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stereostevie · 3 years

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When you think of grunge, do you picture a bunch of long-haired White guys in plaid shirts, singing about teenage angst and self-loathing? Time to expand that viewpoint. Standing above them all should be Tina Bell, a tiny Black woman with an outsized stage presence, and her band, Bam Bam. It’s only recently that the 1980s phenom has begun to be recognized as a godmother of grunge.

This modern genre’s sound was, in many ways, molded by a Black woman. The reason she is mostly unknown has everything to do with racism and misogyny. Looking back at the beginnings of grunge, with the preconception that “everybody involved” was White and/or male, means ignoring the Black woman who was standing at the front of the line.

Bam Bam was formed as a punk band in 1983 in Seattle. Bell, a petite brown-skinned spitfire with more hairstyle changes than David Bowie, sang lead vocals and wrote most of the lyrics. Her then-husband Tommy Martin was on guitars (the band’s name is an acronym of their last names: Bell And Martin), Scotty “Buttocks” Ledgerwood played bass, and Matt Cameron was on drums. Cameron would leave the band in its first year and go on to fame as the drummer for Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. But he paid homage to his beginnings by wearing a Tina Bell T-shirt in a photoshoot for Pearl Jam’s 2017 Anthology: the Complete Scores book.

“For some reason a couple of skinheads are up front, calling her [the N-word] And all of the sudden, Bell grabs a microphone stand and she starts swirling it around her head like a lasso… She swung that fuckin’ thing around her head and about the fourth time, she smashed that son of a bitch.”

Bam Bam’s sound straddled the line between punk and something so new that it didn’t have a name yet. Their music combined a driving, thrumming bass line; downtuned, sludgy guitars; thrashy, pulsing drums; melodic vocals that range from sultry to haunting to screamy; and lyrics about the existential tension of trying to exist in a world not designed for you. The band’s 1984 music video for their single “Ground Zero” is low-budget, but Bell’s charisma seeps through.

“She was fucking badass. That’s all there is to it. She was amazing as a performer. I’ve only seen one White male lead singer command the stage in a similar way that Tina Bell did, and that was Bon Scott of AC/DC,” says Om Johari, who attended Bam Bam shows as a Black teenager in the ’80s and who would go on to lead all-female AC/DC cover band Hell’s Belles.

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Christina King, a Seattle scenester who was close friends with Bell from 1984 until the early ’90s, says the singer’s talent was obvious. But she believes a lot of people dismissed Bell as a gimmick.

Among those attending their shows: Future members of grunge bands like Nirvana (Kurt Cobain did a stint as a Bam Bam roadie), Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam.

“I remember one person saying to me that they didn’t get ‘the whole Black girl singer thing,’ it just didn’t fit whatever they were into,” says King. “They were too ahead of their time.”

Bam Bam came into being in an era when hundreds of underground clubs, taverns, bars, and social halls — anywhere that you could cram in a band — were within the Seattle city limits. Bam Bam played almost all of them, and often to big crowds: The Colourbox, Crocodile Lounge, Gorilla Gardens, Squid Row — just to name a few.

Among those attending their shows: Future members of history-making grunge bands like Nirvana (Kurt Cobain did a stint as a Bam Bam roadie), Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam. Not to mention all the other people, mostly White and male, who would become prime targets for music labels trying to market this new sound.

Bell “already possessed everything they were trying to attain. She had a truer rock and roll spirit than almost any of those guys in that town. Everything they tried to do, she naturally was,” says Ledgerwood, still a loyal bandmate.

One Seattle club, The Metropolis, became “like our fucking living room,” says Ledgerwood. It was also the site of an overtly racist verbal assault against Tina Bell.

“For some reason a couple of skinheads are up front, calling her [the N-word],” Ledgerwood recalls. “And all of the sudden, Bell grabs a microphone stand and she starts swirling it around her head like a lasso… She swung that fuckin’ thing around her head and about the fourth time, she smashed that son of a bitch… She nailed that fucker right in the temple of his head. Split like a melon. And the other guy next to him caught it too, they go down, and we’re like, ‘What the fuck?’”

Ledgerwood says that after going backstage for a while to regroup, Bell came back “and put out the most blistering set of our fucking career.”

This could easily be an anecdote about Bell’s power, her resilience, and willingness to fight back against oppressive forces. But it’s also a story about the cost of being a Black woman who does something that some people don’t expect or approve of.

“She’s being pulled out of her zone because somebody is acknowledging how the rest of the world can see her,” says Johari, empathizing with the star rocker. “And even to react to it by picking up a microphone and smashing someone in the face, that means that that incident cost her not only that moment it takes to get back into the song, but the whole [effects of her] action will last for weeks.

“She’ll replay that over and over and over and over again. And then the people she sees that were there when it happened, they’re gonna come up to her and they’re gonna forget everything that she’s saying, all the stuff that she had did, and they’re only going to focus on, ‘I was at that show where you knocked a dude in the head for calling you an N-word,’” Johari says. “It has nothing to do with her artistry. But it reminds her of the way in which she has to be prepared, just in case it happens again.”

King remembers Bell also felt that some of the other men in the band’s changing lineup failed to treat her as an equal partner: “She’s getting that from her own band members — what do you think audience people are like?”

A European tour in the late ’80s gained Bam Bam international fans, but ended after Bell and Martin split up, and Bell was caught in an immigration enforcement dragnet in the Netherlands.

When they returned to the Pacific Northwest, Bam Bam continued playing shows until 1990, when Bell abruptly quit as they were packing up to head to the studio in Portland, Ore.

“She had just had enough,” Ledgerwood says. “For almost eight years she had almost literally eviscerated herself for the audience.”

But that work never resulted in the national recognition they deserved.

“Grunge, whatever that means, is being identified as from your community, your colleagues, your sound that you were a participant in help shaping, and you’re not even mentioned in any of it.”

“Sometimes you need to be a little bit of an asshole to protect yourself. And Bell wasn’t much of an asshole,” Ledgerwood adds. “She was a pure-hearted person and had a really hard time believing that people couldn’t accept her over something as stupid as race.”

Bell didn’t just quit the band, she withdrew from music completely, says her son, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker TJ Martin. Not out of resentment, he adds, but perhaps to escape the painful reminders that the music she helped pioneer was now earning other bands multimillion-dollar record contracts.

“Grunge, whatever that means, is being identified as from your community, your colleagues, your sound that you were a participant in help shaping, and you’re not even mentioned in any of it,” Martin says. “I can’t even fathom what that would feel like for it to be sort of spit back in your face with such frequency.”

Ledgerwood believes Bell died of a broken heart. But when Bell died alone in her Las Vegas apartment in 2012, the official cause of death listed was cirrhosis of the liver. She had struggled with alcohol and depression. Her son says the coroner estimated her time of death as a couple weeks before her body was discovered. She was 55 years old.

The things that could have told Tina Bell’s story in her own voice are lost. Martin arrived in Las Vegas to find that the contents of his mother’s apartment — except for a DVD player, a poster, and a chair — had been thrown away. All of her writings — lyrics, poems, diaries — along with Bam Bam music, videos, and other memorabilia — went in the trash without her family even being notified.

If you think you were in Seattle in the ’80s, in the grunge scene, and you don’t remember Tina Bell and Bam Bam, you probably weren’t really fucking there.

“I couldn’t help draw a parallel between her not being respected and seen in the first chapter of her life, as the front person of a punk band, and then even in death being disrespected and not being seen for the merits of the life she lived,” says Martin.

Bell’s death is also an indictment of the way she was written out of her own story. The way grunge’s almighty gatekeepers chose to look through her instead of at her. Grunge became the domain of alienated young White men in flannel shirts, and Tina Bell didn’t fit the narrative they were trying to sell.

“Black herstory can suffer immense amounts of erasure if somebody is not brave enough to ensure that women get counted,” Johari says.

To many of those who were part of the scene at the time, the amnesia seems intentional. Ledgerwood brings up the seminal history of Seattle’s grunge era, Everybody Loves Our Town. In it, the author refers to Bam Bam as a three-piece instrumental band mainly notable because Matt Cameron was the drummer. Tina Bell isn’t even mentioned.

“How in the hell would he have a recollection of how great Bam Bam and its drummer was, and not this unbelievably beautiful woman, this firecracker, this explosive rock and roll goddess?” Ledgerwood asks. “Even if he thought she sucked, to not remember the only Black woman on the whole fuckin’ scene is — well, it’s like that old joke about the ’60s: If you think you were in Seattle in the ’80s, in the grunge scene, and you don’t remember Tina Bell and Bam Bam, you probably weren’t really fucking there.”

You can listen to more of Bam Bam’s music on this Spotify playlist. A vinyl album with the band’s songs is coming out this year on Bric-a-Brac Records.

#Alice in Chains #Bam Bam #black history #black women #black women in rock #grunge #Kurt Cobain #music #Nirvana #Pearl Jam #rock #Seattle #Soundgarden #Tina Bell #women in rock #women's history #80s

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elfwoodfae · 3 years

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Writing’s On the Wall Harrison Eo Wells x reader.

Chapter 2- Specter.

Author’s note: I am so happy and excited for this new series. I hope sincerely that you all like it and let me know your thoughts, this new series will touch on darker themes up ahead in the future. Also tumblr is being annoying with the paragraphs that’s why they are so far apart.

I made this moodboard. I looked up and searched the photos and edited them. I don’t mind if you use it.

Part 1 (here)

A strange calmness falls over him; he turns around, opening his eyes for the first time in hours. He feels exhausted, having spend the majority of the night observing you. He chastises himself, he shouldn’t have done that, there was no other option, he reminds himself, he is desperate and frustrated. The sudden reminder of your presence this early in the morning angers him, a growl escaping his mouth as he sits up, the white linens of the bed pooling around his hips as he rubs his face with one hand, turning his head and doing a double take at the door, making sure is locked, he knows he locked it last night but the paranoia your presence has brought him makes him second guess himself.

His feet touch the floor first, he stretches his arms over his head, moaning at the relief it offers, his white shirt riding up enough to expose a gleam of milky skin; his hair is a mess of black curls, the expression looking back at him thorough the mirror is annoyed, tired, he splashes water on his face, he needs to wake up. The shadow of a beard is starting to appear on his chin, along his jaw and cheeks, he closes his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck and sighting before gripping the sink in a moment of fury where he wishes he could rip it out of the wall and throw it, shattering it into pieces.

How hard could it be to get rid of you? It wouldn’t be hard at all, it would be done before you could even draw your next breath, it would bring him more pleasure than beating Allen, but the consequences would be devastating, his rational side reminded him, there was not possible way to free himself from the torture of your existence without dooming his. Had Joe not met you things would have been different but he could see as clear as day the picture waiting back for him at the lab. Barry most likely knows about you by now, he knows there will be questions once he gets there, they will be innocent in nature but they will only serve to cement your presence into his mind.

He looks at himself in the mirror, admiring every detail of his clothes before he turns around, spotting his chair exactly where he had left it last night; he walks to it, looking at it so intently as if his gaze alone could burn it, hating the thing he punishes himself with. It’s for a greater good, he remembers. Wheeling into the main area of the house he notices all the lights are still off, he takes solace onto the fact that you are still sleeping, freeing him from your presence even if he knows it will only be for a few hours. He decides to leave, not wanting to take the chance of you deciding to appear and tag along, he doesn’t think of himself capable enough to not pull a Brutus a gut you in the middle of the day. This are also the only quiet moments he will get to think, to work on his suit, he sighs, there is so little time for him to use even when he is always alone.

The room is unfamiliar to your eyes, the bed linens are soft, warm, they smell of fresh cotton and clean clothes, it takes a moment for your memories to return, reminding you where you are. The room is dark, the curtains successfully blocking any sunlight from peaking in, there is no telling the time as you look around trying to get at least a sense of how rested you are. The clock reads sometime after 8, Harrison has more likely left by now and a slight disappointment settles over you, you wanted to see the labs, maybe he will want to take you tomorrow. The bathroom is spacious, glass doors decorating the shower as a black marble vanity rest on the wall, its too big for one person, it feels too luxurious for a guest room. Your mind reminds you of a forgotten fact, Harrison was never a showoff kind of person, he liked his house to feel welcoming and cozy, completely opposite to this place.

Walking out of the room is impossible not to notice the eerie silence that accompanies you, all the lights are off but the sun seems to illuminate the whole place through the skylight. A feeling of anxiety settles in your stomach as your eyes scan the expanse of the room, a corridor shielding doors you haven’t explored yet calls to you, maybe it would be best to wait for him to come back and show you around. You look around once again, scanning the walls and every available surface, your brows furrowing once a detail settles into you that you hadn’t taken into account the previous day; there is not even a single photo of Tess or himself anywhere. Maybe he has them in his room, or perhaps in his office, you think, the anxiety of walking into his space long forgotten, replaced with curiosity.

With fast steps you make it to the first door, its unlocked. The wood doesn’t creak when you open it and you wish it had, any sound would be better than this silence. Peaking your head inside, rows of shelfs of books welcome you, a dark desk sits in the middle, random papers and pieces discarded around it, nothing you would be able to recognize. A leather chair sits behind it and for a moment you wonder what could he need it for? Scanning the surface for any photos, any memories of Tess you could find but is empty, not even a photo of her in any of the walls.

Moving along you walk to the last room, the one on the end of the hall; opening the door, the room is dark, no light peaking into it, the bedsheets are a dark grey, almost black, nothing is out of order, a smell that could only be described as a freshly shaved man and clean clothes hits you, its pleasant, fresh. There is once again no photos to be seen, you should turn around, walk back and continue with your day but curiosity gets the best of you; the walking closet is big, rows of clothes hanging, color coordinated and perfectly ironed. A mirror from floor to ceiling adorning the wall in front of you. Walking closer to his clothes you grab the sleeve of one of his expensive white shirts, wanting to feel the softness of it, you don’t recall ever seeing him wearing one. Out of impulse you bring it to your nose, clothing your eyes as the smell of his cologne hits you, causing a blush to rise up your cheeks; he probable sprays it on himself here, impregnating everything around him.

Abandoning his room you walk into the kitchen, there is so many things about him you wish you knew, things that have probably changed and things that you don’t remember. He seems so distant, so cold, so unavailable to you, it made you wonder why he had allowed you to stay with him, perhaps it was not you, it was your attachment, the last piece of her memory he had, you were like an heirloom, one he refused to throw away, and that realization made you sad.

He didn’t seem happy, he seemed lonely, used to being by himself, making you question if he had any friends, if there was anyone caring for him. The man you remembered was always accompanied, always surrounded by people, always kind, always loving; where had that man disappear? You wondered, remembering how he hadn’t even known who you were once he picked up the phone that night, but what could you expected? You had never reached out, staying like a ghost, gone and hidden from his life.

Sighting you shake your head, forcing these thoughts to abandon you, having had enough of their torment for a day, there are things after all to be do today. Her face attacks your memory, you remember her from the times Tess and Harrison had brought her over, Christina is her name, she was close to Harrison and she had been very close to Tess, urging the obligation of a visit in you the moment you had decided to visit Central City, certain guilt at staying so out of touch to both of them fills you.

Perhaps you should have called her office before hand, you think, she is a busy woman after all, but after a few name drops from her past her assistant informs you that she will see you shortly. The door opens to the conference room she asked you to wait at, her face haven’t changed, a few wrinkles here and there, but the same determine eyes started back at you.

“Y/n” she says your name, surprise lace in her voice, she seems excited to see you. She hugs you, before commenting how much you have changed since she last saw you approximately fifteen years ago.

“I am so glad you could see me, I’m so sorry I never reached out, is just after the death of Tess so many things changed.” You begin, feeling the sting of tears coming to her at the emotion of relieving those memories, at being so close to someone that knew her.

“I’m surprise Harrison didn’t mention that I was visiting, I assumed you both were close friends.” You say nonchalantly, catching in the way her face contract, she seems uncomfortable at the mention of his name.

“Well yes we were.” She says, taking in a breath before continuing.

“You see, after the accident Harrison and I fell out of touch.” She says, seemingly leaving it at that, but curiosity is a powerful feeling, pulling its strings inside of you, forcing you to ask.

“Oh, but don’t you both keep any contact at all?” The question seems innocent, you genuinely want to know. She understands that, concern for you raising in her as she decides to open up more to you.

“I’ll be honest with you y/n, after the accident Harrison changed so much, that loving, caring man disappeared, he became cold, calculating, manipulative. I understand how grieve can change a person, but he, is like he is not even the same person anymore.” She tells you and you get the feeling she is not speaking in a metaphorical way.

You decide to confide her in your worries of him, in your confusion when he didn’t know who you were, when he didn’t even recognize your name. You can see the concern raising in her eyes, at you being alone with a man neither of you know any longer, but you assure her is fine, you will be fine, how bad could he be? He wouldn’t hurt you, this was Harrison you both are talking about, even if neither of you believe it completely.

@twilightlover2007

@austarus

@harrisonwellsisdaddy

@wintersire

@reallystressedhoneybee

@fanfiction-and-fantasies

@saltykidcreation

@dumpeetintofyre

@yetanotherwells

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spencers-renaissance · 4 years

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To Look On Tempests and Not Be Shaken

Summary: In the wake of a blazing row and an empty apartment, Aaron finds Spencer's well-thumbed copy of Shakespeare's sonnets and recalls the morning after their wedding, when Spencer sat on his lap and read Sonnet 116 to him. Suddenly, everything makes sense.

Tags: angst with a happy ending, fighting and making up, married hotchreid, relationship dynamics, introspection, fluff, shakespeare/literature

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Spencer Reid

Word Count: 2.6k

Masterlist // Read on AO3

(Set in S11, AU in which Haley/Aaron divorced in S1 and Aaron/Spencer married in S4.)

It wasn’t really either of their faults: work was relentless at the moment and they hadn’t had any real time for one another in weeks. That’s not really a consolation to either Spencer or Aaron, however, when they’re in the middle of a blazing row that has them both drowning in flames of anger and passion, unable to see one another for the smoke filling their apartment.

“Aaron, this is the fourth case in a row that you’ve stayed at the office past 4 in the morning to wrap up the paperwork,” Spencer shouts, frustration rising in his chest as he tugs at his hair, already feeling far too overwhelmed. Aaron is looking as unbothered and stoic as he always does during their fights, and even though Spencer is fully aware of the emotion that will be stirring under his carefully constructed mask, it doesn’t make it any less exasperating.

“You know as well as I do that this sort of work load is completely unavoidable,” Aaron says lowly, anger finally audible in his voice. It’s not as satisfying as Spencer had hoped. “We can’t keep rehashing this same old argument. I’m the Unit Chief of a team in one of the most prestigious FBI departments. I have a responsibility.”

“You have a responsibility to me and Jack as well,” Spencer cries, fury bubbling over as he thinks of Jack and just how much he deserves. “We deserve your time just as much as fucking serial killers do.”

Aaron visibly flinches as Spencer swears, an occurrence rare enough to indicate serious emotion. “This is exactly the argument I used to have with Haley, Spencer,” he says harshly. “I refuse to have it with you, too. If you can’t handle it then maybe you should leave, just like she did, hm?”

“Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe that means there’s an element of truth in it then, Aaron?” Spencer asks, voice breaking slightly as the scale tips away from uncontained ire towards hopeless misery. He turns away from his husband, trying in vain to conceal his crumpled face and damp eyes. “And you know I would never do that to you; don’t you dare throw your unresolved issues back in my face.”

“I can’t deal with this right now,” Aaron says, voice and face hardened; Spencer can almost see the walls he’s building up again, the stubborn refusal to concede any point. “You’re not being rational. I’m going to bed.”

His stomach twists with the desperation of the situation as he says quietly to Aaron’s turned, retreating back, “What happened to never going to bed angry?” He doesn’t turn back around.

⭐️

Aaron waits in bed for Spencer to join him, fully intending to feign sleep the moment he enters the bedroom but nevertheless longing to know he’s safely tucked next to him in bed. When he hears the quiet click of the front door and checks the time to see he’s been waiting for almost 25 minutes, though, a panicked feeling fills his chest. He throws the covers back and treads out to the living room, only to be met with a decidedly empty room. If he was a more spiritual man he’d say he could still feel the angry aura of their previous argument lingering over the furniture. Really what he feels is the inevitable, empty vacuum a home without Spencer in it is bound to house.

He sits down on the sofa, just on the wrong side of too cold in his threadbare t-shirt and underwear, and buries his head in his hands. The problem is that he knows Spencer’s right. He and Jack both deserve better than this kind of life, of course they do. Jack deserves a father, Spencer deserves a husband. Admitting such a fact, however, requires humility, vulnerability, failure almost. It means telling his boss that he needs reinforcements, that he can’t continue with the 80+ hour weeks, that he’s not as strong as he used to be.

That sort of thing takes a courage that feels so far out of reach, though, and he’s left defending a place he doesn’t want to be in against people he loves more than anything in the world.

Forcing himself out of his miserable carousel of thoughts and regrets, he pulls his head from his hands and catches sight of a note on the coffee table, his name scrawled across it in Spencer’s handwriting. Immediately, his heart sinks: it’s unlikely a love letter. It’s far more likely it’s a note of good riddance, an announcement of abandonment.

Turning it over in his shaking hands, he reads:

I’ve gone to stay with Derek and Penelope for the night. I will pick up Jack from Jessica’s in the morning, on my way home. I love you. Spencer

He immediately feels guilt at ever having thought that Spencer would be cruel enough to leave him in the same way he’s been left himself one too many times. His husband has an incredible amount of love filling his heart, and he’s simply incapable of such cruelty. It’s been a fear of his for many years, that Spencer would grow unhappy but be too kind to leave, prioritising Aaron above himself. He knows it’s Haley’s fault for embedding such fear and doubt in his heart all those years ago, but he can’t help but berate himself for ever doubting Spencer.

It’s not like they’re about to break up. When he considers the situation logically, he knows that. He loves Spencer, Spencer loves him, and ultimately, he’s going to relent. He’s going to draw on whatever shreds of courage remain in his tattered and beaten soul and do whatever it takes to make his family happy, to give them what they deserve. He just has no idea how to cross the gaping chasm that stands in the way of reaching that eventuality.

He goes to place the note back down on the coffee table, but his eyes land on the book it had originally rested on: Spencer’s well-loved copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He picks it up, sort of absent-mindedly, thumbing the pages the love of his life has read countless times, holding on to the book as an emotional connection to Spencer. It’s travelled their entire relationship with them; he remembers it laying on his spare bedside table back when Spencer visited his apartment in the dead of night, terrified of anyone finding them out. He’d read the poems over and over again, long into the night. Aaron can’t help but smile at the memory of Spencer’s unique quirks.

Eventually, his absent fiddling lands him on a page Spencer’s visited time and time again. A worn leather bookmark Aaron recognises as one of Diana’s gifts marks the page titled Sonnet 116. Tired and lovelorn, he begins reading.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd. Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare

((Modern Translation, if you’d prefer:

I will not admit that interferences are possible in the union of two people In love. Love that changes when circumstances do is not love, Nor if it bends when someone tries to destroy it: Oh no! It is an eternally fixed point, Which may watch storms but is never shaken by them; it is the guiding star for ever lost ship: Its distance may be measured but its quality cannot be. Love does not fall victim to Time, though features of youth Are eventually entrapped by him; Love doesn’t change as hours and weeks race past, But endures until death. If this is wrong, and I’m proved incorrect, Then I never wrote, and no man ever loved.))

The words come rushing back to him as soon as he reads them: it had been a contender for Spencer’s chosen poem at their wedding. He’d eventually gone with I loved you first by Christina Rosetti, the perfect compliment to his own choice of I love you by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, but on their first morning as a married couple, laid in their warm and comfortable bed, Spencer had pulled out this very book and straddled Aaron’s thighs, reading it to him with an earnest expression. He remembers the air being punched out of his chest as he’d looked up at a bright-eyed 27-year-old Spencer who had been through so much already but still held all the grace and innocence he did on his first day at the BAU.

He doesn’t realise he’s crying until a tear runs down his nose and splashes on the page. What really tips him over the edge is reading Spencer’s small, chicken-scratch annotations around the poem, noting different points in their relationship, events between the two of them that prove the words of an Englishman born 400 years earlier.

It’s so easy for him to doubt how much Spencer loves him - insecurities and the trauma of his separation from Haley consume him far too often - but he’s holding the tangible, physical proof. This is undeniable, this is the evidence his doubtful, damaged heart yearns for, and the furious, raging, endlessly tumultuous waters inside him settle for the first time in weeks.

⭐️

The second Aaron’s alarm goes off at 6am, he gets started on the plan he’d formed as soon as the words of Shakespeare’s sonnet had sunk in. The email he’d composed the night before is the first thing his laptop screen displays when he powers it on, and he presses send on the uncompromising, demanding letter he’d addressed to Cruz. Finally feeling good about the entire situation, he turns the coffee maker on and gets dressed; Spencer’s an early riser but he’s determined to get to Derek and Penelope’s before he leaves.

The relief is freeing, and he feels light for the first time in a long time. He hadn’t quite realised just how much it had all been weighing on him until he’d finally found the courage to cut it free.

Armed with two coffees and Shakespeare’s sonnets, he heads downstairs to the taxi he’d ordered the night before. The city races past in front of the slow and steady sunrise, dawn marking a new chapter in Aaron’s life that he’s determined to make worth it. Slowly the thick of the city fades into the suburbs, and the taxi slows down as they wind through the maze of identical looking streets until they arrive at Derek and Penelope’s home.

He pays the taxi driver as quickly as possible and sighs in relief at the sight of Spencer’s car still on the drive as he climbs out of the vehicle, carefully balancing his two coffees, still warm in their thermal mugs. Fully aware that Derek and Penelope are absolutely going to chew him out the minute they lay eyes on him, he hesitantly rings the doorbell.

“Man, what the hell?” Derek exclaims, clearly exasperated as he swings the door open, revealing a sorry looking Aaron Hotchner standing sheepishly on his doorstep.

“I know,” Aaron replies immediately, trying to portray as much regret and understanding with his body language as is possible when holding two coffees with your husband’s most prized possession perched precariously under your arm. “I know, I fucked up, and I’m sorry. I need to see Spencer.”

Derek looks thoroughly put out just being in Aaron’s presence, but after a moment or two of hesitation he relents, opening the door wider to let him through. “Alright,” he sighs. “I’ll ask if he’s okay to see you.”

He parks Aaron in the living room and then leaves to go and find Spencer. Only seconds later, he hears the hurried click of kitten heels on the wooden floor and internally cringes; if facing Derek was bad, facing Penelope will be infinitely more painful.

“Aaron Hotchner,” Penelope shouts before she’s even fully entered the living room, “I have never, and I mean never been more disappointed in you. I don’t think you fully appreciate how lucky you are. You may be my boss but that does not mean I will not chew you out when you screw up this bad. Anyone who makes my Spencer cry is in my bad books for at least two weeks. You are in the dog house, you understand me? The dog house.”

She’s thankfully cut off from continuing her rant by Spencer’s shy, hesitant appearance at the doorway. Penelope immediately rushes over and gives him a hug, whispering something in his ear that Aaron doesn’t catch but makes Spencer giggle. She reaches up to ruffle his hair before patting his cheek fondly and casting a furious glare in Aaron’s direction as she vacates the living room.

“Hi,” Aaron says softly, breaking the silence left in the wake of Storm Penelope. “I bought you a coffee.”

“What are you doing here, Aaron?” Spencer asks, clearly a little confused but still accepting the drink.

“I know you said that you’d come home this morning but I had to come and get you,” he replies, standing up from his seat on the couch and taking a few steps forward. “Look… your note last night, it was on top of this book. And in my absent-minded cloud of misery I was looking through it and came across Sonnet 116.”

A flicker of recognition lights up Spencer’s eyes as his face softens a little at the sight of his beloved book.

“Do you remember? Climbing into my lap on our one day wedding anniversary and reading it to me? Back then I was partly distracted by the gorgeous man in my arms but last night… Spencer, the words hit home in a way I haven’t felt before. Not to mention your annotations; I felt like I was reading a journal of our love story, which I know was probably your intention all along.” He shakes his head, trying to get back on track. “I’ve been an idiot, a rotten fool, and I’m so sorry. I emailed Cruz this morning.

“You did?” Spencer looks up, surprise filling his features for a second before a small, hopeful smile takes over. “What did you say?”

“That I couldn’t continue with the workload and I needed reinforcements. That I would work the same hours for two more weeks to allow them to find an adequate solution, but after that I’ll be reducing my hours to align almost directly with yours,” he says, tentatively gauging Spencer’s reaction.

It’s made pretty easy for him when Spencer’s hesitantly hopeful smile blossoms into a wide grin, relaxing his posture as relief overtakes his body and he throws himself into Aaron’s arms. Aaron buries his face into his husband’s curls and lets himself breathe easy, feeling infinitely better with Spencer wrapped up in his arms again, just where he belongs.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” Aaron whispers as he pulls Spencer impossibly closer.

“I’m sorry, too,” Spencer sighs, nestling his face further into Aaron’s neck. “We both said things we shouldn’t have. But, you’re here now, and that’s what counts.”

“I love you, you know that?” Aaron murmurs, pulling away slightly so he can look Spencer in the eyes, trying to convey his sincerity as well as possible.

“I know,” he smiles. “I love you, too.”

“Come on, sweetheart,” Aaron says, patting Spencer’s side gently. “Let’s get out of here before Penelope comes to stab me with her high heels.”

Spencer giggles at that. “I don’t know, maybe, I’d like to see that,” he teases, digging his finger into Aaron’s ribs for good measure.

“Oh, stop it you,” Aaron smiles fondly before kissing the top of Spencer’s head, feeling happier in this moment than he’d ever thought possible again last night. Peace is finally restored in Aaron Hotchner’s heart, all thanks to one rather ancient English playwright and an academic for a husband. “Let’s go and get Jack,” he says, longing to have his whole family back together, to restore the equilibrium of a tumultuous few weeks.

Spencer leans down to kiss his shoulder as they walk out of the Morgan-Garcia household, and it’s enough to keep him warm the whole way home.

@strippersenseii @criminalmindsvibez

#hotchreid #my writing #hotchreid fic #hotchreid writing #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #aaron hotchner #spencer reid #aaron hotchner/spencer reid #aaron hotchner x spencer reid

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the-evil-authoress · 3 years

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GX Month Day 27: “The Shallow Grave”

This is Yu-Gi-Oh, and death is cheap. Will you showcase your favorite revival today, or explore a scenario with a death of a more permanent kind? Or perhaps a revival went very, very wrong...

Yubel stumbles back as Cyber End Dragon rises once more, the air around it vibrating with power as its attack points double again. 16,000.

Christina’s heart leaps into her throat. This will end the duel, and Zane’s ploy to force Yubel out of Jesse’s body has already failed. Defeating the Supreme King hadn’t killed Jaden, so defeating Yubel like this should kill Jesse either, right?

No, wait. They didn’t defeat Jaden. She and Syrus had broken through to him before his life points ever hit zero.

This attack will kill them both.

“Zane!” Christina lurches forward only to jerk to halt as Zane’s aura flickers, nearly vanishing. Cyber End fades as Power Bond’s second effect kicks in. The demon wearing Jesse’s face sighs in thinly conceded relief. She’s weak, vulnerable; it’d probably only take a small shove from Mana’s magic to cast her out that stolen body. Christina looks back at Zane’s barely flickering aura. “Can you do something?” she hisses at Mana as Bastion and Crowler prop Zane up between them.

“I- I’m not healer,” Mana stammers, fingers clenched around her staff in a white knuckled grip.

“Yubel!”

The fiend already stands before the door, one hand braced on the threshold. She only glances back long enough to smirk over Jesse’s shoulder at Jaden. “Come and get me.” The doors creak shut behind her. Neither Jaden or Christina try to follow.

“I guess...this is the end for me...” Zane says weakly, sweat soaked and breath labored.

“Nonsense! Stop that kind of talk!” Crowler’s fingers tighten on Zane’s shoulder. “You’re going to be fine! You hear me!?” Bold words but his hands are shaking, tears in his eyes. He knows, same as Christina does. She watched Echo’s life fade before her very eyes - she knows what it looks like - and just like then, there’s nothing she can do now.

Useless. Weak. Powerless.

Mana’s arms rest around Syrus’s shoulders as tears slide down his cheeks. “You’re stronger than this.”

“No… This is my limit...”

Zane wheezes. Jaden’s hand snaps out and lands on his shoulder. The shadows darken and Zane shudders, coughing violently. Screaming, Syrus lurches forward, but Jaden stands firm. Christina jerks back as Zane’s aura flares erratically before finally settling alongside deep, even breaths. He stares at the desert before him as if he’s never seen sand before in his life.

“Zane!”

“What was that?! Are you alright? Do you need water? Does anyone have water?!”

Jaden falls back as Syrus and Crowley fret over Zane. His aura remains weak but steady, no longer the dying embers from before.

“Jaden, what on Earth-” Bastion cuts off abruptly, shoulders rigid.

“Your eyes!” Christina hisses, and Jaden ducks his head, eyelids falling shut to hide the damning gold. “What did you do...?”

“I don’t know.” It’s a lie. He’s been doing that a lot lately.

They end up back at the abandoned town, taking shetter in one of the few mostly undamaged houses to let Zane rest in a proper bed. Jaden hovers on the fringes until Zane is settled, then slips away outdoors. He’s been like that ever since Bastion joined back up with those of his friends that remain - distant and withdrawn. Tania catches his attention before Bastion can try to follow the Slifer and beckons him to a secluded corner.

“It was brief, but I saw the boy command the shadows,” she murmurs only for Bastion’s ears to hear. “After what that fiend called him, I suspect this is more than coincidence.”

As does Bastion, and he intends to confirm those suspicions. He finds Jaden among the rubble, vacantly staring at the ruined town, and announces himself before closing the gap. “Jaden.”

He turns at the call of his name, expression still painfully blank before it twitches, obviously trying to be something before giving up. He looks so different from the friend Bastion is used to.

“I don’t know how to say this gently,” Bastion admits. He never thought he’d feel so trapped by his own bluntness and social inabilities. His teachers always praised him for having ‘a way with words’ and yet he still struggles to properly convey emotions. “You still have the Supreme King’s power, don’t you?”

Jaden flinches. “I am the Supreme King.” He looks away, holding his elbows. “It wasn’t some other entity that took over me; it was just me.” A pause. “I remember everything,” he whispers, eyes roaming over the broken and charged remains, and Bastion realizes his expression isn’t as quite vacant but one that Bastion has seen in the mirror on his own worst days.

Guilt and self-loathing.

Bastion never thought he’d see such an expression on someone so vibrant, and yet none of that vibrancy currently remains. He reaches forward without thought and lays a hand on Jaden’s shoulder. Thankfully, the other boy doesn’t jerk away. There’s so much he wants to say, but is it even his place? Bastion chose to stay behind. He doesn’t know what created the Supreme King or why; he only knows the boy that stands before him now is a pale shell of himself, broken and hurting, much like Bastion had been last year. Jaden was there for him then; Bastion will be here for Jaden now.

Perhaps that’s enough.

At a loss, Bastion changes the subject. “About Zane, what exactly did you do?”

With a deep breath, Jaden’s eyes fall closed. “Mystical Elf,” he says at length, voice shaking. “She taught me how to heal. I don’t know how a heart works but I...I had to do something, I couldn’t just-” He chokes up but forces the words out anyway. “-stand by and do nothing this time-”

“Well, it worked.” Both of them jump at the new voice, turning to face Christina where she stands a few paces off. “His aura’s still weak, but he’s not in danger of dying. For now.”

“You can see that?” Bastion blinks at the girl. They’ve had a few conversations about her extra perception but Christina always struggles to explain it and it feels as though no matter how much Bastion learns he’ll never fully comprehend its entire scope.

“Yeah. Aura...fades when people die.” She won’t meet his eyes, fingers worrying the frayed hems of her jacket sleeves. When her eyes do flick up, they land on Jaden. “Darkness can heal then?”

Jaden swallows. “Yeah.”

Christina looks away again. “Guess it isn’t all bad.”

#gxmonth2021 #zane truesdale #marufuji ryo #yubel #yubel jesse #yubel johan #jaden yuki #yuki judai #bastion misawa #misawa daichi #ygo gx #yugioh gx #yu gi oh gx

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doubleattitude · 4 years

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24/7 Dance Convention, Reno, NV: RESULTS

High Scores by Age:

Sidekick Solo

1st: Lauralee King-’Bigger Is Better’

2nd: Valentina Segrest-’All Is Found’

3rd: Nyla McCarthy-’Wind It Up’

4th: Nicole Soto-’Shake and Shimmy’

5th: Brecca Garcia-’Day-O’

5th: Kenlee Townsend-’Kill The Lights’

6th: Ayla Zink-’Stop’

7th: Wren Lavery-’Sweet, Sweet’

8th: Paisley Greendandl-’Worldwide Party’

9th: Marley Cliffe-’Dessert’

9th: Greta Jones-’Shake Rattle and Roll’

10th: Malia Tuaileva-’Stupid Cupid’

Mini Solo

1st: Roxie Onellion-’Drifting Down’

2nd: Isabella Kouznetsova-’Almost There’

2nd: Tiara Sherman-’And The Things Remain’

3rd: Harper Ducale-’Change Is Everything’

3rd: Winter Eberts-’Dreamlike’

3rd: Naiya Abalos-’Forces’

3rd: Cali Cassidy-’Weird People’

4th: Paizley Cogswell-’A Moment Apart’

4th: Fiona Wu-’Juliet’s Dream’

4th: Joah Moore-’Mad World’

4th: Regan Gerena-’My Boyfriend’s Back’

4th: Presley Nava-’Pure Imagination’

4th: Delilah Hewitt-’Shop Around’

5th: Peyton Nowacki-’Angels To Fly’

5th: Kylie Lawrence-’Breathe In’

5th: Tatum Brady-’Fall Creek’

5th: Everleigh Soutas-’Heartbeat’

5th: Olivia Armstrong-’Hit Me With A Hot Note’

5th: Kate Baker-’I’ll Stand By You’

5th: Aria Du-’Reddir’

5th: Elizabeth Hsu-Kwan-’Ruin’

6th: Diana Jouznetsova-’It’s In His Kiss’

6th: Hadlee Heriford-’Unbroken’

7th: Tabitha Nan-’Torn’

7th: June Newmarker-’What A Feeling’

8th: Zoey German-’On My Own’

8th: Elliana Anbardan-’Runway Walk’

8th: Joy Lin-’This Is Me’

9th: Rory Frye-’Amen’

9th: Aurora Brady-’Hit The Road Jack’

9th: Reagan Nordling-’Lemon of Pink’

10th: Khloe Kwon-’Black Pink!’

10th: Aubrey Tolentino-’Footwurkin’

10th: Holland Fraley-’Torn’

Junior Solo

1st: Gracyn French-’CoverGirl’

2nd: Laci Stoico-’Mibiso’

3rd: Makaia Roux-’Everything I Wanted’

4th: Mya Tuaileva-’Can’t Unhear’

4th: Kortlynn Rosenbaugh-’Unearthed’

5th: Hayden Olson-’Breathe’

5th: Lincoln Blakely-’What I Came to Do’

5th: Kendyl Fay-’You’ll Find A Way’

5th: Madison Ortega-’Island Song

6th: Campbell Clark-’I’ll Be Seeing You’

6th: Kylee Ngo-’Ex machina’

6th: Ciana Ciulla-’Sophrosyne’

6th: Madison Ronquillo-’White Ferrari’

6th: Rylee Young-’Lullaby’

7th: Bella Fernandez-’She Was Running’

7th: Kendall Jundt-’Awakening’

7th: Leighton Werner-’The Rose’

8th: Gigi Hipwell-’Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word’

8th: Abbi Francis-’Feel It Still’

8th: Sienna Brown-’Ballroom Blitz’

8th: Natalie Kulba-’Ascending’

8th: Stella Eberts-’Valley’

8th: Campbell Bas-’Silhouette’

9th: Anabel Alexander-’Plans We Made’

9th: Lena Chiem-’Grand Piano’

9th: Anya Inger-’Quiet Thoughts’

10th: Sunnie Pelant-’No Place Like Home’

Teen Solo

1st: Dyllan Blackburn-’Haunted’

2nd: Kaitlyn Tom-’Charity Bound’

2nd: Luke Barrett-’Eden’

2nd: Carley Thinfen-’Self Destruction’

2nd: Elle O’Donnell-’Slowly’

2nd: Imogene Elias-’Timer’

3rd: Zoe Ridge-’A Thousand Eyes’

3rd: Katy McIlwaine-’Heavy’

3rd: Cydney Heard-’I’m Going In’

3rd: Ava DeCristofaro-’Letting In’

3rd: Isabella Warfield-’Nicest Thing’

3rd: Jenna Koblin-’Ultralight Beam’

4th: Kaitlyn Ortega-’All Human Beings’

4th: Sami Sonder-’Fever’

4th: Brooklyn Sandlin-’Hollow’

4th: Siena Riga-’Naked’

4th: Mason Walker-’Touch’

5th: Ali McKeown-’All I Ask’

5th: Lilly McCollum-’Control’

5th: Raina Wu-’Looking In’

5th: Kamryn Webb-’Take Me Out’

6th: Mikaella Lopez-’Mind In Flight’

6th: Dayanara Vega-’Skin’

6th: Amanda J. Lai-’The Journey, Not The Destination’

6th: Zuzu Duchon-’Twelfth of Never’

6th: Riley Cooke-’Yellow’

6th: Aiden Boquiren-’You Will Be Found’

7th: Olivia Magni-’Moonlight Sonata’

7th: Sebastian Hsu-Kwan-’My Identity’

7th: Julissa Ortiz-’Never Knock’

7th: Felix Fulton-’Rome’

8th: Tiffany Robinson-’Human Touch’

8th: Milana Zamora-’Hypnosis’

8th: Ellyana Lor-’Rise of the Phoenix’

8th: Zoey Garcia-’Slappers’

8th: Claire Kaplan-’Suspended’

8th: Avery Reyes-’The Garden’

9th: Bella Machado-’Everybody Got Their Something’

9th: Aaliyah Wiley-’If I Ain’t Got You’

10th: Tyler Chiyuto-’Glitch’

10th: Deanna Zarkova-’Love Song’

10th: Gabbie Carrozza-’Unbroken’

Senior Solo

1st: Zach Burk-’2/21/21′

1st: Selena Hamilton-’Keep an Eye Out’

2nd: Kendall Pangburn-’Secret’

2nd: Anna Miller-’50 Ways’

2nd: Perris Amento-’Addicted to Love’

3rd: Charlotte Foldes-’Shock To Us All’

3rd: Priscilla Tom-’The Blues’

3rd: Milan Furtado-’Peace of Mind’

4th: Gianna Van Den Bosch-’Feel’

4th: Shane Higa-’Superpower’

4th: Camille Fehr-’Till Now’

5th: Kadynce Ross-’Findings’

5th: Kaylee Feierfeil-’Lasting Lover’

5th: Amanda Taylor-’What Is Happening To Me’

5th: Kacie De La Rose-’What’s Poppin’

6th: Lauren Wallingford-’Entanglement’

6th: Izzy Burton-’For All We Know’

6th: Kolton Cross-’Get Your Head In The Game?’

6th: Reese Taylor-’Pink’

6th: Madeline Underwood-’Power of Love’

7th: Mia Hurtz-’Don’t Worry About Me’

7th: John Mays-’Kash’

7th: Amara Tedford-’Stand By Me’

7th: Bianca Capanna-’Unchained Melody’

8th: Grace Glass-’All My Friends’

8th: Stella von Borck-’Hater’

9th: Christina Laude-’Black Ships’

9th: Hanna Clark-’Close To You’

9th: Galilee Nelson-’Everything I Wanted’

9th: Kaitlyn Hong-’I Try’

9th: Cassie Brown-’Ransom’

9th: Delaney Davis-’Shades of Cool’

10th: Noelani Kreider-’Fade’

10th: Alivia Elliot-’My Mistake’

10th: Makenna Bilodeaux-’Oops’

10th: Mallory Davis-’Put It On Me’

Mini Duo/Trio

1st: HYPE Dance Studio-’American Boy’

2nd: Project 21-’I Am The Cute One’

3rd: Pave School of The Arts-’Blow’

3rd: Sweaty Shelly Natomas Dance and Fitness-’Everybody Dance Now’

Junior Duo/Trio

1st: Dance Unlimited Boise-’Me and My Shadow’

2nd: Yoko’s Dance and Performing Arts Academy-’Bring You Home’

3rd: Creative Edge Dance Studio-’Chapstick’

Teen Duo/Trio

1st: DNA Dance Collective-’Tapout’

2nd: Pave School of The Arts-’Amen’

3rd: Dance Attack!-Los Gatos-’Dive In The Water’

Senior Duo/Trio

1st: Elite Studio of Dance-’Layers’

2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Woman’

3rd: Core Connection Dance Company-’Take Over’

Sidekick Group

1st: Echo School of Dance-’It’s My Party’

2nd: Echo School of Dance-’Tonight Belongs To You’

3rd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Hard Knock Life’

Mini Group

1st: Project 21-’Fan Tan Fannie’

2nd: Pave School of The Arts-’Swine’

2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’We Go To Work’

3rd: Echo School of Dance-’We Comin’

Junior Group

1st: Project 21-’Stuff Like That There’

2nd: Project 21-’No Fear But Anticipation’

3rd: Project 21-’Wegue’

Teen Group

1st: Project 21-’Girls, Girls, Girls’

2nd: Project 21-’Bring On The Men’

3rd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Stand Up’

Senior Group

1st: Project 21-’We Can, We Will’

2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’SR HH”

3rd: HYPE Dance Studio-’Silence’

Sidekick Line

1st: HYPE Dance Studio-’ABC’

2nd: HYPE Dance Studio-’We Got The Beat’

Mini Line

1st: Project 21-’Dive In The Pool’

2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Drip or Down’

2nd: Pave School of The Arts-’The List’

3rd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Candy Man’

Junior Line

1st: Project 21-’Proud Mary’

2nd: HYPE Dance Studio-’Get Up Off That Thang’

3rd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Lost On You’

Teen Line

1st: Project 21-’Post That’

2nd: HYPE Dance Studio-’Can U Feel The Beat’

2nd: Dance Attack!-Los Gatos-’Never Be Mine’

2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Nine One Six’

2nd: Project 21-’The Dictator’s Dream’

3rd: California Dance Company-’Back Alley’

Senior Line

1st: Dance Attack!-Los Gatos-’Next To You’

2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Did Something Bad’

3rd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Fergalicious’

Teen Extended Line

1st: Project 21-’Desoleil’

2nd: HYPE Dance Studio-’Pressure’

High Scores by Performance Division:

Sidekick Jazz

1st: Echo School of Dance-’Tonight Belongs To You’ 2nd: HYPE Dance Studio-’We Got The Beat’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Yankee Doodle Dandee’

Sidekick Hip-Hop

1st: Echo School of Dance-’It’s My Party’ 2nd: HYPE Dance Studio-’ABC’

Sidekick Tap

Elite Studio of Dance-’Hard Knock Life’

Mini Jazz

1st: Project 21-’Dive In The Pool’ 2nd: Pave School of The Arts-’Swine’ 3rd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Candy Man’

Mini Hip-Hop

1st: Elite Studio of Dance-’Drip or Down’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’We Go To Work’ 3rd: Echo School of Dance-’We Comin’

Mini Tap

1st: Elite Studio of Dance-’Mr. Postman’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’What You Want’ 3rd: Sweaty Shelly Natomas Dance and Fitness-’Pennies from Heaven’

Mini Contemporary

1st: Pave School of The Arts-’The List’ 2nd: Echo School of Dance-’Warrior’

Mini Lyrical

1st: Elite Studio of Dance-’Wind Beneath My Wings’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Somewhere We Know’ 3rd: Core Connection Dance Company-’Somewhere Only We Know’

Mini Musical Theatre

Project 21-’Fan Tan Fannie’

Junior Jazz

1st: Project 21-’Proud Mary’ 2nd: Project 21-’Stuff Like That There’ 3rd: HYPE Dance Studio-’You Got The Look’

Junior Ballet

Denisa’s School of Dance-’Warrior’

Junior Hip-Hop

1st: Echo School of Dance-’Swagg Out’ 2nd: HYPE Dance Studio-’Diamond Block’

Junior Tap

1st: HYPE Dance Studio-’Get Up Off That Thang’ 2nd: Sweaty Shelly Natomas Dance and Fitness-’Don’t Want To Dance Alone’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Dear Future Husband’

Junior Contemporary

1st: Project 21-’No Fear But Anticipation’ 2nd: HYPE Dance Studio-’How Will I Know’ 3rd: Sweaty Shelly Natomas Dance and Fitness-’All I Know’

Junior Specialty

1st: Project 21-’Wegue’ 2nd: Sweaty Shelly Natomas Dance and Fitness-’Night Fight’

Teen Jazz

1st: Project 21-’Bring On The Men’ 1st: Project 21-’Post That’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Diva’ 3rd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Show Me’

Teen Ballet

Elite Studio of Dance-’Counterpoise’

Teen Hip-Hop

1st: HYPE Dance Studio-’Pressure’ 2nd: HYPE Dance Studio-’Can U Feel The Beat’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Nine One Six’ 3rd: California Dance Company-’Back Alley’

Teen Tap

1st: Dance Attack!-Los Gatos-’Sir Duke’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Just Fine’ 3rd: HYPE Dance Studio-’Beggin’

Teen Contemporary

1st: Project 21-’Girls, Girls, Girls’ 1st: Project 21-’Desoleil’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Stand Up’ 3rd: Project 21-’The Dictator’s Dream’ 3rd: Dance Attack!-Los Gatos-’Never Be Mine’

Teen Lyrical

California Dance Company-’Amen’

Teen Musical Theatre

Sweaty Shelly Natomas Dance and Fitness-’Shaking The Blues Away’

Teen Ballroom

Dance Attack!-Los Gatos-’Baila’

Senior Jazz

Elite Studio of Dance-’Lip Gloss’

Senior Hip-Hop

1st: Elite Studio of Dance-’SR HH” 2nd: Core Connection Dance Company-’Bay Area’

Senior Tap

1st: Elite Studio of Dance-’Fergalicious’ 2nd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Bad Guy’

Senior Contemporary

1st: Project 21-’We Can, We Will’ 2nd: Dance Attack!-Los Gatos-’Next To You’ 3rd: Elite Studio of Dance-’Did Something Bad’

Senior Jazz

Elite Studio of Dance-’Lip Gloss’

11 O’Clock:

Sidekick

Echo School of Dance-’It’s My Party’

HYPE Dance Studio-’ABC’

Elite Studio of Dance-’Hard Knock Life’

Mini

Project 21-’Dive In The Pool’

Pave School of The Arts-’The List’

Elite Studio of Dance-’Drip or Down’

Junior

Sweaty Shelly Natomas Dance and Fitness-’All I Know’

HYPE Dance Studio-’Get Up Off That Thang’

Project 21-’Proud Mary’

Elite Studio of Dance-’Lost On You’

Teen

Dance Attack!-Los Gatos-’Never Be Mine’

Echo School of Dance-’Da Girl Gang’

California Dance Company-’Back Alley’

HYPE Dance Studio-’Pressure’

Elite Studio of Dance-’Stand Up’

Project 21-’Girls, Girls, Girls’

Senior

Dance Attack!-Los Gatos-’Next To You’

Elite Studio of Dance-’Did Something Bad’

HYPE Dance Studio-’Silence’

Echo School of Dance-’I Lost A Friend’

Core Connection Dance Company-’Heartless’

Project 21-’We Can, We Will’

Studio Showcase:

Sweaty Shelly Natomas Dance and Fitness-’Untouchable’

Project 21-’Girls, Girls, Girls’

HYPE Dance Studio-’Pressure’

Elite Studio of Dance-’Stand Up’

Echo School of Dance-’I Lost A Friend’

Core Connection Dance Company-’Heartless’

#reno #nevada #24/7 #dance #2021

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being-worthy · 4 years

Text

Saturday Home Cinema: Mulan (2020) - A very honest review!

I just had to write this review because Mulan is one of my heroes and I’m a huge fan of the original Disney Mulan (1998). I saw the movie for the first time as a kid when I had trouble feeling integrated and was daily bullied at school. I re-watched it again and again and again until I was able to learn by heart the script and all the songs in German (and later on, even in English). I just saw so much of myself in Mulan (maybe except for the fact that I’m not as beautiful or witty as she is). I too always felt out of place and I couldn’t be my true self and I was never very ladylike either. I also looked up at her and saw her as a role model. Sometimes I thought that if I stared long enough at my reflection in the mirror, it’d show me my true self - and I’m still waiting to this day… Disney’s 1998 version of Mulan was and still is my favourite Disney movie.

> SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!! <

The best thing about this movie is the soundtrack, especially at the end. Christina Aguilera was the right choice to sing Reflection and Loyal Brave True. The goosebumps her voice gives, I can’t even describe how extraordinary her voice is. In the end credits, you can listen to the English version of Reflection as well as the Chinese version (sadly sung by Liu Yifei ¬¬). It’s worth to watch the end credits and listen to the songs.

*My suggestion: Stop whatever you’re doing. Put on some headphones (even better if they’re noise-cancelling), close your eyes, play the song Reflection song (and Loyal Brave True if you feel like it) by Christina Aguilera, no distractions no interruptions, forget about everything and everyone, let the song flow through your ears, mind, heart, body, and soul, and you will feel like you’re Mulan, especially when the drumming gets louder, it’s epically epic! (Sorry for the redundancy but it IS a remarkable song!)

I welcome the idea of wanting to take a classic and do something new, something fresh with it but humanity could’ve gone without this movie and they shouldn’t ask for $35 to watch it on Disney+ and sometimes a classical doesn’t need to be redone. Additionally, I can’t entirely understand what’s going on these past years not only with Disney but Hollywood and all other big movie production companies. It’s either remake of this classic or a 2nd/3rd sequel of a movie that doesn’t actually require a sequel but it’s still done anyway. Why even bother wasting big amounts of money to create a disaster? You’re better of donating that money to charity (or to me lol). The main thing that Disney has been doing lately are remakes of many of our childhood movies Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, The Jungle Book, The Lion King, among others, and now Mulan. Some have a few good parts in them but they still can’t and never will compare to the original. Why is there no originality and innovation anymore? Have they run out of ideas? Furthermore, let’s be honest people will always compare the remake (either consciously or unconsciously) with the original because there are less than a dozen movies where the remake either was (almost) as good as the original much less better than the original. The movie Mulan (2020) had a massive budget and is the most expensive film made by a female director (Niki Caro), yet how they made it, the battle sequences and CGI effects, etc. they’re all crappy.

Budgets of all Mulan interpretations:

Mulan (1998) - $90 million > Directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. Made $304.3 million in the box office

Hua Mulan (2009) - $12 million > Directed by Jingle Ma. Sadly, made only $1.8 million in the box office. It deserved more love!

Mulan (2020) - $200 million(!!) > All that budget was a waste!

I’ve seen all three versions. The 1998 version is for everybody and it’s funny and you feel with the characters and the film. Let’s be honest, the granny is one of the best characters, most of us have or had a granny like that in our lives. The 2nd one is a 2-hour long movie, a more mature adaption which illustrates the ugly harsh truth about war and the loss and death it brings with it and that there’s nothing funny or cool about it. This one is not suitable for children. You feel with the characters and their sacrifices and they also develop along the movie. I can only recommend to watch this version if you haven’t. And the latest one is a disgrace.

I’m a bit confused as to what the message of the movie is. On one hand, it tells you shouldn’t hide your inner beauty, you shouldn’t hide who you are, you shouldn’t hide your abilities, you shouldn’t try to hide who you truly are in order to conform to what the world/society wants you to be or who you should be, let your true self shine and be yourself and don’t allow anyone to tell you that you’re inferior just because they think/say you are. This is something powerful and admirable but, on the other hand, at the same time, it tells you that you can only do that if you are the chosen one. Let me explain... In the beginning, we see Mulan as a little girl chasing a chicken up to the roofs of the houses at the village where she lives. Basically, she’s born as a one-woman army (almost deus ex machina) and doesn’t require any further training which is total and utter rubbish. She has all the skills because of her powerful chi (vital life force energy) but has to underplay them because it’s not very ladylike to behave like she wants to and she still underplays them when she trains with the soldiers so as to keep a low profile. Her being so powerful from the beginning makes me feel alienated from her and I can’t empathise with her. It’s also not very realistic, nobody is born with their abilities fully developed. For example, even Bruce Lee had to train hard to get where he got and he wasn’t the only one.

The original version shows us a regular girl, at times clumsy (which is a cliché but we still liked it) and when she’s confronted with new situations, she analyses them and finds a quick canny solution to them. She also has to train her body and mind to get to the peak of her potential and accomplish what nobody else could in her time, and here the character is done from the start of the movie and the only thing she has to do is choose not to hide her chi anymore. This tells us that you don’t have to work hard to achieve your dreams whereas in reality you actually do have to work your butt off!

I’m not a fan of the leading actress they chose for Mulan, aka Liu Yifei, not only because she’s a police brutality supporter according to her controversial tweets a while back - this already makes her unworthy to portray Mulan who is the complete opposite - but also because she didn’t do a good job at depicting this great role. Mulan is a role model for every girl and woman and it’s a massive contradiction if a woman who agrees to the atrocious police methods impersonates her role. What message do we send out to every girl out in the world? In her acting she’s this blank and hollow person through the movie and transmits no emotion whatsoever - not even when she cries. This also makes it difficult for me to identify myself with her. She’s this wooden plank, she is and stays a blank canvas through the whole movie with no growth in her character and it’s frustrating having to see this because the character of Mulan isn’t at all like this. Mulan experiences many emotions from the moment where she makes the decision to enlist so her father doesn’t have to or when she experiences the loss of her comrades or has to kill someone for the first time, etc. she suffers along her journey and all this changes her but you see nothing of it in Liu Yifei’s Mulan.

In the Disney version, there are some crucial moments that are missing in the new one. For instance, the most crucial one is the moment where Mulan decides to go to war. If you remember the animation one, she’s sitting in the rain by the dragon statue and at that moment makes a decision that could kill her or worse bring dishonour to herself and her entire family (including ancestors) which was far worse than death during that time! She gets up, marches to the altar of her ancestors, takes her father’s sword and cuts her hair (I know men had long hair back then too but still), puts on the armour and goes to war. All this while being accompanied by an epic song written by Jerry Goldsmith called Haircut. This is one of the most intense and dramatic moments in the movie and in all Disney movies! You can understand and feel the importance of this decision for the character and you feel the weight of it! In the 2020 one, she takes the sword and the next shot presents her already with the armour on - there’s zero dramatic impact here. That was a great missed opportunity!! By omitting important scenes and their dramatic impacts like this one that are essential to the story and to the characters, to their development and their journey throughout the story and you really need to rely on the original from 1998 to have this context.

The battle scenes are like many modern movies: lots of action, lots of moving (too fast-moving), a few amazing fighting moves and fights but not showed entirely. I at least expected some similar quality, like we’ve seen in films such as Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Tiger & Dragon (2020) to name a few. Sadly, these movies had better fight scenes quality than Mulan which were filmed in high frame rate but over-edited with action that is negatively frenetic and have artificial CGI effects (even the CGI effects in Independence Day were better - I’m watching the movie while writing this). We’re in the 21st century with great advances in technology and movies are given big budgets (particularly Hollywood films), yet despite all this, most movies end up with CGI effects from another era. How come this happens over and over? In this one, we see people running too fast, horses running too fast, and they’re all like a big mass of headless chickens and you don’t know exactly what is happening where. All this fast running, the constant cut and paste of scenes looks all too modern and doesn’t fit the current time period of the movie and it surely doesn’t transmit the way of fighting of that period.

Moreover, we get lots of flashback-lesson learning scenes throughout the movie. This is another fashion in movies lately, playing the film in the present time while at the same time jumping back and forth between flashbacks. It spends a good portion of the movie with these flashbacks. This is not a big issue and admirable per se but when these scenes are insignificant because they’re glossed over and transmitted without zilch emotion, then why even bother to include them in the first instance?

As a last comment, I like the fact that they hired Chinese actors and actresses for the movie (although I don’t know why it had to be in English, I’d have preferred it to be in Chinese, it’s not like we’re allergic to subtitles - unless they’re not done properly), some of them of renewed name, like Gong Li, Rosalind Chao (I loved her in The Joy Luck Club), Jet Li, Donnie Yen (legendary Ip Man), Jason Scott Lee (saw him in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story), Tzi Ma but they won’t be able to save the movie even with a great cast like this one.

#disney mulan #disney mulan 2020 #mulan live action #saturday home cinema #boycott mulan #don't watch it #don't watch mulan #don't watch mulan 2020 #disney should be ashamed #honest review #a very honest review #film night #movie night

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heychangbin · 4 years

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The Camping Trip ║ Part One

Summary: An offhanded admission turns into a weekend trip.

Wordcount: 5228

Warnings: There be smut ahead, Billy working with his hands, that warrants a warning too, right??

A/N: we’re doing parts for this one too y’all, the entire thing came to be over 16k and I’m not about to do that to anyone. I’ll post the next part in the next few days. tag list at the bottom.

It was one of those rare weekends where everyone had a free Saturday night, there were no stuffy business dinners, overseas conference calls, no late night researching of New York City’s penal code, or the chasing leads for The Bulletins next exposé, that's how you found yourself in your favorite comfortable jeans and t-shirt, sitting beside Billy in one of the tables that lined the wall of Josie’s bar, pushing sleeves of his olive green henley to his elbows as he gesticulated while he, Frank, Curt, Matt and Foggy were in the midst of fleshing out a new and improved screening process of new recruits at Anvil so as not to fall into the mistake of Iron & Steel, a rival company who, due to a too lax vetting and screening process, recruited a soldier with PTSD and was now looking at several lawsuits for a training exercise that went wrong.

After they had hashed out the outline for implementing new training protocols, rescreening the personnel and recruits, and possible mandatory sessions with Curt and his veterans group you turned over to the TV behind the bar, watching the two men in the ring deal blow after blow while you wait for Karen to return with the next round of drinks and continue your own conversation with the blonde.

It was just under two minutes into the first round when one of the fighters, a well built man with fair skin and reddish brown hair, wearing black and green trunks, swung his right arm, landing a green glove covered fist to the underside of his opponent’s, a dark skinned man with closely cropped black hair, wearing ((black trucks with a red stripe going down the side, jaw, making him stumble sideways along the ropes. He was on his way down when the familiar logo of WHiH New York flashed across the screen, making everyone in the bar, you included, curse and groan at the interruption.

It was after the news anchor, a strawberry blonde in a conservative scoop navy blue dress, recited the scripted greeting and a banner appeared at the bottom of the screen reading, “dead body found at Thatcher Park Trail.” that the bar quieted down enough for you to hear what she was saying.

"Earlier today, what was supposed to be a relaxing stroll through the woods for a young woman and her dog quickly turned to the things of nightmares when she discovered the body of a dead man, who we now know is Senator Silverstein.” a picture of a man in his early 60s, dressed in a charcoal suit, white shirt and bright red tie, with light brown hair and a generous dusting of white throughout his head, thin lips and his features lined heavily by the years that had passed him by, swept in from the right, “Jeff Santoro is at the scene with more on this story.”

The video cut to a man dressed in a dark windbreaker, looking directly at the camera, giving a few small nods, holding a bulky microphone in his right hand, the WHiH logo stamped on the cube under the foam cover at the top.

“Thank you Christina,” the man said into the bulbous cover, the video on the screen splitting down the middle, on the left, the reporter read off the screen of his phone, reciting what the senators last day’s schedule had been, while on the right, various looping clips of Senator Silverstein talking with the press, walking out of The New York Capitol building, sitting in a plush arms chair deep in thought, and of him having lunch at some restaurant with a portion of his staff.

After having finished, he looked up from the screen of his phone, looking directly at the camera once more and saying,

“Christina, everyone in the news station and especially to our viewers at home, the following is graphic in nature, we strongly suggest that our young and more sensitive viewers turn off their screens.”

There was a brief pause, then a nod and he raised his phone again and began reading from the screen. As he read there is a mixture of murmured phrases that range from “holy shit” to “about damn time” throughout the bar as Karen pushed her way through the tightly packed bodies, bottlenecks of the next round of drinks tucked securely between her slender fingers.

“Can you believe that?” she asked, eyes wide as she settled the bottles at the center of the table except for one, bringing the dark brown bottle up to her lips and taking a swig, turning back around, eyes locking on the TV screen.

“Yeah,” you said, taking one of the bottles for yourself, “kinda makes me feel relieved that I’ve never been camping.”

Frank spluttered mid drink, a violent cough wracking his burly body in the seat across from yours, fighting not to choke on the liquid going down the wrong pipe.

"You gotta be shittin' me," he said, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, "you've never been camping?" Frank asked incredulously.

"It's not that weird Frank." You said, picking up your bottle and taking a measured swig.

"It's kinda weird." Billy chimed from beside you, long fingers slowly turning the dark green bottle in front of him.

"It really isn't,” you argue, annoyance creeping into the edges of your tone, “I bet Matt's never been camping either."

"Red's blind, he doesn't count." Frank said matter of factly, waving off your comment like someone would brush away an annoying fly.

"Wasn't born blind guys, I went camping with my dad all the time before it,” Matt paused, tapping the side of his red tinted glasses with the lip of the bottle in his hand, "happened.”

You looked across the table at him and glowered, it didn't matter that he couldn't see you, you were sure that he could feel it...or was at least picking up on it with his enhanced senses.

It was then that Karen put forth the idea of a group camping trip. As they discussed when it would be a good time and what state park to go to, Billy wrapped an arm around your shoulders and pulled you closer to his side, kissing the top of your head and whispering against your temple,

"Don't worry, I won't let any bears eat you, only I get to do that."

"Gee, thanks." You say, feeling a wave of warmth spread through your body at the image and sensations his words conjure up, you bring the bottle in your hands to your lips, taking another swing of your drink to hide the creeping blush you can feel on your face, making him laugh as the others continue talking enthusiastically about who had and would bring what, things that had to be packed, things that needed to be bought and most importantly, how long the trip would be.

You turned back to the TV behind the bar, tuning them out just as the special bulletin ended, the broadcast signal going back to the fight, a slow motion shot of the man in black and green trucks landing a devastating blow on his opponent, making his head snap to the right, the rest of his body following the motion as his skin rippled with the force of the hit and going down. The bar coming to life with a roar as the hit was replayed, a banner scrolling at the bottom of the screen that read “due to the interruption, the fight will be available on the HBO website” as an announcer came into the ring, a microphone lowering from the ceiling and in a booming voice announced the winner by knockout in the third round, making the man in the black and green trucks raise his arms in victory as the people in the arena and in the bar around you roared to life again.

In the days that followed, the group text was full of pictures of tents, sleeping bags, camping chairs, portable power stations courtesy of Billy, who had four of them lined up with a caption that read, “I got us covered on electricity” and countless other stuff. Between the pictures were questions for possible dates, it was Karen the one that suggested the upcoming holiday, everyone readily agreeing.

You groaned internally, you had been looking forward to those four glorious days to destress with Billy, were secretly hoping that he’d have some kind of overseas conference call that he could not postpone, but when his text came through a few minutes later saying that it worked for him, your hopes were dashed, sending your own reply.

At the end of the following week, after lists were checked twice and everything was carefully packed, you all piled into two SUV's, Billy, you, and Curtis in one, Frank, Karen, Foggy and Matt in the other and were headed to Watkins Glen State Park, a drive that was just a little over four hours, not something you were looking forward to but Billy and Curt assured you there would be stops along the way for everyone to stretch their legs. So far it wasn't bad, the change from city to greenery was soothing, the soft music spilling from the car speakers helping a great deal as were the stories Billy and Curt were recounting of their own trips in the past, Curtis from when he was a kid with his dad and Billy from his time in the military,

“Billy, I don’t think that counts as camping.” you said, turning to him and looking at his profile.

“‘course it does,” Billy argued, taking his hand off the wheel to push his aviators up the bridge of his nose from where they had ridden down. “It’s outta the city, deserted, limited access to supplies. It’s the same thing, just that we ran the risk of an air strike...so maybe a more extreme version of camping.”

You rolled your eyes at him, his laughter filling the small space as he no doubt caught the action out of the corner of his eye.

“Yeah but everyone runs that risk now, what with giant holes appearing in the sky and whatnot.” Curt said from the back seat.

You moved the conversation into lighter topics, and after a quick rest stop Billy maneuvered the SUV through the twists and turns of the park, pulling into the site a while later and killing the engine, the second SUV pulling up just a beat later. It was a flurry of movement after that, trunks were opened and unloaded, you pulled on one of the smaller coolers while Billy tugged on a couple of duffles, hooking the straps to his shoulders and walked off to the northern edge of the site as you gripped both handles of the cooler and carried it over to where Frank and Matt were bringing down the picnic table that was leaning up against one of the more sturdy looking trees.

You were on your way back to bring out another cooler when you saw Billy crouched down on the ground, strong hands pulling and tugging out the large and rolled up tent, followed by a smaller bag. He pulled on the drawstrings that held it close, turned on the balls of his feet and slid out various poles beside the rolled up canvas. You shifted midstep, walking to where Billy was separating the hollow aluminum rods by size and shape.

“Need some help there Lieutenant ?” you asked coming to a stop behind him. Billy looked over his shoulder, the right side of his lip lifting, pushing the apple of his cheek up, making the corner of his eye crinkle in your favorite uneven smile, giving you a quick nod.

“Sure, I could use a hand.” he said, grabbing the rolled up tent, setting it on it’s side in front of him, pulling and gathering the ropes that were holding it close and stuffing them in the back pocket of his loose pants, and giving it a push, the curled up edged flopping open.

“Whaddya need me to do?”

Billy flipped open the folded flaps, his thumb running over a black stripe that ran up the middle “Grab that end, will you?” he pointed a long finger at the opposite end

You walked around him, pushing the sleeves of your plaid overshirt up, the soft cotton bunching at the crook of your elbows and bent down to take the edge, looking over at Billy when you stood back up.

“Gonna turn it so that you’re standing where I am”

You nodded, taking a step in the opposite direction that Billy went, setting it down when you had switched places, then pulled the folded edges at the center, spreading the four corners out until the tent was laying flat on the ground. He walked over to where he had all the poles laid out and picked up a small mallet and a bunch of stakes and went around the tent, pulling the edges, sticking the stake through the grommet and hammering it down, the muscles in his arm bulging and tensing as he brought the mallet up and down.

“Y’know, this’d go much faster if you helped.” you could hear the humor in his voice, and you shrugged,

“There’s only one mallet and I'm enjoying the view too much to ask Frank or Curt if they’ll let me borrow theirs. It’s not every day I get to see you do manual labor.”

“That doing it for you?” he asked, eyes focused on the hook of the spike as he brought the mallet down a little harder than necessary, the muscle in his forearm shifting and tensing, cutting a line that ran along the bottom of his arm all the way to his elbow, looking up when the spike was buried all the way into the ground. Sweat beading across his forehead and down his temples, dampening the roots of his dark hair, a few drops running down and disappearing into the top of his beard.

Warmth that had very little to do with the sun that filtered through the canopy of trees spread throughout your body, as you watched Billy work, Yeah, it is.

He smirks at your silence, huffing out a laugh as he shakes his head and moves along the side of the tent to the next grommet, threading the spike through it and hammering it to the ground.

“Learn something new everyday.” amusement colored his voice as he pushed himself up and moved to the next spot.

It wasn’t long until he was hammering the last spike down, completely securing the bottom of the tent to the ground he braced his hands on his bent knees and pushed himself up, left hand reaching for the brim of his hat and pushing it up and off his head, running his free hand through the damp long strand of hair.

“Ready to get back to work?” he asked, taking the edge of his shirt and using it to wipe across his forehead, down his nose, and over his top lip.

“I mean I guess, since the show is over and all.”

The chuckle he let out was full and hearty as he placed the faded cap back oh his head and walked over to where you were standing,

“I can give you a private show later.” his voice was pitched low, his breath fanning against your ear making a shiver run up your back, fanning the flames of the simmering warmth that watching him work had sparked.

“Imma hold you to that Lieutenant.” you say, stepping closer to him, his hands instantly coming to rest on your waist, bringing you that much closer, your arms circling his neck, the fingers of your right hand stroking the small hair at the nape of his neck as his fingers find their way under the edge of your shirt, gripping the skin there. The calluses that never seem to completely fade from his fingers press against the soft skin of your waist, making you feel hotter as his grip tightens, his tongue coming out to run across his bottom lip before he pulls it into his mouth, teeth digging into the ample flesh, you press yourself forward, lifting yourself onto the balls of your feet, your chest pressing against his, your head angled to the side ready to slot your lips over his, you feel his hands tense and shift, you’re prepared to hoist yourself up when he wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you up, instead you feel him ease back.

“Let's finish getting this thing up so we can take a break.” he says, giving your skin a final squeeze before stepping away and walking to where the poles are on the ground, you let out a huff and shake your head, muttering “fucking tease”

You go around the tent setting up the poles, you’re on the last corner when you begin to feel beads of sweat gathering at your temples, over your top lip, and at the nape of your neck, you gathered your hair at the crown of your head, twirled the silky strands between your fingers and twist it into a bun, hooking your finger between your wrist and the elastic band that was there and quickly pulled your hair through it twice. You take the last pole and thread it through the two hoops on the tent wall and secure the bottom end to the ground, you take a step back and look at what you helped build, fully erect, it’s big, way bigger than what two people need, could probably fit everyone in this thing.

You walk around the tent, dusting your hands off ready to grab a beer for a job well done when you see Billy walking over, a bundle of ropes and more spikes in his hands.

“Thought we were done?”

“Almost, just gotta secure the poles to the ground using these” he said, holding up the bundle of ropes and stakes as he walked past you to the nearest corner of the tent, you turn on your heel and follow behind him.

“Gonna do a slip knot, hook it to the top of the pole, drop a stake and move to the next one. While you’re doin’ that, I’ll fasten them to the ground. Should be done in no time.” he hands you the ropes and stakes and turns to get to work, bringing the mallet out, angling the stake on the ground and starts to steadily pound on the bent top.

You drape the ropes over your shoulder, stuff the spikes into your back pocket and walk over to the next pole over. You pull one of the ropes free, taking the end and wrapping it generously over your index and middle fingers of your left hand, looping the tail over the standing end with your right, then reaching your left fingers through the loop, you take the standing end and pull it through until the knot tightens, making sure to pinch the tail between your index and thumb of your right hand. You hook the loop on the top of the pole, take a stake out from your pocket and drop it, move to the next pole and repeat the process.

You're more than halfway done when you look over at Billy hammering away at one of the spikes, looping the rope under the hook and pulling it until it’s taunt, muscles bulging and shifting with every twist of his hands, then clamping the hook at the end of the rope on itself and moving to the next pole.

Your mind goes back to the words he had said when he had caught you staring at him, wondering how much stock to put to his earlier statement, from experience, you knew Billy was a man of his word, but the tent you were finishing up could easily fit him, yourself and at least two other people.

Maybe we'll bunk with Frank and Karen, that happens on camping trips, right? You hook the knot you've just finished to the pole in front of you.

“So,” you say, plucking another rope from the bunch on your shoulder and start looping it over your fingers, “we gonna be sharing this place with the others?”

“If you’re cruisin for an orgy--”

“Jesus Christ Billy!!” you cry out, eyes going wide, head whipping to the side to look at him. You roll your eyes at the way his shoulders are shaking with laughter as he takes a break from hammering down the stake.

“Just askin’ ‘cause this thing looks like it’ll fit more than just the two of us.” you pull the rope through the loop a little harder than necessary and hook it over the pole, pulling the next rope free and start working on tying the knot, his laughter following you as you stop at the next pole.

You hear some shifting behind you as you tighten the knot, reaching your hand out to hook the loop over the knob at the top of the pole when you feel Billy press up behind you, his arms wrapping around your waist and bringing you against his chest.

“Just gonna be us in here.” his voice is a soft rumble against the side of your face as he trails the tip of his nose from the apple of your cheek to your temple, “‘nd, just in case you were wonderin’,” he continues, lips brushing the shell of your ear, voice pitched low, “I don't share what’s mine.”

You feel your throat go dry and your body go warm at the low possessive growl at the edge of his words, your knees turn to jelly and you suppress a moan as blunt teeth sink into the juncture of you neck and shoulder, it's just on the side of too much when he laves his tongue over the bite.

“Thought never crossed my mind,” your voice comes out breathy, making Billy chuckle into the space behind your ear, his arms squeezing you just a fraction tighter, making your head fall back against his shoulder. After a few beats you clear your throat a couple of times and squeeze his wrist, “Should probably get back to it, I don't wanna have to sleep with one eye open thinking half this thing is gonna fall in on us.”

"Coulda stayed like this for a bit longer" he hums, his arms loosening their hold on you.

Me too Billy, me too.

You’re hooking the loop of your guide rope on the last corner, already pulling and working on the knot of the next one when Frank suggests you go and gather some wood to get a fire going.

"The hell did we buy those bundles of wood for if you weren’t gonna use them to build a fire?" You asked over your shoulder, pulling the rope through the loop in your hands and hooking it to the pole in front of you,

"It's part of the experience" He says too cheerfully for your taste as he walks over to where you are. You look over at Billy who shrugs, adjusting the guide rope, making sure it’s taunt. Stepping up to you and taking the remaining ropes from your shoulder and draping them over his own with a, “I can finish this up on my own,” holding out his hands for the stakes, which you hand over reluctantly.

"Anythin’ on the floor and dry is fine!" Were Frank's last words to you as you walked off past the treeline that was around your site.

You wandered around picking up sticks that looked dead and dry, constantly looking over your shoulder to make sure there wasn't some wild animal about to pounce on you. You had a decent pile of wood under your arm when you stopped cursing Frank to the moon and back. The scenery was nice, the intermittent sound of birds singing was soothing and the odd sighting of squirrels and chipmunks made you simultaneously smile and curse yourself for leaving your phone behind.

You lost track of time as you kept walking aimlessly, bending to pick up another stick to add to the pile you had going when you felt a pair of hands snake themselves around your waist. You didn't need to turn around to know who it was, you'd recognize the feel of those hands anywhere, (the rougher texture of his right index finger where the pulling of a trigger had made it calloused) you leaned back into the strong chest you had woken on that morning, letting out a pleasant and content hum as his face buried itself in the crook of your neck, soft lips leaving a trail of kisses that went up your jaw and behind your ear, to that spot that turned you into putty in his hands.

"What are you doing here Billy?" You asked, your voice coming out a little breathless

"Came to check on you, make sure you didn't wander off too far." He said, against the shell of your ear, giving your lobe a playful nip, the kind that always had you moaning and shuddering in his arms.

"I'm not having wilderness sex with you Billy" you meant for your voice to come out stern but it came out breathy, making him smile against the shell of your ear.

"Thought never crossed my mind." He murmured, hands going tighter around you as he kissed his way back down to your shoulder, sucking and biting the skin of your neck, and grinding his crotch against your ass.

"Liar, bet it's all you've--” a moan interrupted you as his teeth sunk into the soft skin on the crook of your neck, your hips shifting against his hardening crotch of their own accord, “you’ve been thinking about ever since Karen brought up the idea of a camping trip." You said, hand going to his head and burying itself in the longer strands of his hair, your nails dragging against his scalp. His moan was muffled by the skin he was teasing and sucking on, the grinding of his hips was firmer, their shifting full of purpose, and despite not wanting to give the local wildlife or some stray camper a show, you couldn’t deny that Billy was gonna get his way.

You dropped the pile of sticks under your arm and turned, your arms going around his neck and bringing him down into a kiss, he gripped and walked you back until your back was pressed against a nearby tree, his hand caresses the side of your neck, thumb guiding your head to the side so he can kiss and suck along your neck.

His hand moves down, pushing and squeezing your breast up making you hum into his mouth. He slots his thigh between your legs and you shift against it, you’ve worked yourself up but still need more to help you over the edge,

“Billy…” the single word is a desperate plea for more, for him to touch you were you need him and Billy wastes no time in doing so.

His long finger tug and pull at the button and fly of your jeans with practiced ease, hand slipping past the elastic of your underwear and between your folds. The pad of his middle finger circles your clit with a feather light touch that has your shifting downward. Your hand grip his hair and you mutter out a

“Stop playing around Russo, if you’re gonna fuck me—!!” your words die a swift death as his fingers fully press onto your clit as he flicks it about. His fingers work you relentlessly and you come screaming his name. He keeps circling your clit, each stroke sending shivers through you, making you moan and wince slightly as you quickly became overstimulated.

He slowly pulls his hand from between your legs, slotting his lips over yours, his lips moving slow enough for you to catch your breath. When you have your bearing about you, you pull back, placing kisses to the corner of his mouth, his jaw, his chin, and work yourself further down, placing one on his adams apple, another at the hollow of his throat, you kiss his chest through his shirt as our hands work on loosening his jeans and pushing his boxer briefs down, freeing his length.

You lower yourself down until your level with the tip of his member, have half a mind to drag this out just a few seconds more, but when you look up at him through your eyelashes, see the way his eyes were blown, a barely there ring of dark brown around the pupil, making his eyes look completely black, you couldn’t help yourself. You continued to stare into his eyes, licking your lips before taking him into your mouth, swallowing a portion of his length and pulling back again, repeating the process until you’ve taken as much as you can of him, leaving the rest to pump with your hand.

Above you, Billy sings a symphony of steady curses interrupted by the odd moan and groan, it wasn’t long before his hands tightened in your hair with a breathless,

“...I’m close”

Making you double your efforts, and after a few hard sucks he was crying out your name, spilling into the back of your throat. You swallowed everything he gave you before tucking him back into his briefs and getting up off the floor.

He was breathing hard as he fully leaned against the tree in front of him, a wide smile on his lips as he pulled you against him, wrapping his arms around you as you both worked to catch your breath.

“We should get back,” you murmured against his chest once your breathing had returned to normal, “Everyones gotta be wondering what we’re up to.”

He chuckled, pressing his lips to the top of your head

“They ain’t wondering shit, they know exactly what we’re up to.”

You pulled away from him just enough to look him in the eyes, arching an eyebrow questiongly, he just shrugged and said,

“I told Frankie I was gonna come after you and see if we could find the answer to the age old question of, if two people fuck in the middle of the forest and no one is around to hear them, do they make a sound?”

You groaned and let your head fall back to his chest. Of course he did, it really shouldn’t be a surprise to you and you imagined it wasn’t much of a surprise to your group of friends either, they had known Billy way too long for any of his antics to shock them at this point.

“Come on, Karen promised me s’mores.” you said as you pulled away from him completely and turned to pick up the small pile of firewood you had gathered, ready to head back when you looked around you and saw that you had no idea where you had come in from.

“Billy?”

“Yeah?” he said, followed by the sound of the zipper of his jeans being pulled up.

“You know how to get back...right?”

Your question was met with an unsettling silence, then, a murmured,

“Shit.”

Gen: @something-tofightfor @its-my-little-dumpster-fire @the-blind-assassin-12 @suchatinyinfinity @bts-smolarmy @elanor-of-imladris @emyyjemyy

Billy Russo: @nananananananananananabatman @shinebrightlikeafanbase

#billy russo x reader #billy russo x you #billy russo fanfiction #billy russo fic #billy russo #i cant believe i finally finished this #i feel like i'm gonna cry #bonus points to anyone who can name the fight that i tried to vague about

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supernatural-love14 · 4 years

Text

Crossroad Demon

Summary: After a hunt goes wrong. You make a deal to bring back Sam, but to hold up your end of the deal, you have to become the one thing you hate the most. Will Dean and Sam be able to save you?

Chapter Summary: Finally catching up to Y/N, can the boys get her back and cure her before it’s too late

Warnings: Angst - Lots of angst.

Pairings: Eventual Dean x Female reader, Sam x Female reader (Platonic)

Word Count: 1322

SPOTIFY Chapter Music: Devil in Me by Halsey, Lose You to Love Me by Selena Gomez, Drowning by Radio Company, Say Something by A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

Main Masterlist

Crossroad Demon Masterlist

← Part 3

Part 4 - You Can’t Change What’s Already Gone

“Hello boys.” Standing behind the boys, all I could think about was how I’ve been able to avoid them for the past five months. But now I had to deal with them. I can’t go back on my deal. This was all for Sam.

“Y/N?!” Dean exclaimed as he and Sam turned around to face me. He was smiling, but that just confused me. Didn’t he hate me five months ago? How he didn’t want me to be around anymore?

“Why are you here?” I ask in a monotone voice, my red eyes flashing at them.

“We’re here to help you Y/N! Come with us. We can cure you!”

“No. I don’t want to be cured.”

“No? Why not?”

“I made my choice Dean. Like you did all those months ago.”

“Y/N, you have to realise that I didn’t mean what I said back then, I’m so sorry. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. So please let us save you.” Practically begging with the tears that had started to form in his eyes.

“Save it Dean. I know my place in the world and it certainly isn’t with you guys.” Sam is just standing there quietly watching me and Dean interact with one another, he finally looks up at me with those sad puppy eyes I’ve missed.

“Why’d you do it Y/N?” Sam asked, his voice cracking slightly at what you had become. “Why’d you make the deal?”

“You know why Sam.”

“I didn’t want you to make a deal though. I never wanted anyone to sacrifice themselves for me. I told Dean to make sure that none of you would do this.” Sam explained, tears forming in his eyes. Seeing his best friend as a demon was horrible.

“Look, just leave me alone. I’m happy as a demon. I’m good at it. This was just meant to be.” A part of you inside wanted to be cured, but the other part hated what Dean said to you all those months ago. If being a demon made him suffer, then that was all you would do. Make them believe that you don’t want to go back to being human.

“You don’t mean that. You are meant to be with us. With me.” Dean started to say, a pained look formed on his face. Staring into your cold red demon eyes. He was barely holding it together, pretending it wasn’t a demon he was seeing in front of him. Only me.

“Yes. I do mean that.” I started to say, no emotions on my face. “I’ve changed Dean. Being a demon is so much more fun. No emotions to hold on to. People to torture, to kill…”

“Stop it Y/N.” Instantly interrupting you, so he wouldn’t hear anymore. “Let us help you. I’ve been through this before, remember. You helped me, you and Sam wouldn’t stop until you cured me. So let me help you.” He said as he slowly inched closer and closer to you, until he was right in front of you. His green eye pouring into you with sadness and regret.

“I can’t.”

“Why not Y/N?” Dean said quietly, his arm reaching out for yours.

“If I get cured, Sam will most likely go back to being dead. You don’t want that. And you will always choose your brother over me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes it is! That’s why we are here in the first place.” You practically shouted as you turned your back on them, your red demon eyes fading. You didn’t see their faces, you didn’t see them look at each other as they made up their minds.

“I’m sorry Y/N.” Sam said, chucking something at Dean. You noticed too late as Dean handcuffed you to him with the demon handcuffs, all your demonic power gone instantly.

“No! NO! What are you doing? Let me go!!” Screaming at them as you demon eyes came flying back, you bring out a knife to slash at Dean. But Sam was faster knocking it out of your hands before kicking it away as both the boys hold onto your arms.

“Y/N! We are trying to help you.” Sam said as Dean pulled you into his arms, holding you tightly to him, your arms are trapped but it doesn’t stop you from kicking out.

“Sam get the door open.” He said, as you headbutt him but Dean quickly recovers not letting you go. Sam rushed over to Baby, following Dean’s orders without a hitch before Dean forced you into the back seat with him. Practically fighting against Dean, the cuffs had made you weak which made Dean overpower you in minutes. Holding you tightly against him. “Y/N, stop…just stop.” But you never stopped. Your demon instincts telling you to fight, to get out of this. To kill them.

“I will KILL all of you for this!” Dean could feel his heart breaking. How far you had fallen. All because of him. He couldn’t help but blame himself. Because if he didn’t blame himself then who was to blame. He put you on this path. It was his fault that you ended up leaving the bunker, making you believe that he didn’t want you around.

With Sam speeding down the highway, you finally calm down. You weren’t happy about this but what could you do. You’ve been trying ever since they forced you into the car but nothing was working. Dean still had his arms wrapped around you, your back leaning into him as he held you tightly. His head rested on the top of yours and you were trying your best to not let your human side show. You were a demon now, no need for those feelings.

Every so often you could hear Dean sigh, never knowing what for. But for Dean he was sighing in relief. He finally found you, after all this time. Just holding you in his arms had never felt better, even though you were a demon at the moment, but he was so close to getting you back fully.

He was never letting you go ever again. The moment you were cured, he was going to tell you everything he had buried down deep. Everything he had kept away from you because he was afraid of losing you. But because he kept away from you he lost you entirely.

The drive was so long from Wisconsin to Kansas, Sam was keeping an eye on Y/N through the mirror every so often just to make sure she wasn’t trying to kill Dean. A part of him was so happy that they had Y/N now. The team practically back together once they cured her.

But the other part of him was sad, annoyed even. He was meant to die. And Y/N sacrificed herself for him. He never wanted her to do that for him. He was mad at Dean for driving Y/N away. He could see his brother inside out from the way he was holding her in the backseat. It was something that Dean was always terrible at hiding. Sam never said anything to Dean about it, maybe because he knew that Dean would hide his feelings as he always does.

He know that his older brother has always had a thing for Y/N since she first joined them. Dean and Y/N weren’t as close not like Sam and her being best friends. But they still had a lot in common - music taste, food, movies. They should have gotten together so long ago but Dean’s idea of anybody that gets close to him - well us - will die.

Sam prays that after Y/N is cured, Dean will finally make his move. But with the bunker in sight after hours of driving, Sam is afraid that Dean will use this whole thing as an excuse for them to not be together.

← Part 3

→ Part 5

Authors Note: I literally had writers block with this series for months. I just didn’t know how to write this chapter. And I'm not too sure if I am happy with this chapter in general so this might be changed in the future. But I knew I needed to get back to writing this series because I'm not gonna leave a series unfinished. No matter how long it takes to write it and finish it.

Forever Tags:

@peachyafshawn @vicmc624

Crossroad Demon Tags:

@paryl

#Crossroad Demon #Dean x Reader #Dean Winchester #Demons #Crossroad #Angst #Sam #Sam Winchester #Dean #Dean x Y/N #dean x you

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post-itpenny · 3 years

Note

Magnetic

Decided to do some slasher writing. Continuing on with Chloe’s introduction and her first ever round of The Ringmaster’s carnival games. Poem excerpts from Christina Rossetti’s The Goblin Market.

Goblin Games

“Morning and evening

Maids heard the goblins cry:

“Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy.”

A foolish, young couple wandered in like flies to fresh cut melon, swatted at just as quick too.

Pulled from each other’s fingertips tossed in cages. The Ringmaster was almost disappointed how short this round of the game was, but at least the tigers would be well fed tonight.

The rest that would follow were just as quickly disposed of, blindly lured in by some unknown temptation. They were all given the rules, though most didn’t listen. The Ringmaster valued a fair game though, so the rules were given the same.

The screams that filled the air after- delicious.

But here now was the last one, The Ringmaster mused her to be much like the injured child who could not keep up with the others so blindly following the pied piper.

But this one was aware of the danger, she was afraid. It was a curious thing when she entered anyway.

She stepped past the ticket booth, the Ringmaster gently ushering her inside.

“We must not look at goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?”

There was a snap, the midway lighting up. “Welcome! Welcome my dear! How glorious you could join us here at the greatest show on Earth!”

A scream cut through the air, the girl flinched, but did not run.

How curious indeed.

“I do believe you’re the last guest of the evening. Allow me to introduce myself as Mr. Blair P. Gheist. May I say I am utterly delighted to have you joining us.” The Ringmaster greeted as he took the girl’s hand with a light peck to her knuckles.

“C-Chloe.”

He arched an eyebrow, most didn’t introduce themselves. “It’s wonderful of you to pay my humble circus a visit Miss Chloe. Tell me, what is it you most wish to experience tonight Hmm? The acrobatics? Perhaps our fine collection of some of the most exotic animals here on Earth?”

The girl pulled her hand away, her breathing rapid as she looked off in the distance towards the screams.

The Ringmaster watched her intently, gently hooking his finger under her chin and turning her head to face him.

“Perhaps a game?”

The girl- Chloe- slowly nodded. Stepping just out of his reach. The Ringmaster did not pursue, merely leaning on his cane with a devilish grin. “Do you enjoy games then? Normally I place the rule that winners are allowed to leave. But perhaps we could switch things up? If you win I will let them go, all of them.”

“Alive.”

Blair blinked, then smiled again. “But of course. Now my dear, allow me to explain the rules.”

She listened, she actually listened to everything that was explained. She asked questions to clarify, timidly of course but she still asked. She was without a doubt most deserving of a favorite game here at the circus-

Hide and Seek.

“Remember now,” The Ringmaster prompted, “all you have to do is not get caught for thirty minutes.” He glanced at her leg, “of course you get a head start-“

“I don’t need it, I’m fast enough.”

“I would hope you are Miss Chloe,” he responded, “you’re going to need it.” But I do need a chance to count so-“

He grinned, a hand curling over his eyes as he began to count out loud.

She took off running, navigating stalls and tents as The Ringmaster’s voice rang across the circus grounds. Chloe turned a corner. Around her now shadows loomed from the booths and stalls. Clowns with homicidal grins, acrobatics whose joints didn’t look quite right. She nearly crashed into a stagehand who took a casual swing at her with a sledgehammer.

Chloe backpedaled and ran another direction. Ducking into a tent.

She climbed around storage boxes and into a small nook away from the tent sides.

It had grown quiet.

Chloe forced her breathing to steady. Listening intently to the sound of approaching footsteps. They stopped outside the tent, only a moment before moving on.

She breathed a sigh of relief-

There was a loud “bang!” As Chloe was surrounded by an explosion of light.

She shrieked and covered her head, hearing an insane laugh as she pulled herself together and ran out of the tent.

Down the isles for the Midway Chloe ran. Never far behind her was The Ringmaster who always seemed to know what she would go.

She was interesting to watch run, despite the given limp from her prosthetic leg the girl was athletic. Blair casually jogging behind, normally he would just walk but this one didn’t just run blindly. She truly was doing everything in her power to win.

She skidded around a corner and misjudged her speed. Stumbling into a booth with a terrible crash.

The Ringmaster giggled, reaching out with a hand. “Terrific job so far my dear, but you could stand to practice the landing.”

Chloe panicked, backing into the debre, trapped as he grinned down at her. “You’ve done very well, there’s no need to panic my dear Chloe.”

“Stay away!”

“Shh, hush now. The game is almost over, and you have been splendid. Take a deep breath my dear, rest a moment.”

Without thinking Chloe did as she was told. Breath slowing down but still watching a The Ringmaster inched closer. “Most don’t make it this far, it’s admirable really.”

She gripped the strap of her guitar, calming down but still weary.

Blair offered an encouraging smile and inched closer. “Let me help you up, no strings attached.”

“The rules were Mr. Gheist, if you tag me game over. That counts right?”

Oh.

Oh this one was-

Blair grinned. “You paid attention!”

“So it’s an out yes?”

“An exception just this once, trust me. The game is almost over anyways”

She was tired, he could tell. But she couldn’t tell there was still twenty minutes on the clock.

He held out his and again, delighted as she raised her own, fingertips just inches away. She was tired and oblivious. Perhaps he cou-“

WHAM!

If all the things that The Ringmaster had experienced in his carnival games over the years, being hit in the face with a guitar had never been one of them. She stumbled back as he stuttered between curses of pain and a sick laughter. She ran away as fast as she could.

It was delightful.

“One may lead a horse to water,

Twenty cannot make him drink.”

A fighter- a clever and resourceful thing, a fighter. He needed something like that, and if she wasn’t too broken by the end then perhaps he would add her to the troup.

Tossing his top hat aside, he ran after her.

The spectators were whipped into a frenzy. No longer silent watchers, they screamed and laughed. Shoving Chloe if she got too close. Applauding when their boss sprinted by. Her movement was a strange loping one, her speed hindered by the leg. But she did not stop running no matter how much it hurt.

Chloe turned a corner, not realizing her mistake as she entered a building.

The Funhouse.

The entry room was dark, a relief from the bright lights of the Midway, a place to actually hide.

The lights flashed on, she blinked away the spots from her eyes at the sudden light. Screaming at the sight of a corpse flayed and pinned to the wall.

She turned around, The Ringmaster grinning wickedly at her with his hand on the switch, around them whirled to life the sounds of gears turning and music picking up.

He waited, she still had fourteen minutes on the clock. Would she try to dodge around him, or go in?

Would she simply fall to the floor and beg like some of her friends did earlier?

Chloe turned, diving through the small door underneath the Corpse.

Stumbling through dimly lit and tilting hallways, trying doors that led to nowhere. The music was loud and lights would flash. Walls damp with blood as she entered one room that could only be described as an explosion of gore. The smell hit her and she had to stop and vomit twice.

Chloe kept going.

He followed her, shimmying through tight hallways and climbing over obstacles. He pulled something from his pocket, tossing it over her head and down the hall. Covering his own eyes before it hit the ground.

She screeched at the small explosion. Blinded by the sudden light and running without any idea where she was going.

SMACK

She screamed again at the feeling of The Ringmaster’s cane slamming into her back, to her credit she did not falter however. She kept running.

She regained her eyesight to find herself surrounded by herself. A hall of mirrors that twisted and distorted the world. Everywhere she turned was a dead end. Slamming into mirrors as trying desperately to get through. It was so loud here, and their air had changed; now sweet smelling but heavy. Lights an array of colors. She struggled to think, she struggled to breathe.

He found her there, collapsed and hyperventilating.

Blair eyed her before pulling out his pocket watch.

Five minutes.

He sighed, readying his cane much like a club.

Chloe glanced over her shoulder, crawling away best she could. Her prosthetic refusing to cooperate.

He chuckled and hooked the fake leg. Pulling her back towards him.

Four minutes.

“Color me surprised Miss Chloe but most don’t last this long. I would tip my hat to you but I left it quite a ways back.”

Using his cane he flipped her over by the leg. She looked up at him, eyes wide and lungs struggling for air.

“G-g-game?”

Blair grinned, “not over yet I’m afraid. But you’ve been such a sport, I’ll allow your little friends to live if you give up.”

“B-b-b-” she paused and took a massive gulp of air, she was sobbing now.

“But you? Well you lose, you don’t leave.”

Three minutes.

“It’s time to close out the show dear, don’t you think?”

She was in hysterics, her body exhausted and her mind losing to the assault brought on by the hall of mirrors. Chloe flipped herself over and dragged herself across the floor.

Two minutes

The Ringmaster cackled as he hooked her leg again with his cane and dragged her back. He winced, the room was getting louder, it wasn’t supposed to do that.

She kicked out at him, trying to scramble to her feet, hands clamped over her ears and eyes screwed shut.

One Minute.

It would dawn on him later that the volume was due to the loud whispers that had joined the cacophony of music and random sound he had intended for room to hold. But at this moment even the Ringmaster struggled as his ears were assaulted.

Later on her would argue that he had been cheated.

Underneath the racket came the soft chime of The Ringmaster’s pocket watch.

The sounds stopped.

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midnight-aether · 4 years

Photo

Why Vox by Christina Dalcher is not a good novel: Review & Analysis

The premise of this novel is incredibly interesting, don’t get me wrong: Vox (2018) is about a dystopian future, in which US American women are only allowed to speak 100 words per day and must wear a bracelet that shocks them if they go over that limit. Women also aren’t allowed to write, read or use sign language. The main character is a genius linguist called Jean who hates every man in her life, including her husband Patrick and her own sons.

The first sentence already tells us three things about this novel: (1) it’s told from a first-person perspective, which means the reader will be aware of the protagonist’s every thought, (2) the oppressive regime in the novel goes by the name of Pure Movement, so it’s probably going to have something to do with religion, and (3) the action takes place in the span of a week, which I feel like it’s a huge spoiler for the fact that I won’t care for any of the characters at the end of the book, since there’s only so much character development that can happen in that time.

If anyone told me I could bring down the President, and the Pure Movement, and that incompetent little shit Morgan LeBron in a week’s time, I wouldn’t believe them.

There will be spoilers from this point on.

The Setting and the Protagonist

The main character in Vox, Dr. Jean McClellan, is a specialist researcher in the field of aphasia, that is, according to Wikipedia, “an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions”. At some point in the novel we are made aware that a colleague of Jean’s, with her help, has discovered a cure for aphasia, even though they are both linguists and neither a chemist nor a medical researcher. However, she was unable to publish this discovery, due to the conveniently timed sexist apocalypse that stripped her of all her academic titles, as the reader is often reminded.

Jean is married to her husband Patrick and has four children with him: three boys and a girl. Jean evidently resents every man in her family, especially Patrick and their 17-year-old son, Steven. Apparently they’ve all been very quickly indoctrinated to believe women shouldn’t be allowed to speak, so they treat Jean and Sonia, the daughter, accordingly.

There is a whole subplot about Steven, but it’s so plain and uninteresting that there isn’t much to say about it. Basically, he is all for the Pure Movement and their ideals of purity for women, but then still sleeps with his high school girlfriend and proceeds to tattle on her. When she is taken away to a camp, he realizes his mistake a leaves to save her. At some point he is captured by the Movement and ridiculed on TV. Jean doesn’t really care that he’s gone, but is pleasantly surprised when he reappears at the end safe and sound.

At this point, the Pure Movement has only been in power for less than a year and a half. This movement is very overtly described as a Christian uprising that originated within the bible belt and had spread to the entirety of the USA. The followers of the Movement also adopt overly conservative views on gender roles, marriage and sex, leaving very little doubt about the roots of the oppressive regime in Vox.

The Plot

The main intrigue in Vox begins when the brother of the US president starts suffering from aphasia after a “skiing accident” and the government comes to Jean for help, despite her being a woman in a society that literally won’t let women speak. Why do they come to her instead of going to any other male scientist? Because apparently Jean is the best linguist in the whole country... even though, as far as the government (and the reader) knows, she’s only been researching aphasia for a couple of years and hasn’t found a cure yet. Well, the author herself has a doctorate in linguistics (not in the field of aphasia), which brings me to my first problem with this novel: the blatant and, quite frankly conceited, self-insert.

You may have noticed that I wrote “skiing accident” in quotation marks on the last paragraph. That’s because it’s hinted a couple of times throughout the novel that the president’s brother was actually injured on purpose by the government, but this turns out to be false. Later it seems like he was never even injured in the first place, but this is never clearly resolved, as the character himself never appears “onscreen”; however, it’s not a cliffhanger that perpetually haunts the reader.

Back to the story: Jean agrees to help because, by taking the job, she and her daughter get to remove the shock bracelets for the duration of the research. The government then proceeds to give Jean one week (remember the novel’s first sentence) to produce a cure that, to the best of their knowledge, hasn’t even been found yet. If that sounds like a stretch, they even let her work with her old research team of three people, which is supposed to fully convince the reader that a week is a completely plausible time frame to discover, produce, test and approve a cure for an illness.

The Side Characters

This team is composed of Jean, her former colleagues Lin and Lorenzo, and their supervisor Morgan, who you might remember from the novel’s opening sentence. Morgan is apparently an idiot linguist who is very unfit for his position, which is supposed to show how twisted the society in Vox is, as they put the dumb people in charge just because they’re men, and silence the smart women. What it actually does is show that this version of the USA apparently only has a handful of linguists and no other skilled scientists.

This is the novel’s description of Lin:

Lin Kwan is a small woman. I often told Patrick she could fit in one of my pant legs – and I’m only five and a half feet and 120 soaking wet, thanks to the stress diet I’ve been on for the past several months. Everything about her is small: her voice, her almond eyes, the sleek bob that barely reaches below her ears. Lin’s breasts and ass make me look like a Peter Paul Rubens model. But her brain – her brain is a leviathan of gray matter. It would have to be; MIT doesn’t hand out dual PhDs for nothing.

Here we learn that Lin is small, not conventionally attractive (read: small boobs and ass), and finally that she is incredibly intelligent. For some reason, Jean finds it important to describe Lin’s curves, as well as her own, before mentioning Lin’s intelligence. No, this novel was not written by Michael Bay. Also, for representation’s sake, Lin is Asian and a lesbian, yet every other major character in this novel is a white straight person.

Well, there is another lesbian in this story, actually. Jean’s old college roommate, Jackie Juarez, who Jean hasn’t seen since before the machocalypse. We get to know Jackie through flashbacks: the novel tries to portray her as this loud, over-the-top feminist who often tries to make Jean join the rallies and protests against the growing Pure Movement. Alas, Jean chooses to focus on school instead of going to protests and forever regrets this, thinking that if only she had fought, she might have changed history.

I don’t know how to feel about this novel’s depiction of Jackie. She is made out to be a stereotypical feminist lesbian, who actively protests against the uprising of the Pure Movement, and yet whose efforts are in vain. Here is an excerpt that characterizes how Jean sees Jackie, and therefore how the reader is supposed to see her:

“You have to vote, Jean,” [Jackie] said, throwing down the stack of campaign leaflets she’d been running around campus with while I was prepping for what I knew would be a monster of an oral exam. “You have to.”

“The only things I have to do are pay taxes and die,” I said, not holding back the sneer in my voice. That semester was the beginning of the end for Jackie an me. I’d started dating Patrick and preferred our nightly discussions about cognitive processes to Jackie’s rants about whatever new thing she had found to protest.

Here you can see that Jean clearly dismisses Jackie and “whatever new thing she had found to protest”, and instead muses about what an intellectual she is. I understand that this is a flashback, and it’s supposed to show that Jean was wrong not to care about protesting the Pure Movement, but this is told from present Jean’s perspective, so it’s clear she still rolls her eyes at Jackie’s activism in general. It feels like Vox is trying to say that actively expressing your ideas and concerns is useless, since Jean eventually overthrows the government with science and not through activism – and it even takes her no longer than a week to do it, as we learn at the beginning of this novel. There is a lot to unpack here, but I still wouldn’t recommend thinking too hard about the ideas in this book.

Jackie only becomes relevant to the plot towards the end. At some point she is held hostage by the government, so that Jean is forced to finish her work. Why the government chose to kidnap Jean’s old college roommate who she hasn’t seen or spoken about in years instead of, say, her daughter, we will never know. In the end, Jackie is only there so that Jean can save her and “redeem” herself for not having been there for Jackie in the past.

Lorenzo, the last member of the team, is Jean’s love affair since way before the Pure Movement effectively took over. The novel likes to remind the reader that Jean is with the Italian hunk Lorenzo because she despises her husband Patrick, so that makes cheating okay. Eventually we learn that Jean is pregnant with Lorenzo’s child, so he offers to let her escape with him to Italy as his wife. Yet Jean can’t allow herself to leave without her daughter Sonia – she’s fine with never seeing any of her sons again, though. She considers this for a while as she works on the cure for aphasia.

The Ending

At some point during the week, Lin disappears (we later learn she was imprisoned due to big gay activity). Jean and Lorenzo announce that they’ve discovered the cure and even test the serum on a random neighbour of Jean’s who happens to have aphasia as well. Also, Jean’s mother had an aneurysm earlier that week and also started suffering from aphasia. The government is pleased with the results and take the serum away.

Later, Morgan, the supervisor, takes Jean and Lorenzo to a strange lab underground to have them further develop the cure. There they walk through a hallway full of chimpanzees in cages, and there is a bizarre scene in which Jean gets too close to a cage and is attacked by a chimpanzee. There is no purpose to this scene other than to shock the reader, honestly. Here, the novel briefly, yet disrespectfully brings up a very real woman who was mauled by a chimpanzee in 2009 and managed to survive (Wikipedia link, no pictures), by having Jean think something along the lines of “oh no, I don’t want to end up like her!” during the attack.

Jean is fine, obviously. We’re over 200 pages in and nearing the end of the novel when the first interesting development happens in the form of a plot twist: the government has been using their cure in order to create an anti-serum that gives people aphasia. Their plan is to create a more effective means to silence women, of course, since they wouldn’t be able to comprehend or formulate language any more. When Jean discovers this, she wants to quit, but is forced to stay when they reveal they’ve been keeping Jackie, Lin and Lin’s girlfriend hostage in the same building for this very occasion. And maybe also Steven back at that camp, but we don’t even care about him at this point.

The climax of the story arrives, and everything happens so quickly the reader doesn’t have time to digest it. I had to reread what actually happened at the end, because I couldn’t remeber it anymore. I’ll try to recreate the pacing of the ending in the following paragraph, so you can understand what I mean:

Jean and Lorenzo save the lesbians (who are the only likeable characters, so that made me happy), Morgan dies, I think, and they escape with the anti-serum. Patrick appears and decides to help, so they send him to the White House with an anti-serum bomb that suceeds, giving the president and all evil politicians aphasia. Patrick is killed during this, freeing Jean from their marriage and allowing her to escape with Lorenzo and all of her children, whom she suddenly stopped resenting. The Pure Movement collapses and all is well, thanks to... well, thanks to Patrick and Lorenzo.

Conclusion

Vox is a mess of a novel. The characters are unlikeable, the plot is badly paced and the ending is too sudden. I really didn’t care about what happened to any character at any point, which is incredibly disappointing. Additionally, there are many things wrong with the political message in Vox, namely the idea that all religious people are inherently evil and that men generally wish to control and silence women. The premise was good, the writing was fine, but the performance was terrible, unfortunately. Vox feels like it was rushed to come out in time for the dystopian fiction craze of 2017-18 caused by the release of The Handmaid’s Tale TV series. Hopefully we’ll see better work from the author in the future.

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jacnaylor · 4 years

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romance book recs!!

romance is my feel good genre, and it’s also usually somewhat easier to read during stressful times, so here’s a list of some books that are either romance or have a romance element i feel like mentioning.

(EDIT: I STAYED UP TILL 2 AM DOING THIS HELP. this is why some of the comments. don’t make any fucking sense.)

romance books and authors:

CONTEMPORARY:

1. The Bromance bookclub series by Lyssa Kay Adams (A group of men form a bookclub dedicated to romance books in order to understand women, improve their relationships and become better men. It’s funny, cute, and all about dismantling toxic masculinity one romance book at a time)

2. Mariana Zapata books (The queen of slowburn romance. The only book I’ve read by her is ‘Under Locke’, but ‘From Lukov with love’ and ‘Kulti’ have rave reviews. There is so much build up and SO much sexual tension with a great pay off)

3. Milly Johnson books (A uk author whose books are primarily set in the north, these are total feel good books. Not so much graphic and more romantic, but her characters are great and her plot lines really hook you in.)

4. The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren (Super cute, quick enemies-to-lovers story about a bridesmaid who has to go on a honeymoon with the best man when the bride and groom get food poisoning. Obviously this means the holy of holies: fake relationship!)

5. Well met by Jen De Luca (Oh my gosh! Super fun, the characters are just wonderful especially our heroine. A hate-to-love romance set at a renaissance fair! All about overcoming the limits you set on yourself and rethinking your first impressions.)

6. Katherine Center books (My personal favourites are ‘How to walk away’ about a woman who falls for her PT after a near fatal plane crash. And ‘Happiness for beginners’ about a woman taking part in a wilderness trail with her brothers annoying best friend. She writes such great plots and you really feel all the emotions!)

7. Mhairi Mcfarlane books (my personal favourites are ‘Here’s looking at you’ about a woman who comes face to face with her high school bully years later - only he doesn’t recognize her. And he’s not awful? Don’t worry. I know how that synopsis sounds. He’s not excused his actions, but you also understand how he’s grown and changed. It definitely gets you in the feels though. As does ‘You had me at hello’ Which is about a couple from university meeting again years later. God this woman can write angst and yearning!!)

8. A part of me by Anouska Knight (On the same day she and her husband have been accepted into the adoption process, their marriage implodes. This has such a cute romance which follows hate-to friends- to love and it’s v funny)

9. Southern Eclectic series by Molly harper (Just as it sounds. Southern small town romance with a great, quirky cast of characters)

10. Maggie’s man by Lisa Gardner (writing as Alicia Scott) (An escaped convict kidnaps a woman from the courthouse to act as his hostage whilst he tries to prove his innocence. Surprisingly funny and warm. Maggie as a heroine is an absolute joy. They’re sort of chaotic together and it’s a wild ride.)

11. The Mister by E.L James (LISTEN OK - SIT BACK DOWN - It’s not winning awards but it’s actually decent! I was skeptical, but I will admit I was won over. I mean parts are cheesy but it’s so addictive. Basically a rich man falls for his cleaning lady - but it’s also about the yearning. It’s also quite action packed as there’s danger, drama and a chase across europe to get the girl.)

12. RECENT Colleen Hoover (Now, you may enjoy older CH books. Personally I find them very problematic. Now I’ve really enjoyed her recent books though. Especially ‘Without Merit’ and ‘It ends with us’ and ‘Regretting you’. High angst, high drama, dark topics for all of her books. But you can tell she’s matured with her writing. She isn’t for everyone but they’re addictive, fast paced reads.

13. The Austenland duology by Shannon Hale (You might have seen the Austenland movie - The cutest, cheesiest, sweetest, campiest movie ever. Well there’s a book! It’s about women who go on a holiday and live their own Jane Austen story with actors. The first book leans towards Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield park. The second book is more Northanger abbey and Emma.

14. Brigid Kemmerer contemporaries (She is an auto-buy author for me, especially her contemporaries. She writes the best teenage characters, the best teenage boys I’ve ever read about. Her characters are real, she writes about kids trying their best, struggling, and being good, and kind, and the world not being kind to them. Usually the books have a pov from both the female and male love interest. I would rec any of them tbh. ‘Letters to the lost’ comes before it’s companion novel ‘More than we can tell’. I loved ‘Call it what you want’ with has modern Robin Hood elements!!!! seriously she is my favourite YA contemporary author.

15. Sophie Kinsella books (If you haven’t picked up her stand alone novels then what are you doing???? she is the queen!!!! Personal favourites are ‘Can you keep a secret’ and ‘I’ve got your number)

16. A quiet kind of thunder by Sara Barnard (I love her ok. Her books are short and sweet but she packs a punch. TBH these aren’t primarily romance, they’re more just about teenage girls but this one has a good romance element so I’m putting it on here. It’s about Steffi, a selective mute who sometimes communicates with basic sign language who is assigned to look after the new boy at school Rhys, who is deaf.)

17. Meet me at the museum by Anne Youngson (GORGEOUS! moving, tender. A lonely housewifes strikes up a correspondence with a widowed museum curator in Denmark. Oh gosh. I just love this one. It’s about friendship, love, grief, second chances, the choices we make. Seriously love this one and it’s not that long.)

FANTASY:

1. Sorcery of thorns by Margaret Rogerson (Elisabeth has grown up in the great library, protecting grimoires with powers and fearing sorcerers. When a dangerous grimoire is released, she’s forced to team up with an enigmatic sorcerer and his demonic servant in order to save the world.)

2. Sky in the deep duology by Adrienne Young (A viking inspired story about a warrior who is captured by the tribe she is at war with. Such good tension and it’s also got a lot of action. Battle couple romance! Mutual respect! Hate to love!)

3. The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley (I’ve reread this book once but will end up reading it again. It’s a time travel romance about a woman staying in cornwall dealing with the death of her sister who is transported back and forth to the 17th century. It’s a favourite. The romance is wonderful but the stakes are really high too. I also love ‘Belleweather’ by the same author)

4. An ember in the ashes series by Sabaa Tahir (Oh god, the romance. THE ROMANCE! it’s so much. The angst, the pining, the longing. The first book follows Laia, part of a slave class in a roman inspired world. She begins spying in the top military academy and meets Elias, a reluctant soldier. This is a proper fantasy series with only the first three books out, but it’s so great.)

5. Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen (Let me just copy the blurb ok: “Meet Captain James Benjamin Hook, a witty, educated Restoration-era privateer cursed to play villain to a pack of malicious little boys in a pointless war that never ends. But everything changes when Stella Parrish, a forbidden grown woman, dreams her way to the Neverland in defiance of Pan's rules.” I MEAN COME ON. a gorgeous adult fairytale with love and redemption at the center.

6. The Mediator series by Meg Cabot (Obviously Meg Cabot is the most iconic and we stan. But this series is my absolute favourite by her. About Suze Simon, a kickass, no nonsense mediator - Someone who helps ghosts move on to the other side. Sometimes by force. She has to move house and ends up sharing her room with a 100 year old hot ghost named Jesse. The tension. The angst. THE BANTER!!!!)

7. House of Earth and Blood by Sara J Maas (a half fae half mortal girl tries to solve a murder with the help of a fallen angel. It’s a LONG book, but for me personally it flew by. It’s a big new fantasy world but the romance has a great build. Overcoming grief! Being normal together! Being in danger together! THE UST! the characters are so good. I ahven’t been this impressed by a new series for a while)

8. Cursebreakers series by Brigid Kemmerer (yep, she gets another mention. This one is a beauty and the best retelling about a man forced to relive the same season over and over, becoming a literal beat, until a girl from our world can break the curse. The second book, following secondary characters, is my fave so far. But both feature kickass ladies and those small romantic moments BK is so good at)

9. A court of thorns and roses series by Sara J Maas (a fae inspired beauty and the beast retelling. The only time you support a ship switch. Also the secondary ships are getting their own books and oh my god. I’m so excited.)

HISTORICAL/CLASSICS/MILLS AND BOON

1. Jane Austen (The original rom com queen, obviously. Pride and prejudice and Emma are faves. Also I have a major soft spot for the alwayc chaotic and underrated Northanger Abbey)

2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (Actually might be my favourite classic ever. Often described at an industrial p&p. Margaret, from the south, comes face to face with the harsh reality of the world when she moves up north and comes face to face with a brooding millowner. There’s obviously a lot more nuance than that but. THE PINING!!!!!! THE MISCOMMUNICATION! THE DRAMA!)

3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer (You might have seen the film. Please also read the book. Told entirely in letters. The sharp witted author Juliet Ashton falls in love with Guernsey and it’s characters whilst researching what happened there during the war. Funny, moving and romantic.)

4. The Veronica Speedwell series by Deanna Raybourn (A butterfly hunter foils her own kidnap and is paired together with a reclusive natural historian. They solve mysteries together. They can’t admit they wanna sleep together. The tension.......unbearable. See also the Julia Grey mysteries by the same author)

5. The warrior knight and the widow by Ella Matthews (So last year I discovered Mills and Boon and I have no shame about it whatsoever. This is a medieval beauty and the beast retelling about a woman being escorted to her fathers estate by an enigmatic and scarred knight. She’s hoping to convince her father to let her steward her own lands, and of course trying not to fall for her escort.)

6. The bareknuckle bastards series by Sarah Maclean (A badass, brooding trio of siblings who rule the underbelly of Covent Garden fall for smart, beautiful women. Opposites attract, Good girl/bad boy, strong women, banter. Super fun historical romance)

7. Redeeming the reclusive earl by Virginia Heath (I just read this and it was seriously cute!!!! And book where the hero blushes even once is a good book in my opinion. Basically aspiring antiquarian named Effie barrels into the life of a new earl - who really just wants to be left alone to be grumpy and sad and disfigured. ALONE. But Effie wants to dig on his land. And she won’t take no for an answer. She also talks A LOT.

8. A family for the widowed governess by Ann Lethbridge (Technically this is part of a series but you don’t need to read them in order and this is the best one. A widow who is being blackmailed accepts a governess post. She can’t tell her employer about the blackmail especially when she starts falling for him.)

9. The bedlam stacks by Natasha Pulley (I read watchmaker and didn’t like it but you might like it. This one also FEAUTRES A M/M ROMANCE. I know this list was super straight im sorry. Anyway this is about a botanist falling in love with a priest in the jungle.

10. The wilderness series by Sara Donati (Think outlander without the time travel and also not set in scotland. Basically Last of the Mohicans fanfiction about Hawkeye’s grown up son. An english woman moves to america when her father promises she can be a school teacher there. Little does she know he actually has plans to marry her off. Things get more complicated when she falls for Nathaniel Bonner, a white man raised native american and who’s daughter and extended family is Native American. Like outlander there’s romance, adventure, history. But unlike the outlander books the love interest is a decent guy (i say as if i don’t love the tv show)

STUFF THAT REALLY ISN’T ROMANCE AT ALL. BUT I SHIP A SHIP.

1. The Lacey Flint series by Sharon Bolton (Lacey Flint is a police officer who becomes involved in the hunt to catch a Jack the ripper copycat. There actually is a strong romantic element with the other lead police officer.)

2. The last hours duology by Minette Walters. A novel about the black death and a closed estate lead by a woman who’s trying to protect her people. There’s also a kind of murder mystery. But she also has a close relationship to one of the surfs that I got super invested in.

3. The Strike series by J.k Rowling (I know we don’t stan anymore but. This series about PI and his assistant slowly growing closer? Becoming best friends and partners? Not acknowledging any feelings for each other?

#books #book recs #literature #romance #romance books #romance reads #penvenens #romance recs #romance reader #historical romance #probably forgot loads

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jawritter · 4 years

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A Thousand Years...

Chapter 12 (Final)

Heart beats fast. Colors and promises. How to be brave. How can I love when I’m afraid to fall. But watching you stand alone. All of my doubt suddenly goes away…..

Summary: A soulmate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master. – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

A new town, a new job, and a new life, one that you didn’t even expect……

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Reader

Word Count: 1187

Warnings will include… Smut, language, unrequited/ requited love, cheating, and possibly more. This is brand new, so I will add to it as I know. Chapters will have warnings of their own if need be….

A/N: So my little cousin was watching breaking dawn in the living room, and I was folding clothes in the guest room… When the credits rolled and this song started, this fic hit me right in the face… I couldn’t escape it.

Fic Based on the Song A Thousand Years, by Christina Perri

Missed it so far or just want more in general? Check out my masterlist!!

*****MASTERLIST*****

****SERIES MASTERLIST*****

Time Jump Six Years….

It had been six years since you moved into Jensen's house, and in those six years, a lot had changed.

For instance, when the news broke about you and Jensen via Danneel, your family did something you never thought they'd do.

They flat out turned their back on you.

It was hard at first.

You thought they knew you better than that, but they perceived you as a homewrecker, believing Danneel’s word over your own.

It was definitely a bitter pill you didn't think you'd ever have to swallow, but you had to make a choice, and honestly, it ended up being the best decision you ever made because with Jensen you had all the family that you needed that loved and supported you no matter what.

You learned right then that you could either live your life doing what everyone was telling you was the right thing, or you could do what you wanted to do and live your life for you.

There was no way in hell you were going to give up on the person that in 48 short hours you learned you couldn’t live without. Once you made that decision the rest just kind of fell into place where it needed to be.

He'd become your everything. Just that fast.

It sounds cliche, but a quote from one of your favorite books seemed to fit best here.

A soulmate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master.

That was exactly what Jensen did to you from the very beginning.

The moment you stepped foot into the brewery for the first time and shook his hand he turned your world upside down. He showed you every obstacle and addiction that you didn't even know you had.

He’d shown you ultimately, in the end, you didn't need to be a people pleaser; and all you really needed was each other. Because at the end of the day that's all that mattered.

He had shown you just how addicted you were to him. Even on days when you didn't want to admit you needed him, he proved you wrong over and over again until you got it right, and just stopped fighting. Even on days, it looked like you weren't going to make it he was strong enough for the both of you.

He broke your heart, there was no denying that, but if he hadn't, you probably would have never given in to him. Because if he would have never broken your heart, you would have never known just how much you truly had fallen in love with him in a matter of time that surprised you both.

He definitely made you so desperate and out of control that you transformed your life, and moved in with a man you barely knew, started a life together, and over and over again shook you to your very core, transforming you into something better. Letting a part of you free that you didn't even know that you needed.

He definitely taught you how to pray even though he didn't realize it. He never completely confessed to having been abused by Danneel, but all the signs were there. You spent nights praying that he'd open up to you, let you in before you realized that he already had. Because some things didn't need to be spoken, rehashed, or revisited, and if ever the day came when he was ready to talk about it, you'd be there like you always planned to be. Because the progress he'd made and you made with his help was more powerful than any past abuse or relationships.

You loved him. There was no way around it.

Love didn't take years to happen. You learned that it could happen in a moment and turn your whole world upside down.

That's what it did for you. That's what it did for him.

That's why over everything you chose him.

If your family never decided to accept your choice, that was their choice. It was also their loss because you had gained so much more.

Another thing that had changed was Jensen was able to get joint custody of his children without a fight, thankfully.

What Danneel did that day was wrong, but you had to thank her in a way. She did what you never had the guts to do. Threw you out into the open, and forced you to make up your mind what you were going to do about Jensen when you were too afraid to do it yourself.

She also helped bring three beautiful children into the world that became so important to you that they were just like your own.

There were family holidays, birthday parties, and sleepovers, things you never thought would happen for you. You were a family. Blood didn't matter.

Then there was the time that you were alone together.

Nights where you learned everything about each other by simply just being.

It wasn't always about the sex, though that was a big part of it. The intimacy and the connection that you'd developed with each other was so consuming it wove itself into the very fiber of your being like it was written so a thousand years ago, and it will be long after you were gone.

Things were never going to be easy, but you had each other, and that's all that mattered.

You would NEVER get used to being with someone that was famous. You didn't mind it, it's what Jensen loved to do, and he deserved every bit of recognition that he got for everything he did.

Things with Danneel would always be tough between the three of you. That would never change, but according to Jensen, she was hard to get along with on her best day, even when they first got married. Still, you were able to put aside your differences to help co-parent those babies, and that’s what was most important.

Because three years ago you stood before God, Jensen's family, and your friends, and tied yourself to him in every way possible.

You became his wife.

Sitting out on the front porch with him in your Texas home in the middle of Austin you watched as the rain drizzled down on the ground around you, putting a deep peace in you. Jensen's fingers lace with your own, and your head on his shoulder, one of his arms wrapped tightly around you, you found your happy place, you found where you belonged.

"You know I don't know what I ever did without you," Jensen said, leaning his head down on yours.

"Me either," you teased him, giving him a playful jab in the ribs, sending him into one of those whole body laughs that you loved so much.

"I love you, you know that. I'll love you for a thousand years." There it was. The song that was almost your undoing became the foundation of everything that the two of you were. You couldn't help but smile every time he said that.

"I'll love you for a thousand more..."

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

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Series Tag List:

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#jensen ackles #jensen ackles x reader #jensen ackles x you #jensen ackles fanfiton #jensen ackles fanfic #jensen ackles series #jensen x reader #jensen x you #fanfition #SPN fanfiction #SPN Fanfic #SPN #a thousand years #jawritter

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vifvement · 4 years

Text

( christina nadin, nonbinary, they/she ) — a member of the [ COJUANGO ] family seeks entry to the society ! [ VIRIDIANA TERESA ] is a [ 25 ] year old [ YOUTH ACTIVIST & GRADUATE STUDENT ] who hails from [ TARLAC, PHILIPPINES / SĂVÂRȘIN, ROMANIA ] , who call them [ THE DOVE ] . although their peers know them for being [ CHARITABLE ] and [ GOOD-WILLED ] , their reputation for being [ NAÏVE ] and [ GULLIBLE ] might hinder their relations with current society members. while the [ COJUANGCO ] family is known for [ OWNING THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LIQUOR COMPANY ] , the society’s own [ SHIRLEY TEMPLE ] is better remembered by [ A FAIRY TALE-LIKE CHILDHOOD : INNOCENCE AS WHITE AS A DOVE AND THE PEARLS YOU WEAR ; THE WORDS ‘HAVE COURAGE AND BE KIND’ : SECOND CHANCES TURNING INTO THREE, FOUR, FIVE AS YOU LET YOUR HEART RULE YOUR MIND ; & A FLOWER BLOSSOMING DESPITE ADVERSITY, THE PROMISE OF SPRING ETERNAL ] . initial reports say their goal of [ ACHIEVING WORLD PEACE ] would be their first priority after being inducted, although who’s to say that won’t change ?

about

familial background.

trigger warning for: mentions of martial law

okay, idk where to fit this in but blanche is the cousin to the current heir apparent of the romanian royal family—which, really means jackshit bc the romanian royals were all deposed some few decades ago. the cojuangcos were political dissidents in the time of martial law in the philippines, had their assets confiscated, and were forced to flee. both families decided to stay at ireland where their children then met. after some years, some kind of status quo was brought back to both countries and all assets and properties were then returned to the two families.

however, since they’ve already fallen in love, they decided they might as well marry each other despite the logistical hassle of everything involved, though this is perhaps helped considering blanche’s mother is the youngest out of her siblings and so the succession (or the image of a succession) wasn’t so dependent on her staying in romania. blanche’s parents decided to acquire the other’s citizenship and split their time evenly between the two nations.

there’s not much to say about the romanian side of their family aside from them being deposed royals; but the cojuangco side are former hacienderos turned conglomerate owners, and they currently own san miguel corporation which can roughly be imagined as the asian competitor to anheuser-busch.

so, yes, your character can probably ask them for free alcohol.

history.

trigger warning for: mentions of hunger and death

they grew up a darling of a child. they never knew the horrors that gripped their families just decades prior, and they grew up spoiled, protected, sheltered. they grew up knowing vast tracts of country estates free for their horses to ride in, silver-coloured bubbling brooks in charming meadows, dripping pearls and emeralds from their mother’s hands. they lived so far removed from reality that it almost seemed like a fairytale.

for all intents and purposes, they did live in one. blanche is the child of a union between two notable families that had been forged by hardship and fire and bloodshed and revolution. perhaps it was overcompensation that made blanche’s parents raise them up in such a manner, but the scars of war and repression cut deep into the psyche of both the cojuangcos and the al româniei. they wanted to give their perfect little daughter everything she could ever want, and so she was given everything from books to ponies to even a small house of their own, completely modelled after a victorian playhouse model they’d acquired for them.

of course, since their family held dual citizenship, they also had twice of everything: one in săvârșin and one in tarlac—and if they ever forgot anything in one country, their parents just as easily bought it again for them instead of making them wait.

blanche could have rotted from the sweetness of their idyllic childhood but they grew up the epitome of a perfect princess, always so sweet and docile and charming.

yet the years go by, and now the common refrain is: where’s that sweet girl gone? blanche doesn’t even consider themself much of a girl, which points towards how much they’ve changed from their childhood years; but they still think of themself as a dutiful child. after all, what better way to honour their family’s legacy than to fight injustice and repression wherever it may take form?

there isn’t really a specific point in time where they knew that they had to something about the state of the world. perhaps it was seeing the disparity between rich and poor, knowing that some people died of hunger while they and their family feasted on several courses of meals and led to so much food waste, and realising that they not only have the means to change it but the framework too.

they always grew up with knowledge of the society their parents were in, and they had always known membership was an inevitability for them, but they never really thought about it much until they woke up from their dogmatic slumber. now, they’re very much keen to use the society to change the world for the better.

ever since that realisation, they did everything they can to be as politically active as possible, involving themself in numerous movements and initiatives. their sheer enthusiasm, the quaintness of their background, as well as their sheer iron-will determinism, made them an icon of the progressive cause. barely even in college, they were thrust into a global spotlight and made into a spokesperson for the causes they choose.

tl;dr: imagine a greta thunberg for world peace but also for literally every good cause you can think of lmfao

achievements.

international children’s peace prize

one of time 100′s “most influential people in the world”

united nations messenger of peace

constantly described as a “pure cinnamon roll” in social media, which is honestly the peak of their success tbh

etc

wanted connections.

i have a loose friendship group request based on the powerpuff girls, basically a group of young people who want to do some actual good in the world! blanche is bubbles, so i’m looking for blossom and buttercup!

i’m also looking for their cousin, the heir presumptive to the deposed romanian royalty. as that adjective suggests, they are deposed and therefore hold no real power. what they do have, however, are some castles—and that’s always fun.

aside from that, fellow activists that want to change the world! help blanche help the world!

on that note, people who think they’re naïve (which they are) and kinda dumb (which they’re not) for wanting world peace. they’re gonna fight you on that but hey, feel free to convince them they’re wrong. they’re never gonna believe you.

childhood friend! they were very protected and probably not allowed much time outside but please let this be the “exception” their parents made for them

older members who might know their parents, who are definitely more traditionalist than them and so are quite surprised upon meeting blanche

someone who will honest-to-god please teach them some street smarts! they’re super naïve and gullible and also they literally are the epitome of “how much can a banana cost? $10?” so they probably get ripped off on the daily so please... someone... save them

someone please be the corrupting influence to this good && precious soul! make the cinnamon roll a sinnamon roll. ;)

note: blanche would and could answer to both their name of viridiana teresa and she/her pronouns but they prefer to be called blanche and be referred to with they/them pronouns

#gilded:intro #*（ 𝙗𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙝𝙚 ） ⁄ stained with light — info !

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outlanderlush · 5 years

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‘Outlander’: Sam Heughan on Season 2 Changes, Claire and Jamie’s “Modern Relationship”

Being fairly new to the fandom I am enjoying finding old interviews from Sam & Cait. I really enjoyed this one.

Originally posted in Collider Magazine by Christina Radish on April 16, 2016

In Season 2 of the Starz series Outlander, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) have arrived in France, hell-bent on infiltrating the Jacobite rebellion led by Prince Charles Stuart and stopping the he battle of Culloden. While there, they are thrown into the lavish world of French society, where intrigue and parties are abundant, but altering the course of history is a greater challenge then they could have imagined, as they attempt to prevent the extinction of Scottish life as they know it.

During this exclusive interview with Collider, actor Sam Heughan talked about the different themes and feel for Season 2, the effects of Jamie not dealing with his trauma, the changing dynamic between Jamie and Claire, the biggest external threats this season, the new costumes, the shorthand he’s developed with co-star Caitriona Balfe, and what he’s most excited about fans of the book getting to see in Season 2. Be aware that there are some spoilers.

Collider: After such a dark end of the season, last season, was it nice to start off with a brighter and more colorful Season 2?

SAM HEUGHAN: Yeah, visually it’s a lot different. And the themes and feel of it are different, as well. It’s this world that we don’t quite understand, and Jamie and Claire are struggling there. And yet, ultimately, it’s very important for us to go there because when we do go back to Scotland, it’s a release. It’s like, “Ah, this is what we missed.” So, they’re in France and there are a lot of things for them to contend with. Jamie is working all day on the mission, and at night, he’s going out and drinking, all the time, because of what’s happened to him. That’s pulling him and Claire apart, and he’s plagued by it and won’t open up about it, so it comes to a head. It’s something they need to get over and, because of that, Paris is not a particularly joyous place.

Jamie seems very torn between not dealing with the trauma of what he went through and being focused on the mission he’s trying to complete. Will he eventually have to deal with what he’s trying to avoid?

HEUGHAN: He’s very much a man of the time, where you don’t talk about your feelings. He’s dealt with physical trauma before. He’s got scars on his back and multiple wounds. That’s fine. But, the mental side is new to him. He doesn’t think about it and just busies himself. He gets drunk so that he doesn’t have to deal with it, but it does come back to haunt him. Ultimately, it forces Jamie and Claire to be less intimate because he’s closing up and not talking about it. Their physicality becomes less. They see less of each other. It comes to a head because they’re losing hold of each other and losing sight of why they’re there and what they’re doing. And the way that it’s resolved comes in quite a surprising form.

Is Claire trying to get Jamie to talk about it, or is she being very cautious?

HEUGHAN: Initially, she’s very much trying to give him his space. She knows that he’s doing what she asked him to, which is to ingratiate himself with the Jacobites to complete their mission, so she can understand why he’s not talking. But then, he needs to talk about it because it’s affecting their relationship. She thinks that maybe time will cure everything, but unfortunately, it doesn’t. So then, she does ask him to talk about it, which doesn’t really go well.

Where are the biggest external threats coming from this season?

HEUGHAN: In Season 1, you could see the threats coming, in the form of Red Coats who were on horses with guns. This time, it’s less obvious. We met St. Germain in Episode 1, who is this very powerful merchant who has his fingers in pies and ties to King Louis, and he starts to muddle in their affairs. He ties back to other characters that we’ve met before and will meet in the future, who are quite powerful and who have all along been meddling in their affairs. It’s very complicated, but it’s politics.

Was it fun to get to open up the world, in this way?

HEUGHAN: Yes. It’s been very much character based before this and very much about discovery in Season 1. This is a slightly different animal. It’s been interesting. Dealing with Prince Charles and the war generals, you start to realize why these people were so ineffectual in battle, but why they were so inspiring and people would follow them. It’s been really fascinating to understand how and why these things happened.

Do the new costumes make you carry yourself different, physically?

HEUGHAN: Absolutely! It’s quite claustrophobic. They look fantastic, but it’s all buttoned up. It’s all for show, and that’s what Jamie and Claire are doing. They’re putting on this public persona, but in private, it’s a very different story. So, when we do go back to Scotland, it’s like an old friend, putting on the kilt again, and being free and able to express your emotions.

How has your working relationship with Caitriona Balfe changed and grown, after having a season of work behind you?

HEUGHAN: In Season 1, we were finding out way through. Now, we have a shorthand. We know each other and we know what to expect. When I read a scene, I know roughly how she’s going to play it, which is nice. With Season 1, we were both new and naive to it, so we were holding each other’s hand and going into it wide-eyed. Now, it’s a little bit more lived in, which is a good thing. That’s exactly where the characters are. They’re more savvy and they understand the process of where they, but the problems they face are more complex. It’s not young love. They’re not teenagers falling in love. This is a modern relationship that has its own problems and grey areas.

Now that Jamie knows about Claire and where she came from, how does that change things between them?

HEUGHAN: It’s just like any modern relationship when the partner mentions the ex. When Frank’s name is mentioned, it’s like, “Oh, here we go.” It’s just more awkward and it’s a part of the relationship we’re now getting to see.

Are there moments from the books that you’re excited about fans getting to see brought to life this season?

HEUGHAN: I’m really excited about the battles and about the historical side. I’m just excited for the fans of the books to get to meet all of these great characters, like King Louis and Master Raymond. Master Raymond is a great character in the book, and you’ll find out something quite interesting about him. He’s got secrets, as well. He’s such a great character and he’s played so well by Dominique Piñon. Each episode has got new characters and new places, which will be very fun for the readers to see.

Do you worry at all about the changes that get made to the story and how the fans will react to it, or have they been very embracing of the changes?

HEUGHAN: I think they’re very forgiving. Of course, there are always a few, here and there, that are like, “Why is that like this?” If only they knew the logistics of everything. It’s amazing. I’m always amazed at how much we’re able to stick to the story or get everything in. We’ve got a great team of writers and they’ve all read the books, and (author) Diana [Gabaldon] is very good about that. If she doesn’t get something through to the writers or producers, she’ll go to me or Caitriona and suggest something or manage to slip it in somewhere. It is a little bit political, in its own Parisian way. But, I’m very pleased that we manage to stay close to the books. I also like to see us be able to get away from it a little bit or play with the structure. I think that gives us more opportunity to surprise book fans. There’s always that problem of, if we do that, are we going to upset people that we’re not sticking with the books completely. It’s a tough one.

With all of the darker moments of this show, there are usually also some lighter moments. Will we continue to see that?

HEUGHAN: Yeah, there are some light-hearted moments. He’s got his companion, Murtagh, who is always a source of entertainment, in some way or another. There’s also this great character, Fergus, played by Romann Berrux, who is this very wonderful little French boy that brings a great energy into the room. The way that Jamie and Claire react to him is great, and it just lightens everyone. You get to see their more frivolous side. They’re now expectant parents, so you also get to see how they will be as parents.

#outlander #outlander season 2 #interview #sam heughan #sunday sam

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