#wish horatio got more development !!!!

[house-of-mirrors]

18, 26, 28 👀

I'll be ambitious here and answer for everyone since you didn't specify hehe

18. a memory that still makes your OC angry?

Orsinio: Since he's gotten tenure at the university, whispers have died down, but he still knows how much people at Summerset resent him, and he doesn't forget what they said to him even if they're pretending to like him now. More than almost anything, he hates his competency being questioned because of disability and origin. If ur mean to him, prepare to get poisoned, have your scandals published in an exposé, or both

Lucretia: The murder of Orsinio's brother Horatio, whom she had unresolved feelings for. It was unfair and needless violence, she'll never quite be over it, and she's great at repressing feelings till they boil over. Orsinio was the one to do Nemesis, and she feels he deserved to because it was his brother, but sometimes she wishes she'd done it.

Samuel: In his days as a zee captain, anyone who insinuated he didn't actually care about his crew because he's aloof got promptly thrown into the water. Now anyone who hurts his loved ones becomes public enemy no. 1

Miles: Standing across from their father's desk while he told them that they would never amount to anything, which led to the decision to come to the Neath. The fact that no matter how hard they try, they still can't forget him or stop caring about his approval. This festering anger and loathing is what sent them on the path North

Skies Captain M.: uhhhhh whatever tf is going on at Brabazon

26. least favorite food and color?

Interesting! I never really thought too much about this, new OC lore being developed as we speak. Hmm (on a related note I would not survive the Neath because I hate mushrooms lol)

Orsinio: Color: the rotten orange of the Parabola sky. He really doesn't like being there, it holds mostly bad memories for him, and it's a pale imitation of what can never be returned to. Food: he doesn't like chocolate because I don't like chocolate.

Lucretia: Color: red, she's a doctor so sees lots of blood, the stains are impossible to get rid of, and it's a reminder of suffering and sickness. Also Nemesis related trauma. Food: She grew up with great food insecurity so tbh she'll eat anything. She doesn't strike me as a seafood person tho, so uh good luck being in the Neath

Samuel: Color: green and gold, haunted by the lure of the East. Food: hmm he's got the autism so there's probably lots, strikes me as the kind of guy to live off the same 8 things forever. He's a bartender, but I think for a specific example of something he doesn't like, it's fruity drinks. Fruit can be tasty but fruit flavoring... that is a minefield

Miles: Color: their family made its fortune in textiles, so everything was garish bright colors. Miles avoids that and tends to favor dark and neutral colors, earth tones. (Good thing a certain Professor uses that pallet) Food: They strike me as picky about vegetables. Autism also

Cap: Color: that horrible beige-grey-white that permeates the Blue Kingdom. Sapphir'd King can ssuck their ass. Food: you know what? congrats Cap, you're vegetarian now, they're not a meat person and completely lost their appetite for it with all the weird settlers in the Reach that eat people. No UP in this house! Not doing it!

28. is your OC a dog or cat person?

Orsinio: dogs

Lucretia: cats

Samuel: birds

Miles: crawlies (slugs, snakes, yeah)

Cap: inadvisably big dogs

[clockworkowl]

I’m combing through all the old random shit in my Evernote trying to find one specific song film idea (I frequently get entire stop motion films in my head when I listen to songs and I used to actually document them in case I ever developed enough executive function to create them so I could see them)

But instead I’m just seeing the vast array of completely vague and random things I apparently thought I would somehow understand what I meant at some later point.

For the record I don’t know if these are from me being drunk, or like sleep typing (and by sleep typing I mean lack of sleep where I had probably been up for like 72 hours plus and might as well have been asleep for all my conscious brain was working. I used to get really extreme insomnia. Now so just can’t sleep for like 32 hour chunks regularly, which is much more manageable) or whatever but anyway…

Here are some choice examples:

✏️Note title: ‘Most times a ghost is a wish’ followed by a note body that is also just ‘Most times a ghost is a wish’

✏️no title merely the words:‘Desaturated Chicago’

✏️Title: Butlers then what I think is a quote from a book and not something I composed as it is in quotes ‘Did butlers have some sort of secret society where they looked down upon the less than holy gentry.’ Then merely ‘um hell yes’ this in a notebook called plot ideas

✏️No title not categorised just the sentence: ‘I think his world was over before he entered it, but he did a marvellous job maintaining.’

✏️No title absolutely no context just ‘something like if Weekend at Bernie’s were a Stephen King coming of age horror film’

Another category are clearly snippets of dialogue but they don’t go to anything like my brain’s inner monologue got bored and was just spacing out doing improv with itself and my conscious brain heard a part of it and was like ‘yeah, write that down, you can totally use that for something I bet’ but like all of them seem like my inner monologue is like a pair of posh British private detectives in the middle of a bitchy divorce with an affect for snarky arguments.

✏️No title not categorized just:

-I think you’ll find I can tell a hawk from a handsaw.

-Always?

-Most of the time, depending on weather.

✏️No title or context just:

‘It was meant to be a battle of wits, but yours has an extra T.’

(To be fair this one is pretty good, I might actually use that sometime.)

✏️No title, no context (I have no idea who these character names are)

-For fuck’s sake Blackthorne, I made a mistake, I’ve already admitted that, are you really going to weave that into your own noose? There’s no time to be petty.

-My dear Dashiell, there is always the time to be petty.

✏️No title no context merely:

‘What’s a little murder accusation between friends?’

✏️No title just a random exchange of very stylised affected dialogue;

-‘Never mind him my dear Horatio, I knew we’d not escape the evening without being subjected to another poor Yorick.’

-‘Poor Yorick?’

-‘Indeed, a man of infinite jest; for everything he believes is merely an expression of poor wit once it is taken in the offense he meant it in. Should the wind prove north by northwest that is.’

-‘Ah, I know them well.’

[pomodoriyum]

Its quite unfortunate and in very bad taste that caul is one of my poor little meow meows

[ellestra]

War for the future

I think we all figured out the truth about Amalia. Or at least something pretty close. I wasn’t sure if Amalia’s mind was fully replaced after her suicide or if her and Zephyr memories were jumbled and that’s why she seemed to not know some important information about why and how she was there. Now we know that it was just Zephyr’s memories - at least until know since Galanthi shown her Amalia’s life - but she didn’t know because she just didn’t know that much about the alien to begin with. And she also didn’t even know she was coming to the past with it. She was just a grunt soldier. A very good one. But then how could she not be when she was Claudia Black?

We learn that the future people destroyed thought a nuclear war over whether to take the alien help or not. That both sides were fanatical but the  one that fought against the aliens for human purity were especially cruel. They justification of it was that the PDC were traitors to human race. The PDC had Touched who believed Galanthi want to help humans but they developed their own religion around it including the whole “names are sacred and you tell them to no one” thing.

We also know even PDC know very little about Galanthi and what are their plans and how their gifts work. Stripe is convinced every Spore knows how to communicate with the aliens but we see it’s untrue - both because it’s what Stitch tells her but also because all the Touched have Spores but only Myrtle seems to be one that can understand the alien. But it also seems like the ones who can communicate really have more understanding of the powers since future Myrtle seems to know Zephyr is seeing her from the past and tells her to forget it.

We also know that only few people react to the Spores by getting powers. This explains why not all people who were outside that day got them. Like why Lord Massen didn’t get any while his daughter did (I hope we’ll learn soon what is it and why he keeps her in the cellar). Or why Augie is Touched but Lavinia isn’t - although I keep wondering in that case as it seems like there is something off about Lavinia and I wonder if she is Touched after all and that’s why she wants a cure for it or if she’s one of those who came from the future and the was FLA and that’s why she wants to kill Galanthi and thinks it wants to destroy them all. She keeps saying it wants war and will corrupt their minds and all this seems very FLA.

Of course it depends on how choosy Galanthi was with taking people along.Was it everyone in the base who was still alive? Or anyone it could reach? Could it chose who to take? But then why would it include FLA at all? Could it tell who is who? Does it know where they all are in their new lives? I mean it knew not just Zephyr but the name she took in this new time so we should assume it has some connection to all of them still.

I assume it was limited to the base and only to those still alive. However we don’t know who else was fully dead when Galanthi left. Any of the other shot - including that FreeLife Army major and the guy who helped him - could’ve been still alive (they were shot but we didn’t see them die) and hitched a ride.

There were also the other two PDC (shot guy and the other one) so maybe Zephyr isn’t alone in the past. Maybe there aren’t just enemies who were brought along but also back up. And since bodies were doled out based on availability who knows what they look like. Maybe that woman’s voice belongs to one of those guys.

I wonder if giving Zephyr Amalia’s memories was to help her understand her powers. I mean Zephyr had her first flashback - to when she got her scar - when Galanthi first tried to use its tentacles to take the Team but that might’ve been just it trying to communicate. It  looks like she only got the flash forwards after being placed in  Amalia’s body and maybe that’s why she became receptive to Spore. She didn’t have those powers before. She thought they were proof of her being in sim at first after all.

I wonder how much of Zephyr involvement with Cousens is less love and more convenience. He was just at the right place and right time - he just happened to  be the first Touched she knew about in her new world - and she knew they  end up having sex from her vision. And she needed someone in that moment to not feel so alone in this new time so he is one who knows the truth about who she is and how she’s there so she can be herself with him.

So how much of it is just that she  has very different views on sex and commitments than 19th century  British and how much is real attachment? She still called Penance her heart and it’s Penance she told her real name. We know from some Zephyr’s memory flashes she seems to be bisexual.

Of course it seems like in general friendships are more important to Zephyr than romantic relationships (she hadn’t told her neither of those she married her name for 3 years they were married). And maybe she just learning to trust people more. Those two years in less hostile times clearly changed her. It’s clear when you compare the Zephyr who sacrificed Sarah to Hague even though she understood how creepy he is because she was there and already crazy (was being committed before becoming Touched) with one we know now. She always had it in her (we see in her flashback with Knitter) but the war taught her it was unwise to get attached. Penance and others brought her out of that. And now she’s ready to tell all the Touched where she came from and how.

Still, even though I’m not a shipper and I don’t really care who ends up with who this “my heart” and name reveal moments made me wonder if the show really has a plan for Penance and Amalia/Zephyr to get together eventually and it’s not just the shippers wishful thinking. And both Augie (he seems like a character Wheadon would kill off in a pairing) and Horatio (keeps talking about this being a sin a lot and has a wife) are just misdirection.  The first infatuations just to burn out.

[cirrus-grey]

Ao3 Year In Review

I don't normally do these, but I'm really proud of everything I've written/posted this year (and utterly flabbergasted at how much of it there is) so I thought it would be fun to share! Format by @athina-blaine

Top Fandom: The Magnus Archives (55 works) (Yes, that's more fics than there are weeks in the year. No, I don't know how it happened either.)

Date of First Fic Posted: Jan 5, 2020 (1,000, 435 words) (Only fic that's not TMA)

Top Multi-Chapter Fic: Yesterday is Here (53,319 words) Written in ten weeks, posted in twelve, this was the first major multi-chapter story I'd ever posted and I cannot believe how much it took off. It was a purely self-indulgent outpouring of fluff, feelings, and love for TMA, and I never could have predicted how popular it would become. Seeing how much joy it has brought people has been one of, if not the, highlights of an otherwise stressful year, and I am so, so happy that I was able to share it with all of you.

Top One-Shot: Feels Like Lightning (6,065 words) Inspired by and written for the Aspec Martin Blackwood Week collection! My favorite thing about this one is how many people in the comments have told me it's gotten them questioning their own sexuality and possibly realizing they're ace.

Fic You’re Most Proud Of: Tied between A Matter of Diplomacy (57,758 words) and Unsent, but since Unsent also fits another category I'm going with AMoD here. Though 'Yesterday is Here' was the first multi-chapter story of this length I'd ever posted, 'A Matter of Diplomacy' was the first I ever wrote. I learned an awful lot about worldbuilding, balancing plot with character development, and constructing a consistent and engaging narrative through the process of writing it. I'm most proud, though, of the fact that I wrote it, at all. The main story took me a year to write, and the follow-ups added another several months onto that, and even though there were several times when I lost motivation and stopped writing entirely, I always managed to pull myself back and get started again. This was a marathon, not a sprint, and I'm very, very proud of finishing it.

Fic You Wish Got More Attention: Honestly? None of them. I have been absolutely blown away by the amount of hits, comments, kudos, and bookmarks my stories have gotten this year, and there aren't any I could point to as "wish they'd done better."

Fic That Challenged You The Most: Unsent (8,683 words) I spent hours staring at the wall thinking "what exactly is Jon's motivation and mindset here? What about Martin's?" and then used those hours to write a two-sentence text before starting all over again. I had the transcripts open in one window on my computer, and my draft open in another, analyzing single lines of dialogue from the show to figure out how they felt about each other, and how much of that they'd be willing to put into words. I pulled the timeline apart piece by piece trying to work out the order of events, and who knew what when. It is the single most in-character, canon-compliant story I've ever written, and it was hard.

Favourite Quote/Passage: (From In this harsh world, 1,132 words)

"How?" he chokes out, speaking the words into the crook of Jon's neck. "How can you expect me to go on without you? To be happy, without you there?"

"There'll be other things, other people, that bring you happiness. There always are."

"I don't want that," Martin says, and Jon takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I don't want to have to move on without you. I can't- I can't just let you go like that."

"Then don't," Jon whispers, and holds him tighter. "Moving on isn't letting go. Carry the memories. Keep me in your heart. Be the Horatio, to my tragic Prince Hamlet." He draws back, placing his hands on Martin's shoulders and looking him in the eye. "And in this harsh world, draw thy breath in pain to tell our story."

"Jon," Martin sobs.

Jon leans in, and kisses him. "There's no one else I'd trust more to do it," he says. "And know, with every day that passes, that I'm so, so proud of you for making it through."

Total Words Posted: 239,477!

[adultswim2021]

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #87: “Dreams” | January 11, 2004 - 11:30 PM | S08E06

There is no doubt in my mind that Space Ghost is one of the most underappreciated comedy series of all time. For a show that is so screamingly hilarious, it sure is ignored. Hell, the creators of Space Ghost don’t even appreciate the goddamn thing. It makes it all the more special for those of us who love it. This episode of television, which I regard as a comedy masterpiece, sits on IMDB with 35 votes total. Not only is this an exceptional episode of Space Ghost, it also happens to *sorta* be the series finale, and it’s also the single-most profane episode of Space Ghost in existence. It deserves your respect, goddamn it.

In this one, Space Ghost cobbles together a charity organization for the sole purpose of one-upping Zorak and Moltar. He demands an animal be booked as his guest in order to elect it as the org’s cute mascot. Space Ghost winds up with Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.

For those of you who require context: Triumph is an intentionally cheesy dog puppet with a vaguely ethnic accent who makes old-school but also very profane roast-style jokes at his various targets. He was an intentionally one-note character featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Triumph developed enough of a cult following that he wound up recurring pretty regularly. Most notably on Conan he got kicked out of the Westminster Dog Show for humping some of the dogs and generally being a nuisance. My favorite remote he did was where he made fun of nerds waiting in line to see Star Wars Episode II.

In 2003 Triumph released an album which came with a DVD which featured a cameo from Conan O’Brien saying the c-word (cunt) and the recently disgraced Horatio Sanz deep-throating a dildo. That, presumably, is why Triumph is on this show: to promote this album. He keeps trying to steer the conversation to “get to the plug”, and referring to his “beautiful singing voice” There’s a small number of Space Ghost guests who show up genuinely believing that they’ll be allowed to plug their project and that the episode will air in a timely manner. Like Adam West or Fred Willard, this is in fact one of those.

What makes this episode so goddamn funny is that there’s an undercurrent of the Space Ghost staff aggressively trying to undercut Triumph’s shtick. Triumph is almost always the most outrageous character in any given room, and people almost always have a hard time contending with the barrage of fast-paced/profane insults that Triumph supplies. The editing may have had a hand in this, but here we see Triumph doing roughly what he does, but Space Ghost is too boneheaded to really let it effect him. Space Ghost, true to form, misunderstands almost everything Triumph says, taking it at face value. When it finally dawns on him that Triumph is breaking taboos he is briefly shocked. But when Zorak lies and tells him that “money came in” from Triumph’s transgressions he is suddenly motivated to childishly repeat Triumph’s vulgarity.

When Moltar tries to put his foot down he casually breaks an actual network taboo: he says “they will shut us down for that shit. I mean stuff.” completely unbleeped. Not sure what the status of “shit” is on adult swim these days, but in 2004 I don’t think Adult Swim was technically considered it’s own network yet (I’m hazy on the details here, but there was a turning point where Adult Swim ceased to be programming that simply aired on Cartoon Network and was actually registered legally as a network unto itself that shared space with Cartoon Network). So, allowing shit to play on what was still legally considered a children’s network was a pretty big deal. I don’t even think Turner allowed swears that harsh to appear on Adult Swim’s website.

The show escalates beautifully and ends with a song about “retardos”, while Space Ghost inexplicably holds up a Dexter’s Laboratory branded foam finger, a detail I’ve never noticed until this viewing. It is breathtakingly dumb. I love this episode so much.

There are a lot of great lines in this that I’m intentionally leaving out. The length of this write-up might lead you to believe I’ve revealed the entire episode. I haven’t! There’s so many great jokes in this. This begins what I like to think of as the finale trilogy. There are two more quasi-episodes of Space Ghost coming up (not counting the GameTap episodes because they suck or The Room interstitials because that’s so far out from the series true end that it’s practically a reunion special). One is an abandoned episode they aired in an unfinished state. Then comes the tenth anniversary bumpers the Sunday after Space Ghost’s big birthday. But I’ll talk more about that when the time comes. Okay? Alright? Damn!

I forgot to say this earlier so I’m just tacking it on here: my wife and I literally quoted this episode in our wedding vows. It was the “You will lick my shiny boots, for you are now my dog on a leash.” line. This isn’t a joke.

MAIL BAG

Here’s more FUCKING FUCKS writing me dumb shit and wasting my valuable time. Damn. Dang it!

I'm in a minority here but while I loved Home Movies I think it diminished by the time Season 4 rolled around that I think it's straight up overall bad. So much so that I feel you can tack on the camera drop ending to any of the other season finales and have a better show. I don't know why exactly. Is it because H. Jon Benjamin has a writing credit for this one and McGurk is wackier than ever? Did Brendon Small just run out of childhood experiences to mine from? I dislike it.

Huh I wouldn’t go that far OBVIOUSLY. So far I’ve liked a hundo percento of Season 4 even though it’s just two episodes. haha “Aw, who’m I tryinta fool? it’s just two episodes.”

I like the Sonic Guys. Their keen sense to pinpoint the exact craveability of every new Sonic item as well as their overall familiarity and comradery leave the viewer ready for fun and ready for fun: the Sonic way. And if you don't like that, buddy, then you are an Adbusters Stooge.

More like “ready for run” because I would use my feet to get away from their tires, because they’re tired!!!

Do you think the Sonic Guy ever dry over to Popeyes when the cameras aren't rolling. What do you think they would get. If I were them I would get the chicken: it's tender, it's juicy, it has cajun seasonings.

I think they would go there and say stupid cutesy shit like “extra chicken please :D :p” and a teenager would call them n*88*s and they’d commit suicide that night. But what a way to go

Don't give up on ephemera week!, The blog was super fun last week. And it's just a nice way to end the blog after a year of spankworthy stuff. It will be less special if you just pepper them in now and then. How many venmo bucks would I have to pay for you to keep it that way?

What a swanky message to get. I do think Ephemera week will be pretty hard from here on out because 2004 is about where I ended my initial research for this blog and the prospect of doing more of that to give a fairly complete overview of each year would just be too much. I’d much rather just slide it in. You’ll love seeing me slide.

What are your big wishes for 2004?

what the fuck am I supposed to do here? Wish for something to happen in a year that already happened? Do I get to transport myself back there and do this wish all the way back then? Or do I simply feel the butterfly effect of it having had happen in 2004. What the fuck kinda fucked up shit is this anyway.

[hange-zone]

hey...i’ve sat with the ending for a bit and am still not entirely sure what to feel. i will say i’m bit sad that it’s over - i started this series with friends back in 2014, and was little and giddy and excited about it. i consumed a lot of jeanmarco fic (wisteria! LAD! render! strings! etc) and that one really good eremin (we were kings...which is probably half the reason why i’m writing it so feverishly now) + fanart (johannathemad! icarus theory! gimmes! many many more that i’m happy to share but don’t remember right now cos it’s 5am)

and then life went on and i forgot about it mostly because...life...and only got back into it a few months ago when the anime was back on netflix and i watched most of it in the span of a week. and i’m here, again.

i have to admit i don’t exactly read the manga and i stopped the anime for a bit because at the heart of it i’m also not sure how to feel about the time skip. i think that’s on me though - the basement was built up to be this black box and i think a large part of the fun was the not knowing, and the journey to the basement was used as a framing device. so once we found out that fell away and i don’t think any reveal would have been completely satisfactory. and i have issues with the timeskip but it’s probably me being picky (lol dm me if you’d like to know more, i am such a rambler)

though admittedly there are parts of the post timeskip i do enjoy - you can tell i’m obsessed with that one scene eren and armin stare at each other, i love the new designs, i especially love armin lol - and I appreciate parts of the perspective it’s trying to give too in the broadest sense (ie the anti-war themes...effect of propaganda... at least I THINK that’s what we were supposed to take away at the start of season 4 because I stopped watching the show then for a whole host of reasons)

was looking over (ok, glued to) reddit yesterday and it occured to me parts of the fandom (read: r/yeagerbomb) can be quite toxic (as with any large fandom I guess!) so I was hoping to avoid that but also like understand what’s going on...i think honestly i was a bit disappointed in the ending, at first i was actually upset but now i’m just...alright. mostly i think i’m sad it’s ended and that’s mixed up with how I feel in general. but I've thought about it and overall it’s an  ending in the broadest sense, I mean it largely served its purpose and I think importantly for endings, tied up main threads of the plot. and i respect the decisions the author has made, even as we’re all entitled to our opinion and you can disagree. I do wish some other choices made or it were done slightly differently. mostly I wish it had more time to develop some themes and I think generally some parts of the series were a bit convoluted. 

if you’d like my (uninformed) thoughts i am happy to share - they’re in more detail below! and i’d like to hear yours too:)

.

.

.

if it helps i didn’t buy the whole ‘chad eren’ thing at all - at heart he is still a nineteen year old boy and he’s probably still small and scared - something which i’ve explored! - and while i appreciate that eremika didn’t exactly come out of nowhere i’ve always read it as them wanting the domesticity with each other, wanting to live out full, normal lives, but not necessarily just about the exclusivity of a relationship, which is what some readings of the last chapter seemed to suggest (& hence i kinda get why people are so mad that that he comes off as an incel but idk, maybe it’s the translations? i personally am choosing to read it as the first part - that he wanted deep down to have the space to live out a long, natural life with the people he loves).

but wrt to eremika my main thing is that i’m a bit iffy on the parallels to ymir because personally i’m not a bit fan of that entire ymir/fritz thread...1) i get the slave...to love but it also feels a bit like it romanticises their relationship? maybe i’m reading too much into it. but more importantly to me 2) i feel it complicates things a bit because we can’t then pin down if it’s eren or her making the executive decisions which then becomes a bit more thematically murky and doesn’t help with characterisation...I mean if he’s a plot device then he is a plot device, if he’s a character with agency then he’s a character, if he blurs the line between both it becomes a bit of an issue as there aren’t real stakes and character development then becomes a bit of a question mark since there’s also this tendency to reduce him to a symbol...and yeah, as we see the whole  headache-inducing nature of this is quite evident now... (and i want to feel for eren!)

also not a super fan of the eren sending dina. but i’m reminded of the discussions around mr robot and standing in the stream of time wrt white rose but eh, time travel plots are always a bit inscrutable and honestly always make things difficult. personally i rationalise it as more of he sent them away from Bert than to his mother. maybe he had the vague understanding of what it’d do but exactly why he did it was different, which idk, makes all the difference to me. 

but i do appreciate what the ending was trying to show, even if I personally don't think it was the best, i do appreciate eren’s vulnerability, his last talk with armin broke me, and appreciate that jean is okay, levi is okay, and he got to see everyone else again. i’m also kinda appreciative of the bird symbolism though i don’t think it’s any more than that...also it makes me think that poor eren, he’s burdened with Glorious Purpose & like it’s not gonna stop until he’s dead, right :/ also was under no illusions that it was gonna be a happy ending and everyone would be satisfied somehow or another so eh. I do wish that some things were done differently, I would have done some things differently, but also I acknowledge the constraints of the medium and I think some nuances didn't come across/writing could be tighter. maybe we’ll see when the anime comes out, if some of us stick around that long.

also my monkey brain is choosing to fixate on little, abstract things like oh, armin looks so cute with his hair slicked back...so kudos for that and maybe there’s some hamfisted thing about telling the story...giving it meaning...like horatio? maybe? lol goodnight sweet prince eren...i AM overthinking it probably. anyway if you think about it, it’s the death of the author (ie Barthes) and meaning is created not just when it’s encoded in the text, but when we read and experience it -- which gives us some leeway as to how we interpret the whole series, if you’d really like. so this is my outlook:”)

ok this has turned out longer than i expected and is undercut by actually a lot of salt ahh and i actually have a whole sort of treatise on it! but i think i am a bit emotionally exhausted because i always care too much so i think i'll take a break before I get back to prompts, sorry...

anyway what i mean to say is if you made it this far thank you & that i’m interested to hear what people think! so come send in the ask or reply to this - and feel free to disagree etc but let’s be peaceable about it:)

[tortoisesshells]

James Norrington

Why I like them: Initially, because I imprinted hard on Horatio Hornblower and Captain Wentworth as a kid so when I saw Curse of the Black Pearl, who else was I going to get attached to? In all seriousness, Norrington has been living rent-free in my head for seventeen years now, so my reasons for liking him have changed over time, but I suppose it’s in part the unrequited love thing (ah, one of my favorite tropes), and in part the tension between him trying to be good/honorable and both his unwillingness (up until the last few months of his life) to question the imperial system he operates within & his own ambition and selfishness.

Why I don’t: Had the audacity to die and not come back in a series where almost no one stays dead. 0/10 stars.

Favorite Scene: “Swann Song”, in At World’s End, even though it got cut; watch this hopeless shipwreck of a man who knows he sold his soul for something worthless lose the last little bit of hope he didn’t know he had! Context for Norrington actively choosing to die as opposed to escaping with Elizabeth and the crew of the Empress!

Actually canonical? The tavern sequence in Dead Man’s Chest. This scene has everything: pathos! a history of inexplicable weather patterns! complete unhingement! head trauma! pig shit! humiliations galore!

Favorite Movie: Oof. Tie between Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest. Not At World’s End, for obvious reasons. 

I suppose if you put a gun to my head right now, I’d say Dead Man’s Chest, but you might get a different answer tomorrow.

Favorite Line: “My story? It’s exactly the same as your story, just one chapter behind. I chased a man across the seven seas. The pursuit cost me my crew, my commission, and my life.” OR “You hired me. I can’t help it if your standards are lax.”

my love for this character as a self-destructive tragic antagonist versus my love for this character as the universe’s chew toy, fight!

Favorite Outfit: The full dress uniform from Curse of the Black Pearl.

OTP: James Norrington/Character Development, but because I apparently like pain, I definitely have a soft spot for the doomed nonsense that is Norrington/Elizabeth, especially post-DMC.

BrOTP: There’s incredibly little canon interaction, but Lieutenant Groves apparently has 0 compunctions about openly admiring Jack Sparrow around him, and that dynamic is gr8.

Head Canon: I’m going to go out on a limb and say the prequel novels are canon, or at least the parts I find useful, so everything that happened to him as a kid in Sins of the Father are (unfortunately for him) true, sorry, don’t make the rules.

There was a fic I read wayyyyyy back in the day, Mutiny on the Dauntless, that absolutely colored the way I think about Norrington’s relationship with authority structures, so I suppose the events of that fic - the near mutiny combined with the Captain having Norrington (even as a lieutenant!) flogged for perceived insubordination fundamentally changed his thoughts about shipboard power structures for the more lenient - are my head-canon for what else happened on the crossing from England at the start of Curse of the Black Pearl.

Unpopular Opinion: ??? idk. I don’t think I have any.

A Wish: That whoever was editing the original trilogy didn’t cut half his scenes, or that he became the next Captain of the Dutchman.

(... which both thematically makes sense in terms of Norrington’s sense of a need to redeem himself for his sins and his identity very much being wrapped up in his career as a sea-officer AND doesn’t senselessly break up Will and Elizabeth! I understand intellectually that DMC/AWE were trying to play up the parallels between Jones and Will over Will and Elizabeth’s inability to communicate and working at cross-purposes, but ... eh. Also I would not trust William Turner with a boat; they never last long while he’s aboard.)

An oh-god-please-don’t-ever-happen: pls don’t actually come back, I don’t trust the Mouse.

Five Words to Describe Them: Just An Asshole With Feelings; alternately: ambitious, serious-minded, honorable, emotionally-underdeveloped, messy.

My Nickname For Them: Like everyone else in this fandom, Jimothy.

[liighter]

『BOOBOO STEWART ❙ CISMALE』 ⟿ looks like SAGE FRATER is here for HIS SOPHOMORE year as an ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE student. HE is 23 years old & known to be OPEN-MINDED, GENEROUS, LAZY & UNACCOUNTABLE. They’re living in GORHAM, so if you’re there, watch out for them. ⬳ amanda. 22. mst. she/her.

hey howdy hey i almost started this off with caps lock on and that’s the energy i emit yeet. i’m just gonna get into it ok thanks

trigger warning: alcohol

ok real quick ooc info. i’m amanda, i’m 22, i’ve been rping for like 10 years or smth??? a hot minute. i’m an astrology bitch (leo/scorpio/capricorn) and i’m v easygoing and smoke a lot of weed. feel free to hit me up in the dms or on discord. also if u guys like this post i’m going to attack u for plots

NAME:  sage horatio frater AGE:  23 BIRTH DATE:  january 23rd 1996 ZODIAC:  aquarius sun, pisces moon SEXUAL ORIENTATION:  heterosexual SOCIAL CLASS:  lower middle HOMETOWN:  phoenix, arizona EDUCATION LEVEL:  sophomore studying environmental science FACE CLAIM:  booboo stewart ADDICTION(S):  walks the line of alcohol abuse DRUG USE:  smokes weed daily, enjoys uppers but cant afford them ALCOHOL USE:  excessive POSITIVE TRAITS:  flexible, generous, supportive, open-minded NEGATIVE TRAITS:  disorderly, unaccountable, inconsistent, lazy LIKES:  driving fast, mexican food, necklaces, blue curacao,  DISLIKES:  formalwear, romance movies, reading, haircuts

sage is 24, an aquarius with a pisces moon. very boyish personality. kind of a loser who needs to get his shit together rather desperately. holds himself to very low standards, but therefore holds everyone else to them as well.

v easy to befriend, especially if you’ll cut him some slack. he’s that guy in high school who didn’t have a ton of friends, but everyone still kind of knew him? he’s genuinely TOO loyal for his own good, and it takes a lot for him to dislike people.

fucking LOVES animals. and plants. not the type who says he’s “better with animals than people” or anything, but he does find true joy in them. wishes he could fuck off and live in a forest and have like 30 different animals. or maybe a ranch.

also quite the chef but that’s reserved for his real friends. the typa mf whose friends send him recipes or post them on his fb and stuff.

tries to play the guitar but cannot

developing a drinking problem. in fact it’s already past development, but he’d never admit it. he’s probably in denial

does NOT drive, due to a handful of dui’s. had to sell his own car, but sometimes borrows other people despite not having a license anymore. otherwise just catches rides from his friends or walks places.

really cannot afford to go to school and is racking up a ridiculous amount of debt because of it. aka why he’s only a sophomore. at some point he’ll probably do something sketchy for money, if he hasn’t already :~/

WANTED CONNECTIONS

- ex girlfriend(s) — they probably wouldn’t have lasted long, got sick of his shit pretty quickly. he would’ve been a decent boyfriend but he had a hard time conceptualizing a future with anyone. we can elaborate on this

- “we made out once when we were drunk but i don’t remember it” awkwardness

-  god i fucking LOVE unrequited plots please just give me pining that isn’t mutual, i think its so funny. either someone that he’s constantly hitting on to no avail, or someone he doesn’t know how he feels about but is really interested in him.

-  someone he owes money and tries to avoid

- roomate(s) !!!!!!!!! he lives in gorham and would probably be terrible to live with, i wont lie.

- fwb(s) dude i imagine sage to be so fun to hook up with. the kind of guy who would make u laugh sm during sex.

- someone he’s drunkenly gotten into fights with

- a fucking best friend pleaseeeee

- i’m going to be reblogging more ideas in this tag

[m00nslippers]

Everyone Crushing on Jason 2

Today is my birthday, and I’ve got a present for you all! It’s chapter 2 of the ECoJ AU! Later tonight I’m going to post the first on AO3 under the title Jay-Crazy, then a few days later I will add this chapter tow it and then all future chapters will be simulposted. So I hope you all enjoy this slice of complete crack.

If you missed Chapter 1, it’s here.

- - -

“Holy shit, who is that?” Hal demanded of Barry, jabbing his friend with his elbow to get the hero's attention.

They were in the Watchtower Satellite after routing a poorly orchestrated alien invasion attempt. Even compared to the usual morons that thought they could conquer Earth despite it's super-powered protectors, it had been especially inept and the whole endeavor had barely made it to the ground. Martian Manhunter, Cyborg and the Watchtower scanners had detected the alien vessels quickly and, once hostility was ascertained, the satellite and vacuum-hardy heroes like the Kryptonians and Lanterns  lit their asses up. A small force managed to slip by their attacks and make it to the Earth, but according to MM, a hastily dispatched contingent of available JLA members mopped them up easily enough. Hal hadn't heard any of the reports, was actively avoiding them to be honest, but everyone seemed to have come out of the incident alright except the bad guys, so he'd say everyone in participation had earned a beer, especially himself for being a front-line badass. Too bad he was stuck on the Watchtower until the all-clear went through.

He and Barry had just managed to dodge an after-action report with ugh Batman and were loitering in the infirmary—partly because Barry suggested they should be around in case anyone needed more hands with the injured, but mostly because Hal had found out the Bat was allergic to medical care—when Hal's eyes had zoned-in like a laser on the most exquisite pair of tits he'd ever seen on a man.

Jesus that chest was toned! Hal didn't know what kind of exorcize gave a guy pecs developed enough to spill out of your hand, but this guy was doing them and clearly never skipped. Hal was damn near hypnotized as he watched the man strip out of thigh holsters and shrug out of black reinforced-Kevlar body armor that zipped up from the back, revealing a body like a battle axe, hard, cut and stacked, shoulders broad and muscular. The man's legs were insane, his thighs were bigger than Hal's head! He looked like he could dead-lift Hal with one hand and Hal was suddenly wishing the guy would try.

Hal had pretty much been sold before he managed to take in the full package, but lighting on the guy's face Hal realized he was young, in his early to mid twenties, and almost painfully good-looking, even with the domino mask obscuring his eyes. His hair was dark and had a hint of a wave, longer on the top of his head and short at the sides, and at his temple was an interesting streak of white. His face was long and he had a wide, dynamic mouth that was on the verge of a snarl as he argued something with—oh, hey, Nightwing! Damn, he'd been so distracted with the view that he somehow missed that Nightwing, AKA the best ass in the entire vigilante community, was trying to stitch up a nasty three-inch gash in the mystery man's side that should have curbed Hal's arousal but somehow just made him hotter. Yeah, Hal liked the battle-worn and sweaty look all of a sudden.  

Barry squinted where Hal was staring (he assumes, Hal refused to look away from those drool-worthy abs, squeezable pecs and powerful arms and back muscles that had him drooling a puddle on the infirmary floor). Luckily his friend had an answer for him because Hal needed a name to put to that amazing piece of real estate ripe for the tapping that had presented itself before him.

Barry's voice was incredulous as he answered, “That's Red Hood. You know, the guy we all voted into the JLA two nights ago?”

Eh, Hal never paid attention at those things. “Remind me, will you?”

“Gotham Vigilante. Like Nightwing, he used to be Robin. He was a bit of a villain until a few years ago, but he's cleaned up his act and Batman vouched for him—which is all information you should know if you listened at the meetings,” Barry complained. “Don't tell me you voted for someone without knowing anything about them again, Hal...”

Hal tore his gaze away from the smoking hot Red Hood so he could roll his eyes at Barry. “Does it really matter? You listen to the boring stuff and look into all these people and I just vote what you vote.”

Barry sighed, wearily shaking his head. “Hal, that's not--”

Hal raised his fingers to Barry's lips and cut his friend off mid-sentence. “Shh—Daddy's on the prowl,” he whispered and bobbed his eyebrows suggestively.

The speedster's wince was clearly communicated despite his mask as he shoved Hal's hand away from his mouth. “Please don't let me ever hear you refer to yourself as 'Daddy' again, Hal. I'm begging you.”

Hal smirked and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Begging me, huh? Don't let Iris hear about this, she'll be jealous.”

“Why are we friends again? I can't say anything to you,” Barry mused, covering his face in embarrassment, ready to phase through the floor to disappear from the conversation.

“Don't know, but here is where I leave you, pal.” Hal gave a lazy two-fingered salute and grinned. “I've got a pair of pants to get into or die trying—and the pants don't belong to me!”

“I don't even know what to say...” he heard Barry profess as Hal smoothed his hair and strode confidently across the infirmary floor to where his future—Boyfriend? Sex friend? Morning regret? He'd take what he could get, honestly—had an arm resting on Nightwing's back while the other vigilante was underneath it, bent over his side, putting stitches into the long red gash across the man's ribs. And honestly it spoke to the power, or maybe just the novelty, of his new obsession that he wasn't drifting behind Nightwing to get a view of his fantastic booty, but was marching straight up to Red Hood, ignoring Nightwing almost entirely.

But no sooner had he stepped up to the plate then Guy Goddamn Gardner stepped out in front of him with his dumb red hair and his cocksure strut, cutting off his path.

“Hey, is that your jacket, there? Looks nice,” his rival Lantern said, nodding to a brown leather jacket laying on the medical cot next to Red Hood.

Guy's head blocked his view as he raised a brow in disbelief. 'Hey, is that your jacket, there'? 'Looks nice'? What kind of opening line was that? The hell was Guy playing at?

The Red Hood looked up from where he'd been scowling at the floor—damn, his scowl was mean, it was freaking hot—to eye Guy with the confused incredulity such a stupid ice-breaker deserved.

“Uh, thanks?” Hood said, sounding confused as to why anyone was talking to him, which was vaguely adorable to Hal for some reason. “'s kinda breezy, though. Gotta few bullets holes I haven't patched up yet.”

Hal thought he was going to melt into the floor. Shit, even Red Hood's voice was hot. On the deeper end of baritone with a street-sounding drawl Hal had only ever heard in movies because most people didn't actually have accents that strong.

Gotham vigilante, huh? He sure sounded like it. Hal usually had a 'no Bats' policy when it came to pretty much everything in his life he could manage, but this guy seemed different, more chill, more down to Earth than the usual Bat—or maybe Hal was just making excuses to justify sucking face with the guy. Whatever, he wasn't about to question it. The dick wants what the dick wants.

“Yeah, I used to do the whole leather jacket biker-schtick,” Guy said, his usual cockiness leaking into his tone as he flipped up the collar to his vest as if he actually thought he looked cool emulating a 60s greaser. He pointed a thumb at himself with pride as he said, “I incorporated it into my Lantern uniform and everything. It's a one of a kind style in the corps.” Hal could hear the attempt at a smolder in Guy's voice as it dropped half an octave and he praised, “I bet it doesn't look as good on me as it does on you, though.”

Red Hood's expression slanted into bafflement, mind clearly whirring as he processed the words spoken to him, turning them over every which way before hitting on the realization that he'd just been hit on. All at once Red Hood's cheeks blushed pink and he reached a hand up to tug through his hair anxiously, almost as if he wasn't used to people pulling out corny one-liners trying to get his attention and he had no idea what to do about it. It was so damn cute that Hal's brain momentarily ceased to function. Hal was stunned, amazed, incredibly turned on. What the hell, how does someone who looked like they could punch a hole in a car door, no powers necessary, and shoot you without remorse, look that sweet and innocent? It would be wrong if it wasn't so sexy.

Crap, he couldn’t let this go on. Hal had to get in there and break this up or he was going to be shown up by freaking Guy Gardner of all people, and that was something he simply couldn’t allow, especially when someone this good-looking was on the line.

“Okay, move over Horatio, the real Green Lantern has arrived,” Hal said, reaching out to physically maneuvered Guy out of his way before the other Lantern realized what was happening. Taking advantage of the opening, Hal swooped in to his place in front of the delectable Red Hood, whose eyes flicked from Guy to Hal and back quickly, with the almost creepy assessing intelligence that Gotham vigilante's were known for.

Hal offered a hand and his most dazzling smile. “Hi, Red Hood? I'm Hal Jordan, AKA Green Lantern, AKA Earth's first and best Green Lantern, AKA one of the JLA's founding members. I hear you just got accepted into the league, congrats! I bet you'll be a worthy addiction—I mean, addition, around here. Maybe after Wings finishes fixing you up I could show you around? I know all the best spots to avoid Batman.”

The Red Hood didn't take his hand but his mouth stretched into a lop-sided grin, a thing of brightness with a hint of mischief that had Hal going weak in the knees and he didn't know what he said to get said smile but damn was he going to enjoy it. Red Hood snorted in amusement. “'All the best spots to avoid Batman', huh? Maybe I'll take you up on tha—ow!”

Red Hood scowled down at Nightwing who was glaring at the Red Hood's wound as he tied off his stitches. “Oops,” he deadpanned, sliding his disapproving gaze Hal's way. Hal narrowed his eyes back, not sure when the guy had put on that party-pooper bat-look Hal hated, but now he suddenly couldn’t forget the other vigilante had worn the cowl of his greatest rival, world-class busybody Bruce Wayne. He'd always liked Nightwing better in the role of the big bat—he was more laid back, he cracked jokes even if they were mostly stupid puns—but he might have to reassess that opinion. Apparently Nightwing had picked up a thing or two from his mentor. Specifically, how to make Hal feel like scum for breathing.

Hal opened his mouth to ask Nightwing why he was here and what his relationship even was with Red Hood, but before he could confront his potential cockblock, Guy grabbed Hal by the arm and dragged him away to the corner of the room with a mumbled, “Excuse us, guys...” as Hal complained, “Hey, easy on the goods there, Guy!”

As soon as they were out of ear-shot, Guy rounded on Hal with fury in his face. His usually pale complexion was flushed red with anger and embarrassment, twin to his fiery red hair.

Guy shoved Hal hard enough to rock him back on his heels, whisper-shouting, “What the hell, Jordan! Why you gotta butt into my business?”

Hal scoffed. “Your business? No no no, I let you have first crack, but now it's my turn.”

Guy snorted and got in his face, as if he actually thought he could back down the GL Corps original 'man without fear' with his inadequate self. Please, Guy wasn't even close to his level. “You didn't let me do anything, Jordan. I saw him first and you just shoved your way in, like an asshole!”

Hal threw up his hands, unrepentant. “Hey, the man has a right to make his own choices, and clearly the better choice is yours truly. I'm just presenting him the option of my amazing self.”

Guy looked ready to strangle him with his bare hands, which was pretty typical of the man. “Why do you always have to be number one, huh Jordan?” he demanded and an edge of pleading entered his voice that put a momentary damper on Hal's sense of entitlement. “I might have found my soulmate here, why can't you just let me have this?”

Hal frowned, suddenly uncertain. Did Guy know Red Hood previously and have some relationship with him Hal didn't know? Was there some connection between the two that Hal was selfishly getting in the middle of?

“Soulmate?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and regarding his fellow Lantern with skeptical but open ears. “You think Red Hood is the one, huh? What makes you think that?”

Guy's face turned dreamy-eyed and dopey as he explained, “I saw him right-hook an alien in the jaw, take the goon's own gun and blast his face off in a quarter of a second, then back-flip off a car and detonate an explosion that wiped out a landing craft. I fell in love instantly Hal, this is the real deal, man!”

Oh, so he didn't have a connection, Guy was just being typical Guy.

Hal rolled his eyes, unimpressed. “He's not your soul-mate, you just saw him do something badass and now your smitten!”

“Well you just saw him take off his shirt and now your smitten,” Guy countered with a snarl, “At least my reason isn't superficial!”

Hey, physical attraction was usually the first step to a relationship, or so he'd heard somewhere. It was human nature to see a hot body and go after it. “There's nothing wrong with—”

“Hey!” Hal heard as someone snapped their fingers in front of his nose and he looked over to see another fellow Lantern, Kyle Rayner, gracing both of his predecessors with something like irritated disbelief. “Are you two seriously fighting over Jason Todd of all people?”

“So his name is 'Jason Todd'?” Guy perked up, voice soft, “I love it. It just perfectly captures his, like, his everything, and—”

Hal shook his head. “Words are not your strong suit Guy, just stop.” Please.

Kyle pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his Green Lantern's mask, wearing a pained look as he said, “Okay, let's just put on hold the absurdity that is anyone thinking that dickhead Todd is attractive enough to pursue despite his garbage fire of a personality--”

“Woah, that's a bit harsh Rayner,” Hal said with a raised eyebrow, taken aback by the fierceness of Kyle's insult. What the heck? The kid was usually so nice. What did he have against the other man, how did he even know him?

“—aside from all the obvious reasons Todd is a bad idea,” Kyle went on, ignoring him. “If you're really interested, then you guys have way bigger problems than each other.”

Guy crossed his arms and tilted his head in question. “The heck are you talking about?”

Kyle jerked a thumb behind him and Hal looked over his shoulder to find the object of his and Guy's affections, Red Hood, one Jason Todd, was crowded by no less than Supergirl, Superboy, Booster Gold, Arsenal and Starfire, as Nightwing and Orphan hovered nearby like stodgy nannies. Kara had actually latched onto one of Red Hood's arms like a leach and was pressing her breasts against the man's biceps as she covertly ran her eyes all over him, no doubt putting her Kryptonian x-ray vision to good use (so unfair). Superboy—the older one, Kent's kinda-clone, not his kid—was trying to shove Kara out of the way and insert himself into the conversation, but the girl was clinging fast and refused to let go. Booster Gold was yacking and gesticulating, trying to draw attention to himself, but Red Hood seemed to be ignoring him in favor of chatting with Green Arrow's old partner and the Tamaranean princess who were looking way too friendly, with Starfire's hand on his shoulder and Arsenal poking at his ribs, as Red Hood swatted back.

“What the hell is this?” Hal demanded, the unfairness of it all pissing him off. “We were there first, come on!”

“I was there first,” Guy corrected and clicked his tongue angrily. “Man, this is freaking bullshit. This is all your fault, Jordan!”

Hal huffed, indignant. “My fault? You're the one who dragged us away! If you hadn't we—”

“Seriously guys, don't fight over the Red Hood. He's the worst,” Kyle spat with an uncharacteristic vehemence. “He thinks with his gun instead of his head and he's a broody goth-nerd lone-wolf-wannabe who he doesn't know when to quit!”

Guy's face screwed up in confusion. “What's your angle here, Kyle? You're just making him sound hotter.”

Kyle put a hand on Guy's shoulder, inviting him to listen closely as he explained, “Look, he's not hot—I mean, yeah he is, he's like crazy hot—but he's not, trust me.”

Guy looked like his brain was struggling to keep up with Kyle's non-logic. Actually, Hal's was too. “You are making no sense,” Hal informed the kid.

Kyle didn't look especially bothered. “Just don't fight, okay? Seriously, I'll sic John on you.”

Oh, not John Stewart-stick-in-the-mud! He'd shut down their whole operation like the by-the-book buzzkill he was! Damn, when did Rayner get so bitter? The kid was still in his twenties but he was already old and jaded and wise to he and Guy's ways.

“Woah, calm down,” Hal said evenly, as if soothing a potential jumper away from the edge. “We don't need to get John involved. We're cool, right Guy?”

Guy was a bit closer to John than Hal was, so he wasn't sure if the other Lantern would back his play on keeping the third Lantern out of it, but Guy also seemed to realize they needed to think smart here.

“Yeah, we can act civil about this. Probably,” Guy said, fluttering his lashes innocently.

Okay, 'smart' was relative.

Kyle rolled his eyes, not in the least sorry that he was trying to ruin their day with a lecture from John about GL solidarity and keeping your mind out of the gutter, or whatever rules the architect-ex-Marine followed to keep his nose so damn clean.

“Yeah, sure you can,” was Kyle's skeptical retort. The younger man rolled his shoulders wearily and finally seemed to let up on the oppressive tone. “Well, I'm out of here—they sent out the all-clear, no casualties, so I'm flying to my apartment to crash.”

“Okay, goodnight, I guess. Good work out there,” Hal said by way of a goodbye.

The younger Lantern smiled back, suddenly more himself. “Thanks. You guys too.” As he started to walk away Kyle hesitated and stabbed a finger their way, saying, “And if you take my advice you'll stay away from Todd.”

With that, Kyle set off toward the door, only pausing as he walked passed Red Hood and his accumulated admirers to sling a snarky, “Not dead yet, asshole? Shame.”

Jason immediately reacted, throwing up a middle finger as he tossed out a, “Fuck you, Bitch-Lantern,” that sounded almost playful. “I've already come back once, what makes you think I wouldn't rise up from the grave just to kick your ass?”

Kyle was still walking towards the door, yelling back, “I'd like to see you try, Failure-Robin.”

“Suck a dick, Rayner, I could bend you in half,” Jason retorted easily.

“I've got a piece of alien jewelry that says otherwise.”

“I bet your ring runs out of power before I run out of bullets.”

Kyle huffed. “Pff, whatever.” He turned the corner out the door with a much more friendly, “See ya nerd.”

Red Hood rolled his eyes and flapped a dismissive hand at him. “See ya geek.”

Hal stared wide-eyed and dazed in Kyle's wake. The hell was all that? How the heck did Kyle know Red Hood, Jason Todd? And what was with all the belligerent sexual tension? Did he have to worry about Kyle now too? Damn it, this was getting out of hand!

“That kid's a problem,” Hal muttered darkly.

Guy looked like he had somehow fallen even deeper in love after hearing his crush shout at Kyle to suck a dick. “Shit, this is bad,” he said and Hal wasn't entirely sure what Guy meant by it, but he was also certain that the man was correct.

“I hate to say it, but I agree.” Hal chewed his lip, for the first time beginning to think this wouldn't be an open and shut case of show-up-get-laid. He might actually have to work for his prize. It would probably be worth it, though. God, but he could die happy crushed between those beefy thighs.

“Maybe we should...I don't know, join forces or something,” Guy offered.

Hal frowned. “How would that work?”

Guy raised both brows and pointed at himself with a deprecating chuckle. “You're asking me?”

Of course, what was he thinking? “Good point, um...” Hal thought a moment before he said, “How about...we share information and give each other space to work, but everyone else is the enemy. If either of us land him we back off.”

Guy nodded. “I'm game. Truce?”

“Truce,” Hal answered. They sealed their alliance with a fist bump, ring to ring, and both Lantern rings sparked green briefly. Hal and Guy dropped their hands and moved to regard their competition with zealous scrutiny.

“Right,” Hal said after a moment to strategize. “Now let's get in there. You try to push out Booster and the ex-Titans and I'll take the Supers.”

Guy punched a fist into his hand and grinned, ready for a brawl. “Got it.”

[clovis-enthusiast]

Little thought about The Tyrant’s Tomb. [SPOILERS!!!!]

oKAY, so I’m gonna start off by saying that, as usual, Rick Riordan’s writing style never fails to impress and draw me in to keep reading and not stop until I’ve devoured every last word. I was DESPERATE to read this book because it took me longer to get it than usual, and I was trying to go into it spoiler free (aside from reading the snippets that Uncle Rick posted on his Twitter every now and then.) I pretty much managed to do so, and it made the experience that much more emotional for me. I went into The Burning Maze KNOWING that Jason was going to die, but I had absolutely no idea what I’d be facing in this book.

Camp Jupiter

I’m just gonna flat out say it; I was never really all that interested in Camp Jupiter in the beginning. I didn’t like the majority of the characters (aside from Dakota who is my legal son) and the camp structure (though accurate to the Romans) seemed too strict and harsh to me. The ranking systems confused me, and it all in all just did not appeal to me the way Camp Half-Blood does. However, the more I read, the more attached I grew, and although I still MUCH prefer Camp Half-Blood and would choose it in a heartbeat when choosing between the two camps, it still became an interesting place to read about. I ADORE the idea of New Rome and the sharp contrast of silly demigods like the fifth cohort vs. the strict rules and upbringing of the camp.

When Jason died in The Burning Maze and the next book was set to take place surrounding Camp Jupiter, I grew excited. I REALLY wanted to meet more of the demigods of the Roman camp and explore them more (mostly Dakota but I digress.) Although I knew reading about everyone’s reactions to Jason’s death would be hard, I fought through it and was somewhat surprised by the lack of grieving that was presented. I mean, the ENTIRE first few chapters were ALL about Jason’s coffin and Lester and Meg grieving and trying their best to get it to camp but when it actually got there there really wasn’t that much of an uproar. At first I thought that was strange but looking back at it the Romans are brought up to be strong and not let emotions take over them, and people like Hazel have to show absolute strength. Besides the camp was already in mourning over DOZENS of other campers at the time.

That was another thing that sort of bugged me. I was absolutely ITCHING to meet some new characters and granted I got a few, but the majority of the ‘newer’ characters had already been killed and served only as the undead army.

THAT WAS SO FUCKED UP. It was one thing that I think Rick did a really good job with in upping the deep and darkness of the Riordanverse series. Can you imagine fighting your undead comrades and friends?? Like holy shit, that was emotional. I was super worried I spoiled something for myself on Istagram bc I read a post someone made about Jason trying to get the undead Romans to follow him instead or direct them away from camp, but I should have known it wasn’t true since he was literally burned.

Frank

Speaking of burning, I ACTUALLY thought Rick killed Frank off. Up until this book, I hadn’t really realized how much I loved this man. His character is just so well-written and likable and when he sacrificed the wood, I was like NOOOOOOOOO. I was SO grateful he came back in the end because I was sure Rick would never hear the end of THAT one if he allowed it to really happen. On the bright side, my baby boy can now enjoy his life with a little bit more vigor and less fear now that the stick is gone for good.

New Characters

Lavinia Asimov: Okay, Lavinia is a REALLLLLLLY weird character to me. She reminds me a lot of Lou Ellen to be honest, but for some reason, she doesn’t appeal to me as much as Lou Ellen does. (Maybe it’s just because I tend to prefer minor characters) Her rebelliousness seemed a little too... forced at times?? And her whole thing with the dryads and fauns was kinda weird too, but I guess since she likes Poison Ivy, it makes sense. However, she kinda did grow on me, I suppose, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of her.

Poison Ivy: I REALLY wished we could have met her even just once. Lavinia would not shut up about her and was CONSTANTLY rebelling against the rules in camp just to see her, so I wanna know just what kind of a character she is. I’m sure she would have been very interesting and sassy to have been Lavinia’s love interest lol

Pranjal: He’s a good boy!!! Not quite sure how to pronounce his name properly, but his appearance is adorable and I LOVE the fact that he’s a son of Aesculapius because he’s one of my favorite gods soooo... I really wish we could have seen more of him!! He’s kinda like Clovis in the way that he has like one important part, gets mentioned like two times afterwards and then never again :^/

Aristophanes: he’s a cat,,, i love him,,, 

Harpocrates: This was SO interesting and out of the blue to me having gone in spoiler free!! He’s earned a new spot up in my favorite gods list because of how interesting and mysterious he is. His concept was great and although i was sad to see him sacrificed, I hope that he and Sibyl are together wherever they are bc that was damn cute and made me so emotional afgkjldg why did Apollo have to be such a dick as a god,,,

New names with little to no info: Carl (Roman demigod,) Reza (Roman demigod,) Reginald (faun,) Felipe (faun,) Harold (faun,) Lotoya (dryad,) Buster (unicorn,) Muffin (unicorn,) Whagadoodle (unicorn,) Shirley (unicorn,) Horatio (unicorn,) One Eye (pegasus,) Small Ears (pegasus,) Boost (pandai,) Ida (Roman demigod,) Caelius (Roman demigod,) Thomas (Roman demigod,) Colum (Roman demigod,) and Terrel (Roman demigod)

Lester/Apollo

MY BOY HAS GROWN!!! He’s so human now, and I’m so proud. He doesn’t even second guess sacrificing himself or humiliating himself to save his friends. I just... I have a lot of feelings over his character development. Rick handles him SO well, and I just,,, I love him,,, i am,,, in love with him,, i would date lester papadopoulos

Meg

She’s grown to be such a doll!! I was SUPER annoyed by her in the first books, but now she’s my daughter. I love that she’s actually expressing emotions other than ‘annoying 12 year old’ now. Like I wanna protect her.

Reyna

She was a pretty good character in this book and her leaving the camp was a HUGE surprise to me. I kinda wish she was still praetor because idk Hazel just doesn’t rlly seem as fit for it as Reyna was, and I like Reyna a lot, but idk i guess it’s coolio. I was also glad Rick cleared up all the romance discourse about her too though the way he did it was kinda weird (she literally was using the word ‘ship’ out loud like wh-- and i don’t remember the venus thing at all so maybe i missed it from a different book? idk it came out of nowhere to me)

Ella and Tyson

I actually like Ella a lot now!! I used to find her quite annoying, and her relationship with Tyson felt forced, but now that I had the time to get used to her and figure out her character a little more, I do like her. She sort of treats Tyson weird, but I think towards the end, I fell for their relationship more. Tyson was literally excellent, show-stopping, breath-taking, amazing,,, like YESSS KING I LOVE YOU AND YOU PEANUT BUTTER-SMELLING SELF (that one scene where he just started dancing and apollo didn’t know if it was for the ritual or just bc he felt like it killed me)

Character Deaths

Dakota: I AM NEVER GOING TO GET OVER THIS ONE FOLKS. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY TIMES I HAD TO REREAD THE SAME SENTENCE TO MAKE SURE THAT I WASN’T HAVING A NIGHTMARE. I PHYSICALLY CANNOT BELIEVE THAT RICK KILLED HIM OFF. I’M STILL EMOTIONAL OVER IT, AND JUST AJSDHF;AMNJ ‘;  NOOOOOOOOOOO THIS IS THE SECOND SIBLING POLLUX HAS LOST IM GOING TO  S C R E A M  HE WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS AND HE DESERVED BETTER DAMN IT I’M LITERALLY IN SHOCK LITERALLY DO NOT TALK TO ME LIKE I’M STILL IN SHOCK FROM CREST’S DEATH IN THE LAST BOOK TBH AND NOW THIS??? NOW I’M SCARED CLOVIS IS GONNA DIE JSDKLFKS the only thing that gives me comfort is that Jason can be with his friend in Elysium now fuckkkk,,, rick why did you do this to me,,, I LITERALLY CANNOT EXPRESS HOW UPSET I AM I WILL  N E V E R  HEAL

Don: Don was sort of a comic relief character in SoN, and it was very sad to see him go. He reminded me a lot of Grover, and his death scene with Lavinia ACTUALLY made me tear up. THIS BOOK MADE ME SO EMOTIONAL GOD DAKOTA AND DON WERE LITERAL BABIES RICK GIVE THEM BACK

Bobby: listen,,, we never even met this kid rlly and i was still super sad when lavinia had to kill him again and hannibal is without him and just ughhh whyyy

Julia’s mother, father, AND foster parents: HOLY SHIT RICK WASN’T THAT KIND OF OVERKILL??? I felt so bad for the poor girl, especially cause she’s like six??? But it’s very sweet that Terminus adopted her. I really liked that.

Jacob: AAHHHAHA this one made me sad too!!!! he was such a minor character, but he reminded me of Damien White and Ethan Nakamura (if he were allowed to actually be a kid,) so I think that’s why I was sort of partial to him. The way he died was SUPER horrid too, so I just,,, im big sad for him (on a good hand, he went down F I G H T I N G)

Mentions of anything relating to Hypnos or his children

Yes, i am keeping track, sue me. Somnus was mentioned one time in this book as one of the gods Apollo briefly considered summoning to his aid, and it is presumed he has some sort of tribute at Camp Jupiter had he not before. You’ll make another appearance someday Clovis, I know it :’^D 

Final Thoughts

I literally CANNOT wait for the next book (which I presume is the last one.) From what it seems, we’re returning to New York, so Camp Half-Blood will be present. I can’t wait to see my babes again, and I’m REALLY hoping more minor characters will be allowed to shine (cough clovis cough) but like i KNOW some will die and just,,, im sad,,, dakota’s death has wrecked me,,, but on the side note, the new book is coming out in my last year of school!!! i’m so excited because this series holds emotional value to me like i’ve literally gone through my high school career with trials of apollo like it was with me the whole time and it’s one of the only things that keeps me going. i just,,, i have no words to express how much this series and all the others mean to me...

thank you so much for keeping me going, uncle rick. i can’t wait to see how this all ends :^) <3 

[adorkablephil]

Fic: The Roles We Play (6)

Title: The Roles We Play Summary: Dan Howell and Phil Lester work together as voice actors for BBC radio dramas in the late 1930s, but slowly begin to develop “inappropriate” feelings for each other Rating: G Word Count: 6,941 (this chapter) Tags: Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Historical AU, 1930s, BBC, Radio, Actors AU, Slow Burn, Love Letters, Past Character Death, Grief, Angst Author’s Note: This fic was inspired by the @phanfichallenge 20k History Challenge. A bazillion thanks, as always, to my amazing beta, India! This chapter, in particular, gave me some trouble (due to rl stress), and India was my total hero.

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[ All Chapters Masterlist ]

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8 January 1939

Dan arrived at rehearsal the next day only to find Phil unexpectedly absent. He waited and waited, watching the door, because he and Phil usually chatted a bit before the rehearsal started, but that tall, slim form never appeared.

“Mr. Lester has been called away on urgent business,” Drury announced at the start of the rehearsal, making Dan start. He looked around in hope of some explanation. “It is regrettable, of course, since he plays one of our most important roles in this production, but Mr. Joseph Walker will be reading his part during the rehearsals until Mr. Lester is able to return. He fully expects to return before we broadcast on 18 January, but if he is unable to be present by that time, or if he is unable to attend enough of the rehearsals, then Mr. Walker will read the role of Jack in his place.”

Dan had great difficulty focusing on the rehearsal and flubbed his lines several times. Drury grew increasingly impatient with him until finally he simply cut the rehearsal short, sniffing disapprovingly, “I hope we shall all find ourselves more fully present and focused tomorrow.”

Unsure what to do, Dan went home and phoned Phil’s house. Gemma answered the phone, sounding coolly polite as she informed him that Mr. Lester was with family at present and might be away for some time. When Dan pressed for more information, she simply told him that Phil had given her no estimated date of his return and that there was not, to the best of her knowledge, any family tragedy involved.

Phil had simply decided he must spend some time with his family.

He’d said nothing about this the previous night when they’d been chatting after dinner, so something must have come up quite suddenly. And Dan did not understand why Gemma seemed so much less friendly. Was it perhaps that her easy, teasing demeanor depended on Phil’s presence? Or was it something so simple as feeling more formal on the telephone than in person? Whatever the reason, it made Dan uneasy. He had been looking for reassurance in phoning Phil’s home, but had received none. He knew it would be inappropriate to request the phone number of the Lester family residence, so he did not ask, no matter how much he longed to do so.

Had the baby suddenly fallen ill? Dan hoped dearly that young Steven was safe and healthy. Or Mrs. Lester? He thought of the woman gently kissing him on the cheek at Christmas. He thought of each of Phil’s family members in turn and fervently wished them all well.

Most of all, he hoped that Phil himself was well. Why had he not phoned? Why had he sent Dan no message whatsoever? Why had he simply left without a word?

Dan changed out of his suit and into a comfortable pair of slacks and the oatmeal-colored jumper Mrs. Lester had knitted for him. He curled up on the sofa in his lounge under a thick blanket and sent all his anxious good wishes winging toward the north.

******

13 January 1939

After what seemed an interminable length of time, Phil reappeared at rehearsal one morning, and Dan immediately ran to him. “Is everyone well? Is young Steven in good health? Are your parents well?” he asked in a torrent of words, voicing all his worries of the past week.

Phil smiled a little, though he looked rather more pale than usual and a little sad. Phil did not reach out to rest his hand on Dan’s shoulder or arm as he had so often done in the past, but just looked down at the floor and then back into Dan’s eyes. Dan braced himself for the worst.

“I’m sorry I left you with such uncertainty,” Phil apologized, but he seemed distant. He had been gone from London for days, but the tone of his words now made him seem even further away than he had been yesterday, despite their now being in the same room. “I just … needed to be with my family for a time. But they are all well. You needn’t have worried.”

Dan frowned. “But of course I worried! You left without a word, and all I knew was that you had returned to the north to be with your family. You’ve never done such a thing before, so I assumed something serious must have happened.”

“As I said, I apologize for worrying you. They are all well, and … send you greetings.”

Dan felt terribly confused. “Are you quite well, Phil? You seem … different.”

But Drury called the rehearsal to order, and Dan never got a real answer to his question.

When rehearsal had finished, Phil left abruptly without bidding Dan farewell.

Dan spent another evening on his sofa, wearing the oatmeal-colored jumper for comfort, trying to remember the happiness he had felt with Phil and his family at Christmastime, only a few weeks ago. He heated a tin of soup for dinner and went to bed quite early, though he lay awake, unable to fall asleep, for a very long while.

He did not understand what had gone wrong.

******

14 January 1939

When Phil arrived at rehearsal the following day, his smile seemed a bit more natural, less forced, and he chatted with Dan both before and afterward as was their usual habit, though he did still seem slightly subdued. He did not suggest that they go to the pub or otherwise spend time together that evening and simply took his leave after some polite chat.

Dan stared after him, feeling lost.

******

18 January 1939

Drury decided that Phil had been gone for enough of the rehearsal time that it would be best to have Joseph Walker play the role of Jack. Phil graciously acquiesced, but Dan himself felt quite put out. Phil had been so excited to perform this particular play, and he himself had so looked forward to their characters’ lively banter … playing opposite Joseph Walker was a tremendous disappointment.

When he heard Joseph Walker’s aristocratic voice speak the line, “Then a passionate celibacy is all that any of us can look forward to,” he wanted to weep. At least previously he’d had a beautiful friendship with Phil, even though he knew it could never be anything more than that.

Now it seemed he had lost even the friendship. Had he done something to offend Phil? And, if so, why did Phil not simply tell him what he had done, so that they might clear it up? Surely they were good enough friends to weather a storm or two?

At least, Dan had thought they were.

******

24 January 1939

“Would you like to stop by the pub for a drink before heading home?” Phil asked after the repertory company’s business meeting to discuss upcoming productions and potential casting.

Dan looked at his friend in surprise. This was the first time since the dinner at Phil’s house, more than two weeks ago, that Phil had initiated any social interaction beyond a polite chat at the BBC. Dan had tried to suggest that they spend time together once or twice, but Phil’s apparent lack of interest had discouraged him. Always a bit in awe of Phil, even after they had become more comfortable with each other, Dan had been hesitant to continue asking after being rebuffed.

So Phil’s invitation to the pub felt like rain in the desert. “Yes,” Dan agreed eagerly. “Yes, I would love to have a drink with you. I’ve missed our time together.” He bit his lip, worried that he had said too much, but Phil smiled faintly.

Phil’s cheeks looked a bit pink when he admitted, “I have missed you, as well.”

They went to the pub across the road, as they had done on previous occasions, and Phil ordered his usual sweet cocktail. Dan ordered an old fashioned.

“Old fashioned again,” Phil commented for no apparent reason.

“Yes,” Dan replied. “I rather like them.” He took a sip.

“I’ve never been much of an old fashioned man,” Phil said, and then took a sip of his sweet concoction. His face looked surprisingly melancholy for such a banal conversation.

“How are your family doing?” Dan asked, still puzzled about what had happened with all that.

Phil smiled. “They’re fine. You can stop worrying, Dan. I’ve already apologized for alarming you. I just … I needed to be with them for a while. But I’m back now.” His eyes still looked troubled. “I would not want anything to adversely affect our friendship,” he said seriously. “Your regard means a great deal to me, and I’ve come to enjoy our time together very much.”

“Of course nothing would affect our friendship,” Dan replied, concerned. “Why should it? Is something the matter? Did I … was it me? Did I do something?” This was the question he’d most feared to ask, afraid of what Phil might say, but Phil only shook his head, looking down into his drink and stirring it absently.

“No.” He glanced at Dan and then away. “No, of course not. You’ve done nothing wrong.” He met Dan’s eyes, and Dan could not read his expression, but it certainly was not a happy one. “You’re a good man.”

Dan raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t go that far!” he joked.

Phil smiled at him and reached out to rest a hand on Dan’s shoulder for the first time in weeks. “I would.”

******

27 January 1939

They were doing Shakespeare again: Hamlet, this time. Phil, as one of the BBC’s most enduring stars, had the title role. Dan had been assigned the role of Horatio. Drury seemed to like Dan and Phil’s easy camaraderie and so had taken to quite often giving them roles as characters who were friends. Horatio was a plum role for Dan, probably more prestigious than any other role he had played in the repertory company thus far, so he was quite excited. His character appeared in almost every scene, as did Phil’s, so they would be spending a great deal of time together in rehearsal, and Phil would be able to indulge his love of puns again. Despite being a tragedy, Hamlet was chock full of wordplay.

The role assignment meeting drew to a close, and everyone stood up from the table. Dan walked to Phil’s side and asked casually, “Care for a drink at the pub?”

“Er … I’m going to a film this evening, actually.” Phil flushed and looked away in apparent embarrassment. “Nothing that would interest you, but I’ve been looking forward to it.”

“Oh,” Dan tried not to let his disappointment show. “Going with some friends?”

Phil’s flush deepened a bit. “Despite what you may think, I don’t have a large number of friends. And I’m not acquainted with anyone who shares my interest in horror films, so I’m attending the film showing alone.” He tilted his chin up a bit, as if feeling defensive. “There is nothing wrong with a man going to the cinema on his own.”

Dan raised his hands in surrender. “No, of course not! There’s nothing wrong with attending a film showing alone. Unless, perhaps, a friend might like to join you?” He smiled tentatively. It seemed a risk to invite himself along so brazenly, but he and Phil had been carefully finding their footing again, returning slowly to the easy comfort of their friendship, and so he was willing to take the chance.

“You wouldn’t like it,” Phil protested immediately. “It’s nothing intellectual or philosophical. Nothing intellectually challenging at all. Just a frivolous bit of something frightening, for you know I love a good horror story.”

“I do know that,” Dan replied. “And while my reading tastes may differ from yours, I must admit to enjoying a good horror film. Not all my tastes are so fussily pretentious, you know.” He grinned at Phil.

“I didn’t mean to imply that you were pretentious!” Phil gasped in denial.

“Of course not,” Dan’s grin grew wider. “That’s why you were going to invite me to come with you to see … what is the film you’re seeing this evening?”

“It’s called The Face at the Window,” Phil replied, sounding very unsure of himself. “Are you certain you would want to go to a horror film?”

“It will not be the first, nor that last, that I watch with pleasure. I love a good scare! Having your company will only make it all the better.”

After a long hesitation, Phil eventually suggested, “Well, if you are certain, let us get a taxi. We may get dinner near the cinema, if you like.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Dan replied honestly, and he felt as if everything in his world had fallen back into place.

******

10 February 1939

Despite Phil’s extensive social connections, it had taken him some time to find a new club that suited him. “You must come,” he insisted to Dan. They’d gotten over their mysterious awkwardness entirely now and were as close as ever. “They have an actual gaming room which allows non-members! They’re much less snobbish than my previous club. I don’t know why I ever tolerated that place—it must have been the popcorn.” Phil tapped a finger against his chin. “Perhaps I shall be able to persuade the new club to forgo the cucumber sandwiches.” Dan laughed.

Phil’s new club had two rooms in which non-members were permitted: a quiet lounge similar to the one at Phil’s previous club, and a gaming room complete with a billiards table. The gaming room was noisier than the lounge, since men played games in pairs or small groups, but everyone still kept their voices low.

Dan and Phil played a game of billiards—primarily for the novelty, as they’d never played the game together before—but then returned to their favorites: chess and goofspiel. They played a round of each, chatting quietly over their games, until Phil made some remark that made Dan laugh inappropriately loudly. He clapped a hand over his mouth, then made a silent grimace of apology, but Phil told him, “I love how you throw your head back when you laugh with your entire being. Few people appreciate life enough to show that kind of joy. I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Let them look.”

“I don’t really think of myself as a joyous person,” Dan objected.

Phil shook his head. “But when you laugh like that, the truth shows through. There’s joy in your heart. There may be sadness there, too—and you may not see it yourself—but the joy is there.” Phil’s blue eyes shone with intensity.

The heart Phil spoke of beat faster. As he had told Phil upon their first meeting, Dan did not think of himself as a particularly cheerful or happy person, but he had experienced more happiness since meeting Phil than he had any other time in his life.

“It’s because of you,” he told Phil honestly. “I’ve never had a friend like you, never known anyone who made me laugh the way you do. So thank you. Thank you for bringing more joy to my life.”

Phil looked down and blushed. Dan became aware of the intimacy and sentimentality of their conversation and glanced around self-consciously at the men scattered around the room playing chess, billiards, bridge, and other card games.

“Have you discovered yet whether they serve popcorn at this club?” he asked to dispel the seriousness of their interaction.

“Alas, they do not,” Phil replied, looking up again, having regained his composure. “But I simply cannot tolerate an establishment that excludes my most valued acquaintances, regardless of how fine the snacks they offer.” They both chuckled. “I shall simply have to ask my own cook to learn how to make it.”

At that precise moment, a servant appeared at Phil’s elbow and spoke quietly into his ear. Phil’s eyebrows rose, and he nodded with a smile. After the servant had left, Dan asked, “What did he ask you?”

“You shall see,” Phil responded mysteriously. But only a moment later, the servant returned with tea service and a bowl of popcorn, all of which he placed to the side of their table so it would not interfere with their games. Phil explained, “Apparently, when I inquired about it at my first visit, the club considered my request and decided to add popcorn to their menu. I like this club better and better!”

“And no cucumber sandwiches,” Dan pointed out with a chuckle.

“No cucumber sandwiches!” Phil exclaimed, making other men turn their heads to look at them.

Dan smirked and said, “This time it was you who were too loud.”

“Somehow,” Phil replied, “I get the feeling that this club will not be so quick to evict us. I think less and less of that previous club. What a bunch of stiff-necked prigs! I’m so glad you exposed their true nature. Why, I might have continued quietly among their company indefinitely if you had not discomposed them with your utterly inappropriate, raucous behavior.” He giggled, his tongue showing at the corner of his mouth.

Dan looked at his friend, at the beauty and elegance of his features even as he delighted in life like a child, and thought, Oh no. No. I cannot feel this way. Not for him. I must not lose his friendship, but I know such would surely happen if he were ever to know. I cannot feel this way. I must not feel this way. He shuffled the cards so that he had a reason to look away from Phil’s face. He watched his hands for a long moment as they manipulated the deck of cards.

“Are you quite all right?” Phil asked, sounding concerned.

Dan looked up, forcing himself to look at his good friend’s face with a bland expression, and replied, “Of course.” He forced a smile. “I’m fine.” He looked down to shuffle the cards a few more times, though they were no doubt thoroughly mixed by now. He hoped Phil did not notice how his hands shook. He looked for something to say, anything except what he was thinking. Something proper. Something appropriate. Something a man in his position was expected to say. And then he remembered. “Dora will be arriving in London in two weeks to visit her aunt. She’ll be in town for a month, so we should be able to arrange that dinner soon. I know she looks forward to meeting you.”

With his eyes so determinedly focused on his hands and the cards, Dan missed the shadow that passed across Phil’s face as he cleared his throat and replied stiffly, “Of course. Of course. I’m sure it will be lovely to meet her.”

******

28 February 1939

Even with Dora in town, Dan did not see her often, and still spent much of his free time with Phil. He called on her at her aunt’s home three times during the first week, however, to make sure that he did not seem inattentive or unappreciative of her presence, even if their engagement was primarily just a convenience for both of them. They just did not have a great deal in common and spent much of their time together discussing old school friends in Wokingham. Dora still saw them all often, as few of them had moved away as Dan had done, and so she told him all the news about their lives.

Dan had never been close friends with any of them, and many of the men she spoke of so happily were those who had bullied him when they were boys, but he pretended interest.

Dan had never been close friends with anyone before Phil.

Eventually the scheduled evening came when Dora prepared dinner for them and Phil came to visit. Dora was all aflutter as they waited for Phil to arrive, smoothing her carefully waved blonde hair and applying fresh lipstick. She kept repeating how excited she was to meet a true radio celebrity, which Dan found hurt his feelings a bit. He now appeared on the radio as often as Phil, often as his co-star in their dramatic productions on the BBC, but Dora did not consider him as worthy of regard?

No one in Wokingham ever had considered him worthy of much regard. That was why he had left. One of the reasons.

Phil arrived at the door looking handsome and elegant in his well-fitting but not-quite-fashionable suit and hat. Dan took his hat and overcoat, hung them up, and then turned to introduce him to Dora, who hovered nervously in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Dora, allow me to introduce you to my friend, Philip Lester. Phil, allow me to introduce my fiancée, Dora Williams.” Phil bowed to Dora and smiled.

“I am delighted to meet you, Miss Williams,” Phil said with a friendly smile. Not the smile Dan usually saw, not the smile reserved for him, but the smile Phil showed to strangers and work acquaintances. Dan felt surprise that he could so easily differentiate between Phil’s different smiles. Then he tried to focus on the social situation rather than aspects of Phil’s face.

Dora nervously plucked at the skirt of her flowered dress and smiled at Phil so that her dimples showed. Many in Wokingham had called Dora and him a matched pair because of their dimples. Did Phil find dimples attractive? Would he find Dora pretty, with her pale hair and bright blue eyes? Dan’s stomach turned at the thought.

Dora seemed uncharacteristically quiet, probably too anxious to speak, so Dan guided them into the lounge. “I’m afraid my flat compares very poorly to your lovely home,” Dan told Phil. He explained to Dora, “Phil’s house includes, among other things, a solarium full of beautiful plants.”

She turned to look at Phil with wide eyes. “I do love flowers,” she remarked brightly.

Dan hoped that Phil would not take this as an implied request for an invitation to Phil’s home, because that would seem quite rude, so he hurried to interject, “I would give you a tour of the flat, but I’m afraid there isn’t much to see.”

Phil walked to the piano in the corner of the lounge and ran a hand along its lid. “This was what I was most interested in seeing, in any case. I do hope you’ll play for us after dinner?”

Dan felt his face grow hot, but nodded. “Of course. I know we have spoken of it often, so I perhaps owe it to you after all this time.”

Dora exclaimed, “Have you never heard him play? Oh, he plays so wonderfully!”

“No!” Dan replied quickly. “I do not play very well at all. Dora is too kind. Please do not develop unrealistic expectations.”

“I’m sure Miss Williams is quite honest in her admiration for your playing,” Phil replied with a kind smile to the young woman. “But please do not feel anxious that you must impress us. I have looked forward to hearing you play for so long that you might simply smash your head into the keyboard a few times, and I would no doubt be pleased to listen.”

Dan laughed, but Dora looked confused. Not everyone appreciated Phil’s sense of humor. When she heard Dan laugh, though, and saw the good humor on Phil’s face, she gave a small, self-conscious giggle.

Dora had made a roast for them, and Phil complimented her cooking in glowing terms, though Dan knew Phil flattered her more than she perhaps deserved, as the Yorkshire pudding was rather soggy and the vegetables undercooked. Dora cooked tolerably well, but even her own family teased her about her lack of prowess. They often joked that it was the reason Dan had not yet married her.

And at that moment, Dan found the topic suddenly brought up in conversation as if conjured by his thoughts. “How long have you and Dan been engaged?” Phil asked Dora politely.

“Oh,” Dora blushed under Phil’s attention. “We’ve been betrothed since we were 18.”

Phil’s eyebrows flew up, and he glanced at Dan questioningly.

“Yes,” Dan verified with some embarrassment. “It has just … never seemed like … quite the right time.”

“My friends tease me,” Dora admitted with an amused smile, “because we have been engaged so many years, when so many of them have long since married and have children, but I know that it will happen when we are ready.”

Dan felt a twinge of guilt at Dora’s words. He knew that they should marry, that he should have a family and live the life his parents had planned for him, but he just had not felt able to do so. Not yet. And Dora had never seemed overeager, either, so it just … never happened.

After dinner had been cleared away, Dan played piano for them in the lounge. Though Dora had seated herself on the sofa, Phil chose an armchair some distance from her. Dan hoped nothing was wrong there.

He first played for them Beethoven’s "Für Elise,” explaining that he had heard the piece as a child, and that it had been the originating source of his lifelong interest in the piano.

“You never told me that,” marveled Dora, and Dan realized that he had not discussed the piano very much with her. Despite the enthusiasm she had shown in her conversation with Phil, he had not played often for her, either, because she had shown little interest.

When he finished the piece, he told Phil, “I always longed for piano lessons, but never had them. I cannot read music, and I’m afraid I learn only by ear.” He supposed he spoke to both of them, really, but he only saw Phil.

“But that is a great talent!” Phil insisted. “Playing a piece of music after only having heard it is impressive indeed!”

Dan blushed and looked down at his fingers still resting on the piano keyboard. “Shall I play you some Rachmaninoff next?”

Phil and Dora both nodded eagerly, and so he began playing the composer’s “Piano Concerto No. 2.” He realized quickly his mistake, however, for it was an intensely romantic piece, and he thought only of Phil as his fingers moved across the keys. He was a cad. To play this piece, thinking of Phil, when the woman he had sworn to marry sat in the same room, was unforgivable.

Of course, it was wrong to play this piece while thinking of Phil at all.

When he had finished, he sat with his head downcast, his hands resting in his lap, while Phil and Dora both exclaimed about how beautifully he had played. “I made a great many mistakes,” Dan said quietly, but they persisted in their praise. Phil’s pleasure seemed genuine, but Dan guessed that Dora merely followed his example. She had no great love or understanding of music.

Without another word, without any warning, Dan began playing a ragtime piece. He could not remember the name or the composer, but the lively rhythm served well to break his melancholy mood. When he had finished the song, he looked up to see Dora looking quite shocked and Phil delighted. “I’m unfamiliar with that tune, and even that style of music, but it was wonderfully cheerful and lively,” Phil declared with a smile that lit a fire in Dan’s heart.

“Er … yes,” Dora said hesitantly. “It was very … different. I’ve never heard you play anything like that before.”

“I like a great many different kinds of music,” Dan explained. “I thought perhaps we could use something a bit more upbeat.”

Phil walked to the piano and stood beside it, gazing at Dan. “I enjoyed it very much. Thank you for playing for us.” He clapped a hand to Dan’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I do believe this was the highlight of my week!” Then he released Dan’s shoulder and turned to look at Dora. “Please do excuse my familiarity,” he apologized with some apparent embarrassment. “Dan and I have become quite close friends these past few months, but I did not intend…”

“No, of course, it’s fine,” Dora said. She glanced between Phil and Dan as if wondering why Phil had apologized. Dan found himself wondering, as well, for Phil hadn’t done anything untoward.

Dan played the piano for them a bit more, and they all engaged in idle conversation, until eventually the evening naturally wound down.

Dora left before Phil, as her aunt would certainly not consider it appropriate for her to be alone at Dan’s flat without any others present. “It was really so wonderful to meet you!” she gushed to Phil.

Phil took her hand and pressed it gently between both of his, saying, “It was lovely to meet you, as well, Miss Williams. I hope we shall meet again often.” For a moment Dan actually felt jealous, though he was confused about his reasons. Was he jealous that Dora seemed attracted to Phil? Or that Phil seemed attracted to Dora? The twisting in his belly told him the answer, but he tried to keep a friendly expression on his face as they all said their farewells.

At the door, Dora held her face up for Dan to kiss her cheek, which he dutifully did, and she gave Phil a last beatific smile before running outside to get into her taxi.

“Why did you say all that to her?” Dan asked abruptly as soon as he and Phil were alone.

Phil looked confused. “What do you mean? What did I say wrong?”

“All that stuff about how you hope you’ll see her again often. Are you … were you flirting with my own fiancée right in front of me? In my own flat?” Dan demanded.

Phil just stared at him in obvious incomprehension for a long moment. Then he let out a small laugh, but it didn’t sound amused at all. He lifted a hand to rub pale fingers against his forehead as if trying to smooth the furrows that had appeared there.

“Dan, you are my closest and dearest friend, and I hope to have a long friendship with you for many years to come.” He spoke slowly and patiently, sounding somehow sad. Dan’s emotions still roiled within him, though, and he waited for Phil to say something that actually addressed the issue at hand: to wit, Phil flirting with Dora right in front of him.

Phil looked into Dan’s eyes, and his emotions showed openly on his face. Dan had hurt him with the accusation, and he suddenly felt a rush of shame. “Dan, this woman will be your wife—she will be by your side for as long as you live—so it is important to me that she approve of me as your companion. I hope I impressed her favorably this evening, for her good opinion matters to me a great deal. I would hate for her to develop a dislike of me that might someday lead you to end our friendship.”

“That could never happen,” Dan insisted immediately. He would never abandon his friendship with Phil, no matter what anyone else said or thought about him. Dora could harangue him for the rest of his life without convincing him to set Phil aside.

“Dan,” Phil said gently, waiting until Dan met his eyes. “She’s going to be your wife. She’ll come before everyone else in your heart, and so even if she were not a perfectly sweet girl, I must yet court her good opinion out of fear. I hope she liked me this evening.”

“How could anyone not like you?” Dan asked, though despair swamped him for no good reason he could name.

Phil sighed. “I hope you will allow me to meet her again before she leaves town so that I can… Dan, surely you must see the situation I’m in. I am at her mercy. If she chooses to dislike me, then I may lose your friendship forever. I cannot let that happen.” He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes in apparent weariness or some other emotion Dan could not identify, then put them back on. “Please, allow me to make a friend of her, so that I may keep a friend in you.”

******

3 March 1939

Though Dan vigorously denied the necessity of it, Phil insisted that he would very much like to take Dan and Dora to the cinema before she left town. At length, Dan reluctantly arranged it, and the three met to attend a showing of Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. It was not quite the sort of film that Dan or Phil would have chosen on their own, but neither did they find it objectionable … and Dora was quite excited to see the film.

Dan enjoyed the film more than he had expected, as he found the action sequences engaging and the humor occasionally clever. Phil, too, seemed quite cheerful as they left the theatre, though Phil tended toward cheerful in the general case. Dora was bubbling over with delight.

Phil suggested, “Shall we have a brief drink before we part, so that we might discuss the film a bit? It may be that I shan’t see Miss Williams again before her departure. I know of a quaint pub nearby that would suit admirably.”

Dora giggled girlishly and said, “Yes, that would be lovely!” before Dan even had a chance to say anything. He felt excluded by their interaction and his mood began to darken.

They walked the short distance to the pub and found seats at a table together. Phil asked Dan, “What did you think of the film?” But Dan merely shrugged sullenly. Phil gave him a concerned look, but Dan pretended great interest in their surroundings. The pub was well-lit and attractive—the sort of place a gentleman might entertain a lady after a date at the cinema. Dan looked back at Phil and Dora and scowled.

“You know, Phil, I think you quite resemble Errol Flynn in his role as Robin Hood!” Dora gushed.

When had Phil invited Dora to call him by his first name? Dan could not remember, but it seemed overly familiar and inappropriate behavior between a single man and another fellow’s betrothed.

“I’m sure you are wrong, Miss Williams,” Phil replied. He put a slight stress on her name, which led Dan to conclude that perhaps Phil had not invited Dora’s familiarity. If that were true … Dan wondered if he should be embarrassed by Dora’s behavior. “If anything, Dan himself looks more like the hero of the film, with his wavy brown hair and pronounced dimples.” Phil smiled at him, and Dan felt his sulk recede a bit. Phil had noticed his dimples? And found his hair attractive?

“Oh, no!” Dora insisted, sipping daintily at her bright pink beverage. She’d been relatively quiet the first time she’d met Phil. What had caused this difference? Dan thought back to how he had told her that Phil wished to spend time with her again before she left town and wondered if perhaps she had misunderstood. Had Dan given her the wrong impression? “You look much more the romantic hero,” she told Phil. “The aquiline nose, the high cheekbones, the engaging smile!”

Phil blanched, looking to Dan in a helpless plea for assistance. He clearly had no idea what to say in response to Dora’s indecorous flirting. Dan gazed back at him and smirked, shrugging a shoulder as if to say, “What can I do?”

Interesting that he had been so upset when he believed Phil to be flirting with Dora, when he found the opposite only amusing. It was rather fun to watch Phil squirm.

“I assure you, Miss Williams, I am no hero. If faced with danger, I would no doubt run away as fast as my clumsy feet could take me! And I would most likely trip during my flight!” He grinned, obviously hoping that Dora would go along with his self-mockery. “Not to mention the fact that Robin Hood rode horses throughout the film, and I am deathly afraid of the beasts. I’m sure Dan is much braver than I. Do you enjoy riding horses, Dan?”

Dan saw how Phil had tried to shift the conversation, and he felt much less cross now. He felt as if he were watching a game, observing Phil’s desperate attempts to extricate himself from a socially awkward situation.

Before Dan could even answer the question about horses—which he did not, in fact, know how to ride, though he had no particular fear of them—Dora reached hesitantly toward Phil’s face and asked, “May I remove your spectacles? I believe your eyes are much more beautiful than Errol Flynn’s, but I can’t see them properly behind the glass.”

Phil jerked his head back, looking extremely uncomfortable, and shot Dan another look pleading for help. Dan realized that Dora was making a fool of herself, and that he had been allowing his friend to suffer simply to assuage his own jealousy. He felt quite a cad for abandoning Phil to such an awkward situation when he knew such social niceties could make his friend anxious. Phil had often told him that it was why he preferred the quiet at the club, and why he valued his friendship with Dan. Though he felt confident in professional situations such as at the BBC, he often felt quite nervous in less formal social situations. He’d told Dan he’d never felt so comfortable with someone else socially, so at ease, with so little anxiety.

And here Dan had been enjoying watching his friend struggle with those very problems, because of his own petty jealousy.

“Dora!” Dan chided. “You barely know Mr. Lester.” Though Dan himself always called Phil by his first name, he chose to be more formal in this case to point out to Dora her own inappropriate behavior. “I know you mean no harm, but manners are somewhat different in town than in the country.”

Dora lowered her hands away from their reach toward Phil’s face, and her lower lip protruded in an unattractive pout. “I do apologize, Mr. Lester, if I overstepped.” She sounded like a sulking child.

Dan felt ashamed on various levels. He felt embarrassed by Dora’s inappropriate behavior, but more importantly he felt tremendous guilt at subjecting Phil to her advances without offering any rescue.

Phil’s shoulders relaxed, though Dan had not even noticed them growing tense, and he smiled hesitantly at Dora. “No harm done, Miss Williams. I hope we can still be good friends?”

Dora smiled, but looked unhappily chastened. “I do believe I’m ready to return to my aunt’s home. Could you fetch me a taxi, love?” she asked Dan. She rarely called him such pet names, and he wondered if she was just trying to pretend that she hadn’t been nearly throwing herself at someone else in his presence. But he simply nodded and stood. He glanced at Phil, uncertain about leaving him alone with Dora at this point, but Phil smiled and gave just the slightest inclination of his head to let Dan know that everything was all right. Dan returned the smile and went to the bar to request that a taxi be called.

Once Dora had left with barely a glance at either of them, Dan and Phil sat quietly at their table for a long moment before they both began to speak at the same time.

“I’m so sorry…” Dan began.

“I’m so sorry…” Phil also said.

They looked at each other and couldn’t help but laugh. “You have nothing to apologize for,” Dan assured Phil firmly. “Dora behaved abominably, and I should not have let it go on so long. I’m sorry for allowing her to make you so uncomfortable.”

Phil shrugged awkwardly. “I hope I did not offend her. I do still wish for her to have a good opinion of me.”

“Oh, I think she has a very good opinion of you,” Dan joked.

Phil frowned. “Dan, this is no laughing matter. If I’ve given offense…”

Dan rested a hand on Phil’s arm and insisted, “You have done nothing wrong. And nothing Dora could ever say to me will ever change my mind about my regard for you and for our friendship. I promise you that.”

Phil still seemed to fret, but he did so silently. Dan tried to distract him with discussion of the film, including mockery of some of the more ridiculous stunts, and soon Phil was laughing with him, quite relaxed and apparently happy. They spent another hour together in the pub, and Dan found that it was by far the most enjoyable portion of the evening.

When they parted, Phil reached out to embrace him briefly with a grateful smile. They hadn’t touched each other thus very often, but they had done so a few times before, such as at Christmastime and when they had not seen each other for several days.

Dan allowed himself to soak in the warmth of Phil’s arms around him, however brief the embrace. And then they broke apart, and went into their separate taxis with the understanding that they would see each other again at the BBC on the morrow.

And so Dan went home to his silent flat where he lay alone in bed that night, trying very hard not to let his thoughts linger on the scent of Phil’s skin, the texture of Phil’s wool overcoat, and every other detail of their affectionate farewell.

******

[ Continue to Chapter 7 ]

[onestowatch]

Durand Jones & The Indications Share 5 Tips for Spreading Love in ‘American Love Call’ Album

Photo Credit: Horatio Baltz

With our current nationwide tensions, it’s about time America figures out how to spread love and avoid hate, and Durand Jones & The Indications is doing just that with their outstanding new album, American Love Call. Durand Jones & The Indications is a soul/R&B group from Bloomington, Indiana, but their profound sounds are adored by listeners worldwide. Recorded at Brooklyn’s Studio G, Durand Jones & The Indications’ sophomore LP draws attention to their developed songwriting and intricate instrumentals reminiscent of ‘70s soul. With melodic songs about all types of love (“What I Know About You” focuses on platonic love and “Sea Gets Hotter” hones in on undying passion), American Love Call is Durand Jones & The Indications’ call to action for human beings to embody love in every aspect of life.

Speaking on American Love Call, drummer Aaron Frazer shared:

“We’re in a time when so many in this country romanticize the past -- wishing to return to a place of simplicity and former glory. But the reality of our history can be disillusioning. For so many in America, the past represents violence, oppression, fear, and colonialism. As America grows more diverse, we have the opportunity to form the strong, interwoven tapestry that we’ve long claimed. When we find a way to unite across our various movements and see the commonalities of our struggles, we can begin to push forward together. We can begin to see the threads connecting our goals as disparate rallying cries blend into a single song. An ‘American Love Call.’”

Below, you’ll find Durand Jones & The Indications’ five tips for spreading love in modern-day America:  

Life isn’t always fair, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t love.

Addressing stark contrasts between the living conditions across America, “Morning in America” channels Durand Jones & The Indications’ relentlessness and brutal honesty when it comes to pressing matters. Touching on the luxurious upper class through playful lyrics, “Congressmen in Washington / Receive their brief n’ brew,” and immediately toning it down to, “While lead it fills the pipe lines / In a Detroit county school,” Durand Jones & The Indications is endlessly blunt with their opinions. Although they truly call out modern day America’s bullshit, Durand Jones & The Indications also suggests that we have the ability to rally together if we ignore our seemingly irrelevant differences: “And in towns across the country / It’s color that divides / When in working men and ladies / We could find our common side.” With Durand Jones & The Indications’ optimistic mindset, our divided world just might have a likely shot at growth and progression amongst all of the tragedies we face.

Love is so worth the pain.

Have your ever been so consumed by someone’s pure beauty and found yourself in a constant cycle of overwhelming emotions? The talented guys of Durand Jones & The Indications definitely have, so they devoted a captivating song to this unexplainable feeling. “Circles” is a proclamation of unrequited love, interestingly opening with the enchanting chorus: “Got me goin’ in circles / Got me goin’ in circles around you.” After a stage of desperation and complete lust, a simple lyric in second verse speaks volumes: “It drives me crazy that / You treat my love like a game.” Many of us have dealt with unreciprocated feelings, but we continue to pursue romantic relationships with certain people, knowing that they may end up breaking our hearts.

Love is patient, love is kind.

Another strings-infused track on American Love Call, “True Love” rewards those who are willing to be patient when it comes to love. Durand Jones & The Indications demonstrates incredible vulnerability in the sweet lyric, “Can’t sugarcoat it / I’m devoted to the notion of me and you,” as they discuss the questionable potential of a nonexistent connection. They’re persistent with this concept of patience throughout the entire song, as they sing, “So I’m waiting on you girl / Come and find me.”

Trust people with your heart and ask that they do the same.

Durand Jones & The Indications understands that human beings are naturally curious creatures and we’re bound to seek the unknown possibilities. In regards to the relationship narrative of “How Can I Be Sure,” they assure us that at one point a strong love connection existed, but now that distance is thrown into the mix, things have gotten fairly complicated. A moment of realization is showcased by the candid lyric, “I used to think our love was reason enough to stay / That was all before,” during which a serious reevaluation of commitment is explored. “How Can I Be Sure” desperately begs us to be honest with ourselves and our partners about our changing emotions to avoid hurting one another.

Know when your heart deserves better.

The clever chorus of “Too Many Tears” says it all: “One lonely heartbreak / Too many tears / Three makes a heart ache / For all these years.” This witty wordplay makes the liberating message of this song that much more memorable as Durand Jones & The Indications stresses the importance of knowing our self-worth. Dealing with someone who apparently can’t treat their significant other with the respect they deserve, they hit us with the straightforward lyric, “Just look in the mirror and love yourself / So goodbye.” Trailing off with “too many tears” and calming acoustics, Durand Jones & The Indications refuses to admit defeat by leaving the toxic situation on their own terms.

Become a love doctor with Durand Jones & The Indications’ American Love Call below:

You can catch also Durand Jones & The Indications on tour this spring:

Mon. March 18 - Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall Tue. March 19 - Dallas, TX @ Club Dada Thu. March 21 - Santa Fe, NM @ Tumbleroots Fri. March 22 - Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom Sat. March 23 - San Diego, CA @ Casbah Mon. March 25 - Tustin, CA @ Marty’s On Newport Wed. March 27 - Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom Thu. March 28 - Santa Barbara, CA @ SOhO Restaurant & Music Club Fri. March 29 Oakland, CA @ The New Parish Sat. March 30 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent Mon. April 1 - Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom Tue. April 2 - Seattle, WA @ Neumos Thu. April 4 - Salt Lake City, UT @ The State Room Fri. April 5 - Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater Sat. April 6 - Kansas City, MO @ recordBar Sun. April 7 - Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room Tue. April 9 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry Wed. April 10 - Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon Thu. April 11 - Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall Fri. April 12 - Columbus, OH @ A&R Music Bar Sat. April 13 - Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Sun. April 14 - North Charleston, SC @ High Water Festival Tue. April 16 - Washington, DC @ Rock & Roll Hotel Wed. April 17 - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg Fri. April 19 - Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church Sat. April 20 - Uncasville, CT @ Wolf Den at Mohegan Sun Resort Sun. April 21 - Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall Mon. April 22 - Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar Wed. April 24 - Cincinnati, OH @ The Woodward Theater Fri. April 26 - Nashville, TN @ The Basement East Sat. April 27 - Oxford, MS @ Double Decker Arts Festival Sun. April 28 - Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West Sat. May 11 - Bloomington, IN @ Indiana University w/ Neko Case

[iasfuturekings]

Consort Arete, The Last Queen of Valla

Born the eldest daughter of King Galenos and Queen Mira, Arete was a woman of exceptional spiritual power, having been granted the blessings of the Father Dragon Anankos at the mere age of ten. She assumed the throne after her father and continued her family’s legacy of leading the prosperous but hidden kingdom of Valla. She was known for developing new healing techniques alongside her sister Eirene, and also for her gift of song, a talent she shared with her husband Hesiod, the royal bard and composer. 

Her reign came to a tragic end when her husband answered the Father Dragon’s plea to have a glimpse of his kingdom beyond his chamber from which he kept himself sane. The total destruction the dragon wrought upon Valla was irreparable, leaving his children dead in a disaster not seen since the end of the Calamity of Mist and Foam. In grief over his mistake but weakened by his atrophied body, Anankos sought shelter in Hesiod’s corpse and fled to the surface to find a way to revive his people, leaving behind the few survivors.

Despite having lost her people and husband to an unstable god as well as bearing a child, Arete made the decision to help relieve Anankos of his suffering, and searched for him in the west lands, while her sister Eirene looked to the east. After gaining the favor of Marquis Barnaby of Lovell to find a position in the royal court, Arete made bold advances towards King Garon as an indispensable strategist with knowledge of the ancient arts of the water maidens.

In private however, she made her true intentions known, a revelation that King Garon did not take lightly after much proof. However, the king could not reveal such information to his closest allies, for as of late, the court has been suffering the ire of Lady Theresa. The two struck a deal. While she provided him her services as a water maiden, he would provide her resources to find the missing god masquerading as her husband. To set her above most dissenters, most particularly Lady Theresa, he made her consort, named Arete’s newborn child his own, and assigned Lady Gabrielle as her guard. While they only married out of necessity, King Garon came to enjoy her company, since she cared little about maintaining presence in castle affairs but was a good friend.

Now under the king’s protection and her daughter’s safety assured, Arete continued her search for Anankos, and thus uncovered a plot most foul in the court that played in coordination to her husband’s disappearance. And now, it seemed to her that King Garon was slowly succumbing to the influence of Anankos’ madness. Before she could act, her knowledge of the secret dealings within the court became known and she was dealt with.

Her body was found in the catacombs of Windmire soon after, her murderers unknown. Her few friends were devastated by the loss, while the rest of the court thought good riddance. In a moment of clarity and grief, King Garon realized Arete’s only daughter Azura was not safe behind his castle walls as they had thought and made plans to send her to the east lands immediately, where he heard his dear friend mention a sister living there. But the crawling influence of Anankos came and squashed the last of his humanity and finally made him a shell of his former self.

Kinda wish we knew more about Arete’s canonical role in the game, but I guess I have to try to make up for it...

Gabrielle considered herself a friend of Arete

They probably had moments of awkward silence until Arete felt need to make conversation

Gabby often watched how Arete conducted herself as if she were a queen (she never knew about Arete’s background) and greatly admired this

How Arete died under Gabby’s watch is quite the mystery since Arete must have found a way to escape Gabby’s watch and meet someone, only to get killed

She suspected that Theresa got Arete killed since Theresa didn’t like how Arete was so flippant about associating herself with the king and would never play Theresa’s (nor Seraphina’s) games

But Gabby could never find proof

Garon’s retainers Gunter and Horatio often met with Arete since she had to send reports (and poems bc she likes toying with Garon’s sappy tendencies for these things) to Garon

Horatio found great fascination with Arete’s knowledge of the water maidens and often asked if she could document her knowledge, although she would coyly say no

Gunter often found her an odd one, but if Garon liked her, he didn’t really mind

Music - Kaine (Salvation) by MONACA (NieR)

[awed-frog]

the thing where they say Sam and Dean have nobody else is also to be blamed on the format of the show, because even though Jody belongs to their support system by now, all other friends they ever make appear maybe once a season (Donna) or immediately die/are written off (Benny, Garth). They can't build up a support system when the show still restricts the appearances of side characters so much. And Cas has even less interactions outside of TFW since Hannah's dead and he's kept away from Claire

Yes, I’m not sure where they’re going with all that, to be honest, because at this point - it’d be interesting to solve these issues they’ve had since day one (the fact they’re so isolated, their inability to form lasting romantic relationships and so on) and frame them as long-term character development (and we’ve seen hints of that here and there), but, as you say, the format of the show doesn’t really allow for a full resolution of anything. It seems that what we’re left with is a story where the characters have to work on their own issues in the subtext or between the episodes (for instance, we now know they see Jody a lot more than we see her with them, which is good news but also - well, I’d love to see her more often, and mostly to see them with her, so it’s frustrating that we have to imagine all of those things which happen between episodes, because that’s just something that’ll never make it to the actual screen), and that’s weird, surely? I mean, I understand they have a format and everything, but what that means is that we’re missing a lot of what’s going on and the only way to achieve the characters’ arc is - well - either they do it hurriedly, in a kind of extra-long series finale or something, or they stick to the idea of a blaze of glory ending, in which case this is a tragedy and the whole thing becomes, ‘this is what we wanted - but we’ll never get it’ - and that’s acceptable if well-written, but after everything, I’m really rooting for TFW to have some kind of happy ending.

And I’m likely not the only one, but lately I’ve been getting this Sophie’s World vibe from Supernatural - there’s this impression that the characters are just off living their own life, and who even knows what happens and what they do half the time and you find out years later that they’ve got weird hobbies or stashes of DVDs under their beds, that Dean spent a weekend making Cas a mixtape and Sam, who the hell can say who Sam is when he’s not working. And maybe that’s unfair, because most TV shows are like that, but at the same time - there’s two kind of stories you can tell, right, and if we take crime stuff, you can either go the Criminal Minds way and focus on the murders themselves and the whodunnit and occasionally give us a few details or a narrative mirror about who our detectives are, or you can go the Mindhunter way and make the entire show about the heroes, and not about what they actually do all day - and in that case, well, it’s not a waste of time to know exactly who these people are, what they like to eat and whether or not they’ve got girlfriends and boyfriends - it’s the famous ‘it’s not a detective story, it’s a story about a detective’ (and man, I wish I could quote that without a bitter taste in my mouth, but whatever). And if you think about it, it’s always been clear that Supernatural is not about monsters at all - it’s about Sam and Dean and who they are and what they want and sure, we see those things by watching them kill werewolves, but narratively, that’s not that relevant, right? And all of this to say - it’s not the same. I can live without knowing what Horatio Caine had for breakfast and whether or not Patrick Jane ever had a dog growing up, but when it comes to Dean Winchester - in order to truly appreciate a show that’s built this way, ‘they catch the killer, they save the world - the end’ is not satisfying storytelling, because in this universe, I don’t care about the world - I care about Dean. So those stolen moments matter, and they matter a great deal, and I wish we had more insight in how Sam and Dean work together and why they never bought a goddamn couch and why is it that Dean never cooks when the first thing he said about the Bunker was, ‘hey, it’s got a kitchen’. But the problem is, of course, that as you say true character development clashes with the show’s format (not to mention the whole bisexuality issue), which means we can go ‘till here and no further’, in a sense. And that’s a damn shame.

[hellyeahgeorgeorwell]

Winston Smith was born in May of 1944* into a world filled with nuclear warfare. Not much is known about his parents, but when he was eleven years old, with his father most likely dead, his mother and baby sister hid in the old London tubes to shelter themselves from the revolutionary war above. Selfishly, Winston stole some food that his mother had been saving. He ran away and never saw his family again.

In 1971 Winston marries Katherine, a woman with no drive or aspirations except for whatever the Party tells her. Winston is never happy with her and at one point contemplates shoving her off a cliff during a nature hike. Sex with his wife was a boring, uninspiring affair which Katherine called doing her “duty to the Party”—attempting to create children. They separated after only two years of marriage due to the lack of conceiving. Years later Winston muses that they are always still technically married since they never got officially divorced.

We are shown that Winston has started his job at the Ministry of Truth by this time. His job is altering documents per the Party’s wishes and translating them to Newspeak. Despite the soul crushing reason for his job, Winston enjoys the tediousness of it and finds a small area of creativity in coming up with ways to use Newspeak.

One day a slip of paper comes his way that probably ends up changing his life. A little backstory: during the Revolution three men, Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford, are arrested and made to confess to trumped up charges which make them good scapegoats for Big Brother. They are tortured much the same way Winston will be and sent free after they confess. Winston ends up seeing the broken men (one of them shedding a tear during a speech by Big Brother) at the Chestnut Tree Cafe and soon after they are never seen from again. During his fateful day at work Winston comes across a newspaper article that proves that the men’s confessions were a lie. This has a profound effect on him, but he throws it into the “memory hole” anyway (a small grate where information is burned to ashes). Even though the information is gone, it still lives in Winston’s mind and starts to change his feelings towards the Party.

Perhaps someone from the Party noticed Winston staring at this piece of paper for too long because a few years later it (including top Party official O’Brien) starts it’s surveillance on him. Maybe the Thought Police is able to manipulate dreams because Winston starts dreaming of O’Brien and his “Golden Country”.

When our story begins it is April 4, 1984 and Winston skips eating in the canteen for his lunch break in order to come home and start illegally writing in a journal he bought in a junk shop some years before. His interest in O’Brien begins that very day during the Two Minute Hate. He shares a brief look with O’Brien which leads Winston to believe that O’Brien knows that everything the Party stands for is a sham. Winston does not dare act on these suspicions but suspects them all the same.

During this lunch break we are introduced to Winston’s neighbors in Victory Mansions, the apartment building he and other middle-class Party members live. This is the Parson family, of which Mr. Parson is a general acquaintance at work. Mrs. Parson has a problem with her drain and just assumes Winston knows how to fix it, which he does because it is nothing more than nasty clogged hair. During the visit to the Parson’s flat, their two children harass Winston and accuse him of being a traitor to the Party. This rattles Winston, as children are raised by the Party to be spy’s on the adults around them. And Winston has not been having very orthodox thoughts as of late.

Winston takes pleasure in small objects that were made before the revolution. This includes his journal, which has creamy paper, and a paperweight. The paperweight is glass with a piece of coral inside. He buys it at the same second-hand shop he bought his journal at, from a kindly old man named Mr. Charrington.

Shortly after this adventure, another life changing moment happens: he is given a note that says “I love you”. The note is given to him by Julia, a woman Winston knew vaguely by sight around the building. During one Two Minute Hate, Julia is right behind him and Winston feels an intense hatred for her: simply because she is a woman who would never want to have sex with him and, he figures, is a spy. This turns out not to be true and the two develop a love affair.

Sex for pleasure is frowned upon by the Party. In fact, one of it’s main goals is to abolish the orgasm. Sex is only for procreation; to create future generations of Party members. Winston and Julia start meeting out in the country at first but then Winston rents a room above Mr. Charrington’s shop. Little do Winston and Julia know but Mr. Charrington ends up being a member of the Party and relays information to O’Brien about their activities.

Because soon after acquiring the room O’Brien makes his move. O’Brien tells Winston that he is actually a leader amongst the “Brotherhood”, a group of rebels against the Party. He gives Winston “The Book”, a nickname to Emmanuel Goldstein’s, “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism”. In The Book it details the rise of Big Brother and his revolution, as well as the backstory to the Party. Winston is fascinated by The Book and attempts to read it to Julia who promptly falls asleep. Most likely this was a little nod to the reader, of whom Orwell knew would also find The Book boring and would probably skip through the section.

Of course O’Brien is not part of any Brotherhood (of which we never know for sure if it exists or not) but uses this to finally give pretext to arrest Winston and Julia. While naked in their room, the two lovers are taken by the Thought Police to the dreaded and fearful Ministry of Love—the jail and torture center of the Party.

Winston is kept here for over a month before finally meeting with O’Brien. In an instant Winston realizes he has been fooled and had basically led himself to slaughter by befriending the upper-class Party Member. O’Brien begins to torture Winston, his main goal to slowly change Winston’s mind from a “sick” person to someone the Party can control. During the sessions he reveals tidbits about the Party, like how the Party’s main goal is to become powerful for power’s sake. And to make Winston to not only believe but to KNOW whatever the Party tells him, even if it’s something wrong and contradictory like 2 + 2 = 5.

After a few months of this, Winston is still not broken and this is demonstrated by the fact that Winston will not give up his love for Julia. As long as he loves a person instead of the Party then his torture is not over with. Finally, he is taken to Room 101—the room that has the “worst thing in the world” in it. What’s in it? Whatever the person being taken in is afraid of most in the world. Fire, suffocation or, as in Winston’s case, rats. O’Brien places a caged contraption over Winston’s head that, when a door is opened inside of it, rats will run out and start to eat Winston’s face.

Winston’s mind finally snaps and he pleads with O’Brien to “do it to Julia”—torture her instead.

O’Brien is able to piece back together Winston’s broken mind, much like they did with Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford. He builds Winston’s mind into the persona of the Party’s ideal citizen. Winston finally knows that 2 and 2 make 5.

In the spring of 1985, a year after the story starts, Winston is finally out of the MiniLove. He runs into Julia in the park and the two no longer love each other, or have any feelings towards anyone whatsoever. Winston reflects on this meeting while having a drink in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. Suddenly the telescreen behind him features a small speech by Big Brother. A small gin-soaked tear trickles down Winston’s cheek. He may not love another human being but he loves Big Brother!

* Although the month of Winston’s birth is never said, I always assumed it was because Winston is the same age as George Orwell’s adopted son Richard Horatio Blair. Orwell took many timelines and places and people from his real life and it is not a stretch to believe he did the same for Winston’s birth and age.

(Article copied from my Writing As I Please blog)