#fuel my folklore obsession

[anti-hero-of-hawkins]

thoughts on the new taylor swift tracks!! sorry it is a long post

eyes open (tv) - FAVEEEE. tbh i liked this song more than safe and sound (whoops ig). love the taylor's version. def thought the hunger games songs would be on speak now (tv) bc they came out before the red album (hunger games came out in mar 2012) but tbh they do seem more "red" era- like anyway.

safe and sound (tv) - love the increased production quality. taylor swift is the only one who could have reunited the civil wars tbh. this plus eyes open is definitely helping fuel my resurfaced hunger games obsession. safe and sound traipsed through the forest so that folklore and evermore could be grammy nominated/winning albums.

if this was a movie (tv) - can hear the "come back to me like" vs that eli thing ppl talk about!! enunciation def improved there. anyway kind of confused as to why it is being associated with fearless (tv)? did she really want it on fearless (og) but it took a lot of pushing to finally make it onto speak now deluxe (og)? i've already seen that either she put it with fearless era bc she wants to keep speak now 100% self written. this one has a co-writer. second idea that i saw on twitter is that she is not ready to release a speak now (tv) album cover, which does make sense. but she did two pseudo covers for the 1989 (tv) songs so idk. anyway it wasn't my fave track originally but it still is a banger. love the reference to it in exile!

all of the girls you loved before - only heard snippets from the leak on tiktok (tiktok swifties are so frequently impatient and it frustrates me!!) and it legit sounded like she was underwater. but i was holding out hope that i would hear the true track as she intended us to hear it! the song is great. love the production/lyrics/mixing. would have been in the top 5 for me if it was on the lover album. the bathroom lyric def calls back to red yet again (like how daylight also connects to red). the lyrics also do have a lot of parallels with cornelia street and cruel summer which i enjoy.

[nevergrewup]

Idk if anyone will look at this or see this but I wanted to make a sideblog for my current "swiftie era" (a.k.a. my current AuDHD fueled Taylor Swift hyperfixation)

I'm 27 years old, so I'm pretty late, but I've been a passive fan since Fearless. I had Fearless, Speak Now, and Red when I was younger, for some reason I missed 1989, but when Reputation came out I instantly became obsessed and listened to it every day. I still never went back and listened to 1989 until this year I think, and I didn't listen to folklore or evermore until this year either.

So this renewed interest leading into an obsession started with Fearless TV, then Red TV. Around March of this year is when I started to fixate. Cruel Summer became my favorite song. Reputation is still my favorite album. Also, my blog's namesake, The Archer is among my favorites but in the way that I feel like that song is a peek into my soul. My username can also be a callback to Never Grow Up though.

The obsession has been growing and growing since March but then Midnights came out and and I took a nosedive into being fully dedicating almost all of my free time listening to her music, watching videos, talking to my friends about her, etc. Two of my closest friends are also autistic swifties so it's a trip. I feel like her music and artistry really lends itself so well to being a special interest.

Again, I know I'm so late and I'm so new despite passively following off and on since Fearless, but my being autistic makes me fixate and love HARD. I have been using Spotify for almost a decade and she has already become my *number one artist of all time* on Spotify and thats even considering my favorite band of 17 years, Fall Out Boy (and holy fuck do I love that one of Taylor's favorite lyricists is Pete Wentz).

I'm going to try and see her in Houston. I'm working on not having an ugly sobbing breakdown during Would've, Could've, Should've if she does that live because jesus christ. Also champagne problems can y'all imagine? Fingers crossed for All Too Well 10 minute version. Fingers and toes crossed for Cruel Summer my soul will leave my body if I hear that live. I will trade literally anything for Cruel Summer. The absolute HIGH I get from that song.

Even when this obsession inevitably lessens for me, it's safe to say I now have a life-long steady love for her. I always felt like certain songs of hers could describe my life and my pain and heartbreak even when I was younger but now it's on another level entirely.

I was fully prepared to go see her in Houston alone, pay for it alone, drive myself alone, MAYBE meet up with one of my close friends I mentioned earlier. Houston is about 3 hours away from where I live in Louisiana (New Orleans is not much closer but it's more practical for me but it's not on this tour this time), but when it came up in conversation with my parents, I was surprised they wanted to go too and drive me there. I was so moved by that I cried. I registered for Verified Fan but I won't be surprised if I don't get a code. I'll be relying on Capital One pre-sale if not.

I'm just thinking about how even when I wasn't a swiftie, her music has still gotten me through so much in my life throughout multiple stages of my life. I keep getting emotional and crying thinking about having any chance of seeing her life. Having any seat in that stadium. The fact that my parents are willing to support me on this even though I'm a mostly financially independent adult.

Anyways I hope y'all will have me 🥺👉👈

[afro-elf]

fine, i’ll elaborate on my thoughts about tylor sift but they will be disorganized

disclaimer: i know a few people will read this and be like “op is a hozier fan can she really talk about the cultural obsession with mediocre white art?” and the answer is yes because a) i’m black and i have an english degree so can do whatever i fucking want, b) hozier is a better artist than taylor objectively, like his mediocre tracks would be considered her great ones, and c) the comparison of taylor to hozier is part of the problem Genuinely because i don’t even think white people like half the music they listen to, they just don’t wanna be left behind, we’ll get into this later. i’m sorry to everyone who is tired of hearing about him but hozier will be returning later in this post jsfglsjlgldsjlfd

second note: read this

i don’t just dislike taylor because she’s white. i don’t dislike taylor because she’s a woman. i don’t dislike her because she writes mean and petty lyrics about past relationships and people who wronged her. i don’t dislike taylor because her public circle of friends is almost exclusively blonde white celebrities with their own laundry lists of issues that includes ryan reynolds and blake lively who are poster children for white privilege and pseudo-excellence if i’ve ever seen them. i dislike taylor because the amalgamation of all of those things is so exemplary of a huge problem i have with the music industry in general but also like american society

fuck it, numbered list!

1. taylor swift consistently releases the same mediocre album but in different colors. every album is the same lyrically and tonally. her body of work rarely goes very far above “good for taylor swift”. folklore as both title and musical aesthetic is irrelevant to the actual content of the album, which is just every taylor swift album except set to folk pop and with a bit more cussing, congrats for baby’s first swear. i’ve seen folklore compared to much better bodies of work and even propped up by stans as album of the year, a distinction that rina sawayama and chloe x halle will be battling it out for if there is any justice in the world at all. the fact that she is allowed to do this and still be considered great when this is something that even white male artists are butchered critically for... astounds me. like we all know how well received all of coldplay’s similar sounding albums are.... Come on. 

2. i don’t think taylor or her work is particularly feminist and yet for some reason every time she frowns an army of white women brings her kleenex. i’m not saying taylor’s anger has always been unjustified, but her feminism to me has always felt like “i can do whatever a man can do” feminism, which is utterly fucking useless to me as a black woman. it’s only useful to her because as a wealthy, white, straight, cis white woman her ONLY obstacle in life is her gender. and if she just didn’t have that tricky little bitch then maybe people would take her seriously. like, just think about her music video for the man... what was the thesis of that? what was the point of that? with all of her privileges she’d just be gaining a single extra privilege. she’s a blonde blue eyed thin white girl, the world kisses her feet. i have no interest in proving myself any better or any worse than white men, they are not the standard for how a person should be treated, they’re cautionary tales, and white women are too. i think taylor capitalizes off of white woman victimhood, and it’s all over her writing style. even when she’s trying to be empowered, like in mad woman for example, there is this tone to it of victimization, poking the bear, unleashing the beast if you will. she invokes the imagery of salem witches and even more boldly chooses a noose to write about in the song which is..... surely going to be a white tumblr staple for many gifsets to come but holy shit is it hollow. she also tends to come back to teenage memories in her music and she’s thirty. i don’t think about being seventeen unless i’m being held at gunpoint but she seems to think about it All The Time. and part of this is to keep herself young, at least in her music, which only further ingrains this image of fragile teeny bopper taylor into the mind of the listener, fueling her victim image. this imagery and language means nothing because the world always rallies around taylor. even when she was the butt of jokes for not being beyonce (which she is not and never can be) and writing about her exes (which she does), she was largely supported by the industry and by critics. look at how many fucking awards she has!

3. folk and indie and alternative music is in a moment of transition, where musicians of color are getting the chance to really speak about how they’ve been treated in these overwhelmingly white circles and create their own standards and their own voices. and for taylor swift to swoop in with aaron dessner and jack antonoff fantano and almost reassert that mid-2010s indie sound as The Sound of folk pop in the popular consciousness.... it makes me violent! it! makes! me! violent! 

4. back to hozier! finally, i wanna talk about white standom, fandom, bandom, and womandom. i often see these very superficial comparisons between hozier and taylor (and hozier and florence and hozier and stevie nicks and hozier and whatever other white woman in fashion) and they frustrate me for more than one reason. i know that hozier has met taylor and said she’s cool, which is nice of him and he’s a nice man, but i’m not a nice man so i’m going to just say it: none of the people who have made those posts have listened to more than four hozier songs and it shows. the reason why this matters is because these posts catch on and create an image and preconception of hozier’s music that is divorced from reality and divorced from his influences and most importantly divorced from the deliberate and reverent blackness of his musical style. hozier has his white male privilege in the industry for sure but he’s not as towering of a giant as taylor and taylor’s music is an unsalted chicken, plain oatmeal, white paint drying on a white wall, a stick of unflavored gum. her music is so white it told me that its dad is a cop. i am, as a black hozier fan, exhausted with having to share space with white women who don’t know why hozier’s music kicks me in my lungs sometimes and think that taylor mentioning a tree ONCE in her 3 minute acoustic guitar slog about whatever suburb is the same when it simply is not. i swear some of you are pretending to love taylor because your friends love her and you don’t wanna be left out of the hot new musical discourse but she’s only the hot new musical discourse CONSTANTLY because she’s a white woman, she’s almost the Perfect white woman. like if someone asked me to describe a white woman, it would be taylor swift. her position at the top of the musical pyramid among people who eclipse her musically, vocally, and lyrically is only allowed because she’s The Perfect White Woman. she’s an ideal. white girls relate to her immediately because of it and now we have this unshakable mob of unbearable white women who think that the world has wronged someone who literally wrote fanfiction about the rich oil heiress white woman who owned her rhode island mansion before her aklghlghdhlgs it drives me fucking NUTS 

anyway that’s all. if you made it this far, listen to adia victoria, kaia kater, samantha crain, valerie june, kelsey lu, corinne bailey rae, brittany howard, kimya dawson, japanese breakfast, cold specks, left at london, rhiannon giddens, aisha badru, shea diamond, nadine shah, xenia rubinos, karen o, mirel wagner.... Anyone

[noctilionoidea]

I made a Halloween and folklore themed painting I’m pretentiously calling The Veil Discarded. Because Halloween is a deeply important holiday for me in a variety of ways. This’ll be a long one folks.

Halloween is my favourite holiday. I loved reading about, as a child, how my ancestors (a huge and crazy concept to someone who wasn’t being raised with much of any cultures) would ward off spirits during the time when the veil thinned/lifted. I thought it was really, really amazing and just so cool. Then with the addition of several other holidays, it really just feels like an appreciation for the dead and shoving my face full of sweets surrounded by creepy things. Halloween is also great because it fuels my obsession of buying fake human skulls. Is it weird? Yes. Shut up. Also I’m a goth so it’s just a great season to find things. My mom and I like to go Halloween shopping and I recently found out that she likes doing it because of how excited and happy I get at all the creepy, “witchy” looking things and just... I love my family so much!

Anyways, there’s a lot going on background wise here. I struggle to get into the symbolism, like that woman is a faerie but like also a ao sidhe which has clear connotations and so you probably know who she’s meant to represent if you know mythology and this is referencing a specific Irish myth about samhain too but only vaguely cause it’s symbolic??? So nothing should be taken seriously whatsoever in a myth context.

A little cropped out, but also I put Jack o’ lantern, the ghost that explains the stories of will o wisps! He’s actually how I found out about will o wisps, wish those happened here in New England… but I mean we have a demonic state park here in Mass so I guess it’s an okay trade off.

basically, this shitty asshole named Jack is gonna go to hell and the devil’s come to collect his soul, but he cons the devil, making them get drinks first. Then he makes the devil turn into a coin to con the employees at the pub (a cardinal sin in my eyes tbh) and then has him drop in his pocket. THEN JACK JUST… DROPS HIS CRUCIFIX ON THE MAN. Utterly hilarious I swear. Anyways Jack makes the devil swear that he’ll never go to hell. And he doesn’t! But he’s a dick, so heaven doesn’t let him in, so the devil just gives him a fire to keep him warm in the in between. That’s the version I heard at least. I’ve heard it twice from separate sources that way so I think that’s how it goes.

I’m so fuckin ready the trees are turning and my mother’s garden is dying a natural death for the coming winter and just aaaaaa I love fall in New England so much. But advice, if you’re going to Salem go in another season! Even when I go in summer it’s very tight because Salem is still very traditional in its layout, so all the tourist areas are tighter cobblestone streets. But there’s a lot that the movies don’t show about Salem, like the nautical history. It’s gonna be cheesy, and the witch trials were basically just people selecting the impure (those they hated) to be eternally ruined, so it’s not… tonally fair? But it’s so wonderful and fun, and just the biggest fuck you to the puritans. Look what happened to your theocracy. Bitch.

[limitlessgojo]

Blood Bound: Blackened Bond (Ch 16)

Warnings: Action, Coarse Language, Fighting, Descriptions of Blood, Death, Gore, Japanese Mythical Folklore, No Major Character Death

Previous Chapter: 土御門天皇 (Tsuchimikado)

Next Chapter: Inferno: Flames of Hell

Word Count: 3.3k

Tags: Kamo Noritoshi x Reader, Soulmates AU, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Fem!Reader

Taglist: @lessie-oxj @rizzo-nero @whoreuc @fkngkumiko @isl3t @gojoussunglasses @onepotatostand-blog @s-t-f-u-b-i-t-c-h @sunaswife @lordguameow @track5enthusiast @nayydoesthings

Notes: If you want to be tagged for every update, and specify if you're okay with NSFW posts or not, please mention it in the comments below ty ❤

This chapter is LONG, a lot longer than I expected haha, happy reading!

Chapter 16: Non-Standard

Noritoshi was in a shitty mood to say the least. He went home to his clan immediately after getting a summon. The clan head had discussed their stance on the upcoming war and is readying their jujutsu sorcerers for battle.

His half-brother had made a not too subtle snarky remark about you. "You've already gotten yourself a woman? Wonder if she even likes you. I'm willing to bet Homura's cuter than her." Secretly his brother was curious about you, having heard about your special grade status.

Noritoshi steeled himself, knowing his brother's playboy tendencies at his school.

"That's enough. I am quite serious about her, so don't even think of taking her."

He watched his brother shut up upon seeing him like this and left him hanging.

'Heeehhh? That Noritoshi is actually interested in someone? Interesting…'

Other serious matters aside, his father, as usual, asked about you, only for him to find out you've both gotten into an argument.

The head of the Kamo clan only raised an eyebrow. "That’s normal for every couple."

Noritoshi kept his temper at bay. But he couldn't help resenting his phone call with his father that day. If his father was less controlling and obsessive over their clan status, maybe it would have gone better.

No... He was also influenced by the elders. Ashamed as Noritoshi was to acknowledge it himself.

“We… broke up…”

At that, his father shuts his eyes, mood obviously souring.

"You are literally a fated pair, how is that even possible? *sigh* If it proves too difficult with her… well we had that list of marriage partners set up for you. Homura has made it quite clear she and her family would be very delighted to assimilate with ours."

Is this what Noritoshi wanted? A woman who obviously flirted with him as she lusted for power? No, he wanted you, who never inquired about his status. Just about his family, his mom, dad and half siblings.

You made it very clear you were worried about his family's well-being. And whether they would like you or not. You want him to meet yours. You never even asked him for a gift or much favors. (Though he had a feeling your family was pretty well off, based on your clothes and jewellery.)

And he loved the fact that he could breathe like a regular teenage guy around you. The only thing you’ve requested from him so far was honesty and transparency.

"No. That won't be needed. Y/N is mine. She is the only one for me." He spoke slowly and clearly. This is the first time he actually disagreed with his father. He'd lose his sanity without you.

"I expected as much, I've never seen you this determined about something before. Soulmates are so complicated." His father sighed out. "Do as you wish. It isn't wise for me or the elders to interfere with something as sacred and ancient as this soulbond you share with her anyways."

Noritoshi felt himself earn a small win at that. He was growing a backbone. "Thank you father."

“However! You cannot force her to love you back. Surely you know this. If you don’t get married by the age of 25, as per our clan tradition I’ll have you set up with another woman.”

Noritoshi inwardly sighed, resigned to his fate.

◇◇◇

Needless to say, you trained like a demon as the eve of Christmas quickly approached. Nobody dared come 10 feet near you as you perfected your Blizzard and Tornado techniques. It was normal to hear the crack of a sonic boom and see flashes of lightning around you.

You were hesitant to use your cursed technique reversal. You barely use flames and Inferno in general, but it can't be helped. But now you hold a pack of matches in your hand.

You lit a match and manipulated the flames. It danced dangerously around your fingers before you moved it from one hand to the other.

You were doing well. Spending a lot of time here on campus helped you to control your emotions and not let anger fuel your cursed energy like you did when you were younger. Those were such bad habits.

A wheel of flame circled in front of you. Very clean and stable. All of the sudden, a strong whirl of wind and empty space extinguished the flames like a vacuum … Only one other person in Japan is capable of doing that other than you.

You turned your head to the side and saw an incredibly tall man with snow white hair and a pair of sunglasses approached you. His bright baby blue eyes gently twinkling and peeking over the rims of his shades.

“Satoru nii, it’s been a while. Why visit me now?” You tiredly asked. He came up just a few inches away from you, staring down at you.

“I got a call from Hiroki. I’m here to help you with your special cursed techniques. It’s time, you’ve stopped holding yourself back Neko-chan.” He leered down with his trademark grin.

◇◇◇

You spend the entire afternoon getting pushed around by Satoru. This man was crazy strong. He kicked you against a tree. “OOF” you heaved.

"You avoid using Inferno. Is it because of your childhood trauma? I'm not shaming you but it's something you need to overcome."

You frowned at his words.

"You only have today to train with me y/n! Aren’t you honored I went out of my way from Tokyo to Kyoto?”

"Like hell I am."

“You’re not using the full extent of your cursed techniques. That power is your one true ally in this world. Trust it a bit more. Apart from your soulmate anyways, but I can see you and Noritoshi aren't exactly swell right now." Your eye twitched at that statement.

Satoru eyed the broken strands of red ropes that floated around you. Not a good sign. It was reaching out to the distance. Maybe to where Noritoshi is huh, Satoru wondered. Until he spotted one thin string, still very much intact and alive. He grinned.

‘This prick and his fucking special eye abilities’, you grumbled. He hit your back hard, “What bad language you have. Imma straighten you up today kitteeeen~”

He pranced around you and squatted to lean down to your level.

"But seriously, you say you want to get strong but you fear your own power kitten. Don't do that." Satoru pointed straight at your eyes. “Remove the fear of hurting the people around you. Because you’re literally fighting to protect the ones you love, focus instead on harnessing your cursed energy to fight. Your messed up emotions could cost you a fight, even your life. Doesn’t matter if you’re a special grade like me. At this rate you won’t catch up to me.”

You slumped to the ground in defeat.

“To be honest, I feel like my growth has stunted. I don’t know if it’s the lack of powerful opponents I’ve had lately.”

He sighed out so loudly and obnoxiously that your anger flared up at him. “Thaaat’s what I kept telling you. You shoulda come to Tokyo Jujutsu instead of here! 100% I would enjoy teaching you and I mean it. I could teach you ya know, and Yuuta is there as well. Another Special Grade, although his circumstances are quite unique and with the way he is right now, you have a better chance at beating him one-on-one since he’s a newbie to this world. And yet you kept saying you wanted to be here for your family.” He shook his head.

You felt as though your head cleared up all of a sudden. “Because I was here…. I was meant to be here. Satoru. I know it deep in my soul. Because I met Noritoshi and…. “ Your heart throbbed so loudly you heard it in your ears. A deep pain stabbed into you.

Ah right. You said you were over him. You broke up with him weeks ago.

“And? You’re not together anymore. Figure out your heart and I could let you reconsider transferring to Tokyo Jujutsu High you know?” He said with a frown.

Why does the idea of leaving Noritoshi behind feeling like you were carving your heart out? He isn’t anything to you anymore and yet…

No. Enough of this. You’re here to train and fight that curse that killed Sora. Your emotions were all over the place. Satoru came up to you and wiped your tears off your face.

“What are you doing to yourself y/n? Don’t lie to yourself. I thought you wanted to live life as honestly as possible.” Even Satoru looked concerned and troubled over your state.

You gulped. “Yeah you’re right. I told myself I wanted to get stronger and protect the ones I love. Now I’m just running away. Noritoshi at least has been trying to reach out to me, but I shut him down.” Your heart is hurting.

Satoru stared at you and the cursed energy that was rapidly pulsing around you. Then grinned. “Then... Fight me one-on-one right here right now. Let’s make sure to keep the damages to a minimum and take care of the buildings. All the other students are still here on campus. Sky's the limit since both of us can move well in mid-air. I want to see you control your emotions and fight me properly. I’ll hold back.” He said.

You took a deep breath and looked back up. “Challenge accepted.”

You’ve envisioned this countless times. You wanted to see how you could match-up against Satoru and all his years of experience. You weren’t expecting to win, but you were not going down without a fight. Your cursed technique is actually a good matchup for his.

You can manipulate molecules. Though you suspect his control is on an atomic level, and thus could overpower yours due to his finesse and 6 eyes. But you could at the very least try.

Satoru, on the other hand, already knew of your potential. 'She is the only one I know who can actually touch and surpass me, given that she can control gravity and condense molecules. It will come down to timing and refining techniques.'

“Give me 5 minutes to suit up.” You asked. He agreed. You flew to your room and eyed the katana of your father. He actually planned to give it to Sora when she turns 16. But due to her death, he gave it to you instead on your 16th.

The name was Kintsugi, because it was made of two halves before being welded together in the centre with high grade steel. The center has a core of a fine diamond dust that’s infused with cursed energy. It’s a grade 1 special tool that multiplies the cursed energy you put into it by 10.

“Don’t break it. Don’t break it…. But It’s Satoru I’m going against. It will break.” And so you put it back and instead reached for your best twin blades and metallic whip. You coiled it around your wrist like a bangle, before flying back to Satoru.

“Done preparing, kitten?” He had removed his sunglasses and his blue eyes were out wide open as they assessed your cursed technique.

“Yep!” You yelled. “Ah Toru, shouldn’t we inform the elders or Utahime sensei that we-”

He didn’t give you time to speak as he appeared in front of you all of the sudden. Rushing with a right hook. You quickly dodged. He kept his word and is going easy on you at least.

You exchanged a few blows with him, both his limitless and your spacial barrier active so technically, no hits were landed.

Until you warped the space and forced the molecules around them to retract, making you actually reach and hit him.

He must have expected the solid punch, because in return, he kicked you as he warped off your spacial barrier. You eyed him as you regrouped. It’s anyone’s game huh.

“You’re still holding back! Are you going to be like this in a real battle? Are you okay with staying weak? Or do you have to wait for someone special to die before you ignite?!”

Oh no he didn’t. Your emotions raged, and you tried to calm them down. But all you saw was blood red. You never felt this angry at Satoru before. Before you knew it, you had activated inferno, making the entire surrounding area, which Satoru was in, combust and burn up in flames.

You lit up a match and pulled the flames on the ground and trees towards your smaller flame and held a massive ball of fire. Satoru was gone, it was only soot on the ground. You looked up to see him hurtling down at you.

You barely dodged, before wrapping the flames around you as you used it to strike at him repeatedly. You both rose up higher and higher into the air.

“Special art: Goldenrod,” you shot a bolt of lightning at Satoru only for him to dodge it. “Don’t just shoot it from your hands! Electricity is a current! You can make it run through your entire body!” He yelled as you both spiraled and fought over the campus.

He had the energy to teach you while you were fighting. You scoffed, but listened carefully, generating electricity in your hands before letting it wrap around you.

You were both dodging and striking at each other with such power. The trees swayed violently as winds and rubble were thrown about.

“What on earth…” Noritoshi and the other students stared at the flashes of fire, lightning, and wind above the campus.

The sky darkened. Good. If you had water, that was another asset.

He must have realized this as he immediately activated his Cursed Technique: Reversal. “Red.” You were forced back, plummeting to the ground. You swiftly turned and saw Miwa and Mai staring at you with horror.

You pulled yourself up back into the sky, still filled with fire and lightning, narrowly missing the building. You twisted your fingers to the side. The flames turned into the shape of the Dragon and you whipped back to hit Satoru from the front while your dragon of flame hit him from behind.

He danced around your attacks, teleporting from one area to the next to dodge them.

He then easily extinguished your flames with a flick of his wrist, but your lightning stayed. He can’t extinguish it, because it was coursing through your body, constantly moving.

You both stood, hundreds of feet high above the Kyoto Campus in midair. Lightning flashed above and winds howled.

You’ve never been pushed this hard your entire life. Not with Hiroki. Not with Todo. But Satoru was really on another level of strong. Unbreakable like a monster. He didn’t feel human anymore.

You tried for a Mach Speed hit, which you’ve never tried on anyone else; it would kill them on impact. “Mach 3.5” There was a loud BANG!

Going at Mach Speed has its limits of course. You can afford to do Mach 1, 5 times a day. Mach 2, 3 times, and Mach 4 only once.

A huge cone of smoke formed behind you as you launched yourself at Satoru. He was still able to evade you, but you pointed one hand to him, quickly following up on another attack.

“Fubuki.” Your blizzard technique was a combination of Niflheim and Tatsumaki. Cold air whipped around you and you thrust it towards Satoru. A mini tornado has formed around you and it pushed and pulled widely. But you were in the eye of the storm.

Satoru dodged your winds, but couldn’t escape them all, wincing as some small ice shards cut into his skin. He attracted debris and rocks towards you. One caught on your shoulder, making you yell in pain, but the rest you were able to guard against with your winds.

He immediately closed in on you to prevent you from doing another full blast and punched with ‘Red’. You countered with a roundhouse kick supercharged with your blizzard and lightning, neutralising his infinity jujutsu with a bit of mixed gravity control.

A huge gust of whirlwind was emitted from the impact, forcing everyone on campus down to the ground.

“GOJO! TSUCHIMIKADO! STOP THIS!” Utahime was screaming at the top of her lungs, still heard over the roar of thunderclap.

You both looked at each other and knew it had to end soon. Rain was starting to fall.

He threw his back and laughed out loud. “I hadn’t had this much fun in ages. You’ve grown really strong. Stop me if you can.” And flew away from the buildings and into the surrounding forest. You whipped your tornado around you and quickly followed him.

All the other students that had been watching you go at it followed. Utahime did as well. They stood from a distance as both of you exchanged more hits.

You lit another match and let arrows made of flames rain on Satoru, weakening his limitless barrier as much as you could. Only one arrow slightly singed his sleeve. Damn he was good.

Satoru attracted your body with “Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue.” You felt like your insides were tearing as you tried to stop his force. But his limitless technique easily overpowered yours. You let go and rushed towards him with both your swords out.

He easily sidestepped and kicked them out of your grasp. The hit was so heavy, even though it hit your swords, you felt the force reverberate throughout your body.

Satoru grabbed your neck from behind, and for the very first time since you were awarded the Special Grade Jujutsushi status, you were forced down onto the ground.

You used your cursed technique to soften the blow as much as possible, but Satoru was relentless as he slammed you head-first down onto the grass.

Everyone winced as you hit the ground hard. "He's not human." Mai said. Everyone agreed, not used to seeing you at the mercy of another party like this. They were reminded of who exactly was the strongest sorcerer alive.

In order to win against Satoru, your goal was to touch him and move past his limitless barrier. Even if it’s just for a moment. You couldn’t use Niflheim or Inferno from afar. He would remain unaffected as he guards and stops the change in movement of molecules around him.

But now his hand was around your neck. Your twin blades suddenly rush to close in around his neck in an x position to gather his attention, while you use your technique to warp the space around his hand to weaken limitless and hold onto him.

You lashed out with your metallic whip, letting your cursed technique run through it. It worked and scratched his cheek a bit.

"Enhanced gravity: Output 30%", the ground cracked underneath the both of you as a massive weight pressed down. And then you shocked both Satoru and yourself with the lightning coursing through you. Screaming at the pain in the process.

He gritted his teeth as volts shocked his bones.

Utahime and the others stared at both of you. "What a huge amount of cursed energy." Todo said in awe. "Non-standard Jujutsu users are insane."

Satoru still had the strength to hit your lower back which caused you to heave out and stop Goldenrod from activating. Both of your clothes were literally toasted. “Haha. You’re a scary one y/n.”

That’s all you remembered before you passed out; you were out of cursed energy.

◇◇◇

Noritoshi rushed over to take you in his arms. Pulling your unconscious body close to his, he gave you a once-over. You had just fainted from exhaustion, there were no serious injuries. Good.

"Noritoshi," Satoru called.

"Yes, Gojo San?"

"Take care of her for me please."

He straightened up, "Of course. There’s no need to ask that from me." He then carried you to the infirmary, holding you gently in his arms.

Blood Bound: Table of Contents

Author's Notes: Me writing this entire scene: FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!! (x100)

Y/n was able to fight on par with Satoru, because he chose to limit his cursed energy output and match his skills to her level. A psychokinesis cursed technique would be a natural enemy for limitless since you can condense and expand space between molecules. But you still lack experience in battle. And if we were going to talk about Domains, Satoru would dominate the battle.

[linnea-quinn]

[ EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT VEELA ]

An Informative Research Document Compiled by The Librarian’s Consortium of Higher Magical Theory, Narrative Preservation, & Knowledge Procurement

Shelved in UK Catalogue: Magical Species: Beings: Veela

Edited by: Sr. Librn. Benjamin Arnold, Intake Officer, European Division {editor’s notations in braces}

In Muggle Folklore

Referred to colloquially as samodiva or samovila in the Veelan country of origin, Bulgaria, the Muggles’ perception of the Veelan race has been fraught with misconception. Locally equated with mythology surrounding fae, forest spirits, and wood nymphs, a brief compilation of relevant Muggle beliefs about Veela is as follows:

The name samodiva is formed by combining two separate words, ‘samo’ and ‘diva’. The former means ‘alone’, whilst the latter ‘wild’, or ‘divine’, hence the name literally means ‘wild alone’. The first part of the creature’s name signifies its avoidance of human beings, whereas the second indicates her wild or divine nature. {In truth, the Veelan race are highly secretive in what they share about their kind with magical and Muggle communities alike.}

The samodivi are always described as extremely beautiful women who never age. {Not quite factual; see sec. below: “Lifespan” for facts regarding Veelan aging.} They have long, blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Their attire consists of a long white gown made of moonbeams. Other legends depict them as ethereal maidens with long, loose hair, and in some cases, wings, typically dressed in free-flowing, feathered white gowns, which give them the power of flight. {Perhaps a historical perception of the Veelan Harpy form.}

Stories about the samodivi often portray them as being harmful towards human beings. Although these creatures enjoy dancing, especially when accompanied by the music of a kaval or shepherd’s pipe, they often either seduce or kidnap a shepherd to obtain that music. If an unfortunate human stumbles on the samodivi whilst they are dancing, he would be enticed to join them. The human, not being able to keep up with their pace, would die of exhaustion. Beginning at midnight and finishing at dawn, their dance symbolized the raw energy of both nature and the supernatural world. {No truth to the menacing intent behind this myth, but the Veela’s Dance has been known to evoke a trancelike response in some humans; see section below: “Active Abilities.” Also calls to mind the ritualistic birthing practices of Veela; see section below: “Veelan Conception & Birth”}

Some legends depict samodivas with an affinity for fire. They have the power to bring about drought, burn a farmer's crops, or make cattle die of high fever. It is said that, when angered, a samodiva can change her appearance and turn into a monstrous bird, capable of throwing fire at her enemies. {Another early reference to the Harpy form.}

They are usually hostile and dangerous to people. Men who gaze upon a samodiva fall instantly in love or in lust. Sometimes a samodiva would seduce a person, commonly a shepherd or a trespasser in her forest, and take them for her lover. However, in doing so, she would take all of their life energy. The person would then become obsessed with the samodiva and chase her relentlessly, unable to think of anything else. The samodiva, fueled by the energy stolen from her admirer, would then proceed to torture the person until he died of exhaustion. {See sections below: “Active Abilities” & “Passive Abilities” for facts which could have inspired such myths.} 

A samodiva's power is believed to come mostly from her long (usually blond) hair. A samodiva would sometimes give a small portion of it to her lover to strengthen her control over him via its magical effects. However, if her hair is damaged in some way, she will either disappear entirely or be stripped of her powers and beauty. {Little truth to this myth beyond the magical properties contained in Veelan hair, which is infrequently used as a wix wand core.}

A samodiva's close connection to the forest makes her knowledgeable about magical herbs and cures for all illnesses. It is said that if a person managed to eavesdrop on a gathering of samodivas he could also gain knowledge of these remedies. In many stories, this is exactly what the hero is forced to do to save a loved one, as a samodiva would never share her secrets willingly. In Macedonian folklore, samovila's are often seen that they have the ability to hurt people or to heal them. {See section below: “Passive Abilities” regarding accelerated healing.}

Veelan Conception & Birth

The process by which Veela bear children is not fully understood, but what we do know is that to become pregnant, a Veela must copulate with Intent, in sync with the Natural Harmonics of the area, and after a ritual involving one full Moon Cycle.

Births of newborn Veela commonly happen late evening or early morning while the moon is still visible. The birth of a full-blooded Veela is a dedicated occasion that involves a number of members of the community at once, as neither the conception nor birth are as typical as Humans. The birth of two full-blooded Veelan twins is a rarity amongst the species, and is a highly coveted, sacred occurrence.

Due to the mishap of the Birth of the Twins, the birth is overseen by members of the community to ensure no nefarious acts are occurring, that those involved are protected, and that the ritual can take place comfortably beneath the moon. The presence of a matriarch for the Veelan bloodline being sired is preferable during the birthing ritual.

Lifespan

A common misconception regarding Veela is that they are immortal; in truth, Veela do age, albeit very slowly in comparison to humans and even wix lifespans. Full-blooded Veela average a lifespan of one thousand years, while a half-blooded Veela will average 500-600 years. 

A Veela will mature at a rate comparable to humans through “puberty”; roughly 12-17 years after a Veela’s birth they will experience the most growth and development of their passive abilities, and after approximately eighteen years, a Veela is considered fully mature in their society, and will not appear to significantly age until the last 20-50 years of their life. It is likely this quality that perpetuates the myth of Veela being eternally youthful.

Passive Abilities

Known for their beauty, a Veela’s allure is in fact biological; most humans are drawn to Veela, and have been often noted to experience lust and desire while in the presence of a Veela at a heightened or even sometimes overwhelming rate. 

Full-blooded Veela possess the ability to transform into a winged, part-bird Harpy-form when enraged, and while in this form they can shoot fireballs from their hands. This shifted form has not been recorded as passed on to part-Veela historically; however, there are several cases of noted affinity to birds in particular, which is theorized to stem from the Veelan Harpy form.

Veelan blood has accelerated healing properties, which means those of Veelan descent heal from cosmetic wounds more rapidly, have difficulty maintaining piercings and tattoos, and are rarely known to contract common illnesses. Historically, Veelan blood was highly sought after by wix, often hunted for and sold on the medicine circuit to aid in healing. Veelan blood is noted to smell irresistible to vampires, and possess a drug-like high on vampires who consume it. Lesser known about is the healing qualities a Veela’s saliva can have on a human wound; in fact, the modern practice of kissing an injury to “make it better” comes from a very old Veelan medicinal practice of kissing an injury to heal it. 

Veela are generally highly in tune with the natural world, including plants and animals, and most report being more comfortable the closer they are to nature. Veela also reportedly possess a latent ability to sense energies that are not perceptible to most humans in a physical way, but it’s a sense that must be nurtured and developed; most Veela have been known to channel these mysterious energies into their own form of wandless magic. 

Active Abilities

The Veela Charm

“You have to feel it. It’s like fog; gentle and delicate, but enough for you to sense against your skin. It has its own waves, its own currents, and you, my darling, have the power to guide it. You can slip it into the minds of Men and haze them, make them believe whatever you desire, and bend them to your will to act however you see fit. Or, you can wrap it around despair and smother it where it stands, press it into wounds to cloud and ease their pain. It is up to you to choose how it is used, but however you choose— do it with conviction.”

Also known as glamouring or charmé, the act of imposing a Veela Charm on a human or Being involves drawing in express emotional energy from another and then pushing it back into the mind of the person being Charmed, along with the power of the Veela’s will. Those that are experiencing strong or otherwise turbulent emotions are significantly easier to Charm, due to the emotional expenditure they’re putting out. This is especially true of emotions related to desire and anger (’passions running high,’ related to the duality of the Veela’s alluring female form and the rage-fueled Harpy-form), but can be true also of jealousy, anxiety, sadness, worry, joy, disgust, fear, hatred, love, etc.

The nature of the Charm causes the person being Charmed to be susceptible to a Veela’s suggestion, to varying degrees; for the average or half-blooded Veela, the effect equates roughly to intense emotional coercion or persuasion, that when administered properly is often indistinguishable from the Charmed’s own wants and decisions. Those under the influence of a Veela Charm are noted to experience rosy vision, and an intensified desire to please the Veela who is Charming them by doing what they suggest. Full-blooded and more powerful Veela are able to gain such control over the mind of the Charmed, however, that they can fully persuade the subconscious to their own will, effectively altering the Charmed’s perceived reality. For all Veela, the ability to generate and impose a Veela Charm is a learned skill that can be developed and mastered with practice and time.

The most powerful among the Veelan race who experience the highest level of control over their abilities are even able to perform a Veela Charm on other Veela, though this practice is highly frowned upon in Veelan society {see subsection below: “Sins”} 

Less common but still practiced amongst some Veelan circles is imbibing non-sentient lifeforms, such as flowers and plants, with traces of the Veela Charm, which causes anyone in near proximity to the item to experience a highly diluted emotional effect based on the will of the Veela who performed the Charm.

The Veela’s Dance

When full-blooded Veela perform together in a ritualized dance, the effect on humans has been characterized as mesmerizing and even hypnotic, in such a way that those watching will enter a trancelike state in which they experience a loss of words, and will sometimes try to impress the Veela in foolhardy ways.

Link of Kin

Originally known as vrŭzka na krŭvta, or “bond of blood” in Bulgarian, the Link or Nexus of Kin is a phenomenon of consciousness connection between Veela in the same bloodline. While Linked, a pair or group of Veela experience an intense magical empathic connection which allows them to feel each others’ emotions on a sensory and telepathic communicative level, as well as share memories. This process is known to be calming and meditative--a heightened zen-like state similar to the ease Veela naturally feel in the presence of other Veela, but exponentially more powerful the more Veela are Linked. The “blood connection” is thought of as sacred and spiritual to Veela, whose long lifespans place particular gravity on family, lineage, and collective memory.

The Link of Kin is a learned process; however, very rarely, a Veela will be a Nexus Born Natural. Such a Veela would, from the earliest development of their abilities, experience an involuntary empathic connection with humans and other Beings, drawing in emotional energy with noticeable physical sensation, as well as sensing the “lifeforce” of the consciousness of others, and sometimes unintentionally mirroring or reflecting drawn-in emotions that are not their own. A Born Natural’s abilities are notoriously difficult to control and require dedicated focus and training to master, lest the Veela become overwhelmed by the constant influx of outside energetic stimuli.

Cold Iron

It’s been shown through some limited study that both passive and active Veelan abilities can be lessened, minimized, and even warded off entirely through the controversial use of cold-forged iron.

A process known only by Goblinkind and kept highly secretive by the same, the cold iron must be forged using a precise process, and then bound to the wix’s aura for the relative immunity to Veelan abilities to be effective. Any slip up in this process can result in disastrous, irreparable damage to a person’s aura. {Recommend further testing and study on the effects of cold iron in relation to Veela and wix.}

Veelan Society

Veelan society is largely matriarchal, with Veelan male offspring being something of a rarity in terms of percentage. Because of the long lifespans of Veela, a Veelan matriarch’s successor is selected prior to their death, and can be chosen from any of the matriarch’s Veelan kin, regardless of their age; often, a new reigning Veela matriarch will be selected based on merit and their contributions to Veelan society as a whole. 

Similarly, the death of any Veela is considered a great loss to the societal collective, and as such, the death of a Veela is mourned internationally. All Veela are made aware of their passing and permitted a compulsory mourning period for their fallen kin.

Sins

A set of rules taught to and followed by all Veela which, should they be broken, are considered Sin(s);

None should use the Charm against another Veela. Despite being difficult to achieve, if done the consequences can be exile or even death, depending on the nature of the Sin.

No other Beings are permitted within or around the spaces owned by a brood without prior approval by the Matriarch.

Veela & Other Beings

Veela & Were-Beings/Half-Breeds

With their connection to the moon and close relationship with animals themselves, Veela and Were-Beings tend to get on surprisingly well; they manage to find a common ground on many fronts, their Harpy blood lending to a softness and kinship.

Veela & Vampires: Siblings

{NOTE: THIS SECTION HAS BEEN MARKED AS SENSITIVE AND RESHELVED FOR FURTHER ANALYSIS}

...

{For further study, known Veelan Bloodlines, historical succession disputes, or notable Veelan figures and historically significant events, please consult Appendices A-E of the catalogue Magical Species: Beings: Veela.}

[lovehugsandcandy]

Mermaid Magic (ColtxMC, RoD)

A/N: Apparently, if you want something done, you better do it yourself (note: not done well. just done). Based off the amazing idea where MC is a mermaid and Colt is an idiot from @escanorelyon, here. Thank you for letting me write this and for coming up with such a delicious concept. Anyone, if you want to put your own spin on the idea, I would love to see what you come up with! Tag me!

Pairing: Colt x MC, ROD

Length: ~3,000 words

Rating/Warnings: PG-13 (Swearing?)

Summary: Is the surprise that there’s a mermaid? Or is the surprise that it takes him so long to figure it all out?

The plunge is weightless, terrifyingly familiar, and his swift reentry to earth, via splash into the Pacific so deep his ears roar with the pressure, never fails to take his breath away. As Colt kicks back to the surface, salt water around him churning with every stroke, he can almost pretend it has taken his stress away, a complete distraction from the rationale behind his trip to LA.

He emerges and shakes the sea from his hair, swiping at the water dripping from his nose and tonguing at his tingling lips. It’s peaceful here, tranquil, miles away from the confrontation he knows awaits. The cliff had always been the opposite of his home life, peace instead of strife, calm instead of stress, and the trips had always been a respite from the turmoil of his youth. After being forced to make the leap time and time again, he came to see this place as a haven of solitude, where he could be alone and process whatever shithole situation he was currently in.

A sudden splash to his left makes him realize his thoughts of solitude were ill-informed.

“Hello?” He spins, water rippling around him, eyes darting around the surface to assess whatever danger lay beneath.

But it doesn’t look like danger as a face slowly comes into view, chestnut hair slowly rising through the sea. She blinks at him, eyes glowing almost otherworldly in the sunlight, and she purses her lips. She looks wary, scared, as if he was the one who impinged on her peaceful time. “Hi.”

“How the hell did you get here?” He cranes his neck up at the cliff; there were no other cars there when he arrived and he sure as hell would have heard someone else diving into the water. And it’s inaccessible from the sides, cliff towering over them, steep rock jutting out in treacherous points, against which the Pacific crashed in rhythmic pulses booming into the sea air. “This is my spot.”

Her plush lips fall open. “Your spot?” she sputters incredulously. “Are you kidding me?”

“I’ve been coming here since I was eight.”

“I’ve been coming here forever. You don’t own this spot, you utter buffoon!” She swims closer, glaring at him, and, had he less experience in dealing with the rage of others, he might have stood down; however, her anger only fuels his.

“How did you even get here? I was swimming here first.”

“You don’t own the sea and you were not here first!” Her movements are choppy with anger as she gets closer, but Colt doesn’t retreat, treading water and glaring defiantly back. “I’ve been here…” Her diatribe fades into the surf as he notices that she is being followed, graceful teal fin swimming after her, flapping over the water.

“Umm, “ he interrupts, “something’s behind you.”

“What?” She spins, and the tail does too, swirling around her, too close to be a normal fish. It doesn’t look like a normal anything, swaying just over the waves, matching her every motion movement-for-movement.

His heart stops and, before he can think, he ducks under the water, eyes stinging as he forces them open. It has to be a trick of the light, some weird fever dream. Maybe he died leaping from the cliff. Maybe he isn’t even in LA, instead still lying in his dorm room having talked himself out of this adventure of paternal reunion. Because anything would make more sense than what he was seeing. 

For, in front of his eyes, there is a fucking tail where her legs should be, swirling gracefully and leaving tiny ripples in its wake. The scales glisten, catching the sunlight filtering through the ocean, and it is strangely compelling: unnatural, alien, gorgeous. He opens his mouth and swallows a gulp of salt water, sputtering to the surface to hack and cough and try to get air to his lungs.

When he can finally see again, she is gaping at him, eyes wide, breath coming in uncertain pants. “Wait…” she murmurs weakly, “I can explain-”

“Oh my God.” He can barely believe his eyes but, at the terrified look on her face, he realizes he wasn’t seeing things. “You’re a mermaid.”

~~~~~

The plan had been simple: get to LA, go to the sideshow, have the requisite argument with his father, probably punctuated by a screaming match at the garage, and then fight his way into the crew and prove his worth.

But everything had changed after his leap into the water, when he had met a goddamned mermaid, a fucking sea creature, floating outside the PCH like she belonged in California, not in the dusty tomes of some piece of shit folklore.

Make no mistake, he still wanted to fight his way back into his father’s good graces (assuming Teppei possessed good grace, Colt would be content with begrudging acceptance instead). But now, he was desperate to solve the mystery. He had begged her to stay, voice dipping into embarrassingly weak pleas, but she had panicked and leapt into the waves, tail flitting behind her in a merry farewell as she fled.

He couldn’t let that be the last time he saw her; he had to talk to her again. He was so distracted, wandering around the sideshow with his mind on the sea, that he almost walked straight into a couple, wandering the cars side-by-side and meandering through the crowd.

“Watch where you’re going,” he shot out, halfheartedly, more instinct than conscious thought. 

“You watch where you’re going.” The kid turned, swinging his hair out of his eyes to size Colt up. He rolled his eyes. Did this punk really want to start something here? Of all places?

The girl in front of him stops short as well but, as soon as she turns, she flinches, damp hair settling in haphazard waves around her fine features as she gawks at him, eyes wide. They gleam, large in her face, an almost otherworldly glow from the dance floor strobe lights, and she looks terrified. Colt scoffs; he might rough up her man, but he wouldn’t lay hands on this tiny brunette. He’s not that much of a prick.

She stares at him and takes a deep breath, exhaling loudly as she studies him. He blinks back, waiting, never dropping the gaze. Finally, she speaks. “Ummm....Hi?”

With the sour intensity painting her features, he expected a better opening line. “What? Cat got your tongue, sweetheart?” She’s still staring at him in terror, eyes glassy, face pale. 

“What? Ummm… you don’t…” Her tongue pokes out to wet her trembling lips and he follows the movement before remembering the asshole perched next to her. “You don’t know who I am?”

“Sorry,” he scoffs, already bored. “I don’t pay attention to every single pair of losers that has the audacity to get in my way.” He shakes his head and stalks off, mind already returning to the waves and the shadow of a tail underneath the surface.

~~~~~ 

He is absolutely, completely, world-endingly obsessed.

Colt is no stranger to obsession (motorcycles, video games, reclaiming his place as rightful heir through fists and sweat and blood) but his desperate need to see the mermaid is bordering on insanity. He leaps from the cliff, again and again and again, varying hour of day and day of week based on a detailed spreadsheet he drafted to give him the best probability to see her again. The middle of the day is fruitless, depths of the sea a brilliant reprieve from the sun sweltering overhead, but he doesn’t even notice, feeling only dismay when she doesn’t appear. The middle of the night is no better, moon lighting a solemn path through the trees as its glow echoes softly over the lapping waves, but still no mermaid.

He is starting to lose hope, despair seeping its way into his heart, when he spies a familiar head of hair in the evening sunset.

“It’s you,” he breathes and swims closer, drawn to her in a way that he doesn’t want to examine too hard.

“Hi.”

“I’ve been trying to find you, I’ve been coming here almost every day.”

She rolls her eyes. “Is that where you’ve been going?”

“What?”

“When you take off….” she opens her mouth and closes it again, eyes scrutinizing him as if he were a puzzle to be deciphered and conquered. “This is where you go?”

“What?”

“When you…” she trails off before shaking her head, dismissively. “Never mind. You are an idiot.”

He ignores the insult as he takes her in, the water tracing gentle paths down her features, the tail glowing luminescent behind her, reflecting the waning rays of sun dipping over the ocean. “Who are you? How did you get here? Where are you from?”

“You are really curious about me.” She smiles sanguinely and her tail flips behind her. Colt feels lightheaded.

“You have no idea.” 

“I’m from LA obviously,” she giggles and the tilt of her laugh pulls him closer, legs kicking out until he is treading water directly in front of her.

“What, a secret coven of mermaids hidden in the Hills?”

She laughs and his fingers twitch, aching to reach out and touch the droplet heavy on her cheek. “Covens are for witches.”

“Do you mean the mythical kind? Do they also live in LA? Or are you referring to the lady who runs the bodega on 92nd cuz she is a real witch?”

She laughs again and he would do anything, absolutely anything, to hear the sound again. “I’m sure you may have instigated something there.”

“Maybe…” The smile still plays on her lips; there is so much he wants to ask, so much he needs to know. 

“I can’t believe there are mermaids. Damn.” A sudden thought hits him; he considered this his secret but maybe it wasn’t just his. “Does anyone else know about you?”

“What? I guess…My dad…” She looks past him, gazing far away at something only she can see. “He knows but he…he doesn’t understand what it’s like. What I’m like.”

Her eyes suddenly water with something more painful than the sea and Colt is stuck by the fact that even mermaids have human problems. “Yeah, I get that.”

“I know you do, Colt.”

“Wait...How did you know my name?”

She rolls her eyes, and the sadness vanishes, replaced by the familiar teasing grin, the sense that she knows some secret that he can’t comprehend. “You are a goddamn…It’s mermaid magic, Colt. Mermaid magic.”

~~~~~~

He spends less and less time at the shop.

He’s sure his father is delighted, but he’s also sure Pop harbors secret, unnecessary concerns about his whereabouts. The crew seems the same as when he was shipped out east, as bumbling as ever, but now when he desperately escapes from the crowd, it is with purpose. He yearns to catch yet another glimpse of the girl, tail fleeting in the water, smirk on her face as they banter back and forth.

He isn’t interested in anything but the mermaid. 

Except maybe one thing. One person.

The girl from the sideshow, Ellie, has somehow integrated herself into the crew. At first, he was doubtful, wondering how a careful valedictorian could fit in with a group of hardened thieves, but she seemed to integrate seamlessly into the group, her intelligence a compliment to a crew that was severely lacking.

And apparently even he found it hard to reject her, her toughness and drive reminding him of himself. She’s fast on her feet; they have traded almost infinite barbs, various interchanges and insults, her quick wit keeping pace even with his own. He's also caught her glancing his way, peeking glances from across the shop, interest and confusion painting her face. He looks at her as well, more than he would admit, and he tells himself it is solely curiosity. Sure, she's attractive, but she's also rejecting her cozy home for a shadowed existence in a crew on the edge. Of course, he's curious.

Which is how he finds himself escorting her to her driver’s test which, obviously, she passed with flying colors. Beaming with pride, she insists on using her new paper permit to drive them back to the garage, hands confidently gripping the steering wheel as he watches the highway fly by.

“You know you’re an idiot, right?”

He gapes at her. The insult is familiar; it’s far from the first time she called him that, but it seems rather random this time. “Pot, meet kettle,” he huffs.

“You are just so dumb.” She only smiles wider. “You don’t see what’s right in front of your face.”

“I see another idiot who is gonna waste twenty minutes if she misses the off-ramp.”

”Whatever,” she sighs and dutifully puts her blinker on, plush lips pursing at him. “You think you’re so smart, with your stealthy getaways, your little secret. You’re nowhere near as smart as you think you are.”

“What are you-” His voice fades away as his mind races. How did she know-? She couldn’t know. Right? He hasn’t told anyone about the mermaid, about his trips to the cliff, about flying though the air to find her, waiting for him, wet skin glowing in the setting sun.

“I know you have a secret…” She glances over then quickly averts her eyes to the road. “Maybe I do, too.”

“Ha. Your secret is that you got mixed up in a life of crime.”

“And your secret is even more insane.”

He stares at her, trying to figure out what exactly she knows, but she only winks at him, throwing her car in park. “What are you…” he trails off.

“What’s the one thing you want more than anything?” Her lips play in a sly smirk and he can’t help but incline his head towards her. Colt wants, God, he wants all the time. He is a perpetual raging ball of want, desperate for things he can’t have-access to his father’s life, a place in the crew, the trust of a mermaid-all of it swirling in his mind but, right now, the one thing he wants is to lean even closer, to capture Ellie’s lips in his own and bite at her snarky smile until his name on her lips is the only thing she herself wants.

He inhales, sharp, the desire pulsing through him sharp as a splash of water over his face. He is suddenly as cold as the sea.

“You’ve almost got it,” she inches closer and her eyes positively gleam, brilliantly reflecting the dashboard indicators, and she gives him one last smirk before pulling away, springing out of the seat and slamming the door behind her.

Now that she has moved, Colt feels like he can finally breathe, air rushing into his lungs. It smells slightly of salt, as if the sea breeze had made it all the way to Gramercy Park, even through the closed windows. Strange.

~~~~~

“You are an idiot,” she sings, voice high over the surf.

They splash together in the waves and he peppers the mermaid with questions, most of which she answers in between diving under the surf to pop up behind him, hair swirling as he stutters. Every time they meet up, he has more questions, and she indulges him with a small grin. He has learned that unicorns don’t exist, she has never seen an actual sea monster, and, apparently, her overprotective father is so worried about a human finding out about her that he used to put a GPS locator on her phone.

“But how do you have a phone?”

“Idiot!!! How are you so-urgh!” She blows bubbles through full lips and laughs. “Everyone has a phone.”

“What, you just have a pocket in your tail?” He dives, reaching out to slowly caress the scales under the surface. They are smooth to the touch, like sea glass or river rocks, glowing incandescent in the water. She swats at him, tail flicking playfully, and he swims after it, giving chase until his lungs burn and he needs to emerge, sucking in oxygen.

“I told you, I’m not always a mermaid.”

“So you go to school? Like normal?”

She blinks slowly at him, eyes imploring. “I’m in high school. A senior. I’m gonna be the valedictorian of my class.”

“That’s why you think I’m an idiot, because you’re a nerdy smartypants.”

She rolls her eyes. “Nope. Not why I think you’re an idiot, Colt.”

“Will I ever get to see you as a human?”

“Ummm…” She swallows, hard, and a flash of terror crosses her face. His stomach swoops, deja vu hinting at something in his mind, but she continues before he can examine the sensation. “I don’t know. Can I trust you?”

“I’ve kept your secret so far.”

“You have,” she avers with certainty, nodding to herself. “You have.” She looks around at the ocean, deep in thought and chewing on her lips, before she looks at him resolutely. “Ok. Let’s do this.”

“Now?”

She nods again and ducks under the waves, swimming out in front of him, slowly, so his clumsy human feet can follow her to a shadowy cove hidden in the cliff side. He walks out onto a small strip of sand as she pulls herself up, arms propelling her forward as her tail glistens and picks up damp granules of warm sand.

“Wait here. Close your eyes.”

“Fine,” he huffs but dutifully listens, hearing her slither behind a rock. There’s a quiet rustling, movement, fabric draping over wet skin; he can almost imagine her behind the rock, skin wet from the ocean, salt clinging to every inch his tongue could chase. He swallows the flash of heat down.

“Ok.” Her voice trembles and she sounds intensely nervous, though Colt can’t figure out why. “You can open your eyes.”

He does and, standing right in front of him, the mermaid is clad in jeans and a tank top. Her dark hair is sopping wet as she rings it out, strands tangling over her fingers and draping over her shoulder. He steps closer in shock. “You have legs!”

She blinks at him again, dumbfounded. “You are as dumb as these rocks.”

He is about to retort when she reaches down to grasp a sweatshirt, sliding the familiar blue over her head, rocking back on her heels and crossing her arms right below where the white lettering spells out LANGSTON. 

“Holy shit-”

“I told you you were an idiot.”

“I am so stupid. I am so fucking stupid.”

“Wow, we actually agree on something.” She smiles and he can’t stop his fingers from reaching out to grasp her hips, Ellie’s human hips.

When she kisses him, she tastes like the sea.

.

Tags

Perma @desireepow-1986 @leelee10898 @emichelle @client-327 @choicesgremlin @brightpinkpeppercorn @thequeenofcronuts @lilyofchoices @choicesarehard

ROD @omgjasminesimone @mskaneko @lovemychoices

Colt

@deimosensblog @alegria1580   @thefarrari @moonlit-girl-wonder @going-down-downtown@soniadotalves @jolietmaraud @flowerpowell@poeticscolt @zaira-oh-zaira @akrenich @sibella-plays-choices​  @maxwellsquidsuit  @liamzigmichael4ever​ @octobereighth @i-only-signed-up-for-fanfiction

[recklessfiction]

I'm obsessed with your writing! It's amazing! Who and/or what are your influences?

Thank you so much, that means a lot to me! I’d say the things that influence me the most would be the lovecraft mythos and its monsters, welcome to nightvale and tma mostly b/c of their monsters and just how the shows themselves are written (the way they like to leave a lot of things vague), the x-files, and a lot of folklore including religious folklore. 

Honestly a lot of my writing is inspired by the art of independent artists that I follow. Their creativity fuels my own and honestly i have a list of fantastic artists that i follow and if you like my writing, you’ll love their stuff so lmk if you want me to post a list.

[mabgravesart]

From @brettmanningart : “My love of cryptozoology began very early on, fueled by fairytales and campfire stories paired with obsessively watching Unsolved Mysteries whenever I had the chance! To me, it’s a lot more fun believing in the possibility of the existence of such creatures with a healthy and realistic dose of skepticism rather than being a full on cynic, simply because our world is far more mysterious than a lot of us like to think! The world of cryptids is extensive, never ending, but for my piece I’ve drawn some of the classics; The Jersey Devil, Sasquatch, Dogman, Nessie, and, maybe a lesser known beastie but just as alluring, the Wolpertinger! If you’re familiar with my art you may know about Ibbonculus the Indiana Beast, a creature I dreamed about years ago, and only recently discovered that he mirrors several other real folkloric creatures- ancient pagans of the British Isles and Native Americans both have strangely similar deer-man stories which I just find so intriguing! Things like this keep my brain gears a-spinnin, inspiring me to draw and create all the creepy creatures I can! Stay fascinated everyone! “ #brettmanning #brettmanningart #cryptozoology #cryptids #theindianabeast #mabsdrawlloweenclub #mabsdrawlloweenclub2019 https://www.instagram.com/p/B3heQ8Yng77/?igshid=1e3d1x075jz8c

[secretlyatargaryen]

July 2019 Reviews

Games

Walden, a game - A delightful experience for those who love games and literature and the idea of them together. The best parts of the game are the quotes from Thoreau's book that appear on the screen when you examine something closely, like a fox or a maple tree, complete with great voice acting. The ecological detail put into the game is impressive. The worst part is that the game mechanics for completing tasks are clunky and there is very little time each day before the game forces you to go to sleep and begin the next day, and your hunger, fuel, and shelter meter always seems to be low, causing you to spend the majority of your daylight hours picking berries and collecting firewood. I get that this is supposed to mirror the experience of "living simply," but 1) it is boringly repetitive and if anything calls to mind the irony of “being one with nature” in a computer game and 2) there are a lot of other interesting things to do in the game which you do not have enough time to do, such as helping escaped slaves on their way to the underground railroad. I learned playing this game that Henry David Thoreau was basically every guy I met in college who hated the government and whose solution to its atrocities was to fuck off into the woods and smoke pot instead of actually doing anything about it. This analogy is completed by the fact that you are able to go into town and get food and clean laundry from your parents' house if you get too low on those things.

Black Mirror (2017) - No, not the Netflix series. This is a re-imagining of the Black Mirror series of adventure games developed in the early 2000s. The original game is considered a classic of point and click adventures but suffers from an unoriginal plot (obligatory part where I once again complain about horror games and their obsession with "Surprise! You're crazy! Dead women!") and the unfortunateness of early 3D polygon graphics. The second and third game took the series in a completely new and original direction and were quite good, so while I had never heard of the remake before I came across it during the steam summer sale, I was cautiously hopeful. Even if it was trash, it's just the kind of gothic-mystery-exploring-a-haunted-castle trash that I like to throw my money at. The gameplay is pretty fun (minus some quick time events where you can get killed by ghosts mostly by failing to operate the somewhat clunky controls - the game was originally ported for PS4) and the story is original but also expands upon the series mythos. An enjoyable trashy gothic yarn, although the story also felt incomplete, even to someone who has played the original games, and was both wrapped up too quickly and left weirdly unresolved.

Books

Greenglass House, Kate Milford - I started this book a while ago and it’s been on my radar for a while, and I restarted it again when I heard it was going to be on this year’s BOB list. A fun young adult adventure story which utilizes one of my favorite mystery tropes, the closed circle. The story is that preteen Milo lives in the eponymous house, which his family runs as an inn. The house used to be a meeting place for smugglers back in the day, which means there’s buried treasure somewhere in the house, and when the story starts a slew of guests arrive at the house and are stranded by a snowstorm, when things start getting mysterious. Someone in the house is a thief! I really like this book and the way that the story’s original folklore is woven into the plot. There are also several dungeons and dragons elements that play a role in the plot - to solve the mystery, Milo and his friend Meddy pretend to be characters in a role-playing game, and I love the way the story makes connections between games, stories, and language, since that happens to align with my interests.

Serafina and the Black Cloak, Robert Beatty - Another BOB book, this one also has been on my radar for a while because the series is very popular among my students, and when I went to Beatty’s website recently I saw that Disney had already put their name on it, lol. What I didn’t know was that the series takes place in my state. The setting is the Biltmore Estate in the late 1800s, and the story is a historical fantasy that utilizes some of the local folklore in some really interesting ways, although it’s more fantasy than historical. An enjoyable read with an interesting female protagonist.

Movies

Ready Player One - I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would. I had heard going into it that it was not a great adaptation from friends who loved the book, which I haven’t read. That might be why I did enjoyed it so much. I don’t think it’s anything that memorable, but it is enjoyable. I can see why the book became so popular, although I’ve read books with similar storylines. I guess a book like this is more relevant nowadays with the popularity of VR in the modern gaming market, but the story relied on some tired cliches nonetheless. I also was a bit annoyed when the story acknowledged the issue with the main character falling for Artemis’ idealistically beautiful avatar without really knowing her...and then had her turn out to be stunningly gorgeous in real life. Okay, she had a wine-stain disfigurement on her face, but she was still traditionally beautiful, and the main character gets to be with her in the end while meanwhile, his actual best friend, who turns out to be an unfeminine black girl in real life and who obviously has a crush on him, is left behind.

Picnic At Hanging Rock - I come across this movie on gothic film recommendation lists every so often and have wanted to watch it for years, and I happened to find it on youtube, which surprised me. The original movie is from 1975 and is a cult classic for a reason. Stunning visuals and a story that leaves you confused in the just the right way. After watching it, I was itching to learn more and came across last year’s amazon prime series with Natalie Dormer and watched all six episodes, and although the series was enjoyable and a good extension for anyone who enjoys the original movie, it does not have the charm or brilliance of the original. The series expands on the story, but part of the beauty of the original movie is the way the story is told in what isn’t said, and in carefully choreographed scenes where nobody on screen says a word. I can see why the movie is called “gothic” as it has some of the trappings of the genre. It takes place in 1900 at a remote and mysterious boarding school in Australia. Three girls vanish during a school field trip, seemingly without a trace. What happened to them may have been supernatural. Or they may have been murdered, kidnapped, or run off on their own. Also, I’m pretty sure everyone is gay.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - I’m a huge fan of the Shirley Jackson novel which this movie is an adaptation of, and unlike Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, this movie is actually a fairly straight adaptation of the novel. The movie captures the gothic feel of the book as well as the anxiety about gender and class from which it gets its themes, and there are solid performances all around, but the movie does seem a bit devoid of a life of its own. Despite, and possibly because of, the voice-over narration, Merricat never really comes alive as a character the way she does in the book. This is, I think, a problem with a lot of book to movie adaptations that rely on voice-overs to tell the story. I can see the appeal of this, especially with a book like this which is both heavily steeped in POV and characterized by an unreliable narrator, but I found myself really wishing the movie would just let itself tell the story rather than the narrator.

Shows

American Gods - I watched all of season two on the starz website except for the finale, which I was told that I needed to upgrade by account to watch, so if you are watching on the website or the app be aware of that. I enjoyed season two, although it lacked some of the urgency of the first season. I do enjoy some of the adaptational choices made that update the novel a bit, such as having Technology be outsourced by New Media. Also, season two saw the arrival of my daughter, Sam Black Crow. I’m also looking forward to the Lakeside subplot next season (I assume) as it’s my favorite part of the novel.

Stranger Things - I watched the first four episodes of season one when it came out, and then for some reason never finished it. I know, I know. It didn’t take me very long to watch all three seasons, which I sort of interpreted as one as a result, although I do think there’s a drop in quality somewhere in the second/third season, but overall it’s a fun show that definitely kept me interested and invested in the characters. Also, every scene relating to the upside down motivated me to clean my bathroom.

[hyba]

Hola! I was tagged by @awritinglen for the 11/11/11 tag! Thank you for thinking of me! :D

I’m going to choose my Apartment WIP to answer this one (mostly because the list of names in all my other WIPs is too long ahaha).

1. Name all OCs in your WIP.

James, Angela, Alex, Eli, and a bunch of others that never get named but are very important to the plot.

2. Name at least one hobby your Main character loves

Jamie: loves painting, also loves fitness and running

Angela: baking, watching movies/series

Alex: ???

Eli: ??????

3. 3 sentences about your current WIP:

The suspense is terrible. The characters are all suspect. The plot is absurd.

4. Is there a romance in your WIP and did you plan it from the beginning?

There’s not a romance, but there are definitely two (very different) past romantic relationships that turned into a nightmare for the characters in question.

There’s some creeping/stalking on another character’s part. An unhealthy obsession, a desperation.

5. What genre(s) is it?

I would call it horror because of its general creepiness and eerie feel, but I might also place it under the psychological drama genre and the thriller genre as well.

6. What’s the aesthetic of two of your characters?

Jamie: dried paint, splattered floors, messy hair, closed doors.

Alex: stolen shirts, black hair dye, extra locks, dark circles under the eyes.

7. When did you start your current WIP?

About 4 months ago, give or take a week? I’m not that good with time.

8. How far along are you in the process (i.e 1st/2nd/3rd draft, world-building)

First draft! But I edit as I go along so after my first draft, I’ll probably do a quick print-edit and then send it to others for review, and then finishing touches and voila!

9. Who’s the hardest character for you to write?

Probably Angela. She’s the most ‘normal’ of all my characters, and sometimes that can come off as somehow lacking/weak/boring. But I think her being a somewhat boring character acts as a great contrast to my other characters, who are much, much less boring. It also helps emphasize how crazy things get.

10. What music genre best describes your main character(s) and what’s their favorite?

Angela: mainstream pop, probably

James: stuff without words - classical, soundtrack music, etc.

Alex: ???

Eli: ??????

11. Are you working on more than one WIP?

Yes! :D I have Apartment, which is a standalone eerie horror book, and the following WIPs:

An Entity in Your Midst: paranormal/supernatural horror, based mainly on Eastern European/Slavic folklore.

The Pirates of Sissa: originally the second in my fantasy series, but honestly it wouldn’t change much if I released it first or third, so... I’ve been wondering if I’ll just make it a standalone fantasy book under the general umbrella of my fantasy world. 

The Fall of the Black Masks: supposedly the first book in my high fantasy series. Follows growing civil unrest and political conspiracy and how it affects the lives of my characters, and how they handle it/react to it.

The Town by the Sea: another book in my high fantasy series. Follows two strangers who come upon a mysterious town and set off a series of events that will change the town forever - and quite possibly the world. Probably the only one that actually includes ‘magic’. 

The City of Light: another installment in my fantasy series. Follows a young princess who ascends the throne and her struggles as she tries to become a competent queen with the help of her adviser and arranged fiance. Involves diplomacy, conspiracy, betrayal, treason, and so much more.

The Return of the Exiled: last installment in my fantasy series (OR IS IT?). Follows one man’s quest for vengeance against those who took his life from him several years ago, and how his thirst for revenge fuels a revolution in a weakened kingdom.

That was super fun! Thank you for the tag!

I’m going to tag @alexwillow, @hesterhamilton, @exanderstreiching, @ren-c-leyn, @trickster-writes, @norawritess, @silveredgedwriting, @kenny-d-juice, and @awritinglen :P 

Here are my questions for you!

1. If you were to give your WIP(s) a rating (PG/G/16/18/R/etc.), which would it be and why?

2. What do you think most characterizes your writing?

3. Would you call yourself a full-time writer or a part-time writer?

4. Would you prefer for your WIP(s) to be published digitally or in print? 

5. What’s one thing a lot of people don’t know about you?

6. Do you like to infuse your stories with morals/lessons?

7. Which WIP did you have to do the most research on, and which resources did you find helped you the most?

8. If you were a villain in a story, what kind of villain would you be?

9. What’s your favourite character archetype?

10. Do any of your characters have nervous habits? What are they?

11. Which setting - that you have written - is your favourite?

Thanks for reading and I hope you all have fun with these Qs! ^^

[fromthelibrary]

About Me (and What I’m Going To Be Doing Here)

Hello, book nerds of Tumblr! I’ve been hanging around this website for a long time, just looking at memes and pictures of bookshelves, never really creating any content of my own. But I’ve just finished school and a few things have happened as a result. Firstly, I now have time to read what I want to read, when I want to read it. I’m super excited about this and want some way to engage meaningfully with the books I read, and with other readers. What better way than to write about what I read? Furthermore, I’ve been working in a bookstore for almost two years now and I am constantly asked for opinions and recommendations. On top of this, I am about to embark on what will hopefully be a long and fulfilling career in librarianship, so it has become even more important that I have well formed, critical opinions about what I’m reading, and what’s happening in the world of books.

What I intend to do here is share what I’m reading, and what I think and feel about it. I’m also interested in hearing your thoughts, preferences and recommendations. To forewarn you, I will almost never be reading the newest release, or whatever is on trend. I am buried under a TBR pile several years deep, and am generally dismayed by what appears to me to be a culture of disposable books. I am of the opinion that a good book is always worth reading, and talking about, even once the marketing hype has died away and the industry has moved on to the next, newest thing.

So, what will I be reading? I want to say I’ll read anything. And it’s true, I’m willing to give just about anything a shot. But if I’m being honest, the vast majority of what I like to read is fantasy, so there will be a lot of that, as well as occasional sci-fi, various other types of fiction, non-fiction related to history, folklore, and whatever else might catch my eye. Cookbooks may even make an appearance. I’m definitely open to suggestions. I’ve got a library card; the whole world of literature is within my reach.

I’ll tell you a few more things about myself. I was obsessed with books even before I could even read. I still harbour a wish to write books myself, but we’ll see about that, it’s been a long time since I wrote anything that wasn’t a caffeine fueled, bullshit riddled, mildly panicky last minute essay. I like to cook, do outdoorsy stuff when I can, all dogs are my best friends, and I lowkey love heavy metal. I fell in love with a man and a bike at the same time, which triggered the greatest, most unexpected, adventure of my life.

I look forward to reading with you Tumblr!

[collectivefomo]

I call it Hamilton season. Nearly two years ago, all your friends bragged on Facebook about the tickets they bought for the musical, for a time that seemed so far everyone pretty much forgot about it. Now it’s time, and they all rush down to London from all over the place. Some may ask to sleep on your couch. Of course for me, it was the occasion to get a tête-à-tête with Juliette this spring.

Often known under her artist name Cy-lindric, Juliette lives and studies in Paris at one of the most prestigious schools of animation, The Gobelins. If you’re in London though, you might spot her blue head and chunky sneakers in the streets this summer, as she’s been working with the brilliant Golden Wolf Studio in Hoxton.

What’s the life and community like at the Gobelins?

There’s a lot going on. We have our own groups within our promotion and with the rest of the school and then with the alumni. I’m pretty sure a fair amount of studios just pick in that ‘bank’ when they look for talents, they don’t bother looking elsewhere. I’m learning a lot just being around the other students and I think the school is hoping for that emulation. When you have such a level of selection, people are so brilliant it can’t really go any other way; we have classes in our first year but after that, we’re pretty free - sometimes maybe too much. They encourage us to create films but I know I’d love to build up my own cinematographic culture first, I think that’s important.Les Gobelins is like a microcosm for “real life” projects, we complete each other pretty well when we have to work together. Some people specialize in FX, others in 3D… I know I love setting colours and I feel comfortable doing backgrounds so I tend to do that a lot - so much that when it comes to my personal illustrations, I’m more quiet with sceneries.

So despite studying there, you’d still call yourself an illustrator rather than an animator?

Oh yes, definitely. I wouldn’t even say that animation is not really “my thing”! It’s actually quite a frequent situation to encounter among animators. But if you want to do background, or vis dev, you have to start somewhere.

What do you enjoy drawing the most? Any subjects you often come back to or themes that we can usually recognize in your work?

I think these subjects are pretty easy to spot! Music is definitely a recurring theme, I love to illustrate players, instruments, find graphic ways to represent sound and music. I love folklore and fashion and history, these really represent a big source of inspiration.

What’s your own advice on how to become a good animator? Or a good illustrator?

You’ve heard it already but I do believe that a cultivated curiosity and diverse personal experiences often matter just as much as being attentive to technique and details and actually make a big difference. I feel like you always perceive the richness of an artist’s work when they make use of varied references from thorough personal visual libraries, with somewhat niche interests in peripheral cultures. In my case, being diligent helps me a great deal; I’m often galvanized by regular production but like a lot of other things, I’m not sure this applies to everyone else. This may sound mundane but we all have very different relationships with creativity and we all have to find our own fuel. So I would say that the best quality to have is to be curious (I’d even say potentially obsessed) to be propelled forward in our progression towards subjects that actually motivate us.

And what kind of tip can you give to someone who would like to make it to the Gobelins?

Be as productive as possible and try your hand at different things, at your own pace. Once again, this might not be true for everyone but in my case, graduating somewhere else before enrolling at the Gobelins really was a complementary and beneficial experience; I really made the most of it and explored different creative paths.

Check out Juliette’s work and follow her on Instagram. You can purchase her gorgeous, limited editions prints she did for our collective show Urban Legends on our online shop.

[mst3kproject]

816: Prince of Space

In a lot of ways this is one of the more daunting reviews I've taken on.  There are various reasons why I might not want to review a particular movie.  Maybe, as in Last of the Wild Horses, the movie just doesn't interest me.  Maybe, as in Hobgoblins, I just hate the movie that much.  Maybe, as in Swamp Diamonds, I have a hard time coming up with anything to say about it.  Prince of Space falls into none of those categories.  Instead, like Pod People or Manos: the Hands of Fate, this is one of the classic episodes, the ones that have been so thoroughly watched, discussed, and destroyed by the fandom at large that I'm not sure I can really contribute anything.

The goal of this blog is completeness, though, so here I go. Phantom, Dictator of Krankor, has come to Earth to steal the secret of Professor Maki's advanced rocket fuel (or Professor Macken, or Professor Marken... the dub actors cannot seem to agree). Fortunately, Earth has a secret weapon – the invulnerable Prince of Space!  Prince of Space steals the formula back from Phantom and chases him away, so Phantom falls back on Plan B.  He kidnaps the world's leading scientists and takes them to Planet Krankor so they can see just what a mighty empire they are up against.  Once again it's up to Prince of Space to save the day!

Prince of Space was originally a TV show, Yūsei Ōji (Planet Prince), which was made to capitalize on the popular Super Giants film series – yeah, you read that right, Prince of Space is a ripoff of Star-Man!  The series proved popular enough in itself that two movies were made based on it, and it was these that were edited together into the Prince of Space we all know and love.  They did a surprisingly good job, actually. The resulting film feels only slightly bifurcated, mostly because the three children pretty much vanish for the second half, and I'm guessing the original Prince of Space movies were intended as 'part one' and 'part two' of the same story.  It's also the rare MST3K movie that remains entertaining even without Mike and the Bots at the bottom.

This is kind of surprising, because Prince of Space has basically the exact same plot as Invasion of the Neptune Men: a z-list superhero and a bunch of little kids try to stop an alien invasion too incompetent for even Godzilla to take notice.  But while Invasion of the Neptune Men was an unmitigated pain parade, Prince of Space is silly, over-the-top fun.  Why the difference?  Prince of Space still isn't what anybody would call a 'good' movie, but it gets right a great many of the things Invasion of the Neptune Men got wrong.

For starters, Prince of Space has characters in it. There are the three kids: scientist's son Johnny Maki, and Wally the Bootblack's two wards, Kimmy and Mickey.  They have names, lives, and interests – these are minimal, but they exist.  Johnny likes to watch boxing on TV and worries about getting in trouble.  Kimmy and Mickey are proud of their jobs as Wally's assistants.  They talk about the problems presented to them, instead of just pointing and running around like the kids in Invasion of the Neptune Men. Their familial connections to Dr. Maki and Wally mean there is an actual reason why they keep getting involved in these events.  

Similarly, Wally/Prince of Space is himself a character.  I'm not sure how a guy who makes his living shining shoes finds the time or money to be a superhero on the side, but his secret identity is actually relevant and in danger of discovery.  He, too, also has a bit of personality – he's the type of person who is kind to a fault, often to his own detriment.  He takes in the two orphans even though he really can't afford to.  He returns forgotten items to his customers even though it takes him away from his work.  Tips the kids earn shining shoes are explicitly stated to be theirs, not his, even though he could use the money.

The Neptune Men were nothing but singing humanoid buttplugs – faceless, nameless, and devoid of personality.  The Chicken-Men of Krankor have faces, which allows them to react to things, and Phantom at least has a distinctive look and personality, with his arrogant attitude and obnoxious laugh.  What's more, the aliens of Prince of Space have a goal.  While the Neptune Men seemed to just be throwing stuff at the Earth at random, Krankor is specifically after Professor Maki's rocket fuel and at first his attempt to conquer the world is focused on that.  Later, after Prince of Space thwarts him over and over, he becomes increasingly obsessed with destroying the hero by any means possible, whether it benefits his invasion plans or not.

There is one kind of cool idea in this, actually.  In one scene a reporter asks Dr. Maki why Phantom would be after his formula, when the technology of Krankor is so far advanced over Earth's.  Dr. Maki replies that Krankor is advanced in some ways but not in others, and they happen to be lagging behind Earth in the development of rocket fuel.  This is a neat concept.  We don't know, after all, what constitutes a 'level' of technological development because we have only one example of a technological civilization, and that's our own. Maybe somewhere out there are aliens who have made enormous strides in mathematics but still believe the body is composed of humours that must be balanced.  If that sounds unlikely, think again: it was the actual state of things in Europe when Newton and Liebniz invented calculus.  Or maybe the inverse is true: maybe the aliens are skilled doctors who can perform life-saving operations we wouldn't dare attempt, but they don't understand things like logarithms at all.

If this were a good movie, the stuff humans are good at and Chicken-Men not would be a key to their final defeat.  But this is Prince of Space.

The entertainment factor here is also upped by the fact that Prince of Space is not afraid to be ridiculous.  Invasion of the Neptune Men was often rather restrained.  Prince of Space has a big-eared, matronly giant who destroys Phantom's enemies with weaponized halitosis.  The Chicken-Men themselves are delightfully ridiculous, with their pointed noses and hoods that suggest their heads and chins are pointed too, and their spaceship looks like a roast turkey.  Prince of Space's own ship looks like a modified bumper car and he has a magic wand that deflects death rays.  It makes the movie enjoyable in a way Invasion of the Neptune Men never even approached.

Finally, it's always possible to tell what's going on in Prince of Space.  While there are endless shootout scenes, those are always connected with something in the story. Wally flees Chicken-Men through a graveyard after they discover his secret identity – will he be able to transform into Prince of Space before they catch him?  Laser fire is exchanged as Prince of Space leads the captive scientists through Phantom's fortress.  Will they make it to the ship to return to Earth?  Invasion of the Neptune Men had none of this, just spaceship models shooting at each other without even anything to tell us how far apart they were.  An action scene in which we really can't tell what's happening is dull. The director and editors of Prince of Space had at least some idea how to do it right.

I actually really wish this movie were in colour.  According to the posters, Prince of Space's costume was red, green, and white, while the Chicken-Men of Krankor wore pink and purple.  I'd love to see what colours were on the walls of the Great Hall, or that the giant was dressed in.  It must have looked gloriously ridiculous.

Remember Invaders from Space, in which the bad guys were Kappa-People?  Well, Prince of Space is less explicit about it, but I think the Chicken-Men are supposed to be Tengu-People.  The Tengu is a birdlike demon in Japanese folklore who is supposed to be a harbinger of war.  They are often depicted with unnaturally long, sometimes beaklike noses.  Such noses are also featured in Japanese caricatures of white people.  Hmm... they come promising peace and prosperity and then they blow your shit up.  Sounds about right.

Wikipedia doesn't have an antique woodcut of anybody farting on a Tengu, but this watercolour of one getting yelled at by a monk is kind of fun.

This is another movie that is difficult to analyze, because it doesn't really have any higher ambitions.  The original goal of the Yūsei Ōji TV show was to make money off Star Man fans, and the movies were intended to make money off fans of the TV show. Fortunately, enough effort and good fun were put into the result that it stands on its own.  Of all the Japanese-Superhero-Versus-Stupid-Aliens movies I've seen, Prince of Space is undoubtedly my favourite... and the fact that I can talk about those as a genre is... well, it's sadder than talking about the Nazi Zombie genre, but not as sad as talking about the Bela Lugosi vs Gorilla Suit genre.  So there's that.

The other wonderful thing we got out of Prince of Space is the 'temporally displaced chicken puppet' sketch, which is probably the funniest single skit in the entire Sci-Fi Channel era. Gypsy's burrito makes me laugh every single time.

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Joe has often read "Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck" by Don Rosa For those unaware of Carl Barks, permit me a brief (?) tutorial. Carl Barks wrote and illustrated no less than 300 comics for Disney, starting in the '30's & on into the swingin 60's. These were not all full issue comics, many of them ten pages but still. He is credited as having created Scrooge McDuck, Duckburg, the Junior Woodchucks, Gyro Gearloose (& his little robot pal), basically half the cast of "DuckTales" (woo-oo). In fact numerous DT episodes were adaptations of his comics. I've admired him for over 30 years now, but I've barely scratched the surface of his canon. I was an avid collector of Disney comics in my formative years (nerd!) mainly because the stories were actually pretty good, and superheroes really didn't appeal to me once I got past my six-year-old obsession with Superman. That said I was also not a huge fan of most Disney cartoons, I was a Looney Tunes kid to the core! But the comics were different, especially those penned by Mr Barks and his protege, Don Rosa. The characters *actually* had personalities, Donald wasn't just a series of tantrums, and you could UNDERSTAND what he was saying! Also the stories were pretty cool adventures, often grounded in either history or folklore, with numerous nods to modern science. Mr. Don Rosa worked much more recently on the Duck stories, he faithfully kept the Barks tradition alive & kicking but also adorned his panels with numerous background gags a la early MAD, all rendered with razor-sharp line work. He & Carl were my first heroes in comics and fueled my passion in the field from a very early age. Well, ten. Lo, my obsession with these comics took a major hit with the onset of puberty, also my tastes expanded somewhat and grew more "sophisticated" (I discovered 'Heavy Metal') but my admiration never waned, they always had a dusty spot in my heart and on my shelf. UNTIL THE DAY I was in Brooklyn NY at Rocket Comics and I came upon THIS game-changer, "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" by Don Rosa! This collection of stories is Don Rosa's attempt to chronicle Scrooge's biography (as the title indicates, man I got this reviewin' stuff DOWN) starting with earning his first dime (of legend) and ending with him as a cranky old miser with a giant money bin full of mostly coins (?!?). In order to do all that, Rosa pieced together EVERY TIDBIT of information from the Barks library, regardless of how off-hand or obscure, in a way that more or less made sense or at least adhered to a linear timeline. If Scrooge mentioned his time on a riverboat with Uncle Seafoam McDuck in "Uncle Scrooge" #36, that was Rosa's springboard for chapter two. He seriously left no nugget unturned, and often had to come up with his own plot twists to explain contradictory information (ie if Scrooge's family were "poor as church mice", why was there a "Castle McDuck"? & so on). In this tome, we bare witness to his accumulation of wealth by being "smarter than the Smarties and tougher than the toughies, and making it square". As a character, Scrooge is problematic. They sweetened him up some for "DuckTales" but he still can be seen as a symbol of greed and selfishness, if we choose to go that route. I don't, it's merely a facet of his character. These things are in fact addressed in the chapter "All That Money Can Buy", in which Scrooge alienates his only relatives and really goes to the "dark side". But the journey itself is the joy of this book, he meets with failure after failure, also, the Beagle Boys, Flintheart Glomgold, "Glittering Goldie" (Scrooge's one that got away) and a whole menagerie of friends and foes. Even historical figures, like Teddy Roosevelt, Wyatt Earp, etc. Not only did Rosa accomplish the Herculean task of stringing together Scrooge's timeline, he also did extensive research on history and geography. (Did you know there really is, or was a "Monkey's Elbow" somewhere along the Mississippi? Not me!) All this provides a solid backdrop for Scrooge's exploits, more than once a real bit of history factors into the plot; along with numerous references to old movies, which was often Rosa's forté. (I bet I was the only 11-year-old in Ingham County who caught the "Citizen Kane" reference in "His Majesty McDuck", Uncle Scrooge Adventures #10) What makes this whole thing hit home & stay there, is the underlying message: forget your family, the almighty dollar is your only God. Jk! Through all his failures and hardships, Scrooge never gives up, he doggedly (duckedly?) perseveres towards his goal, and takes each failure as both a badge of honor and as a lesson that serves him well in future adventures. Also at the very end, he is reminded of the most important part of life which is bourbon. Family! I mean family. Thanks for reading all this, it was impossible for me to "stay out" of this review, it was a very personal one. Don Rosa & Carl Barks made me want to do comics, damn them. Pick this up whenever you get a chance, you may go one step further too and grab "the Life & times Companion"! (He just had WAY too much material to work with). Thank you Don & Carl. And screw you for not letting artists credit themselves back in the day, DISNEY! https://ift.tt/34Mpl6x

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“ALL IRAQIS WILL READILY agree that their life has always been noir,” says editor Samuel Shimon in his introduction to Baghdad Noir, one of the two latest volumes in Akashic Books’s globe-spanning “Noir” series (the other being Marrakech Noir, edited by Yassin Adnan and released on the same day, although covering cities at the opposite ends of the Arab world). But while the oppression and violence that have marked Iraq’s recent history furnish plenty of grimness for the mood associated with noir fiction and film, the genre is distinctly American in origin, from black-and-white Hollywood movies of sin and betrayal to Philip Marlowe’s jaded outlook on human nature. As Shimon points out in his introduction, the Iraqi authors he approached were less directly familiar with the genre, and Baghdad Noir is the first collection of Iraqi crime fiction that he is aware of. [1] So, tasked with commissioning the 14 stories included in this volume, he arranged to translate into Arabic a story by the late Maggie Estep that was published in Akashic’s early Queens Noir collection, and sent the translation to the writers as a model of noir style to follow.

As a result, the contributors have found ways to make this genre their own. What is surprising here is the breadth of settings and eras for these stories, ranging from 1950, during the relatively stable period of the Hashemite monarchy, through the paranoid years of Ba’athist rule, the sanctions era of the 1990s, and the violent years after 2003, up to the more recent threat of terrorism embodied by Daesh’s (ISIS) draconian rule over Iraq’s north.

Ten of the authors represented here are Iraqi; the other four are American, Iranian, Tunisian, and Lebanese. Shimon has managed to secure stories from some of the most prominent Iraqi authors now writing, such as Ahmed Saadawi, Sinan Antoon, Muhsin al-Ramli, and Ali Bader. Of the four women writers in the book, only two are Iraqi: it would have been interesting to see prominent Iraqi women writers like Inaam Kachachi or Dunya Mikhail try their hand at noir. I was unfamiliar with several of these contributors, and it speaks to their talents that these stories piqued my interest to track down their full-length novels.

Noir is a broad category — it may refer primarily to a story’s general mood, or it can refer to specific plot elements. For this collection, some of the contributors wrote their noir as stories of murder and the search for a killer. Muhsin al-Ramli, perhaps best known for his 2012 novel Hada’iq al-Ra’is (published in English as The President’s Gardens), opens the collection with a whodunit set in an apartment building in Baghdad during the American occupation. It begins with the discovery of a murdered young woman in the courtyard of the building, which has been locked down after the night’s curfew. It’s a classic closed environment as the house’s occupants eye each other warily, knowing that the killer must be among them. Al-Ramli has a flair for evoking urban squalor (the neighborhood carries “smoke from piles of putrid, smoldering garbage mixed with the scent of grilled meat and spices”) and corruption (the police are “good for nothing except taking bribes”), while the story peels back the layers of lust, politics, and mixed motives that lead to murder.

The Iraqi authorities in general, and Baghdad’s police specifically, don’t come off well in this collection, being either ineffectual or actively criminal, as in Mohammed Alwan Jabr’s compelling “Room 22,” a tense account of a man bringing a suitcase full of ransom money to a hotel room in order to pay off his young nephew’s kidnappers, only to discover a greater web of religious and official corruption behind the abduction. One exception to this dim view of law enforcement is Salima Salih’s compact “The Apartment,” in which a dogged police inspector, Naji Nassar, investigates the brutal murder of an old lady at her home. Even here, though, the story closes not on the arrest of the guilty party, but just a world-weary acknowledgment that this is “just another day in Baghdad.”

The identity of the killer is more elusive in the excellent “Empty Bottles” by novelist Hussain al-Mozany, who died shortly after completing this story. Set in the 1950s working-class neighborhood of al-Thawra City (now since renamed Sadr City), it begins with a gruesome “honor killing” committed at dawn, witnessed by the 12-year-old narrator’s mother. The killing becomes an obsession with al-Mozany’s narrator, who comes to a disturbing realization about why honor killings are so prevalent among the poor: “A feeling struck me like a thunderbolt that honor was the only wealth the poor had…” In his morbid imagination, the killer transforms into a monster of folklore, a djinn known as the tantal that kidnaps children in the night. Al-Mozany’s story focuses our attention on the ongoing impact of violence, rippling out from the past in unexpected ways. The narrator didn’t even witness the murder himself, but it becomes a permanent rupture in his later life, making him, as he says, “an indirect victim of its savagery.”

Another standout in this collection is Ali Bader’s “Baghdad House,” which is set in 1950 and features a middle-class, educated protagonist. The story’s milieu is vastly different from the rest of the book, given the political and social changes Iraq has witnessed since 1950 — the overthrow of the monarchy in the late 1950s, the subsequent political assassinations and coups culminating in the Ba’athist coup in 1968, followed by the ascendancy of Saddam (itself a kind of internal coup), and the years of war, sanctions, and occupation that followed. In Bader’s contribution, an accountant for an automotive company is temporarily transferred from Basra to the company’s Baghdad office to replace two colleagues who have successively gone missing. Both of his vanished predecessors had been residents at the same upscale lodging house, Baghdad House, where he, too, is assigned to stay. On his first day there, one of its longtime residents, a Persian woman, is murdered, and the accountant finds himself becoming a detective, uncovering a sordid demimonde of upper-crust Baghdad. Even more than others in this collection, this narrative — a clear homage to Agatha Christie’s mysteries — seems like a novel in miniature that could easily have been expanded. Bader has already proven himself adept with historical settings, and if he ever chose to write a full-length mystery novel set in 1950s Baghdad, I would jump at the chance to read it.

Noir can also draw on the darker recesses of human psychology, on madness and unreliable narrators that pull the rug out from under the reader. Of the stories that took that route, the foremost is Sinan Antoon’s excellent “Jasim’s File,” which is based on a true incident involving the mass escape of mental patients from Baghdad’s al-Rashad Hospital when the Americans invaded. “The Americans kind of liberated me,” says the protagonist, Jasim, as he flees the mental ward and returns to his family home during the chaos of April 2003. Living in his family’s empty home, Jasim falls into working with a friend who has joined the Badr Brigade, a military faction formed by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, with the express purpose of encouraging an Iranian-style Islamic revolution in Iraq. The story concludes with an ironic reveal after we have learned that Jasim has graduated to assassinations. Jasim’s story replays in miniature the devastation of the 2003 occupation that gave free rein to social disorder and allowed criminal behavior to drift easily into terrorism.

Dheya al-Khalidi’s “Getting to Abu Nuwas Street” has a great noir opening, one that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Chandler novel (“I come to in the morning, and see that I’m in an abandoned metal shop. Tied up.”). Al-Khalidi’s 2012 novel al-Qutla (The Killers) is set during the violent years after 2003, and this kicker of a story conveys some of the same flavor, but featuring a narrator with fuzzy memories of the events that led to his capture. The American troops may have withdrawn in 2009, but Baghdad’s violence remains: “American soldiers used to command Baghdad’s nights — their Humvees roaring, keeping us awake and afraid. Then the night’s custody switched over to our Iraqi brownness — bullets flying freely — even for a riled cat or a hungry dog.” Here, nighttime Baghdad has a particular menace, a city strangely desolate of humans after curfew and shrouded in blackness. The story is saturated with the narrator’s memories — such as his nostalgia for happier times, which led him to break curfew to try and reach Abu Nuwas park the night before — even though memory itself, like the titular park the narrator can never reach, becomes elusive, slippery, and leading to danger.

“Post-Traumatic Stress Reality in Qadisiya,” by the Lebanese-born author Hadia Said, concerns an increasingly paranoid protagonist, Amin, who is looking to regain the right to his family’s long-abandoned home in the Qadisiya district. He is desperate to find the title deed and key to the house, which his dying grandmother had given to him. The story veers between Amin’s memories of the past and his hallucinatory present reality. The spectral appearance of long-dead family members makes this a ghost story — particularly given the ending, which suggests that Amin himself may be the one who is dead and buried.

Two stories revolve around the noirish trope of characters with a death wish, fueled by regrets about their own past crimes. The first is “A Sense of Remorse” by Ahmed Saadawi — best known to English-language readers for his novel Frankenstein in Baghdad, a finalist for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize — in which a police investigator looks into the mysterious death of his alcoholic older brother. His brother’s suicide leads him to uncover his brother’s Ba’athist past, a charlatan who once made amulets that claimed to help recruits escape military service, and a poison that only kills those who are incapable of feeling remorse. The revelations about the brother offer a disturbing insight into the way power corrupts and gives license to cruelty:

I want to feel remorse […] to cry about the terrible things I did, but it looks like I’m hopeless. I’m a demon, and I’ll admit to you right now that I enjoyed doing what I did. It was fun. It gave me an amazing sense of power and control. Is that what a normal person would say?

Salar Abdoh’s “Baghdad on Borrowed Time” also features a character with a death wish. Of all the stories in the collection, Abdoh’s hews most closely to the tropes of traditional noir and explicitly references American noir fiction. The protagonist is a Tehran-based private investigator whose clients always insist on bringing up Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler with him. This Iranian PI — who was once a POW held by Iraq — is hired by an Iraqi client who wants him to find a killer (“a serial killer with a purpose”) who has murdered a string of middle-aged men in Baghdad. The client, as we learn, is a veteran of the Badr Brigade, who lived for years in exile in Iran and only returned to Iraq after 2003.

Each of the victims is a former Iraqi soldier who had spent time occupying part of Iran. The murderer is somehow tracking down the former soldiers and taking three-decades-old revenge on people who are otherwise strangers to him. The investigator realizes he is being asked to solve murders that no one cares about, in a city already teeming with violence and bloodshed, for a client with no seeming connection to the crime. In a twist, the culprit begs the investigator to catch him and then brings him along to witness his final murder and his suicide, all in time for the investigator to catch his midnight flight back home to Tehran. As with Saadawi’s story, a character’s grief dates back to the Iran-Iraq War, a pointed reminder of the impact that that prolonged conflict had on the people of both countries, long before Operation Iraqi Freedom was a glint in Dick Cheney’s eye.

Two other authors, Layla Qasrany and Hayet Raies, mine the climate of paranoia that characterized Ba’athist Iraq for their stories, which are both set in the late 1970s. Hayet Raies was born in Tunisia but did her master’s degree at Baghdad University, an experience that informs the tense setting of “The Fear of Iraqi Intelligence,” as a female university student negotiates the disappearance of her roommate. The palpable presence of the authoritarian state is unmistakable, and Raies effectively conveys the fear it invoked, such as students monitoring their private dorm-room conversations lest their closest friends turn out to be government informers. The atmosphere is stifling even for relatively privileged foreign students, and even if Raies’s story doesn’t exactly seem noir, it makes for a compelling read. Likewise, Layla Qasrany’s “Tuesday of Sorrows” depicts an educated, middle-class family attempting to emigrate from Iraq without arousing the suspicions of the Ba’athist authorities. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, and these characters, too, use private code words to fool eavesdroppers. On the day of their departure to London, a man with an axe bursts into the apartment and kills the mother, a symbol of the state’s unchecked power over people’s lives, and its ability to wreak havoc for reasons of its own.

Two final stories are linked by their focus on protagonists taking revenge. Unlike the other stories, where the protagonists are victims, or at best witnesses to evil, in these two stories, the protagonists commit murder themselves. Roy Scranton’s “Homecoming” is a neatly plotted tale of a son’s vengeance against local thugs in Baghdad. I initially felt that the inclusion of an American author was unnecessary — after all, there are plenty of novels and memoirs written by Americans about Iraq post-2003, and far too few works of fiction by Iraqis made available to English-language readers. However, Scranton, who had previously been a soldier in the US army in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 and has since become an essayist and teacher of creative writing, has more than justified his placement in this collection with this lived-in tale, set before Mosul fell to Daesh in 2014. The protagonist, Haider, is on leave from the Iraqi army after he is injured fighting against Daesh. As always, readers may raise questions of representation, as an American author assumes the voice of a young Iraqi man, but Scranton’s story makes for a gripping read, as Haider avenges a brutal punishment meted out to his father by local thugs. It is perhaps unsurprising that there is an American character involved — albeit a distinctly unsympathetic one. As with a few other stories in this collection, “Homecoming” was written originally in English, and as such, there is a tendency for the characters to sound very much like American grunts with their fluent English swearing. The story offers a satisfying closure, but it did prompt me to wonder about the fiction yet to be written by Iraqis who lived through the most recent war against Daesh: there are surely memoirs and novels about those experiences being written now, just as the long Iran-Iraq War spawned a number of works of fiction in both Persian and Arabic.

In Nassif Falak’s “Doomsday Book,” set during the sanctions era, the narrator shadows his brother across Baghdad to discover why he is stealing items from their family home, only to discover that his brother is working for a local al-Qaeda cell. Later, after his brother disappears, the protagonist returns to the home of the cell leader and strangles him with wire. He also gets his hands on the leader’s ledger (“the doomsday book” of the title) that suggests that his brother has traveled to Afghanistan. The protagonist has some political secrets of his own, as a friend of his, just before being arrested, passed off to him a hand grenade for safekeeping, which the protagonist then buried in the yard of his house. The recurring image of the buried hand grenade, with its pin gradually rotting away, is a perfect symbol of the tensions buried within Iraqi society under Saddam, just waiting to explode into the open.

In his introduction, Shimon notes that a prominent theme in Baghdad Noir is family, and particularly the fraying of family bonds as siblings and relatives turn on each other and traditional ties loosen. I would argue, though, that the true common theme in these stories — a theme very much in the spirit of noir — is betrayal. Characters in this collection are frequently on the receiving end of unpleasant epiphanies. And as this engaging group of stories amply demonstrates, betrayal — whether by authorities, religious leaders, neighbors, colleagues, or liberators — is a subject that Iraqis know all too well.

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Chip Rossetti is a book editor and a translator of modern Arabic fiction.

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[1] Although there are certainly urban noir and noir-adjacent elements in Iraqi fiction and popular culture: I am thinking in particular of Hassan Blasim’s macabre short stories, and, more distantly, Iraqi television shows like Night Wolves (Dhi’ab al-Layl), which aired in the late 1980s, about violent gangsters in Baghdad’s criminal underworld.

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