Plight of a Sparrow, I chose first person from Sparrow’s point of view. I wrote the first draft of the first book in third person, actually, but I didn’t like how far away from the drama and the characters it felt. Sparrow was the natural choice for narrator for two reasons. 1. The story centers around her and her quest to become a hero. 2. She knows the least about what is actually happening around her, which allows me to build the layers of intrigue, shock, betrayal, and emotion I wanted out of the story. Which is something I couldn’t have gotten out of any of the other characters.

For The Dragon’s Crown, it was a similar thing, except it wasn’t that I didn’t like the third person, it’s just that Ophelia’s sass was too much fun to write not to let the players experience her inner monologue.

My Ancestor, My Enemy, the entire project was just so I could practice writing as though the story was from a journal, so since the story is Lierin’s hunting journal, it only made sense to have her be the narrator.

The Firewalker was an experiment in multiple POVs, and I chose to do it in first person so I could really dig into exactly what Thistle and Valerian thought of each other and the mess they got themselves and each other into. And, finally, Forgotten Gods. I picked third person with an alternating focus on each of the characters and their roles in the story, but first person felt too limiting for the kinds of transitions and scenes I wanted. It’s been awhile since I’ve done a project in third person, but it’s going smoothly. I was afraid I’d be too rusty to pull off a full project again, but it looks like I was worried for nothing ^^

What pov did you choose for your current project and why?

#writing discussion #my wips #the plight of a sparrow #the dragons crown #my ancestor my enemy #The Firewalker #Forgotten Gods

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alicescripts · 8 years ago

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Part 2, Chapter 2: Mouth of the Water

First the dogs will bark. They’ll know before any of us. Then I will have six to fifteen minutes.

I’ve been taking long walks on this coast, just north of the Oregon border. Bald eagles, actual bald eagles, sitting on a wide sandy beach, and I’m the only one here to see it. I can’t see anyone else in either direction. Waves repeating themselves at the tideline, clouds of birds fluttering up and resetting. 10 to 30 seconds after the dogs start barking, the ground will shake. 6 to 15 minutes later, the tsunami will come.

An earthquake is due here, and afterward the tsunami inevitable. If I began running when the dogs started barking, could I make it to the grassy dunes and up to the hills?

No. I can see the root, can make any plan I want, but I couldn’t outrun the wave. Six to fifteen minutes after the dogs started barking I would die. That’s what would happen.

No one in sight in any direction. Birds at the tideline, actual fucking bald eagles.

I finished my walk still alive. When what’s coming for me finally comes, there will be no warning.

[theme song]

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink. Performed by Jasika Nicole, produced by Disparition.

Cape Disappointment. As picturesque piece of land as you’re going to find in this world. Northwest forest overlooking the point where the gray ocean, all froth and wave, and the mouth of the Columbia River, tranquil and turquoise, meet. A dangerous place for boats. Up on the cliffs above, the coast guard keep constant watch from a lighthouse.

I went up there, stood near their lookout. A panorama where so many have floundered, so many have died. But for now, just a beautiful view of the ocean.

The coast guard officer came out of the station, stood next to me in the railing. She closed her eyes, let the wind sweeping in off the river and the wind coming down the coast fight with each other in her hair. She was beautiful, is maybe why I talked to her. Or maybe it had been a long time since I talked to anyone except myself. Monologues broadcast to a wife who is out fighting a fight that I’m still trying to understand.

“Aren’t you supposed to be watching the boats?” I said. I meant it like a joke, but I think it came out like a reprimand. She opened her eyes, glanced at me. “No traffic right now,” she said. “I think it’ll be safe for me to take a second of fresh air, but don’t tell my bosses down the hill. They have different ideas about safety.”

“[chuckles] Always do, I said. I’m Keisha.”

“Laurel.”

“Not Officer something?” I asked.

“[scoffs] Yeah, Officer Something,” she said. “But for you, Laurel.”

A pressure in my chest that could have been pain or could have been laughter. It had been so long since I had flirted, or felt the fleeting pleasure of the five-minute crush. “What about that boat there?” I said. “Seems like you’re derelicting your duties, Laurel.”

There was a boat, medium-sized, tiny in comparison to the mighty cargo ships that come and go through this passage. It was painted black and sitting motionless near the mouth of the river. As soon as I pointed it out, I wished I hadn’t. There was a wrongness to it that didn’t belong to a spring afternoon’s flirtation.

Laurel didn’t look at the boat or at me. Any friendliness that had been in her face, or that I had imagined in her face, was gone.“I’m not supposed to talk while on duty, Ma’am,” she said. “Excuse me.” She went back into the station, slamming the door. [chuckle] I haven’t lost my touch, Alice!

We have a problem as a society. Our goal is efficiency, but the result of efficiency by definition is that it takes less work to get things done. And less work to get things done means there is less work to do. If there is less work, there are less jobs. Progress destroys jobs.

Another result of efficiency is an explosion in population. The easier things get, the less of us die. More and more of us, less and less jobs.

This place was named by a fur trader who stopped here and failed to discover the Columbia River around the corner. And so this little piece of coast line heaven is Cape Disappointment. There’s this one beach on an inlet tucked away from the main trail. I had to go down a path that was more a controlled fall than path. The water was shallow and clear, the sharp blue of a tropical sea in a postcard. There were people living in tents on that semi-hidden beach. I watched them play with their dogs. The dogs swam way out into the inlet. I wanted to swim too but the water, for all its tropical appearance, was freezing.

When I went back to where I had parked, a buck came out of the woods and crossed the road right in front of me. Slow, leisurely, unafraid. Later I went up north a bit, to a place that billed itself as a free museum, but was more of a gift shop with some stuff stuck to its walls. Jackalopes and two-headed calves and the like. Old coin-operated stuff. A coin-operated execution. You put in your quarter and the minute your castle doors opened, a priest read last rites, the prisoner was hung, and a black flag rose over the castle walls. I paid to see it twice.

They had a body they built as an alligator man. I think it’s an actual corpse’s head stuck on the body of an alligator which is… Well, it’s something. They had it in a glass case, next to a T-shirt rack. For a quarter I could get a penny smashed with its image. I didn’t.

I bought a Piña Colada flavored saltwater taffy. While I was buying it, I asked the guy behind the counter about the boat I had seen. I don’t know why, but the reaction of Laurel made me curious. He frowned. “Not many people ask about that boat,” he said. “Tourists don’t stick around long enough to notice it. Locals know enough not to talk about it. That’ll be 3.99.” “Why don’t locals talk about it?” I asked. What, I was gonna be friends with this guy? Either he’d tell me or he wouldn’t. He looked past me to the next customer. [monotonous voice] “It’s been in the same spot for three decades now,” he said. “Don’t seem to be anchored, just unaffected by currents. Holds its position. No one is ever seen onboard. People who ask questions about it learn that they shouldn’t. I need to help the next person in life.” “OK,” I said, wondering why I had bought saltwater taffy. The taste is disappointing, the texture’s garbage. “Thanks!” and I left the free museum with my four-dollar shitty candy.

Down the street was an arcade called Fun Land, but I took to pronouncing it Funland, like Iceland. I spent an afternoon playing skee ball. I’m looking for a vacation from this endless search for answers, and here on a sliver of land on the coast of Washington, I think I’ve found it. Can’t last long though. I can’t live forever in Funland. I can’t live forever period.

Humanity’s drive toward betterment has resulted in two things: more people and less jobs. None of our choices were wrong, exactly. Each was made with good intentions, hell maybe every choice was correct. The problem wasn’t the choices but the values. Survival is no longer a value, because survival has become easy. It used to be old people were revered, because they had outrun death longer than anyone else. Now old people are just the ones who waited around too long. Anyone can become an old person with a little luck. It’s not a collapse of morals that has diminished our respect for the elderly. It’s an inevitable response to the changing meaning of age.

I ate Indian food down in Astoria, a lunch buffet. As I was eating, a woman came in looking for me. I didn’t recognize her at first out of uniform, but it was Laurel. She sat across from me. I felt the faint pang of a passing afternoon’s crush. Without a greeting, she held out her phone to me. A photo of a middle-aged man, bushy silver mustache, arm in arm with a teenage boy. “That’s my brother Bobby,” Laurel said. “And that’s his son, my nephew Evan.” “Ah, OK,” I said. This seemed like a strange conversation, but I lost my ability to judge strangeness somewhere around Texas. “Bobby was obsessed with the black boat,” she said. “Spent hours watching it, said he never saw anything on board, then one day he did.” “What did he see?” I asked. “Wouldn’t tell anyone. Rented a kayak in Navy Heights and went out into the mouth of the river. Said he had no choice and he had to get to that boat. Wouldn’t listen to anyone telling him different, wouldn’t let anyone come with him. We lost sight of his kayak - don’t know how, it was broad daylight. There and then gone. Never found any kind of body.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is a country of the vanished, of the missing. We’ve got a lot of space to put them, I guess. Then his kid Evan, he gets obsessed with the idea that the black boat took his father somehow. We tried to get him interested in other things, put him through therapy, stuff like that but it doesn’t take. The answer to his pain is in that boat, and so he goes to the same place as his father, rents the same kind of kayak, takes the same kind of journey.” I knew the ending to the story. “How long has he been missing? “I asked. “It was a year three weeks ago,” she said. “You seem like a nice woman. Hm. Maybe in a different life, you know? Maybe in a kinder world, but I like you enough to tell you this: forget you ever saw the black boat. Never ask about it again, it’s not a mystery to solve. It’s a depth to drown in.” She held my eyes for a moment more and then left me to my lunch, which I had no more appetite for. That all you can eat buffet got a good deal on me.

I knew exactly what that black boat was. A supernatural oddity stealing innocent people? It was a Thistle boat. There were Thistle men onboard. And so tired, lost me, I would have to stop them.

Out to Cape Disappointment with binoculars from the truck. Went up on a ridge above the trail to the lighthouse and I looked out at the Thistle boat. I knew what I would see. Sagging face, yellow teeth, yellow hat, “Thistle”. The boat had no name, no markings. Every surface was painted black. I watched for a long while, but there was no movement on the deck, nothing in the windows. It seemed truly abandoned except that it stayed in position against the current. I put down the binoculars considering my next move.

And that’s when I noticed something on the deck, even with my naked eyes from this distance. Dots of various colors. They hadn’t been there a moment ago. I looked back through the binoculars. The entire deck was covered in people. They were all facing me, looking right back at me through the lenses. I was too far away for anyone to see me against the hillside. They saw me.

They weren’t Thistle men. They were people. Women, men, mouths open, dull eyes. Some of them are dressed in clothes that could only have been worn without irony in the 80’s. others wearing clothes that could have been worn without vintage cool in the 70’s. there was a man with a bushy silver mustache. I could taste the horror on my gum line. Bobby, slack-jawed. Bobby, staring. And a gangly teenager, Evan, across the deck from Bobby. Nowhere near him, same expression. Both staring back at me as I stared at them.

I put the binoculars away. I stepped back down onto the trail and descended toward the parking lot. This was not a Thistle boat. That’s not what Thistle does to people. This is some other horror, unrelated to whatever I’ve been chasing.

I have enough terror in my life. I can’t add more. [scoffs] A boat that eats people. It will have to be a story without me. I am leaving.

Since we no longer value survival and age, we need some other way to rank people. Because we need that, we need some people to be worth more than others. We have many ways to do that, but here’s one: we value wealth. The ones who own more are better. Not for any reason, just because. And since theoretically but rarely actually in practice, the way toward owning more is work, work has become a measure of someone’s value, second only to money. A lazy rich person is better than a poor person with a good job, but a poor person with a job is better than a poor person without a job. Ranked first by wealth, then by worth. And so that is the situation. There are more of us, there are less jobs, and we value people by whether they have a job or not.

What happens when you have a world where it is impossible for people to create value for themselves in the eyes of society? What happens when we judge people for the inevitable outcome of our collective actions? I don’t know. But together we’re finding out.

Driving back over to Astoria. The long bridge across the mouth of the Columbia River. Starting out it’s a causeway right on the water. Seagulls flying overhead, riding the same wind that’s nudging my trailer toward tragedy. Once you drive out under the bridge, you can’t turn around for four miles until you’re back on land. Which is fine, which is normal. But also I feel the anxiety. Being trapped on a course, no alternatives except the disaster of water. The bridge rises steeply, creating a section that the cargo ships can pass under. This is uncomfortable in a truck this size, the engine roaring against the weight behind it. And now break lights. We’re stopping. Construction, traffic going in one way only, we have to wait our turn.

I’m on a slope so steep that I’m looking at clouds in order to see the car in front of me. It’s less that they’re in front of me and more that they’re suspended above me. [sighs] Breathe. Your anxiety does not change your circumstances. You can get as anxious as you want, the world will stay the same. [breathes deeply] It doesn’t help that just the turn of the head puts the black boat in my view. No one on board again, those empty faces gone. Or not gone, but not visible to me. I must always remember that not visible to me and not in existence are not the same thing. That would be a good thing for all of us to remember, I guess.

Here’s a cargo ship coming. Modern, a tiny control center dwarfed by the vast expanse it controls. The kind of ship that crosses oceans. Huh. The ship is gonna pass really close to the black boat. It might even.. that’s gonna be a near one. It’s going to.. oh my god, hold on.

I’m on the highway to Portland now. Logging depots, gas stations with stalls outside selling fresh fruit picked nearby. The great cargo ship collided with the black boat. I gout out of the truck, went to the side of the bridge to watch. A lot of people did. We were stopped anyway. We were standing on this steep slope that swayed with the wind and jittered with the movement of traffic in the other direction. Flimsy, like we were all perched on the thinnest branch at the top of the tallest tree. I covered my mouth, anxiety kindling into horror.

The ship didn’t slow. Didn’t see the other boat maybe? Or-or a miscalculation, an error? God knows there are plenty of those.

The ship cut through the center of the black boat and the black boat turned up on its side and then tore in half. The force must have made a gash in the hull of the larger ship because it sagged forward in the water, like a person falling to her knees, and then listed sideways. This might have taken a while. We all may have stood there a long while. One of the containers on the bigger ship wasn’t secured correctly. It toppled off the deck. The black boat settled under the water, a slow disappearing act. I never saw anyone on board the entire time.

The police got us back into our vehicles, got traffic moving. Coast guard boats rashed to the collision, rescued the crew of the bigger ship, but there was no sign of anyone from the other boat. They reported that initial sweeps found no sign of its wreckage under the water. I don’t suspect they’ll ever find that wreckage. I don’t suspect they’ll look too hard.

There once was a black boat on a wide blue river. The only people onboard were the people who had asked the dangerous question. And one day, it sunk and was never seen again. It’s a simple story, a story with no ending. The kind of story that happens every day in this country.

Vacation over, I guess. Back to asking my own dangerous questions. Back to receiving my own dangerous answers.

-- Knock knock. [left speaker] Who’s there? [right speaker] No one. [left] No one who? [right] No, no one is here. It’s been quiet out here for a long time. Once there were people, I think but they moved on. Why haven’t you moved on? [left] If no one’s here then who is talking? [right] No one is. [left] No one’s talking? [right] Yes. [left] OK. [right] OK. [left] I love you. [right] I know.

#alice isn't dead #alice isn't dead transcripts #part 2 episode 2 #mouth of the water #sorry i'm a bit late with this #i've had a busy day

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