#also if anyone is going to rochester absolutely let me know i will make you a thursday bracelet or keychain or something along those lines

[wavernot4love]

just opened instagram to immediate whiplash when i saw this aka new dates .....

with YET ANOTHER thursdayband show in my immediate area???? the third in around ten months????? oh wavernot4love is going to be so very back this summer indeed

[janeeyreheresy]

A Happy Ending or An Unreliable Narrator?

Was the ending truly a happy one--or is Jane lying to us?

Let's take a look: Jane Eyre ("I am no bird no net ensnares me") married her much older former master, who, due to his limited use of limbs and visual impairment, requires care. We know there's no hired carer, because Jane explicitly says she was the one who looked after him (hence why she had to send Adele to school) and also, as I noted in my recap post, it's not likely they'd be able to hire anyone. They've got no room for a live-in staff and a live-out one won't be able to make their daily way to Ferndean, which is located away from habitable civilisation.

Ferndean Manor, we are told, is not in a good state. We are told that Rochester didn't move Bertha there because the damp walls would eventually result in her death. This is the house where the Rochesters now live. Jane, however, tells us nothing about any repairs being done. Neither does she mention any decorating, purchasing furniture, wallpaper, carpets, curtains, pictures on the walls--zilch. She got a lot of pleasure out of cleaning Moor House in time for Christmas (shortly after she discovered she and the Riverses were cousins). Just look at this:

“My first aim will be to clean down (do you comprehend the full force of the expression?)—to clean down Moor House from chamber to cellar; my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite number of cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I shall go near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room; and lastly, the two days preceding that on which your sisters are expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a beating of eggs, sorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding of Christmas cakes, chopping up of materials for mince-pies, and solemnising of other culinary rites, as words can convey but an inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you. My purpose, in short, is to have all things in an absolutely perfect state of readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday; and my ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come.”

This one paragraph contains more home cosiness than the entire last chapter. The "I have now been married ten years" paragraph may be very poetic, but it tells us nothing. She was his eyes, then he regained some sight, so he can pretty much move about by himself. She says they visit Diana and Mary, but that's all. Nothing else about how they spend their time, the long summer days or the long winter nights.

And then, that "when his first-born was put into his arms" line. Even Katniss Everdeen isn't this cold about her kids, and she didn't want any. She only had them because Peeta talked her into it. There's nothing in the book that would indicate whether Jane wanted children, but neither is there anything that would indicate she didn't want them. Presumably she did, married life would have meant kids (unless, idk, they lived sexlessly, or there was birth control). She only mentions how Rochester felt about the kid ("On that occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy."), not her. It's baffling.

Lastly, the final words are dedicated to St John. Why? She receives his letter from India, in which he tells her he feels death coming. She gets tears in her eyes. Does she wish she married him instead?

Of course, that would not have been a better option than marrying Rochester in any way, but she may have thought the grass was greener in St John-landia.

So to sum it up, there's certainly an argument against it being a happy ending. Take it any way you wish.

Personally I don't care. I actually think she was, indeed, happy. I may not see caring for a spouse in a dump like Ferndean in Bumfuck Nowhere a happy ending, but that's me. Jane, however, does. This is a woman with a very limited worldview, who has never been anywhere and not met many people, who fell in love with the first man who crossed her path, who at barely twenty years old believes nobody will ever love her the way the Roch did. She doesn't think that she deserves anything better than what she got. So yeah, she was happy.

But like I said, I don't care. What I do care about is that Bertha was happy after her escape and divorce from Rochester.

[reidscanehand]

Can I please request 33 from the kiss prompt list with hotch?

Someone to Steady Me

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x BAUfem!Reader Category: Hurt/Comfort/Fluff TW: Reader is going through it after a particularly difficult case, so mentions of typical CM case content, anxiety, depression, disordered eating habits (really just avoidance of food), exhaustion, burnout, a small mention of slight head injury on a case

I have been going through it recently and I need something like this - it won't happen - so I have to write it. This is also, lowkey, based on another moment from Bridgerton season 2. No spoilers really, unless you've seen the series (in which case, enjoy the moment I stole from it). Anyway, enjoy! xx

Aaron Hotchner has worked very hard to achieve the positions he holds in life. He worked hard to become a federal prosecutor and then even harder to transition to behavioral profiler in the FBI, and even harder to become unit chief. He works hard to be a good team leader, a good father, and as good a human being as he can be. He's earned his place in life. Strictly speaking, it is difficult to make him feel uncomfortable.

And yet, standing outside your door, he's not sure he's ever felt so uncomfortable in his entire life. Especially when he has to knock on your door yet again - the third time he's done so. 

"Y/N," he calls, feeling - still - incredibly foolish. It’s not too astonishing - at least, not to him (and probably not to the rest of the team either, if he’s honest with himself) that you are able to disarm him so completely. The case the team had just completed in Rochester had been exhausting as usual and had taken a toll on everyone, but especially you. While chasing down the unsub, he’d gone up, climbing a ladder to an attic and slamming the door on top of your head knocking you out and back down the ladder. It was a miracle, frankly that your only injury was your head injury. He’d been embarrassingly attentive at the hospital, only for you to refuse to stay any longer than you absolutely had to, voting instead to go home. And now, three days into the bureau-mandated week’s long leave for the team, you’d not been answering phone calls or text messages from anyone. Penelope finally broke and went to check on you to at least make sure you were alive. You’d told her you were fine through the door, but she was still worried and relayed her worries to Aaron, who has been worried about it since the moment you left the hospital. 

"Yes?" your small voice replies, clearly just on the other side of the door. He barely quashes the sigh of relief he emits at hearing your voice. 

"It's, um, it's Hotch," he states rather awkwardly, shifting his weight between his feet, flexing his hold on the handle of the brown paper grocery bag he's carrying. "I was just-"

"Do you need something?" you ask quietly. It's not quite rude, but...strained and sad. Tense.

"Um," Aaron presses his hand against the door, hoping you can't hear the desperation in his voice, "I just, uh, you're unwell and-"

"I'm fine, Hotch," you say softly, your voice still strained and sad.

"That isn't a judgment, just a fact. You got hurt, Y/N," he corrects you sweetly. "And I...I know you are stubborn, but...you live alone. I just couldn't...will you please let me in?"

You don't respond and he sighs deeply.

"Please?" he asks again. He hears the hitch of your breath and nearly apologizes, but is cut off by the sound of the lock clicking open. The door opens and he takes in the sight, trying not to look too shocked.

You don't look...well. You're gorgeous - you always are - but you look so exhausted that Aaron can hardly bear to see it. The circles under your eyes are darker than he's ever seen them, your hair is in slight disarray, and even your clothes look too worn in - as though you haven't changed in days.

He should've come sooner, is all he can think, trying to avoid thinking about the three days since the team was put on a mandatory week's leave following the difficult case in New York the week prior.

"Y/N," he gasps, immediately regretting it as you practically wither under his gaze.

"See?" you ask, your voice growing smaller and tighter. "I'm fine. Just tired and...and feeling sorry for myself o-over nothing-"

"Getting hit in the head," Aaron interrupts you gently, stepping forward slightly into the doorframe, "and knocked out by the unsub on a case as difficult as the one in Rochester was is hardly nothing, Y/N."

You stare up at him, lips parting slightly. It's these moments, the quiet ones between you two - the ones where little but the two of you breathing can be heard- that Aaron begins to wonder if you might possibly feel the same for him as he does for you.

Because he cares for you deeply.

"Soup," he states ineptly, cutting off his own wayward thoughts. "I brought you soup."

"Oh," you reply, stepping back after another awkward moment of silence. He enters the apartment, schooling his expression as he takes in the view. Profiling is hard to turn off, especially as a seasoned professional and, to put it simply: you're clearly not okay.

Your apartment isn't filthy, but he knows you and he knows that you would never have let him in with it in its current state had he not insisted on coming in. There are mugs everywhere. Mugs of broth, mugs of tea (if the abandoned tea bags, their end tabs fluttering like surrendering soldiers in a battle were anything to go on), mugs of coffee, and glasses of water sit on almost every flat surface. He grimaces at the lack of real food, wishing he’d brought you something more than soup. The case was tough, but he knows that’s not the issue here. This is plain, old-fashioned, but just as terrifying as ever burn out. He doesn’t realize he hasn’t spoken until your quiet voice pipes up again.

“Sorry for the mess,” you nearly whisper.

“Oh, Y/N,” he sighs sweetly, putting his bags down on the counter and rushing over to you, only just stopping himself from pulling you into his arms. He stops himself because he’d never touch you without your permission, but also because you take a huge step back, still not quite looking at him.

“Please don’t pity me, Aaron,” you rasp, clearly trying not to cry.

“I’m not pitying you, Y/N, I’m-”

“It’s already humiliating enough,” you continue as though he hadn’t spoken. You open your mouth to speak again, but a small, choked sob of your own cuts you off. 

“What is?” Aaron asks quietly, a little afraid of your answer.

“Being so needy,” you manage to answer. “Being too much and yet...yet still not enough.” 

He can’t take it anymore, though, because you’re crying too much. He steps forward and tentatively wraps his arms around you. You freeze for half a second before allowing yourself to be comforted by his embrace. You wrap your arms around him as well. The two of you stand in silence, wrapped in each other’s arms for a good, long while. Finally, as your breathing returns to normal, signalling that you’ve stopped crying, Aaron clears his throat gently. 

“You’re not needy,” Aaron tells you. “You’re not too much. And you are more than enough, Y/N...do you, do you realize how much you mean to people? To me?”

You say nothing, but your arms tighten around Aaron and he reciprocates by pulling you impossibly closer. 

And as the two of you stand in the afternoon light of your apartment, Aaron hopes you realize just how much he means what he’s saying, but also that you don’t realize just how much he cares for you. 

~~~

When the week off is over, the team returns to the office, thankful that they haven’t been called away for another case, but ever at the ready in case they get called in. Aaron had spent that afternoon with you at your apartment, cleaning your dishes while you ate soup. The next afternoon he’d convinced you to go on a walk through the park with himself and Jack. The day after that, the two of you had taken Jack to the movies. And the day after that, he’d taken you to dinner just the two of you. It had felt date-like, but Aaron didn’t want to push it. He would never push and he’s, frankly, thrilled for whatever time you’re willing to spend with him. And he hopes...he hopes more than anything that your time spent together has made you recognize that you aren’t a burden. You aren’t too needy. You aren’t too much. You’re...you’re you and that is beyond enough. 

When you walk through the glass doors with a smile on your face, he knows you can feel the surprise from the rest of the team. Other than assuring Penelope that you were alive, well, and getting some form of Vitamin D (Penelope sent Aaron some delighted emojis that he didn’t fully understand, but he knows that she knows how he feels about you), you’d not responded to any of the group chats. In fact, other than Aaron and a few texts with Penelope, you’ve haven’t really spoken to anyone else. So your smiling face entering the bullpen is a complete, but entirely delightful, surprise. 

“Good morning, Hotch,” you greet when he stops in front of you. Your smile doesn’t fade, if anything, it deepens, making his own smile impossible to control. 

“Good morning, Y/L/N,” he responds, feeling the rest of the team’s eyes focusing on the two of you. “How was your break?”

“It was...delighful,” you answer shyly. “I learned a lot.”

“Learned a lot?” Aaron asks, cocking his head to one side, barely resisting the desire to wrap his hands around your waist and pull you closer to him. 

“Yes,” you giggle, “I learned that it’s...alright to need people sometimes. Especially after a head injury.”

Aaron narrows his eyes jokingly and steps closer to you, holding up three fingers in front of your face, “How many?”

“Three,” you grin up at him proudly. But Aaron flips his hand around adding his pinky and clicking his teeth.

“Ah, too bad,” he teases. 

You chuckle delightfully, still smiling up at him, “Guess I still need someone to steady me.”

“Could I...offer myself up for that job?” Aaron asks quietly, feeling a blush rise in his cheeks. A blush that only grows stronger as you reach up and press your lips to his. 

Pulling away, you grin up at his surprised expression, “I wouldn’t want it to be anyone else.”

Aaron stands speechless for a moment and your adorable confidence fades slightly at his lack of response. 

“I’m sorry,” you say quickly, “was that too-”

But, ever ready to steady your nerves, Aaron cuts you off with another kiss. 

~~~

Feel free to send kiss prompts from this list! xx

[chispas-and-broken-bindings]

Your tags about darklina made me wonder, what are some of your favorite villain/heroine romances? I know they’re popular, but the only time I’ve really bought that dynamic was Villanelle/Eve.

Oh!  What a good ask @esther-dot! Though, unfortunately I don’t have many to recommend. I really love the enemies-to-lovers trope and a good villain/hero(ine) romance, but unfortunately I think its very hard to do well and most of the time I just don’t buy it either. 

When it’s done poorly I absolutely hate it. 

I love Killing Eve, and the Villanelle/Eve dynamic is actually what renewed my interest in the trope. It had been dead to me for awhile because I saw too many darklina versions of it, and that left a sour taste in my mouth (sorry for the shade S&B fans...they just really don’t do it for me)

That being said, here are some versions of the trope that I do adore. 

1. Lust, Caution - This is the film where it all started for me...and also what ruined almost all other versions of the trope. Nothing compares. It’s directed by Ang Lee, and it’s set during the Japanese occupation of  China during the second sino-japanese war. and stars Tang Wei and Tony Leung. Tang Wei plays an idealistic university student who plots to seduce and kill Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), a special agent and recruiter for the puppet government. 

It’s beautifully filmed, very sexy, suspenseful and the stakes are high! I couldn’t recommend it more, though beware. There are no happy endings. 

2. Tie me up! Tie me down!

I was actually just chatting with @woodswit about this film so it’s on my mind. ¡Átame! is a dark romantic comedy starring a very fresh-faced Antonio Banderas (the movie is from 1989) who plays a troubled young man who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital. He immediately proceeds to kidnap an actress (Victoria Abril) in order to make her fall in love with him. It’s the kind of plot that would never be billed as a comedy or a romance in the year of our lord 2021...but its so much fun. Young Antonio Banderas is fine as hell, and they play with both horror and romantic comedy conventions in a really unique way. It’s a Pedro Almodovar film so it’s beautiful to look at as well.

3. The Handmaiden - this is the kind of movie you should really go into blind, but lets just say they twist the trope in the most deliciously unexpected ways, and you’ll leave very satisfied with everyone’s fates. 

4. Jane Eyre - I completely think Mr. Rochester is the villain to Jane’s heroine....and I love every bit of it. It’s been one of my favorite books since I was a preteen, and while my more mature self wants to tell Jane to run for the hills, another side of me is screaming for her to get it. 

5. Tom Riddle/Hermione Granger - This obviously only exists in fandom, and I wasn’t even really aware of this ship until the last year or so, but I’ve read a few good fics and I really like the dynamic when its an adult Hermione traveling back in time to stop the rise of Voldemart. Blood and Gold by @obsidianpen is an in-progress fic that is excellent! 

6. Honorable mention: Battlestar Galactica

I posed the question to my husband during dinner, and this was his submission and I think the entire television series actually fits the best parts of the trope really well, if you squint. 

These are the first examples that came to mind! If anyone can think of other good ones, I’m all ears, though I’d prefer non-YA examples. Every time I’ve encountered the worst versions of this trope, it’s been in a YA series. 

[songsofacagedbird]

Is that BALIAN “BALO” DRISKELL? Wow, they do look a lot like EMILIIE DE RAVIN I hear SHE is an EIGHTEEN year old high school SENIOR. Word is they are a REGULAR student at Luxor Academy. You should watch out because they can be NAIVE and SENSITIVE, but on the bright side they can also be BUBBLY and OPTIMISTIC. Ultimately, you’ll get to see it all for yourself.

the basics //

Full Name: Balian “Balo” Grace Driskell

Preferred Name: Balo Driskell

Age: 18

Birthday: February 23rd

Zodiac: Pisces

Gender & Pronouns: Woman (She/Hers)

Sexuality: Balo doesn’t label her sexuality, she’s part of the LGBT+ community (and has canonly dated both girls and boys) but she doesn’t feel comfortable labeling it personally.

Occupation: N/A, she occasionally does commissions though (both art and in like making clothes)

Relationship Status: In a relationship with Cade Carroll (npc) since early May 

Place of Birth: Rochester, New York

Hometown: Saratoga Springs, New York

Country of Citizenship: United States

Languages Spoken: English (first) and French

deeper dive //

Hobbies and Talents:

 ○ Sketching (in particular people and animals, an inspiration board for her sketch book can be found here.)

 ○ Painting

 ○ Gymnastics (her leg is her left leg! By “her leg” I mean the leg she leads off with / does her split with for her floor routine / has better balance)

 ○ Fashion Design and Sewing

 ○ Cheerleading

 ○ Gymnastics

 ○ Yoga

 ○ Roller Skating

 ○ Scrapbooking

 ○ Dancing (a hobby, not a talent)

 ○ She can touch her nose with her tongue

Favorites:

 ○ Color: The entire rainbow, Balo has issues with picking one favorite color so she doesn’t choose.

 ○ Food: Balo’s not the biggest on food but she has a weakness for popcorn. Extra butter, light on the salt.

 ○ Animal: Cats

 ○ Drink: Hot Chocolate

 ○ Flower: Sunflowers

 ○ Book: a fairy tale collection she got from Zander when she was a child

 ○ Holiday: Christmas, to the point she’ll start decorating as early as she can. (June? Why not!)

 ○ Movie: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

 ○ Scent: Strawberries, real a bit more than the artificial but she adores both.

 ○ Place: Her “little art studio” (technically just a corner of her room with her art supplies).

 ○ Quote:

“Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.” - Unknown

Bêtes Noires:

 ○ Color: Dark brown, although she won’t admit to it

 ○ Food: Chicken à la King

 ○ Animal: Spiders, Balo does not like spiders and would like to stay far away from them

 ○ Drink: Matcha

 ○ Flower: Nepenthes peltata

 ○ Book: The Divergent Books

 ○ Holiday: 4th of July

 ○ Movie: Rugrats in Paris, she thinks it’s practically a horror movie

 ○ Scent: Garlic

 ○ Place: The Driskell family home in Saratoga Springs

health //  

Conditions:

          ○ Anorexia Nervosa

          ○ HIV

Allergies: N/A

Sleeping Habits: Balo gets to bed usually at a good time and sleeps 8 hours at a shot.

Exercise Habits: She exercises multiple times of day, between gymnastics and cheerleading, it’s important she’s in prime shape. Dance and Yoga are her go-tos outside of practice.

Addictions: N/A

Drug Use: Very rarely. After a bad LSD trip (when she wasn’t aware she was being drugged until after the fact), she’s very wary of drugs on average.

Alcohol Use: Occasionally. Balo doesn’t have a high alcohol tolerance, she gets tipsy after one drink and if she keeps drinking, after a couple the odds of her stripping are extremely high. (It’s not a sexual thing, she overheats and doesn’t really think about the consequences).

personality //  

MBTI: ESFP

Enneagram: 2w3 (The Helper with The Achiever Wing)

Alignment: Neutral Good

Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff

Percy Jackson Parent: Iris

Pokémon Type: Dragon

Pokémon Subtype: Ghost

Winx: Nature

appearance //  

Height:  5′11” – not at fc height (I enjoy her being a few cm taller than Zander too much to put her at fc now #oops)

Tattoos: One

Scars: None

Piercings: Ears

Hair: Blonde

Eyes: Blue

Fashion:

 ○ link to balo’s closet

 ○ link to balo’s shoes

life at luxor //  

Classes:

 ○ Communications

 ○ French

 ○ General P.E.

 ○ Visual Arts

 ○ Fashion Design

 ○ Human Biology

 ○ Beginner Ballet

Clubs and Activities:

 ○ Art Club

 ○ Cheerleading (Flyer)

 ○  Gymnastics

fun facts //  

 ○ Balo has been attending Luxor since her Freshman year.

 ○ Balo’s kind of a literal ray of sunshine who believes (almost) everyone is truly good at heart.

 ○ Very easy to manipulate, please manipulate her. I’ll literally give you my firstborn.

 ○ Usually you’ll see her running around with a smile trying to brighten everyone’s day. She tries to put everyone’s happiness before herself, however, she’s slowly getting better about forming boundaries.

 ○ While it’d be easy to assume Balo’s dumb, that’s not quite the case. She only remembers the information she wants to. The issue is... most of the information she wants to learn is relatively useless. Want to know how to sew sutures? She’s your girl. Want to know the definition of cannibalism? Well, ask Jack how that goes.

 ○ She has two teddy bears and an American Girl doll living on her dresser. Duffy, Shelley-Mae, and Robin Banks. They’re decorative, but they make her happy.

 ○ One of her best friends is Logan Keller, the boy who went missing during the summer camping trip. The two are still in touch, and extremely close, so occasionally he gets mentioned here and there, but it’s still a sore spot for her (I am still in touch with the person who played him, so I run stuff by his mun when / if he comes up).

 ○ Jack’s adoptive parents recently adopted her, although she hasn’t said a lot about it. Your muse probably won’t know unless one of the two directly told them (or they heard it from Zander). It’s not a secret, she just didn’t make an announcement or anything.

 ○ In October 2019, Zander had an intervention for her to force her to get help for her eating disorder. She was in inpatient until April 2020, when she returned to Luxor.

 ○ Cheer and Gymnastics team member from Freshmen year until her intervention, and she returned to both teams this fall with the new school year.

 ○ Balo’s left handed (the only one of my muses that is a lefty)!

 ○   I’m aware Balo’s family page can be complicated, please feel free to dm me with questions. Also, please remember Balo doesn’t know she’s Daniel’s daughter, let alone the fact there’s even a chance Lance isn’t her father, which means your muse has absolutely no way of knowing this.

 ○ Befriended a stray racoon on the Lake George campus she named Reese Withercoon.

 ○ Literally only just said her first swear word this June, we’re very proud of her for finally getting that done. (#ThanksAxelAndLeo)

 ○ Balo finds the Winnie the Pooh theme song extremely soothing, which resulted in her naming a certain group chat with a set of friends the 100 Acre Woods - because she finds spending time with them soothing too.

 ○ I’m always willing to discuss my muses, so feel free to hit me up if you have any questions at any point.

a tl;dr history  //  

 ○ Balo’s home life growing up was far from perfect. Her father, Lance - is an abusive alcoholic, and while her mother tried her best to protect her children - she also covered things up without hesitation because she loves her husband. It wasn’t uncommon to see a Driskell in the ER with a lie and people willing to back up the story.

 ○ Balo was conceived during the time Lance and Cassandra were seperated the only time that her mother tried to leave. She’s completely unaware that she’s not Lance’s biological daughter (as is everyone else).

 ○ She’s been attending Luxor since freshman year, although she had to leave in the middle of her Junior year had to leave for a few months to attend extensive inpatient treatment. She came back in April, although she could not rejoin the cheerleading and gymnastic teams until her therapist confirmed she was doing well (so the start of her senior year) because of concerns about her well-being.

 ○ She was disowned following her HIV diagnosis over the fall. Over the winter, the Fieldings adopted Balo.

 ○ I strongly recommend skimming Balo’s timeline page before interacting with her. These are just the bare minimum basics, and there're more things your muse may know on there.

wanted connections //  

 ○ Friendships

 ○ Someone to manipulate her, please I beg you

 ○ Anyone who knows her from the gymnastics and/or cheer teams, or the art club

[mizeliza]

So, I’m reading Jane Eyre for a class and was wondering why you like the novel? Currently, I’m struggling to get through it, finding the language to be almost disorienting and alienating and Rochester to be unlike able.

You’ve opened a can of worms here because I truly do love Jane Eyre but I am also painfully aware that it is my problematic fave - there are a lot of things that are morally unacceptable by today’s standards in it and yet. And yet. 

I’ve tried to mostly keep this spoiler free, because you seem to be in the middle of the book, but the book has been out for 173 years, and many of the things I have say have to do directly with it’s major plot points and eventual ending. For the most part I’ve tried to be vague, but that isn’t always possible, if you care about spoilers, consider yourself duly warned. And if anything is too vague and you need a better explanation with more details, feel free to message me or send in another ask! As you’re about to see I love talking about Jane Eyre lol

Addressing your issues first:

If the language doesn't work for you, unfortunately you’re just going to have to struggle through it. It’s old and that was the style. I first read Jane Eyre for my 11th grade English class and to this day all my friends from that class refer to long, long sentences as Charlotte Bronte sentences. I don’t mind them, but I am also prone to long, long sentences in both my personal and academic work so. But I can definitely see how that could be a barrier for people. If you don’t have to go too deep into annotations or tracking for the class, it’s okay to skim a lot of the longer paragraphs in order to get to more of the action.

Rochester is very unlikeable, but I think that’s sort of the point, he’s one of the original brooding older men that don’t get on with anyone but that somehow has eyes for the young heroine - he sees in her what no one else does and falls in love with her for it. It’s a trope I associate a lot with 2000s/v early 2010s YA novels, and at this point it’s tired and admittedly creepy, but this was part of the origin of it, and I think that’s why it works for me. 

Side note - If at the end of it you want to really hate Rochester, read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which is about colonialism and feminism and Bertha Mason and Rochester, during which he definitely comes off worse than in Jane Eyre and she gets to be more than the originator of a very different trope, but make sure to get a version with footnotes or you will be very lost 

There are a ton of other problems with it, which I won’t go into, simply because it would take lots of time and lots of space and that isn’t what you asked for.

So back to why I love Jane Eyre:

I once saw it described as the first YA novel and I think that’s a pretty succinct way of looking at it. It’s definitely a coming of age story - from Jane escaping her abusive family members to an even worse boarding school, to her entering into the wider world for the first time, eventually leaving even though she’s in love because she refuses to compromise her morals - more on that later, getting to explore herself and her purpose in life outside of having to worry about her physical, mental, or moral survival, standing up for herself and again refusing to compromise her beliefs, and then, finally, upon realizing what she really wants in life - with the obstacles conveniently removed by fate - she returns on her own terms and gets to live happily ever after. Upon first reading it, as I mentioned above with Rochester, I noticed a lot of aspects that were very familiar to me - several of my annotations in the copy I read for school are just “wow this is just like in harry potter” - but again, they were new at the time. Anyway I just love narratives of women growing up and discovering themselves and chasing after what they want, I just think they’re neat.

I much prefer the first half? 2/3? of the book, up until she leaves Rochester and goes walking across the moors (so dramatic! and yet, what an absolute mood, if I had a moor to wander across in a forlorn state after leaving the person I love because I refused to compromise myself for them I would also go for it and end up half-dead on the doorstep of strangers) than afterwards, when she’s living with the Riverses, simply because I find them boring, especially St. John (whose name is pronounced Sinjin, which infuriated half my English class). Even though I am too afraid to watch or read true horror, I love the concept of a good ambiguously haunted isolated gothic mansion, and Jane Eyre delivers that. 

Which brings me to one of my favorite things about the book, I gave a presentation on it in my English class, which I am now realizing was four years ago which is terrifying, what I call the “almost supernatural.” Jane Eyre is filled with things that could be supernatural that aren’t - the Red Room, where Jane is filled with fear at the thought of a ghost, when she first meets Rochester and at first mistakes Pilot the dog for a gytrash, then thinking the house is haunted when strange things start happening, when it turns out to have been a person all along, if not the one everyone told her it was, and even arguably Jane herself, who Rochester refers to as a fairy multiple times. She wants so badly to believe in the supernatural, and strange and interesting things keep happening around her, and even though they’re terrifying, I’ve always gotten sort of an air of disappointment from her when it’s revealed that they’re just normal things. And then, at the very end of the book, something supernatural actually does happen to her, and it’s glossed over like the fact that what happens is physically impossible doesn’t even matter to her, after wanting things to be supernatural the whole book, because she finally knows what she really wants and has the capacity to chase after it. 

Finally, I will always take the chance to talk about how I think Jane Eyre is a feminist narrative, and am always willing to argue my point. 

By the middle of the book, Jane is in love with Rochester, and he is in love with her, he’s proposed and they’re somewhat happy together, but the situation always feels a bit off to Jane. She still doesn’t really value herself at this point, and he wants to give her nice and expensive things, and she also still feels the power dynamic - she’s an 18-year-old, possibly 19-year-old at this point? I don’t remember all the dates/times, adult but v young, governess and he’s her what, mid thirties at the youngest? rich, land-owning employer. There’s a huge power dynamic there on multiple levels, and unlike earlier, during their talks in the library where she openly calls him ugly and teases him back, at this point because of the changed social dynamic between them because of their engagement and her feelings of inadequacy because of their positions in society, made very clear by Miss Blanche Ingram (another trope that Jane Eyre helped make popular - the single father marrying the governess), Jane no longer feels like she can criticize him. While before, especially while alone, they were on more or less equal footing, she is now all too aware of how unequal they are and she shrinks a bit because of it. Somewhat ironically, Jane has very little agency between her assertion of her agency - “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will” - and her leaving Rochester, during that time she basically lets things happen to her while being somewhat bewildered about them. 

And then. And then the truth about Rochester and Thornfield is revealed, and they can no longer be married. And he offers to go away with her, to where no one knows them, to live in sin as husband and wife even though they can’t be actually married. And Jane sticks to her principles. She believes that that’s wrong and she refuses, and rather than be tortured by either the betrayal of her principles or the knowledge that he’s there and loves her and she can’t have him, she leaves. She takes only what she already owned, leaving behind everything he gave her. She finally exerts her agency again, and from then on, she keeps exerting it. 

While with the Riverses, she makes her own choices, and her own money, and again refuses a marriage that she feels isn’t right and that doesn't align with her beliefs - this time, she chooses not to marry because neither of them are in love. She rejects what St. John sees as her duty, including what can be seen as rejecting a closer relationship to god and god’s work, when god was the reason for her rejection of Rochester in the first place. Even though I think this part of the book is the most boring, Jane stands up for herself a lot more here, and she asserts herself as a person who values herself, and maybe I should reread it lol. And then, after refusing St. John and asserting her value outside of marriage, and with herself now financially secure and able to be on equal footing, socially, financially, romantically, with Rochester, then she returns to him so that they can have an equal relationship - which it would not have been before. 

I hope this was satisfying to you, even though (like Jane Eyre) it is very long and somewhat rambley, and I hope that I manage to improve your experience of the book! Please feel free to send me any responses or other commentary that you have because as shown I really do love to talk about it :)

[thewidowstanton]

Josie Stone: costumier

Costumier Josie Stone was born in London and lived and worked there most of her life but is now based in Rochester in Kent. She’s been in the business “going back to the Flower Power days of the sixties” in London’s King’s Road, and worked for a lot of up-and-coming pop groups, selling clothes to Tommy Roberts’ Kleptomania in Carnaby Street. She made fashion samples for designers Paddy Campbell and Katherine Cusack, and one Christmas Liberty’s department store had windows showcasing Cusack’s dresses – including one for Diana, Princess of Wales – all of which Josie had made. She also created samples for adverts in the boutique Medusa near Sloane Square. 

Later Josie moved into the entertainment industry, making outfits for both the children’s and adults’ Royal Variety Performances, as well as doing TV work for the Des O’Connor Show, the Michael Barrymore Show, the Lesley Garrett and Frank Skinner shows, TFI Friday and for organisations such as Butlins and Bassline Circus. She’s made costumes for shows on cruise ships and for films such as Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, and has made those for Thursford Christmas Spectacular for many years. Even though Thursford always credits her work, her considerable contribution to the industry has largely gone unrecognised. 

She is performer Becky [Rebecca] Burford’s mother, and her son-in-law is stunt man Andrew Burford. The Widow’s Liz Arratoon has always regarded costumes as a vital part of any show and was delighted when Josie agreed to chat about her impressive – and lengthy – career. 

The Widow Stanton: Have you always loved clothes and fashion? Josie Stone: It was always in me. I was one of these kids that when my mother and father bought me a sewing machine I made all my dolls’ clothes.

Was this skill in your family background? No, my mum was very good at sewing… very good. But no they didn’t do this. My father was a printer. I learnt a lot at school and a lot from my mum. I didn’t go to college; we had lessons at school for making… millinery classes and also sewing classes.

That’s amazing! We had sewing classes at school but we never learnt anything worthwhile. How did you start out actually working in the industry? I left school and went to a couple of places making shirts but that didn’t last long. Then I met up with this guy who had his workroom above Tesco’s in Victoria. He was very keen to start making… it was like Flower Power days but you couldn’t buy shirts and trousers and things like that for the pop groups. Those sort of things just weren’t around. So I went to work with him. It was a rented flat he lived in and we were all working in there making these things. Then he suddenly got this place down King’s Road in Chelsea called The Potato Shop; on the corner in World’s End. At the time Granny Takes a Trip was just down the road from us, with this American car sticking out the window that appeared to crash through on to the step. It was great! I mean good fun, great fun!

Do you design as well as make? No, I don’t design. I get a drawing and that’s it. It depends on who the designer is… sometimes you get ‘I want that at the bottom, I want the skirt to look like that and the top to look like that’. 

Can you remember any of the pop groups you worked for? [Laughs] No! You’re talking a lot of years ago, lots of years ago. It was any group that was starting out in that industry and they had nowhere to buy their things. We would buy Indian bedspreads and make them into kaftans, sailors’ trousers, dyeing them all different colours and altering them, and frilly shirts that would be sold to the antique market at the Sloane Square end of the King’s Road, near the town hall. We had one floor in The Potato Shop and there were crazy carryings on downstairs in the basement. We didn’t really know what it was all about but it was a bit naughty. One night we sneaked back into the place and worked all night so this guy could get his order out. 

We always hear about the Swinging Sixties… how much fun was it?  Oh, King’s Road was lovely. Beautiful, beautiful. It was a wonderful place to be in the sixties with all the Flower Power, then the punks. It was great fun; it was wonderful fun. It was all unknown to me; it was all new and that was the start of me getting into that type of work. My dad worked just off of Carnaby Street and he got us work from Kleptomania, a big, big place where all the pop groups used to go. We’d be making more kaftans and shirts with frills all down the sides and the centre. There still weren’t many shops around that were selling that type of thing. Tommy Roberts would sell to people like Jimi Hendrix and The Who. It was just fun. [Laughs] I was a single girl having great fun going from one place to the next, really. 

After that I worked in a boutique called Medusa. I was downstairs making samples all the time. I didn’t used to do much production. Mainly I’d make a sample up and then if they liked it it would go off to wherever, to a factory or somewhere like that to do production. Medusa was a swinging place, it was in a little alleyway off the King’s Road next to Sainsbury’s. I believe it was called Elystan Place. It was an up-and-coming boutique. That was at the time when Zandra Rhodes was big, and those sort of people. One time we made some samples for Apple Records, the Beatles’ label, but it never came to anything. 

What was the best part of your life then? I was young and having fun and it was all the unknown. I lived then in Wandsworth Road with my parents, and these were all Chelsea people and they were different, completely different to the life I’d led, and it was just really way out, anything went. It didn’t matter what you wore, anything went. And I loved my job. I’d work any hours because I loved it. I didn’t always like the places, I’d go from job to job, but I did love my work and I then started having my own workroom. I decided I’d work from home. I worked with a friend from my first mother-in-law’s house and we were still doing the kaftans… a guy used to pull up in this black cab that was all painted with psychedelic patterns. It was at Tulse Hill – they were very quiet there – and the neighbours used to look in absolute amazement at everything going on. But we loved it, my mother-in-law loved it and it was good fun.

So, let’s jump ahead, how did the Liberty’s window display come about? I worked for somebody called Katherine Cusack. That was just when Rebecca was born and I was working from home. I think Katherine advertised in The Stage and she wanted to start doing semi-couture work. I’d make her samples and then she’d have a party and invite all these quite wealthy people to her lounge. It was a beautiful Edwardian house in Grafton Square in Clapham Common. Then she managed to get into Liberty’s and that Christmas the whole front had all the dresses that I’d made. 

Which of Lady Di’s dresses did you make?  It was a beautiful silk velvet in a beautiful deep blue. It had long sleeves and rouleau loops with little buttons all the way down. I think Di went into Liberty’s and bought it. I believe she was photographed wearing it for The Lady. Katherine was over the moon. But it was real pain to make because silk velvet takes its own route. It’s not the easiest of fabrics to work on because it’s so soft. It is beautiful but it’s not easy to make. You’ve go to have the right feed on your machine otherwise when you’re joining the seams up you’ll lose it and it will be longer one end. Josie! That dress was later auctioned for thousands and thousands! £48,000, I believe.

How did you make the move into showbusiness?  I moved into that when Rebecca started at Sylvia Young’s. They used to put on shows all the time because it’s a theatre school and I started making costumes. Then I went on to doing the children’s Royal Variety. 

Is that how you got on to the adults’ Royal Variety Performance? I’d got into a workroom at Acton doing samples for someone I met on the children’s Royal Variety. Then I went into my own workroom at Acton and I used to help her out. Various different designers got my name and we took on the work. That’s how we gradually started doing all the shows. She didn’t want to go on the shows so I used to go to the studios or anywhere where the work was and I’d fit the costumes and then come back and we’d finish them, but she stayed in the workroom to do whatever needed to be done there. 

Can you tell us about any really nice celebs you worked with? Oh God, who haven’t I met? [Laughs] I worked on the Royal Variety for years with a wonderful designer called Linda Martin. That’s years and years so that’s one helluva lot of people I’ve met. Des O’Connor was sweet. He was lovely, lovely, absolutely charming and so was his wife. We used to do a lunchtime show with him. I did that for a lot of years. Michael Barrymore was also lovely. I was really upset when he went off the scene because he was a nice guy. 

Does anyone else stand out? There’s very few that weren’t nice. They were all very nice. No one was horrible. I worked on Michael Barrymore’s show at Wimbledon Theatre and there were so many celebs on it that they had to share dressing rooms. This one particular share was with Warren Mitchell and Chris Eubank. And Warren Mitchell didn’t want to share with Chris Eubank at all. At the time Chris Eubank had this electric scooter that he would go all round the corridors on it. I could understand Warren Mitchell not wanting to share with him because he was a bit wild at this point. He’s the only one I can say wasn’t very pleasant, but I think it was because he was unhappy about sharing because he and Chris were complete opposites. 

Do you know how many years you’ve done Thursford for?  If we go this time, probably 20 years. The designer I work with there is Stephen Adnitt; he was Cilla’s designer. I worked with Linda Martin for 12 or 13 years doing Thursford. I’d never met Stephen, I knew of him, and he asked me to join his team. The designer gets the job and they’ll have a team and usually they keep that same team all the time. I’ve worked with him for eight years. 

How many costumes might be involved in its Christmas show? We have to dress everybody at Thursford, even the orchestra. So you have 56 singers, 23 dancers and almost two full orchestras. 

So when would you start to plan something like that? We – I work with Rita Best – would start end of May, beginning of June. Our designs would come in before then. We’d measure people and make the costumes and fit them in September. There are probably eight or nine sets of costumes to make. It’s enormous! Enormous. It’s the biggest show I think in Europe. We’d spend three weeks in Norfolk just making sure that it all works on the set; making sure that sequins don’t come off – I mean it’s covered, absolutely covered in sequins – and we’ll be sitting for hours and hours sticking them on. But again, we love it. We’d see the rehearsals and the preview and the day the show starts we’d come home. Our job was done. When I was working for Linda there, I’d be there working late at night. That didn’t happen so much with Stephen. He’d be like: “We’ve got to finish now.” 

You mentioned doing millinery at school so do you do headdresses and that sort of thing? No, I would have liked to have done but for Thursford we have a milliner who comes with us; Shirley Davis, who has also been in the business a very long time.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow in your footsteps? Get into a workroom and learn how it goes. Learn how people work because what they learn at college is not how a workroom works. And really to earn any money at it, you’ve got to have a bit of speed on the machine. You can’t hang about. You can’t take a week or two or three weeks to make something. It’s nice if they can get into a workroom and see it first hand. I mean I get my work through various designers that I’ve known over the years or another maker who will ring me up completely out of the blue. Last week I helped someone out on a film. I’ll work on anything that needs a costume. I did Red or Black? at Wembley Arena, a game show developed by Simon Cowell. You could win a £1 million. It was massive. I worked with another designer called Scott Landridge, who did the children’s TV series The Worst Witch, the TV series Mile High and the sitcom Citizen Khan.

Have you had any costume disasters? Not really. [Laughs] I’ve had a lot of late nights or working all night to finish a costume off. You get the occasional broken strap and you have to quickly run down to the stage or on to the set and pin them up, or something doesn’t fit when they arrive. But no major disasters.

Have you been doing anything during the lockdown?  Just before the lockdown we had all these shows on cruise ships lined up but that all went. At first I was making scrubs for the hospitals. I did loads of voluntary work for anyone who needed them. Sometimes they gave me the material and sometimes I’d provide it. They were using all kinds of material in the end, even bedspreads. I did that for a while and I also made these little pairs of hearts. They were to send to hospices and hospitals so the patient could have one to hold and the family would have the other one. I made them out of all the material I have here. I also did masks, but I’m not doing so many now.

Do you ever think about retiring? No! [Laughs] I love what I do. But the work will get less and less and that will be it. I mean we’ve had hardly anything this year. We did a few bits for Butlins and a big Dame’s costume, which I don’t think ever got used because that show was cut. 

Can you pick out a few career highlights? I loved working on the Royal Variety at the Royal Albert Hall. I loved doing it in there. I did that quite a few times. Beautiful, beautiful. It’s a beautiful building and it’s just lovely to work in. If you look back at all the names that have been on the Royal and I did it for more than twenty years, there are a hell of a lot of names I’ve met. And that was quite fun. 

Josie is hoping that Thursford Christmas Spectacular in Thursford, Norfolk will go ahead this year. If so, it will run from 9 November – 23 December 2021 at 2pm and 7pm. 

In the meantime she can be contacted on 07956 832261 for commissions.

For Thursford tickets click here

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[thorne93]

Inside the Criminal Mind (Part 23)

Prompt: You’re married to Dr. Spencer Reid of the BAU, and are a distinguished doctor yourself on the team. You’re sent down to Miami, Florida for teaching and as a side request from the FBI, to investigate a string of missing persons. When you think you’ve figured out who the unsub is, your life becomes more complicated than you ever could’ve imagined.

Word Count: 1793

Warnings: (throughout the fic –>) death, blood, gore, killings, language, disturbing mental notions, mentions of rapes/murder/etc (You know, Dexter and Criminal Minds related business)

Notes: Thank you so much to @arrow-guy​​​​​​, @carryonmyswansong​​​​​​, and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo​​​​​​ - without each of you, I couldn’t have finished, written, or properly navigated this story. Each of you helped me fish out details that were incredibly important to me. Beta’d by @carryonmyswansong​​​​​​ and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo​​​​​​… Aesthetic by @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo​​​​​​

This is a crossover of Criminal Minds x Dexter. First time writing Dexter.

Also, the timeline is after Season 1 of Dexter, but during season 14-ish of Criminal minds into Season 15. Enjoy!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following morning, Spencer was holding you, a sensation you never thought you’d feel ever again. The two of you were wide awake, staring at the ceiling, not speaking. You’d been awake for about twenty minutes. You weren’t sure what he was going to say, or do, so you just enjoyed this moment with him. You weren’t positive that Spence wouldn’t suddenly change his mind. 

“So… what made you change your mind? I mean, when you realized it was Dexter. At some point you went from turning him in, to letting him go, to studying him, to actually wanting to do what he does. How did that happen?” he asked evenly, a bit of confusion in his voice. 

You frowned, thinking, chewing your lip. “It actually happened pretty fast. I had an instinct that it was him when I interviewed him. I sort of honed in on him, and a lot of things lined up. I could’ve probably gotten more evidence if I asked for a warrant and involved Garcia, but the evidence I had was enough for me. I was going to call in for a warrant, but suddenly I thought of Rochester, and I just wanted to talk to Dexter. Then, when I realized I wanted to talk to him, I knew I’d have to let him go, but I don’t know… Some part of me wanted to… help I guess, to be like him. Not the unfeeling killer part, but the fact that he was getting away with killing some of these evil pieces of shit - that, that’s what I wanted to be apart of.” 

He didn’t say anything for about one minute then he asked, “Who was your first victim?”

“Well, that’s hard to say.”

“How so?”

“Well, Dexter wanted me to kill one of his, to get a feel for it. Basically kill someone that he was going to kill anyway. He let me feel what it was like.” 

“And how did it feel?” he asked. You could hear the concern in his voice. Was he wanting to know if you were still in there, his caring and loving wife? Or had you devolved into something that the two of you usually hunted?

“It felt.... Satisfying. Honestly, it felt okay. Not great, not exhilarating. Criminals like this guy were Dexter’s thing. My first victim, the one I picked, was this guy who ran an awful dog fighting ring. Killing him was very satisfying.” 

“Was it… easy for you?”

You couldn’t help but laugh a little, very little humor in the sound. “No, I actually froze a few times. It was really hard. I started to panic and Dexter had to remind me why I was there. I knew if I didn’t do it, he’d have to. But I wanted to do it. Even if it was one person that wasn’t hurting something as innocent as some dogs, then it was worth whatever psychological strain I might’ve faced.” 

“And did you? Did you ever feel guilty?”

“No,” you said without hesitation. “No, I don’t see any reason for fuckers like that to go on living.” 

“That… makes sense,” he commented.

“Really? You aren’t worried I’m the next Dahmer?”

“No, not at all.” He turned and kissed your head and you smiled. “I know you care deeply about innocent lives, I just never knew it was enough to kill someone who threatens that. But… it makes sense.”

“Thank you, Spence.” 

“Were things ever… romantic between you and Dexter?” he asked, a bit of worry lacing his voice. 

You rolled to face him as you sat up on your elbow. “No, absolutely not.”

“Never? You never kissed or thought anything about him?” he inquired, pressing the issue.

“No,” you informed with a soft smile, trying to reassure him. 

“Ah, good,” he said, his gaze seeming to leave the room. 

“Hey, were you actually worried about that?”

“Somewhat. The chances of a female-male serial killer team and not forming some form of sexual interaction is rather statistically low.”

The corner of your mouth perked up. “Well, as much as your stats help the team, and as much as I love all the knowledge in your head, this time, your information is wrong.” 

He nodded slightly. “Not to mention the fact that you became distant… I thought maybe I was losing you to him.” 

“Absolutely not… Dexter and I are… we’re friends, that’s all. It started out as FBI agent talking to a serial killer, then it went to student - mentor, then we went to friends, somehow. I don’t really know how or when it happened…”

To this, he nodded again. 

“To be honest, I slightly wondered the same,” you confessed, nervously toying with your hands as you cast your eyes down. 

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when you found out about me, I was worried that maybe you… well, that you’d go to JJ…” 

He peered at you for a moment before saying, “Y/N, no matter what happens between us, I won’t want JJ. I don’t see her that way, and even if I ever did, her behavior surrounding this whole situation would’ve deterred me from ever wanting her like that.”

All you did was nod. 

“So we can put this behind us?” you asked. 

“That’s all we can do,” he remarked. 

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

You were back at work, Spencer by your side, the team welcoming you back lovingly. Well, all except JJ, which was to be expected. Once you got settled into your desk, you went to the bathroom and when you came out of the stall, JJ was standing in the bathroom, her hands on her hips. Her jaw was set. 

She was angry with you. Not pissed. But angry. 

Inter-team profiling went out the window when she confessed she had feelings for a married man, your man. 

“You told Will that I love Spence?” she demanded, clearly distraught. 

“I did,” you answered evenly as you washed your hands. “He had a right to know.”

“This is none of your business. You don’t get to tell my husband things I tell Spencer in confidence.” 

You shook your hands of water as you looked at her with annoyance. 

After you walked around her to grab some paper towels, you spoke. “JJ, Spence told me, it's no longer a secret. It didn't feel right for the three of us to be in the loop but your husband to be left out about you loving another man."  

She made a face of utter befuddlement and irritation. "Well you're one to talk, what about you and Dexter, huh? I saw the way you two were. There's no way you weren't having an affair.”

You let go of the paper towels and got so close to her face you could feel her breath. She didn’t back down or flinch, you had to give her that. "You have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe if you stopped scamming on peoples' husbands, you could see what's actually going on around you."

Suddenly, the door opened and you two turned to see who it was. Emily. 

She eyed you two before letting out a sigh. “In my office, now.” 

The two of you looked at each other before following her. You went to her office and just a few seconds later, she came in with Spencer. 

“Alright, I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know right now. We aren’t leaving this room until this is resolved,” she ordered, looking at each of you. 

No one said anything. 

“Are we going to be adults about this or am I going to have to threaten a suspension for all three of you if you don’t speak up?” she asked. 

“JJ told me a while ago that she has romantic feelings for me. That’s why I asked to be placed on separate assignments. I told Y/N and Y/N told Will,” Spencer explained. 

“And in the bathroom, what was that I saw?” Emily asked. 

“She confronted me on telling her husband behind her back. She then accused me of having an affair with a friend of mine,” you explained.

Emily shook her head and let out a noise of disbelief. “JJ, is this all true?” 

She wrung her hands but eventually nodded and cleared her throat. “Yes. I do have feelings for Spencer and I kept quiet for years but then we were forced to play truth or dare and I told him.” 

“Then you harassed Y/N, on her first day back?”

“I wouldn’t say I harassed her,” she said, scoffing lightly. “I asked her if she told my husband something private.”

“It’s not my place to get into marriages,” Emily stated, her hands going in the air. “I can’t tell any of you to talk, not talk, yell, or scream at each other. This is between you four. I can’t condone any ill will towards anyone and what you all decide is amongst yourselves. But I do have a say in how this team is ran and when it’s having issues, I have to take action.” She pressed her lips together before speaking again. “JJ, I think it’s best you take a leave of absence.” 

“What? Why? I didn’t do anything.” 

Emily held her hand up to keep her from speaking further. “I can make it a full suspension if you’d like. I just thought you might like it to be on your terms. Seeing as Spencer and Y/N are married, and your confession is what is making a division in the unit, I think it’s best if you go and sort things out with your husband and your personal matters before you return.” 

“This is ridiculous. I can still do my job--”

“Apparently not. Y/N goes to the restroom on her first day back and you follow her to the bathroom for a confrontation. I understand you all need to talk, but it can’t be done on the government’s time. I recommend two weeks and you all can sort your personal matters out then.” 

“So, I’m just--”

“On a leave of absence. We will tell the team that you have family matters to attend to and that’s all that we know,” she offered. “As I said, it’s either that or a suspension.” 

“I don’t believe this. Fine.” She got up and stormed out. 

Emily turned to you two. “I’m sorry for all this. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. Any of you. This is hard. I hope the time apart helps though.” 

“It does, thank you for being so understanding, Emily.” You got up and took her hand, smiling at her before grinning to Spencer and returning to your desk. 

Maybe now you could rest at work without her breathing down your neck.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[nicnacsnonsense]

So right now as I sit here procrastinating on the things I’m supposed to be doing is probably a good a time as any to dump my Good Omens Jane Eyre AU thoughts on you all. (Quick side note: Aziraphale, Crowley, and Beelzebub are all female-presenting, she/her for the purposes of this AU.)

I want to start you off with a little backstory. The other day @eunyisadoran suggested to me that Gabriel and Beelzebub would make for a perfect Rochester/Jane Eyre AU. What my mouth said in response was “Sorry, I don’t really ship Ineffable Bureaucracy,” but my brain said, “Wait, shut up a second me; I can work with this.” But as I considered it I decided that while I could see Gabriel as Rochester — Gabriel isn’t someone I’d consider especially Byronic, but if you set that aside, he can still function in the story the way the character needs to — Beelzebub as Jane was not working for me at all. If Gabriel tried to pull on Bee some the shit Rochester pulled on Jane, Bee would just straight punch him in the face. By that point it was getting pretty late, so I fired a message off to Euny about how I’d do it that I’m pretty sure was supposed to be a joke at the time, but the next morning she came back to me super on board for it, so here we are.

Okay, stick with me, cause it’s going to sound weird at first, but I promise it all comes together. As I said, Gabriel as Rochester, but Jane is Aziraphale. Beelzebub is instead Bertha, Rochester’s mad wife. For Aziraphale and Gabriel’s relationship we’re going to take the things about Jane/Rochester that are a bit problematic and amplify them, while dialing down the idea of there being any genuine love there. For Aziraphale Gabriel is handsome and charming, but more importantly he holds a position of power over her, so when he starts showing an interest she subconsciously convinces herself she returns his interest. Meanwhile Gabriel is lonely and mentally exhausted and Aziraphale is emotionally easy for him. She’s attractive enough, she’s there when he wants her, goes away when he doesn’t, doesn’t ask anything of him, and is generally pretty compliant. I wouldn’t say it’s Gabriel’s intention to use Aziraphale like that, but that’s absolutely what he’s doing.

So we get to the wedding scene and the truth coming out about Bee — let’s maybe have Ligur as her brother, since in Jane Eyre Bertha is a POC — and Aziraphale leaves Thornfield. Eventually she ends up at the doorstep of the River siblings: Crowley, Shadwell (young ‘67 era Shadwell, obv, not old man Shadwell), and Anathema. (Which admittedly is a weird group of siblings. I’d probably make Anathema a half-sister, with a Puerto Rican mother.) Crowley instantly gets a massive crush on Aziraphale when Shadwell brings her in, and very quickly falls in love with her. However Crowley assumes Aziraphale couldn’t possibly love another woman, and so keeps pushing Aziraphale on Shadwell, thinking if those two get married, at least Crowley will always be able to keep Aziraphale close by. Meanwhile Aziraphale hasn’t figured out the whole “being into girls” thing yet, but knows she’s hurt by the way Crowley, who is Aziraphale’s dearest friend, keeps pushing Aziraphale away and pawning her off on her brother. Eventually Aziraphale does agree to go marry Shadwell and go to India with him because she’s convinced it her duty and she thinks it’s what Crowley wants. But at the last minute (and with some help from Anathema) Aziraphale realizes she can’t leave the person she’s in love with — her cousin Crowley. So Shadwell goes off to India on his own (and has a terrible time because we hate him), and Aziraphale and Crowley live together as wives with Anathema as their mutual best friend (aside from each other).

But we’re not nearly done yet. First we’re actually going to backtrack some to touch on some Gabriel backstory. I’ve rearranged the timeline a little to lessen the age gap between Gabriel and Aziraphale. Aziraphale can stay 18, but Gabriel I’m pushing down to late 20’s. Part of that means pushing his affair with Céline (who I think we shall leave as Céline) to before his marriage, while he was on break from university. Gabriel was not going to take her baby in — despite her claims that he is the father, he suspects the actual father was her other lover (who Gabriel didn’t know about and dumped her when he found out) Lucian. However, Gabriel’s mother found out about the whole thing and ordered him to take in the child, and Gabriel will argue with absolutely anyone except his mother. No one argues with Mrs. Rochester. No one. And that is how he ended up as the guardian of Adam, who is eight when Aziraphale is hired on as governess.

Gabriel graduates university when Adam is one, and at encouragement from his mother he goes to Jamaica to visit the Masons and potentially court their daughter Bee (apparently God just ships all the angel/demon pairings; all about that balance). They get married and then whoops, turns out “madness” runs in the family. Bee’s behavior starts to become erratic, and she begins losing touch with reality. They had back to England with hopes of better doctors and a cure, but during the voyage Bee’s symptoms continue to worsen and she becomes prone to violent outbursts. It’s so bad by the time they reach England, Gabriel ends up sneaking her into Thornfield at the dead of night. Little three year old Adam wakes up and sees this, but is told in the morning he dreamed it. He still tells the story to Aziraphale when she comes years later, but Adam tells a lot of wild stories and she assumes this is just another one of them.

Backtracking a bit, what Bee has is what we would recognize as schizophrenia and she is currently suffering from a psychotic episode (which are of course not usually violent, but in Bee’s particular case she can be). Unfortunately the doctors weren’t really familiar with that, so they just called it hysteria. It’s all those lady parts, making her crazy, as they do. Bee is prescribed with a frequent regimen of heavy doses of opium, to curb her outbursts. It does calm her down, but turns out one of the more uncommon side effects of opiates is to cause psychosis. So this medication actually exacerbates her psychosis, even if it keeps her calm. So she isn’t so much locked in the room as she is just in a constant drugged out haze — when she isn’t full-on catatonic — completely divorced from reality.

Grace Poole will be played by Madame Tracy, who I realize is pretty different from Grace in terms of personality, but I have my reasons. Tracy is the kind of person who is scatterbrained enough to occasionally forget to give Bee her medication and also kind-hearted and scatterbrained enough to sometimes deliberately skip a dose because she seemed like she was doing better, she was practically lucid today, and I really do feel she gets better quality rest when she’s not on the drugs. Those are the times Bee manages to break out, when the amount of opium in her system has dipped enough to allow her to actually get up and move around independently. Unfortunately she’s still suffering from her psychosis at these times. Mostly she just wanders around confused and getting up to small mischief — breaking things, moving things around, and the like — but she is still violent on occasion.

After Aziraphale and Gabriel’s aborted wedding and Aziraphale leaving, Gabriel snaps a little. He sends Adam away (to visit Grandma perhaps) as well as a good chunk of the servants, and then cuts off Bee’s opium. He claims he’s doing this to punish her for her part in ruining his wedding and his chance at happiness, but honestly the dude just misses his wife. Because he doesn’t see the vacant woman sitting doped up in a chair all day as his wife. At least when she’s off the opium and throwing shit it reminds him of the passion she used to have. At first it does get worse, but after a bit she starts to calm down. Tracy stays with her when she’s upset and stays calm and positive, Bee starts to get familiar with the house, less staff means she’s not running into people she doesn’t know as much. They figure out that most of her violent behavior was caused by her being confused and scared and lashing out. Then the morning she wakes up and is genuinely lucid. After 6 years, her psychotic episode is over. They conclude that while the opium was keeping her calm, it was also worsening her delusions, and resolve not to give her any ever again.

All of this about what happened after she left Aziraphale has had in a letter from Adam, written with help from Madame Tracy and his new tutor Mr. Newton Pulsifer. They have heard of Aziraphale’s new station and improved fortune, and Adam begs Aziraphale, as well as the Misses Crowley and Anathema Rivers, to come visit them all in Thornfield Hall as soon as they can. They all lived happily ever after, the end.

[eyreguide]

5 Things I Learned About Jane Eyre

A few years ago I was interviewed by a UK based educational company in preparation for their release of content about the Brontës aimed for teachers and students. Sadly the company, Train of Thought Productions, seems to be no more, but at the time they sent me a complimentary copy of the DVD titled “Brontës in Context”.  Unfortunately I believe it is hard to find now, but I found it a very interesting examination of the Brontës’ lives and work.

The Jane Eyre section of the DVD was especially illuminating.  I’ve never studied Jane Eyre in school, and although I've read critical texts about the story, there are schools of thoughts that I haven’t really explored.   Jane Eyre is such an intertextually rich story, that I should have anticipated that this DVD would be eye-opening in unexpected ways. So this post is about the things I learned from the "Brontës in Context" DVD. 

1st Person Narration

Okay, I do know that Jane Eyre is written in the first person. And I know that because the novel has a first person POV, the reader is drawn more into Jane's story, her spirit and her fiery nature. But one comment from a professor on the DVD really struck me - the idea that Jane addresses the reader personally (by saying "reader") more and more as the story progresses. "Reader, I married him." being the famous example. I was curious though to see if that was really true, so I went to the Gutenberg online copy and did a search - in the scroll bar, there are little yellow ticks that show where the word comes up in the text, so I took a screenshot of that bar to illustrate (I made the scroll bar horizontal).

From left to right: The beginning of Jane Eyre to the end

Again the yellow marks are every time Jane says "reader" (which is not absolutely accurate since there are like three times it's in the novel, and it's not addressing the reader of the book) But it's true that Jane does directly reach out to the reader more as the novel progresses. The professor on the DVD explains it as Jane wanting to take control of her story, and one way she does this is by correcting the reader's thoughts - by giving them the truth directly. I thought that was a fascinating and accurate explanation of the purpose of Jane addressing the reader.

Bluebeard

To me, Jane Eyre is most succinctly compared to two fairy tales - Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. I am aware of a Bluebeard connection, but I feel like the aforementioned tales encompasses the story more. But after watching this DVD I am leaning more towards seeing Jane Eyre in a "Bluebeard" light. Especially as Jane Eyre is a Gothic novel, and Bluebeard fits that genre the best of these three tales. There's a "secret at its heart" (quote from the DVD) which is a thoughtful encapsulation of both stories. And there was a comment made by one of the professors that placed the reader of the novel as the curious Bluebeard wife, reading the novel to discover the secret. Such an interesting idea! (And does that mean that Mr. Rochester is my husband??)

St. John and Helen

The role of religion is touched on in the DVD, and there was a thought that the character of St. John Rivers (who is not a bad person, but is kind of unforgivably self-righteous - oh, just me?) hearkens back to Jane's friend Helen Burns.  Helen is such a positive character and St. John considerably less so, that I initally felt it's almost a slur on Helen to link the two. But in the context of what the professor on the DVD said it makes sense -  they are similar in that they 'quash physical desires'.  And in that way I can understand why Jane would be drawn to them - they both encourage Jane to embrace a devotion to God and reason, at a time when her passionate nature is giving her the most pain. Unfortunately for St. John, his function later in the novel means he also has to show Jane that living such a cold, dispassionate life is not for her. And hey, both Helen and St. John meet untimely ends. Which to my mind is Charlotte making a harsh judgement on the idea of living just for God.

Jane and Injustice

Here's something that is hugely appealing to me about this novel. The novel can be pointed to as a feminist work, and Jane is speaking out for women everywhere, but what I love about Jane is that it's not her treatment as a woman that makes her upset. She's really angry at injustice. And the whole misogyny thing is just a part of that. It really took this DVD to drive that home to me. Jane is so passionate about what she feels is not right - the inability of Mrs. Reed to love her, the treatment of the girls at Lowood, the way Mr. Rochester speaks of Bertha, St. John Rivers not wanting to marry Rosamund Oliver. It's a glorious aspect to her character and reminds me of a line from an old sixties adaptation of the novel - Mr. Rochester calls Jane "the small crusader, pitiless with righteousness and rectitude." Rochester was a little harsh with that line, but I do like the 'small crusader' imagery. (In the 1961 adaptation he's more perturbed than happy that Jane's come back to him after he's been blinded and can not be the kind of man he wants to be for her.)

Postcolonialism

The DVD touches on three critical schools of thought in connection to Jane Eyre - Feminism, Marxism and Postcolonialism. And I learned two things in relation to the last one - what Postcolonialism is exactly, and that I really don't like seeing Jane Eyre in that context. In a nutshell, Postcolonialism is looking at the imperialist, British attitude as represented by Mr. Rochester as rich white guy, and Bertha as poor Creole woman. And Bertha's relation to Jane as a dark mirror. There's even a book written with those themes called Wide Sargasso Sea which is a prequel to Jane Eyre. It's from Bertha's viewpoint. I didn't care for the book actually. The thing with me is, I am sympathetic to Mr. Rochester. And I don't really see how you can accept the view that Mr. Rochester is a lying, manipulative scoundrel with no redeeming qualities and still like the novel or Jane. Because Jane - the character to whom the reader is intimately involved and invested in - chooses Mr. Rochester in the end, as the person who makes her the happiest. And if you love Jane because she is an intelligent, moral, capable heroine, as we have gotten to know her and rely on her throughout this story - it's silly to think she is so mistaken as to have made a horrible choice in the end. Also she is telling her story with 10 years distance, and not repenting her decision. She is happy, so what more could anyone ask for?

But back to Postcolonialism and why it does not gel with me; because I also feel like making a story called JANE EYRE, with the first person narration by said JANE EYRE, and then evaluating the story through NOT the main character is kind of ridiculous. Jane Eyre is such a personal journey, that I feel it's a big leap to talk about the novel like Charlotte Brontë was seriously examining slavery/race and British imperialism. If one chooses to see Bertha as completely innocent and horrendously mistreated, at least let it be because Mr. Rochester has misjudged her and acted unsympathetically, before saying it's obviously a master/slave dynamic. And I will just insert this excerpt of a letter that Charlottë Bronte wrote in response to some comments on Bertha:

Miss Kavanagh's view of the Maniac coincides with Leigh Hunt's. I agree with them that the character is shocking, but I know that it is but too natural. There is a phase of insanity which may be called moral madness, in which all that is good or even human seems to disappear from the mind and a fiend-nature replaces it. The sole aim and desire of the being thus possessed is to exasperate, to molest, to destroy, and preternatural ingenuity and energy are often exercised to that dreadful end. The aspect in such cases, assimilates with the disposition; all seems demonized. It is true that profound pity ought to be the only sentiment elicited by the view of such degradation, and equally true is it that I have not sufficiently dwelt on that feeling; I have erred in making horror too predominant. Mrs. Rochester indeed lived a sinful life before she was insane, but sin is itself a species of insanity: the truly good behold and compassionate it as such.

- Charlottë Bronte to W.S. Williams, written 4 January 1848

For me, the interesting points in the letter being Charlotte was (later?) more sympathetic to Bertha's plight, but not condemnatory of Mr. Rochester - she mentions that Bertha has led a sinful life before she was insane and that because of the nature of Bertha's insanity (as Charlotte wrote and understood it), it was probably too easy to 'demonize' her from the character's POV, which shouldn't happen to someone who is truly compassionate. Obviously Mr. Rochester doesn't get points in the philanthropy department which is noted by Jane early on. I understand and completely believe that Bertha's situation is awful and sad in so many ways, but I don't feel that it is important enough to the novel to base interpretations of the story on. Yet can I point out that Mr. Rochester didn't lock up Bertha for funnsies - it would have been so much easier for him if she were not mad because then he could divorce her. (The law at the time being that you could not divorce your wife if she was diagnosed insane.) If he could have let her go to have a normal life and not been responsible if she attacked people, he probably would have been all over that.

To wrap up, I am saddned that this DVD is not widely available any more (at least my google searches have not been fruitful) because it was a very well concieved educational program.  This DVD was sent to me in 2015, and I’m revisiting it, by posting this on my blog.  I orginally posted this on a former blog.  And I believe this post once featured on the Train of Thought Productions website, but sadly that site is no more.

[itsevidentvery]

The wonderful @joycecarolnotes had their birthday last week, and here is my (appallingly belated) birthday gift. 

Warning: I haven’t watched any of the most recent season, and it’s been months since I wrote Jared/Richard fic, so my apologies for, like, everything.

BUT. Here is my offering for sickfic, domestic fluff, Jared being taken care of, and Far Too Much Vicks Vaporub.

‘If I could just - ’

‘No, Jared,’ says Richard. ‘You can’t just.’

Jared shrinks back, his shoulders drawing in and the colour draining out of his cheeks. Well, mainly draining out. That fever-brightness remains.

‘As you say,’ says Jared with absolutely no expression.

Richard swears inside his head. He knows that tone, that terrible flatline blade-of-the-guillotine, hush-before-the-hangman-swings tone. The tone before Jared falls ass over teakettle in love with some social reject who won’t even –

Not that Richard –

She didn’t even notice he was gone when Jared came back to Richard.

To Pied Piper.

But also to Richard.

Which. Jared just came back. Back to his weird garret office-space that he clasped his hands when he first saw and then bustled about saying things about the first Mrs Rochester that Richard is 1000% certain are not, like, remotely comforting analogies.

But still. Back he came.

And then fell ill because he was helping his friend Mabel babysit her great-granddaughter who promptly distributed the flu to anyone who even looked at her for more than ten seconds and then Jared went down like a baby bird with a broken wing.

And there he is now, swaying on his feet and hunting desperately for those goddamn sunglasses.

‘You’re ill, Jared,’ says Richard, as softly as he can.

Jared sniffs. ‘It’s nothing, Captain, I can’t – I won’t – be felled by a bacterium - ’

‘The flu’s a virus,’ says Richard. ‘Jared. Go home.’

And Jared shrinks again – right into the waiting arms of Gwart or GNewt or GPickle or whatever other beady-eyed coder with the social skills of a concussed duckling but who somehow, somehow, knows juuuuust enough to clutch their gizzards and make juuuuust the right sort of pitiful eyes at Jared, Richard knows, he knows, he knows their game, you’ll have to get up pret-ty early in the morning to pull one over on Richard Hendricks.

In this regard, at least.

‘I’ll come home with you,’ says Richard in a rush.

Jared’s head flies up and his eyes are like stars and Richard really hopes he’s not starting the flu because he’s feeling hot and cold and hot all over.

‘Let me just - ,’ says Richard, and he turns and fumbles for his laptop.

‘Af- after you, m’lord,’ he says once he has it, and then sucks his entire bottom lip into his mouth because what. The actual. What.

*******************************************************************************************

Jared’s condo is still cosy and sparkling with that precise combination of Arsenic and Old Lace that so defines Jared. There’s some Hieronymus Bosch and Remedios Varo up beside his Welsh Spoon collection, which is – yeah. Checks out.

‘So,’ says Richard, ‘you go and, uh. Lie down? Yeah. You should.’

‘But Richard,’ says Jared.

‘Jared,’ says Richard.

‘I really do think - ’

‘Jared - ’

‘I’m fine, Richard,’ says Jared, the effect only slightly undercut by the racking cough that shakes him.

‘Please lie down, Jared,’ says Richard, and Jared meekly trails away.

*******************************************************************************************

It’s actually pretty … nice. Not nice nice, but … Richard had almost forgotten how easy it is to work at Jared’s. How the quiet lets everything fall away, and the occasional Surprise Mediaeval Horrorshow helps keep him sharp.

He’s clack-clack-clacking away in a pleasant, highly focussed trance, when he sees a notification at the corner of his screen. It’s an e-mail from Monica with the subject line ‘I THOUGHT HE WAS WITH YOU.’

Richard opens the e-mail, which turns out to be a forward from Jared with a spreadsheet attached. Richard clicks on the attachment, and regrets it the instant his eyes are assaulted with RED-AMBER-GREEN colour-coded nested-conditional visual basic fuckery.

He plucks off his headphones, puts down his laptop and goes to Jared’s bedroom. Where the supposed patient is sitting up in bed, honking and wheezing and clacking away furiously on a laptop (and just where the fuck did he get a laptop anyway?)

‘Jared,’ says Richard. Jared looks up and freezes, like some kind of weird flannel-wearing deer in the headlights.

‘Richard,’ he croaks. ‘Richard, this isn’t what it looks like.’

‘Jared,’ says Richard, ‘you need to rest.’

‘I will,’ says Jared, ‘I just need to - ’

Richard steps closer and holds out his hand. ‘Give me the laptop, Jared.’

‘Let me just - ’

‘Laptop, Jared.’

They look at each other for a while, and yes, okay, maybe it’s cheating, but it’s kinda – like, Richard always breaks first, he always does, because Jared’s gaze is a heavy thing and it’s kinda hard to, to, it’s kinda hard when that laser blue is like, entering through Richard’s eyeballs and leaving out the back of his head because – well, anyway, it’s like that. But now Jared’s compromised by his plague or whatever and Richard gets to watch him duck his head and sigh.

And then his giant hands tighten on the keyboard.

‘I just need to send this and then - ’

Richard grabs one end of the laptop. It’s not exactly – Jared’s clutching at one end and he doesn’t want to like, hurt him, and yes it’s all helpfully rounded edges but still and then also knuckles and very long fingers and then Jared kinda yanks and Richard tumbles over and faceplants onto Jared’s bony chest.

Jared’s startled ‘Ooph!’ has the hair on Richard’s head rustling gently.

‘Sorry!’ Richard says into the little indent between Jared’s – like, his – his chests.

Chest.

Chest, singular.

Jared has one chest.

One chest that Richard is now talking into.

He springs away, very narrowly missing butting Jared’s chin (which, on the one hand, good, but on the other hand, all that means is that like, that’s one more thing lying in wait for Richard now).

‘Sorry,’ says Richard. Scrubs his fingers through his hair. Dares a glance at Jared.

Jared who is staring at him, chest (one chest. One chest with one indent. One chest with one indent just perfectly made for Richard’s nose.) rising and falling rapidly.

There’s a flush on his cheeks. Not that hectic scarlet flu-blotch, but.

It’s.

His eyes are very bright.

Richard swallows. Watches Jared’s eyes track the movement.

Richard grabs the laptop and runs out of the room, deaf to Jared’s protesting cry.

Well, not deaf precisely.

But like. He’s doing the right thing, so.

*******************************************************************************************

Richard sits back down and quickly loses himself to a script that won’t run, when his e-mail pings again. This time it’s from Dinesh and it’s another forward. From Jared.

Richard goes to the bedroom to find Jared sitting in bed with his hands clasped in his lap.

Nobody should be this bad at looking nonchalant.

‘Jared,’ says Richard.

‘Hello, Captain,’ says Jared. Is he trying to hum carelessly?

‘Jared,’ says Richard again.

‘Can I help you, Richard?’

Richard sighs. ‘Where is it, Jared?’

‘Where’s what, Richard?’

‘Your iPad, Jared.’

‘Oh,’ says Jared, and Richard swears he can see Jared wondering whether to deny any knowledge of the existence of iPads in general, and his own in specific. ‘I – Richard, I’m not sure, would you like me to find it for you?’

‘I’d like you,’ says Richard, ‘to give me your iPad, Jared.’

‘I would,’ says Jared earnestly, and it’s terrible, its grotesque, it’s fascinating how bad a liar he is, ‘but I really couldn’t say, Richard, and I just - ’ he coughs, once, and how in the flaming hell can someone with the actual flu not produce a better cough, literally how, ‘I’m quite, the flu, Captain, I’m afraid I feel quite faint, so - ’

‘Where is it, Jared.’

‘I’m not - ’

At this point there’s a ping and a green flash under Jared’s duvet.

Richard holds out his hand. There’s a momentary flicker of … something … on Jared’s face. Something that on anyone else might look like…

“Mutiny” supplies a voice in Richard’s head which sounds a lot like Jared’s voice.

Well, anyway.

That.

‘Thank you,’ Richard finds himself saying, as Jared hands him the iPad. Jared’s head snaps up to look at him, his eyes very round.

Richard flees.

*******************************************************************************************

Richard builds up a nice little collection of devices as the day wears on. Jared’s phone. Jared’s old phone. Jared’s much older phone, which, how the fuck was Jared tapping out forecasting instructions on a fucking flip-phone anyway? Jared’s watch. He’s considering taking away his FitBit: he has no idea how Jared could even put together hideous spreadsheets on the thing, but he won’t be fooled again.

When he pops his head in later, Jared’s looking like reheated shit. His cheeks are blotchy, his eyes are huge and he’s shivering.

Richard’s horrified but also –

‘I told you you were sick,’ he says.

‘Richard,’ says Jared, and his voice is so small, ‘Richard, I can’t do this.’

‘You can,’ says Richard, ‘Jared, it’s only like a couple of days and - ’

‘Richard, this is vital forecasting - ’

‘Jared, it’s fine - ’

‘It’s not fine, it’s the end of the quarter and - ’

‘Monica’s on top of it, all right? It’s being done. Look, here - ’ and Richard pulls up the interactive project management tool that Jared introduced, shows him the exuberant and reassuring sea of green, and –

And Jared’s curled in on himself.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I – that’s good. Thank you, Richard.’

Richard blinks at him.

‘I – Jared, that’s – I thought you’d - ’

‘No, I am,’ says Jared, and smiles. A broad rictus grin that makes Richard want to claw his own skin odd. ‘It’s – you’re doing very well, Richard. Monica’s – she’s doing very well.’ He clears his throat. ‘I’ll – I’ll take some rest now, Richard.’

Richard watches him lie down and curl up on his side.

‘I - ’

‘I’m glad you told me, Richard,’ says Jared. ‘I’ll let you work now. I – I’m sorry, I thought I was helping.’

Which.

I mean.

That’s.

That wasn’t what –

Ah, fuck.

‘Jared?’ says Richard. ‘Jared, I want you to get better.’

Jared nods. He isn’t looking back at Richard.

Richard swallows and goes on: ‘B – because I – I think we should have fixed exchange rates for PiperCoin.’

Jared’s head snaps around to look at Richard. (Richard cheers internally. Gotcha.)

‘Rich - ’ he says and is overtaken by a cough.

‘Hey, hey,’ says Richard, his voice coming out quicker and softer than he’s ever heard it. ‘I wouldn’t – not without - ’

Jared’s staring at Richard. He swallows. ‘I’m sure Monica could - ’

Richard shrugs. ‘Maybe. Seems like it might - ’

‘Please don’t,’ says Jared, ‘please, I’ll – tell Monica, she’ll tell you to - ’

‘I want you,’ says Richard, still softly. He coughs. ‘I – t-to – f-figure it out, or - ’

There’s a silence. Jared’s still staring at Richard. Richard can feel every individual capillary on his cheeks warming.

‘Okay,’ says Jared, at length. He’s pink, but in a good way.

‘Okay,’ says Richard, nodding.

Thank fuck.

He opens up his laptop. Kicks off his sneakers and stretches out on the bed. Tells himself it’s because he doesn’t trust Jared not to fish out a pedometer or a remote control or whatever the fuck to start working.

*******************************************************************************************

He orders soup and crusty bread for the two of them. Watches as Jared pulls himself up painfully to a sitting position. Hears his own mouth offer to feed it to Jared in a soft voice, bending from the waist with his head tilted, which, what even. Jared refuses with a blush. Richard doesn’t insist, which is probably – I mean, Richard spills scalding hot soup over his own hands like five seconds later so. Yeah. But Richard watches Jared’s lashes resting on his cheek and his lips purse as he blows on his soup and he doesn’t blink for the next twenty minutes.

Jared eats up all the soup, careful and quiet, which is good.

And Richard says so.

He says ‘Good boy,’ when Jared’s done eating his soup, which.

He says it.

Out loud.

Softly.

Glowingly.

With his mouth.

Where Jared can hear.

Where Jared does hear.

And Jared blushes.

And says ‘Thank you.’

And looks at Richard with saucer eyes.

And Richard hits his elbow against the side table.

Which.

There’s a jar of Vicks Vaporub on the table.

‘Would, uh,’ says Richard, ‘would this help?’

He holds up the jar, and Jared’s absurd eyes get even rounder.

‘I,’ says Jared, and swallows, ‘I don’t – Richard, I don’t want to impose.’

‘Okay,’ says Richard, and moves back so quickly he nearly falls off the bed and has to claw at the sheets to right himself. ‘Okay, yeah, sure, I shouldn’t. Yeah.’

He opens up his laptop and stares at the screen.

Jared’s breathing evenly. Very very carefully evenly.

Typetypetype.

In. Out.

Clicklicklick.

In. Out.

Typetypetype.

In. Out.

Then: ‘Richard, if you wouldn’t mind - ’

‘Yeahsureokay,’ says Richard, and grabs the jar.

Jared sits up. Begins to unbutton his pyjama shirt.

His hands are shaking, Richard notices.

So are Richard’s, as he unscrews the lid.

The smell hits him. Menthol and little old ladies all at once, obtrusive and confident.

‘So,’ says Richard, ‘I just – on your chest?’

Jared nods.

‘Okay,’ says Richard. ‘Sure.’

Jared says ‘Richard, you really don’t have to.’

‘No, I want to,’ says Richard, and swallows. ‘I just - ’

‘Richard, I – you’ve already done so much, you really don’t have to feel like you – oh.’

Richard’s slapped a Vaporub-laden index and middle finger on Jared’s chest.

He spends a few moments like that, just kinda. Tracing the indent, up and down. Until Jared lets out a shaky exhale and Richard starts.

‘I’ll just,’ he says and gets another glob of the stuff.

He spreads out his fingers. Figures the point is to distribute the stuff on Jared’s chest. Maybe get kinda … it’s gotta … he should get it so Jared can inhale?

And also … rubbing? They say. Right there in the name, it says. So.

He presses a little and looks at Jared. ‘Is this – Jared, is this okay?’

Jared seems to refocus – the flu, right, the flu – and nods. ‘Y- yes, Richard. It’s – it’s okay.’

Richard dips back into the jar. Returns. Presses. Kneads. Strokes in wide concentric circles. The rhythm is dreamy, like cleaning string code when you’re tired. Jared’s chest rises and falls beneath his fingers. His clavicle is somehow both fragile and – impudent? Kinda? Just piercing through the delicate skin? Richard’s slick fingers stroke up to cover it and he watches Jared’s Adam’s Apple bob.

Jared’s face is swimming before his eyes and Richard wonders for a full twenty seconds if he’s caught Jared’s plague before he realises, oh yeah, the Vaporub.

Richard’s eyes are stinging from the Vaporub.

He should probably…

Like, the jar’s half-empty anyway.

And then Richard’s eyes return to Jared’s chest, naked and glistening, and he swallows.

One more coat can’t hurt, right?

*******************************************************************************************

Richard – inevitably – catches Jared’s cold.

Jared pre-emptively seizes all electronic equipment before Richard can secrete them away.

He does, however, bring the VapoRub.

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

Toby Stephens and Luke Arnold on Black Sails Season Two

“Black Sails” returns for its second season on Starz on Saturday, January 24. Picking up right where the first season left off, Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) and John Silver (Luke Arnold) are stranded with their crew on an island. I’ve seen the first two new episodes and got to speak with Arnold and Stephens when they were at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.

Some light spoilers for season two follow, as it entails Flint and Silver boarding another ship, battling with other boats in their quest for gold. The action is only going to get bigger, the actors say, but we’ll never quite know whether to trust Flint or Silver, names you’ll also recognize from Treasure Island.

ComingSoon.net: Are Flint and Silver pretty inseparable now?

Toby Stephens: Yeah.

Luke Arnold: Yeah, we do. Season one, we had little bits to do with each other, but especially second season, we got to spend a lot of time together and luckily we don’t hate each other.

Stephens: You were sick of me by the end of the season.

Arnold: No, it’s been pretty nice. It is one of the great things in the show for me is to work with this guy.

Stephens: Mine as well.

Arnold: A big highlight of the season.

Stephens: It’s a lot of fun, because they’re such a mismatch. It’s a great relationship between the two of them stuck together. Circumstances have thrown them together. They don’t trust one another, they don’t like one another and yet they need one another. That’s kind of a cool dynamic.

CS: Is there less duplicity now that both of their agendas are right out in the open?

Arnold: It definitely begins that way. Without saying too much, I think that’s where they start. They’re very much on the same page. They go, “Well, we both want the same thing so let’s team up.” But I think their alliance is very dependent on that remaining true or remaining the same as the season goes on. So yeah, I think it constantly changes. From moment to moment they can be honest with each other and then you see maybe one of them. They’re never sure who’s going to cross whom.

Stephens: It’s also trying to work out what the other one’s bigger game is, because they’re both people who think ten steps ahead of the next person. It’s the reason that they kind of actually are similar. They’re chess players, but it’s trying to work out where are your ten steps ahead compared to where my ten steps ahead are. They’re both trying to figure out, okay, when you get this gold, what are you going to do with the gold? Do you really intend to get the gold? Where are we going with this? So they’re constantly trying to second guess each other. It’s not that they’re lying to one another. It’s just that we’re very economic with the truth.

Arnold: And it’s quite strange because Silver knows as much as anyone, if not more so, what this man is capable of and what happens to the men who are close to him. So he knows he has to be on his guard the whole time because he was in the room when Gates got choked out. So he’s very aware not to put too much trust in this man’s world.

CS: Do you catch up at all to Treasure Island this season?

Arnold: I think the shadows of Treasure Island start to hang over “Black Sails” much more in this series, which to me is my favorite thing about it. Plotting that chart for Silver between this young kid we see at the beginning of season one and the man we know he has to become. That’s both with Flint as well. You only hear about Flint in the book. Definitely the ghost of him is so strong.

Stephens: There are more references to the book, but what’s great is that it doesn’t become tied down by it as well. I was saying earlier, it’s like Robert Louis Stevenson saw “Treasure Island” from this vantage. We’re looking at it from this vantage. So it’s the same story, they’re the same characters but perceived in a totally different way. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote it in this kind of romanticized children’s almost naive point of view. We’re looking at it from a very 21st century adult way. It’s the same kind of thing but from a different angle.

CS: Speaking of literature, did you have a preference for Captain Flint or Rochester in Jayne Eyre?

Stephens: That’s really hard to say because they’re such different characters. Rochester is a literary archetype. He really is. I was very nervous when I played him because it was like am I going to be able to do Rochester right for all of these women out there who are totally obsessed by this character in fiction? But it was a very satisfying part to play and I loved doing it. In a way, Flint, we’re creating a character totally because he’s not in “Treasure Island.” He’s talked about. He’s referred to. We don’t know who this guy is so I’m starting afresh with the writers. That’s what’s really cool is creating this character. I’m not trying to avoid the question. It’s just really hard to compare the two because they’re satisfying in totally different ways. I would say they’re equally satisfying.

CS: How is the fencing training going?

Arnold: Training kind of adapts as we go. It really kicked off with our boot camp and got our basic sword skills under our belt. After that point, much more happens really fight by fight. There isn’t a time. Unfortunately there isn’t the time to keep getting us in the stunt room just for general training. We are in the gym pretty much every day but the fight training really comes a month or however long we can before the scene.

Stephens: Getting you in, choreographing the fight so that on the day… The problem was at the end of last season, the schedule got so constant that there was no time. There was absolutely no time, and it ends with this epic sequence which I won’t get into, but it’s a really epic sequence at the end of the season with loads of various fights with me and Zach McGowan fighting…

Arnold: Don’t say too much, man, come on.

Stephens: I’m not, and we had no time, so it was kind of like on the day, okay, this happens, this happens, then you do this and then we go to that. It’s all a bit last minute but that was kind of fun. It kind of added an edge to it that perhaps wouldn’t have been there.

Arnold: Like everything, it always happens in shooting. You’d always love more time with the training and preparation, but once the wheels start turning, that rehearsal and training time starts to disappear.

CS: The season starts out with a big naval battle, so does the pace keep up action-wise?

Arnold: Absolutely. There was plenty of action in season one but that is dwarfed time and time again in season two. While it is still the focus of “Black Sails” being a character-driven drama, there is so much action in the second season and the scale of it just gets bigger and bigger. If people want a bit more action, you definitely get it served up in the second season.

Stephens: The thing is, you’ve got to ration out. If you just have sea battle after sea battle, it’s boring. It’s like oh, another sea battle, they blow the sh*t out of each other, there’s a load of cannons coming. But there are all kinds of different action sequences that you can have within the context of this show. So it’s not necessarily just about ships. And I love the fact that we go back to London 15 years before. We reveal this whole other kind of world. Really, the kind of center of that world because that’s where it all comes from. All of the power comes from England. The reason that they’re there comes from England, so it’s cool that that takes us there and that opens up a whole other world for us.

Arnold: What I love about the first episode, and it’s where the writers are getting inventive in a great way is that we see a ship takeover in a completely different way, your and my little mission. There’s a really inventive, interesting, tense way to take over a ship rather than blasting it with cannons and throwing the hooks over and doing that thing. I think lots more of that where we start to see pirate action in not the cliche way you’ve come to expect.

CS: You’ve already got a third season.

Arnold: We’re in the middle of it.

CS: This whole time have you shot seasons back to back?

Stephens: We have a five month hiatus between where they have to write them. They start writing them.

Arnold: And also because the visual effects are so huge, that’s why we have to be over a year ahead. Even though we’re shooting season three now, they’ve only just put finishing touches on the end of season two ready to air. The post-production is so massive we have to be ahead of the game.

CS: What are Flint’s and Silver’s most redeeming qualities?

Arnold: I think Silver’s honesty about his intentions. I think even though he can be so duplicitous and can lie and has the gift of the gab, he’s also really able to just say, “Don’t trust me. Don’t rely on me for anything more than what I’m telling you. I’m only teaming up with you because we both want this. As soon as we get it, I’ll see you later.” And I think that clarity of his intentions is actually a really redeeming feature.

Stephens: I think Flint is that he’s brilliant at what he does. He’s an incredibly good seaman. As we find out, he was in the Navy so he’s properly trained. He is a really good captain and generally his decision making is sound. It’s just that it isn’t particularly perhaps the choices that his crew would want him to make. But his judgment is very, very good and rational. I think that’s his saving grace. 

- ComingSoon.net

[gotatext]

hello, it’s swamp witch nora again…. i couldn’t stay away.... hitting u with a tiny baby boy who is also terrible (sometimes).  musical softboi who loves karl marx and hates children dying in cobalt mines to make smart phones. as is tradition, here’s the pinterest board, have a peruse. fyi sorry for those of u who have read this intro a thousand times i literally.... can never b bothred to change it n i think thats really sexy of me x

CHARLIE PLUMMER / DEMI-BOY — don’t look now, but is that rory bergström  i see? the 23 year old music student is in their junior year and he is a rochester alum. i hear they can be whimsical, impassioned, self-indulgent and nitpicky, so maybe keep that in mind. i bet he / they will make a name for themselves living in griffin street. ( nora. 24. gmt. she/her. )

aesthetics.

bed hair from a permanent state of slumber, calloused fingertips from strumming bass into the early hours and djing into the blacklit night, self-help books thumbed once and thrown beneath your bed, battered copies of choose your own adventure books, spliffs passed half-arsed across rooftops while light pollution obscures low-hanging stars, marxist literature in stacks against your bedroom walls, a burner phone twice-shattered and a stash of replacement sim cards.

tw ocd, anxiety, drugs

half-swedish, half-british. the swedish is on his mother’s side. he’s bilingual but thinks in english. only really speaks swedish around his mother. only child, and kinda put a lot of pressure on himself to be the perfect kid when he was young, but his parents are honestly, quite decent? and just want him to have a nice life, they don’t care if he isn’t successful or rich or anything, they’re honestly rather solid. (wow imagine having nice parents, a first for all my characters, im literally this meme)

grew up in peckham, a suburb of london. growing up, his mum was a model / actress / waitress who later retrained as a speech therapist and his dad worked in her majesty’s service at buckingham palace. his dad wasn’t allowed to tell his family what his job entailed but rory suspects it’s probably very boring and just involves a lot of…. logistics n security.

was bullied a lot at school. [cole sprouse voice] he didn’t fit in and he didn’t want to fit in. unironically wore a trenchcoat to school every day of his life. spent most of his lunchtimes in the library because it was his safe space. as a result he knows…. loads of useless information because 30% of his school years were spent reading anthologies on space and the vikings etc. would be good on a game show. obsessively recorded every episode of university challenge as a child.

middle-class and lowkey quite wealthy but rarely talks about money, one of those well-off people who still wears really old shitty shoes and only spends money if they absolutely have to

virgin who can’t drive

into star wars, not into the big bang theory. feminist. can’t watch horror movies

favourite film is where the wild things are. also loves the florida project. thinks kids are the sweetest thing and can’t wait to be a dad to some

has been musical for as long as they can remember. first picked up guitar because he thought it would make this girl esther who he was in love with like him, but he just ended up falling in love with music instead.

formulated several different bands as a kid but ultimately had to give it up cos he was quite controlling and got fixated on making a certain sound so it wasn’t really fun for the others. got into electronic music because it was something he could do basically on his own and keep tweaking until he got it perfect

always drumming their fingers or strumming invisible guitar strings. tends to avoid parties bc he has quite has specific tastes when it comes to music and doesn’t like listening to r&b for eight hours while people throw up into plastic cups.

a techno connoisseur. has been making electronic music since he was about twelve.

after his parents divorce, when he was fourteen, rory & his mother moved to run-down suburban neighbourhood, pittsfield, massachussets.

big into photography. he mostly uses a canon 35mm camera, but occasionally uses disposable ones when he wants that more rustic feel.

moving to the states, their photography became more focused on suburban neighborhoods and are often quite dark and cinematic (think gregory crewsden). here are some shots of pittsfield i really like which rory has on his wall [1] [2] [3]

falls in love 12 times a day. never had a girlfriend or boyfriend. gets sweaty when someone cute looks at him. flirting?? what?? would prefer to idealise them from a distance

gender??? hm. rory don’t really know where they fit yet, sometimes he feels like a guy and sometimes they dont feel like anything at all!! slippin out of his physical form into the spirit realm! isn’t really bothered, cos they think it’s a social construct anyway. uses he/they pronouns interchangeably, but currently feels like ‘he’ is more fitting. won’t necessarily pull anyone up on it cos he knows having an identity that’s constantly…. in flux.. can be annoying for others … and doesn’t want to be a burden even tho it isn’t at all?? rory internalises guilt

everything is socially constructed. mirrors let you move through time. the whole thing’s a metaphor. he thinks he’s got free will but really he’s trapped in a maze. in a system. all he can do is consume. people think it’s a happy game. it’s not a happy game — it’s a fucking nightmare world, and the worst thing is, it’s real and we live in it!!!!

has ocd. tries to let it affect his life as little as possible, but obviously it’s incredibly hard to control a compulsive disorder. was teased for it at school when other kids started to notice. he was obsessed with the number five, would wash his hands five times, count stairs i groups of five, he could only use the corridors in one direction and always had to keep his hands busy. it manifests itself in hyper-fixations (trains when he was a child – specifically steam engines – then later he became obsessed with space and the patterns of constellations, and now he’s obsessed with synthesizers) and repetitive behaviours like counting stairs. doesn’t really affect his social life at all, he can jst get a bit locked-on n hyper-focused sometimes.

has insomnia. barely ever sleeps. finds it hard to switch off from work / writing / gaming / whatever’s preoccupying him in that moment. he’s always awake at 5am and quite often sleeps in through classes but still gets really good grades because he’s very good at his course. rarely attends classes. prefers to work independently. doesn’t really trust his tutors are intelligent enough to be teaching him, and is particularly suspicious of the lockwood tutors. a music snob tbh

occasionally deals weed n pills when strapped for cash, but only 2 ppl he knows, and on a very small scale grass-roots level!! (so its ok???) rollerskates around campus dealing cos they dnt have a car. we love to see it

aesthetics: bed hair from a permanent state of slumber, calloused fingertips from strumming bass into the early hours and drumming into blacklit night, self-help books thumbed once and thrown beneath your bed, watching vine compilations until your eyes turn square, battered copies of choose your own adventure books, spliffs passed half-arsed across rooftops while light pollution obscures low-hanging stars

likes: techno, the webpage cats on synthesizers in space, allen ginsberg, vintage gramophones,  floating points, lcd soundsystem, marijuana, soft dogs that let you pet them, late-night strolls talking about the universe, independent films, cigarettes, herbal tea, gallows humour, long showers, brown eyes, tchaikovsky, dr. seuss, constellations, photography, late night jazz, vintage game boys and girls who could rip his still-beating heart out of his chest and use it as an ashtray. dislikes:  weddings, funerals, formality, button-up shirts that people actually button-up, bananas, hot coffee, social media, people who watch and play sports, rap music – especially of the misogynistic variety, indie wankers in wire-framed glasses that play ed sheeran songs at open mic nights.

plot ! with ! me ! i’d say all the usual “exes fwb hookups spiel” but rory… has never hooked up with anyone… i feel like a deer in the headlights of love……. so give me

study buddies,

people who are also into techno and are music snobs about it,

people who love all kinds of music,

people who are in bands that maybe rory’s recorded and produced stuff for,

people he actually jams with (he plays bass and synth),

unrequited crushes!!

actually i think rory had sex w delilah in the last version of this rp so if u want a hook up plot its possible just unlikely. they’d hav 2 be the driving force i reckon cos rory doesn’t really act on impulses like desire or anythin.... jst bottles that shit up !!! but yea we could do a spicy hook up plot maybs, depending on the person

someone they met at a knitting club in freshman year and have remained friends with despite no longer going to it

people rory knows from open mic nights and gigs

library girlfriends / boyfriends that he stares at longingly while paging through leatherbound volumes

gamers !!! social recluses !!! hermits !!

people he deals weed to on his rollerskates (why r all my characters obsessed with rollerskates)

skaters. rory is really shit at skateboarding. like really shit. help the smol

[bomberqueen17]

a bff visit

So we went this weekend to Rochester to visit my bff and her kids. We haven’t been in far too long, it was actually three months ago we were last there, which is too long, but we were both busy and logistics were prohibitive. 

They’d decided the kids could just stay up if they wanted to, why not. The girl, who is five, has been in full-on revolt and will not sleep normally; she insists on sleeping in their bedroom with them, won’t sleep in her own room, won’t admit she’s tired, won’t go to bed, won’t stay asleep in the mornings. BFF has actually decided she’s just going to go to a counselor about it, because clearly just letting the child work it out for herself is doing nothing. And sure enough, after the party was winding down, little miss M reappeared, after midnight, and wanted to sit on my lap and join in the conversation. Her mother had long ago given up and gone to bed, and in fact had let her come sleep in the bed with her, and still that wasn’t enough, this child wanted to be awake if anyone in the house was awake, and here she was. And she was up at 7, and completely unable to cope with anything, because six hours of sleep for a five year old is basically like an adult pulling an all-nighter. So that was something.

We were drinking various pomegranate cocktails, because of Persephone’s descent to the underworld I suppose. I took charge of mixing them because my friend’s husband has a horrible predilection for mixing things vastly overstrength and then underestimating their effect, every time. Also we had pigs in blankets and little meat pastries, and Turkish delight and spinach salad and potato chips and onion dip and many cheeses and some crackers, all of which was wonderful. We also had a fire in the fireplace, and I thought for a moment it might prove to be too much for me after all, but it happily wasn’t. Which is good, I’d be super bummed not to be able to enjoy fireplace fires anymore; they’re some of my favorite things.

In the evening the kids were left to pick whatever they wanted to watch on their account on the TV, it was one of those things that aggregates streaming services? Some online-connected box thing, IDK, hot and cold running cartoons you can pause and rewind and such, which is still weird to me. And they have a kids account, and it’s full of their favorites, so their mom was like, go for it, pick whatever you want. I went back into that room after a while and stood staring at the TV thinking perhaps I was having a stroke, because it was a brightly-colored computer-animated children’s cartoon of some very sweet-faced little kids, and about every tenth word was in English, and the rest of it was really definitely not in English even though it sort of sounded like it (similar vowels, similar consonants, just absolutely not in the right order), and I could not figure out what the hell was going on. The kids loved it, and just thought the characters were speaking gibberish; they were repeating it to me, and it was similar sounds but they’d made it into words they knew, though it didn’t make sense. Rather a bit of drink had been taken, by me, and so it took me longer than it should have to begin to figure out what was going on.

It took until something appeared with a text label onscreen for me to identify that it was absolutely an Indian language, about which I know very little. I guessed Hindi because I know Hindi 1) is spoken by an absolutely massive number of people and 2) uses that kind of script where it’s straight on top and curly on bottom and 3) I’ve heard it spoken a bunch and it sounds like that, though that’s not really super scientific of me.

I have since looked it up and it was definitely ChuChu TV, which is on Netflix, but it has a drop-down and is available in either English or Hindi and somehow the children had selected Hindi. They both can read a tiny bit but not very well, so I really don’t know whether they had the slightest idea what they were choosing; like most white American children, they’re unfamiliar with the concept of people speaking different languages, and so could not be made to understand what was actually happening. We turned off the TV for the night, but the next morning they wanted to watch it again. We found them something else to watch, in English, as it would be more illuminating, but the girl, who if you recall had basically not slept, pitched a holy fit because she wanted to watch the show in Hindi, which she was referring to by her understanding of one of the things they’d been saying. (Something along the lines of “johnny johnny hop up!”)

It was both cute and Entirely Too Much for a pack of hung-over adults. 

I’ve recovered enough from my hangover now but like. I am out of practice drinking, which is fine, and maybe going forward I’ll dial back my participation in the drinking, because dang. I am old.

[maculategiraffe]

OK, darlings, bear with me.  I'm almost ready to post the new chapter of Refreshment, but first I gotta get this Hill House thing off my chest.

This post will not contain specific plot spoilers, but it will discuss-- arcs, and themes.  So if you haven't watched it yet and are already planning to and don't want any more information before watching it than "so far it's my favorite thing in awhile" and "it's so goddamn good, I cast myself down and wept," then maybe avoid this one until after you've watched it.  (Or skip it altogether!  I'm gonna get long-winded here, I can feel it.)

If, on the other hand, you aren't sure yet whether you want to watch it, and you want to know more about what the viewing experience might be like and why I found it to be so good, then this would be a good thing for you to read before watching it, maybe, to help you make up your mind whether it's for you.

Or if you've already watched it, then just, here's why I loved it.

One:  It's not an adaptation; it's a lovingly transformative fan work.

You know how gleeful we all got about the fact that The Shape of Water was literally Guillermo del Toro's Cold War AU Creature/Kay fix-it fic of The Creature from the Black Lagoon?   Because fuck yeah, beautifully shot high-budget fanwork that develops and builds upon themes and possibilities latent in the original work and wins Oscars in its own right?

I really love the book The Haunting of Hill House, and I'm predisposed to hate adaptations of things I really love, because they always fucking get things wrong.  I've become a bit more open-minded about this as I've aged-- I will now grudgingly watch a Jane Eyre adaptation with a blue-eyed Rochester (although I still get so Goddamn Pissy about how Goddamn Pretty everybody always is in a Jane Eyre movie adaptation when both the romantic leads are canonically Changeling-Looking Motherfuckers, and that's, like, IMPORTANT, okay)-- but mostly adaptations seem to me to have missed an important point about the original.  At LEAST one!  Do you know what I mean?  Like in the movie of The End of the Affair where they made it so the guy she was secretly meeting with was a priest, and like... the whole POINT was--!  Or like remember how mad certain people got about Tom Bombadil being left out of LotR, and how much they (we) wanted to explain to you (anyone who was like "meh, fair enough, he didn't have much to do with anything anyway") that the whole POINT of Tom Bombadil was--!

 Anyway sorry the point is, that this isn't an adaptation.  It isn't The Movie Of The Book, or The Show Of The Book, which always gets things wrong.  (Except the movie of The Princess Bride, which in my view was essentially the second, improved draft of the novel.) 

It's a fanwork, about the book, and, like all great fanworks, it gets the book-- in some ways, yeah, I'll say it-- righter than the book itself did.  Because it loves the book, and it takes things that are peeping out at the corners and between the lines of the book, or merely glanced at by the text and hurried past, maybe for pacing purposes, or that you thought about when you were reading the book for the seventh time, and it develops those, and interacts with them, and brings them out into new contexts, and-- just, altogether, instead of being like watching an adaptation of a thing you loved, it's like reading a fantastic fanfic series of a thing that you loved.  Instead of watching it butchered, you get to watch it, skillfully and thoughtfully and thoroughly, loved, and in a way that you wouldn't have known how to by yourself.

Two:  It's scary like wasabi is hot.

I love wasabi, because, like many very strange humans whose behavior is a puzzlement and a dismay to rational plants everywhere, I like eating something that makes me feel like my head is going to explode, but unlike some of those strange humans, I don't like the pain to linger.   I avoid super-hot chilis, because I don't like a burnt-mouth feeling.  I like wasabi because while I'm eating it it makes tears stream down my face, but then once it's gone, it's gone.  Well, I like my stories like I like my wasabi-- super intense while they last, but with a discrete ending to the pain.  I love wallowing in exquisitely painful hurt/comfort depictions of a character's anguish and terror and desolation, because I know the comfort part is coming.  If it doesn’t, I feel kind of hurt and burnt.

 Well, I like my horror the same way.  I like things that scare the living starlight out of me while they're happening, but that wrap up in a way that leaves me not-scared for later.  My previous best example of this was probably The Others (remember The Others?  Nicole Kidman?  2001?  I never hear about that movie any more, I feel like it's really underrated.  I saw it in the theater and there was one moment when everyone in the theater collectively stopped breathing and then everyone let out this crazy collective shaky what-was-that laugh), but I also feel that way about The Babadook, and Alien, and-- I could probably list other examples, but you get the point.   I like Cabin in the Woods, but it (and others like it) work by defusing the horror while stuff is happening, which is different from movies that commit wholeheartedly to scaring you while they're happening but after you're done watching them don't leave you scared to go to sleep in case the Thing is under the bed or peering out of the mirror.  You know?  

Hill House ends that way, but-- disclaimer-- it's a 10-episode series, and if you stop watching at any point before the last episode, like I did, you might be creeped out and have to sleep with the light on, like I did.  (After, specifically, episode 5.  I already loved it but it had spooked me out badly.)  It is genuinely terrifying while it's happening, but it gets-- steadily, artfully, beautifully-- less scary as it goes along.  But not by becoming less intense.  The ratio of emotional intensity to spooky business steadily increases, until at the very end, you are far too busy sobbing your soul out onto your sweater to be scared.

which brings me to my next item:

Three: It's a deep, and deeply cathartic, exploration of how grief and trauma work.

Do you know the quote-- I think I've reblogged it here a couple of times, lemme just, here:

My therapist says I can’t

make the monsters disappear

no matter how much I pay her.

All she can do is bring them

into the room, so I can get

to know them, so I can learn

their names, so I can see clearly

their toothless mouths,

their empty hands,

their pleading eyes.

 So that's what it's about.  

It's not about how there was never anything to be afraid of at all.  It's not about how the monsters can't hurt you unless you believe in them.  That's part of what the show looks at, is denial, how corrosive it can be, and in what ways, to deny the reality of what happened to you and how much it hurt you and how it changed you, and how important the things were that you lost, and how different you are because of what's happened to you, and what's still happening.  And yet how understandable it is, to try to close your eyes to it, try to white-knuckle it away, fix it yourself, close the door on it, build a wall to block it out, make yourself blind to everything so you don't have to see the one unbearable thing.  

It's not about how the monsters can't really, or won't really, or didn't really, hurt you. 

It's about learning to understand how they can, and how they did, and how they do, and what they are, and that's the beginning of learning how you're going to live now.  And that you are.  And that-- and how-- it's going to be beautiful.

Four:  It's about love.

The ways love is messy.  The ways love makes mistakes.  The ways love fails.  The ways love oversteps.  The ways love overwhelms.  The ways love, when accompanied by fear or bad judgement or incomplete information or the other ways we all stumble so helplessly through life, can even lead us to hurt and harm people.  Beloved people.  Or be horribly hurt by them.  The ways love is not, in and of itself, a safeguard against doing the absolutely, catastrophically, unbearably, unfixably wrong thing.

And the ways love lights our path.  The ways love brings us back.  The ways love makes life, no matter how much it hurts, worth living.  The ways we can't do without it, nothing means anything without it, no matter how much it hurts-- and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts-- but that's what it is to be alive at all.  To be able to feel, and feel deeply.  To rejoice, and despair, and panic, and regret, and hope, and grieve, and breathe, and love.  And love.

That’s what it’s about.

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 43 - NJD - Exorcise and Celly

It was a rainy night in Buffalo and dread was in the air among the spires of downtown Buffalo. The Sabres were a fright since Christmas and could hardly tame cats. The absolute fright seemed to reach its peak when the Devils incarnate came to town: often the torturers of Key Bank Center crowds they had not lost in Buffalo since April fool’s Day 2014. No, not tonight, for tonight was a different night: tonight would be the night a silver sabre was stabbed into the heart of the beast. Tonight… or last night now… would be an exorcism. Enough of the theatrics: there was a kid in the row behind me who was no older than 8 who repeatedly hollered obscure stats from NHL 19. We’ll be calling him Chel kid for this blog post. Chel kid was a few seats down from Loudmouth. Loudmouth only kind of knew he was at a hockey game yelling about drama of his family and friends to the two rather fetching women at either side of him. Chel kid and Loudmouth had a rollercoaster game. This is all to say I was at this game. I’ve been at both wins since Christmas so… maybe buy me tickets if you really like this team? There might be some rich trust fund baby in Amherst who might take me up on that. Nonetheless, demons were sorta exorcised in this game. In the second period it was a regular Tae-Bo session! Yes, that was a play on words pun and Tae-Bo was basically Zumba before Zumba was popularized, kids. Is this going to be six paragraphs of this guy making exorcism and exercise jokes? The answer is yes; today we celebrate because it’s been a rough go of it for the Sabres these last few games. We’re going to Exorcise and Celly today! Exorcise and Celly with Chel Kid and Loudmouth because the Sabres have perhaps their most compelling win since November in this tilt with the Devils of Newark.

The first period really only exists in this game to remind us of what this club has not been doing well. Passes, zone entries and secondary scoring did not come in the first. That said, it wasn’t a horror show either. It started out sour. Blake Coleman redirects a puck clumsily around Carter Hutton he had received from Miles Wood. Two thoughts on this goal: Miles Wood looks way to handsome to live in Newark, like no offense Newark but that City is what New Yorkers mean when they talk trash about New Jersey; and second: that goal should’ve been stopped by Hutton screened or not. If anyone was screening him it was Sabotka who was not even in his line of sight as the puck crosses the ice to Coleman. The first period ended 1-0 Devils but not before guys like Tage Thompson and Sam Reinhart really begin to lay it on. Do note that the Sabres outshot the Devils for the entirety of this game in spite of the visitors getting many more opportunities there. Loudmouth was really raising the decibel level as the first goes on, not for the Sabres but apparently because one of the women he was with told a very meandering story about how her sister was throwing a fit about having to work on her birthday. All the power to ya girl but do you find Loudmouth shattering ear drums for ten seats around in every direction attractive? Jeff Skinner got some hot opportunities in the first and Chel Kid made sure to let his surrounding compatriots know that Skinner’s shooting rating has been updated because of his hot start. Good to know, Chel kid.

Chel Kid was overjoyed when 1:39 into the second period Jeff Skinner came in on the right circle and sliced one home over Keith Kincaid’s far shoulder to draw the Sabres even. Tage Thompson, banging on the door all night got the only assist on that play.  I get an added kick out of Skinner’s 29th goal this season out of the hope that he’s warming up for Friday night’s trip to his old stomping ground in Carolina. I have that kind of midrange buzzing hatred for the Canes and I hope Skinner does pirouette goals around them. I had hardly stopped freaking out about Skinner potentially getting his 30th goal while I was there when C.J. Smith collects an arching pass from Johan Larsson in the offensive zone all by his Sabre lonesome. He proceeded to lean around the Devils defenseman and get his shot off from the low circle. The puck lands behind Kincaid and trickles in. It hardly looked like a goal. Smith cellyed on his own while it was deliberated. The refs reviewed it and the arena buzzed with cheer as the replays played on the video board. It was made official: C.J. Smith’s first NHL goal and one that feels like the start of something great considering his last 16 months with Rochester: glorious! What comes next over the six to ten minutes to follow is a moderate counterattack by the Devils who were actually 3-2 in their last 5 games coming into this one. Hutton stoned them on the few shots they got. Loudmouth actually started getting into the product on the ice at this point; it may be in part because Chel Kid had a lot to say about the Rochester Americans following Smith’s goal. My word, if NHL 19 is an adequate teacher of Hockey then this kid is probably smarter about Hockey then me, not that I’m any genius.

Casey Mittelstadt has been rough lately. He’s almost a guaranteed commodity. In time he will be a bankable second line center. Unfortunately he’s so not that right now that talk of trading for a 2C to fill that role for a time is afoot. Mittelstadt got the puck at the blue line and went along the left boards before cutting in and shooting the puck right on Kincaid. He then collects his own rebound and puts it around him on the second attempt at 10:42 of the second. That’s a nice little weight off his shoulders and his first goal in ten games. The Devils got twice as many powerplay opportunities as the Sabres in this game but the Buffalo PK was hot and the Devils just weren’t on their PPs. The Devils were on the powerplay with Buffalo up 3-1 when Vladimir Sabotka got the puck to Evan Rodrigues who broke out of the D-Zone with Jake McCabe. The two went in two-on-one against Will Butcher and did the old last second pass and McCabe got the puck past Kincaid who was still looking at E-Rod: shorthanded goal and 4-1 Sabres! This second period had everything from tape-to-tape passes to good zone entries on the Sabres part. It was maybe the most complete period they’ve played since November. But it wasn’t done yet! They were set up in the O-Zone when Conor Sheary got the puck back to our young Lawrence Pilut at the blue line. Pilut just rips that one at a foot per second and the puck goes in a straight line past his own guys, a couple Devils defenders and Keith Kincaid: 5-1 Sabres. Loudmouth must have seen this play from the start because he immediately lost his mind. Chel kid gave me a good laugh when he yelled: How many goals will they score!?

They would score no more and neither would the Devils. The visitors would shoot as many shots as the Sabres in the third period and even get a couple scraps going. None would pass and this game ended 5-1 and hit me like a cool, spring breeze. Buffalo needed this and as Loudmouth said: I’ve never seen a Sabres game with this many goals! Not only that Loudmouth but if you count assists 14 different Sabres got points in this game and all but one from Skinner came from non-top line guys. That by itself is worth celebrating. I don’t just joke about exorcism because it’s the Devils: that lack of secondary scoring has been a real blight for this team. Moreover, the Devils are an Eastern Conference team which means in the second half of this season they get Playoff Trash talk with New Look Sabres: New Jersey, if you make the playoffs at this point it will be something of a miracle. Your mix of young guns and geriatric players makes you and enigma to figure out but goaltending is not stable in Newark and the Sabres would make quick work outscoring a Devils team that in spite of its talent has no true firepower. Taylor Hall went from a five alarm fire in Edmonton to an already burnt down sporting goods store in New Jersey and isn’t saving this team in a seven-game series: not last season, not this season. Beating the Devils in the first round would be our punishment to them for making the 2010s a nightmare at home. Sabres win in 5.

Speaking of the Playoffs: the only good news on that front last night was that the Islanders lost and are now two points back of Buffalo in the first spot out. Montreal, Boston and even Carolina won so all the other spots remain the same although Buffalo moves up to the first wildcard spot. They have to beat Carolina on Friday because every team around them in the standings plays one or two games between now and then. Their buffer is gone but yes, there is much hockey to be played. Like, comment and share this blog. I look forward to a day both Loudmouth and Chel Kid read New Look Sabres although I’m not helping myself with a younger demographic making a friggin Tae-Bo reference. Do also note however that I didn’t call this game just exorcism; yes they played the right way in this game but I am not convinced yet that they’re exorcising some of those consistent mistakes. See you Friday in what will surely be a feelsy game. Keep pace, Sabres!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Scott Wilson getting waived right now may seem stranger than how precise Jack Eichel’s game day regimen is but the 411 on that is that when he clears he’s going down to Rochester for a reclamation stint if you will having been out since Training Camp.