#you have a story to tell ( mr ibis )

[random-imagines-blog]

TV Show Masterlist (A-K)

In an attempt to organize the blog and keep everything in order, masterlists are being made to join together into a masterlist of masterlists to make it easier for those on mobile. Thanks for being patient!

Not in Alphabetical Order

⭐contains smut

American Gods

Oneshots:

Disarm (Shadow Moon Sibling!Reader)

Still a Stranger (Shadow Moon)

A Visit to the World (Mr World)

All is Fair (Mr World)

Understand (Mr Wednesday)

King of the Wasteland (Tech-Boy)

They Speak the Language (Tech-Boy)

Stunner (Bilquis) ⭐

Imagines

Imagine Shadow Moon finding out that you are his true soulmate.

Imagine Shadow Moon threatening Mr Wednesday over you.

Imagine telling Shadow Moon you’re pregnant with his child.

Imagine being Shadow Moon’s sister, and him taking care of you while you’re sick.

Imagine being Demeter’s daughter, and Shadow Moon falling in love with you.

Imagine making fun of Shadow’s new look.

Imagine getting married to Shadow Moon.

Imagine making fun of Shadow Moon for his crush on Ostara.

Imagine Shadow Moon having a crush on you.

Imagine telling Shadow about your own big projects.

Imagine being Shadow Moon’s younger sibling, and he’s terribly overprotective.

Imagine being the reason Shadow Moon is brave throughout all the madness.

Imagine only joining the war for the chance to get close to Shadow.

Imagine impressing Mr. World

Imagine Mr Wednesday finding out you have feelings for him. 

Imagine flirting with Mr. Wednesday.

Imagine Mr Wednesday holding you during a panic attack.

Imagine being Mr. Wednesday’s child and him singing you a lullaby.

Imagine Odin finding you injured on the battlefield.

Imagine reuniting with your father, Mr Wednesday, in Lakeside.

Imagine Mr Wednesday being intrigued by you at House on the Rock.

Imagine being Wednesday’s favorite daughter.

Imagine Mr. Wednesday making you feel better after being rejected by Shadow.

Imagine Wednesday comforting you after a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day.

Imagine Wednesday trying to seduce you into the war.

Imagine Mr. Wednesday appreciating that you are on his side.

Imagine Mr Wednesday sensing a quiet strength in you.

Imagine Mr Wednesday realizing how attached to you, a human, he is after an argument.

Imagine  Mr. Wednesday trying to charm you into being on his side.  

Imagine Anansi making you a suit.

Imagine Anansi coming to you in times of trouble.

Imagine being a Muse and catching Anansi’s eye.

Imagine sharing a home and bed with Laura Moon.

Imagine dating one of Shadow’s friends and Laura being jealous.

Imagine being a cook in the prison and you start feeling attraction to Low-Key.

Imagine being Low-Key Lyesmith’s wife but people just don’t understand it.

Imagine listening to Low-Key Lyesmith’s stories to help you sleep.

Imagine making a deal with Mad Sweeney where he cures your loved one and in return, you must marry him.

Imagine Mad Sweeney collecting on your debt.

Imagine breaking Tech-Boy out of New Gods’ Headquarters. 

Imagine Tech-Boy trying to protect you from his world.

Imagine Tech-Boy using your hugs as stress relief.

Imagine bear-hugging Tech-Boy, after thinking he might have been replaced.

Imagine forcing Tech-Boy to look at the real world once in a while.

Imagine punching Tech-Boy in the face when he makes too make snide comments.

Imagine Mr Ibis only listening to your songs while he works.

Imagine being Mr. Ibis’s wife and intimidating the other Gods.

Imagine becoming Mr. Ibis’s assistant.

Imagine hugging Bilquis after not seeing her for a long time.

Imagine Bilquis getting tired of waiting for you to make a move.

Imagine New Media trying to get you to trust her.

Imagine comforting Media when she starts to feel old.

 Elementary

Oneshots

No shit, Sherlock (Sherlock Holmes)

Changeling (General)

Valentines Day without the Hearts (General)

Coffee with a Criminal (Jamie Moriarty)

Patch-Up (Jamie Moriarty)

Imagines

Imagine getting hurt on a case with Sherlock.

Imagine Sherlock genuinely caring about upsetting you.

Imagine taking Sherlock to Starbucks

Imagine having a simple pizza date with Joan Watson.

Imagine Joan being confused by people who still use homophobic terms.

Imagine telling Joan Watson you’ve admired her from the moment you met her.

Imagine being a new detective and Joan Watson taking you under her wing.

Imagine Mycroft Holmes personally bringing you flowers at his restaurant.

Imagine Mycroft helping you unpack.

Imagine being kidnapped by Jamie Moriarty because she finds you fascinating.

Imagine working with Sherlock and Joan, but also being Jamie’s girlfriend.

Hannibal

Oneshots

Breach (Hannibal Lector, Will Graham, Poly)

Imagines

Imagine Hannibal vowing to keep you safe.

Imagine your honeymoon with your new husband, Hannibal Lecter.

Imagine Hannibal coming over for Christmas.

Imagine inviting Hannibal into your home for dinner.

Imagine being one of Hannibal’s patients, and causing him stress when he realizes you know his secret.

Imagine being Will Graham’s much taller significant other.

Imagine Will always coming to you after a case for comfort.

Imagine being the only person Will Graham can’t see darkness in.

Imagine renting a cabin with Will Graham.

Imagine Will Graham meeting your dogs for the first time.

Imagine being the only one to understand Will Graham’s love of dogs, and support him in it.

Imagine running away to Europe with Matthew Brown.

Imagine Matthew Brown helping you to escape.

Imagine surprising Matthew with a new victim.

Imagine Matthew Brown being impressed by how well your daughter is carving a pumpkin.   

Imagine Matthew Brown attempting to help you destress.  

Imagine being the only one in the room who does not stare at Francis’s disfigurement.

American Horror Story

Oneshots

Horror Show (Tate Langdon)

Personality Ransack (Kit Walker)

Imagines

Imagine Tate Langdon appreciating your dark side.

Imagine Tate Langdon’s expression when you tell him you’re moving from the Murder House.

Imagine Tate Langdon being upset that he can’t go out with you on your birthday since it’s not on Halloween.

Imagine Tate Langdon wanting to show you off to the other spirits on Halloween.

Imagine being a Christian girl, and having Tate try to change your faith.

Imagine Kit dreaming of the day you walked into his shop.

Imagine being in the asylum and having a secret pet with Kit Walker.

Imagine sharing a room with Kit Walker, and he loves to smoke since it annoys you so much.

Imagine Kit Walker covering for you, and getting in trouble.

Imagine visiting the circus everyday to see Jimmy Darling.

Imagine Jimmy Darling buying you a new dress and seeing you in it for the first time.

Imagine Jimmy Darling flirting with you despite your disfigurement.

Imagine Dandy Mott insisting you share a bed with him.

Imagine Dandy Mott finding out that you are a normal person, and not one of the ‘Freaks’.

Imagine Dandy Mott finding you more interesting than the Freak Show.

Imagine controlling Kevin Spencer and having him do ‘fun’ things to you.

Imagine being a ghost and confusing Ben Harmon by walking past his office naked.

Imagine teasing Ben Harmon by luring him into the shower, only to disappear when he gets in.

Imagine toying with Ben Harmon one night, and kissing him when he begins doubting your existence.

House

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine your boyfriend Dr. House coming up with some creative ways to help your insomnia.

Imagine Gregory House entering your house for the first time.

Imagine lying to Dr. House but he understands it completely.

Imagine working under House and hearing him  complain about his problems.

The IT Crowd

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine bringing Roy a salad for lunch.

Imagine looking after Maurice Moss when he’s slightly concussed.

Friends

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine spending your birthday with Phoebe Buffay.

Chicago Fire

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine Matt Casey missing you.

His Dark Materials

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine Asriel always seeing you as the one that got away.

Imagine Lord Asriel not wanting to admit to you that he was wrong.

Criminal Minds

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine figuring out who the killer is before the rest of your team, including Spencer Reid.

Interview with the Vampire

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine Lestat falling for you, despite you being the opposite of him.

Imagine being Lestat’s soulmate, but almost total opposite.

Imagine having an at-home spa day with Lestat.

Imagine being Louis’s child, and him comforting you after turning you.

Imagine being more of a sleeper, while Lestat is an ‘up and at em’ kind of fellow.

Imagine catching Lestat singing to your (stolen) daughter.

Imagine watching Lestat teaching your daughter French.

Imagine rejecting Lestat’s advances.

Imagine Lestat throwing a temper tantrum after you reject him.

Imagine Louis and Lestat receiving a letter from your sister, after putting an advertisement out for a third partner.

Imagine being a liberal woman, and the three vampires wanting to make you part of their family.

Imagine being Lestat’s younger sister, and Armand flirting with you.

Imagine giving Lestat your virginity on your wedding night.

Imagine attending the theater, and Armand becoming fixated on you.

Freaks and Geeks

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine Daniel Desario trying to get you to admit to your feelings for him.

[forabeatofadrum]

Hello and El WooWoo to you. It is the last El WooWoo Wednesday of the year. That is wack. Thank you @martsonmars and @cutestkilla for the tags. I have written absolutely nothing, which was something I had sort of planned. Sure, I want to continue Ljubim te, and I also want to wrap up my Carry On textfic soon, but today is not the day!

So instead of writing, I’m reading! I have a lot of fic to catch up, from the Klaine 321 Bangs, to the Klaine Advent stories, and of course the new Klaine Secret Santa fics. Of course, the Snowbaz fam isn’t sitting still. So much Carry On Countdown and there is also the Secret Snowflake Exchange fics. Apart from these current challenges, I still have older fic to read. For the summer I made an amazing summer reading list and in the end I barely had time to go through it.

So many fics, so little time. That’s what I am trying to change for now.

Of course I devoured @chen-chen-chen-again-chen​‘s Jelly Babies. I am besotted with Swithin and Gregory, with Simon and Baz being elder queers. The moment where Gregory tells Simon that he hopes that Simon falls of a horse and gets a weird bruise on his arse has been stuck in my head ever since I first red it.

I also just finished Let It Snow - Or At Least Stop Sleeting by @1908jmd​ (who also wrote my Secret Santa gift!), which was adorable and the backgroup characters were extremely funny.

@yeonjunenby​ mentioned several times that they were working on a Snow for Christmas sequel and it cameo out. A Grimm Christmas at the Salisburys was great and Lady Ruth is an absolute badass.

I’ve been looking foward to Work Friends: A Holiday Romance ever since @crissmastrees-and-candyklaines​ shared that snippet of Kurt drawing Mr. Ryerson’s name. It’s so good. “Fuck me.” “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” ALY I AM ON THE FLOOR.

AND WHEN I LEAST EXPECTED IT.... @facewithoutheart​ comes back with a new chapter of On Love’s Light Wings. YEEHAW!!!!

Lastly, I just finished Babysitter for a Vampire by @martsonmars​. God. I love this. I specifically love Simon badmouthing Michael Bublé for Santa Buddy. I know that is not the point of the fic, but Simon is so fucking right. Just, UGH, Marta I love how you write Simon. He’s such a fucking mess. The Santa Buddy moment is only one of the many good gems.

And, okay, okay, I am also reading actual books again. I finished Pride by Ibi Zoboi, which is a modern version of Pride and Prejudice and it takes place in Brooklyn, which is being gentrified. I also finished Carrie Soto is Back and damnit, Taylor Jenkins Reid delivers again.

Since this got long, I’ll put the tags under the cut, together with a surprise!

Tagging @quizasvivamos @crissmastrees-and-candyklaines @coffeegleek @esperantoauthor @otherworldsivelivedin @caramelcoffeeaddict @sillyunicorn @bazzybelle @dragoneggos @raenestee @tectonicduck @nightimedreamersworld @urban-sith @thnxforknowingme @captain-aralias @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @takitalks @justgleekout @cerriddwenluna @tea-brigade @ivelovedhimthroughworse @moodandmist @whogaveyoupermission @bookish-bogwitch @confused-bi-queer @aroace-genderfluid-sheep @ionlydrinkhotwater @1908jmd @special-bc-ur-part-of-it @larkral @chen-chen-chen-again-chen​ @nausikaaa​/@wellbelesbian​ @artsyunderstudy​ @facewithoutheart​

[digitallit213]

pride & prejudice & zombies & the inner city & queer people

jane austen's pride & prejudice has been remixed so many times, it'd probably be impossible to name all of them in one cohesive post.

the original novel was published in 1813 and is one of the most-loved books among both scholars and the general population, and is a commentary on class, marriage, and feminism during austen's time. i'm sure i don't need to explain the plot to you (hopefully), but its importance in society certainly cannot be undermined.

the two most popular adaptations to date are the 1995 bbc miniseries starring colin firth as mr. darcy and the 2005 movie starring keira knightly and matthew mcfayden as elizabeth bennet and mr. darcy.

both adaptations are fairly faithful to the original book (except the lake scene <3), but it's hard to objectively say why viewers are so drawn to them, aside from the cast. there is, of course, the dry humor that, while sophisticated, is still understandable, the magical, og enemies to lovers relationship from the still-relatable characters, and the absolute timelessness of it.

it's really no wonder that p&p is prime material for remixes, with the most popular being pride & prejudice & zombies, which was first a book and then a movie. it's sort of exactly what it sounds like: a parody of p&p, same plot but there's also a zombie plague going around, and also some fighting and murder plots. then, there's pride by ibi zoboi, which is a modern day pride & prejudice set in a brooklyn neighborhood slowly being gentrified in part by the rich darcy family who zuri, the elizabeth bennet of the novel, wants nothing to do with. most recently is most ardently by gabe cole novoa, in which elizabeth bennet is a transgender man, with a few more suitors thrown into the mix.

why pride & prejudice then? and what do these remixes bring to the table? given the examples provided, i think it's just a relatable story, despite its age, that you can really put yourself into. class differences will always exist and will always affect relationships like in zoboi's novel. enemies to lovers will always be a popular trope that leaves room for so much drama, such as zombies, because sure. why not. and transgender people have always existed, so who can tell us that they don't deserve the same type of touching, all-encompassing love story that elizabeth and darcy got, even if it is a little unrealistic for the 1850s.

everyone wants a love story with a happy ending, and pride & prejudice is nothing if not one of the best ever written.

[mysmistree]

A simple reflection of Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

I will speak frankly, so readers beware spoilers.

I literally just finished this book 10 minutes ago, and thoughts are flooding my brain.

It was a spectacular adventure. It was interesting, it was strange. It was more adult and treated me, the reader, as more adult than most books I've read. (The part with the Ifrit especially was stunning and entertaining.)

I completely misunderstood the title when I glanced it in a bookstore, taking it as something like "Those who are gods in America", like say a rich stockbroker might be a god, or a CEO might be a god, metaphorically, to some.

I now understand it was about a world in which there are old gods, Norse and Egyptian, African and Slavic, and then there are American Gods. All treated diametrically opposed when they are not really on different sides.

I was startled by Media. I was disturbed by The Technical Boy.

I loved and hated Mr. Wednesday.

I did not know who Mr. Nancy/Anansi was when I was reading, but I asked a friend at work if he'd ever heard of such a man, and boy did he have tales to tell me about him. He, you see, has been raised on the legends of Anansi, and went into wonderful detail that I never would've even heard if not for this story and my question.

Through googling I've learned more of the Zorya sisters, and of Chernobog and Belogbog, which made the epilogue of the story click so beautifully with the little things such as what color of the checkers pieces Chernobog preferred to play as.

I was dissapointed to not see in any deep capacity any Greek gods, but now on the other side of the book I was so much more thrilled to become fond of new ones.

I was wonderfully pleased to see old gods who I knew well, Mr. Wednesday and Jackal. I loved how very rarely if ever that the name Odin appeared in the book despite his prominence in the story. It left me somewhat off-balance about how faithful the godly story was before being assured by the end that it was as earnest about the gods as I can imagine anyone to be.

My favorite characters were, unquestionably:

Sam, the charming hitchiker girl who dared to wave flags with a kiss and cast things in bronze, and I adored seeing a lesbian in writing as I had not run into this very much before diving back into books as an adult.

Mr. Ibis, of the Ibis & Jackal Funeral Home. I have never felt more comfortable in conversation with ideas so close to, and involving, death. I also could not help but squeal when Shadow placed a call to them specifically. He was wonderfully put-together and down-to-earth, and I loved in the scene with the scales and the feather how he reflected on his own "image" of himself, as one who writes little histories and stories of people.

And Mr. Nancy. I'm an American-born girl and have never been outside of it, so the only image I have for explaining his attitude is something akin to a "Louisiana swagger", but he certainly rocks it with absolute style. I loved that he is so frequently noted to be wearing bright-yellow gloves, and I am not sure but I recall him wearing much more yellow very early in the story. He was charming and sweet, and felt much more aware of how gods were to the world than most of his peers, such as Mr. Wednesday. (With perhaps Mr. Ibis and Mr. Jackal being equally aware to Mr. Nancy, though far less interested in their god-hood than in their simple living.)

As I listened to this in audio format, I also want to say that I loved all of the voices. Being able to recognize them made pure magic out of hearing their dialogue. In the town car that came to pick up Shadow, I cannot recall nor recognize the moment the driver and his companion became Mr. Nancy and Chernobog. The shift was so smooth, subtle, and quick, and I was thrilled to be there for it.

Overall the book was strange and peculiar. Death did not feel like a theme as much as a companion through the book. Laura's death, Laura. The Funeral Home. Sacrifice upon the tree. The wager with Chernobog. Everything, EVERYTHING, was conjoined with death.

I am not completely sure what the book is about. It felt like it was about loss, about fate. Like it was about symbols and meanings. It felt like it was about deceit and grifts.

It was splendid. It was a hard start getting to know who Shadow was as, from the first, he was dealing with so much. But it was wonderful.

It was amazing.

AND THE GALL OF NEIL GAIMAN TO END MR. TOWN WITH BUT A SINGLE LINE THAT ONLY SAID:

"So she did."

THE GALL. IT WAS INCREDIBLE.

I felt rewarded, as a reader, for recognizing what that meant. It wasn't a secret, by any means, but it wasn't clear. That line alone without context can mean anything. and yet I felt so appreciated, so seen as a reader for paying attention.

Like yes, I knew what happened before. And so I knew what this meant when the time came. I loved that it did not need to be doted upon. It did not need to be re-explained.

He asked her to show him, so show him she did.

I have deeply, deeply enjoyed this book. I believe in this moment that it was a good book, and I am thoroughly pleased to have gotten to the end. This is now the third book of Neil's that I've read, the other two being The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Neverwhere. Both wonderful books, but fundamentally different books to American Gods.

Though I vaguely recall from Neverwhere, the line:

"As old as my tongue, and slightly older than my teeth," which also appears in American Gods, and is now forever in my memory.

This is my longest and most detailed post, but I have enjoyed this book immensely. I recommend it to any who have a love or fascination with old gods, and quite especially to those with a fascination with learning about more.

It was a lovely book. It was a strange story. It was a crooked game, but it was the only game in town.

And I absolutely loved it.

[immortaljackal]

Layla Jacquel, every time she’s in Cairo and learns that her father and/or uncle have invited someone else to stay in one of the rooms within the funeral parlour:  “I did not know we were running a Dead, Bed, and Breakfast here.”

[dw-writes]

The Invasion...Chapter Fourteen

Summary: Mad Sweeney could not recall the last true believer he had. Sure, he’d been brought over as one of the Fair Folk, but it was different. A sliver of the truth, a dim shadow of what he was really owed. The belief of someone who followed traditions, not him.

That changed when he arrived in Cairo.

That changed when he laid eyes on you and he found that one didn’t have to believe in the myth to believe in the man.

A/N: /lies down....this chapter.....she finally be finished......finally......

This chapter isn’t as long as it could be? (I mean, it’s still VERY long, just like the others) but there was something about this chapter that was just....very difficult to handle? I can’t put my finger on it.

Oh wait, yes i can. CONTENT WARNING as there is a very obvious mental decline in the reader, and we start to delve into the handling of depression from now on. Please be warned.

I REALLY hope you guys enjoy this chapter. It’s bringing us into the thick of things now. Let me know what you think!!!!

Chapters: Chapter One || Chapter Two || Chapter Three || Chapter Four  || Chapter Five || Chapter Six || Chapter Seven || Chapter Eight || Chapter Nine || Chapter Ten || Chapter Eleven || Chapter Twelve || Chapter Thirteen || Chapter Fourteen || Chapter Fourteen-ish || Chapter Fifteen || Chapter Sixteen || Chapter Seventeen || Chapter Eighteen || Chapter Nineteen || Chapter Twenty || Chapter Twenty-One || Chapter Twenty-Two Requests: Mad Sweeney and The Holidays || The Invasion and the Stressful Blows One Shots: The Invasion and That One Thankful Holiday || The Invasion and the Weight of Change || Eyes On You

The Invasion and the Pass to Somewhere

The Wetland Library loomed over you, though the wetlands were less wet and the vegetation greener. You followed the same path you previously did, Hody’s shoes protecting you from the moss and dirt and twigs that made up the path. The doors were not obscured but framed by blooming vines. There were more candles this time, and blown glass lanterns that hung from the ceiling by ropes and chains. While the shelves around you were mostly empty, and the table in the middle of the room was still alone, you found that you were not the only person in the Library.

You had never met Mr. Ibis, never had a chance to while you were in Cairo, but you correctly assumed the man sitting at the desk – not a table, it was not round or surrounded by chairs but square and set up like a writing desk – must have been him. It wasn’t his appearance – his dark skin or round glasses or prim demeanor – that made you guess, but his shadow, which was cast by the single lamp on his desk and the hundreds of candles around him. It stretched so long that it climbed the distant wall, and was not the shadow of a man at a desk, but the shadow of a man standing, holding a tablet, scribbling a story that he felt needed to be told. The man’s bird head bowed, as the shadow of a cat appeared next to him.

You returned your focus to the desk.

The woman you had so often dreamed of sat on the corner of the desk with her legs crossed. She examined her nails with absent interest while she listened to a story Mr. Ibis spun. “Bast,” said Mr. Ibis, “Must you crowd me while I work?”

“I have interest in this story,” she purred. You wandered behind Mr. Ibis’s chair and felt Bast’s eyes upon your face. “I’m not the only one.”

“Oh?” He turned enough that his ear pointed at you. “I do love an audience.”

“Oh, yes,” she sighed. She placed a delicate finger against Mr. Ibis’s temple and gently pushed his head. “Do tell the story, Thoth. It’s been a long time since you’ve spun one just for me.”

You gripped the back of his chair and leaned over his shoulder.

It was the story of a girl named Essie. Mr. Ibis wrote her story, but there was another hidden between the lines of it. You leaned over his shoulder – or he leaned aside for you – and gently brushed your thumb over a space between the paragraphs. Beige words lifted from the page whose color they shared, curling in Mr. Ibis’s careful calligraphy, like smoke from an extinguished candle.

Ireland was a wild place when Essie was young, when she would sit on the shores and listen to the stories from her Grandmother. Her Grandmother spoke of leprechauns and piskies like she’d known them intimately, been under the hill time and again and returned with tales to regale a listening ear.

The elderly woman knew of Sweeney from her younger years, when she, herself, had been passed down the stories of the leprechauns and the men of the trees from her mother while the two made bread. She knew of a man who protected his gold so fiercely that he wouldn’t share a piece – not for greed, but for something else she could not place. Essie’s Grandmother imparted this wisdom onto Essie while they waited for new bread to rise, or when Essie would wait for her father’s ship to return to port, or when they separated the cream into dishes for the cats and an extra dish for the wayward faerie.

“The thing with leprechauns,” her Grandmother would say, “is that they look for those who help others.”

“Why?” asked a little Essie late one evening. She stood on her toes and slid the dish of cream into the window well. She was still too small to open the window herself, but her Grandmother was more than happy to help with such a thing.

Essie’s Grandmother didn’t have an answer for that, not one that she knew from stories or tales or late night trips into the woods. She knew of a leprechaun who was lost to the changing world and just looking for the humanity he had long missed in the woods. Her Grandmother knelt and smiled and took little Essie’s hands in her own as she said, “Because luck from a leprechaun is not given lightly.” She pinched Essie’s button nose and earned a string of light giggles. “You must prove your worth for such a gift. Only kindness begets kindness. Remember that, Essie.”

Essie nodded and let her Grandmother take her to bed that evening, asking only once for another tale of Fair Folk before she went to sleep. A man listened from beneath Essie’s window, drinking from a dish of cream and smiling at a well-worn voice. He remembered that voice, just as he would remember Essie’s.

Essie was a young lady when her Grandmother passed. The funeral was small and meager, with a pine box in the local church yard and a small flat headstone in the earth. It was all Essie could afford, and she wept when the gravediggers lowered her family into the grave. Essie knelt in the dirt and gently wedged a bottle of cream by one corner of the casket, and a wrapped loaf of bread by the other. In the center, she placed a gold coin. Nothing was special about the coin, except that it was the first gold coin that Essie had earned working as a housemaid, so it was something she could easily part with. She looked at the gravediggers when she was done with her task, rose from the dirt, and brushed off her dress.

“The leprechauns only grant luck to those who show them kindness,” she told them as she sniffled and cried, “I would hate for them not to bestow their luck on her just because she couldn’t spare a piece of bread or a dish of cream.”

She turned away.

(Essie was not a stupid girl – she knew the gravediggers would take the bread and the cream and the coin for themselves and feast on freely given food, but it was important that she gave her Grandmother’s spirit the opportunity to go under the hill with arms laden with gifts than with nothing at all.)

She brushed past a man who stood just outside the cemetery gate. She didn’t see his face, only his shoes, which were dirty and worn from hard travel, and smelled cloves and fresh tobacco on the air. Essie slowed further down the trail and turned around with the hopes of seeing the man, but he was gone just as quickly as the bread and the cream and the coin must have been. She left the cemetery.

The man, though, stayed. Essie had not seen him because he had moved further along the fence, following the hard boundary of the church yard closer to her Grandmother’s grave, smoking from a pipe that was in dire need of being replaced. He saw the men take the cream and the bread and toss the coin to see who would take it. He leaned on the fence and watched them. They felt a chill crawl into their bones as though someone had walked over their graves or cursed their names to the rising sun. They took the bread and cream but left the coin and buried Essie’s Grandmother with it. The man reached through the Hoard and plucked the coin from the dirt. He’d ensure that a spirit full of tales would find a peaceful rest in the Land of the Young and tucked the coin safely away.

“Interesting that a leprechaun who was so cautious of the encroaching civilization would pay so much attention to someone like that,” said Mr. Ibis. His words shook you from your haze. You glanced down. The wisps of words were fading from the air, their fire put out from diminishing ink. Mr. Ibis was smiling as he dipped his pen in his ink well.

You leaned your elbow on the back of his chair. “He thrives on being believed,” you responded.

The author inclined his head, setting one eye on your face, and smiled. “Everyone thrives on belief,” he replied. He nodded at his page. “Would you like me to continue?”

“I would,” you answered. You folded your hands and leaned over his shoulder. “Are you Mr. Ibis?” you asked.

“That I am,” said the man as he set his pen to paper.

You smiled. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Mr. Ibis returned your smile and set his eyes on his page. The words – the story – floated up to cloud your vision. A tinny tune filled your ear. You frowned and turned away from the desk and the book and the god that looked up from his now interrupted tale. You recognized the sound as something from an ice cream truck but you couldn’t…

…you couldn’t recall where you’d heard it.

You tilted your head and stared up. The ceiling was gone, replaced with a thin layer of fog and the bright blue sky of day beyond it.

Bast called your name. You turned your head and felt your temple throb at the sudden movement. Her nails brushed over your head and into your hair. “Are you alright, dear messenger?” she murmured. The pain slowly subsided. You leaned into her palm.

“I dunno,” you whispered. You frowned. “I don’t remember.” Your brow furrowed. “How did I get here?”

Mr. Ibis rose from his seat and turned it towards you, one hand flipping to a new set of fresh pages, while Bast guided you to sit. You looked up at them both. Mr. Ibis turned your hand over and placed the quill between your fingers. You twirled it gently. The ink welled on the nib.

“You could remember,” implied Mr. Ibis as his hands brushed over your shoulders, “You just need to let the story tell itself.” He gave your arms a squeeze, then released you.

Righting it carefully, you pressed the pen to the parchment, and wrote.

The memory bled out in careful cursive letters.

Laura and Sweeney argued as you sat at the base of a massive white bison statue, looking up at it with a tiny frown. Your head hurt a bit, and you weren’t entirely sure why, even as you leaned it against the surprisingly cool leg of the statue. Sweeney said there used to be an actual white bison, and that it used to be a god because of all the attention and reverence it got. It made you think of Lynne, and of the way that belief seemed to work when it came to gods.

It made you think of other ways that belief could work.

You glanced at Sweeney’s broad back and shifted, rubbing your nose with the back of your hand. Clove and smoke filled your nostrils. You looked down. You were wearing Sweeney’s button up over your tee shirt, one just as dirty as the other, and both just as dirty as your hair. You didn’t know when you had stolen it. You tucked your hands under your thighs and pushed off the cement pedestal just as Laura whipped around to face Salim.

“Wisconsin!” she shouted. She stalked towards the taxi. “Your Jinn will be in Wisconsin, at some place called The House on the Rock.” Salim skittered for a moment, his hands stalling as they worked to roll up his mat. Then, he hurried to the trunk, exchanged the mat for your duffle – which he carefully set on the ground, even though it was empty of almost all of your books and held nothing fragile – then climb in his car and sped off.

You lifted a hand and waved at the retreating yellow taxicab. “Bye,” you called to unlistening ears, “Drive safe.” Be careful, said your words on the air, and you felt the sentiment returned in kind by equally unheard words.

“Why the fuck did ya do that?!” Sweeney screeched over you.

“Why do you think?!” Laura screamed back.

A migraine cracked your temple in two and you squeezed your eyes shut. You folded into yourself, first at the waist, then at the knees, then pulled your arms around your head as the pain increased tenfold, until you were a ball that teetered on the toes of your gifted shoes with your name echoing like thunder in your head.

A hot hand touched the back of your neck. You flinched away from it. Sweeney’s face swam before you, concern etched into his features as a voice that wasn’t his came from his mouth, “Are you alright?”

“Hm?”

Your eyes fluttered. You stared at the parchment where the ink bled from the quill in your hand and stained dozens of pages behind it. You dropped it and stood, hurling a litany of apologies to a man who only chuckled and waved his hand.

He picked up his quill and dipped it into the ink well with the precision of a master. “It’s no bother,” he said. Then, he tilted his head. “Though, I wouldn’t say no to a fresh pot of ink.” You tucked the suggestion in the back of your mind, between a crack that had yet to fill, and folded Sweeney’s button up around yourself until it was all you could feel – the warmth of the Irishman seemed to seep from its threads and into your cold skin.

Why were you so cold?

Bast rubbed your back and frowned. “Don’t force the memory,” she purred with a press of her cheek against your temple. The pounding ache dulled. She smelled so good, so deliriously good that you leaned into her and let her hold up your dead weight. She gathered you into her arms like you were nothing but a mess of feathers, or a newborn kitten, and held you close. Her arm hooked behind your knees and your head lolled against her shoulder. She perched on the corner of Mr. Ibis’s desk and held you tight.

“Do continue your story, Thoth,” she insisted. Her nails stroked down your temple, and the pain followed them, trickling down your face and jaw, until it disappeared. You closed your eyes. “No, no,” she tutted, shrugging her shoulder. You scrunched your face. “You must stay awake, my dear.” Her nails brushed your hair. “You have to be awake to hear the story.”

“What’s this?” Your eyes wandered up, away from Bast’s lingering touch and the curve of Mr. Ibis’s shoulders as he moved his chair to let your feet dangle over his arm. Another man approached the writing desk with the confidence and stride of a proud but equally humble being. He folded his hands in front of him and rested his knuckles on the wood, watching the two deities around you before focusing his eyes on your bundled form. “I must say, this is a surprise.”

“Mr. Jacquel,” Mr. Ibis both called and introduced as he tapped his quill against the rim of his ink pot. “A pleasure.”

“Your services aren’t required,” drawled Bast. Her cheek rubbed against your scalp. “As you can see.” With the ache gone from your head, you started to notice other pains – in your nose, in your chest, in your knees and shins and all the way up your spine. You wondered where the pain had come from and how you had walked into the Wetland Library at all.

“So, I have noticed.” Mr. Jacquel acknowledged you with a long look, then extended his hand out to you, a gesture that you took with tender, weak fingers. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said with a slow smile, “You’re becoming quite the story collector.” He retracted his hand. “I believe you might have a collection that will rival Mr. Ibis’s soon.”

“Now, let’s not be hasty,” Mr. Ibis jested. He waved a hand to the corner opposite you and Bast. “Will you join us?”

“It has been a long time since I’ve had the chance to play audience to a story,” stated Mr. Jacquel as he adjusted his long robe and perched on the desk. Mr. Ibis tutted, but smiled, and once again dipped his quill into the ink. Tapping its tip against the pot, he quickly dove back into writing. The faded tan of the story between the lines rose like smoke from the paper and filled your eyes with green grass and blue sky and the distant storm at sea.

The first time that Essie McGowan crossed the Atlantic, she had a shadow. He was a watchful shadow, and when the cream no longer appeared on the windowsill – for how could piskies and faeries and leprechauns travel across the water so far from home – he found the cream elsewhere: in the dishes of babes and mousers, on the lips of ladies whose husbands slept soundly beside them, and in the bottles that the cook made sure to keep a steady eye on. Those were purchased with a bit of luck and fanciful tales that were shared over liquor and late nights. Those were the best ones.

(Those reminded you of something, you thought as he remembered them; of late nights and awful movies; of lounging on a threadbare sofa into the early mornings.)

The leprechaun watched the ocean one day, feeling that feeling one gets when a limb falls asleep in the back of his mind. He carded his fingers through his misted locked with a frown, then dug his nails into his scalp as he groaned. He’d had the feeling since he set out on the crossing, following his tall tales to another coast and another country – the feeling that he was forgetting something, that someone was watching him, that he was somewhere that he should know well but couldn’t pinpoint, like being lost when your destination is just around a corner. He folded himself in half to stare at the water that lapped at the ship’s hull and groaned.

What was he forgetting?

He dropped his hands.

You stared back up at him, watching his face through the waves. He looked so different with his hair long and wavy, and the beard trimmed to a thin layer of stubble across his jaw. But you hadn’t seen him look so lost before. So clean and prim and proper, someone that belonged in a world beyond the faerie circles, but still so lost.

He leaned on the bulwark of the ship and started to whistle while pulling a familiar coin from the Hoard.

The whistle became distant, the glint of the coin faded, and your eyes fluttered. Something warm and wet dragged across your temple while sharp nails gently separated your hair. “Stay with me, little mouse,” Bast whispered in your ear.

Mr. Jacquel eyed you in Bast’s lap. “You must be the Sad One,” he mused, a smile slowly creeping across his face.

“Sad one?” you murmured.

He hummed. “This is what Bast called you. She didn’t know you name for the longest time.”

“It took the leprechaun showing up to get it,” she huffed, her lips brushing your skin. Your temple didn’t hurt any more. In fact, the pain had vanished. You blinked as the fog slowly started to fade. She pressed a kiss against the once bloody spot, then nuzzled her nose into your hair. “But now you are no longer sad,” she purred, “Now you’re a shooting star: granting wishes, lighting up skies.”

“Sounds fake,” you grumbled.

Mr. Ibis chuckled. “How can a star see what it does when it is the star?” he asked. Bast combed her fingers through your hair as you watched him. He dipped the quill into the ink, tapped it once, then extended it out to you. “Would you like to try again?”

“This is another first,” Mr. Jacquel commented as you slid from Bast’s lap. She steadied you, her needle like claws piercing the fabric of your shirt but going no further. “Since when do you let anyone sit in your chair? Or write in your book for that matter?”

“When they have something to share, of course,” replied Mr. Ibis with a blithe smile. He helped you into the seat, then eased the quill between your fingers. You stared at its gold tip, glistening with ink, then looked up. Across from you, between the aisles of the Library – aisle that held a few books, you realized, books that you recognized, that you had read once before – were long shadows that stretched from the desk. You were one of them, a lone figure with an outline that was distorted and inky, and down three other aisles were shadows you recognized: Thoth, straightening from the desk; Bast, arching her back at your elbow; and Anubis, sitting calmly besides you. Their heads all turned to you, and you cast your eyes downwards, to the paragraph you had left off before, and pressed the nib to the parchment.

You had been on the road for an undetermined stretch of time, marked by an undetermined stretch of silence in which you examined the truck and Sweeney swore up a storm about the cold.

“I cannot believe you stole an ice cream truck,” you said as you hefted up the lid of one of the freezers. You barely saw Laura’s head tilt as she shrugged but didn’t say anything to your comment. You leaned into the freezer and dug around.

“What’re you doin’?” asked Sweeney as he leaned next to you, having abandoned his seat in the front. You felt the truck trundle over some rough pavement and braced against the freezer carefully.

You glanced up at him. “What?”

“Are you takin’ the ice cream?” he slowly asked, watching your face with a slow smile. The tip of his nose was red. You absently touched your own. It was cold.

You puffed your cheeks and let the freezer shut, holding out a treat. “No,” you replied indignantly. He took it. “I’m taking a popsicle.” He snorted at the semantics and ripped off the paper wrapper. You followed suite and tossed the wrapped in his direction with a soft cheer. It was purple. Sweeney’s was red. “You know, I used to love these as a kid,” you said as you leaned back against the freezer. You slid your toes to the base of the other and wedged yourself between them.

Sweeney crunched on the tip of his, groaning as it melted in his mouth. You glanced up as you placed the tip of your own popsicle between your lips. The freezer lid creaked. Sweeney’s finger brushed your hip, the swell of your ass that was perched on the freezer, then pressed closer. He didn’t watch you but watched your mouth around the treat with a heat in his eyes and his tongue tracing his bottom lip.

You flushed when you looked away but didn’t remove the popsicle from your mouth. In fact, you pushed it further between your lips and settled back against the ice chest and his wandering hand.

He leaned his head closer to yours as his hand slid behind you. “Think it’s becomin’ my favorite, too,” Sweeney rasped in your ear. You took your time as you pulled the popsicle free from the suction of your mouth. “Or, at least watchin’ you eat it is,” he added. His voice had dropped lower.

You widened your eyes when you looked up at him to innocently ask, “Why’s that?” The question was the only thing you could get out.

The look he gave you was almost predatory, but not quite; scalding with intensity, but smoldering with heat; and was fixed solely on your eyes as you stared back at him. They wouldn’t need to wander anywhere else, couldn’t even if they wanted to – Sweeney had moved so close, had almost closed the distance between the both of you that you could see the Hoard sprinkled across the Irish fields of his eyes. You wondered what he saw in your own gaze.

“Y’know, there’s a word for people like you,” he whispered.

“What’s that?” you replied in kind.

When had you become so bold? Was it always like this? You had become comfortable with him, yes, but you couldn’t recall when it had been okay to start flirting with him. Was it when you heart started to beat a little faster when he stared? Or was it when you started noticing how warm his hands were, how rough and callused they were, and how perfect yours fit into his? He didn’t seem to mind, nor want to comment on it. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it!

“Fuck!” snarled Laura. You jumped. It was so loud and sharp in the truck, like a firecracker going off in your ear. It broke whatever trance both you and Sweeney had been in, and you both looked up at the Dead Wife driving the truck. “We need gas,” she groaned. She threw a glance back at you. “I’ll pay you back?”

You blinked. “Yeah. Okay.” You glanced down. The popsicle laid at your feet. The melted purple ice turned black as it reached your feet.

“There’s a book here,” you said, no longer in the ice cream truck but in the Library – in your library – surrounded by the gods that were pulled to you somehow. You stared at the small ink blot that sunk into the pages, then looked up as Mr. Ibis took the quill from your warming fingers. “Did you see it?” you asked.

“What book would that be, my dear?” he asked. You pushed out of the chair and stumbled. You felt like a baby deer, but you didn’t know why – your legs were weak, and trembled as you turned around and spotted the book you were looking for. It sat on one of the shelves, next to a book on Celtic Mythology. You plucked it off the shelf.

The cover was different. It was softer, as though it had been properly taken care of, and some of the sloppier patches were gone. Sweeney, the one written in black marker, was also gone, replaced instead by the looping letters that spelled out his name in pretty, green paint. You opened it carefully. More of the pages were filled – some were even covered in gorgeous illustrations; one was of a man with a circlet of bronze branches dancing with a woman around a massive bonfire. The gentle waves of his hair looked familiar, but his face was turned towards the woman, who bore no face at all. There was the story of Essie, halfway through being told, with Essie’s story on one page and Sweeney’s story on the facing one. Essie’s story continued, the words appearing as though they were sinking into the page.

It made you realize that where you were – it wasn’t real.

It wasn’t corporeal.

It was in your head. Or, at least, it was somewhere else.

Somewhere different.

Somewhere between.

“You shouldn’t be back here.”

You flipped through the pages until you came across another illustration, one of you and Sweeney in the back of the ice cream truck.

“May I see that?” asked Mr. Ibis over your shoulder.

You jumped – you hadn’t heard him approach. You closed the book and held it to your chest. “I’m sorry?”

“May I see that?” he asked again. He didn’t reach for it. Instead, he held his hands in front of him, clasped together. “It’s interesting that another’s story would be available to another like this, even more so when it’s the story of someone like Sweeney,” he commented. His mouth quirked up in a smile. “I’ll give it back.”

You brushed your fingers over the spine. The leather was so soft beneath the patches. Hesitantly, you held the book out. Mr. Ibis took it with light, careful fingers, then motioned for you to follow him back to the desk with his head. You obeyed.

“Something like this,” he slowly explained, “Well, to put it plainly, this is something that I would expect to find on my shelves.” He leafed through the pages.

“In Cairo?” you asked.

He nodded. “I collect stories. At least, the more interesting ones. My office is filled with tomes like this, each of them carefully detailing the lives of their subjects from start to finish.” He smiled. “I even have yours.”

“I’m sorry, I have a book?” you asked.

“Of course,” he said, “You are here, after all.” He trailed his finger down a page. “To see that you have this here, well, it is very interesting.”

“How so?” you asked again, tucking his comment about you away for a later time. Bast carded her fingers through your hair when you were close enough, and you let her. She tugged you between her legs and parted the strands with her nails, then leaned in to drag her tongue over the gash on your scalp. You didn’t pull away. In fact, it was comforting. You relaxed against her. Mr. Ibis was too involved in the book before him to answer. You hummed. “It’s been here for a while,” you murmured, “It looked worse before.” You yawned. “I made a promise to myself that I’d help him get his memory back,” you absently whispered.

Cool hands dislodged you from Bast’s embrace. You were guided around the back of Mr. Ibis’s chair, then lifted to sit by his elbow. Mr. Jacquel sat next to you. His fingers started to trail over your scalp.

“Mr. Ibis,” called Mr. Jacquel. The storyteller looked up after a moment. “I believe you should be able to pull the memory from your successor’s mind.”

“My successor?” Mr. Ibis asked with interest. You smiled. “Oh, well, I am dearly honored to have such a talented successor, indeed.” He gingerly closed Sweeney’s book and set it aside. Then, he turned his hand up to you, while his other collected his quill. “Come now, little ibis. Give me your hand.”

“Little ibis,” you murmured as you set your hand in his. His fingers were covered in softening calluses. “I like that.”

Mr. Ibis curled his fingers around yours and hummed. “I don’t mind it one bit,” he said.

The pen touched the parchment.

“’ere.” You looked up just in time to get slapped in the face by a wad of fabric. Sputtering, you leaned back against the freezer. The shirt you wore – the button up that normally graced Sweeney’s shoulders – fell into your lap. You stared at it, then at your covered wrists, and back at the shirt. “Put it on,” Sweeney grunted as he leaned back. He was tugging his jean jacket back over his shoulders while snuggling deeper into the sleeping bags he had found buried in the truck. He tilted his head. “Put it on and c’mere.”

You pulled the shirt on but left it unbuttoned over the sweatshirt you had donned at some point, then slid across the cold floor to Sweeney’s side. He tugged you over one thigh and into his lap, where he tucked you close to his chest and wrapped his arms around you. You shifted until your shoulder curved against his and your back rested against his arm. He’d tucked a sleeping bag underneath him to keep the cold from freezing his ass.

“You two getting cozy back there?” Laura threw over her shoulder.

“Fuck off,” replied Sweeney lazily. He thumped his head back against the seat he leaned on. “Just because yer not bothered by freezer burn doesn’t mean we aren’t.”

“So, you have to snuggle?” she teased.

“It has been scientifically proven that sharing body heat is the best way to stave off the cold since it’s a slow warm,” you said.

“Science,” Sweeney added. He squeezed you against him.

Laura scoffed. “Yeah, because you knew that, Ginger Minge,” she said. You stared at the side of her face. She was paler than she had been earlier that morning, looking more and more like a corpse the longer she was in the cold.

“I’m not a stupid as you think I am, Dead Wife,” he snapped.

Laura rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, right, I forgot that you were a genius.”

“Hey, is it difficult for you to drive?” you cut in. She glanced back at you. “I don’t know if you went through rigor mortis or if that really applies but it looks like you’re decaying, so your joints should be getting stiff.” You adjusted in Sweeney’s hold as you spoke to keep your voice from being swallowed by the camping gear. Your knees framed Sweeney’s thigh as you sat up, pulling the sleeves over your hands and crossing your arms. You leaned your weight against his shoulder and propped your chin on the passenger’s seat he leaned on. He grunted. Even through the layers you could feel him shift and press his face into your ribs, the cold of his nose and cheeks seeping through the cloth. His arms squeezed your hips, then slid lower, until his hands gripped your thighs and his cold fingers sought out the heat between them.

You tapped your elbow against his head and told yourself that the flush in your cheeks was from the cold. You didn’t stop him, and his hands didn’t wander any further than that.

Laura looked back at you. “You know, I haven’t really given it too much thought?” she said. She adjusted herself in the seat. She wiggled her fingers.

You watched them, and out of the corner of your eye, you saw something hop out into the road. You didn’t think too much of it then, and hardly glanced at it, but you knew exactly what it was.

It was a small white rabbit.

You jerked. No, you didn’t want to see that again. You didn’t want to!

“I remember,” you whispered. Your hands trembled beneath your chin. You glanced at them. You must have pulled your hand away when you realized what was about to happen. You met Mr. Ibis’s gaze, then Bast’s, and lastly Mr. Jacquel’s. “Am I dead?”

The last man had the grace to chuckle only a little, shaking his head. “No, little ibis,” he murmured, “No, Bast has made it clear that this is not your time to go.”

Your head snapped to her. She was stretching again, smiling a languid smile, and in one of her hands was the pumpkin toy. She gave it a gentle shake. “You have given me much worship since we’ve met,” she cooed, “I felt your distress all the way back home.”

“It worked out that I was already working on something,” Mr. Ibis added. You held your elbows as Bast wandered to you and dangled the pumpkin in front of you. She waited until you presented your hands to drop it into your palms. Mr. Ibis motioned to the Library around you. “Imagine my surprise when Mr. Jacquel and I reached out to find you and found this place,” he said. He smiled a mysterious little grin and tilted his head. “It seems we have very much in common.”

“What is this place, then?” you asked. You curled further into yourself. Your muscles were starting to hurt. “I’ve been here before.”

Mr. Ibis leaned back in his seat, tilting his head up towards the ceiling. “Well, that is a little harder to explain,” he murmured. You watched his face. His eyebrows arched a little higher, and he sat up. “And we may not have enough time to explain it right now.”

“What do you mean?”  you whispered.

He motioned upwards. “The sky is falling.”

You looked up. The ceiling was rapidly coming towards you, its brilliant blue hue filling your gaze. You lifted your arms to try and keep yourself from getting squished, but your arms didn’t move. They were held at your sides by something strong and warm. You squeezed the toy in your hand. Your body ached and the air was a little cold but whoever held you was so very warm.

“Wake up.” The words barely existed in your ear. Hot breath puffed against your neck, and arms squeezed your aching body tight against a chest you were familiar with. You were rocked forward and back. “Please.” The man that held you sniffed, and your hair was pushed away from your face. You could feel the dirt on his skin as he pressed his forehead against yours. He whispered something, something in Gaeilge, then sniffed again. “Bran, I’d do anything if you’d fix this.”

You parted your lips. It took so much energy! Why? Why did it take so much energy! “Don’t make promises you won’t keep,” you whispered.

Sweeney’s eyes popped open. His hands gripped the sides of your head so fast that you had to grab his jacket to keep yourself upright. Something fell from your hands and hit the ground with the tinkle of a bell. His eyes looked more golden than green as they flicked over your face. “Yer--”

“Bast,” you sighed. Your breath tasted like the fake grape popsicle you had eaten hours ago. “And Mr. Ibis, and Mr. Jacquel.”

Sweeney licked his lips as his eyes dropped to your mouth. His fingers smoothed your hair away from your face again. “How?”

“’s a long story,” you muttered. You shifted your legs. They fell off his lap. Carefully, you pulled your feet under you. Sweeney’s hands dropped to your arms to help you stand. Rolling your shoulders, you squinted up at him. “Were you crying?” you softly asked.

His hands shot for his face, and the heel of his palm brushed under an eye. “No,” he grunted. He sniffed again. He gripped your arm and turned you around with his other hand.

You stumbled as you were faced away from him, frowning, then gasped at the sight of Laura’s very dead body sprawled out on the pavement. Your hands flew to cover your mouth. She was motionless. Her jacket was open, and her shirt had ripped down the middle, right where her autopsy scars had burst at the seams. There was very little blood, but there was a rank smell. You lifted a foot and looked around the ground, scooping up the small pumpkin toy you spotted by your heel. Sweeney shuffled past you. You watched as he knelt and plucked his lucky coin from the road.

Your throat suddenly felt dry. “Sweeney?”

He stared at his coin. You wondered what he was thinking.

(He was thinking of all the bad luck he’d had since he lost the damn thing – he’d come onto you so strongly that you’d kicked him across a bathroom stall; you had seen someone die rather violently; you’d been followed – stalked – by one of the Children; he’d dragged you across two states; made you fight; made you steal; made you grave rob; he’d gotten arrested; he’d seen you getting cozy with someone else; you had died; you had almost died. All the bad luck seemed to involve you. Maybe losing the coin just made him cursed.)

He looked at you.

He looked at the coin.

He enveloped it in his hand and held his closed fist out towards you. “Take it,” he rasped. He cleared his throat and repeated the phrase, “Take it,” a little more clearly. You hesitantly held your empty hand under his. He watched you, turned to you, took your cold hand in his warm one and pressed the coin into your skin. It was hot, like a quarter that had been left on a summer sidewalk. The one that dangled from your throat burned just a bit.

Then, he withdrew his hand, and the weight of centuries of luck filled your veins until, for once, you felt rooted to the world.

You turned the coin over until the sun stared at you.

Sweeney sniffed and swiped at his nose. “You decide what to do with it,” he mumbled.

Your eyes snapped up to him. “What?” you squeaked. “No.” You shoved the coin at him. “Take it back!”

Sweeney took a step backwards. “Nah.”

“Take it back!” you shouted.

He stepped back again, a smile working across his face. “I gave it to you!”

(Gods, he didn’t realize how much it would hurt to never hear the sound of your voice again.)

“And I’m giving it back!” you exclaimed.

He continued backwards then swore when his heel caught on the dead weight of Laura Moon in the middle of the road. He tumbled ass over tea kettle and disappeared into the grass. He snarled. You gasped in surprise.

(Would his luck be different, thought Sweeney as he laid face down in the earth, now that he knew he gave the coin away? That he gave the luck away willingly, instead of being tricked by a bastard? Maybe giving it away would break a curse. Maybe giving it to you would break his.)

You glanced down at Laura and knew what had to be done – she had to have the coin. It wasn’t fair, was it? Now that she’d had a taste of life again. Now that she could atone for the things that she’d done wrong. Now that she wanted to live. Who were you to deny her of that?

You swiftly pressed the coin against the middle of her ribcage, then carefully worked your way down the low shoulder to make sure Sweeney hadn’t broken anything. He merely groaned when you arrived, lifting a hand above his head and waving you off. You almost stumbled over your own feet in an effort not to step on him.

“’m gonna lie here a moment,” he muttered to the grass. You tugged his shirt closed over your sweatshirt and crouched next to him. He turned his head towards you. His temple was scrapped, and a few slivers of glass pierced his skin. “Leave me,” he groaned.

You hummed as you reached out, carefully pulling the glass free until all the pieces were gone.

(What would he have done if he couldn’t feel your touch anymore? What would he have given to feel it again?)

“Nah,” you said, “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

A startled gasp drew your attention back to the road. Laura shot up, bracing her hands behind her as she looked around with wide eyes and dilated pupils.

You stood and brushed off your jeans, internally groaning – there were so many patches that had become victims to road rash! You were down to one pair. You made a note that wherever you ended up, you needed to go through your clothes and trash all the ones that were no longer salvageable. And shower. That was important. Actually, maybe Nancy could fix them! If you paid him.

Laura pulled her skin together, then zipped up the jacket.

“What the fuck happened?” Laura croaked.

“Um.” You carded a hand through your hair. There was a scab along your hair line and another down the back of your head, but neither were bad. You looked around, climbing up onto the road from the ditch when you were sure that Sweeney was going to stand up again. “Bunny, I think.” You rolled your shoulder. You ached. You glanced at the spot on the road you had woken up on as Laura stood, and felt your heart thud in your chest.

It was red.

You felt you owed one hell of a boon to Bast now, something much better than a pumpkin. Thinking of the toy, you squeezed it in your other hand and watched Laura right the ice cream truck with ease. You wandered back to it.

“Oh, shit,” Laura muttered. She glanced at you. “Sorry.”

“For what?” you asked as you walked past her to the door, then paused.

Pills and glass and powder littered the floor. The small bag you had carried your medications in had ripped open in the crash, and the bottles inside had been crushed by freezers. What wasn’t crushed was covered in glass from the windows and, upon closer inspection, from your phone, which was beyond salvaging.

You carefully climbed into the truck while pulling Sweeney’s shirt tighter around you.

“This is fine,” you found yourself wheezing. Sweeney’s hand pressed against your back. “I’ll just refill them when I find another pharmacy. Yeah.” You swallowed. “This is fine.” It wasn’t fine, you thought to yourself. You hid the anxious tremble of your fingers in the tightening of your shirt, pulling it taut until you thought you heard a seam pop. Medication aside, what if there was an emergency? No one knew where you were, except for those you were with. No one would be able to respond to you if you needed them. No one would get to you in time if you did something stupid or drastic or reckless.

Laura said something, then Sweeney replied, and the door of the truck squealed as it closed. It lurched forward.

Sweeney caught you by your elbows with a soft grunt. “’ey,” he murmured. He turned you around. He cupped your face when you didn’t look up at him and forced your face upwards. You could see him but couldn’t register why he was frowning. “You need those, yeah?” he whispered. You nodded. “Right, then we’ll get ‘em. Soon as we can.” You nodded again. “Alright,” he said. His hands fell from your face to your hips. “Jump,” he commanded. You didn’t try to follow it; instead, he just lifted you up, like you were nothing, and set you on the edge of the freezer. He tugged his loose shirt out from under your rear, then buttoned it closed down the front, and finally moved you back until your knees caught on the freeze lid. He stood between them.

“Y’know,” Laura commented, “If Jesus really is there, maybe we can have him fix that brain of yours.”

You didn’t mean to flinch, but you did mean to duck your head. Was it the same thing? It didn’t matter – she was right, wasn’t she? You only needed those because your brain wasn’t working right, right? A voice crept into your brain.

You felt it.

You dreaded it.

(You recognized it.)

Sweeney scowled and rubbed your hands between his palms. “Fuck off, Dead Wife,” he snarled. He ducked his head closer to yours and whispered, “There’s nothin’ wrong with ya.”

(The voice you hadn’t heard in months and months told you he was lying.)

Sweeney’s hands were cold by the time the ice cream truck rolled up to a lavish mansion, and your anxiety had curdled into a hard stone in your gut. You slung your almost empty duffle over your shoulder and jumped out of the truck with a groan.

“Lead the way, Ginger Minge,” Laura directed with a wave of her arms.

(You never did ask how she knew he was ginger, said the voice.)

Sweeney groaned and rolled his eyes and shouldered between you both. His fingers wrapped around the strap of your bag and tugged you along after him.

The anxiety in your stomach morphed into a roiling pit of dread.

Something was going to happen, you thought as you watched the mansion grow closer, as you followed the weaving garden path to the back door, as you slipped inside with Sweeney before you and Laura behind.

Something was going to happen and it was going to change everything.

(Something bad.)

You could feel it.

~*~*~Thanks for Reading~*~*~ ~*~Tag List~*~

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[americangodstalk]

There it is! I found back the extract I was looking for

The moment in the novel where it is explained by Mr. Ibis that a lot of the Old Gods were brought long, long before Christopher Columbus “discovered” America (and the same extract that explains the alternate history of American Gods):

Shadow stopped in the street, and stared. “Are you trying to tell me that ancient Egyptians came here to trade five thousand years ago?”

Mr. Ibis said nothing, but he smirked loudly. Then he said, “Three thousand five hundred and thirty years ago. Give or take.”

“Okay,” said Shadow. “I’ll buy it, I guess. What were they trading?”

“Not much,” said Mr. Ibis. “Animal skins. Some food. Copper from the mines in what would now be Michigan’s upper peninsula. The whole thing was rather a disappointment. Not worth the effort. They stayed here long enough to believe in us, to sacrifice to us, and for a handful of the traders to die of fever and be buried here, leaving us behind them.” He stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, turned around slowly, arms extended. “This country has been Grand Central for ten thousand years or more. You say to me, what about Columbus?”

“Sure,” said Shadow, obligingly. “What about him?”

“Columbus did what people had been doing for thousands of years. There’s nothing special about coming to America. I’ve been writing stories about it, from time to time.” They began to walk again.

“True stories?”

“Up to a point, yes. I’ll let you read one or two, if you like. It’s all there for anyone who has eyes to see it. Personally—and this is speaking as a subscriber to Scientific American, here—I feel very sorry for the professionals whenever they find another confusing skull, something that belonged to the wrong sort of people, or whenever they find statues or artifacts that confuse them—for they’ll talk about the odd, but they won’t talk about the impossible, which is where I feel sorry for them, for as soon as something becomes impossible it slipslides out of belief entirely, whether it’s true or not. I mean, here’s a skull that shows the Ainu, the Japanese aboriginal race, were in America nine thousand years ago. Here’s another that shows there were Polynesians in California nearly two thousand years later. And all the scientists mutter and puzzle over who’s descended from whom, missing the point entirely. Heaven knows what’11 happen if they ever actually find the Hopi emergence tunnels. That’ll shake a few things up, you just wait.

“Did the Irish come to America in the dark ages, you ask me? Of course they did, and the Welsh, ,and the Vikings, while the Africans from the West Coast—what in later days they called the Slave Coast or the Ivory Coasts—they were trading with South America, and the Chinese visited Oregon a couple of times—they called it Fu Sang. The Basque established their secret sacred fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland twelve hundred years back. Now, I suppose you’re going to say, but Mister Ibis, these people were primitives, they didn’t have radio controls and vitamin pills and jet airplanes.”

Shadow hadn’t said anything, and hadn’t planned to say anything, but he felt it was required of him, so he said, “Well, weren’t they?” The last dead leaves of fall crackled underfoot, winter-crisp.

“The misconception is that men didn’t travel long distances in boats before the days of Columbus. Yet New Zealand and Tahiti and countless Pacific Islands were settied by people in boats whose navigation skills would have put Columbus to shame; and the wealth of Africa was from trading, although that was mostly to the east, to India and China. My people, the Nile folk, we discovered early on that a reed boat will take you around the world, if you have the patience and enough jars of sweet water. You seet the biggest problem with coming to America in the old days was that there wasn’t a lot here that anyone wanted to trade, and it was much too far away.”

[heartyearning]

noah fence but a prayer for mad sweeney is the most beautiful thing ive ever seen, i thought lemon scented you would be the best episode but @ past me BINCH U THOUGHT

[toho-literature]

Curiosities of Lotus Asia - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Illusionary Bird

Marisa visited Kourindou carrying one of the beautiful crested ibises that had been increasing in number in Gensokyo lately. After catching it near Hakurei Shrine, Marisa was planning to cook it and eat it with Reimu. In the now lively Kourindou, the owner Rinnosuke was immersed in thought about the reason for the increase in the ibises...

Chapter 2 of an original story based on the Touhou series!

Illusionary Bird

“Hey, Kourin! What's up? Today's our routine hot pot day!”

She shouted as she threw open the door. As far as I'm concerned, today's Animal Protection Day.

“Oh, it's you, Marisa? What's the meaning of coming here and claiming this to be a 'hot pot day'?”

Marisa showed me what she had in her right hand, and there it was, a limp, red-and-white lump...

Some way from the Human Village in Gensokyo is the Forest of Magic, and close by this forest is my shop, Kourindou. In other words, it's halfway between where the humans live and where the youkai are. I thought that I could do business with both humans and youkai in this location, but the truth is that I almost never have clients of either kind. Well, it gets lively at times, but...

“Isn't that a crested ibis? What happened?”

“Yeah, I caught it by the shrine. Reimu's preparin' stuff for the hot pot, so she'll be late.”

“And why did you decide to meet at my place? You never even asked.”

“What are you talkin' about? This'll make a great meal! Sure, he looks a bit worse for the wear, but...”

The crested ibis. More and more of these birds have been appearing in Gensokyo every year. Wherever they become roused, the sky would become dyed in their colors. Yet their meat tastes good, despite their shabby appearances. The hot pot too, would end up dyed in that ibis color, almost a scarlet red. Not a nice way to put it, but it'd look like a human hot pot made by a vampire.

“Well, I guess it's fine, but why hot pot, all of a sudden?”

“Isn't it obvious? Cold days are all about hot pots.”

Marisa continued to chatter while barging into the kitchen. "Well, I just found 'im by chance, but he was pretty lively until a while ago."

Gensokyo is, quite literally, a place where illusionary creatures dwell. At some point, the people in the outside world wrote off “illusionary creatures” as nothing more than “fantasy creatures”. But, of course, illusionary creatures and fantasy creatures are very different. A fantasy creature is just another name for a delusion, misinterpretation or misunderstanding. On the other hand, an illusionary creature is one that can only be found in Gensokyo. It goes without saying, then, that both Marisa and I are also illusionary creatures.

However, the reason behind the sudden proliferation of crested ibises is something I don't understand. Could it be that they have become “illusionary birds”? That would be unthinkable in the outside world I knew, but then again, too much time has elapsed since then. As much as I try to imagine the outside world from limited literature and old memories, it would amount to nothing more than imaginations. An imagination plagued by imaginations is no more than a fantasy. For imaginations, I rank them in the order of Fantasy, Delusion, Prediction, the Virtual, and Illusion.

“Sorry for the wait! Marisa is here, too, right?”

“...I wasn't waiting. How could I when you girls showed up so suddenly?”

“Well, of course we came suddenly. But you should be waiting at all times. Isn't this a shop and everything?”

Reimu came just as Marisa said. She was carrying several bags with her. Ingredients for the hot pot, I guess.

“Hey, Reimu! Took ya long enough! Let's get this hot pot cookin'.”

Marisa had her arm outstretched, with a feeling of “C'mon, hand it over!” to it.

“I brought everything, yes.”

“Huh? This is red miso. Who told you to bring red miso?”

“I didn't need to be told. Red miso is the obvious choice for ibis broth!”

“Hey, hey! The hot pot is already red enough, so we should make it with white miso. Putting red miso in red broth? Are ya some kind of Communist?"

“It's not like you aren't going to eat because of the color. Since ibis meat is red to begin with, it shouldn't bother you, right? And why white miso? This isn't the Genpei War.”

The two of them went on about food coloring, but I wasn't listening. Regardless, Marisa was holding the ibis, and every time she gave it a squeeze, the ibis would squawk. It was kind of weird, like the ibis was supporting her. I'm sure Marisa was doing that on purpose.

"Don't red pickles go with tonkotsu? Wouldja put it in miso ramen?"

"And doesn't fukujinzuke go with curry? But knowing you, you'd probably throw it in cream stew.”

“Having somethin' red in the middle of somethin' white is the sign of a Japanese soul!”

“I'm already red and white enough. And what part of you has a Japanese soul, Marisa? Do you even know what 'Wabi-sabi' is?”

“I don't think ya know yerself, Reimu.”

“Of course I don't.”

“Anyway, we're not makin' a hot pot like that.”

“Wasn't it you who came up with the hot pot idea? We can't eat this ibis raw.”

“So is that how it is? Alright then, let's just divide it now.”

“Decide it?”

“Yeah, that'll work, too. Wanna go?”

In the end, it seems like they decided to settle the matter in a shooting duel, without so much as asking for my advice (even though they came to my shop uninvited). The rules were: 1-on-1 with Spellcard Rules. If Reimu won, the hot pot would be done her way; if Marisa won, she'd apparently make her go buy white miso. Never mind that I had white miso in my place, they seemed to be enjoying themselves, so I just let them be. Speaking of which, I actually know the tastiest way to cook a crested ibis...

“Marisa, what do I always tell you?”

“If you're gonna fight, then go outside, right?”

“More importantly, could you divide the bird up for Marisa, Mr. Rinnosuke?”

Their objectives seem to have changed already. Whatever the result is, I guess they'll happily eat it however I cook it. I could go as far as to think they arranged this scenario from the beginning, since it always follows the same pattern. Those two are frequently dueling to decide the most insignificant things. On top of that, they've been using attacks with lots of projectiles. It's extremely bright, and hard on the eyes.

Their duels are always a study in contrast. Against the gung-ho Marisa, Reimu – either on purpose or naturally – fights in a more laid-back style. The duels mostly go Reimu's way, but Marisa doesn't always lose. It's just that Marisa attacks with all her skill and might against Reimu, who looks just like she was made of air; it's like trying to pound a nail into dust. In any way, when looking at Reimu, she gives off a feeling that she is not quite from our own world. Anything more than that is something one cannot quite grasp.

“Hey, that's dangerous! What if it had hit me, Marisa!? Geez...”

“Aw, c'mon! Why didn't it hit?”

“Your bullets swerve to avoid me on their own. How nice of them!”

“They're flyin' straight...”

Since I could hear their voices, I went to see how things were going. Reimu looked like she would practically teleport at times. And her bullets would fly guided in impossible directions. It was kind of unfair.

Well then, this nice, round ibis looks really tasty; I've never seen one like it before. Speaking of which, Marisa said something that bothered me...

“Sorry for the wait, we've just made a decision.”

“Yes, you always make me wait like this. I already made the hot pot. With red miso, as expected.”

“Grrr... You already prepared the hot pot? What would ya do if I had won, Kourin?”

“I would have had you eat an ibis cooked in the tastiest way.”

The Hakurei Shrine is located in the edge of Gensokyo. And by edge, that doesn't mean only in the physical sense. There is the border between the outside world and Gensokyo. Because of that, the Hakurei Shrine is not an entirely “illusionary place”. And Marisa said she caught the ibis by the Shrine. It may be that this ibis is indeed from the outside world. So it would seem that crested ibises are not Illusionary Birds yet. I feel somewhat relieved.

[miss-m-calling]

Rare Pairs 2020 letter

Canons requested: American Gods (TV), The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Starred Up, Witchblade (TV),  킹덤 Kingdom (Netflix)

Dear writer,

Hello and thank you for writing for me. I’m very excited to read whatever you come up with.

Without further ado…

Requests:

American Gods (TV)

Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney

I ship it. Yes I do. They had me at “gimme-my-coin-dead-wife”-flicks-him-into-wall. The snarky road trip was the best thing I never knew I wanted until it happened, and I adored every second of it, not to mention the upped shippiness in S2. They’re both such assholes and so fascinating, even if they start to mellow toward each other a bit, and all the gods/magic/resurrection stuff swirling around them begs to be explored further. Also I love love love how their dynamic is about equal parts spikiness, pathos, and humor (they’re funny! and the canon doesn’t shy away from putting them in ludicrous situations), and it weaves seamlessly between those three. Plus she’s half his size yet can and does beat him up with literally one finger, and then there’s the angst of he having killed her, feeling really guilty about it, and then bringing her back. And the way that their New Orleans adventure makes clear they have feelings for each other (S1 was more one-sided Sweeney -> Laura) but neither wants to admit it. And and and… yeah, I just love them. Canon-specific DNWs: Sweeney dying/staying dead (at least permanently), Laura as Essie’s reincarnation/descendant or a reincarnation/whatever of Sweeney’s wife from back when he was a king in old Ireland (or a lot of focus on those relationships), either Laura or Sweeney as an inanimate corpse in a smut scenario

My prompts are a combo of prompts I had after I binged S1 and others I added throughout S2. Even if some of this is addressed or hinted at in canon, feel free to diverge – canon divergences and canon-adjacent stories are my jam!

-Please give me either missing scenes from the road trip (if you can work in a divergence, that’s great - for example, I like Salim, but if you want to have him boot Sweeney and Laura to the curb and go off on his own, or Sweeney to boost his taxi before Salim catches them, or whatever else to have those two alone, go for it!), or a divergence from either season (instead of going to Ostara, they go where? to see whom? about getting Laura resurrected. Or things go down differently in New Orleans, or Cairo, or anywhere else) or something about these two post-canon.

-Laura discovers (how? you decide!) that Sweeney gave her back the coin after their accident – whatever happens next, some punching may be involved. (If nothing else, Mama-Ji mentions that the coin is now in Laura’s heart, and we saw Sweeney place it on her ribcage after the accident, whereas it was originally in her gut like she’d swallowed it. Laura might ask herself how the hell it moved.)

-Wednesday’s big war finally comes, and “don’t you dare die on me [again], you asshole” is a line either Sweeney or Laura (or both) might say to each other.

-Laura asked “What does Wednesday have to lose?” and the answer is…? (Yes, give me that sweet poetic justice. One possibility, though not remotely the only one, but as of S2E3 Laura is technically a god-killer...) Or later when she straight-up says she’s going to kill Wednesday, but is warned to bring power with her when she does, how does that work? How else might she damage Wednesday or ruin his plans, just in case she can’t actually kill him?

-At the end of S2, Laura hoists Sweeney’s dead body over her shoulders and strides off, seemingly leaving Cairo, Shadow, and all of it behind. Tell me what happens then – does she use Baron Samedi’s potion to bring him back, and whose is the blood filled with love she uses (does she still bleed? You could get creative here, worldbuilding is also my jam)? Does her/his coin play a part – and how come the coin still “powers” Laura despite Sweeney’s death? Does she bring him back another way, maybe figuring out how to keep herself around and be able to give Sweeney back his coin? Does he come back like she did, more undead than alive, or does his godhead, however depleted, help with that? That still leaves Laura to be fully resurrected too… Or does something completely out of left field happen – surprise me!

-Possible divergences from “Treasure of the Sun”: Sweeney manages to kill Wednesday, and then Laura rolls up, and then…? Or Laura rolls up and makes like Mama-Ji told her – destroys some motherfuckers? Or Sweeney gets killed temporarily but Laura brings him back, or brings herself back, or does something else with the Baron’s potion, and is Sweeney’s blood the one filled with love, or can we interpret voodoo spells in a non-literal way? Or what happens with Gungnir hidden in Sweeney’s hoard? And definitely how do they deal with each other once they meet up in Cairo, given how they parted in New Orleans (I don’t know what hurt more to watch: Laura deflecting at the diner, or Sweeney rambling drunkenly about her when Shadow finds him, or later on telling Shadow with such desperate sincerity to keep her away from Wednesday)?

-Or how about a wild divergence from the last several episodes? Sweeney and Laura manage to settle their differences (ahem, more fucking, on this plane of reality, might help) and don’t part ways before leaving NOLA. Or they roll up in Cairo separately but at the same time, and confront Wednesday together, and neither of them die (or die more, in her case). Or they’re there together when the police nearly raid the house. Or they have Wednesday (the ultimate cause of Laura’s death) and Ibis (a death deity) and Bilquis (a love/death/life deity) on hand, surely they can concoct some kind of resurrection thingamajig for Laura, and if they have to twist some divine arms then so be it. Or or or…?

-Wednesday told that luckless cop that Sweeney had been against the big gods’ war from the start, and while Wednesday lies, what if Sweeney decided much sooner to say to hell with Grimnir and his war and his having Sweeney kill random people? I’m guessing Sweeney too drank three glasses of mead so he can’t back out without dire consequence – but he does have a fierce, dead woman in his corner.

-They go to some as-yet-unnamed old god (feel free to bring in whatever mythology you want) in order to bring Laura back to life. Between Sweeney’s mouth and temper, and Laura’s mouth and temper, it doesn’t go well. Now one or both of them are in big magical trouble with a pissed-off deity and have to get themselves/each other out of it. Speaking of other deities, I really enjoyed their brief canon interactions with Ostara, Anansi, and Mama-Ji, and I’d like to see more of that, especially Ostara’s polite yet over-it attitude, Anansi very obvious over-it attitude and his dramatic flair, or Mama-Ji being one of the few capable of giving Laura pause.

-All the petty, ridiculous ways in which Sweeney’s bad luck manifests itself make me laugh (can’t help it, won’t even try), and I’m down for more variations on that theme.

-Sweeney and Laura fighting together, like they did on Mr. Town’s train of torture. Whether it’s a bar fight of their own making, or the big gods’ war they find themselves embroiled in, or something else entirely.

-Things happen and Laura finds herself in the position to throw Sweeney under the bus but also help/save him, and while he knows it’s only karma (he did kill her way back when), he can still be pissed off about it – how do they navigate this?

-Related to that, the Baron said: “In death is her true love, but she betrays him also.” If that meant Sweeney, or can mean Sweeney in the future (I don’t like destiny-wills-it stories, and they’re definitely not there yet, but they could maybe get there at some future point, and even then It Would Be Complicated), was the betrayal Laura rejecting him after the loa ‘fuck them,’ or is it something that hasn’t happened yet, and if so, what?

-Laura gets fully alive again, but traces of her (un)dead state remain – what are they, how does she cope, what price did she/he/they have to pay for her resurrection, and how does their relationship change? I’d especially be curious how it would work if they’re already a sorta-maybe-item and then she’s alive again and it’s weird in a new way.

-For reasons I’ll leave up to you, Sweeney and Laura have to stay put in a single place for a while and end up essentially cohabiting, regardless of what their relationship is at that point. Take “cohabiting” as literally or as creatively as you want – in any case, I’m sure it will be marvelously disastrous and amazing. If the place they have to stay happens to be NOLA, all the better, I find everything about that city fascinating. Or, if you wanted to use book canon, Laura and Sweeney (rather than Shadow) are the ones who have to spend time living in Lakeside and deal with its creepy Norman Rockwell-ness and with Hinzelmann.

-Slight or major AU from the opening of “The Ways of the Dead”: Laura has hitchhiked with Sweeney instead of going off in a huff with Wednesday, or she otherwise gets to New Orleans sooner, and she and Sweeney tear up the town together. Gimme bar fights, carnival shenanigans, all the food and drink porn, backstage craziness with the Christian rock band (Sweeney seems to have a backstage pass on a lanyard around his neck when Laura finds him)… Maybe they even cross the paths of some loa and it doesn’t get all angsty (for what it’s worth, I think the reason the sex magic didn’t bring Laura back to life was because she couldn’t accept the truth(s) revealed during the astral-plane sex and just ask Sweeney to prick his finger for the potion – instead she defaults straight to “this is all Wednesday’s evil plan” the morning after – not because the loa fucked them over). They were actually getting along nicely in those first couple of scenes in NOLA, only ribbing each other a little while still being their grouchy selves, before they got to Le Coq Noir. I wouldn’t have minded seeing some more of that.

-AU from the end of “The Ways of the Dead”: they still have their big fight (which was amazing as well as painful) or some variation thereof, but they don’t split up. (Maybe the reason is as mundane as Sweeney refusing to get left behind or they have a shared ride out of town, or maybe the more time passes the less Sweeney can afford to be far from his coin – or maybe the coin needs him close by to work at full capacity.) And then what?

-All the old gods hide their true appearance to an extent. A situation arises in which Laura sees Sweeney’s true, or at least old, self (I’m thinking of his surprise!poignant monologue about when he used to be a king, and him in full Celtic warrior mode in the S2 flashbacks). Or Wednesday’s war ends in victory, meaning the old gods again get belief, worship, and sacrifices. How does Laura, the ultimate skeptic even when she’s on the other side of the mirror, react? How does this new knowledge and new reality change her opinion of/attitude to Sweeney? Or to flip that around, if Sweeney were again relevant and believed-in, would that actually change his bad attitude and fix his issues (my guess is it would be complicated)? On that note, Sweeney’s decline from Lugh to king to leprechaun was more sketched in than really explored in canon, ditto I didn’t really get why he couldn’t seem to remember his own history except in snatches (the curse that made him a bird/madman of the woods?) – I’d love to see more about it and his (not) dealing with it, or with a reversal of that decline. Eorann told him long ago to adapt and change with the times – but what does that mean after humpteen centuries in a rut and becoming used to always feeling angry and unappreciated?

-The power of names, since they never use each other’s in canon: for all his “dead wifeing,” there comes a time when Sweeney (has to) call her by her actual name, and that’s a tricky moment for them to navigate. Or, Mad Sweeney is not his actual name, and true names have great magical power and so must be kept secret; Laura discovers or learns his name, from someone else or from himself; what does she do with that knowledge? Or, Sweeney gets to say “cunt” in a situation (sexual or otherwise) where, not only does Laura not peel his lips from his gums, but she finds that she can’t object, even though she knows that he knows that he’s getting away with it.

-So far in canon, it’s pretty clear that Sweeney has a lot of complicated but sincere feelings for Laura. Laura is still pretty focused on Shadow (or rather her idealized vision of Shadow and what their relationship might yet be), whom she seems to equate with her own lost-maybe-to-be-regained life, although that’s starting to change at the end of S2. For one thing, she’s starting to soften toward Sweeney as she realizes he’s doing things for her that are not all about getting his coin back (and her sparring match with Wednesday in “Muninn” as well as Shadow refusing to be called puppy anymore in “Moon Shadow” may finally force her to accept that her relationship with Shadow died alongside her and Robbie on that road in Indiana). Not to mention the shared truth revealed in “The Ways of the Dead” (bullshit was that just Laura’s truth!) and how Laura flips out rather than deal with it and Sweeney can’t spit out that it mattered to him either, or how obviously cut up she is about Sweeney’s death despite refusing to admit it. Tell me the story of how Laura stumbles her way to feeling – and acknowledging that she feels – more complex, maybe kinder or softer, really annoying for her blunt-force-trauma-personality things about Sweeney and about the notion that her dynamic with him is different from the way she tended to use men for her convenience without really letting them in in the past. Also I’m pretty sure that even if they can admit they feel the same – or sorta in the same ballpark – about each other, their relationship would still run on a lot of conflict, and I would so be here for it.

-On that note: in “Munnin” it also becomes clear that Laura has, without realizing it herself, started to rely on Sweeney. The “I trusted you” line made me think, whoa she’s too furious to catch herself doing it but this is huge for Laura, and the fact that she goes off with Wednesday (!) basically because she’s mad at Sweeney because she thinks he’s prioritizing his debt to Wednesday over her… Yeah, I would like to see that explored some more and/or to see Laura and Sweeney get to a point where they trust each other and rely on each other, and know it and accept it, however difficult the getting there and being there may be for them.

-Sweeney has this intense need to see himself as a brave person and someone worthy of the world’s respect – but his past and his long experience as just a leprechaun have chipped away at that. Add the guilt of having been the instrument of Laura’s death and then all the pesky feelings he develops for her, and it’s a lot. Obviously his final actions in S2 are his trying to reclaim that courage and nobility of old (also to spite Wednesday, who’s messed both him and Laura up), but I would love to read about his character development under different circumstances, where Laura is there all the way, as opposed to them parting ways and meeting up again multiple times like in canon.

-And since I’m on the subject of Laura, you know how she’s not actually an abrasive bitch all the time to everyone? And when she is, the people on the receiving end of it sometimes richly deserve it, or very occasionally they push back (ILU, Mama-Ji!), and anyway it’s refreshing to see a female character who defaults to confrontational and doesn’t bother flirting and accommodating others for the sake of social harmony? As much as I enjoy watching her rip into people (ahem, Sweeney), I also love it when she acts differently, like her genuine interest in getting to know Salim and her joy in seeing him again in S2, or her running passive-aggressive battle of wills with Wednesday. Her beginning to feel sympathy for Sweeney and her anger and disappointment when she feels let down by him are a part of that, and I’d love to see all that explored more. Nuance! Give me all the nuance and seeming contradictions in both Laura and Sweeney’s characters!

-Sweeney and Laura get drunk and wake up married. Or some sex and/or blood resurrection spell results in basically an unbreakable marriage bond, whether it also secures resurrection or not. Or marrying the dead keeps them (sorta) alive. Or being married makes it possible for them to share magical/supernatural abilities. They’re both pissed about it, but secretly having to make it work may not be the worst thing that’s ever happened...

-My perfect AG spinoff would basically be Sweeney and Laura tooling around America, looking to get her resurrected (whether they succeed or not is up to you), stealing ever more ridiculous vehicles, arguing/fighting and having those pesky moments where vulnerability and genuineness creep in – and fucking. So yessiree I’d be down for porn, including “it’s technically necrophilia/zombiesex” porn, including a canon-divergent first time, or their second time, or all the later times after they had their first time in NOLA in canon.

-If you wanted to throw in some worldbuilding, maybe something exploring living death. Magical bargains. What kind of favor did Sweeney do for Ostara that would be worth her bringing someone back to life as repayment? What other powers might Sweeney have – or have left from when he was Lugh? How long can a dead wife keep going before she’s “soup”? What other superhuman abilities might dead!Laura have? Can the dead do magic? What even are the rules governing and the limits of different beings’ magical abilities? For example, why can’t Sweeney just take his coin back, or why does Laura gain super-strength as part of her undead package deal? Is the hoard in the same space as the behind-the-scenes accessed through the merry-go-round, or it’s a different place? Why does the coin seem to start to “run down” the longer Laura has it? Why did Wednesday need Laura to kill Argus when he killed Vulcan himself just fine? What happens with Gungnir now it’s in the hoard – can only Sweeney get to it, has it been transformed somehow (it’s now the treasure of the sun), etc.?

If it helps your inspiration, you can find some of my meta and lots of tag-burbling about these two here. I have read the book though I remember it only in bits and pieces, and while I prefer the show characters and the fact that they get thrown together, you can use or riff on book material if you want, though I’d prefer a story that isn’t just a retread of the book. With reference to one of my DNWs, for this canon, describing Laura’s physical decay is totally fine. Also, Shadow/Laura don’t interest me except as a part of Laura’s backstory (so if your story wants to include Laura figuring out or having already figured out that pinning all her hopes on Shadow to make everything right is unrealistic, unfair, and not how it works – by all means, go for it!), and Shadow/Sweeney interest me not at all.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)

Lenny Bruce/Miriam “Midge” Maisel/Susie Myerson

Lenny Bruce/Miriam “Midge” Maisel & Miriam “Midge” Maisel/Susie Myerson

I’m here for Midge’s adventures in the intoxicating, foul-mouthed, and often-frustrating world of comedy, so her dynamic with Susie and Lenny is where it’s at. I just love the interactions between these three, and between every pair combination among them: Midge and Susie bantering and swearing and tits-upping even when they irritate each other, Midge and Lenny bringing the pathos as well as the humor, and Lenny and Susie both being hardened old pros with still a little glimmer of starry eyes. I am good with either V-shaped triad/poly or hey, Susie (whom I absolutely read as gay) might find a way to be good with a full-on triangle… And as much as I like the comedy inherent in the characters, I also love that they’re all three, each in their own way, messed up people and dysfunctional to various degrees. So yeah, I just want Midge to hand the kids over to her parents, ditch Joel once and for all, marry (interpret that as literally or as loosely as you want) both Susie and Lenny, and for the three of them to ride off into the sunset to make comedy history. Canon-specific DNWs: anything above M rating, pairing any two as a / couple with the third as a & hanger-on, and while Lenny can still be his RL messed-up, drugged-up self – albeit the gentler version the show gives us – it would be good if he didn’t kick the bucket a handful of years down the line.

Most of these prompts are from before S3 dropped – feel free to work with canon or diverge however you see fit, I am all caught up now:

-Does Susie manage them both? Does Midge open for Lenny on tour? Does he open for her??? Or they become equal stars on the comedy circuit?

-Maybe Lenny joins Shy Baldwin’s tour, or they run into him while touring Europe or the US, or after Shy fires Midge, Midge and Susie cobble together a Midge-only tour of America and keep crossing Lenny’s own touring path, and they all tool around, and yes I would love as much period detail and geography porn as you can throw at me. And while Lenny and Midge have seen the world, Susie hasn’t – her reaction to different foods, languages, customs, landscapes would be spectacular to witness. Especially if “different” is someplace as close to New York as Jersey or Connecticut, or someplace as far away and different as, say, Japan.

-If they do go to Europe, somehow or other they also tour the Soviet Bloc. Cue culture clashes, getting followed (or thinking they’re being followed) by the secret police, getting hammered on vodka and herring and pickles, and then when they get back to the States, the Feds grill them. It’s all dead serious, and Midge and Lenny refuse to take it as seriously as they should, while Susie is trying but the whole thing is really pissing her off…

-Lenny’s burned out, and Midge is just getting started. This dissonance may or may not find some sort of resolution. One thing’s for sure: Susie has limited patience for both Lenny’s depression and Midge’s need to make everything pretty.

-Instead of going to Joel for a no-way-is-that-closure fling after the Steve Allen Show taping, Midge goes to have a drink or seven with the two people who have, in their own ways, always been there for her and never let her down.

-Midge goes on TV again, this time as the star: longer set, prime time slot, dressing room, the works. She’s dying of nerves. Lenny and Susie coach her through it.

-More radio work to make ends meet in between gigs: hilaribad period ads, hilaribad radio drama, running all over town to be on time, getting paid in all kinds of dubious merch…

-Midge and Susie head out west to make it big and stay with Lenny once they’re in Los Angeles, and it’s marvelous (ha ha) and disastrous in equal measure.

-More of Susie being the hypercompetent manager we saw especially in S3! (And please don’t dwell on her gambling problem, I was not a fan.)

-They all three get drunk, maybe with a hint of sadness if it’s the holidays (you can ignore my DNW about holidays, but please let that be just the background, not the lynchpin of the story) or someone’s birthday, and there’s a bar fight, running from the cops, eating greasy food at ass o’clock, and possibly kissing, not necessarily in that order.

-One or two or all three of them get arrested/have court appearances all over America and have to bail each other out, or find someone to bail them all out, or secure legal counsel – you get the drift. Or all three of them are trying to explain to a single lawyer what happened, talking over each other, the two pros not being able to resist landing zingers and Susie not being far behind, and the lawyer just getting more and more confused.

-They get in trouble some other way – offended patrons, surly management, shitty hotels, tour bus breaks down in the middle of Wyoming – and have to have each other’s backs because no one else will.

-Three-person road trip or tour, and only Susie knows how to drive. So Midge decides to learn, right then and there. And Lenny… Lenny may or may not be too lazy/hungover/lying about not knowing how. There’s supposed to be a rotation so everyone gets to stretch out on the back seat for equal lengths of time, but you know the system doesn’t work too well in practice. Also, they play games in the car to while away the time, and they do it their own way of course: I spy, cows on my side, yellow car, never have I ever, 20 questions, or riffing on whatever’s playing on the radio…

-They sit down to watch the moon landing (you can move it up a bit so it’s not happening a whole decade after S2) – by which I mean, Midge is all gung-ho about the moon landing, and Lenny and Susie are like whatever – and things don’t quite go to plan, but a good time is eventually had by all.

-It’s Yom Kippur again, and Midge wants to do the whole production: synagogue, breaking fast, the lot. Lenny and Susie would rather eat glass. Midge gets her way, of course. Does she decide to bring Susie and Lenny home to meet – or meet properly – her parents??? I bet Abe and Rose’s reactions would be something to see. (This too is an exception to my DNW about holiday settings – I just want stuff to get as crazy as it did the two times we saw Yom Kippur celebrated on the show, and for everything to still somehow turn out relatively OK.)

-Midge and Lenny have cheered each other up when the going got extra rough. I want for Susie to be especially down in the dumps – maybe her boozehound of a mother died and Susie took it worse than she does in canon, maybe some asshole told her she’s a shit manager and got her right in her insecurities – and Midge to rope Lenny into trying to cheer her up. And for Susie to fight them every step of the way but still be glad they care enough to try.

-Inspired by Susie’s brother looking just like her, by which I mean she and he and their sister look nothing alike, and by Lenny’s “she’s my mother” quip about Midge at the TV studio and then his “let me introduce my wife or maybe my sister” in Miami – Midge, Susie, and Lenny pretend to all be blood relatives, or mafiosi, or spies, or something else they’re not, while out in public, say in a restaurant. Just to be assholes and see how long they can keep it going before they break character or people figure them out, or call the cops, or something. There’s totally a bet on who corpses and breaks character first. Or, nice hotels ca. 1960 weren’t very big on letting unmarried couples, let alone threesomes stay in rooms together – pretending to be family might make that easier; forgetting what they’re meant to be to each other, or mixing up their backstories might make it harder. Or they’re just trying to save money by only getting one room, there’s only one free room in the hotel, or any other screwball reason you can invent.

-Lenny and Midge do a (comeback) tour of the Borscht Belt, and all the Steiner Mountain Resort guests (especially the gossipy old hens from the beauty salon) and staff go to see them – and heckle.

-Stuff happens and they end up performing at some hole in the wall place where no one knows who they are (or no one believes it’s really those people they’ve seen on TV) – tough crowd, but a good workout for the two comics, and if Susie gets to threaten to rip off someone’s head, all the better.

-Lenny and Midge honing their routines – and maybe developing a double act – and Susie being all “oh my fucking god, what the fuck!!! … They’re actually good. I’m so proud.”

-Sharing a bed with two other people is an ongoing project: who sleeps (or refuses to sleep) in the middle? Who gets up during the night and why? Who starfishes across most of the bed? Who snores, and how does this get handled? If alcohol or pot have happened, how does that affect the sleeping arrangements? Also, Susie and Lenny witness and react to Midge’s beauty routine, ‘nuff said. Or, for various reasons one person after another ends up decamping to another room/bed/couch, but it doesn’t help them get much sleep or even stay there very long (this is inspired by my love of Shirley Jackson and her short story/humorous essay “The Night We All Had Grippe”).

Starred Up (2013 movie)

Oliver Baumer/Eric Love

Yes I do ship it, I do, I do!

Ahem. Don’t get me wrong, I liked what the movie did with the father-son relationship and its influence on both men’s character development – but I really wish they hadn’t got Oliver out of the action before the story’s climax (not like that!). The final denouement with Love father and Love son was great, as was the hint at the end that Eric learned something in anger-management group and has a support network that will help him a lot. But. I would have wanted to see more of the intriguing dynamic between Eric the intelligent, semi-feral, yet not-incorrigible, young thug and Oliver the educated, dedicated, kind yet aware of his own potential for violence (what was he on about with “I need to be here”?), slightly older counselor. They had me at Oliver’s “I want him” and Eric later telling his father that Oliver’s a better man than Love Sr. Also the not-flirting and the push-pull in the scene when Oliver picks up Eric from his cell - yowza!

For this canon, my dubcon DNW does not apply.

Prompts:

-I would love to see Oliver return to holding his group in prison, so the two of them can interact more, either in the movie’s immediate aftermath or years down the line, as it’s implied that Eric will be serving a long sentence. Give me more scenes from anger management or the ribald, honest, free-flowing conversations in group, either with the other men present (I liked Hassan and Tyrone especially, among the group members) or a one-on-one session.

-An oblique or open-but-undramatic admission/declaration that they both know there’s something there, even if they don’t know what to do with it. Or, one or both of them knows exactly what to do with it, and the push-pull that would result from that.

-Dirty talk: used for arousal, as a defense mechanism, as a form of flirtation. Eric using slurs to assert dominance, and Oliver not letting him hide behind profanity, when he can use colorful language to express emotion and/or sexual interest. There could definitely be some verbal taunting/flirting about who wants/is eager to do what or is good at doing something. There may be some sniping comments about logistics and (lack of) condoms and barebacking and what men get up to in prison. There probably wouldn’t be deep discussions about sexual identity.

-An emergency in the prison requires a lock-down, so Oliver gets temporarily stuck in Eric’s cell or another room with only Eric for company. Things get porny and/or emotional.

-Eric is eventually released (you can handwave this so it happens soon after the movie or have it happen years later) and crashes with Oliver while he adjusts to the outside world. You guessed it: things get porny and/or emotional.

-How do they get to the point where both can cross that line from friends/whatever the hell they are and become, to lovers? (There’s Eric’s personal history and general discomfort with vulnerability, plus all the ways prison sex can be or make things complicated, and if it helps, I headcanon Oliver as either gay or bi and at least somewhat closeted, at work especially.) Who initiates and “directs traffic”? How does their always-contentious dynamic shift during and after sex? Is the sex an isolated (series of) occasion(s), or a progression/escalation over multiple encounters (how would I love especially an escalating series of encounters, let me count the ways)? Eric might seem like the logical initiator and/or dominant partner as well as using the possibility of sex to manipulate and exert control, but then Oliver might (or might not!) surprise him and is definitely the one more in touch with himself as well as aware of his custodial duty toward the men in the group.

-At some point in their intimate relationship (probably not right at the start, and probably not in prison, though if you can make it happen in prison, more power to you!), Oliver decides he’s going to take his sweet time and make Eric fall absolutely apart with pleasure, while using dirty talk to both arouse and empower Eric to own his desires – by that point, Eric is in a place where he can let that happen and enjoy it, even if he still talks tough.

-Role reversal: Oliver as the con (jittery, shut off, sticking out like a sore thumb in prison with all his fancy learning, yet no pushover) and Eric as the newbie counselor (kid from the wrong side of the tracks made good? Youthful hoodlum turned around his life, now trying to help others via tough love and lots of swearing and maybe a bit of manipulation when called for?)

Witchblade (TV) Sara Pezzini/Danny Woo

I used to love this show back in the day, and loved it again in all its hokey gloriousness when I rewatched it recently. Sara figuring things out and being a principled badass, but maybe out of her depth with the Witchblade, and her dynamic with Danny, whether he's a ghost or alive, it’s all catnip to me. Sara is not extremely quippy, she has a job to do dammit! and don’t look at her vulnerable side, just don’t look at it!, and I love that about her (she’s much harsher in S1, after Danny’s death, than in S2); ditto that Danny is somewhat softer than she is, but still can hold his own thanksverymuch (well, when the plot doesn’t require him to get nabbed by bad guys) and has a bit of a deadpan snarker side too. I’d love something that plays around with their canon dynamic from either season, or uses canon as just a starting point. Some of my prompts lean dark or horror-y, so don’t be shy about going there; I’d also enjoy a story in which the Witchblade itself ends up not being very significant (say, they start to investigate a possibly mystical case and then nope, plain murder). Canon-specific DNW: Irons and any version of Nottingham appearing (you can mention them if you need to).

Prompts:

-The Witchblade is more parasitic than symbiotic, and instead of Sara learning to control it, its feeding on Sara affects her more and more over time. Or, the visions and dreams ramp up into full-blown paranoia and/or disassociation. The Witchblade's POV, maybe (it is sentient)? Asking for help is the hardest thing for someone like Sara, but what are (more than) friends for? I’d also enjoy a dubcon scenario (exception to blanket DNW) where Sara really shouldn’t be having sex when her head is all messed up by the Witchblade’s influence, but... well... they do. The Witchblade canonically enjoys violence and bloodshed perpetrated by its wearers, so it stands to reason that it might lower other inhibitions too.

-Witchblade v. mythological monsters. In S1, even with everything else that's going on, Sara absolutely scoffs at the possibility of vampires. So of course I want: Witchblade v. vampires! The scarier and more feral, the better. Or, it's implied that the Witchblade was forged from a meteorite, so it's basically an eldritch artefact from outer space. Yes, please lean all the way into the Lovecraftian tropes! (The moon is turning red, the Old Ones are back, it’s the end of the world as we know it, but Sara’s got her partner by her side.) Or something from Chinese mythology, so Danny can kick extra ass. Or, for a silly take on Chinese culture: Sara and Danny in the world of Big Trouble in Little China, another old fave of mine, the entire plot of which revolves around… a woman with green eyes and an unwanted connection to the supernatural.

-The Witchblade has a reputation for abandoning its wearers just when they need it the most. True to form, it slips off of Sara’s fist, leaving her and Danny to save themselves with good old-fashioned guns, fisticuffs, martial arts, and of course having each other’s back.

-More of the psychedelic-ness in many of Sara’s fight scenes, where now she’s a woman in a leather jacket with a gauntlet on her arm, now she’s a knight in armor! Now her opponent is human, now he’s a wolf-shaped spirit of evil and hatred! Playing around with the characters’ senses and perceptions – yes!

-Instead of seeing only Danny and needing him to play intermediary for Sara to talk to other ghosts, the Witchblade makes Sara see ghosts all over the place, and it's getting to her. Ghost!Danny may or may not help with that. Or, ghost!Danny is basically always around, whether Sara can see him or not. He manifests when Sara is masturbating, and you can't really feel guilty if the ghost of your dead partner whom you’ve always had a thing for helps you out, and anyway you’re probably going crazy and none of this is real, so it doesn’t count anyway... right?

-Case fic/stakeouts and banter. Flirting to pass the long and stressful days at work. Quick and guilty sex because Danny's married. Slow and intense sex if handwave he's not married but “oh noes we’re partners, we shouldn’t be doing this, but somehow we keep doing it anyway.” Hooking up in the car. I've always headcanoned that they had a thing pre-canon which ended for Reasons, but they both kinda wish it hadn't, hence the hand kissing, and the “I can’t even touch you,” and the coffee bringing/stealing, etc. So feel free to play around with that.

-Undercover as married, undercover as a gangster and his moll (LOL at Sara as a moll, or have Sara as the gangster and Danny as her lieutenant/enforcer/arm candy), undercover as “they think we’re fucking, better fake it real good for the people listening in, oops shit got real fast, careful don’t say each other’s real name or you’ll blow your cover.”

-More timey-wimey shenanigans with the Witchblade. Maybe it allows Sara to manipulate time more than once. Maybe she starts doing it way too often, throwing the continuum out of whack (something non-linear would be very interesting). Maybe she and/or Danny remember some or all of what happened in S1. Something about all the multiverse versions of them, possibly splitting off from a dramatic moment. Time loops and feelings are a combustible mix.

-Apart from the super obvious shippiness, what I like about S1 especially is how Sara rolls with the weirdness the Witchblade has brought into her life, instead of reaching for rational explanations. More of that (I can't think of a better way to put it), and double extra brownie points if alive!Danny figures out at least some of what's going on with Sara's bracelet and somehow gets in on the action. Maybe a Danny saves the day divergence? Or how about a loophole that allows a man close to the Witchblade's wearer to wield it temporarily, but There Is a Price to Pay.

킹덤 Kingdom (Netflix)

Prince Lee Chang/Seo-bi

I fell so hard for this show. So hard! The beautiful production values, the wonderful cast, how the characters develop, how the show slowly but surely unfolds one reveal after another and packs so much into two short seasons, all the period detail, the genuinely tense action scenes, the moments of humor and intense emotion, the intertwining of political intrigue and zomg! really scary zombies, how the zombie outbreak works on multiple levels both literal and metaphorical…

I love the brave, kind-hearted, but sheltered prince, whose whole life has been so privileged yet shadowed by the possibility of death if he loses his position as heir, learning what it means to actually rule and lead people, to protect them and be protected by them in turn. And I love Seo-bi the fearless, dedicated, selfless physician, who notices things and figures things out regardless of whether this annoys the people in power. I love how instantly and fiercely loyal she is to him (not just because he’s the crown prince, but because she’s seen how brave and altruistic he can be) and how he immediately takes her advice and experience seriously despite her being a woman and a commoner in this super-hierarchical setting. Also, I love most of the cast (not a huge fan of Chancellor Cho, but he is an effective antagonist), and would be delighted to see any of them in fic too. Especially the loyal and funny and badass Mu-yeong (he was loyal, despite the Haewon Cho clan’s blackmail, and if you want to diverge from canon so he lives, I would not mind that at all), the even more badass and wounded and snarky Yeong-sin (or is that “Yeong-sin”???), Chang’s sparky, exiled uncle several times removed, and the terrifying and frankly unhinged young queen are my favorites. I even have a soft spot for that mostly-useless coward Cho Beom-pal, but really, they’re all great and I would love reading about them too, or just about the prince and the lady physician – whatever works!

Finally, before I get to prompts, I know a bit about the Joseon period, but we’re talking the bits and pieces I remember from a college class, and what I’ve read on Wikipedia and picked up from this and other Korean movies and shows. I know a bit more about some of the cultural background, like the Confucian values, the social stratification and feudal system, the gender segregation among the aristocracy, the wars with Japan, but again – my knowledge is limited. So if you want to teach me stuff about Joseon, go for it! If you want to invent or handwave stuff, as long as it fits the canon’s mood and broad cultural parameters, go for it! And if you want to treat me to some worldbuilding, period detail of any kind, and/or costume porn, definitely go for it. Canon-specific DNW: anything above M rating for sex (violence is fine).

Prompts:

Zombie fighting anything! Learning to survive in a society that’s rapidly breaking down, having to transcend their habitual social roles and challenging each other, anything! Maybe one of them teaches the other to hunt, or to make herbal medicines, or to fight with a sword, or heck, to cook or clean dirty clothes. (FYI I wrote most of these prompts before I was quite done with S2, and the time-skip took me totally by surprise. So while my prompts ignore Chang renouncing the throne, I’d also be down for the untold adventures of the former prince and his traveling companions, as Chang learns how to be just regular folks and they pursue clues about the resurrection flower, or for your take on what happens in S3. Use whatever works for you in my prompts in any way you want!)

Figuring out how the zombie infection continues to evolve and/or working together to find a cure beyond dunking the infected in water – whether that means to destroy large numbers of the undead, or to develop an antidote, or to cure and bring back those afflicted. One plot detail that really struck me: more experimenting with zombies, like Chancellor Cho started to do, might also hold the key to a cure?

Political intrigue anything! Having to fight zombies and/or factions at court with both friends and unexpected allies (not gonna lie, I would have loved to have seen the young queen unleashed on some zombies, even if that did not make her the prince and Seo-bi’s ally).

More road trip/survival/battle goodness – maybe Seo-bi offers Lee Chang some advice while they’re navigating their new situation, or she witnesses him developing his leadership muscles, and it brings them closer together than before. Or maybe a moment of humor, relaxation, or quiet affection on the road or in between zombie-slaying, especially if it catches them both a bit by surprise. Or one of them gets a non-zombifying injury (nothing too gruesome or life-threatening, please!) and the other one has to care for them – extra points if Seo-bi is injured and the prince kind of bumbles through the most basic things so she has to talk him through her own treatment. Or nightmares/being triggered by something, like we saw both Chang and Seo-bi react at the sounds of zombies growling and people screaming in S2E5.

We have seen Seo-bi insist on staying loyal to the prince, and Lee Chang rely on her repeatedly to the exclusion of all his other people – give me a situation in which he has to make clear his own loyalty to her, as a part of both his becoming a better leader and as a step in advancing their relationship. Or, there comes a time when Seo-bi really pushes against the rules of what someone like she can and cannot say or do to/around a crown prince – we’ve seen Lee Chang refuse to stand on his dignity to the point where so many of his interactions with commoners would end in the commoners’ death, but I imagine even he has his limits, and that kind of clash can only drive this dynamic forward!

Canon divergence in which Seo-bi gets sent to the capital and assigned to be the personal physician to the petulant, frustrated prince we meet at the start of the show (handwave the gender segregation and impropriety). She knows her place, but she also does not suffer fools or male nonsense. Sparks fly, social conventions get tested, zombies may or may not happen, and a new mutual understanding is born.

Canon divergence from the scene in S2E2 when Seo-bi finagles her way to being allowed to see the prince and he instructs her to resurrect Ahn Hyeon – what if instead of that, they came up with another plan of escape? Or maybe Lee Chang sending Seo-bi to spy on the queen goes a different way than in canon? And really, anything that requires those two to pass secret messages while grabbing each other’s hands and staring intently into each other’s eyes is A++ with me!

One theme which emerges gradually, and I really loved, is people having to compromise their principles to survive and ensure the safety of those they feel loyal and/or obliged to: Ahn Hyeon agreeing to turn the sick villagers into zombies, dear Mu-yeong having been a spy but also protecting the prince all along, Seo-bi resurrecting Ahn Hyeon, Lee Chang instructing her to do it as well as his thousand-yard-stare after having to finish off what’s left of his father… I’d love to see more such compromises, how their consequences ripple out, and the emotional fallout.

In addition to zombies, other magical and/or supernatural events and creatures start to appear in Joseon. If you want to bring in something from Buddhist mythology or Korean folklore, please do, and any and all worldbuilding would be awesome.

Post-canon something in which Lee Chang is king, possibly of only a part of the country (maybe a zombie-free enclave, or a part he won in a civil war against the Cho clan or a cadet branch of his family), and Seo-bi is there as his advisor, physician, and unofficial chancellor. Gimme policymaking to deal with the lingering zombie issue, and assassination plots, and servants/guards/ladies in waiting gossiping like it’s their real job, and all the palace intrigue!

Kind of related to the previous: even as a “spare” prince, Lee Chang can’t marry a commoner. Would he ever think to offer Seo-bi to become his concubine? I don’t think she’d go for it, and he might realize it, but maybe I’m wrong! Or maybe being intensely platonic/sublimating at each other is as good as it gets for them, and they’re kind of okay with that. Or they get married in secret and have to be very careful not to let slip anything by word on gesture in public, or not to let Seo-bi get pregnant. Or, y’know, one day or night on the road or in a fortified town, in between scavenging for supplies and fighting zombies, they decide to bone just because their lives are weird enough now to forget about propriety and all that jazz for an hour.

Role reversal: Seo-bi is the sheltered, willful princess fearful for her position (especially since she’s a woman as well as the daughter of a concubine only) and Lee Chang is the proper yet willful provincial physician. Do they meet as in canon, or under different circumstances (maybe she must flee the court to escape assassins, accusations of treason, or an arranged marriage, with or without bonus zombies)? How would their dynamic be complicated (and made awesome of course!) by the gender reversal? Also, burning question: does Princess Seo-bi already know how to fight (because she forced Mu-yeong to teach her back at court, of course), or does she have to learn once zombies/brigands/insurrection/whatever happen? And does Physician Lee Chang know one end of a musket or sword from another, or does he need rescuing at some point?

I realize that some of these prompts could work as well (better?) as a no-zombies AU, and that’s fine if you want to take it in that direction. Just so we’re clear. :-)

Likes:

I love pre-canon, canon, post-canon, canon-divergent, and missing-scene stories. I love character-driven and plot-driven stories equally, and I love fics which mix humor and angst/serious business when appropriate for the canon.

I love stories about characters at work and play, group dynamics, family dynamics (including constructed families), professional partnerships, friendships, alliances, rivalries, intimate couples (new lovers/first times as well as long-term/established couples), UST-ridden couples who are not just UST-ridden but connected in other ways too, etc.

I love irony, snark, humor as well as angst arising from the characters rather than the plot crowbaring it in, linear, non-linear, and 5+1 stories, hopeful endings, happy endings, bittersweet endings, worldbuilding, competence, spiky characters who keep their jagged edges and spikiness in adversity as well as when their lives are going well, square-peg-in-round-hole characters, characters who are their own worst enemies as well as those who can get over themselves when the occasion calls for it, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other.

I especially love workplace stories (this can mean anything from an actual workplace/casefic/procedural setting to anything that revolves around the canon world in which the characters live) in which the characters are competent and dedicated to the job, and while they may not be exactly friends and they may well irritate one another, they still manage to rub along to get the job done and maybe even grow to care about one another (much to their surprise and sometimes reluctance/discomfort). Or, if they can’t get along, show me why not and what’s preventing them from finding common ground.

In terms of ship dynamics, I love (where it fits the characters) banter, competitiveness or antagonism shading into attraction (this tension need not be resolved), oh-god-why-did-it-have-to-be-you-what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this, bickering yet loving couples, characters who are serious about their romantic interests, characters who think they are much better at flirtation than they actually are, characters forced to work together only to prove much more compatible than they initially assumed, fics which mix an exploration of characters’ professional and everyday lives with shipping. A dynamic I cannot resist is shipping a couple who are incompatible in some important way (they are ideological enemies, cop and criminal, spies from opposite sides, one betrayed the other or they betrayed each other), and while they love and want each other they’re also not willing to change sides or surrender/compromise their identity for the other’s benefit, and how they might (or not) make their relationship work anyway.

I don’t have any very specific likes for smut, other than smut fitting the characters – show me how their canon dynamics spill over into the bedroom (or other place of congress). I also like sexual scenarios that subvert expectations a little and surprise the characters themselves (e.g., the person who’s usually quiet or more passive taking charge, the more aggressive person goes with it possibly snarking or commenting on it as long as they can). And I like sexual scenarios that contain an element of competition, antagonism, oh-god-this-is-a-bad-idea-but-we’re-going-for-it-hammer-and-tongs, not wanting to admit feelings or show vulnerability except oops it happens anyway, whether the characters acknowledge it or not, or just people getting way more into it or being more affected by it than they thought they would. When it fits the characters and their canon dynamic, you also can’t go wrong with we-both-wanted-this-for-forever-and-now-we-both-know-it-so-here-we-go-diving-in-headfirst. For het and/or slash, oral, vaginal, anal incl. pegging, manual (ifyouknowwhatImean) – it’s all good. You can go as veiled or as explicit as you like, but please avoid excessive medical jargon – I don’t find a lot of mention of “penis” or “clit” sexy.

 DNWs:

MPREG, A/B/O, knotting, D/s, kinks, incest, underage, genderswap/genderbent characters, xeno, non-/dub-con, torture and abuse (this and non-/dub-con can be mentioned if the story needs it, but please don’t dwell on it in loving detail or subject any of my requested characters to it), dwelling on bodily fluids (mentions of gore/blood and come are fine), toilet humor, character bashing, issuefic, gender/sexuality/race/ethnicity/religion/ability/identity headcanons, unrequested ships, soulmates and soul marks, major character death (meaning my requested characters being or staying dead by story’s end - Laura Moon can remain undead), serious illness or injury, pregnancy and children, holiday or wedding setting/theme, secondary characters shipping the main pair like it’s their job, reference to RL current events, 1st/2nd person POV, unrequested crossovers or fusions, AUs which have nothing to do with canon

[truthbeetoldmedia]

American Gods 2x04 “The Greatest Story Ever Told” Review

So much happens in every single hour of American Gods and this week’s episode is no different! We saw how Technical Boy came to be, Mr. Nancy trying to get Bilquis and Mr. Ibis to actually play their part in the war, and some weird Girl Scouts who were far scarier than an angry Mr. World or Mr. Wednesday.  

The story of how Technical Boy came to be started with a young boy who expressed minimal interest in classical music but showed great enthusiasm for all things technical. All the boy’s father wanted to do was share his love of classical music (his self-proclaimed way of praying) with his son. While the boy was talented on the piano, like any young child during the rise of computers, his interests were held elsewhere. By college, the son found a way for his computer program to write music. The boy was so proud, he showed his father. When his father found out that it was the computer, and not his son, that wrote the beautiful music, you could tell he was disappointed. This new technology encroached on the one thing he loved most. Well, the two things he loved most.  

The father ends up dying. At the funeral, Technical Boy comes into the picture. As mentioned before, music was how the father prayed. Incorporating music into tech is how the boy prays, thus Technical Boy appears above the man’s casket. For some reason, that’s not how I envisioned Technical Boy to come into being.  

Seeing Technical Boy come to be and seeing him lose usefulness to Mr. World in the same episode is kind of fascinating. As New Media said in the last episode, the two of them existing at the same time is kind of redundant. With Technical Boy letting Laura kill Argos in the last episode, Mr. World is beyond pissed. Technical Boy not getting the job Mr. World sent him out to do isn’t exactly doing him any favors. New Media is coming across as the favorite child with the big boss, while Technical Boy is sent into a time-out. (I’m taking it as a time-out. Whatever that ball that ate him is, I don’t think it destroyed him, so I’m calling it a time-out.) Technical Boy went to the young boy-turned-CEO for help in this war. This ended up being his downfall. For the longest time, Technical Boy was this man’s only friend. However, this man’s attention is fickle. New Media is easy to distract him with her technology and Mr. World essentially shows Technical Boy that he’s no longer essential and that he’s replaceable, which isn’t an easy thing for a god to hear.  

The first scene with Shadow picks up right where the last episode left off. He had the stuffing kicked out of him and he was FEELING it. Mr. Wednesday made him a deal that if Shadow wasn’t feeling better in the morning, then he could ride off with Better (his car) and leave Mr. Wednesday behind. You see, Shadow’s been feeling beyond frustrated with Mr. Wednesday lately and I can’t blame him. The man is keeping him in the dark about why he even chose Shadow to begin with. He wants to leave. He wants to find Laura and do what? Well, I’m not sure. You can’t very well go back to a life before you found out gods were real with a walking, talking corpse of a wife.  

Anyways, it’s nighttime and Shadow is in bed. A naked woman is sitting right on top of him. Her name is Bast and she’s an old warrior goddess, who also happened to be the goddess of cats. They start having sex, because apparently now Shadow has sex with random women who just find him in the middle of the night. (I’m not slut-shaming Shadow. I’m just saying that that’s not exactly practicing safe sex there, pal.) While they’re doing the dirty, she starts clawing at his skin...like a cat. She licks his open wounds from when he was beat up and then she starts leaving actual cuts on his chest and back. In the morning, Shadow wakes up and the woman has vanished. There is, however, a cat in Shadow’s room.  

Shadow goes down and speaks with Mr. Ibis and Mr. Wednesday. Wednesday wants to head out to St. Louis, where they find themselves at a diner. Mama-ji is there because she works at every Motel America, apparently. (Hope the paycheck is worth it, Mama-ji!) Tensions continue to run high between Mr. Wednesday and Shadow because Mr. Wednesday, as I previously mentioned, refuses to key Shadow into the reason he was chosen for this job. Mr. Wednesday tells him it’s because he’s essentially a nobody to everyone and, let me tell YOU, Shadow is EVERYTHING to ME.  

They end up meeting with these creepy girl scouts, who ask them if they want to buy candy and if they’d like to use debit or credit. It’s code for a meeting between Mr. World and a bookkeeper, but it’s the weirdest thing to actually witness. Whatever exactly this meeting was, because I’m still a tad confused to be honest, it ends in a draw because the bookkeeper isn’t making any decisions. I take it to mean that it’s really anybody’s war.  

While Shadow and Mr. Wednesday are in St. Louis, Mr. Ibis is attending to a dead woman’s body at his funeral parlor. Bilquis happens upon the deceased woman’s granddaughter in the chapel. One can only assume that Bilquis was searching out the old gods because maybe she’s finally chosen a side after Mr. World confronted her in last week’s episode. Anyways, Bilquis is all about human connections, so she starts speaking with the granddaughter, whose name we find out is Ruby. The topic of discussion is all about faith, of course. Ruby speaks of how her grandmother believed in Jesus and the sense of community that faith brought her. Ruby seems to appreciate the community, as well.  

Mr. Nancy shows up at the funeral parlor as well to deliver some much needed truth. Mr. Ibis and Bilquis have made it clear so far that they aren’t on any side. Well, Mr. Nancy wants them to decide. All three of them are some of the oldest gods out there. They are three powerful African gods. While it’s nice that Mr. Ibis and Bilquis don’t want to choose a side because they just want peace, they’re going to have to actually participate in order to reach that peace. The death of Zorya Vechernyaya brought Czernobog into the fight. To paraphrase Mr. Nancy, it took the death of an old white lady for Czernobog to swing his hammer. If it had been an old black lady, who’s to say Czernobog would’ve taken a stance? Like last season when we were introduced to Mr. Nancy, what he says speaks truths about America’s politics today. I believe that may have been enough for these three to show a united front, especially between Mr. Nancy and Bilquis with their steamy lip-locking.  

While this episode left me questioning some things, I was overall very pleased with it. I’m hoping Shadow gets more answers soon. I hate seeing him so confused and torn on his place by Mr. Wednesday’s side. I also want to see more Nancy/Bilquis/Ibis. I’m looking forward to their next interaction with Wednesday. One thing I’m hoping is explored more is New Media’s power and her new personality. We caught glimpses with Technical Boy, but there’s still so much more they could be showing us.

Some thoughts on the episode:

I’m actually really mad with how that father reacted to his son’s way of writing music. The boy was so proud of his creation, but his father didn’t see that. He just saw technology “ruining” something he loved so much. There’s definitely a generational divide with something like that. I can see both sides to the issue at hand, but I can’t help but be on the boy’s side with this one. Technology is AMAZING. It can do SO MUCH with just pressing a few keys on a keyboard. It was a real shame the boy’s father couldn’t take pride in something his son made because while the computer technically wrote the music, the son made it all possible to begin with.  

Can’t anyone have any normal sex on this show? First, the human-eating vagina. Then, the technical tentacle sex. Now, Shadow has sex with the cat-lady. I am DISTURBED.  

I’m shipping Mr. Nancy and Bilquis! They’re stunning! Mr. Ibis is their supportive mom friend.  

I actually felt really bad for Technical Boy by the end of the episode, which is something I never thought I’d do, considering I find Technical Boy to be awfully bratty.  

I like Mr. Wednesday more than Mr. World just for the record!

American Gods airs on Sundays at 8/7c on Starz.

Sarah’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

[douxreviews]

American Gods - ‘Treasure of the Sun’ Review

"That’s what the world does. It changes."

I wasn't ready for that.

Should have been. But wasn't.

Let's not dance around the issue in any way and get the sort-of-spoiler out in the open right up front. Last chance to turn away.

So, Mad Sweeney appears to die at the end of this week's episode.

This shouldn't really count as a spoiler, as the episode itself did everything it could possibly do to make us all aware that it was going to happen. They laid the funeral atmosphere on this one with a trowel. The presence of banshees that only Sweeney could hear was just the cherry on top of the great big farewell sundae.

Last season they devoted the entire penultimate episode to telling us the story of Essie MacGowan, which tangentially also told us the story of Mad Sweeney. As a mystical being, Sweeney's background was left very much vague there, and he was really only seen through the frame of reference that Essie saw him through. And it was one of the best episodes of anything, ever, so if you haven't watched it lately you should totally go do that as soon as you finish reading this review. This approach worked very well for Sweeney, since being unsure about his backstory and all the contradictory possible pasts that he possesses are kind of the point of the character.

He's a very quantum god, only being able to be seen through a vague mist of probabilities and attitude.

This week promised in advance to finally fill in the backstory of Mad Sweeney, and I confess that I was a little disappointed that they were going there, since any concrete backstory that we get will never be as good as the possible stories we have in our heads. Imagine, then, my surprise when they doubled down on the whole 'contradictory pasts' thing and made that the whole point of the character.

We've had unreliable narrators before. Here we get what might be described as an unreliable protagonist. Any of the stories we're told about him may or may not be true. Even he, we're told many times over the course of the episode, doesn't really remember.

So we're told about a Sweeney that had sex with a girl who predicted that Laura Moon would one day be his downfall. And of a Sweeney who was a king, and abandoned his allies on the battlefield after being cursed by a bishop and was destined to die from a spear. And a Sweeney from even earlier who was a god king, destined to kill his grandfather in one of those 'you brought about the future you were trying to prevent from happening' kind of stories. Except the grandfather might have been Wednesday. Possibly.

Sweeney is full to the brim of contradictory pasts, and they're all presented to us as true. The little narrative games of inserting the wrong character's voice in the flashback voiceover, or having the wrong voice come from the wrong mouth as the story is being told just underscore this fluidity. What we do seem to know for sure is that he's in Mr. Wednesday's debt for some reason, possibly connected with having fled that battlefield. Odin is a war god. Did fleeing the battlefield cause the debt directly, or was there more to it than that? Somehow tied up with this, Wednesday owes Sweeney a battle, which would make sense if the initial sin was skipping out on the other battle. How that squares with the earlier god king or the later prophesy and boobies story I couldn't begin to say.

It's a rare trick, appearing to devote an entire episode to a character's backstory, only to leave the viewer feeling like they know less afterwards than they did before.

The season's recurring theme of how gods change and evolve to survive over time continues this week. Bilquis is now apparently an evangelical preacher, focusing primarily on the erotic poetry portions of the Bible, of which there are a surprising number, actually. I still can't figure out what she needs from Ruby Goodchild, but I don't think they intend us to understand that part yet. I think it's deliberate that the episode shows all of the changes that Sweeney goes through being done to him by outside forces, such as Mother Church rebranding him as small.

The cleverest move of the week, however, goes to the choice to begin the episode with Sweeney's body under the bridge. That, if you haven't read it, is how Sweeney dies in the book, and it's much less dramatic than what we get here. Changing the narrative so that Shadow is an active participant in Sweeney's death is a much richer story. In the book he basically dies from a tragic case of the plot not requiring him anymore. By starting the episode with the fakeout of him not being dead under the bridge, they're preparing the viewer for his eventual death at the end. Hell, they might as well have put a 'Sweeney Death Countdown Clock' in the bottom corner of the screen.

Farewell, Mad Sweeney. You were arguably the character that benefited most from the book-to-screen translation. I don't expect that we've really seen the last of you. For one thing, it would be just perverse if there was never some sort of resolution with your relationship with Laura after the way things ended last week. For another, even in the book you stopped back by to attend your own wake. I didn't entirely understand what was going on in that section of the book, to be honest.

Wednesday made a point of telling us that every death brought about by the spear was a tribute to him, which means Shadow just made a tribute to Odin of Sweeney's death. That has to be important, right?

Quotes:

Sweeney: "Oh, I can smell the whiskey on your breathe already, Ben Franklin."

Laura: "You know that I can literally rip peoples' limbs off, right?"

Kali: "Goddamn Voudon. Always so dramatic."

Wednesday: "Oh, I know that smell. That smells like a hot bottle of whiskey and sex in an alleyway. With a top note of failure. Eau du F**kup."

Eorann: "Remember, the boundaries of your father’s mind have grown thin since he left us."

Sweeney: "You’ve got 80 years on your dial, You’re going to give 'em up for somebody who’s gonna live forever?" Salim: "That’s how love works."

Wednesday: "F**k the fairies." Sweeney: (To Salim) "You gonna let him talk about us like that?"

Been meaning to mention - I really love Wednesday's vest

Bits and Pieces:

-- Do people really bring food to funeral parlors? I know that they do to the grieving, but I've never heard of them bringing it directly to the funeral home. Maybe it's a southern thing.

-- Ibis mentions that Jaquel will come when Wednesday calls him to war. Does that mean that Chris Obi has just been busy with Star Trek: Discovery and we'll have him back later when he has the time? I hope so.

-- The discussion of Sweeney being a troll or a leprechaun nicely set up the theme of incompatible but equally valid pasts.

-- How has it not come up at all for Shadow that Sweeney caused the car accident that killed Laura? Laura found out about that in last season's finale.

-- Sweeney's final act, other than flipping the bird, was to send Wednesday's spear to 'the hoard,' the realm where all the treasure is that he and Laura took a shortcut through a few episodes back. That was clever. Can't wait to see how Wednesday responds to that one.

-- I feel like it's still OK to 'ship Sweeney and Laura, since she's also dead. Just let me have this one.

-- Pablo Schreiber had a lot of scenes to film in the woods while wearing very little clothing. That just had to be unbearably uncomfortable. I mean, just the bug bites alone...

-- Speaking of Pablo, it was announced shortly before this episode that he'd been cast as the Master Chief in the Halo series. That wasn't a good omen for Sweeney, no Neil Gaiman pun intended.

-- The Jinn mentioned other Ifrits in Chicago, answering my longstanding question about whether Ifrit was his name or his species. I guess we're back to calling him the Jinn. They should really give him a name.

-- Sweeney, despite his best efforts to resist the urge, was really going out of his way to be kind to Salim.

-- I've never considered the erotic subtext of the eucharist before, but what with Bilquis deep diving into the whole 'take my flesh deep into your mouth' aspect of it I'll probably never be able to look at the pope without blushing again.

-- The treasure of the sun was both the coins in the hoard and the love Sweeney and his wife shared, as highlighted by her yellow wedding dress. She'd lost that dress by the time Sweeney had gone mad.

It's hard to make Ricky Whittle look small...

This episode had a lot to really dig into, but it felt a little incomplete to me in a way that "Prayer for Mad Sweeney" didn't. On the tiniest level it feels like an exercise in setting pieces up for the finale rather than a story in its own.

Three out of four tubs of potato salad.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

[amandajoyce118]

Shazam Easter Eggs And Comic Book References

Now that Shazam has been in theaters for over a week, I thought I’d share the list of Easter eggs I found. A tiny bit of background for those non comic book fans: Shazam was originally named Captain Marvel back in the day, but that name didn’t work out for many, many reasons that’ll pop up in the list below. Shazam stands for Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury, the deities that the powers were supposed to provide nods to. The movie premiered on the 80th anniversary of the character debuting in comic books. In the movie, Billy Batson is gifted with the powers of Shazam in order to battle a great evil, but Billy’s more preoccupied with taking care of himself, avoiding his foster family, and finding his birth mother.

Now, there will be spoilers, so if you haven’t yet seen the movie, you’ve been warned.

Sivana’s Father

Recognize the actor playing the elder Sivana? That’s John Glover. As DC loves to do with its movies, they’ve given a small, but noteworthy, role to someone who has worked in other DC projects. In this case, Glover was Lionel Luthor on Smallville, a mad scientist in Batman and Robin, and provided voiceover work in animated series as the Riddler. (Also previously cast in DC projects? Adam Brody and DJ Cotrona. They appear as a adult versions of Freddy and Pedro, respectively. They were also both cast in Frank Miller’s Justice League: Mortal as Flash and Superman, again respectively. The movie never got off the ground. Likewise, Djimon Hounsou also appeared in Aquaman. He and Zachary Levi have also been in Marvel movies.)

The Caterpillar

We learn more about this caterpillar looking creature in the mid credit scene. He’s actually the classic Shazam villain Mr. Mind. Looks like he’s being set up as the villain for the sequel.

Annabelle

So you remember the doll from Annabelle getting a cameo in Aquaman? She also gets a cameo here. She’s on a shelf in the pawn shop when Billy traps the police. It’s a nod from director David S. Sandberg since he also directed Annabelle: Creation.

Billy Wants The Tiger

I think it’s cute that toddler Billy really wants that stuffed tiger. Why? Because the Shazam family actually has a tiger at one point in the comics. Or maybe it’s the Flashpoint version of the family, which is actually the Captain Thunder family in that universe. Either way, they have a tiger. It’s a nice way to show Billy letting go of his past later when he gives a stuffed tiger to the little girl hiding at the fair. There’s also a nod in the tiger on his backpack and the faces of tigers on the pins holding his cape in place (which I couldn’t see on film, but did in HD photos online).

The Smiley Face

There are a lot of smiley faces on the desk of Billy’s social worker. A coffee mug, stress ball, and a few other things have the yellow smiley faces on them. It’s a nod to the smiley face of the Watchmen comics.

The Crocodile

The same scene features a small toy crocodile, which might seem like an odd choice. That’s only if you don’t know that Shazam has a few villains in his Captain Marvel past with a crocodile theme. I’m not sure which one this is a nod to, but take I like Sobek AKA the Crocodile Man for the nod. Especially since the Crocodile Men get a nod later in the many magical doors.

Freddy, Mary, Darla, Pedro, and Eugene

These five feature in a lot of Shazam backstory. Freddy actually debuted in the original Captain Marvel comics as a disabled newsboy while Mary was Mary Batson, Billy’s long lost sister. Before Flashpoint and the New 52 relaunch of DC comics, there was a plan to launch a new Shazam AKA Captain Marvel title, rebranding the hero as Captain Thunder. The plan was to introduce Darla, Pedro, and Eugene then, but it never got off the ground. Instead, they were all introduced as Billy’s foster siblings in Flashpoint, officially becoming part of the DC Universe in the new 52. Together, all of the kids could unite to form Captain Thunder (with their tiger). In the original Captain Marvel series, Freddy was actually Kid Marvel and Mary was Mary Marvel when Billy shared his power with them. Different from the movie, they each didn’t have full power, but instead, a portion of the same finite amount of power, making each new addition progressively weaker than the one before.

DC Memorabilia

Making it clear that the DC superheroes have become household names, Freddy owns a lot of memorabilia. Not only does he have action figures of long time big names Batman and Superman, but he also has newspaper clippings of all the main events, even some from the Daily Planet. He also sports logo tee shirts for Wonder Woman and Aquaman, meaning they’re better known than they were before.

The Rock Of Eternity

The Rock of Eternity is the name of the place where Billy receive’s Shazam’s power. In that “lair” though, there are a few relics from the comics that come people might miss. There is, of course, Mr. Mind’s jar and the statues of the Sins. Beyond that though, there is also the magic mirror (named Francesca in the comics) and a scepter called the Ibistick (it belonged to the Egyptian prince Ibis the Invincible).

Black Adam

A lot of fans thought Black Adam would appear in some cameo form in the movie. He might be the most famous of Shazam villains, and there were talks of Dwayne Johnson taking on the role. The villain doesn’t appear in the movie, but his story does. He’s the subject of the story the wizard tells Billy. He’s the hero that decided he wanted all of the power of the council for himself.

Fawcett Central School

The school is named for Fawcett Comics. Fawcett Comics was the original publisher of Captain Marvel stories, the name given to the Billy Batson superhero. National Comics (AKA DC Comics) eventually sued Fawcett because they thought Captain Marvel was too similar to Superman. Fawcett Comics quit publishing his stories and eventually went under, the copyright for the character transferring to DC. DC started publishing Captain Marvel stories until Marvel Comics decided that a name like Captain Marvel fit more with their brand. These days, Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics) and Billy Batson is Shazam (DC Comics) instead of the way things started.

Moran

The security officer at the school’s name is inspired by another version of Captain Marvel. A British publisher rewrote the American Captain Marvel stories as Marvelman AKA Miracleman after the Captain Marvel lawsuits. The hero’s name was Michael Moran.

Ace Chemicals

Batman fans know this name because it’s the company that gave birth to the Joker. We got a glimpse of one of their factories during a Suicide Squad flashback sequence as the Joker took Harley Quinn to prove her love for him. That same location, and therefore the same factory, was used in Shazam. It’s the location where Freddy and Billy try to figure out his powers. You can even see a bit of the faded company logo on tanks in one shot.

Captain Sparkle Fingers

One of the many names Billy gets over the course of the film, this one is unique. Why? Because it’s a shout out to the Carol Danvers version of Captain Marvel. She actually gets called Princess Sparkle Fists a few times. When Freddy uploads videos of Billy’s powers online, he also calls him Zap-tain America in one as a nod to Captain America and Red Cyclone as a nod to a DC Comics character.

C.C. Batson

Billy’s father’s name is a nod to C.C. Beck, who helped create the original comics. Likewise, Billy’s mother is from Minnesota, which is where Beck was born.

The Floor Piano

During the climactic fight scene, Billy and Sivana go across a piano matt on the floor of a toy store, or the toy section of a department store. It’s a brief few steps, but it’s a nice, quick homage to the Tom Hank movie Big where a little boy becomes an adult overnight, not unlike how Billy’s super powers work.

Seven

If you pay attention, the number seven is all over this movie. There are, of course, Seven Deadly Sins, Billy’s mother is on the seventh floor of her building in room 707, and Freddy wants seven bedrooms for their family in a new lair. Seven is long thought to be a magical number (see the Harry Potter books for examples of the way it’s used), so it’s fitting that it gets used a lot for a superhero who gets his powers from a sorcerer. It’s also the number of realms the family explores in the modern comics.

A Little Foreshadowing

When Thaddeus first enters the Rock of Eternity and peers at the orb, the light of the orb reflects on the lens of the same eye where it will eventually embed.

Billy’s new foster siblings have their favorite colors. The jackets they wear in various scenes throughout the movie correspond to the colors of their super suits.

That’s all I’ve got, guys. But this isn’t a time I’ve watched the movie more than once, so I’ve likely missed some things. Let me know if you’ve spotted something I missed.

[virtuissimo]

Pride by Ibi Zoboi (Review)

This book is a modern retelling of the Jane Austen’s seminal classic Pride & Prejudice. Zuri Luz Benitez is a black Haitian-Dominican teenager in her senior year of high school whose identity is constructed around her life in Bushwick, a neighborhood with a tight community that is going through aggressive gentrification. Across the street, in one of the new gentrified houses, the Darcy family moves in, including twins Ainsley and Darius, two rich private-school boys sticking out like a fish out of water.

Zoboi’s adaptation creates amazing parallels when compared one-to-one with P&P, but it can’t hold its own very well. The writing is a simplistic and the characterization for most of the named characters is extremely one-dimensional. I was taken a bit by surprise when I found it in the youth section, and the simple writing makes me confused about the age of the intended audience. In any case, I didn’t have a bad time reading this, but I was expecting a lot more than I got.

To expand a little on the intended audience, I think my confusion is mostly because of the conflicting styles. On one hand, Zoboi’s prose is very simple and almost hamfisted in how she handles her characters and story. Other than some nice and age-appropriate poetry from Zuri herself, the rest of the book isn’t very elegant in writing quality. So I said to myself, ok I found it in the youth section. It’s intended for a younger audience. However, all the central characters are in their senior year of high school, and there are numerous allusions to sex and cusses that I’m not sure would fly in middle fiction. I think those who are in this reading level will find the characters too old and teenagery, while those who are the main character’s ages will find the prose to be lacking. Zuri in specific is a voracious reader, and she herself would not have the patience to enjoy reading this book which is far below her reading level.

It’s easier to read this book for what it’s supposed to be saying rather than what it is saying, if that makes any sense. For instance, Darius when he first shows up is quiet and doesn’t offer much information about himself, but he also wasn’t very rude or belligerent upon first impression. I know “prejudice” is half the thing, but Zuri really jumps the gun and kind of started the whole feud in the first place. It just wasn’t that believable that he was some jerk who deserved her hatred like it was with Elizabeth Bennet, and similarly it wasn’t very believable when she later learns that she just misinterpreted his social awkwardness.

Also, I thought it was interesting that the title removed the “prejudice” when to me that seemed like a much bigger aspect of this version than in Austen’s work. For instance, Darius makes a number of disparaging remarks about Bushwick and its “ghetto” people, but even before he makes these remarks Zuri already “hates” him based on stuff she made up about him in her head. And then later, when they begin to get closer, she actually never confronts him about his prejudice and just. Forgives and forgets.

She also forgives and forgets when it comes to Ainsley and Janae. This bothered me a lot more than some of my other nitpicking because it actually changes one of the important themes of P&P. Not that Zoboi doesn’t have the right to alter thematic elements—she absolutely does! But the theme of family and the fact that Zuri would do ANYTHING for her sisters is told to the reader through a lot of exposition, but we don’t actually see it. The moment in the car when she finds out that Darius split up Ainsley and Janae is really representative of that for me. She got angry in the moment, but she never actually investigates to find out WHY he did it like Elizabeth in P&P. On that note, later on when she forgives him, she never asks him to account for it again.

In fact, character motivation and appropriate emotional buildup was a recurring issue in this book. Nothing hit quite like I think Zoboi intended them to.

The talk on gentrification and class difference is good tho. Perhaps incomplete, but there’s only so much space. They really show how class plays a role in a variety of different circumstances and scenarios, and I think Zoboi succeeds here where others have failed.

Some of the parallels that I liked:

-          Warren and Colin took me OUT when they first appeared. You can really see what Zoboi thinks about Mr. Wickham and Mr. Collins from the original lol.

-          The tour of Howard instead of touring the Darcy home was very interesting to me. I think it was a great introduction to how she wasn’t expecting her world to expand so much, and that there’s a lot of different experiences in the world that she’s missing, and she gets introduced to this idea by people who AREN’T Darius and Ainsley. I really liked that.

-          The leopard print and “inappropriate dress” that the Benitez family wore to the Darcy cocktail party. It seems like a good way to show how respectability politics still play into the modern day, and it added a bit of character to the Benitez family as a prototypical Latinx family that I really enjoyed.

-          The Warren and Georgia situation was also a good way to translate this into the modern day.

-          P&P: In order to avoid scandal, Darcy pays for a marriage between a 16 year old and a 20-something known scumbag, and this is seen as a good thing because it saved the Bennet family. Zoboi’s Pride: Darius beats the shit out of Warren. I REALLY CRIED, THIS IS WHAT I WANT OUT OF AN ADAPTATION.

Things I didn’t like so much:

-          Ainsley x Janae is treated like a veeery minor side story instead of being a secondary plot. One of the big things in P&P is that Jane and Bingley are the prototypical pure love story and they think they are the main characters. Ainsley and Janae are not given much space to breathe in the narrative, and their relationship comes across as an afterthought instead of as one of the principal plot threads.

-          The diversion with Darius’ grandmother was also thrown in there like an afterthought. It didn’t add much to the story other than showing that Darius will side with Zuri when push comes to shove. It still felt like it took up a lot more time than it needed to if the grandmother wasn’t going to appear again at the end of the book like in the original. If it’s role to the plot was going to be minimized like that, I don’t really understand why it was included at all.

-          Charlise and Colin as a pair also felt out of place. In the original, Mr. Collins and Charlotte weren’t a major part of the story, but they contributed to the narrative that Austen wanted to tell about marriage and the different types of marriages that exist in English society at the time. Charlise and Colin don’t really have that effect on the story at all. Both characters are completely irrelevant to the plot (except Colin in the last possible moment), and they’re only really there to BE an adaptation.

-          Some of the plot beats were rearranged. I didn’t mind this so much since any number of directorial decisions are valid so long as the have a positive impact on the adaptation’s goal, but I didn’t really see how they added much.

One thing I REALLY liked was the addition of Madrina. I’m not sure if she’s a reference to something I don’t remember from the text or a completely original addition, but I thought she made for some really interesting moments. I especially loved how much connection Zuri felt with her Orisha worship and that they called her “daughter of Ochun.” I would change NOTHING about this, it was pure and really sweet.

One adaptation I WISH Zoboi had made was to have Zuri call out Darius’ hypocrisy. In P&P, the Bennetts are certainly in a different social class from Darcy and the Bingleys, but they’re ultimately still property owners in Britain. The stakes are different here. Darius keeps talking about how things in his life aren’t perfect just because he’s rich (which is absolutely true, especially when Zoboi starts getting into his experience as a black teenager surrounded by white classmates), but he is STILL not really understanding the difference in experience between himself and Zuri. The thing is, although she’s not right to judge Darius’ whole personality, she absolutely IS right about a lot of his privilege at the very beginning, but she kind of lets that go after a while. Zuri confronts Darius about his wealth many times, but to me at least it doesn’t really seem like she was able to convince him that his whole outlook on life is fundamentally different because of his wealth. Idk maybe I’m grasping at straws here. I just wish that Darius had actually talked about like . trying to persuade his parents to donate more to charity, or doing community service, or idk DISTRIBUTING THE WEALTH. Darius doesn’t change much in the story. At the beginning, he’s like “sorry im rich but lmfao you’re being mean to me!” and then at the end he is like “I am simply a rich boy, I cannot change this” which is barely a difference at all.

Anyways. I really didn’t hate this book. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did, which is why I have all these criticisms about it.

I recommend this to anyone who wants to read a thoughtprovoking discussion on class through the lens of one of history’s most overrated love stories (speaking as someone who loves P&P: yea it’s overrated). Read it for Zuri and Darius, who are totally different people from Elizabeth and Darcy. Read it for nostalgia, because even though I don’t know what it feels like to be one of 5 Afrolatine kids in Bushwick, I Felt that family affection.

3/5 for having great ideas but not such great execution.

[lindsglenne]

Hello! Pop culture and entertainment rule my life. I decided that it would be fun to do a little recap of all the media I consume each month:

December

End of the year, otherwise known as: TIME TO CRAM! Cramming in books for my reading challenge, cramming in movies before the Golden Globes.

BOOKS!

Always and Forever Lara Jean by Jenny Han♥♥♥

Finishing up the series from my reread during November. Loved it just like the rest of the series. I think Han finished up Lara Jean’s story in such a beautiful and satisfying way. ♥♥♥♥♥

  Snow in Love by Kasie West, Melissa de la Cruz, Aimee Friedman, and Nic Stone

I talked about my feelings about this book in a post about winter anthologies earlier in December, but basically I loved the stories from Kasie West and Nic Stone and didn’t care for the other two. From what I’ve read from other people, the feelings were mutual. ♥♥♥

Dumplin by Julie Murphy

I had just watched the movie and I needed much more Bo lovin’! I reread it one morning when I hadn’t slept all night. ♥♥♥♥

Pride by Ibi Zoboi 

This is a Pride & Prejudice retelling taking place in Brooklyn centered on Afro-Latina Zuri and her big family as two new boys move in across the street. I felt it was a little rushed towards the end, especially with the situation with Layla and Warren. I also think towards the end the back in forth between Zuri and Darius got a little too repetitive and they seemed to be constantly contradicting themselves. But I really love Ibi Zoboi’s writing and this gave me another reason to actually read Pride & Prejudice. ♥♥♥♥

Goodbye Perfect by Sara Barnard

My third Sara Barnard book of the year and I think my favorite? She has become an auto-buy author for me, even though I have to get her books from Book Depository. This story really looks at how far you would go for a friendship and when you realize how much you do know about someone who you think is your best friend.

  To Make Monsters Out of Girls by Amanda Lovelace

It wasn’t until Amanda Lovelace that I really started to appreciate poetry. Her voice draws me in and she has such a way with words that really paints a picture. Beautiful. ♥♥♥♥♥

    Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

After reading Courtney Summer’s book this year, Sadie, I had to read her earlier work. This book deals with sexual assault and bullying that sometimes felt a little unbelievable. The things that were being done to the main character Regina were unbearable and like no adult was around to notice anything? No parent or teacher sees damaged property or literal fights? Some of the relationships also seemed a little to over exaggerated and unbelievable.You can really tell how much Summers’s writing has evolved and improved over the years. ♥♥

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

Beautiful book. The prose was so lyrical it could even be considered on very long poem. The storyline was fragmented, jumping around from past to present, from descriptions and memories to facts. However, all of that just clicked. It all worked so well, I felt like I was in her head. And a person’s mind is far from linear. I read this because I needed something short to quickly finish my GR reading goal but I got so much more out of it. ♥♥♥♥♥

    TV!

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel

I fucking love this show. Rachel Brosnahan is an absolute joy. I think taking the show to the Catskills for a few episodes was a great change of pace and it brought us Zachary Levi as this kind of surly curmudgeon who is fascinated with Midge. I really did love them together. And the dynamic between Suzy and Midge is just perfect and we really saw so much of it during their disastrous tour. Ugh and then we have Lenny Bruce! I love the friendship he has with Midge. They could have easily tried to get them together but their friendship is really special.

MOVIES!

Dumplin‘

I did a whole post about my feelings on this movie but as a recap: loved it!

Crazy Rich Asians 

This was a welcomed rewatch and now I want to own it on DVD.

Spotlight

This was another rewatch, my parents started watching it after dinner one night and I was reminded how incredible this movie is and how great the cast work together. There was a reason this won the Best Picture Oscar.

Blackkklansman

I can’t believe this is a true story. A black man and his white partner go undercover in the Ku Klux Klan. John David Washington (Denzel Washington’s son) and Adam Driver were spectacular. Some parts were really funny and other parts where just unbelievable. It’s crazy that people truly had—still have— so much hatred in the hearts that they would treat people so horribly just because of the color of their skin or for being a different religion.

Mary Poppins Returns

One of my most anticipated movies of the year! It made me so happy, from beginning to end. When I heard Emily Blunt was going to be Mary Poppins I knew it was going to be in the right hands. There was still so much magic and wonder from the first movie that really shines through. And LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA! My baby boy! I loved his crush on Jane Banks and his amazement of everything Mary did. He was perfect, the whole movie was perfect.

Bohemian Rhapsody 

I don’t get it. People are obsessed with this movie and I just don’t get it. There were parts that were so unbelievably cringy and cliche that I started shifting in my seat. Such obvious *winking* at the audience. It’s just an incorrect telling of the history of a band set to a good soundtrack. Despite all this, even I can’t deny how great Rami Malek looked like Freddie Mercury. Too bad the writing was such trash.

Vice

The more I separate myself from this movie, the more I dislike it. The acting was great, I mean Christian Bale was incredible as Dick Chaney, as much as I hate to admit it, but there was just something about it that bothered me. I just have a hard time putting it into words.

The Favourite

Yorgos Lanthimos, you complete weirdo! Now that this movie is getting so much attention, I hope this gets people to see the director’s other work, like The Lobster. Everyone was bat-shit crazy and I never knew what was going to happen next with Queen Anne and her two ladies. This movie is definitely not for everyone.

A Simple Favor

Finally! I had been waiting to see this for such a long time and it was serious worth the wait. Blake Lively is a bad ass. She takes power suits to a whole other level. This story about two mothers is another one where I had no idea where it was going to go next. It started to get a little convoluted towards the end where they kind of needed to pick a direction and stick to it but all the performances were excellent.

Monthly Entertainment Recap: December Hello! Pop culture and entertainment rule my life. I decided that it would be fun to do a little recap of all the media I consume each month:

[americangodstalk]

Notes about S2E3: Muninn

# As stated previously, Betty is the modern form of Sleipnir, and we see its reincarnation here.

# Note that on the newspaper Wednesday reads that is an article about how the “Deep State is watching”, a foreshadowing of Argos. 

# Ibis is seen here eating pieces of the corpses he dissects (something that Jacquel did in the novel).

# Argus Panoptes is mixed up with “Argus”, the dog of Odysseus. He is also referred to as a “peepin’ Tom”.

# Argus backstory is honestly a mess... The backstory is told in an Egyptian style. Ibis says that Argus Panoptes was rebirthed by Hera as a “god of surveillance” (it is actually merely a metaphor, and it is show that Argus had other incarnations before the American god of surveillance, but many people took it for literal). And it is mentionned that he was a god of surveillance before joining the New Gods - in fact it is the fading of his worship that pushed him to an alliance. 

# Argus is confirmed to be the eye seen in season 1 through the bank’s security camera.

# Argus is described by Wednesday as akin to Mr. Wood, a being that adapted into “something else”. It is mentionned that his “many eyes faded”, and that only his memories stayed intact - in the form of the Argus archives. Argus actually appears to the world as a private surveillance company - we can note that the symbol of the company appeared on the jumbo screens of the “Media reinventing herself” scene.

# Argus is connected to Black Briar and offers its “eyes” to them. We see he uses drones as part of his many eyes. When one of said drones is taken down by Muninn (or Huginn), the Caretaker complains that the system was not updated and the GPS files are corrupted. Tech Boy answers that he told Argus to upgrade the system, and complains that he is not a “micromanagement”. However Mr. World quickly tells Tech Boy to put “your man on the line” (here Argus is identified as an agent of Tech Boy). Mr. World mentions the “broken window theory”, and insists that visiting Argus instead of texting him is “per tradition”. Mr. World has this very interesting concept that “We build the new world on the ruins of the old”. 

# Before New Media appears, Mr. World has strange hand gestures - which almost makes it look like he is “downloading” informations from Technical Boy he then injects into the screen New Media comes out from. Or am I reading too much into this? 

# New Media appears dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl (some mentionned a Harajuku vibe), with a Hello Kitty-look alike on her collar (hinting at the influence of Japanese pop culture over the Internet and the youth). In the background you can see the screen she comes out from becomes full with social media posts of New Media - one can see Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, a lot of selfies and videos... She is shown disdaining things that are “old”, and she also is seemingly aware of who, what and how her previous-self acted since she makes a reference to Media by imitating the Marilyn Monroe persona. Of course, one can see she literaly manifests emojis, emoticans and picture filters in the real world. She also refers to Argus as “the man with the fiber optic”. 

# The headquarters of the Argus company have a parabolic satellite antena. Wednesday explains that, for the “local tinfoil hats”, this building is a stronghold of the Deep State, the Illuminati and/or the Men in Black. But to the “local city council”, it is just an old warehouse filled with computers. And in Wednesday’s words, in the end “truth and lies mix up”. Again, it is mentionned that in the warehouse there are “miles” of fiber optic cables, and that “only the memories remain”. 

# Interestingly, we see Argus doesn’t just archive information, but also himself or rather his old versions. We get to see the “cast-away husks” he collected after he changed into “something else”. Here, we get to see the original Argus - the monstrous sheperd that was supposed to guard Io in the Greek mythology and was killed by Hermes. Apparently, only a sacrifice can allow one to move forward from this stage of the archive - the killing of Io. The fans have been splitting their head over what exactly the wooden tool Wednesday uses is - on top of that, it has an eye symbol engraved on it. 

# Wednesday mentions that Laura is a “revenant” and like all revenants, she is “single-minded”. Just like the archive and Argus, to move forward Laura needs change, but change only comes with a sacrifice. 

# We step away from all that to go to the Corn Palace, a strip-tease palace where live Old Iktomi, the Native American shapeshifter and spider-spirit (compared by the Jinn to Anansi). Actually it seems it was originally the “Porn Palace”, but the P neon letter “died” in such a way it looks like a C now. The Jinn describes Iktomi as “manipulating humans like puppets” and advices him to not look at him in the eyes. We also get to see another Native spirit - Gnaskineyan, “Crazy Buffalo” an evil spirit, looking here like a tall blind man. 

# The next incarnation of Argus seems to have been in Roman times - indeed, we see that Argus was at this point the caretaker of the Library of Alexandria, renowned as the greatest collection of knowledge in the world. It seems Argus is locked in a cycle of rebirths and deaths - more precisely murders. Indeed, Argus always end up killed, because he keeps repeating his original myth - guarding something for which he will die. He murder because he was the guardian of Io, burned down along with his library... Note here that the Library of Alexandria was located in Egypt - which might explain why Mr. Ibis had Argus story told through an Egyptian point of view. Also note that here, Argus had his eyes ripped out.

# Iktomi appears in a wheelchair (hinting at his decay as an Old God). He grows marijuana in the background of his Palace - it seems he is an expert at tricks and potions. I honestly don’t know why people keep saying Iktomi and Whiskey Jack are the same being when, from my researches, they apparently are not. Whiskey Jack is a Crane spirit from the cultures of Algonquian and Dene people, while Iktomi is a trickster from Lakota mythology. Yes, both are considered equivalents, but they are not the same. 

# We need an explanation on how Iktomi ended up having Wednesday’s spear. It seems Iktomi is also aware of Thoth, as he mentions he will be against the use of the spear for it is an “instrument of death”. 

# New Media of course uses hashtags in her talk. In her talks with Technical Boy she appears friendly, childish, energetic, but she has a snarky and nasty side to her hinting at her rivalry with the technology god. She explains that Tech Boy and her have “different audiences” and she mentions that she needs “bandwidth”. 

# Tech Boy threatens Argus to come back on their deal, which would have Argus “go back to trolling the Dark Web on IRC bots and Geocities pages” - so that’s what he as doing as a god of surveillance before taking a deal with the New Gods. Interestingly, we here have an incoherence - before Mr. World identified Argus as an agent of Tech Boy, but here Tech Boy has the hardest time acting as Argus boss, since the “surveillance god” says he was offered a deal by Mr. World and works only for him. 

# Odin explains that he wants Argus killed because he “plays both sides” (how? We never saw Argus help the Old Gods), and apparently to kill him Laura needs to stab the tattoo in his neck. Though one may actually see how he plays “both sides” by looking at what Argus says - he says that entropy leads to disorder and all systems evolve towards chaos, “even alliances with gods”. It seems as a result that Argus has a sort of nihilistic view - he doesn’t wish to partake in the war, or to really help one side or another because ultimately it doesn’t matter who wins this conflict. That’s why he is so rebellious against Technical Boy. Or at least it seems like it... 

# New Media, to interact with Argus, brutally switches personality - you can literaly see her change. She becomes seducing, flirty, very sexual. She visibly wants to take over Tech Boy by stealing Argus to herself. She mentions that she has “likes, shares and subscribers” and that everyone watches her, but what she wants is “someone to watch them back”. She wishes to “connect and merge” with Argus - which takes the form of a strange sexual scene. I personally believe this is a reference to “hentai” in its primal form - the typical diea of “sex with tentacles”. Indeed, in this episode New Media has a strong Japanese pop culture influence, and for those of you who don’t know, “hentai” originally was a form of pornographic art of Japanese culture, very old, and that often involved tentacles and sexuality with octopuses. However, the Internet took over this “hentai” style and turned it into a true meme, a recurring joke and a “common knowledge” and “popular trope” of Internet works - it is a literal representation of how the Internet takes back for itself forms of traditional art and turns them into something entirely new. 

Anyway, she talks about her “fusion” with Argus as a “synesgestic expanding” and a “marketing opportunity”. 

# Despite his death, Wednesday mentions that “Argus will come back”. Which hints that maybe Argus has enough belief/worship/popularity to keep living, contrary to the other Old Gods.

# It seems Bast is part of Wednesday’s plans, or will act at Wednesday’s request when she will “heal” Shadow.