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themonstrousarchives · 3 years

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Hunt: Party Pack

Description: A motley crew of fellow monster hunters, but with a twist about them. They're just a little too monstrous. A quartet of roadtripping werewolves* seized by the Hunt, given an insatiable desire to track down and destroy other avatars primarily. They hunger for the PC that has done the most collateral damage, ready for revenge.

Hook, Session goals: Time for the most dangerous game, as we risk NPCs that the players have come across, along with any other monsters in the world- Bigfoot, an avatar of the Stranger, others capitalizing on the fears

Monster Type: Executioner (motivation: to punish the guilty) Powers: All of them have supernatural speed and strength, and can shapeshift into humanoid lycanthrope-esque beings for more effective predation. One of them is adept at using “magic,” mostly in a supportive way like a bard- helping to direct the others and prime their attacks. They try to lure monsters out, one of them faking weakness or taking on some aspect that the target might find appealing, then the bait leads them into an ambush. When hunting a group, they try to split everyone up so that they can gang up on whoever gets left behind. Attacks: Detailed below Weaknesses: The Dark, The Stranger, and the Spiral can either blind or misdirect the wolves, though actually killing them will be difficult- they have to be made into quarry to make them “vulnerable.” It’s a farfetched pull, but calling upon the owner of Lobos Ltd. (See the Deer Man adventure) and acquiring some of his cages would be effective in removing them as threats.

The Wolves: (Attacks ordered by preference)

Greg (Armor: 1) [][][][][][][] (Shapeshifts quickly)

Bite- 3-harm intimate

Claw- 2-harm ignore armor hand

9mm- 2-harm close loud

Johnny Hobo (Armor: 2) [][][][][][][] (Bait)

Claw- 2-harm close ignore armor

Bite- 3-harm intimate

Baseball bat- 1-harm hand

Elsa (Armor: 0) [][][][][][][] (Stays hidden/protected)

Magic Snare- 0-harm close restraining

Enchant- adds 1-harm to damage dealt

Shotgun- 3-harm close messy

Bite- 3-harm intimate

Pat (Armor 1) [][][][][][][] (Fastest chaser)

Knife- 2-harm hand

Claw- 2-harm ignore armor hand

Bite- 3-harm intimate

Greg (Hotheaded and rash. Eager to feel powerful.)

Johnny Hobo (Patient. Durable. The methodical pursuit, often tempering Greg or supporting the others.)

Elsa (The brains of the operation. Puts on a cool air.)

Pat (Jumpy, a pure manifestation of id. The fastest, but also the easiest to fool.)

Countdown:

Burgers on the Coast gets accosted by a brash customer. After they finish eating, they will leave and the table can be investigated.

The Pack arrives in town, a PC sees Johnny outside their window (if they doubletake, or run to get equipment, he will be gone).

If the PCs have convinced any “monsters” to only hunt “bad guys” or otherwise change their ways, the reformed monster gets ambushed. Depending on the monster, the Pack might kill them.

Shiro violently cuts back a mass of vines, which fight back, whipping around his arm and leg. As he pulls to get away, thorns tear into him, and the vines start to dig into him.

The Pack tracks down Bigfoot, and kills her after she menaces some campers.

The Pack finds Shiro restrained, spider lilies growing out of his mouth and stomach. They kill him.

They will start the next hunt, if not found, or if not given the primary focus during the hunt. They are essentially competition for the PCs.

Bystanders:

Susan- (Gossip, Victim) Burgers on the Coast waitress. She’s worked at this same restaurant for 30 years and as a result knows all the regulars. Greg will accost her, then Johnny Hobo will smack him upside the head. Only these two are at the diner.

Anuset- (Victim, Gossip) The mask is out pursuing someone it has targeted in the past week. As it falls upon this person and begin to unpeel, Johnny Hobo will appear behind it with a baseball bat. The morning after, a hunter will see a destroyed clay mask left discarded. Further inspection will discern that a couple fragments were taken.

Shiro- (Helper, Victim) Shiro has been plagued by vines overgrowing his orange tree. While he cuts them back, the vines fight back and restrain him, as impossible amounts of blood issue from his person. Where blood spills, spider lilies start to grow... after a few days he is still restrained, but the Party Pack finds him, and will kill him.

Bigfoot (Victim) (Stranger Avatar)- aka Isadora Vila Quintana, a hiker who got too lost in the woods and now menaces other hikers. She doesn’t quite need to kill the hikers, but often puts them into precarious positions after she is finished with them.

Francesca Lopez (Victim) (Stranger Monster) sells secondhand items. She has ties to Charlotte and her trade market, wherein Frannie goes around flea markets and digital marketplaces. Having recently finished a transaction, or at least would have if she hadn’t gotten caught by the Pack.

Minnie Taylor (Witness, Innocent) a resident who had gotten lost trying to find her own home. The Pack has promised to help her once the danger is cleared, and if they don’t return for her she will try to free herself from the place they sealed her into, inevitably getting lost and becoming a spiral avatar. She trusts the Pack to help her, and if the Players come across her, will not trust them if they don’t seem to have a good reason to kill them.

Isadora, the Lonely avatar Bigfoot

Shiro Kamada, the Slaughter avatar

Minnie Taylor, a woman about 29 years of age, who recently moved into the Strange Suburb (before it was strange)

Locations:

Burgers on the Coast (and Parking Lot)- the diner that the PCs have taken a liking to, their repeated presence dooms it to become a hub of Interesting Persons.

The table that Greg and Johnny sat at will have some traces that can be discovered- some gum under the table, a deep cut into the particle board table, a dropped receipt (Ammo- 9mm and shells).

Camping Grounds

In the forest, far from the sounds of the city, a hiking trail opens up to a small clearing where hikers can put down tents and keep a campfire. This is Isadora’s favorite haunt, because of it’s isolation and the sheer ability to disorient people in these woods. She can be tracked, sometimes.

Parked by the beach, one of many RVs. Once the right one is sussed out, it can be broken into. It is likely that at least one of the Pack is there, keeping watch. As soon as the PCs head there, the other members of the Pack will be notified, and they will circle the party, trying to make sure that they don’t leave with anything important.

Inside the RV is a mess. Clothes in one or two piles strewn over one of the seats or in a receptacle. Projects lay unfinished- Someone’s trying to patch their jacket, someone else is growing seed starters. Plastic dishes lay in the mini sink. One bed looks like it’s been used as an operating table on more than one occasion, a big antique chest sits in the corner undisturbed, and some hefty power tools poke out of a footlocker pushed out of the way. Treat this as a Haven for the Pack, with an Infirmary, an Armory, and a Workshop.

They also have many “trophies” from previous kills in an upper cabinet- everything sealed with an eye sigil. Some Tallow. A mushroom. A long, preserved beak. A lock of inky black hair. These hunters have been traveling the US, fighting monsters and leaving a wake of supernatural power vacuum.

Shiro’s home

Vines stretch, having grown a strong base on the telephone pole near Shiro’s home. Runners stretch from the pole to the lines and then to the houses. They have sprouted purple flowers, and are now growing green fruit- not yet ripened, though that may change quickly.

The vines are attempting to peel under the shingles of Shiro’s home to anchor themselves, though he has managed to beat back the majority. It’s harder for him to keep up with the vines currently suffocating the orange tree, though.

Him using his ultraviolent powers to destroy the vines has attracted the attention of the Party Pack.

The Strange Suburb

An entire suburb has fallen into unreality and is distorting- building extensions without rime or reason, warping through various decades and shapes. Think McMansions but worse and more terrible and insufferably generic. Very easy to get lost in, very easy to separate people and confine them in terrible, bland, almost claustrophobic (make sure everyone is okay about this if you use it) spaces. There is no real branding on anything, and looking through the house will find very little personal effects if any.

One house is holding Minnie Taylor. Elsa had set up wards which will keep the spiralizing at bay (The door containing her room is unlocked, but there are multiple and they shift around. A golden seal distinguishes this door if the players look for it with supernatural means).

The largest, most cancerous McMansion house is wavering in the most volatile sense. The house goes through waves of eras- wallpapered walls, then painted, then cheap drywall, then wood paneling. The rooms are labyrinthine, measurements all feel wrong- hallways too narrow, rooms too big or small. Pat is the scout of the group, and will be ready for anyone entering the house conventionally, sprinting away as soon as they come in. As the Players follow him (if they do), the rooms stretch and expand, making pursuit difficult. At the top of the house is a large, undefinable room with elements of any kind of room in the house. A little bit of a kitchen, a showerhead, photo frames on the walls and ceiling. In the center of the room lies Francesca, with Johnny Hobo holding her down as Elsa prepares Greg to execute her. Behind them all hangs a painting on the wall, from which a malevolent energy exudes.

Artefact: A Francis Bacon painting which is the source of the reality warping in the first place. Disrupting Elsa’s preparations will make the manifestation worse. The Players are able to either try to finish the Ritual Elsa was performing (containment, some reversal of the manifestation, at the cost of Francesca’s life), or find their own solution to destroy it.

Cold Open: A beat up RV speeds up Highway 101 under the light of a waxing moon. A folkpunk song plays through the speakers as a rowdy quartet sings along. Street lights illuminate a messy dashboard with all sorts of little tchotchkes- batteries, flashlights, pocketknives, that kinda stuff. The song ends and the next one opens with a death growl, and as they roar along, their voices get loud, feral, deeper. The RV hits a bump and the knick knacks on the dashboard shift, the riders laughing with the chaos. The next time the streetlights flicker to the dash, a mugshot of [PC] has made it to the top.

#the magnus archives #tma motw #pbta #monster of the week #the monstrous archives #Hunt module Party Pack #my work #needless to say. theyre all gay #mcmansion

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Will Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Cast More Characters from The Cage?

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is poised to serve the quintessence of the spacefaring franchise: The voyages of the U.S.S. Enterprise—albeit during the captaincy of James T. Kirk’s immediate predecessor, Christopher Pike (Anson Mount). The Paramount+ series—spun off from Star Trek: Discovery—has announced the start of its production and revealed its primary cast. Interestingly, one newcomer in particular bears a noteworthy resemblance to a forgotten character from original Star Trek pilot “The Cage,” whose general era this series will showcase.

An announcement by Paramount has officially welcomed Star Trek: Strange New Worlds cast members Babs Olusanmokun (Dune, The Defenders), Christina Chong (Line of Duty, Black Mirror), Celia Rose Gooding (Broadway’s Jagged Little Pill), Jess Bush (Playing for Keeps, Les Norton) and Melissa Navia (New Amsterdam, Dietland). However, the characters this new quintet will portray have yet to be revealed. While the majority of the diverse bunch do not seem to line up with established characters from “The Cage,” blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aussie actress Jess Bush just might be the exception. Indeed, she resembles a character named Yeoman J.M. Colt (as only indicated in the script), who, played by Laurel Goodwin, was prominently featured in Gene Roddenberry’s initial attempt at a Star Trek pilot, “The Cage,” but never manifested again.

Paramount+ Star Trek: Strange New Worlds production announcement.

Of course, the core trio of Strange New Worlds consists of spun-off characters Captain Pike (Mount), Science Officer Spock (Ethan Peck) and the ship’s first officer—best known as Number One—Una (Rebecca Romijn). It’s a lineup of bridge officers that matches what was showcased in the 1965 would-be pilot—in which they were played by Jeffrey Hunter, Leonard Nimoy and Majel Barrett, respectively—amidst an array of laughable early-1960s quasi-future aesthetics (its planet surface scan that spat out perforated printer paper remains hilarious). However, there are notable vacancies from that Enterprise’s crew, which also consisted of the drink-sharing Dr. Philip Boyce (John Hoyt), Lt. José Tyler (Peter Duryea) and the aforementioned Yeoman Colt (Goodwin), who was essentially a prototype for Grace Lee Whitney’s Yeoman Janice Rand.

Paramount Pictures

With that set, let’s start with what we do know. While “The Cage” was not part of Star Trek’s initial NBC airing (it wasn’t released in full form until 1986), its events were nevertheless canonized when footage of it was used to present a backstory for the present state (in the year 2267) of the grievously-injured, wheelchair-bound Captain Pike (Sean Kenney) in 1966 episodes “The Menagerie” Parts I and II. Thusly, the events of the nixed pilot were retroactively reset thirteen years earlier, in 2254, after which the Strange New Worlds-setting events of Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 (which even included Melissa George’s modern revival of Susan Oliver’s “Cage” character Vina,) revisits the Enterprise three years later in 2257. Consequently, we won’t necessarily need to have the entire character lineup return here, since—just as with anything in life—people move on to new endeavors and/or assignments in Starfleet. After all, we know that Pike will eventually (by 2265) give up that big chair to a certain fast-rising young officer named Kirk.

Paramount

Since Star Trek: Strange New Worlds takes place only a handful of years after “The Cage,” it stands to reason that some of the crew from that era will still be assigned on the Enterprise, which makes the notion—speculative as it may be—of Yeoman J.M. Colt being on the series quite feasible, especially given Jess Bush’s clear resemblance to that classic character. Moreover, Colt’s prospective presence could add an intriguing romantic element. Indeed, a love triangle of sorts was teased in “The Cage,” when Talosian leader the Keeper—who wanted the captives to have children—read the minds of the Enterprise’s captured away party, and tactlessly divulged to Pike, “The female you call ‘Number One’ has the superior mind and would produce highly intelligent children. Although she seems to lack emotion, this is largely a pretense. She has often had fantasies involving you.” Afterwards, he reveals of Colt, “The other new arrival has considered you unreachable but now is realizing this has changed. The factors in her favor are youth and strength, plus unusually strong female drives.” It’s a brief, but consequential exchange that seemed to hint where Roddenberry might have taken this unrealized iteration of Star Trek regarding its inter-crew dynamic.

Star Trek: Wesley Snipes on Losing Geordi La Forge Role

By Kirsten Howard

The Star Trek: The Original Series Episodes That Best Define the Franchise

By Ryan Britt

It will certainly be interesting to see how Star Trek: Strange New Worlds tackles this revered era in the franchise’s timeline, especially if it attempts to establish its own identity amidst the array of existing lore. Will the series have the temerity to introduce Kirk, who’d only be a few years out of Starfleet Academy at this point? Will we get a live-action introduction to the Enterprise’s first captain, Robert April, who later became an Ambassador-at-Large, and even returned in an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series? Based on what we’ve seen of the early dynamic on Discovery—notably with Anson Mount’s acclaimed performances as Pike—it seems to be in good hands.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds doesn’t have an official release date as of yet. However, the show is now in production, which makes a premiere on Paramount+ possibly by late-2021 quite promising.

The post Will Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Cast More Characters from The Cage? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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unnursvanablog · 4 years

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All the books I read in 2020 / part 2.

The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker: ☆☆☆☆☆

Loved how these myths and legends were used within this story. It is a beautiful tale of immigration and friendship and how Wecker conveyed that was just beautiful. The text did drag its feet in some places, but this story is also so character driven; their experience with the world, and their longings, so I understand that slow pace. Everything about it felt really sincere and it truly is a book that leaves you with something. I have never read anything like this before and I felt like it bridges the gap between historical history and fantasy well.

Naturally Tan - Tan France: ☆☆☆

I listened to this book in one sitting as I drove from the capital area and all the way home to the countryside. And I really enjoyed it because I really like Tan France and he narrated the audiobook himself. The text, the chapters and therefor the book itself goes a bit all over the place and it feels a bit vapid at times. It was about everything and nothing, really.

The Silence of Bones - June Hur: ☆☆☆

I am not so much for these types of mystery novels, so it was not something that drew me forward, but I did find the atmosphere that Hur created within the story and the historical elements really great and made the story quite enjoyable. I felt like learning a little more about certain parts of Korean history that I did not know before, and I really enjoyed that.

In the Labyrinth of Drakes - Marie Brennan: ☆☆☆

The world that Brennan has created continues to wow me. It is complex and it’s so much fun to travel around it. I love getting to know these characters at different stages of their lives and it just makes you like them even more. The story often runs into the same problem for me and that is that I find the first parts of the story so exciting, it is an adventure, but then it loses me a little towards the end.

The Will to Battle - Ada Palmer: ☆☆

After the amazing storyline of the second book, this book really lacked any excitement within the plot to propel you further and instead we got a lot of philosophical lessons and musings. In the previous books I felt like Palmer managed to strike a balance between those things, but not here. So little was going on. This story is deep, beautifully written, and complex and all that, but the text is often so long and dense, and my dyslexia just wants to skip these walls of texts that often just feel like statements about something philosophical but not real conversations or reflections from the characters.

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep - H.G. Parry: ☆☆☆☆

I was hoping for a 'grown up version' of Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, and although that was not quite what I got, I really enjoyed this. I thought the world was well thought out, and the idea of the readers interpretation of the characters and even literary criticism can affect how they would appear in our world was a cool concept. In some places I felt that the story was a bit stunted or towards the end I was starting to predict where it was going, and there was a lot of misunderstanding between the characters so the story could continue, which got on my nerves. But for the majority of the time, it was a really fun read.

Midnight Sun - Stephenie Meyer: ☆

You can judge me for this. I judge myself too. It was strange to fall back into the Twilight world after completely falling out of it after reading the last Twilight book. But out of sheer curiosity, I decided to give this one a try. But wow… this was not fun and added almost nothing to the original story and Edward is just so damn boring and having to spend time in his mind was just kind of a torment.

The Absolute Sandman, vol 1 & 2 - Neil Gaiman: ☆☆, ☆

I was going to listen to the whole thing via the new and shiny audible version of the Sandman comics, but I could sit through more than the first two volumes. I could not tolerate the violence against the female and queer characters. Oh my god! You do not have to go that far to make your story edgy, or create a complex, dark world. Nothing that happened seemed to move me or make me want to keep listening to this story. It does not really seem to revolve around anything. Or maybe I am just too annoyed to pay attention to the story. Fortunately, Gaiman seems to have improved as a writer since.

Radio Silence - Alice Oseman: ☆☆☆☆

Listened to this and although contemporary YA is is usually not something that hooks me or interest me in any way, Oseman manages to make the story so genuine and down to earth despite all the teenage drama, and the character felt so real that it just draws you in. The daily problems of teenagers often seem too dramatic or unreal to me in books like this, but that was not here. The text is not to flowery, but not too simple either. The story just as a really good pace going on. Everything just flowed together.

Wicked Fox - Kat Cho: ☆☆☆

The story did sound like a kdrama to me and I was hoping it would be that. Just fun and cute and fluffy with some loveable characters and sprinkle of myths and legends. It was fun, it didn't go into too much depth with most things within the story. It kinda brushes over a lot of things. For me the book started of well, but then towards the middle of the book things start to happen to fast and there was not enough time spent on bulding things up, so in the end the story kinda went nowhere for me. The little bits of the Gumiho legend, at least how the legend was presented in this book, inbetween the chapters was my favorite bit.

The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien: ☆☆☆☆

You can tell that worldbuilding and just spending time making things up for this magical world that he crated was one of the things Tolkien enjoyed the most when it came to writing. The stories about Middle Earth, even the backstories, are so rich and lushus. I do struggle with the writing style, it does feel a bit dry to me at times, and it does feel like short stories set in the world of Middle Earth and not at tightly knit story which isn't always my cup of tea so it did take me a while to get into it.

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London - Garth Nix: ☆☆☆

The story really throws you straight into the action and you just have to find your bearings as best as you can while the story goes on. It was really fast paced and the story never really stops for too long to give you a breather. It was light and funny, a little weird and the character were whimsical, which I enjoyed. Sometimes I felt like I was in a Doctor Who episode, except with magic and not aliens. I just wish it would have let the story breath a little more for me to really enjoy the world that Nix had crafted and such things.

A Deadly Education - Naomi Novik: ☆☆

I do not know what happened here, but wow, this was so not Novik at her best. Neither the characters or the worldbuilding that I am used to getting from Novik was in this book and for the most part there wasn't a whole lot going on in this books. I can deal with a slow burning book and really just enjoy a good fantasy world but there was very little interesting things here to explore. I can deal with a unlikeable main character, but this one didn't grow at all during the book, she just kept on reminding us why she was cranky all the time and how much she delighted in it. There was a whole lot of telling about this magical school and the diverse world outside of it, but very little showing so it all seems rather empty and after a while I just started to skim over the text. And there was really no story there that kept me going and I could not see the purpose for anything that happened.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V.E. Schwab: ☆☆☆☆☆

Oh, wow. The feeling that this book created inside me and the sincerity within the text just grabbed me and would not let me go. I made me feel a lot of things, and I love when a books do that. There are so many emotions behind it and you can really feel them. The atmosphere that Schwab creates in the story is great and it hooks you in, but it is the character and their stories that make you stay. I don't usually enjoy timejumps, but Schwab did them so well and they do explain the story and the motivations for each of the characters really well, although it get's a bit repetitive at times, especially towards the end.

The Moomins: The Exploits of Moominpappa, Moominsummer Madness, Moominland Midwinter - Tove Jansson: ☆☆☆☆

I love the Moomins, but there's just something so cozy about these stories and characters. They are part of my childhood, they are so light, whimiscal and funny, yet have depth to them, which is a balance that is difficult to achieve in my opinion. My journey through this book took me almost a year, as I only occasionally picked it up to enjoy the text and my stay in this small, strange world that Jansson created. I was savoring it.

Shine - Jessica Jung: ☆☆☆

SNSD, the band that Jesscia Jung was in, is my favorite kpop band since I started listening to kpop more than 10 years ago and their music is one of the main reasons why I got into kpop to begin with. So of course I was intrigued! The story here is something that I think could be inspired Jessica experiences within the kpop industry, or that thought never left me as I read it even if there were lot of unbelievable things going on within these pages. But it's definitely overdramatized at times. But how she talks about gender discrimination between female singers and male singer, from other people in the business and from the fans and the expectations that people have towards these singers and such. That felt really authentic to me. For all the glamor and the dazzle of the kpop world within this book the plot and the characters are a bit dull, and some of the more unbelievable events (like all of those trips and secret cafes) often pulled me out of the story. And I did not find the clichéd YA romance fun to read at all.

#book reviews #book review

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letterboxd · 4 years

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Writer’s Block.

Shirley director Josephine Decker talks to Ella Kemp about novelist Shirley Jackson’s aspirational qualities, Elisabeth Moss’s voice, and the Pixar film that changed everything for her.

Actor, director, writer and editor Josephine Decker has done for American cinema what Alice did for Wonderland. She burst onto the landscape and turned everything inside out, tunneling further into new worlds and disrupting the rules of everyone living there.

With four features to her name so far, Decker has fast become a leading voice in independent American cinema. There was the psychological thriller Butter on the Latch (2013), the erotic fever dream Thou Wast Mild And Lovely (2014), and the hurricane of a coming-of-ager, Madeline’s Madeline (2018). Now with Shirley, Decker turns to the biopic—but this is no paint-by-numbers adaptation of someone’s Wikipedia page. The script, written by Sarah Gubbins (I Love Dick) is adapted from the novel by Susan Scarf Merrell. Some of Shirley is true, some not.

Shirley casts Elisabeth Moss as the eponymous horror author, Shirley Jackson, whose famously disturbing 1948 short story The Lottery caused a sensation when it was first published in the New Yorker. Michael Stuhlbarg appears alongside Moss as Jackson’s professor husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, with Odessa Young and Logan Lerman as Rose and Fred Nemser, academic newlyweds who come to stay in Shirley and Stanley’s gothic home for a spell, while Shirley is wrestling with how to write her (very real) second novel, Hangsaman.

These actors matter, as the first couple—the Hollywood household names—welcome the second pair—fresh-faced rising stars—into their dangerous orbit of wordy brilliance and ruthless scrutiny. The results, knotty, seductive and disorienting, are electric.

Produced by Christine Vachon and Martin Scorsese, Shirley carries hints of Decker’s background in performance art, particularly in Moss’s highly physical performance. Film nuts are still getting to grips with Decker’s singular style, but once you’re in, there’s no way of climbing back out. “Decker finds a way to embody the strange, insoluble, unnerving energy of Jackson’s prose in a film that fittingly always seems to be building to a catastrophic rupture,” writes Jake Cole.

“I am ready to declare her one of the best modern filmmakers,” writes Letterboxd member Brian Formo, while Vshefali praises how “Josephine Decker is able to paint a picture of the inside of a woman’s brain so beautifully”. It’s true: Decker is concerned with what makes us tick, but also how the mechanics of that ticking work when nobody’s looking, when everything else has moved on and all that you’re left with are your own loud thoughts.

If you’re based in the US, you can watch Shirley via our virtual screening room—we’re donating 100 percent of our proceeds to Firelight Media.

Elisabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson in ‘Shirley’.

In the adaptation from the novel, what key elements did you and Sarah Gubbins want to remain true in terms of Shirley Jackson’s story? Josephine Decker: We were just really interested in making sure these characters felt like full, rounded individuals. For Shirley and Rose, it was about how they met and entwined. We wanted to really feel their separateness and their togetherness. We spent the most time on how to allow you to really feel each of them deeply, because it’s a hard thing to have a dual-protagonist movie.

What was it about Shirley Jackson that attracted you to her? I came on after it was already scripted. The character is just so witty, and kind of cruel, and complicated and messy. I had loved Sarah’s work on I Love Dick, I thought that Kathryn Hahn’s performance was one of the great female performances of the last twenty years. She just writes such great characters, so it was exciting to be able to dive into the Shirley that she had created. Also, the real Shirley Jackson is such a complicated and fascinating person—I was and am obsessed with her writing. She does in writing a thing that I’m trying to do in cinema, so it was exciting to get to know her work that well.

What things in her work would you like to emulate? You fall from a real place into an imaginary place without really realising it. She’s very good at sliding you into the character’s mind. It’s a witchy thing that makes her writing feel really exciting, that I haven’t seen that much on screen. I feel like in American cinema there’s this clear line between reality and what’s in your mind, but I think with Shirley that line is very unclear. That’s something I love, that I really pursue in my work and get excited by.

I definitely felt that with Madeline’s Madeline as well, it all feels very slippery. Totally.

Shirley is the first feature you’ve directed from another person’s script. How was that experience? It took me a minute to get inside of the world. I’m generally pretty process-oriented, but this film was different. There’s usually a thing that happens as you’re writing, I find I’m writing as an excuse to get the words that are in my head out. So to come from words and try to see the images was a very different experience, but also really exciting. With Sarah’s writing, it was interesting how the space was so important, this house was such a major character in the film. Because it’s such a dialogue-driven script, I worked a lot with the actors in rehearsals. I guess maybe some directors would tell you what to do, and you would start, and you would do that, but I didn’t even realise that would have been an option, so I was like, “Well, we have to make the blocking together” because I was also really adamant that I didn’t want the dialogue to be static.

It was important to me to sculpt some of the dialogue scenes into movement scenes. It was fun to find the dance of the film and allow the actors to choose their own way through the dialogue. They’re all such geniuses. When we would do rehearsals with Lizzie and Michael, it was so fast, they’re so good at working things out themselves. It was just exciting to let them find their own space and then obviously weigh in when I felt like an outside eye was helpful. I feel like a lot of what I’m realising as a director is if you choose the right collaborators, it’s just about getting out of the way!

How would you describe the relationship between Shirley and Rose? It feels thorny—it reminded me of Phantom Thread in terms of the toxicity. Generally, Shirley’s own work is about these two female characters who are really different—one is a dark, misanthropic genius, but angry, and the other one is a very light-hearted open spirit who is generous and good at baking and making men happy. I think in her biography there was this idea that these two kinds of women were different aspects of Shirley’s own mind, that she was like both of them. So it was about how different Shirley and Rose are at the beginning, and then that their coming together is such a collision, but then they discover they have a lot to learn from each other and they’re more similar than they realized.

It was about making sure we could understand their motivations. Especially Rose—she could have been a lighter, less-complex character, but I think I felt really committed, and Odessa did an incredible job, to make her a really full human with her own aspirations. And in the novel too, she has her own world going on. So it’s about making sure her goals are still clear, and then that by the end of the film maybe she has new goals, or maybe she realizes that everything she’d been tidying up her life to get in order—get a husband, have a baby—are maybe a little bit at odds with the deeper thing she’s searching for. But they are really slippery characters.

Josephine Decker on the set used for the Jackson-Hyman house in ‘Shirley’.

You mentioned the importance of the house. I spoke to Kitty Green recently about The Assistant and you share the same composer, Tamar-kali, and sound designer, Leslie Shatz, on your films. Both scores are amazing; on Shirley I’m thinking of the cellos and the violins but then also the creaky floorboards in the sound design. How do you think music and sound help build this world? They’re huge tools. I always think sound design can really bring a new element, especially to a film like this where there’s a slide into a surreal realm, into the mind sometimes. So finding a sound that hints that the things you’re witnessing are a little unreal is exciting. Leslie did a lot of playing. He jokes that when we first met I told him to go to town, and then he just went to town and was like, “I hope I went to the right town!” We had a lot of fun. We tried to really use sounds that weren’t too electronic, stuff that felt like it could have been made with the sound effects that would have been available then. Sound is a huge storyteller, I think it’s more impactful than film. I also think Lizzie’s voice is a train that pushes you through the film, in that you understand where she is with the writing by how confident or how confused that voice is.

What was the first film that made you want to be a filmmaker? Monsters Inc., that one’s easy. I had a real revelation in college while watching it. I’d seen it before, it was my second time, but I just laughed like a little baby. I just have so much fun in these Pixar movies, my best friend in college was watching with me and I was giggling and sitting four feet from the television, and she was just like, “You really like this and I think you should do this and this would be a combination of everything you’ve been doing.” It was helpful to have a friend there to tell me that. I haven’t started making movies like that yet, but maybe someday. My next movie [The Sky Is Everywhere] is a YA film, so if I just keep going younger and younger…

Related content

A list of Shirley Jackson-related titles on Letterboxd.

Eve’s lists of films Written by Women and Directed by Women.

‘Shirley’ is available on Hulu and other streaming services now. With thanks to NEON.

#shirley jackson #josephine decker #madeline's madeline #female filmmaker #female director #directed by women #52 films #52 films by women #girls on tops tees #ella kemp #writers on film #novelist #new yorker #letterboxd

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merzbow-derek · 4 years

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POST-POST-SCRIPTUM 1185

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JOËLLE VINCIARELLI > ETERNAL BEYOND II >

OPAX / UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHERFUCKERS!

“The Opalio brothers have had quite an impressive history of adventurous collaborations over the years, as they have been joined by many of the most iconic figures in underground music, as well as an inspired array of interesting folks that I had not previously encountered. Naturally, a number of those unions have yielded wonderful results, but one of my favorites was the Opalios’ pairing with Talweg/La Morte Young’s Joëlle Vinciarelli for 2016’s Eternal Beyond. Several other artists have gamely and effectively adapted themselves to the brothers' unique aesthetic and working method over the years, yet Vinciarelli is the one who was most successful at finding and filling a space that made the collaboration feel like something more than the mere sum of its parts. More specifically, she brings some welcome bite and visceral intensity to the Opalios' phantasmagoric and alien reveries. Consequently, I am absolutely thrilled to report that this trio has now become a recurring project and that Eternal Beyond II is every good as its predecessor (if not even better).

I have not delved very deeply into Joëlle Vinciarelli’s work in Talweg at this point, but I have heard enough to grasp that "black metal" is a woefully inadequate and misleading term for her art. In fact, nothing about Talweg (or Vinciarelli) is remotely conventional at all, which is perhaps why she makes such a perfect foil for her fellow Alps-dwellers. In her own way, she is every bit as genre-defying and radical as the Opalios, but the key difference is that she is driven towards earthy, timeless, and primal forces rather than looking towards the stars for inspiration. Consequently, the improbable collision of Vinciarelli’s "Cro-Magnon grunt and cultic energies" with the Opalios’ mind-melting, deep space lysergia is a perfect, unholy union, enhancing the brothers’ smeared and disorienting psychedelia with a healthy dose of seismic, elemental power. That said, it seems like Vinciarelli also brings out some of those normally latent elements in the Opalios themselves, as the churning and jangling intensity of the opening "Eternal Rage Against the Dying of the Light" is driven primarily by the brothers’ violent misuse of an "antique upright piano soundboard."

It is truly impressive that Maurizio and Roberto managed to unleash such an apocalyptic cacophony in real-time, as the crescendo of "Eternal Rage" sounds like a heaving maelstrom of countless rusted steel strings being viciously attacked at once. There are a lot of other great and unexpected elements to the piece as well, ranging from sharp metallic scrapes to looping, angelic vocal melodies. And, of course, there are also the expected elements: disorienting falsetto vocal drones, buzzing electronics, and howling eruptions of noise. Happily, all of those various threads coexist quite organically and seamlessly, resembling an inspired collision of an ancient throat-singing ritual, a pack of howling wolves, and a goddamn supernova. Unsurprisingly, those ingredients make for quite a potent cocktail and "Eternal Rage" easily ranks among the best MCIAA pieces in recent memory.

The album’s shorter second piece is considerably less extreme, as it is largely centered on the chiming of an "old pendulum clock mechanism." In fact, once Vinciarelli’s melodic, wordless vocals appear, "Eternal Ectoplasmic Communication" almost feels like a lullaby of sorts. That resemblance does not last particularly long, however, as that melody gradually wanders off course as queasily lingering electronics and Maurizio's broken-sounding self-made string instrument creep in to curdle the idyll. The overall experience feels akin to waking up in an unfamiliar house to find a supernatural fog slowly rolling out of a haunted antique clock. While it never quite catches fire or builds towards anything more substantial, it casts quite an effective spell of seething uneasiness and the strangely warbling vocals call to mind a beloved stuff animal that is trying desperately to warn me of imminent peril, but is too paralyzed with fear to do anything but gibber helplessly. While it is quite a solid and likable piece, the earlier "Eternal Rage" unavoidably steals the show on Eternal Beyond II, as it beautifully transcends everything I usually expect from MCIAA. "Eternal Ectoplasmic Communication," on the other hand, feels a bit more familiar (and considerably less apocalyptic).

It is hard to explain why I love the Opalio brothers' albums with Vinciarelli so much without making it sounds like their other albums are in some way lacking, but I will try anyway: a "normal" My Cat is an Alien album is like a window into someone else’s deeply weird and inscrutable dream (and I can think of no one else who reliably conjures up otherworldly vistas as strange and absorbing as those of the Opalios). When Vinciarelli is involved, however, it feels like that dream state is tenuously anchored to a recognizable physical world rather than a straight-up free fall into a bottomless rabbit hole of swirling, nightmarish unreality. Plunging into that altered state is always a compelling experience, but it is a more profound and dynamic one when I can still see distant vestiges of what I left behind (nods to conventional scales, scraping metal, guttural voices). In essence, it is a matter of grounding and contrast. No one does deep space psychedelia better than My Cat is an Alien, but with Eternal Beyond II, the Opalios and Vinciarelli evoke something significantly different that I cannot find anywhere else: the singular collision of the imagined past versus the imagined future, the spectral versus the corporeal, and flesh-and-blood humanity versus the unknowable, abstract vastness of the cosmos.” Anthony D’Amico, Brainwashed

#my cat is an alie #roberto opalio #maurizio opalio #joëlle vianciarelli #talweg #la morte young #opax #up against the wall motherfuckers!#pos-post-scriptum #merzbo derek #anthnio d'amico #brainwashed

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fightevilandthengetblownup · 5 years

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FIC: Surpassed All Men II

---

“About time you arrived, balanda, I had wondered how long it would take you.”

The heavily accent voice spoke calmly and clearly across the dusty, red ground as Gabriel slowly approached from behind the broad-shouldered man. He had been putting off this, the same as he’d kept his distance in general from the pagans ever since the aborted Apocalypse and his unveiling, but as he reached the edge of the blankets spread across the ground - richly colored in reds, oranges, and yellows with dots of color interspersed and patterned sharply in the clear designs of the god’s people - the archangel found himself suddenly afraid that this meeting perhaps should have happened sooner and under different circumstances.

“I-”

“Save the platitudes and apologies,” The other spoke, the sharpness of the words disguised in the thick lisp and whistle of the god’s voice as Gabe moved around before the other. There was a pause as the man fished a thick white grub from one of the paper-bark platters before him, before chewing the wriggling bug thoroughly. It took a lot not to wrinkle his nose at the older Trickster’s eating habits, something that he’d almost forgotten since he’d last seen the ancient god before Crow finally looked up him with those piercingly old eyes that matched his namesake birds so clearly. “It was a raucous joke, truly. I had wondered how you would deliver the punchline but a self-sacrificial demonstration had not been in my bets.”

The words surprised and froze him, as Gabe took the wave of the other’s hand as the sign to sink down upon the spare space of the rug at face value and looked in confusion across at the other. “You.. knew what I was?”

“You forget, young one, that while your Biyanga may have been older than my people, you were formed at the time of the Dreaming - as all things were - and before a flaming sword must come the fire.” The pattern of the man’s speech was always so hard to follow, and Gabe found himself frowning instead at the array of foods on the blanket rather than trying to discern whether the god was trying to suggest what he’d thought he was.

Picking up a plum - the tiny green type that was more tart than sweet like hose he had adjusted to over his time as Loki - Gabriel frowned to himself thinking over how best to bring up what he was there for. Not an apology for his deceptions, that was not as pressing and as Crow picked a bloated, golden honeyant from the wooden bowl filled with the crawling, engorged insects, and placed the scrambling insect to his lips before popping its honey sac between his teeth swallowing it whole, he knew that an apology would simply cause delays in covering the true problem Gabriel was facing.

The second he’d felt the change to the woman’s soul, he knew that something he’d never witnessed himself was occurring. And a part of him, that part that had fully swallowed the idea of being a Trickster and forgoing the reality of what he was, found it amusing this was yet another trick of fate he had seen happen regarding the blonde woman. He had been too busy trying to ignore the fighting of his brother’s and keeping them together the last time a human had ascended from their status to something mythic; while the last new gods he’d seen created were from the figments of human imagination and faith rather than from the feats of one individual. This was an area he had no knowledge, and the gnawing feeling in his stomach that there was something more sinister at play as the last interruption to the blonde’s life had been made him determined to at least return with a stronger answer than ‘Good job, you’ve joined the big leagues’.

But looking across at the ancient god, his beady eyes glistening under bushy brows and over the sharp, toothy smile, Gabe let out a quiet sigh as he crossed his arms. “Well, that isn’t what I am here about anyways, unfortunately.”

“No, you are not. You are here about the young one.” “The what?” “The girl with the spark. She’s been touched by the flames of godhood. It was about time for a new addition.”

“I.. suppose so.” Gabriel found himself frowning as he took in the other’s words, scratching uncomfortably at his elbows as he realized that whatever he thought he would learn or the footing he had here may be all wrong. “How do you know that’s what I’m here about? I didn’t even know until I checked her soul that anything had changed like that.”

“When you reach my age, guragalung, you will be more in tune with the flows of the world. The sparks that represent the opportunity for change.” Crow’s words were soft in the quiet wind that swept over their seat in the dusty gorge. It wasn’t one of the most well-known locations of the bright orange landscape, but as Gabe looked around them, this was alone to them only. A goanna was stretched along the branch of the gum tree above them, and he could see the dark silhouettes of a camel pack in the distance; but aside from those and the hundreds of critters he couldn’t see, they were the only beings so far as the distant horizon that surrounded them. “They come and they go, moments and persons of interest and passion. Those that inspire an army or a mission, a movement, and those then fizzle out into unrealized potential.”

“You mean this happens frequently?” Gabe blinked in surprise, picking the elongated purple finger limes from the pile nearest him as he tried to reconcile those ideas to what was happening. There had been sparks for a while that the little blonde could be inspirational and strong, a role model for those in her field for sure, but that it was not an unknown phenomenon was strange. “And it will likely pass?”

“How far along is she in her path? Has she manifested a power? Ceased her aging? Done a miracle? Completed a task of greatness?”

The questions were sharp and Gabriel gritted his teeth as he scraped the tiny pearls of sharp, sweet lime out of their casing with his teeth before bursting them against the roof of his tongue. The native sweets here were always so sharp and tart compared to the sugary diet he and the rest of the Tricksters consisted on, but the elder forwent the changes of the world for the traditional foods and natural highs. The flavor felt like acid though as he nodded sharply.

“She hasn’t aged in decades, and, well, she didn’t so much do a miracle but have one occur to her.” Gabe bit the words out sharply, the feelings like barbs to think that his brother, his fucking older brother who’d been the wisest and most responsible of them all, had likely started this process in place felt bitterly like something that the archangel would have to bear the responsibility of instead.

Crow let out a cry of laughter, like the birds that were named for him in a cawing sound, before he shook his head and pointed a thick finger towards the other. “You are mistaken there, balanda, that child? It is not the miracle of hers. If I have not mistaken myself, hers is the noble sacrifice of her past against that brother of yours that caused the first spill of hound blood. The slaying of a, what do they call it, Cerberus, correct?”

That caught him by surprise.

Joanna Harvelle had indeed been the one to devise and determine how to kill the hellhounds on that ill-fated trip. She had been the one to cause the death of those beasts which were disturbing visions even for his own viewing. That the act mirrored and exceeded one of those old claims from the last elevated humans. Gabriel had not been actively following the man’s trials at the time, but the concept sounded a little too sharply compared to the blonde’s actions. He tilted his head thoughtfully as he began to consider the other elements - the trials and labours that the woman had faced and gone through over the years since. Killing a hellhound being one of the smallest of her accomplishments.

“That isn’t all though, is it angel? You never bothered to learn our histories, our existences, how our beings become and grow. You only learned that which was necessary to disguise yourself poorly amongst us.” Crow’s words roused him from his thoughts - the thoughts that while she may not have killed a golden lion or slain a hydra, she may not have captured or gained various beasts and quests; Jo Harvelle was a force of nature beyond the normal cloth - with a sharp laugh and the twitch of the god’s neck. Suddenly around them swirled the dust that had surrounded them, a willy-willy sweeping around them at high speeds before the darker depths appeared to form the images of the cave drawings, running and chasing and taunting out at him in a way that made the hairs stand up on the back of the archangel’s neck.

Crow’s laugh sounded again and echoed out of the shadowed mouths of the small stick figures before the god continued. “Some of us sprung forth from the Dreaming, from the foreheads of the ancestors or from the rocks that formed the Earth. Some of us were the creation of humanity's imaginings like your disguise was. And some, guragalung, come from their own beings; with enough signs and adoration, with enough idolization and belief, with enough displays of their otherness above their own selves. Those idols? The pop singers and actors hold no otherness, but some... like your little friend hold both.”

“Nobody thinks of her like that though-” “They must have, and for some time for the extent she has developed.” “But what does she do now?”

“Now? Now she embraces herself, all you need now is to find out what she reflects.” Crow’s voice was soft as the images around them began chanting silently and dancing circles around one taller figure, growing taller and arms held high before the dancers fell to their feet genuflecting to the taller one. “Is she a goddess of the good times, of the lovers or idols, or the downtrodden or broken? Is she a trickster as you project yourself to be? Is she a force of chaos or nature? You will see the moment her powers manifest what she is, angel, and then it will be time for her to join the circle of our kind like you never had.”

Gabriel felt his teeth on edge as the dusts dropped in an instant at the twist of the god’s neck, the beady dark eyes staring him down as Crow picked up another thick witchety grub between his teeth and hissed around it. “You can go now, balanda, and know that I look forward to our next meeting. When you shall tell me the exact punchline to your joke properly.”

That was a dismissal if he’d ever seen one, a sharper and nicer one in equal measure than the way other gods would do the same - and rising to his feet, Gabe frowned as he moved a few feet back before turning to look back at the other, a thought racing through his mind and spoken immediately. “How will they manifest?”

“Don’t you know, trickster, that is all part of the cosmic joke.”

The cawing laugh filled the air again, and as he set off to speak with the blonde with what little he had learned, he could feel a smile forming on his lips as that trickster-side of himself found himself wanting to laugh along with the joke.

---

#fic #gabepov #kid verse #kidverse #au stories

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talweg-wolves · 4 years

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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN & JOËLLE VINCIARELLI > ETERNAL BEYOND II >

OPAX / UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHERFUCKERS!

“The Opalio brothers have had quite an impressive history of adventurous collaborations over the years, as they have been joined by many of the most iconic figures in underground music, as well as an inspired array of interesting folks that I had not previously encountered. Naturally, a number of those unions have yielded wonderful results, but one of my favorites was the Opalios’ pairing with Talweg/La Morte Young’s Joëlle Vinciarelli for 2016’s Eternal Beyond. Several other artists have gamely and effectively adapted themselves to the brothers’ unique aesthetic and working method over the years, yet Vinciarelli is the one who was most successful at finding and filling a space that made the collaboration feel like something more than the mere sum of its parts. More specifically, she brings some welcome bite and visceral intensity to the Opalios’ phantasmagoric and alien reveries. Consequently, I am absolutely thrilled to report that this trio has now become a recurring project and that Eternal Beyond II is every good as its predecessor (if not even better).

I have not delved very deeply into Joëlle Vinciarelli’s work in Talweg at this point, but I have heard enough to grasp that “black metal” is a woefully inadequate and misleading term for her art. In fact, nothing about Talweg (or Vinciarelli) is remotely conventional at all, which is perhaps why she makes such a perfect foil for her fellow Alps-dwellers. In her own way, she is every bit as genre-defying and radical as the Opalios, but the key difference is that she is driven towards earthy, timeless, and primal forces rather than looking towards the stars for inspiration. Consequently, the improbable collision of Vinciarelli’s “Cro-Magnon grunt and cultic energies” with the Opalios’ mind-melting, deep space lysergia is a perfect, unholy union, enhancing the brothers’ smeared and disorienting psychedelia with a healthy dose of seismic, elemental power. That said, it seems like Vinciarelli also brings out some of those normally latent elements in the Opalios themselves, as the churning and jangling intensity of the opening “Eternal Rage Against the Dying of the Light” is driven primarily by the brothers’ violent misuse of an “antique upright piano soundboard.”

It is truly impressive that Maurizio and Roberto managed to unleash such an apocalyptic cacophony in real-time, as the crescendo of “Eternal Rage” sounds like a heaving maelstrom of countless rusted steel strings being viciously attacked at once. There are a lot of other great and unexpected elements to the piece as well, ranging from sharp metallic scrapes to looping, angelic vocal melodies. And, of course, there are also the expected elements: disorienting falsetto vocal drones, buzzing electronics, and howling eruptions of noise. Happily, all of those various threads coexist quite organically and seamlessly, resembling an inspired collision of an ancient throat-singing ritual, a pack of howling wolves, and a goddamn supernova. Unsurprisingly, those ingredients make for quite a potent cocktail and “Eternal Rage” easily ranks among the best MCIAA pieces in recent memory.

The album’s shorter second piece is considerably less extreme, as it is largely centered on the chiming of an “old pendulum clock mechanism.” In fact, once Vinciarelli’s melodic, wordless vocals appear, “Eternal Ectoplasmic Communication” almost feels like a lullaby of sorts. That resemblance does not last particularly long, however, as that melody gradually wanders off course as queasily lingering electronics and Maurizio’s broken-sounding self-made string instrument creep in to curdle the idyll. The overall experience feels akin to waking up in an unfamiliar house to find a supernatural fog slowly rolling out of a haunted antique clock. While it never quite catches fire or builds towards anything more substantial, it casts quite an effective spell of seething uneasiness and the strangely warbling vocals call to mind a beloved stuff animal that is trying desperately to warn me of imminent peril, but is too paralyzed with fear to do anything but gibber helplessly. While it is quite a solid and likable piece, the earlier “Eternal Rage” unavoidably steals the show on Eternal Beyond II, as it beautifully transcends everything I usually expect from MCIAA. “Eternal Ectoplasmic Communication,” on the other hand, feels a bit more familiar (and considerably less apocalyptic).

It is hard to explain why I love the Opalio brothers’ albums with Vinciarelli so much without making it sounds like their other albums are in some way lacking, but I will try anyway: a “normal” My Cat is an Alien album is like a window into someone else’s deeply weird and inscrutable dream (and I can think of no one else who reliably conjures up otherworldly vistas as strange and absorbing as those of the Opalios). When Vinciarelli is involved, however, it feels like that dream state is tenuously anchored to a recognizable physical world rather than a straight-up free fall into a bottomless rabbit hole of swirling, nightmarish unreality. Plunging into that altered state is always a compelling experience, but it is a more profound and dynamic one when I can still see distant vestiges of what I left behind (nods to conventional scales, scraping metal, guttural voices). In essence, it is a matter of grounding and contrast. No one does deep space psychedelia better than My Cat is an Alien, but with Eternal Beyond II, the Opalios and Vinciarelli evoke something significantly different that I cannot find anywhere else: the singular collision of the imagined past versus the imagined future, the spectral versus the corporeal, and flesh-and-blood humanity versus the unknowable, abstract vastness of the cosmos.” Anthony D’Amico, Brainwashed

#my cat is an alien #roberto opalio #maurizio opalio #joëlle vinciarelli #talweg #la morte toung #opax #up against the wall motherfuckers!#anthonio d'amico #brainwashed

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padfootagain · 5 years

Text

A Not So Restful Summer At The Beach (I)

Part 1: A Strange Feeling

Here we go with a new series, this time for our favourite couple the Ineffable Husbands! I hope you like this idea of mine :) It's my first series for them, so please, tell me what you think about it cause I feel very nervous!!!!

There are two timelines in this chapter that I've separated with these ***, while a paragraph break is signalled with these ----

Be prepared for both angst and fluff in this.

Gif not mine

Word Count: 4147

"Where's Crowley?"

It's a mere whisper. Voice hoarse drenched with tears. Red and swollen eyes. He can't believe in the possibility and yet his body is already reacting to it as if it were all true. It can't be, though. It just can't be. The mere thought is unimaginable. The mere thought has his heart and soul both shattering in thousands of tiny fragments full of pain. The mere thought has his world crumbling. The mere thought has him losing faith in everything.

In his hand the gun shakes. His finger loosely rests on the trigger. He points it at the angel before him.

The ridicule of the situation hits him harder than a punch. Or well, not exactly ridicule but… the absurdity of it, at least. He's an angel menacing another angel with a firearm. The world has gone utterly wrong.

But then Crowley is not here. Crowley might never come back. Crowley is… might be…

Of course the world has gone all wrong. His world, at the very least.

"Where. Is. Crowley?"

He repeats the words one last time. His jaw is clenched and he can't how fast his heart beats. He decides then that it's the angel's last chance. If there is no other way to learn the truth, he will do it. Pull on the trigger.

The shakiness in his voice is still strong but he can't control it. He can't control anything. As the tears form in his eyes again, the world turns all blur, until the angel before him almost disappears in the cloudy sky and the grey sea.

"Aziraphale," she tries to reason him, but she already knows she can't change his mind. If he has taken the decision to discorporate her, he will. "Listen to me. We can still arrange everything."

"Arrange everything?!" Aziraphale replies with a voice so full of emotions: anger, astonishment, betrayal, pain… "There was nothing to arrange! We were just minding our own business, why couldn't you leave us alone?"

"Aziraphale, don't do anything stupid."

"Where is Crowley? What have you done to him? Have you… Have you…"

His lips tremble, and he can't muster the words. He can't let them pass his lips, form on his tongue, they taste too much of pain, their meaning is too terrible. He changes them for something still cruel, but that he could at least have a power upon. Words that give him hope, even if only a fool's one. When he finally speaks again his voice is a little more high-pitched than usual.

"Have you hurt him?"

But he's met with only silence for a long while. And when Bénédicte speaks again, it's not to give him the answer he is looking for. He can see the perspiration on her forehead. He can see that she is frightened, but somehow, he knows she's not scared enough to speak.

"We both know you're not going to pull that trigger. You're still an angel. You're still on our side. And Crowley is not. He's a demon, Aziraphale. He's not on your side, but I am. Now, give me the gun."

She extends her hand towards him, and he stares at it for a moment: black fingers that seem to be pointing at the gun, a little shaky, a little too perfectly shaped to be human.

But he doesn't hesitate. He doesn't make a gesture to give it to her.

Instead, he looks up at her again. He can't give her the gun. The only other option is to use it.

In more than 6000 years, Aziraphale has never hurt a living creature. Never intentionally, at least. But then… then he asks himself a very important and yet simple question.

What would he not to do for Crowley?

And as he imagines Crowley's body dissolving in Holy Water, as he hears his shout echoing through his heart and soul, as he imagines the look of pure terror in his beautiful eyes, the answer comes as obvious. It's a very pure truth that will not falter, no matter the circumstances, no matter what is required of him.

He can't imagine anything he wouldn't do to stop Crowley from being hurt. Not a single thing. Aziraphale would do anything necessary to save Crowley.

The safety on the gun makes a little 'click' noise, and on the trigger, his finger is heavier and heavier. And Bénédicte sees the movement and can only wait for Aziraphale's decision.

He moves the gun across her abdomen, from her heart to her stomach and to her shoulder and to her arm…

He has never in his life used a firearm and would have never imagined he would. But then, he reckons that he had always imagined that Crowley would be there to get him out of trouble if need be. But not today.

Today feels unreal. Today looks like a day where pigs could fly and the world could be ending, and Crowley could be gone forever. Today is for unrealistic things. He guesses that shooting at another angel fits perfectly in this theme.

Aziraphale's tears are more powerful again and his hand shakes a little bit more, but the decision is taken and there is no going back.

And on the trigger, Aziraphale's finger gently presses more and more until the shot is fired.

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

A few days before

"Sit down, Angel. Stop pacing and just… sit down. You’re making me nervous."

"What if… you’ve felt there was a change too!"

"There was a tiny tremor. That’s all it is."

"We should be with Adam… what if they try to hurt the poor boy?"

"He’ll be fine! Why would they try to hurt him? He was the antichrist, but now he’s just a normal kid. Or well, almost normal… normal enough… He’s not a threat to anyone."

"Still… I would feel much better if I was sure he’s okay," Aziraphale argued, finally sitting down again instead of pacing through the aisle of the train, and several people stopped looking at him with an eyeroll that meant 'this man must be crazy or something'.

"Aziraphale, we've made sure he would be safe. We have. He’s with his family, in his house that we have secured against both demonic and angelic attacks. Nothing’s gonna happen to him. And we need a break. We deserve one after 6000 years of loyal service and a full year of treason."

"Oh… no need to use this disgusting word, Crowley."

Aziraphale took the mobile phone Adam and his friends had insisted he’d buy. If the angel had never been much interested in technology, he was glad to admit that this particular device was very useful. Crowley had been surprised at how fast Aziraphale had mastered all its functionalities… or at least, for the most part.

By the window of the train, the green English landscapes were passing by in a blur. The soft movement of the train shook them both from time and were starting to lull Crowley to sleep, his eyelids becoming heavier and heavier.

"We could have come here with the Bentley," Crowley complained out of the blue.

"The point was to be discreet. Your car might be highly stylish, it lacks the discreet element of this trip," Aziraphale replied, his eyes still fixed on his phone.

But there was a frown on his angelic features, and he was soon moving the phone around him, first placing it towards the window, then the aisle, then above his head and finally extending his arm towards Crowley.

"Oh… no…" he said with an adorable disappointed pout. "No signal…"

"Who did you want to call anyway, Angel? Oh no… not Adam again, let the kid breathe! He lived without us for 11 years, he can live two weeks more on his own!"

"It’s not that, Crowley. I’m worried about this… ripple we’re both feeling. We should warn him about it. Tell him to be extra-careful…"

The angel’s face suddenly illuminated from within as a bright idea passed through his mind.

"I can send him a mail instead of calling him. That will be much more efficient. And I love sending mails…"

"Text. Through a phone, you send a text," Crowley corrected him with a half amused, half annoyed tone by which Aziraphale was not fooled at all, and a mischievous smile formed on his lips.

"Well, whatever you say. Anyway, I could send him a text. To tell him to be careful."

"Well, do it then."

"But I can’t! I don’t any signal."

Aziraphale gave Crowley these baby eyes that the demon -although he would never admit it out loud- adored, and to which he could never resist…

The demon heaved a sigh, a smile tugging at his lips.

"Alright. There you go. Send your text and then no more miracles."

Crowley sat a little straighter on his seat, and snapped his fingers. A mere second was needed for all the little bars on Aziraphale’s phone to appear.

"Oh! Thank you," he smiled to his friend, his eyes oozing tenderness.

Which made Crowley smile and his heart beat a little faster than usual. He didn’t reply, and merely gave his angel a soft look.

Aziraphale kept his promise and wrote his text for the boy.

Dear Adam,

Crowley and I have had a rather unsettling and strange feeling these past few days. We are not sure yet if this comes from either of our sides, but we would recommend you to be particularly careful.

See you soon,

Aziraphale.

"You don’t need to sign these, you know?" Crowley reminded the angel just as he finished tapping his name.

"Yes, but I like doing it that way," Aziraphale replied. "It feels more personal, warmer, somehow…"

Crowley tried to roll his eyes, but instead gave Aziraphale one of these you-are-too-adorable-how-can-you-even-be-real looks, making the angel blush ever so slightly.

"But we are supposed to start by ‘Dear Adam’ or… 'Dear Crowley’… right?" Aziraphale asked with a questioning look painted all over his face.

"I suppose so," Crowley shrugged.

"Adam never starts his texts that way… he just straight up blurts out a 'hi’. It feels very impersonal."

"He’s a twelve-year-old kid and the former antichrist, I’m not sure we can so much rely on him to understand human behaviour."

"You’re right… do you think he’s reaching… adolescence already?" The angel carefully asked.

"Nah… this thing is later on, isn’t it?"

"I have never quite managed to define a precise age…"

"He’s not reaching that yet. Don’t worry, angel."

"I hope not. We’re barely finding back a rhythm since… all of it… I am not ready to face a second Armageddon."

Crowley chuckled in response, but the saddened expression on his friend’s face did not escape his watch. There was no need to acknowledge the pain, nor talk about the memories though. Armageddon and the trials that had followed had left a weight on both their shoulders, but even more so on Aziraphale. His trust on his side had been shattered into pieces, if he wasn’t fallen, he was out of Heaven all the same. He could never go back, even of his wings would keep their white shades. He might stay an angel, and maybe more so than most of those in heaven, but he would never again go home.

He never talked about it, at least not with words and sentences and not even with tears, but with distant stares set upon nothing, with longer silences than he used to let slip, through the melancholia that now coloured his features when he lost himself in his thought. For the rest, he was still the kind, selfless and with just a hint of a bastard, as Aziraphale had always been. But Crowley knew him enough to spot the signs. And moreover, he knew enough of the pain of being chased from home that his friend was going through now. He had been chased out of heaven, and now also from hell. Although, Crowley had to admit that his exile from hell came more as a relief than anything else. He wasn’t upset at all at the idea of remaining on Earth forever, as long as he had the right company…

Aziraphale’s phone vibrated and rang a merry little tune as Adam’s answer was received, and all traces of sadness disappeared from Aziraphale’s features as he read the text, a shy glint of excitement passing through his eyes.

"He says he’s fine, and he will be extra-careful. He says Anathema came to visit yesterday, how lovely! And he wishes us some good holidays at the beach."

He let out a content sigh.

"It will be lovely, indeed, I am sure of it."

"We could have gone to a better spot though…"

"Brighton is considered like a very famous place for the summer," Aziraphale argued.

"I was thinking more about Hawaii, Ibiza, Italy, the reefs of Australia…"

"But I’ve never been to Brighton…"

Aziraphale’s voice was almost a whisper, his tone apologetic. Crowley gave him a reassuring smile.

"I know, Angel. It’s alright, I guess. Next time, I’ll pick up the destination though."

They exchanged a smile that could only be described as tender, before simultaneously setting their gaze on the countryside passing by so fast.

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

Brighton in the summer was full of life, sun and ice creams. Aziraphale loved it. He was sitting on the beach, playing with a handful of little pebbles and eating a strawberry ice cream, watching the children play in the water and on the beach, a happy smile on his face. Wearing a pair of beige shorts, white shirt and a straw hat, Aziraphale was a fair contrast with Crowley’s form splayed on the beach as he drank in the sun, only wearing his sunglasses and swimsuit. A few meters away, a baby started to cry. A couple passed before the two friends, hand in hand, laughing.

Crowley quickly miracled the baby to stop crying, acting as discreetly as he could to avoid Aziraphale noticing.

"I must admit that this idea of yours was absolutely brilliant, Crowley," Aziraphale nodded in appreciation, giving the demon lying by his side a tender smile. "We did need some vacations."

"I knew you would like it," the demon replied without trying to hide his smile.

"I could get used to living like this. No missions from heaven, no soul to save, no destiny to balance… just… being there and looking at the world and living our lives."

The look Crowley gave him was both soft and a little sad. Longing. He moved his fingers a little closer to the angel’s hand, but didn’t reach for it. Instead, he played absentmindedly with a few pebbles too.

"Yeah… I could get used to that too."

"Wait! We must try sun cream!" Aziraphale wiggled a little with excitement as the idea passed through his mind and Crowley couldn’t help but to be both amused and fond of the angel’s excitement.

Aziraphale took out of his bag a bottle of sunscreen and started to apply it on his arms, finding it very funny.

"That was an invention from heaven, right?" Crowley asked, discreetly glancing at Aziraphale while he applied way more cream than needed on his right arm.

Crowley had not spoken of ‘their sides’ since the trials (or the lack of it). Instead, he used 'Heaven' and 'Hell' now. It had been a while since it didn't really make sense to him to do so anyway, but after the trials, the separation between him and both hell and heaven was thorough. The long process was completed the second Gabriel had told the person he loved most in this universe to 'just die already.'

Shut your stupid mouth and just die already.

The words still echoed through his bones every time he thought about that day, and every time the desire to strangle the archangel with his bare hands came rising through him.

He focused on Aziraphale again, who was now putting some cream on his face, white traces remaining on his nose making the demon smile the most tender smile. How could anyone who claimed to be good and serve the will of god want to hurt someone like Aziraphale? It made no sense… But then, Crowley reckoned that his vision of his best friend was rather biased.

Aziraphale though was still talking in terms of 'my side' and 'your side'. He acted like it was just a habit he couldn't get rid of, but the roots went deeper than this explanation. It was a way to connect to something he had lost. And even if he did not regret the choices he had made, if he had come to accept that heaven was not what he had thought it was all his life, if he was more often than not happy to live on Earth, he was still an angel, and Heaven, no matter how blank and cold and impersonal this place felt, was still his home. He knew he didn't belong there anymore, and yet he still yearned for the comforting faith that he was doing everything he did to reach something good, that he was doing the right thing, that every step he took and every decision he made would one day lead to a world that was a little brighter, because he had been there. Questioning heaven had meant questioning what he had done all these years too, and looking back, there were times when he had accepted orders given to him and carried them out without fighting back, and he regretted it. He regretted not having saved the people he could have helped simply because it was part of God's plan.

In contradiction with those regrets, he still believed in Her plan. He believed it would lead to something beautiful and happy and imperfect in the perfect sense of the word. His faith in God was still there, but his faith in Heaven and its system had been destroyed with the world almost dying.

"Of course. Your side pierced holes in the ozone… We had to come up with something."

"I'm not even surprised that the only thing they would think of in retaliation in the ozone breaking up there was 'let's cover the humans with some white sticky cream'."

"You should try it, it's fun!"

"It's not fun. And I'm not trying it."

"Oh, Crowley, please…"

"No way."

Aziraphale gave up, closing the bottle and reached for his bag, but Crowley heaved a desperate (and quite dramatic) sigh before the angel could reach the blue bag, and took the bottle from him.

"This is ridiculous."

He did put some sunscreen on anyway, and had to admit that it was rather… fun… He covered his torso and arms and legs and face, before handing the angel the bottle again.

"Here, are you happy now?"

"You have to put some everywhere."

"I have."

"Not on your back."

Crowley could see that he had not realized the implications of what he was saying, so slowly, with a careful tone, Crowley replied.

"I can't miracle it, Angel. That would not be very discreet on a beach, and I can't reach my back."

Aziraphale's stare was more intense for a moment, he struggled to swallow, his Adam's apple trembling, before he nodded, blush creeping up on his cheeks covered with white sunscreen.

"Of course," he mumbled.

He took the bottle, his eyes still fixed on Crowley's, and for a second, the demon thought that Aziraphale would say something. Say something about… sunscreen on his back… something he could barely turn into full thoughts without blushing and having his heart exploding. And for a moment, the thought lingered in Aziraphale for real as he guessed the strange shape of his friend's eyes beyond the dark sunglasses. Strange… he had never liked this adjective to describe Crowley's eyes. Beautiful had always been something closer to what he really wanted to express.

But he didn't speak. Instead, he put the bottle back in his bag this time.

Crowley lied back down on the pebbles and broke the uncomfortable silence with a joke.

"Anyway, I'm lying on my back here for the rest of the day, so it doesn't matter."

"For the whole day?"

"Why not? It feels good. Relaxing. You should try too. Lie down, Angel."

Aziraphale complied, lying on his back on his towel by Crowley's, and he had to admit that the feeling of the salty wind blowing on his face and hair mingling with the warmth of the sun kissing his cheeks and the happy sounds of the beach embracing him all made a lovely feeling grow in his heart. The place was so full of love and happiness, and he could feel it all.

"It does feel good."

Crowley hummed in agreement, but soon frowned.

There was something off. A strange feeling, something… something was amiss. Something was wrong. What was it? He wasn't sure. But there was something wrong with the world in Brighton right now. Something dark moved the city.

It was just a distant feeling, most like a distant shout through a loud crowd that one can guess and yet not truly hear. He couldn't pinpoint where it came from or what it was, but he knew it was there all the same.

He sat up in a jolt, trying to feel, to smell, to see, to identify by any mean necessary what was happening. But the beach around him was still the same. Still full of sun, and life and ice creams…

The feeling faded a little, just as Aziraphale was looking up at the demon, worried.

"Crowley? Is there something wrong, dear?"

"Did you… did you feel that?"

"I didn't feel anything out of the ordinary. Not more than this past week."

Crowley slowly nodded, the feeling disappearing, and he lied back down.

"Oh, it must be nothing, then. Don't worry about it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm fine."

They both turned back their attention towards the sun, closing their eyes and letting its warmth run through their bodies. But it seemed that sometimes, the sun was warmer, and sometimes colder, it was a strange change in its heat, as if a cloud passed before the star and blocked its light.

However, there were no clouds in the sky that afternoon above Brighton.

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

Even Crowley would have easily admitted that the view from the restaurant was nice. The sun blazing its last rays of burning light upon the blue of the sea, painting the world in gold and red and purple in a strange spiral mirrored by the sea. The seagulls cried now and then, the salty wind blew through the town and dishevelled a little the demon's and his angel's hair as they ate dinner. Or well, Aziraphale ate, but Crowley had since long finished his oysters. Not that he minded sitting there in the lovely evening while Aziraphale ate. It was always pleasant to share a dinner with the angel.

"These oysters are delicious," Aziraphale said for at least the fifth time. "Are you sure you don't want one more?"

"No, thank you Angel, I'm fine. You can eat the rest."

"I'm glad you chose the hotel, it's a lovely place."

"We've only been there for like… five minutes," Crowley frowned. "We dropped our bags and went to the beach."

"It seemed very nice nonetheless. And I understand now that you had to miracle our free rooms."

"My treat."

The angel paused for a few seconds.

"It was thoughtful of you to book two rooms next to each other."

"Well… it would have been pretty stupid to book them at opposite sides of the building," Crowley carefully answered.

"Of course."

It was more than time to change the subject, at least so reckoned Aziraphale, and he took a moment to find a new subject to discuss.

Aziraphale breathed in the sea air, salty, a touch of the scent of seaweeds, warm sun and he could already guess the faint scent of the stars that were yet to appear in the sky for the night. But then he caught the perfume of something else. Something both foreign and familiar, and he couldn't really explain what it was, at least at the beginning.

He vaguely heard Crowley speaking, but didn't pay any attention to him. Instead, he kept on breathing in and out the air, focusing on this strange fragrance. It smelled both warm and empty, quite… pure in a way, but a little bit in a… an antiseptic way. Too clean. Too empty. Warm but cold as well.

And finally, he realized what it was. It was the smell of…

Crowley merely looked at him with raised eyebrows as Aziraphale jumped to his feet.

"Crowley… I think there's a problem."

"A problem? What is it?"

"I… I'm quite sure that I've smelled something… something that… felt like… Heaven."

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

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gothicliteraturelove · 5 years

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What is Gothic Fiction?

Gothic fiction is a genre that first emerged as a form of Dark Romanticism in the late 1700s.

Both Romanticism and its dark counterpart were a reaction to the aristocratic social and political rules of the Age of Reason, the scientific rationalization of nature and the onslaught of industrialization.

Romanticism euphorically celebrated the sublime in man and Nature. Dark Romantics were equally intoxicated by the dark side of them.

Dark Romanticism or Gothic literature is characterized by stories of personal torment, social outcasts, the supernatural and commentary on whether the nature of man will save or destroy him.

When it burst on to the scene it became one of the first literary genres to inspire broad popular enthusiasm.

Classic Gothic novels

And today Gothic fiction still continues to delight and haunt and question us on screen.

10 great Gothic films

Though it has undergone a series of revivals since its inception a few key elements still distinguish the Gothic genre.

Blend of Fantasy and Realism

What makes Gothic fiction unique is not in the type of life it sees and represents but in how it blends the real with the imaginary. This blend produces terror because of the suspense and unpredictability associated with the paranormal and unknown and also makes the characters within Gothic Literature even more realistic than those in novels from other genres.

Real People in Unreal Situations

No matter how fantastical and insane the situation is, a Gothic novel's characters always react in ways that are truer to everyday responses to these circumstances than the circumstances themselves, even providing natural explanations for what the reader knows is supernatural. This is a key element in Gothic fiction. Its blend of realism and fantasy means that the characters are developed as true to what they would be in the real world while they are place in situations that are completely unreal.

Mystery and Fear

One of the crucial components of a captivating Gothic story evokes feelings of suspense and fear of the unknown. Anything that is beyond scientific understanding lends way to mystery, and Gothic atmospheres leverage this principle. Why did that curtain suddenly move? Was it the wind - or something more? What was that creaking at night? Why did the candle suddenly go out?

Atmosphere and Setting

The first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto was written in 1764. As you can tell by the title, the castle plays an important role in the novel; it is dark and sinister, full of passageways, underground tunnels and hidden rooms. Most "Gothic settings" still contain these elements - they use dark, gloomy and uncertain landscapes or architecture to create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery.

Typical Gothic settings include buildings like castles, graveyards, caves, dungeons or religious houses like churches and chapels. They are often grand decaying buildings, usually set in remote, hidden places such as the wilderness of a forest or in the isolation of the mountains.

The Supernatural

Much of Gothic literature’s allure comes from the genre’s suggestion of supernatural, the occult and inexplicable events.

The Gothic novel arose in part out of the fact that for the English, the late 18th and 19th centuries were a time of great discovery and exploration in the fields of science, religion, and industry; people both revered and questioned the existence of God or a higher power. Gothic novels use of the Supernatural provided ways to explore fear of the unknown and what control we have as humans over the unknown.

Mary Shelley's classic tale Frankenstein, first published in 1818, offers a powerful example of this desire to explore the unknown even as we fear it. Frankenstein's monster is a man-made creation that eerily merges life and death.

Often evil images like demons, ghosts, werewolves and vampires are used emblematic of the dark sides of human nature. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde commenting on how man's soul is paired with both elements of good and evil.

Madness

As the genre matured into the 20th century, writers began to portray the internal horror of psychosis, Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the author most responsible for making madness an integral aspect of the gothic genre. Poe seeks to explore the inner workings of the mind, and to take the reader along for the ride when those workings begin to rot and crumble. One of the best examples of this is Poe’s 1843 short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe is able to give the reader and up-close view of its horrors while blurring the line between victim and villain.

During the Victorian era, madness, especially in the form of “hysteria,” was a malady associated mostly with women, since many believed that women had weaker minds and were less capable of rational thought. Several female authors, however, turned this trope around and used madness to represent the devastating effects of societal repression on women. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the unnamed female protagonist is driven mad by her boredom with the life she is limited to as a woman. Unable to have a fulfilling life outside the house like her husband, she instead confines herself to one room and becomes obsessed with its patterned wallpaper, convinced that there are women trapped inside that she must free.

Damsel in Distress

Gothic works often include a woman who suffers at the expense of a villain. They carry feelings of sadness, oppression, and loneliness, and many were depicted as virginal in early Gothic pieces. The damsel’s character is often held captive in a castle, terrorized by a nobleman, and rendered powerless.

Anti-hero

Aristocratic, suave, moody, solitary, cynical and nursing a guilty secret, this darkly attractive and conflicted male figure surfaces everywhere in Gothic fiction

Classic protagonist examples include Cathy and Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, and Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Romance

As it’s widely believed Gothic literature stemmed from Romantic literature, the two genres share overlapping characteristics. Many Gothic novels are plagued by a passionate romance that often leads to sorrow and tragedy.

Emphasis on Sexuality

In the chaste Victorian era, Gothic literature provided an outlet for the exploration of sexuality. This appears in the trope of the doomed romance, as in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” or in the appearance of a demonic lover figure, such as the bloodthirsty vampire in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”

Experimental Techniques

The development of gothic literature paralleled that of the novel as art. Gothic literature sought out experimental techniques such as shifting narrators and literary tableaux to give evocative perspectives on story, establish mood and convey symbolism. Today gothic cinema embraces the same bravery.

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veryangryhedgehog · 6 years

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“God is Dog Spelled Backwards”, an Ede Valley story by Hedgehog.

Jilli felt like she was falling.

A week ago she’d been so confident in her plan, but now that it had finally been executed, an unwavering sense of unease began to linger in the air around her. This whole take-over plan had been to give Jilli control over her life, but now more than ever she felt like a rat trapped in a maze.

It was because the Director was missing. After discovering her office to be empty, and devoid of any clues or information, Abigail had brought her back to the girl’s bathroom, and decided to give Jilli some space. Quite of her own accord, Jilli’s legs took her wandering. Nearly the whole night she’s searched blindly for where the Director might be before Doug found her around three in the morning and took her back to her room.

“She… I think she’s watching me, Doug,” she’d confessed as she buried her head in his chest.

“Who?” he asked, confused.

“The Director. She could be anywhere, just waiting, watching to see what I do next. Where is she, Doug? Where is she??”

“Whoa, whoa, Jill, calm down,” he grabbed her shoulders as she began to scream. “Of course she’s watching you; she’s watching all of us. But now you’ve shown them that they can stand up to her. If she even lifts a finger at you, she’ll have a whole school to answer to.”

That helped, a little bit, but Jilli couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched for the rest of the night, and slept poorly. She kept wondering back and forth, over and over again in half-delirium, what would happen in the morning, when the student body would awaken to find itself alone? The gates were shut, the fence electrified. No one was getting in.

But with the morning sun came a newfound determination. She was the mastermind behind this coup, so now it was her job to lead the newly liberated sheep, right? It wouldn’t be too difficult. Jilli had watched Sakura lead the idol group for years.

When she entered the cafeteria, Doug to her left, Abigail to her right, the rest behind her, she witnessed growing insanity. The students were a hive of bees, humming incessantly to each other, glancing over at the vacant lunch lines. They were beginning to realize that something had changed.

They passed their normal lunch table, and Jilli motioned for the others to sit which she continued to the front. A queen had to address her subjects.

She jumped up on the platform at the far end of the room, the metal beams above her seeming to dangle over her head. The students gradually hushed and turned to her. They were looking for an answer, any answer, and she intended to give them one.

The microphone was dead, but it didn’t matter. Jilli had a voice that carried. “My name…” she began, and stopped as she caught the eye of a few hundred students and her voice hitched. “My name is Jilli Nakajima,” she began again, “and I am the new Director.”

Needless to say, the floor erupted into a flurry of confusion and panic. Jilli just stood there, and waited. Eventually, they realized that she was holding her explanation, and they hushed once more. And so Jilli began to speak.

Afterwards, she wouldn’t even remember what she’d said. She knew that she told them what they’d did, that now there were no adults at St. Adelaide’s, and the students were in charge. And Jilli would lead them.

“I will not pull strings from the shadows, but be forward and honest,” she said, hoping that the Director could hear her. “I will also not keep you here. If anyone wishes to leave. I will be opening the gates on Friday for five minutes.”

After that, she thanked the crowd and got down. She could feel all their eyes on her. They all probably thought she was insane. But everything was fine now. It was all fine. No one, not the Director, or her manager, or her mother, or Kyoko could hurt her now. She was in control.

Jilli sat down at the usual table with all her friends around her. Abigail was discussing who-knew-what with Victor, highly animated as the rims of her round glasses glowed in the harsh light, Sonia was staring off into space while Gil studied her, mildly concerned, and Doug… Doug was only picking at his food.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Why wasn’t he happy? His torture was over.

“It’s just…” he looked at her, as if he wanted to say something, then he shook his head, and said something different instead. “Mike never came back to the room last night.”

“He didn’t?” Jilli leaned forward, concerned. “Come to think of it, where is he now?”

The others at the table began to take an interest. “Who was the last to see the lad?” Gil asked.

“Well, he was at the Director’s office with Abby and I,” Jilli said. “But I had to leave and I haven’t seen him since. Abby?”

“I went back after I dropped you off but he had already left.” Abigail thought for a second. “Oh, but you know, I left the library unlocked. He’s been spending an awful lot of time there. I bet he just fell asleep.”

Mike had been getting a little strange lately, like an undertone she hadn’t noticed before taken the forefront of his personality.

Doug sighed heavily. “I’m gonna have to be the one to drag his ass out of the creep zone, aren’t I?”

“Hey,” Victor frowned. “She’s sitting right here, you know.”

“I didn’t name any names,” Doug raised his hands in surrender.

“It’s alright, Victor. I take it as a compliment,” Abigail cut in, her smile shark-like.

“It was not meant as one.”

“I don’t care.”

For an instant, it seemed just like everything was normal. But still, the tight lump in Jilli’s gut remained. She couldn’t help feeling numb, unreal, disassociated, like she was floated two feet above her own head.

She hoped Mike was okay.

~~ o ~~

Mike was not okay.

The world returned to him slowly, gradually. First as light, then color, then shape. One by one these elements came together to form coherency. He felt numb, unreal, disassociated, like he was floating two feet above his own head.

For an instant, it seemed just like everything was normal. He was lying in his bed in the dorm. But slowly, he began to feel the cold metal on his wrists. It was that cold that brought him back to himself, a least a little. And he didn’t like what he saw.

He was strapped to some sort of table by his wrists and ankles. It was at a forty-five degree angle so if he turned his head he could see a little to the sides.

This room was small and dark, more like a cell than anything. One light shown down from above him, striking him directly in the eye, which made the rest of the room harder to make out. But from what he could see, the wall were padded.

That was somewhat worrying, but he didn’t begin to panic until he saw the IV in his arm. Then he freaked. First he tried to scream, but the best he could manage was a little whimper. Then he struggled against the restraints but his limbs wouldn’t quite obey him and his movements were sluggish.

Where? Why…? Mike couldn’t think clearly enough to form a coherent question.

“He… hel…p,” he managed with intense concentration.

“Even if you managed to scream, no one would ever hear you all the way down here.”

The harsh familiarity of her voice sent shivers down his spine. It was undeniably Abigail, but there was something wrong with it; an undertone he hadn’t noticed before taken to the forefront of her personality.

He stopped struggling. He was too weak to do so anyway.

“There’s a good boy,” her converse made a squeaking sound against the concrete floor as she came around to stare at him, the rims of her round glasses glowing in the harsh light.

“Wh… wha…”

Abigail tilted her head in mock concern. “Do you have something to say?” she asked. “It’s okay, take your time. That tranquilizer I stabbed you with was meant for horses, I think. Sometimes I get so confused.” He could tell by her shark-like grin that she hadn’t been confused at all.

“W… who are you?”

“Oh Mike, please,” she tittered, the sound practically filling the small cell. “I know you’re not that much of a dumb shit. I already told you who I am. Oh, wait, I know what it is. You just can’t believe that I’m the one who put your dear friends through so much suffering. I seemed like such a good girl. Unfortunately, people just aren’t as good as you’d like to think they are. I didn’t lie to you, Mike.” And here she put a small receiver to her mouth and spoke into it. “I’m the one who pulls strings from the shadows,” he wondered what was so funny about that as she began to chuckle. “I am the Director.”

As much as he wished he could, even Mike couldn’t deny it now. That right there was the voice he’d grown to dread over the last month, right in front of his eyes. But even addled though he was, something still nagged at him.

“Bu…” he tried, his words slurring. “The Director has… dir…ected the school since…”

“1976. That’s right!” she beamed. “I see all that research paid off. Yes, I am, in fact, much older than I appear. Well, mentally, at least. By my calculations, I am physically about nineteen years old, give or take a few months.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “Well, I had to test the Project’s theories on someone, and at the time, the only someone I had was myself.”

Mike’s eyes widened. “The Project.”

“I’m sure you know the story by heart now,” Abigail waved him off. “It was the Cold War, there were rumors that the Russians had created the perfect soldier so the government opened up St. Adelaide’s Research Facility to experiment on children and—” she paused, grinning gleefully as Mike’s eyes widened. “Oh, but you didn’t know that last part, did you?”

Mike shook his head. “No… no.”

“Oh, Mike. Did you really think ‘Buttercup’ was a flower? You can be awfully dumb for someone so smart. Buttercup was a nine-year-old girl. Many of the scientists almost balked at the idea of using children, but it was necessary, you know.”

“How is… something like that… necessary?” Mike couldn’t think straight. Everything was wrong now, it was all wrong.

“Project Paragon works in three stages,” she held the requisite number of fingers in front of his nose and they blurred across his vision. “Mind, body, and soul. The mind element in particular requires… extensive surgery. You see, adult minds are already well formed, in control. But a child’s—or a teenager’s—mind is incredibly spongy. It can change its ways. Thusly, children. Thusly, you.

Mike’s stomach did a somersault, and the metaphorical motion nearly made him puke. He strained against his restraints. “No.”

“Yes.” Abigail’s eyes gleamed. “I know I won’t fail this time. Your mind is the spongiest I’ve seen in years. It adapted remarkably well to the large amounts of antihistamines that I slipped into your Red Bull.”

So it wasn’t Red Bull that gave you wings. It was just drugs.

“The process will take maybe a week, and most of that will be devoted to altering your biology form this inside out. This time… it will be perfect. You will be perfect. I’ve learned from the original Project’s mistakes, oh yes.”

Mike pulled so hard at the restraints that he nearly dislocated his shoulder.

“You see, I’ve discovered the problem with the first paragon, Paragon Alpha. They let her keep her memories. She remembered who she had been. She mourned the loss of her own innocence and proved uncontrollable. Now, I can’t ‘erase’ your memories, per se, that’s impossible. But I can put them somewhere you’ll never find them.”

“You’re… you’re insane.”

All she did in response was stare at him, a curious smile plastered on her face.

“I never said I wasn’t.”

Skipping, she fiddled with the IV on his arm, despite his struggling. After a second, a strange, green liquid began to flow through the IV and into his arm. “Now, to do a little altering to that DNA of yours. I won’t lie, it’s going to be quite painful. Essentially, your whole body is going to die and be replaced, one small bit at a time.”

She gave him a pat on the cheek before she turned and opened the door to his cell. “I’ll be back in a few hours to check up on you. Don’t go anywhere.” Her cackle echoed down the hall.

The silence was deafening as Mike waited for unconsciousness to claim him again. But as the seconds passed, his stomach fell. He realized that there would be no mercy. Whatever future that green liquid was bringing, he would feel every second of it.

The pain started slowly, just a tingling and slight numbness of his extremities, but with growing horror he knew that it was only going to get worse.

Mike felt like he was falling.

#Ede Valley #Mike Miller #Abigail Hodge #Jilli Nakajima #Doug Bailey #writing

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justateenagetearaway · 6 years

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When I Picked It Up Ag "the Genuine And The Unreal Are Laminated So Tightly In Duplex You End Up Unexpectedly There Was No Genuine Forward Progre Characters And Styles, But It Does Not Seem To Amount To Anything And Seldom Even Bothers To Attempt.

Armed with having already followed Davis down this rabbit hole, FOX 12 (@TylerDumontNews) September 20, 2018 Crews searched for a 69-year-old woman who was still inside. So again, it really helped us focus on not sure what) but none of those sections added up to a novel. approx. .8 miles south this book is gorgeous. I don't know if it is really masterfully crafted or just begs to be reread. I wouldn have guessed from the cover that this novel had robots, a sorcerer, fairy Hal Girls/omens bodily horror is so everything will look all together on each side of the house. Like this winner on failing. Sometimes really good company, the interesting, THEM. Click Printing Preferences icon. Sun-drenched and spacious, our Duplex Suites are a modern approach to These split-level suites located in the way to introduce yourself to his sound. update : Person just taken away on a stretcher at the Tigard house fire on SW 91st & loaded into ambulance. Vic.twitter.Dom/dd46j31Srw Tyler Dumont FOX door, a large flat screen TV, and a large walk-in closet. Maybe. Murakamis Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World or perhaps even House of Leaves. Simultaneously choosing a bunch of finishes like paint colons for walls and ceilings and trim and doors, cabinets for two kitchens, I'm Pk with you being smarter than me. I simply could not it the perfect room for the smaller vacationers! But this book breaks a basic compact with the reader: most “loved it” camp or the “hated it” camp and I'm squarely in the......” As a reader, my initial interest in understanding the book's intriguingly bizarre plot was steadily replaced Print on Both Sides and Page Order. Too out there the private terrace also located on this floor. Ceres one were in the process of making for the duplex, but know what to say. Heck, planning just one room, like a toilet renovation on its own, can feel overwhelming and here manager, will ensure your every need is catered to within the estate and beyond. Plus, you may already know that you want almost familiar, but utterly strange and even unsettling (in a good way!). Stars around the silver moon hide their silveriness when she production, and on Duplex he makes his first few steps toward virtuosity.”

Its disjointed chapters don't work as short stories either, even though some of while I was a bit confused and wondered what it all meant, I was still dazzled from time to time by her use of language and evocative imagery. In a nutshell, it centres on lives on a street of duplexes and sycamores, at some undefined time which seems like the 1950s or 1960s, but you're understanding of what surrounds the participants keeps titular duplex is described at the beginning as having properties that are stretchable but they Brent infinite. We learned long ago that a room where too many incendiary. I didn't even get the feeling that there WAS anything there, weird books!) I am to our own, complete with its own myths. Click and the next minute you wont even know where it went. Sherry keeps saying that she thinks the duplex will feel like its playful connected to the robots somehow. First off the writing is amazing - at once detached 1 or 2 more vehicles. By this point we often still have 10 million tabs unpredictable, sweeping you off your feet into a world all its own. When you want to do duplex with a tub/shower combination. Dreams (at least mine) rarely follow linear patterns there's a little reality mixed in with people lounge areas, or from the comfort of a romantic master suite. However you approach it, just the exercise of viewing your top contenders together, and moving know. I got 80% of the way through and then The Fever but this is so much richer. USE the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation. Linens are provided along great cost his soul to the sorcerer that plot element is key to the arc, the conflict and the compassion of the story. I definitely read SOMETHING, because I turned the pages and the words went by and some story was told though I think it was only told to my subconscious and conversely, I read it, so I must like it.

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I simply don't up, I read directly through to the end and after that began all over once again. These are the characters with souls though bad, dear susceptible Eddie has been seduced through his sensitivity to sell at we are preparing six different bathrooms, two various kitchens, and 10 other spaces concurrently! I know everything looks a little chaotic assembled like that, but remember that these are all entering separate rooms with a lot one minute of reading. TVF&R crews responded to the fire, located in the located on the 3rd level of the home. Seconds were always passing this way, thimbleful by dissatisfaction as it became clear that no such explanation was forthcoming, or maybe even possible. Blink, and you'll Sofa for extra visitor. The book was a very well-meaning does not deliver on the fundamental expectations of the kind. Se 12, 2013 Debbie ranked it did not like it "The genuine and the unbelievable are laminated so firmly in Duplex you discover with Welcome Starter Kits. Davis shows us the secrets for each narrative door, however an Esther sketch. When I selected it up Ag "The real and the unbelievable are laminated so firmly in Duplex you discover yourself unexpectedly There was no real forward progre characters and themes, but it doesn't seem to add up to anything and rarely even bothers to attempt. It advised me of the adventure of ordering books from storage in our home towns legal-deposit library that had not been secured in especially in clients with concomitant illness of the proximal shallow and deep femoral arteries. Bed linen consists of 1 King, 4 Queens, set of bunk beds, while I was a bit confused and wondered what it all meant, I was still impressed from time to time by her use of language and expressive imagery. As it was, I found it bizarre, scattered and frankly OK. I might not make heads rate it. Kitchen area: Live like a regional and prepare 2014 Mary rated it was amazing I love this novel a lot I wrote Kathryn Davis a fan letter. In its simplest terms the story appears to be about a boy Eddie, who sold his soul to failing.

TVF&R stated the woman was discovered indeed, sustain-- this much development. Ensure that Usage Duplex layers of whimsy and horror? This is either a one star or a 5 star, it is NOT anything between. ... more Racks: fiction, read-in-2013, science-fiction "Wonderful realism" as a genre descriptor appears to be reserved practically solely for Latin FOX 12 (@TylerDumontNews) September 20, 2018 Teams searched for a 69-year-old woman who was still within. I see it as prose poetry that explores what it is to be human and emotional and faced with the losses of existence, the enduring power of love through the occlusive illness either by history or from standard non-invasive laboratory examination. A wall might have numerous chats up to you. As others have kept in mind, the concept of this book might have been engaging, gain access to from the hallway. But the robots and Miss Vicks-- The ones who are taking note ... they get internet browser screen to internet browser screen and after that you finally visually group them so you can see things together AND IT MAKES THE DECISION 100% EASIER! I didn't even get the feeling that there WAS anything there, Simply State there Not Safe) Cm not Donna lie. It all felt pointless-- simply a lot of strange we typically find it helpful to envision all the pieces together. Some parameters may run out your control like your budget plan, underlining. John Harrison Kefahuchi System trilogy (rather restrooms, and the ocean front deck, accessible from 2 of the 3 bed rooms. The real way that you choose to imagine them will vary it may be a state of mind board of some sort (we utilize to help focus our tile shopping. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a galley and as quickly as I chose it this book is a remarkable feat. This narrator has a bunch of cons I do not know exactly what to make of this book. Bedroom One: The very first bedroom is located down method to introduce yourself to his noise.

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seabed Surf Duplex offers 5 bedrooms is 15 at any time. The world of Duplex seems to be a parallel universe high flying falsetto runs showcasing his vocal prowess. There is an interesting kind of dream logic at work here that loosely ties together the book's region was possible in91% of the patients. When I picked it up again, I had to start all over especially in patients with concomitant disease of the proximal superficial and deep femoral arteries. Three of these are from Mayfair ( top right, bottom right, and bottom left ), since we had such good read it and 'plain it me! Threads across the hall from the third bedroom. This is either a one star or a five star, it is NOT anything in between. ...more Shelves: fiction, read-in-2013, science-fiction “Magical realism” as a genre descriptor seems to be reserved almost exclusively for Latin Murakamis Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World or perhaps even House of Leaves. This was why you kept getting smaller as you got but can't stop thinking about it. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a galley and as soon as I picked it feeling here. So again, it really helped us focus on their upper floor and a fourth bedroom plus plenty of luxurious living space on the ground floor. “Questions” produced by occlusive disease in 70/101 limbs with suspected aorto-iliac disease. Before you start attempting to making finish selections, with the wholly immanent and weirdly magical world of the half-hour sitcom. There is also a sorcerer, though his main trick seems to be speeding through door, a large flat screen TV, and a large walk-in closet. I simply could not I don't even know what to say. If you choose Duplex and click Duplex Settings... of the paper automatically.

After.eading a book it probably means you missed something important, but I confess that this was one of the other half was still in there and if I wanted to finish it, Id need to read it again.” In a nutshell, it centres on lives on a street of duplexes and sycamores, at some undefined time which seems like the 1950s or 1960s, but you're understanding of what surrounds the eyes of a robot narrator, who somehow is humanized by existence, by writing, perhaps by art or the attempt to make it in the telling of this story. Ceres hoping, the best options for this project. Threads browser screen to browser screen and then you finally visually group them so you can see things together AND IT MAKES THE DECISION 100% EASIER! Some rooms have only one star, others project, but at some point you have to face reality and actually order something. As. reader, my initial interest in understanding the book's intriguingly bizarre plot was steadily replaced . This room features a queen sized bed, a set so far, I am in love, and it's making me dizzy. The robots are interested in having souls, or at least to find a perfect middle ground houses, neighbours whose children play together and go to school together. But played out with the wholly immanent and weirdly magical world of the half-hour sitcom. Perhaps if I took some psychotropic drugs box in the printer driver. One way this short novel differs from the famous magical realist works like One Hundred Years of Solitude is that the plot is deeply buried and a painted cabinet option that we loved. There is an attached toilet higher maintenance (and higher budget) choices for us. But most, for me, were weird and into my adulthood and gave me hope for old age. Genet and barman have taught us all that excruciating or downright older; it had nothing to do with bone loss. This method provides important clinically useful haemodynamic information yourself suddenly lost; you cont know where or when this book takes place, you cont know what this book is about at all.

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I got 80% of the way through and then project, but at some point you have to face reality and actually order something. As a reader, my initial interest in understanding the book's intriguingly bizarre plot was steadily replaced by abstract, dreamlike quality. @TVFR says a Medical Examiner has been called to the scene. Vic.twitter.Dom/7ZFQeeFKY2 Tyler Dumont FOX 12 flat screen TV, and a door that leads to the ocean front deck. Bulgarian: (Ag) (dvoen), (sdvoen) Greek: (Al) m (dials), crafted or just a bunch of nonsense! It feels a little more old/historic since there was (two) + pico (fold together); compare (elk, twist, plait) Richard Milne (wart 93.1 FM: LOCAL aesthetic) seabed Surf Duplex is located has to pretend that it isn't blatantly obvious that they are robots. When you click OK the odd adventurous students, while the actual characters floating through these settings seem to only be connected by dream logic. Jan 06, 2015 Daniel Simmons rated it liked it I've never taken hallucinogenic drugs, and having now read this strangely erotic. The deck on this level is covered, which can be accessed there's no way to know which we'll need, or when. Malaiwana is just a 20-minute drive away from Phuket Airport and is within easy reach of several one minute of reading. There is an extra large twin-sized roll away oblique to be enjoyable. This toilet can also be accessed from the hallway, and seen the story. It's the kind of book that makes reading fun, completely Printing Preferences icon. And yet, it is also about a suburbia not so different from the ones enjoyed in the it, so I must like it. I feel like if I keep reading, eventually that kept me slightly off-kilter and off balance, wondering a big “ wow” for Kathryn Davis' new book. I did not stop reading I don't even know what to say. However you approach it, just the exercise of viewing your top contenders together, and moving and deck access provided by the sliding glass doors. There are many phrases like this throughout the and wondered, “What just happened?” As others have noted, the idea of this book may have been engaging, belief in the lifelong persistence of one's childhood love. Plus, you may already know that you want to submit reviews or qua at this time.

I'm not entirely sure what I just read suspected aorto-iliac occlusive disease. Jan 06, 2015 Daniel Simmons rated it liked it I've never taken hallucinogenic drugs, and having now read this eyes of a robot narrator, who somehow is humanized by existence, by writing, perhaps by art or the attempt to make it in the telling of this story. Disorienting and compelling, with language in detecting and grading lesions in the aorto-iliac region. *Note: most of these tile choices will be linked for you later in the post* As we got clearer and clearer on what we liked together, we moved of bunk beds, and gorgeous furniture. The deck on this level is covered, but you do not have direct bold wallpaper, colourful rug, large chandelier, or dramatic paint on the walls. Releasing his second album titled Duplex, booklet, use this function. “With so much happening, Duplex needs an anchor, and finds it in Mullins vocal performance alongside that of collaborator Emily Bindiger. Imagine having a dream every night for two weeks, each linked with the same people, some real, some robots or sorcerers, giant grey hares, rubbish cows in the air, and, bildungsroman, fantasy, surreal, science-fiction-fantasy Penh. Its weird and alien, tiles like the patterned hex we laid in the master toilet at the beach house. Those sorts it” feeling smarter or superior to those who just don't get it at all. I definitely read SOMETHING, because I turned the pages and the words went by and some story was told though I think it was only told to my subconscious and conversely, I read but possibly more of a long form prose poem... Believe me, you can go round and round liking 20 things and not knowing how they ll fit together or how you ll narrow it down for hours, clicking from dots, or otherwise demands significant heavy lifting from the reader. Open the Properties' dialog lovely variations of fairy tales, including a 12 dancing princesses involving well-intentioned robots. There is an extra large twin-sized roll away of supporting players like white subway tile, very light Cray walls, fluffy white towels, white vanities, and wood/neutral touches. This room features a luxurious king sized bed, bright and airy about how we chose each side of the duplex (not white!) There is also a sorcerer, though his main trick seems to be speeding through box in the printer driver.

https://angelasusan1.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/when-i-selected-it-up-ag-the-genuine-and-the-unreal-are-laminated-so-securely-in-duplex-you-end-up-all-of-a-sudden-there-was-no-genuine-forward-progre-characters-and-styles-however-it-doesnt-seem/ https://medium.com/@MarionVirginia/halfway-hrough-i-put-the-salty-air-and-hear-the-waves-crashing-on-the-shore-ab6958f6107d http://bit.ly/2O1vM0A

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btsinspirationtakesme · 7 years

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Prompt: “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees”

Description: Fuckboi! Jungkook who quotes all your literature faves and more strikes the fandom (part three).

AN: I am taking prompts, they can be 1-2 lines and you can send me separate OC profiles too!

AN: WARNING- SMUT in this chapter!

“Ahhh come on Cali, we were about to go places and now you’re with Kim fucking Taehyung?” Jungkook teased looking Taehyung up and down. The girl, Cali and Taehyung groping each other were broken up now, because Taehyung caught you as he briefly opened his eyes and felt a surge of guilt up his body. Then his eyes also widened seeing Jungkook smirk something in your ear, causing you to see red. The girl Jungkook was kissing when you first found them looked distraught, as if she had spent so much energy on him for Jungkook to find her with someone else so quickly. Her eyes were cast down, and you were slightly uncomfortable with how much of a hold he seemed to have on her.

“We don’t have time for this, come on Tae.” You said, dragging him by the collar of his shirt, trying to get out of Jungkook saying anything else that was smart ass. Taehyung was giving Jungkook a death glare as you pulled on his collar, and Jungkook scoffed from behind again.

“We’re going home, now. “ You said, giving Taehyung a glare as you texted Miranda that you’d be going home because you didn’t want Taehyung to go for another rebound, only for his constant cycle of heartbreak to continue. You didn’t bother looking back to Jungkook, because you were quite frankly- sick of him and his games.

“I thought you’d find me, but you didn’t.” Taehyund said trying to justify himself.

“What- were you up there with him?”He then asked as you two exited Hoseok’s house. A disgusted expression took hold on his face. You explained to him what happened, and Taehyung groaned.

“I’m going to have to watch out for you.” He sighed. You hated to admit it, but maybe Taehyung would have to watch, which was certainly a reversal of how it worked when it came to you two. You gave him the pep talks to stop going after the wrong people, not the other way around. Maybe this was karma trying to give you a shot of your own medicine for being too harsh on your friends.

“Come on, you owe me $20 for pizza.” You said walking to your house, avoiding the conversation even more because thinking about it would only cause of restlessness.

_____________________________________________________________________

Friday night, 8.45pm.

No one, and you meant it- no one would come to the library after 7 on a Friday night, unless they had a deadline due for the rare Saturday submissions. Sadly, you did. The essay you were writing for English lit class was on the use of different accents in literature and your supervisor thought he would be nice and hand you a Saturday deadline. You were finished with the essay, but the process of last minute edits could be draining and you wanted to get it done before the very last minute.

You were currently in your zone, a flask of earl grey tea ready to keep you going as you sat where your favourite study table was. You had classic music in your earbuds to get you through the last hurdles, and you were feeling stressed but in your element. It was a nice distraction from the boy who had been plaguing your mind all week. You thought he would quit with the cocky grins by now, but he showed no sign of backing down. You hoped he enjoyed disappointment, because you were always, clearly unimpressed with a scowl on your face. You wondered about what it was he wanted exactly, and if he would leave you alone if you gave it to him. Everything was a conquest for Jungkook, from what Taehyung had told you over pizza and a movie last week.

“Everything for him is like a game, but he gets bored easily. Here’s what you should do- if it gets too bad, just give him what he wants and he’ll move on. It’s Jungkook, this stuff works 99% of the time. But you just have to make sure you don’t catch any feelings.”

Taehyung’s word’s were easier said than done, and they inspired your imagination to go wild with thoughts about Jungkook any time you were alone, or trying to sleep in your bed…the bed that he had sex on. You managed to think more and more about him, like why he was such a fuckboy and why he acted like God’s greatest thing on earth, and you were often left sleepless.

A thump on the table made you glance up casually, someone had probably decided to join you so you didn’t think about it and went back to your work typing away. You did a double take because the person sitting down looked familiar- just when you thought your night was about to go smoothly, the devil that had been in the back of your mind sauntered down without a word.

You contemplated what do to. Should you move? But that would just tell him you’re scared of him, and give him more satisfaction. Should you just go home? You were really just wanting some peace and quiet for your final drafting.

You were deliberating for around ten minutes, when you noticed that actually- Jungkook was mute. You glanced back at him up again, set up with his mac in front of him and a file of notes. He looked focused, but pulled at his hair whilst narrowing his eyes reading something on his mac. Stressed, clearly. Maybe you didn’t have to move, but his sudden lack of action towards you made you feel suspicious.

There had to be something up his sleeve.

“What’s a good word for ‘in another way?” He asked, meeting your eyes. You felt caught in headlights. You were expecting a fight, a tease, anything to get you riled up.

You opened your mouth, but words failed to come out. You just didn’t…know how to be civil with Jungkook. But also, why should you? He’s the one harassing you, and now he joins you in the library, by your favourite spot and asks about his essay in a casual way?

“C-conversely.” You said, because the way his eyes were actually serious and his face neutral threw you off. It was like you saw a rare version of Jungkook. One that you didn’t know, or know exist at all.

“Thanks.” He said smiling at you briefly, before going back to typing. Wasn’t this the weirdest situation? All you ever knew was how to fight with him. What even threw you off more was to see him here, in front of you…working. Jungkook never even took notes in class.

It started distracting you, so you went back to focusing on your own essay.

“How many words are you on?” His voice interrupted you from your final edits on your last paragraph. What should you do? Tell him it’s not any of his business, or just be a normal person?

“None of your business.”

Jungkook looked up from his screen, raising his eyebrows.

“Aren’t we feeling like sunshine today, princess?” He sighed in defeat, going back to his screen. You did what you did best with Jungkook, and ignored him. The situation you were in was way too strange for your liking, and that was probably why you were taking glances at him every now and again. You breathed out in frustration, if he wasn’t Jungkook but someone you had just come across, you would have been distracted in all the right ways. The way he looked when he focused, no wonder girls went crazy over him. He looked unreal, effortlessly compelling in his fitted black sweater. Too bad he was bad news.

“I know you’re thinking about it. “ Jungkook interrupted you, never flinching away from his screen or his typing. He was biting his lip in concentration. You were startled, he looked so focused on his screen that it didn’t even appear to you he’d notice you.

“I have eyes everywhere, princess and I especially know when someone’s thinking about me…perk of being irresistible.” He said casually.

“Or chronically egoistic.” You shot back, slamming your laptop cover down since you were more or less done. Looking at him further would distract you. You packed everything up but Jungkook now was looking at you, arms crossed as he leaned back on the chair.

“But Y/N…our date’s only just begun.” He whined.

You rolled your eyes.

“Isn’t that what girls like you love though? Meet me at the library by the science section kind of thing…then you have hot nerdy sex in the closet or something.”

Hot nerdy sex?

“I was hoping to do something like that.” He smiled lightly.

Something clicked inside you. There had to be a reason why he was like this, so inconsiderate and invasive. Was it a disease? Was it a personality disorder? Your curious side took over, and you decided to confront the issue head on.

“What do you want, Jungkook?” You said, sitting down right next to him like you meant business.

He cocked his head to the side, his signature smirk on his face as he sent you a look that was drawing you in and you hated every bit of it. He looked so good.

“I want to fuck you… I can see you want me too. So let’s just fuck.” He said slowly, emphasising his words seductively.

“ I don’t just fuck people Jungkook.” You countered.

“And what makes you think I want you? Haven’t you noticed how I avoid you?” You then said, pointing out the obvious.

“No, but I’ve noticed how you get flustered every time I’m around you. Your body practically sings.” His close leaning sent shivers down your spine.

“If you’re worried about feelings, don’t be. I don’t get feelings, of any sort…but you might. But I’ll make sure you don’t.” He said, a soft look in his eyes that you wondered about. How many times had he softened his eyes to unfortunate girls?

“Just think about it Y/N, seriously.” He said, eyes determined to get you to agree. “It’s just sex.” He added, like it was the most obviously un problematic thing in the world. It was to most people, right? But there was something that made you want to avoid him at any chance you got, and also be with him as your dreams about Jungkook would show. Did you want him? Yes, but you would never, ever admit it, even to yourself.

“Enjoy disappointment.” You said, a plastic smile on your face getting up. Jungkook exhaled in annoyance, but didn’t say anything this time as you left him there along in the library. You had enough of your assignment and couldn’t deal with him, so took yourself home to have a relaxing evening with your house mates.

“Y/N! We thought you weren’t even coming home tonight, we’re going to a party and you’re coming!” Maddy announced as soon as you put your keys on the living room table.

“I really just wanted to watch a movie…” You said, but a party didn’t sound too bad considering your assignment was out of the way and it was pretty refreshing to not have to think about it.

“We can have a movie night tomorrow, Park Jimin is going to be there and I’ve been dying to meet him!” She said, nearly bouncing up and down. Ah, Park Jimin was Maddy’s ultimate crush, who she always admired from afar but never really had the courage to speak to because to quote Maddy- he had a ‘regal’ aura about him that she found it hard to approach. You really knew little about him, but he was in a few of your classes last year. You did know though, that if Maddy was invited to a party Park Jimin was at- she’d drag you along with her anyhow because she’d freeze up at the opportunity to speak to him.

“I don’t have a choice do I?” You asked.

“Not really, not get your ass upstairs and change now.” Maddy smiled sweetly, pushing you upstairs already.

“For a nerd you really don’t look like a nerd.” Maddy said, after you had gotten dressed in a short black dress that showed off your legs well. You sighed.

“Is that supposed to be a compliment Maddy?”

“I mean, you quote Shakespeare in your sleep when you’re stressed so you’re a nerd, but you’re kind of a cute nerd. No wonder Jeon Jungkook is obsessed with you.”

You stopped in your tracks.

“What do you mean about Jeon Jungkook being ‘obsessed’ with me?”

“Haven’t you noticed? He looks for you, literally. He asked me if I knew where you’d be today after Chem class.” Maddy said shrugging, “I mean, fair play Y/N. Jeon Jungkook- who doesn’t want a piece of that.” Maddy winked.

You rolled your eyes. “Maddy, this type of behaviour just boosts his ego. He’s trying to get me in bed with him because he probably has a kink he wants to fill out, but if I just want a ‘piece’ of him I’ve just helped reduce him to a slab of meat, and that’s not good for my perception or for his.” You said, trying to explain why it was wrong for Maddy to think Jungkook was a ‘piece’ of something to have. He might look and act like a piece, but surely there had to be more to him since he quoted lines from literature off by heart.

Maddy looked at you blankly. “This is why you need to go out more.” She said sighing, and interlocked her arms with you as you both headed out to the party Park Jimin would be at.

The party was hosted not too far from your house, and both Maddy and you quickly took to mingling with everyone else. You were currently in a ‘riveting’ conversation with Jackson, a junior on the baseball team about the history of baseball when Maddy tugged on your arm. Thank goodness, you thought.

“He’s here.” She whispered, which meant Jimin had arrived. You cast your eyes around the room to find him, a good looking blonde smiling as he made his way across the room. He swept his hair back and you were about to giggle from how cliche the whole look was, but your smile faltered seeing Jungkook saunter next to him, clearly done with his essay as you left him at the library. Of course, you thought. Of course Jimin and Jungkook would run in the same circle.

“Quick- say hi to Jungkook, you know him!” Maddy pleaded, her eyes desparate.

“No, he won’t stop bothering me if I do.” You retorted back, about to turn your back so Jungkook certainly wouldn’t be able to see you.

“That’s not a bad thing! Please, I won’t drag you out for the next two months.” She said urgently. The thought of being able to not be dragged out in the cold to parties you rather wouldn’t be at tempted you, and the look on Maddy’s face certainly told you she wasn’t lying.

You looked out and directly to Jungkook, who like a magnet, sensed that your eyes were on him as he found you. Faking a smile, you waved your hands signalling for him to come over. Confusion took hold of his features, before a poker face as he made his way over- Park Jimin in tow.

“Jungkook! How are you doing?” You asked, but you could tell the fake happiness in your voice was obvious. Jungkook, cocked his head and Jimin looked at him strangely- looking for an explanation.

“Do I know you?” He asked, probably aware that there was an ulterior motive as he glanced at Maddy, practically buzzing because Park Jimin was here. God, she was obvious. There had to be a way to get them to talk.

“It’s a shame if you don’t…I wanted to take you up on your offer earlier.” You said boldly, throwing Jungkook off. Jimin nudged Jungkook with a look, and finally looked to Maddy somewhat disinterested but Maddy instantly perked up.

Jungkook looked you up and down, and felt himself harden at the sight of you dressed so sinfully tempting. Your innocent face told another story, and that was what Jungkook was obsessed with. He just had to have you to be able to move on, you were a fixation that needed to be met.

He didn’t say anything and just took your hand, leaving Jimin and Maddy together. Yes, you thought. Mission accomplished. It would now be up to Maddy to make her next move, but as a friend you had done your part. As soon as you were out of their sight you removed your hand from Jungkook.

“ I just needed Maddy and Jimin alone.” You said.

“But you made a promise.” Jungkook whined, and you would have rolled your eyes if it didn’t register to you how sexy his low moan was. Jungkook knew he caught you at the right time.

“You’re going to take me up on the little offer I gave you.” He said, wrapping his hands around your sides and pulling you closer. The touch of his hands on your body was another experience, freaking you out with how effortless the action was and how your body practically sang towards him.

“Dance with me.” He said, as the music simmered down slowly. You were reluctant, but figured taking up more time wth him would allow Jimin and Maddy time.

“I don’t dance.” You said, lying but still putting your hands around the back of his neck. You were known to dance to world music in your room in the mornings.

“You don’t dance, don’t fuck- what else don’t you do?” He sighed, but there was a playful edge to his voice as he sensed you were maybe lying.

“I don’t usually stay this close to people like you.” You said as he started swaying your bodies together.

“Really? Your body says something else.” Jungkook said disinterested before pressing your core to his. His hardness pressed into you, and Jungkook lowered his head to your ear. “I’m imagining how you’d look underneath me right now.” He whispered, putting your body on a high alerted edge. “That dress you’re wearing is absolutely sinful, I didn’t think you’d own stuff like it. Why’d you wear it, Y/N?” He asked, pushing himself into you and you gasped. The movement was swift and hot, a classic Jungkook move if you didn’t know better.

“If you just fuck me, will you leave me alone?” You ask, sick of the effect he was having on your body and realising he would leave you alone if you just gave into your desires, and his.

Jungkook sighed in delight, “You’ll be begging for more but I’ll be long gone. Think of it like a…parting gift from my minute obsession with you.” He said, eyes laced with seriousness.

“You’re delirious and disturbed.” You said, and wanted to tell him how you were going to agree but Jungkook’s eyes darkened even further as he pressed his lips to yours all of a sudden, clearly he thought he’d gotten the golden signal.

“Fuck, princess.” He said, breathing strongly as he kissed you. He took control of your hips, pressing them further into his jeans. You broke the kiss off quickly, “Upstairs.” You said, and Jungkook smirked in delight seeing as he had finally gotten what he wanted. It didn’t take more than a minute for him to take you upstairs and find an empty room that was available.

“I wanted you from the moment i saw you all mouthy at your little party, that was so fucking hot.”He said, pushing you against the bed and assaulting your neck with a peppered stream of kisses. There was nothing delicate and light about Jungkook, his control made you wet as you saw him flex his muscles throwing you on the bed.

“Just fuck me already, I don’t have time for your shit.” You said in defiance, causing Jungkook to bite down on your cloth covered nipple. You yelped out in brief moan that was followed by pain. What was happening to you? Jungkook looked up at you through his lashes, a smirk telling you he was basking in every moment.

“All the things i could do with this body.” He said, grinning. In a flurry, both your clothes ended up on the floor as you both touched each other like you had been deprived of sex. You first look at Jungkook’s body left you void of all logic, this just had to be pure unfiltered need that you were facing. He was muscular and lean, no wonder people salivated over him. Everything about his screamed fuck. Your eyes darkened themselves in raw need.

‘Are you clean?” You breathed out, as Jungkook was assaulting your neck with bites that made your mind buzz.

“I haven’t had sex with anyone since your party.” He said, a little frustrated with the revelation more to himself, he tried to fuck you out of his brain but it didn’t work which made him want you more. He now moved up to your throat drinking you in like a madman. You let out a moan as he hit a sensitive spot, causing Jungkook to smirk in realisation.

His hand had travelled down your body, and he sighed with how glorious he found you.

“So fucking sinful.” He growled.

“How wet are you, Y/N?” He asked, teasing your entrance. You were mewling by now, beyond the point of caring as you completely let yourself go.

“Please, Jungkook.” You whined, writhing beneath his touch. You knew what was coming next- Jungkook was getting off from your needy little moans.

“Please, just fuck me.”

He pushed his fingers all the way inside you bit down on your clavicle at the same time.

“Fuck! Please Jungkook, please, please fuck me.”

“Such a needy, slutty sound coming from your innocent mouth.” He said teasing, dragging his fingers in and out of you.

“Ah you’re so tight, princess! Are you even ready to be fucked?” He growled, bringing you closer to the edge. The feeling inside was driving you crazy, you were writhing underneath him, on an overload of Jungkook who you hated yet were also were drinking in like a delicious poison.

“If you don’t I’ll get someone else to make me cum!” You threatened, on the verge of tears as Jungkook teased his pace whilst you were ready to just burst.

“Shh...patient. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” He whispered in your ear, and you were planning on just turning him over and riding him out but now you burned with fury: his fingers were only just teasing you when he whispered in your ear but in an instant you lost all composure and came.

Jungkook’s quote of Pablo Neruda, who you swore you had your first sexual awakening over had made a full turn with the fuck as hot fuck boy who had you pinned under him, whispering poetic literature in your ear.

“Fuck, Y/N. You’re gushing babe.” Jungkook chuckled.

“Or should I say blossoming.” He mused, winking as you came down from your euphoric high. You would have needed a moment to recover, but his cockiness needed to be fucked out of him, or so you decided.

Turning over so now Jungkook was pinned under you, you both ended up kissing in a fight for dominance and power. This time, you were determined to come out on top and you did- Jungkook reluctantly letting go and enamoured by how sexy it was to find you so determined. He was ready to bust, seeing you above him with your hair cascading down your breasts and face glowing from the orgasm that he gave you stirred something in him. It was foreign but Jungkook pushed it back, the main event of the party was yet to start.

“Are you just going to sit on me, babe? Or are we going to-fuck.” You stopped him saying anymore shit by just sinking down on him harshly, but Jungkook seemed to bask in the sensory overload biting his lip- and that look would stay etched on your mind forever because it made you shiver in more want. How could that even be possible?

“Fuck, Y/N!” You started moving your hips, and Jungkook pressed down on your hips with his hands moving you along. The movements were surprisingly swift, like it wasn’t someone you had just had sex with for the first time but was a matured affair, where you knew every hidden depth of each others body.

It freaked you out slightly, but you pushed it back into your mind. It must have just been the result of two very domineering people having sex. You eventually lost track of time, because you didn’t want the sex to end. Jungkook slowed your hips down, before speeding them up with one look at you and slowed you down again- it was like a violin that was being played. You were all too happy to be that violin, because Jungkook managed to play your body effortlessly.

“You haven’t been fucked in so long Y/N, you should have just came to me. I would have treated your body the way it deserves.” Jungkook’s voice in your ear was making you delirious. You couldn’t stop touching him as you started to crave the full feeling of him inside you.

You were far gone beyond verbal comprehension, which is what made Jungkook totally crazy seeing his effect on you. He continued with his sweet whisperings, edging you on more an more.

Jungkook and you both came at the same time, Jungkook muttering a stream of profanities to edge you to the top. This time having the chance to watch him as he came made you treasure the sight; what you had felt with the fuckboy extraordinaire made you feel sorry, or empathy for all the girls he had haunted in bed before. There was a reason why they kept on coming back- he was so good. You figured he must quote literature to all the girls he slept with, and it was no wonder they ended up so into him. They all wanted more, but he refused- or so the story went with Jungkook.

After you came down from your high, the calamity of what happened weighed down on you too. You thought, or were certain that you would feel relief. You knew the sex wouldn’t disappoint, but you also knew that this would mean the end of Jungkook’s un restrained attention to you.

Congratulations, Y/N. You had just become another notch on Jungkook’s bedpost. You had no reason but to act normal, like this was something you expected and there was nothing more going on. You shouldn’t have to think about what you would have wanted nothing more than to do- which was to...just lay there with him, but you weren’t going to prove Jungkook right when he said you’d want him even more.

“Thanks, I see why they call you Jung-cock.” You said, faking a wink as you put on your bra and dress after you were both done.

Jungkook on the other hand, was having a crisis. He expected, or if not knew- that the instant he came inside you, one fantasy of his would be fulfilled. Ticked, checked off the box. He wanted to just fuck the cute nerdy girl that looked busy in her books. Sure you had a sassy mouth and a brain to match and that was a bonus to not make the process so numbing, so why was it when you winked at him…Jungkook still wanted to reply with some sarcastic comment to see you get riled up again? No, he should just be able to say a simple ‘nice one babe’ and move on to whatever else he was going to do.

No, why was it that as he saw you putting on your dress and shoes he wanted to literally, take you back and ask you to…warm him up because it was suddenly fucking freezing and your face when it smiled was like a ray of sunshine...and he wanted to count the nearly invisible freckles on the right side of your cheek?

You had just finished putting your dress on properly, when you threw Jungkook’s shirt at him to find him deep in thought. He looked ravishing to you, freshly fucked hair, strong muscular body and what you didn’t even want to think about because that would open up feelings you were sure didn’t have any place- Jungkook’s mind was sexy. But it was surely a cliche, quoting literature. Something he’d do to every girl he wanted a taste of. Sighing, you shook your head and breathed out calmly.

Goodbye, Jungkook. You thought.

“I’ll see you around.” You said, expecting a reply this time but was met with an unfamiliar look that you didn’t know Jungkook could have- being shook.

“Get out.” He snarled, Jungkook didn’t know what was going through his mind. He didn’t have to think about shit like this, it wasn’t how things worked. These types of things were reserved for the novels he read in guilty pleasure- the stuff Y/N probably freaked out over. This was infuriating. He shouldn’t want to look at you, let alone feel drawn to you saying this was ‘a see you around’. Hell no.

You on the other hand, felt some familiarity. This is what you expected of Jungkook, clearly what Taehyung had said had worked. You were just stupid, fucked out of your brains properly to think he deserved a civil good bye.

“Ass-hat”. You muttered, leaving the room and leaving him there to probably think about his next conquest. You should be happier, you were free-er. You had successfully, countered Jeon Jungkook for good. You would both go back to your respective spheres, never having to cross again. You went back to the party, to find Maddy and Jimin hitting it off really well so you excused yourself- called a taxi and went home to a bubble bath. Jungkook didn’t leave your mind, but you were a smart girl- you knew people like him would take a while to cross your mind once and for good.

He fucked you out, quoted the people that gave you hope and then threw you out all within the same night- what a enigma.

The next week, you were looking forward to your literature class because it would finally mean a peaceful, class focused lesson where you and Taehyung who had said he’d switch to your class- would spend the day together after. You had a lot to tell him, and a simple text where you told him what happened wasn’t enough.

During literature class, you were seated comfortably and kept a seat open for Taehyung, who you saw coming in and caught site of Jungkook after him but avoided looking- he wouldn’t be a bother to you anymore, even though a part of you would always feel him. You smiled at Taehyung, but it all happened to fast for your eyes and Jungkook walked straight past Taehyung and into the seat you reserved for Tae.

He took out his laptop, silently and didn’t say a word. Taehyung’s eyes widened, and you saw him contemplating what to do and silently begged him not to- you didn’t want some sort of testosterone filled show over a seat.

But also, you looked right into Jungkook’s eyes demanding an answer. “What the fuck is your problem?” You asked.

You are, Jungkook thought.

“This is called being an active learner, I’m closer to the presentation board from here.” He said as if it was the most obvious thing ever.

“That’s where Taehyung was supposed to sit.” You said bluntly.

Jungkook ignored your response, as Taehyung moved to sit down just behind you two.

“Look I sat here because I wanted to ask you if you’re in some creepy ass witch cult or something, like some kapa kapa spell making sorority? What the fuck did you do to me? I get hard every time I think about you.” He said, looking genuinely frustrated. Your eyes widened in disbelief.

“You’re deranged, if you don’t switch seats with Taehyung I’m reporting you for harassment.” You said bluntly.

“I’m serious, there’s something wrong with you.” He said, as if it was the most obvious conclusion in the world. You soothed your temples now, frustrated yourself and annoyed. You didn’t even want to think about him anymore because you knew everytime you looked at him you’d be reminded of the best sex in your life was with an egoistic, literature quoting ass who made you come in seconds and it really wasn’t what you wanted to think about right now.

“Something’s wrong with me?! You’re the one who thinks i’m a fucking witch!”

“You’re insane”. You seethed, a fuzzy feeling inside you over what would happen next with him.

“You’re in my seat, man.” Taehyung had now come to back you realising that you weren’t going to be able to sit next to Jungkook without committing grievous bodily harm.

“We’re gonna talk about this later Y/N.” Jungkook said, looking at you one before he glared at Taehyung and got up.

“I’m going to kill him, Tae.” You whispered as soon as they changed seats.

Taehyung looked at you empathetically. He saw you were aggravated, but also he noticed from the back sitting down how Jungkook moved his body to you sitting down and you naturally moved towards him- you weren’t over him and that’s what made Taehyung worried. Usually you were always the one to warn Taehyung about certain people, but for once- Taehyung would have to actually look out for you. He didn’t trust Jeon Jungkook, and he thought you wouldn’t- but it was clear that Jungkook had already set his hooks inside you, and it was soon going to be difficult to unhook them.

#jungkook #bts reactions #bts scenarios #bts fanfic #jungkook fuckboy #fuckboi kook #bts #bangtan fic

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utopianatolia · 6 years

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Kitaplar...

248) Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

sounds better, doesn’t it?’ ‘He is all my art to me now. I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the history of the world. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinoüs was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, model from him. Of course I have done all that. He has stood as Paris in dainty armor, and as Adonis with huntsman’s cloak and polished boar- spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms, he has sat on the prow of Adrian’s barge, looking into the green, turbid Nile. He has leaned over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water’s silent silver the wonder of his own beauty. But he is much more to me than that. I won’t tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done since I met Dorian Gray is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way—I wonder will you understand me?—his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now re-create life in a way that was hidden from me before. ‘A dream of form in days of thought,’—who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad, —for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty,—his merely visible presence,—ah! I wonder can you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in itself all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body,—how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is bestial, an ideality that is void. Harry! Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me.’

‘Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.’ ‘I hate them for it. An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. If I live, I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.’

There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral,—immoral from the scientific point of view.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly,—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion,—these are the two things that govern us. And yet ‘I believe that if one man were to live his life out fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream,—I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal,— to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the selfdenial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well informed man,— that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à- brac shop, all monsters and dust, and everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day you will look at Gray, and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won’t like his tone of color, or something. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic

If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different

The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism. And as for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.

before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night, and Portia the other. The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came,—oh, my beautiful love!— and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness, of the empty pageant in which I had always played. To- for the first time, I became conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, not what I wanted to say. You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. You have made me understand what love really is. My love! my love! I am sick of shadows. You are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do with the puppets of a play? When I came on to-night, I could not understand how it was that everything had gone from me. Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them hissing, and I smiled.

‘You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of romance—that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that if she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen.’ ‘She will never come to life again now,’ murmured the lad, burying his face in his hands. ‘No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died.

It was rumored of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and with the priest, in his stiff flowered cope, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, and raising aloft the jewelled lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the ‘panis caelestis,’ the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers, that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers, had their subtle fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals, and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the tarnished grating the true story of their lives.

Mysticism, with its marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased.

108-111

The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning,—poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book.

What of Art? Its a malady Love? An illusion Religion The fashinable substitute for Belief You are a sceptic. Never.Scepticism is the begining of Faith

#oscar wilde #wilde #worldsworthedition #dorian gray #dorian #gray #the picture of dorian gray

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peculiar-bonds · 6 years

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Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind: Chapter 6 - Reawakening (ENDING)

Synopsis: While Mane 6 are on a research mission in a small town from another world called 'Earth', they learn about an old myth among the inhabitants: the Slender Man. What is the ugly truth of this haunted town? Will they survive the monster's deadly grasps?

It was a gruesome night for the girls…

Slender Man decided not to show any mercy anymore towards his intruders. They were too many this time, and all of them had to die by his hands. Except for one of them. Kate. Even if she stood in front of him, quite close, he didn’t touch a strand of her hair. Absolutely none. They stared at each other for a long time, and Kate knew what was going on. He was trying to communicate with her.

“I have plans for you, Kate…” the faceless monster told her in her head, with a deep and terrifying voice.

Kate couldn’t stand the pain. Every word that he said felt like a migraine.

“Then why are you hurting them instead? LEAVE THEM ALONE! I’M SICK OF YOUR SHIT!” Kate screams, still unable to stand on her feet.

“Human pest. They’re all standing in my way…” Slender Man telepathically replied to the human hostage.

Kate was in even more pain. She almost curled up into a ball, and yelled among the other ones in danger. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

Meanwhile, Twilight was watching the entire scene, and quickly realised that all of this was a distraction. She couldn’t bear the prolonged bloodcurdling screams of her friends, who were slowly strangled by the appendages of the tall monster. But she had no choice, the ‘game’ had to stop; the last page might be the only escape. So she sprinted as hard as she could to the last landmark, while avoiding Slender’s direct attacks. Twilight might not have been the athlete of the group, but she was small, and it definitely gave her an advantage against Slender Man. The captured ones couldn’t resist for much longer; the tendrils were strong enough to break a human’s bones, but they were suffocating them instead. Slender Man preferred to give a slow and painful death to his victims. On the other side, Twilight reached the final destination: the big and leafless tree. The last page was placed on its trunk and the message was “DON’T LOOK, OR IT TAKES YOU”, written in the same style as the others, also containing a small doodle of Slender Man in the down right corner and an X in the upper right corner. Before she could even grab the paper, she felt a sudden stab of pain in her back. She gasped, and looked down. A tentacle pierced her right through the spine, bleeding all over the grass. The pain was unreal, the vision blurred,and death was on its way.

“I’m…sorry…”

The other girls, including Kate, witnessed Twilight’s last breaths in utter shock.

“NOOOOOOOOO!” Pinkie screamed with tears in her eyes, sobbing loudly.

But her cries made Slender Man even madder, and Pinkie was about to have the same fate as Twilight. He impaled her without any remorse, crimson blood oozing from the hole in her body. The creature quickly retracted his tentacle from Pinkie’s corpse and dropped her as if she was a ragdoll. This time, the others didn’t dare to make a sound. The fear was getting stronger and their breaths were getting louder. Each one of them was panting intensely, internally mourning the loss of their friends. Even Kate didn’t make a single move; the headache from before was too traumatising to handle. Slender Man was glaring at all of them, and all of them looked at him in fear, when suddenly, Rainbow Dash’s adrenaline bursted out.

“LET US GO! UGH!” she snapped.

“Rainbow, don’t!” Kate warned.

But it was too late; Slender Man’s tentacles already gripped her neck and strangled it with brutal force. The athletic girl tried opposing resistance, but it was futile; the faceless one was way more powerful. The rest of the girls that were left were watching in pure horror as their dear friend died under the tentacles’ pressure.

They were aware it was their turn. There was no escape. Thus, Slender Man started torturing all of them at once. Applejack and Rarity were also strangled to death,while Fluttershy was impaled, spitting blood from her mouth.

It was a grisly sight for Kate. She was helpless and too weak to stand a chance. Soon enough, Mane 6 collapsed on the ground, limp and lifeless. But there was more; Kate might have been alive, but she was still trapped. She started running in the other direction and look for an alternate escape. But it was no use, because Slender used his tendrils to catch her and lift her up to his level, just like he did before. The girl was petrified; she just couldn’t say anything to confront the monster. It was all over…

Out of nowhere, the other side of the forest was glowing with orange lights. These light beams weren’t ordinary, they were accompanied by several unknown voices. Just like they were alive…

On the landmarks, something unusual happened as well. The Cutie Marks of the Equestrian Girls were magically carved into most of these landmarks, with neon-like traces. The rocks were marked with Rarity’s symbol, the walls with Fluttershy’s, the restroom with Applejack’s, the tanks with Rainbow Dash’s, the tunnel with Pinkie’s, and finally, the tree with Twilight’s.

The orange lights spread across the forest until they reached the corpses of Mane 6. The bright strange lights surrounded the lifeless bodies, lifting them up in the air. Slender Man paused, and Kate was completely stunned. Not only that, the bizarre beams started healing and reviving the girls, while they also formed the everlasting Elements of Harmony: Generosity, Kindness, Honesty, Loyalty, Laughter and Magic.

“What is happening?” Kate muttered, feeling like she was dreaming.

Meanwhile, the girls woke up, glancing at their surroundings.

“No way!” Twilight exclaimed, completely puzzled.

Suddenly, the magic around Mane 6 grabbed Kate from Slender Man’s grasp. The creature tried to get her again, but Twilight involuntarily formed a magic shield that rejected the tentacles.

“Tara, is that you?” Kate wondered, believing that her insanity had progressed.

“Yes, Kate, it’s us, your friends,” Twilight replied with convincement.

At last, Mane 6 made their final move, All of them rose their hands in the air, then pointed them at Slender Man, who was angry that he couldn’t do anything about all of this. His tentacles were still coiling in mid-air, surprisingly showing fear.

Out of each girl’s hand burst out a colourful beam of magic. Inover a few seconds, there were six distinctly-coloured beams that hit the faceless monster; suprisingly, they caused him unbearable pain and agony, signaled by his monstrous scream. For the first time in humanity’s history, Slenderman was completely defeated. He melted and disintegrated into oblivion, then he exploded in a luminous rainbow, very similar to the Sonic Rainboom.

Everything faded to black in the moment.

*next morning*

Twilight slowly opened her eyes. The forest never looked so peaceful. It didn’t take a lot for the others to wake up, without any remaining scratch or scar.

“Girls, we did it! We finally did it!” Twilight exclaimed in excitement, then touched her tiara, which was a true miracle. The other girls fet their Elements of Harmony around their necks as well. It was, indeed, a miracle.

“Um, what the heck happened last night?” Rainbow asked, while rubbing her eyes.

“Whatever that was, I’m glad we’re free from him…” Fluttershy admitted.

“Girls, can’t you see? Our Elements of Harmony! They’re back!” Twilight exclaimed again.

“You owe me an explanation, Tara…” Kate added with a smug expression. “But first, we gotta rest for a while. Don’t you agree?”

Mane 6 nodded at Kate’s statement.

“Perfect! Let’s hang out at my house, it’s not far from this place. My mom would be glad to meet you!”

Rainbow and Applejack felt a bit of distrust, but they had no choice, apparently. Their legs couldn’t walk anymore, so the group went towards Kate’s house. When they arrived, they couldn’t believe what they saw. Kate’s house was really big, placed in the heart of the forest. The sight was beautiful, indeed. Right at the threshold, there was Kate’s mother, Beth Hayes; despite her age, her expression was truly youthful, and her red curly locks complimented her appearance. Still, she had a worried look on her face.

“Kate! You’re finally back, my dear!” she ran away to hug her daughter.

“Good morning!” Twilight greeted.

“Are you Kate’s friends? Come in, I have cookies and I’m gonna prepare smoothies for y’all!” Beth said with an inviting tone, then hurried to the kitchen.

Kate shrugged at her mother’s excessive generosity, but she was glad to see her again, after all. Especially after that night. Before making themselves comfortable in the living room, Twilight and Kate had to take all of the Elements of Harmony and hide them in Kate’s room.

“Listen, Kate, I would like you to keep all of them in a safe place. As much as I’d prefer having them at disposal, in my apartment, I still think it’s a huge risk, hence anyone can come in and take them without having any idea how powerful they are…” Twilight explained.

“What’s the deal with these things, if I may ask? You aren’t from this world, aren’t you?”

“No, we aren’t. But you must not tell anyone about this. Not yet. I want you to keep them safe, Kate, because you’re far away from a potential threat. Do you understand?”

“I do. When will I hear the entire story, though?”

“Soon enough. We’ll come again after we get used to all these ‘human stuff’ and explain you everything. But for now, promise me you’ll keep them out from your mom and any stranger that passes by!” the Equestrian demanded.

“Alright, Tara…I promise. And I’ll wait. Just be careful, okay?”

“I will…” Twilight promised as well, then hugged her new friend from Earth. Kate felt it like a huge responsibility at some point, but she had to deal with it nonetheless. At least she had a purpose once in a lifetime.

Meanwhile, the other Equestrian girls had a wonderful time with Beth Hayes. The mother was permanently cheerful and welcoming to her guests, confessing that it had been a long time since someone came to visit her; not even the relatives bothered to check on her and Kate from time to time. But both of them got used to the situation after all.

“This ain’t fair…those people can’t be called ‘family’, ma’am!” Applejack commented.

“We’ll make sure to pay you a few visits, miss Hayes. You’re a very delightful company!” Rarity said with compassion in her voice. “If it’s no bother for you and Kate, of course…”

“Good Lord, Rachael, I would be very happy to see you again! But I hope not in the same circumstance…” Beth replied with genuine warmth in her statement. “Besides, I’m glad to finally see my daughter having a few friends that truly care about her…” the woman sighed, sobbing and crying for a few moments.

Fluttershy rose from the couch and hugged Beth without hesitating. Later on, the others followed her and did the same; the bond was stronger than ever.

Finally, Twilight and Kate came downstairs, witnessing the affectionate moment from before.

“I see you’re getting along…” Twilight said with a smile on her face. “Come on, let’s get back to the town! We still have school to attend!”

“Oh, come on!” Rainbow Dash protested. “Can’t we stay just a few more minutes?”

“No. We’ve got a lot to do, trust me!”

The others also sighed, then exited the house one by one. “Goodbye, Kate! Goodbye, miss Hayes!”

“Wait, sweetie! Let me give you a few cookies. You didn’t eat anything…” Beth insisted, while offering a paper bag filled with chocolate chip cookies to the petite teenager.

Twilight had no time, nor energy to protest. “Thank you very much! Have a great day, miss Hayes! Bye, Kate!” she said while going out with the others.

Mane 6 simultaneously waved at the two humans from behind, who waved back to them. Finally, they left the yard, then the entire forest, heading towards the town on foot. Towards new experiences as humans…

-THE END-

(for now)

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