#i loved that swamp with my whole heart and i watched so many little bird families thrive in there. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

i-like-plan-m · 4 years

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Could you do a modern au with famous parents Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji and baby a-yuan being adorable and being loved by their fans?

this was fun, thank you! [Posted to Ao3]

The video was short and packed with Wei Ying��s rapid-fire chatter, a response to his recent fan-selected award after a landslide of votes had catapulted him to the top of a long list of very accomplished actors. He’d spent the last hour trading off between screaming into a pillow and wandering around in dazed disbelief until Wen Qing, acting in her capacity as his agent, had bullied him into making a quick thank you video.

Wei Ying kept it quick and crammed as much of his gratitude and excitement into it as he could, though he was careful to keep the screen confined to the office space Lan Zhan had designed for him. It was a live video, since that seemed to be what fans preferred these days, so he angled the camera carefully away from anything incriminating.

And by incriminating he meant “any sign that Wei Ying had a life outside of acting.”

The door was closed, and the room held no identifying pictures or objects. Wei Ying had come to treasure his privacy, and was fierce about protecting the details of his personal life out of the hands of his thousands of fans. Enough that no one outside of their families even knew they were friends, much less married with a son.

Lan Zhan, of course, hated the riot of noise and flashing lights that accompanied Wei Ying anywhere in public. As one of the foremost violinists in this hemisphere, he had his own level of fame, but his fans were less likely to screech like a banshee upon seeing him. And they had A-Yuan to protect now, and keeping him out of the spotlight was the safest way to do so.

His oversight was not locking the door. A rookie parenting mistake.

A-Yuan burst through the door like the Kool-Aid Man about ten seconds into Wei Ying’s final thank you speech, his damp hair sticking up in downy tufts and his little body swamped by one of Wei Ying’s softest threadbare t-shirts.

“Baba!” He shouted at the top of his tiny but incredibly powerful lungs. “There’s a bird in the house!”

Wei Ying watched the dismay cross his face in real time on the phone screen, followed by alarm when his son’s words finally registered. “There’s a what in the house?” He asked as he whipped his head around, the live stream momentarily forgotten.

“A bird!” A-Yuan said excitedly, hopping over to him when the shirt got tangled around his feet. Wei Ying scooped him up before he tumbled face-first to the floor. His son gripped his shirt and leaned in until their noses were nearly touching, eyes wide and bright over the commotion. “Can we keep it?”

There was an angry shriek from the kitchen that suggested the bird would not appreciate such an invitation.

“Where is your dad?” Wei Ying asked instead of answering, phone shoved hastily into his pocket when a crash sounded in the house.

“He’s hiding Popcorn and Jelly Bean,” A-Yuan reported. Wei Ying’s smile was fond; of course Lan Zhan would stash the bunnies safely away. “He told me to wait for him, but I didn’t want you to be scared! It’s okay to be scared, though,” he said earnestly, his little face solemn and so reminiscent of Lan Zhan that Wei Ying had to stop and shower kisses all over his face.

“When’d you get to be so smart, huh?” Wei Ying asked when A-Yuan was breathless with laughter and squirming so much he nearly dropped him.

“Baba,” he complained, flopping over his shoulder with a huff. “That’s what you said.”

“Ha! Of course you’re smart, then, if you’re learning from me!”

“Wei Ying.” Lan Zhan’s low voice had him turning and tightening his grip on A-Yuan when he wriggled happily at the sight of his other father.

“I hear we have an intruder,” Wei Ying said, grinning widely at his husband.

Exasperation crossed Lan Zhan’s face. “It flew in by mistake,” he said, but then he glanced at A-Yuan with a wry smile.

“By mistake, huh?” Wei Ying bounced his son in his arms, grinning when A-Yuan giggled and fisted his hands in his shirt to cling to for balance. “And what, pray tell, were you doing when this bird wandered into our home?”

A-Yuan blinked big, dark eyes at him with utter innocence. “Playing!”

“Mhm. And what were you playing?” Wei Ying leaned cautiously around the corner to peer into the kitchen, wincing when the unfortunately large bird spotted him and screeched furiously.

“Um.” A-Yuan thought for a moment. “The bunnies wanted to see outside.”

“Did they?” Wei Ying asked, trading a glance with Lan Zhan, who then scowled at the bird now stabbing its beak angrily at the plants on top of the cabinets.

A-Yuan nodded seriously. “Yes, they told me.”

“So you took the bunnies onto the balcony?” Wei Ying prompted.

“They aren’t allowed outside unless someone is with them,” A-Yuan repeated, which, okay, at least he remembered some of the rules. They’d have to work on ensuring he understood the rules were for him, not their fuzzy little pets. “I carried Jellybean outside so she could see the clouds! One looked like a dinosaur, baba. She wanted to see.”

“Oh, well, in that case.” He had a good idea of what had happened here. The ‘not going outside without someone to watch you’ rule had somehow been transferred into ‘you can go outside alone as long as you’re watching the bunnies,’ because that was the logic of a four year old.

“And then the bird?” Lan Zhan asked, clearly also aware of the chain of events that had led to them cowering in the hallway as a baffled and irate bird rushed around their kitchen in a destructive-sounding temper tantrum.

A-Yuan cuddled closer to Wei Ying as though sensing an impending punishment. Wei Ying rolled his eyes; Lan Zhan would fold in a heartbeat under that big-eyed stare, and it would be left to Wei Ying to remind them both why humans under three feet tall weren’t allowed on the balcony alone.

“The bird wanted to play with Jellybean,” A-Yuan said. Wei Ying’s jaw dropped.

“The bird wanted to play with Jellybean,” Lan Zhan repeated slowly.

“Yes! It flew down super fast! And it landed right beside me! Then we went inside, because Popcorn was all alone, and the bird came inside to see him too!”

“Okay,” Wei Ying said in a strangled voice, and it took a heroic effort to keep the laughter at bay. “A-Yuan, why don’t you go check on the bunnies, okay? We’re going to go help the bird get back home.”

A-Yuan craned his neck around to peer into the kitchen. “It sounds pretty mad,” he said doubtfully.

“We will talk to it,” Lan Zhan assured him, and they waited until A-Yuan had scampered out of sight to stare at each other with wide eyes.

“Oh my god. Oh my god.”

Lan Zhan pinched the bridge of his nose. “The bunnies were almost eaten.”

“Our son was almost traumatized for life,” Wei Ying said, choking on a laugh. “Lan Zhan, he almost witnessed a double homicide on our own balcony.” He wheezed with laughter, clutching his ribs.

“We will install higher locks,” Lan Zhan said grimly.

“Either that or buy a baby backpack leash,” Wei Ying agreed, and grinned widely at Lan Zhan’s sigh. “I’m just saying, the kid is going to keep on growing. He’s too smart for his own good, too.”

“What do we do about the bird?” Lan Zhan asked, absently stroking a hand along Wei Ying’s spine when he leaned against his side.

“Hell if I know. Maybe Wen Ning will know what to do. He knows things like this, right?”

“He is a vet,” Lan Zhan said dryly. “I should hope so.”

“I’ll call him,” Wei Ying decided. “We should probably feed him while he’s over here. As payment, you know. Not many friends would come wrestle with a wild bird on a Friday night for us.”

“I think the bird would object if I tried to cook,” Lan Zhan said, surly. He made a sound of distress. “Wei Ying, it’s in the pantry.”

“It’s deciding what it wants for dinner, Lan Zhan. Better pay attention or it’ll go for the bunnies again!” Lan Zhan looked at him, appalled, and he couldn’t bite back the tide of laughter.

“Ridiculous,” Lan Zhan muttered.

“You married me,” Wei Ying pointed out. “No take backs.”

Lan Zhan softened like he did every time Wei Ying brought up their marriage. Pressed a kiss to his forehead and agreed, “No take backs.”

And then a moment later— “But leave the bunnies out of this.”

His Lan Zhan was so soft hearted, Wei Ying thought, so full of love he could burst.

“Yeah, yeah, I know where I rank,” Wei Ying said, entirely teasing. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, still grinning up at Lan Zhan as his husband gave an exasperated sigh.

The grin fell right off his face at the sight of his phone screen, which was open. And recording. And so full with rapid-fire comments that the actual video screen was barely visible.

“Oh no,” he said. “Oh no. Lan Zhan.”

“What’s wrong?” Lan Zhan asked, glancing worriedly at him and then down to the screen when Wei Ying couldn’t tear his eyes away from it.

Wei Ying looked up slowly, so guilty he felt sick with it. “It’s been recording this whole time,” he whispered.

He must have looked really bad, because Lan Zhan ignored the phone entirely and pulled him close, holding one of Wei Ying’s palms flat against his chest and breathing slowly and deliberately until he matched his own breathing to Lan Zhan’s. The familiar routine soothed the edges of anxiety that were rapidly blooming into a panic attack, and he swallowed hard and dropped his forehead against Lan Zhan’s shoulder until he could think straight.

“I’m—“

“No apologies,” Lan Zhan reminded him in a murmur so low against his ear that the phone couldn’t have picked it up. “It was an accident. We knew this wouldn’t last forever, and I’m not ashamed of you or A-Yuan. It’s okay Wei Ying.”

“But I fucked up,” Wei Ying mumbled into his neck, clinging like A-Yuan after a bad dream.

“You had an intruder to welcome,” Lan Zhan said, amused. Wei Ying risked a glance up and found that Lan Zhan was smiling, not even a hint of worry on his face.

“Might as well run with it, I guess,” he said with a hesitant smile.

Lan Zhan pressed a kiss to his hair. “Might as well.”

Wei Ying smiled for real now, bright and unrestrained as he lifted the camera away from the floor. “Uh. Hi, everyone! Wow, there are a lot of you. Lan Zhan, this is like, triple the people who were watching it at the beginning. I think I’m offended.”

“Wei Ying.”

“Right, right. So… surprise!” He laughed at a few of the comments, and then they winced in tandem at the loud bang and squawk from the kitchen. “There’s another surprise for all of us tonight, it seems. Look who showed up and just let herself right in!” He flipped the camera around just in time to catch the bird’s beady eyes glaring at them from atop the fridge.

“Can you believe this?” Wei Ying slipped into his usual stream-of-consciousness chatter, free hand tucked into Lan Zhan’s as the pitter patter of little feet trotted down the hall towards them, announcing A-Yuan’s return.

He segued into talking about his husband and son, hesitant at first from years of absolute silence on the topic. Half an hour, a miraculously unscathed Wen Ning and a freed bird later, Wei Ying ended the video and set his phone aside, feeling a little wrung out from the evening’s events.

His phone buzzed. “Jiang Cheng wants to know why we’re trending on twitter. Ha! Get a bird stuck in your house and maybe you’ll become a twitter sensation, A-Cheng!”

He glanced over at A-Yuan, who had his face pressed to the glass door to the balcony in a futile search for the bird. “Time for that talk?” He asked, nudging Lan Zhan with a pointed nod.

Lan Zhan looked shifty. “The bunnies weren’t actually hurt.”

“So… a lecture about the dangers of balconies, but not about the bunny jailbreak and near-execution?”

“That seems fair.”

Fair. Yeah, right. Lan Zhan just couldn’t handle a few distraught tears from their child who absolutely realized this weakness and happily exploited it. “You realize we’re a couple of suckers, right?”

Lan Zhan shrugged. “I’m okay with it.”

Yeah, Wei Ying thought, giving in with a sigh. So was he.

#prompts #asks #the untamed #mdzs #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #a yuan #wen yuan #lan sizhui #parents lan wangji and wei wuxian #wen ning #celebrity au #modern au #modern universe #2020cumdump

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scoundrels-in-love · 4 years

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Did you slip in through open doors and sit down, just to look at me like that (every day) | Chapter 2 - Jaime I

Brienne doesn’t mean to lie to her father. She just wants him to stop trying to set her up with men who aren’t Jaime Lannister, whom she’s secretly in love with. Unfortunately, that’s exactly who eagerly inserts himself in the narrative as her fake boyfriend. And her father is coming to King’s Landing in two weeks.

Truly, what could go wrong?

Also on AO3. Still part of @jbmonthlymadness Mutual Pining March.

He is so, so fucked.

Not quite the same way he thought a week ago, but still very much fucked.

Jaime glances over to where Brienne is watching a game on the couch for what feels like the hundredth time this half hour. While that itself isn’t unusual, everything else is. Tenseness in her shoulders he isn’t sure he will lure out with a stupid joke and then slay with even worse one, the way they’ve barely spoken to each other today and that his heart is being harshly kneaded by some huge, clawed animal. He’d say it’s a lion, but considering his House that feels just a little cliche .

Though, according to Elia, he is a walking cliche and a terribly executed one, at that. He sighs, realizes that the beer bottle really isn’t where he’s blindly grabbing for it, and averts his gaze from his fake girlfriend. There is exactly one word too many in that title and it’s neither girl or friend. If only he could convince Brienne of the same.

Jaime has tried , he really has. Gotten up earlier to make sure he can prepare her coffee and go on a jog with her, kissed her goodbye on the cheek, pestered her into having a lunch during work hours and ordered takeout to arrive just after she got home the days he knew he’d be home even later than her, sent her obscure memes about animals he found on some nature activist group on Raventome that he frankly didn’t get but hoped she would and have a good laugh between work and more.

Granted, he does all these things regularly anyway (except the cheek kisses, but he isn’t sure they’re as much of a highlight of the day for her as they are for him), but now it’s daily. And it’s not a bother, like Brienne tries to convince him to think, and Jaime would gladly do it for the rest of the foreseeable future. Even waking an hour earlier, although he likes to think that if they were properly dating, he’d persuade her to explore other workouts they could do in the time without leaving the house.

Elia suggested it’s because she’s stressed about the convention, but Jaime knows better. (“Of course you do, that’s why you suggested to be her fake boyfriend instead of telling her you’ve been head over heels for her for years now.”) No, Brienne’s work has nothing to do with the skittishness in her eyes, the way she freezes when he presses lips to her delightfully reddening cheek, sometimes daring to brush corner of her mouth or lingering a second too long because her proximity makes him a little dizzy, or stumbles over conversations topics as if they are larger than boulders she can easily best when hiking. She doesn’t even shut down his flirtations anymore - instead she looks away and mumbles something or trips into the next topic.

Their new arrangement is the cause, and the realization has been rolling toward him like a house sized morning star down a gentle slope.

“Jaime? Movie’s starting,” subject of his sweet agony and worry calls out and Jaime realizes he has quite literally spaced out. And that perhaps his inner narrator is going a little overboard. Elia would have another laughing fit if she knew.

He grabs the snacks and another beer and presents them to her with a smile, falls heavily in his spot that earns a little bit of glare from Brienne because, of course, she’s concerned for the springs and one of these days he will tell her he can think of more interesting things to wreck their couch with. ‘One of these days’ feels like an awful stretch and ‘a mountainclimb later’ sort of thing, though. He heaves a sigh.

“Everything alright, Jaime?” she asks and he looks at her, armed with a bright smile and an easy no, when they crumble faced with concern that colors the blue of her eyes deeper, yet gilded shade like the last glimpse of sunset paints the sea. Of course Brienne finds time to worry about him, despite seemingly thinking she’s standing between two cannons labelled ‘work’ and ‘fake boyfriend’, ready to shoot.

He wants to pull her close and press a kiss to her furrowed brow so much he can physically feel an alternate reality, one where he’s braver and does just that, manifest.

Unfortunately, in this one Jaime only laughs and plops his head in her lap, facing the TV. “Of course I am, B. But if you’re so worried, you can always pet my head and tell me it’s going to be alright.” He likes it when she says that, the way she sets her jaw mulishly and seems to simply talk it into existence with sheer willpower and kindness. But never for herself, only others.

Brienne stills for a moment, then, much to his relief, makes indigant noise and pushes at his shoulder slightly but with no real force. “I’m not a cushion, Jaime” she tells him and he shifts just so he can grin up at her.

“C’mon, I’ve been a good boyfriend this week, have I not earned one lap cushion coupon? I must use it before it expires.”

“ Fake boyfriend,” she says seriously and Jaime looks at the screen again so she can’t witness his grin shattering like the window of Casterly Rock’s kitchen when he had been six and too eager while playing ball. He might feel even more chastised than after the lecture Tywin had given him, which had left a stone grinding sharp edge in his gut for a week.

“Fine, but I am not going to pet your head. You are not an overgrown housecat, no matter how much you may act as one,” Brienne relents, but by the end of the movie, she brushes back a strand he has shaken into his eyes and halfway through the second movie, she actually runs her hand through his hair and he barely manages to remain still, instead of following her hand like foam graces a wave’s edge.

All things considered, Jaime feels re-energized for the next week and his little war campaign on Brienne’s heart. He likes to think of it as war, though she is not a thing to conquer despite her truly formidable walls, just to trounce the narrative she has set for herself.

Once, before that fatefully shitty night when a pipe in his first own apartment burst and Brienne had invited him to stay over until it was fixed (and then he never really left), they had talked about who they would be in Targaryen and Stark eras, both revealing their dreams about knighthood.

Already knowing her love for ridiculous, historical(ly inaccurate) romance novels, he had joked if she’d not like ballads written about her instead, but Brienne’s face had shuttered and she had reminded him that no one would go to war for her . “I would rather defend the innocent and fight than stay home a sad and unmarried maid,” she had concluded, before going off about Blue Knight and other warrior women of Tarth. Jaime had already known back then that in any lifetime she’d be worthy of many great songs - of love and otherwise. But the bridge of their friendship was tentative still and he had had no intentions of being the one to lay the siege on her heart.

And when he had wanted to, he had already been so deep in the annoying, best friend role and still so utterly not having his shit together he didn’t feel he had the right to start the march. Someone better would surely come along. Except no one has, three years later still, and Brienne seems to think it’s a sign she only deserves a photoshopped suit-hanger and Jaime would rather be pierced endlessly by her glowering and risk her friendship that he treasures above anything he has ever known, than passively let her continue believing that.

For now, he’s only dying because of work, as they are currently quite swamped. It doesn’t help at all that his brain is a little (or a whole lot, but who’s counting) occupied with various Romance-Brienne-So-Hard-She-Doesn’t-Know-What-Hit-Her strategies. His plans for Friday come to immediate stop when he arrives home and finds Brienne fallen asleep at the kitchen table, her laptop’s screensaver of pixelated Kingslayer and Blue Knight from their favorite cartoon bouncing around the screen. He had installed it the first week of living here and despite her initial grumbling, she has never changed or disabled it.

This would be easier if Brienne’s one quirk when working at home wasn’t changing her workspace every few hours, as if it helps her think. It’s one of her most restless habits and typically, Jaime finds it adorable, but now that he has to haul half-asleep Brienne to her room he… Who is kidding, he also finds it endearing.

“Jaime, I can walk,” she scoffs, but leans on him anyway and when he helps her lay down on the bed, her eyes are soft and a little dazed and he thinks of early spring mornings, when nothing but the birds and clouds are awake yet, against the blueness of the sky.

Brienne curls up and he pulls a blanket over her and she gives him a sleepy smile, so warm that the consistent pull toward her feels anchored to the sun itself. He follows it and leans down and presses lips to her forehead. She exhales softly and when he pulls back, her eyes are closed, but there’s an almost sad turn to her lips.

“I really don’t want this to end, Jaime.” Her voice is so quiet he almost doesn’t hear - he wouldn’t if he wasn’t so close. His heart does an odd thing in his chest, something that would make it more of a rope dancer than a lion leaping through a ring of fire.

Jaime brushes a strand of her hair back, gently, in an attempt to reassure what odd fear has burrowed into her heart. He shouldn’t be so happy every time Brienne expresses she doesn’t want to lose him, but even her brilliant light can’t erase generations of carefully cultivated selfishness. “It doesn’t have to.”

“But it will.” And then she nuzzles deeper in the pillow and he knows this is a conversation to be finished (or maybe repeated) when she’s actually awake. Quietly, he walks out of the room and when the door has shut gently, bounces toward the living room with a grin that everyone would tell him begs for a punch.

There is hope for him yet.

#Jaime x Brienne #braime #braime ff #rainy writes stuff #my fic #I don't know how to format these things *sad noises*

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drelmurn · 4 years

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kinda tagged by @sixth-light. “ Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favorite authors! “

1. Who Stole Away The Moon (Star Wars, Tatooine Slave Culture): “ One day Ekkreth was walking/They found a crowd with fear/Grandmother’s shape did they take/To ask what scared them here”

2. Unexpectedly (Katekyo Hitman Reborn): “Aa! Dame-Tsuna? You’re still alive-ugh!”/“Tsuna!” Takeshi says excitedly, not looking back at the pair of second-years he ran over to get to Tsuna. “Your mom finally let you come back?”

3. (I have loved the stars too fondly) to be fearful of the night (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “I don't remember Kore./Kore. He is - was - my twin.”

4. Get Up Eight: Toph Beifong (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “ I’m . . . not at all surprised when we pick up another person. Zuko seems to be surprised, but then he didn’t figure out that Nuan and Samir and I wanted to help him fight the Fire Nation and defend people.”

5. An Idea That Is Not Dangerous: Zuko of Honoiro (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “ “Earth soldiers,” Kuzon murmurs suddenly, and I echo him, hissing it to the others. There’s a brief scrambling - we’d been kitted out to fight firebenders in as many layers of thick, red cloth as we’d been able to reasonably buy on our very meagre budget. Luckily we’d left our normal green robes on underneath all the red. “

6. The Trouble With Retreating (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): ““Hey,” Hotaru says as she steps up to rest her hands on the rail next to me./Kaede says nothing as he settles down on my other side.”

7. Narcissa (Harry Potter): “ Narcissa. Sweet little Marcy, youngest of three, little Narcissa Black who is not really a Black at all. Sweet little Marcy, youngest daughter of Druella Black of Druella Rosier who is not really Cygnus Black’s daughter, whose father is unknown, not in the sense that he is not talked about but in the sense that everyone knew that Druella had not been in so much as the same building for at least three years when Narcissa Black was born.“

8. A Storm is Brewing (Star Wars, Tatooine Slave Culture): “ When Ebra was a little thing/Before their mom could start to sing/The song that called a child's birth/The Depur stole them from that earth”

9. Just Before You Start: Rei of Nishiyama (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “ I'm doing inventory of the herbs in my pack, the dog curled like a big lump at my back, acting as a backrest. Sometimes they'll shift, their attention following a bird as it hops along the ground or a sneeze at the more pungent herbs.”

10. Elder Sister, run away (Star Wars, Tatooine Slave Culture):”Elder Sister, run away/The cats have sent the mice to play/Our ikkalda(1), clad in white/You distract our Depur’s might”

11. God of Destruction (make way for the new world) (Doctor Who, Shiva): “I stumble as the floor drops out from beneath me, and I land a couple of inches down. I close my eyes as I lean forward to brace myself on my knees, and nausea curls in my gut.”

12. This is a lie (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “Tena she grows, Tena, Tena/Tena she gives, Tena, Tena”

13. Don't Give Me Nothing you Don't Want to Loose: Akane of Suzaku Izland (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “ I cross my arms and watch Rei examine Samir through the doorway of the tent, one of her hands dropping down to twine in the dog's fur. I shouldn't be surprised. They say be careful what you ask for, and I always thought I was.“

14. Look for Broken Bars (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “Fact: My first memory is the sight of some boy’s back as he walks away from me - chin up, back straight, steps as steady as a heartbeat./Memory: Beat beat. Beat beat. Beat-”

15. Down This Unfamiliar Road: Kiran of Baoshan (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): "Are you sure you want to bring me back with you?" I ask as I follow Gopan through the crowded streets. "You haven't gone home in a month, and they don't know me-"

16. It's a revolution, I suppose: Hikari of Honoiro Island (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “I sit across from Saito with Azula to my left, and Kouki Oshiro to my right. The tea seeping in the pot on the table between us is black tea, the tea Saito had told me was Kouki's favorite. It probably isn't.”

17. Sparks At My Fingertips (Harry Potter): " Before you read this - there’s something you have to understand. It wasn’t about the power. I don’t care about the power, no matter what you hear those oh-so-righteous purebloods mutter.”

18. Faith Walks on Broken Glass: Minato of Kyoshi Island (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “ I'm already awake, laying there and thinking about children (my-children-not-my-children, their-children, but they are my-children because that is who they are, that is all I've ever known them as, but they aren't-my-children because I've-never-met-them, I was the-one-who-gave-birth to them, but I'm a guy, I can't give birth-) when Vasuman goes still, and the quiet sounds of his breathing cut off. I hesitate for a moment, then roll over so that I can see his silhouette in the darkness.”

19. Warriors of a Different Kind (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Step by Step): “Kyoshi Island has long been considered odd, and to tell the truth, I can see why. I’ve only ever heard of one place like it before, and the people of the Foggy Swamp are considered even odder than we are.“

20. Drowned in Fire (Heralds of Valdemar, Friends Across Borders): “ My lord, for you, young children have been burned,/Heart brother nearly drowned in fire bright.”

Thoughts: Wow I really need to get that compiled version of Step by Step back up, why did I decided to make it separate parts again? Also, nice to see so much of my poetry.

For the rest of it, I really do like starting off by hitting you in the face with first person. So many of the actual fics start off with “I” doing something, and like sixth-light, a lot of that’s in media rez. Other times I’m just going off on some tangent that’ll be important, which is nice.

Of the poems, I think my favorite first is Drowned in Fire? I don’t know, I just kind of feel that the first lines of the others aren’t as strong.

Of the stories, I think Unexpectedly or An Idea That Is Not Dangerous. Unexpectedly immediately establishes a connection to cannon, before showing that something’s different as Takeshi comes over. It creates an interesting tone, which I think carries through the rest of the work from comments I’ve gotten, establishing connections to canon, then twisting it in an unexpected way.

An Idea That Is Not Dangerous is actually from the middle of a series, coming back to a group of characters after a while away, and while I’m honestly not that happy with the work as a whole and especially the work immediately after it, the energy of the first couple lines is very much what I wanted to go for for the group.

@browncoatparadox? You wanna go?

#ask thing #step by step #unexpectedly #Shiva

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weaselle · 5 years

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pay no attention to this collection I just need to post it so I can find it

hit walls and floor... tall inside of my skull; if I never fall at all, clever's awfully dull - so if "push" says the door you'll be watchin' me pull - 'cause I only shop for china when I'm walkin' with bulls

Order me sit? dope, I'm askin' how high; I out right hope my notes are causin' outcry - where do I fit? miles as the cow flies - statistically shit, climbin' slopes to outlie

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I can juggle knives, and proselytize, and wink my eyes in flirth (or mix words like mirth and flirt, like, ask what planet Dirt is wearth) I can lift a person by their soul, or... even let them down; I can fit myself to any role: demon, prophet, clown. I can write like frightened squid, or read a book from any shelf- but a lifeguard out at sea can drown, and I can't save myself

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I want an adventurous crew, less than 100 and much more than 2; I've got an idea or four to do and believe that "to lead" isn't "ordering you" - I want be thicker than thieves: if one of us cries, everyone grieves; stacked deck for success, form small companies so that every ace dealt goes up all of our sleeves - I wish I had Boromir's horn; I stand full of arrows, small and forlorn I'd summon an army as sure as you're born and we'd rend every obstacle / mend what is torn

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yo when it's late I don't know if debate is a pro that I'm prone to or con I conflate; yawn ok great it's the dawn of new date too soon gone like a pawn in a perilous state - do I wander or wait, keep closed yonder gate or transpose these ten toes 'til exposing my fate? if not off to bed nodding off head berates and refuses to do more than snooze/obfuscate

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I don't have time enough to tell the clock to stop its ticking talk, while I'm sublimely sleepy, still ensconced in twos of shoes and socks; I'm staring off in awful need of themes that breed these searing thoughts- I breathe more air when all unfair reality congeals and clots; when sleep is claustrophobic, fear near stoic in its static stay, I ride my nightmares into mounts more suited to the dreams of day

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time for me to be known from home to home, on the campaign trail like when Romans roam, I'mma do the damn thang, prevail and own every twist in this life-line vine I've grown

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sick like a little bit with a bad tum and sniffle it's not a badda-boom bat beating but a wiffle hit; sleep like the bleeping sheep gotta wring it outta me, sore like a freaking score that you sing without a "c".

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i got nothing to say, i'm all bluff in this play, i mean i'm here to swerve some verse it's clear i'm thumpin' away at the buttons with the letters on whenever it’s day like a cat attacks a sweater, just pretending it’s prey - I need to catch the thing I’m chasing, like, it’s gotta get caught, and so I jot it down a lot to try to capture the thought; but though the plot is often written out in dashes and sketches, i rarely cash in those checks, i need more carry than fetches, so I’m dreamin’ and dumpin’ out all the schemin’ or somethin’ and like, even if it’s meaningless these keys I’ll keep thumpin

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with the internet i’m magic and i’m casting a spell call a song out of the air to here as clear as a bell private playlist from the A-list like i’m famous as hell making music moving quickly so I’m faster as well

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“oh no” I shout “Where’s Trusty my phone?” I don’t know the whereabouts, must be shown- adjusted the tone of the ring to silence now trying to find it brings me to violence; really need to locate as I motivate to go today I throw the flippin’ sofa pillows hopin’ for a stowaway... but oh no way it’s gone I pray this song will make a tiny spell; a lesson less on lost forlorn and more intent on finding cell

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pocket full of humbug, some'll argue/ some shrug but damnit my whole planet's stupid like it's on the Dumb drug will there be a U.S. war? (I mean ANOTHER on our list) maybe something civil: neo-drivel vs. power fist... maybe accidental, mental trump insulting china's boss I fear these pale tears will steer us straight into a giant loss

so many people on the earth are searching for a safe life the rich'll keep their swords but lord they'll take away our steak knife Nothing free for you and me our banking fees are never waved; an act by black or poor is "crime" for white or rich it's "misbehaved" They're pouring us an ethanol and calling it an eggnog - time to run away and trade these reindeer for a sled-dog; the season of the commie christ whose message hasn't landed yet: money only isn't evil if the people's needs are met

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no thanks on the news, yo crank up the tunes, don't bank on the crankiness taking a snooze unless I get dressed from neckless to shoes and charge the horizon more wise than confused __________________________________________________________

hear the too late beep, missing two days sleep, and the road to a dream is a two way street; so the mood stays bleak though I do make sweet this coffee with cream and the brew ain't weak

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been a While since I styled out the verbs and tenses, went around the Gates and straight hopped the fences; penUltimately gotta be a sultan of self: master mind, rule body, find my worth-and-my-wealth; if i'm quiet too long I'll have sloth not stealth so I try to move along and get my words off the shelf.

my projects: objects I invent/books writ - that shit won't pay the rent; throw fits, I have, it don't prevent: what's real from feeling devil-sent.

so I must be clever, do each: sum total; whatever needs eating this dead-beat goat'll; ask what is the art in a pace grown sickly? cut to the part where the chase goes quickly

Now hook or crook I must prepare, to tell each truth/take every dare stand hand on hips, and one in air, you can kiss my lips, or my derrière

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got me a hit list, swear i'ma get this done til the sun goes under the business; witness, this is crazy and witless, lazy lately: maybe the wiz kid just hid restless - put to the test his quiz is bested get to the rest it's now or not again, get that got and then kill it til the whole damn lot is a slaughter pen, sweat til the wet drip drops gettin' hotter than the metal that your kettle corn kernel keeps poppin' in; hoppin' and hippin' and readin' what's written i gotta be gettin' to the List no skippin'! slippin like fall, new leaves i'm flippin - givin' my all just to keep on grippin'; breakin' what doesn't bend wrong way through, as i make it to the end of the long To Do

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i post at the prompt, chew big what i've chomped; grew kid to a ghost haunting most of this pomp; listless within this to do list i'm swamped - spirit in fits, corpse slow to go romp

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incautious swatches of saying; watch as he washes the playing: switching the swerving and swaying into some terms of conveying wishes conditions occurred in which this envisioned un-blurred digit could get itself heard and flip politicians the bird

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in the trace of the face off you tasted last, is the scent of the sense made fading fast, so your dreams leak sieve-like hiking past a scared nightmare crew of an all-you cast

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got me a pallet of shall get around to, climb out of shallow kie, it's not about you; just look at the play and see where the props ain't, take out a brush but don't rush it you'll drop paint; stop sayin' you're praying for planet like damn saint but get out and do, do it, do, 'til you feel faint; yes do it, true get into some writing, what you must chew is how much off you're biting, i dust off the lightning and plug it right in, if i play hard enough then my bluff just might win, all this tin in my pocket while walking about til the hat-caving camptown will clean me all out- my ten other projects, pretend money fudge it, i'll sell all my objects and end up with budget; i'd love it if some of my ideas ran, but i'll finish the one and be one happy man

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each piece is news, new peace in reach; tho a few of you choose nude tweets of Preach- but the rest got best bits fittin' here, what tests my pets must sit and hear: forget that past rush last two years going mash-gas fast 'til we're clashing gears, it's clear no room for fear to be, but the info flash is a blast to me- from the crashing sea to the land locked loam, we're lashed to the new word womb to tomb; and it's all fantastic like plastic foam that'll patch like magic a tragic home, or a tech part heart in 3-d print that'll let docs talk too intelligent; it's so elegant, that an elephant could do operations like he hella went: to harvard med my head is full but the school yard's sharp like a shaving tool; i'm a raving fool, but i drink it in, article particles 'til i sink and spin, win wonder i'm under delusions grand- will i sunder illusions and understand? or is it too much fuss will i cuss and worry, will i do what's just 'mid the dust and fury all i know is i go with the flow i find, tryna rein in my brain while i fill my mind

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so often was the A.M. spent prayin' for mayhem, like seeing riots firing inspired me to 'amen'; i'd hate when the job sucked, my robbed luck, i'd get stuck- attempts at free society my hopes and dreams were all fucked; but lately (don't hate me) the game is less crazy- i bust twice as lustrous if bosses don't make me; So new to the bragging, i catch up from lagging and write down solutions more lucid less nagging

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no sleep awake i sit and wait until the mill will dim/abate some whim shall take my fancy fate is to be sleeping dreaming state my eyes won't close i'll type i 'spose i'll write a night time rhyming prose those words i've heard but rearranged their meaning seeming weird and strange i've changed but how i could not say i only know no other way yet days gone by then who was i my mind was mine but what i tried to bind untied it flies! it runs! i rue what once i 'knew'; so dumb- untruth undo what time has done i can't so chant of what's to come oh spin oh sing oh show such things oh paint me what the future brings if won't be still then say your fill i pray my brain abstain from frills and spill the beans and give me scenes of things that help divine the means which plan to make which paths to take? i sit and wait no sleep awake

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rework this

i want things to be different, starting with me; like to find me a new mind, with new eyes to see; like to start a new life, with new ways to be; can't be hard to do right, or this dude might flee- but i like the older version, no aversion to he: the kid who up and did lots, and got up from knees; who figured bigger sub-plots, and thought it was neat; who questioned syncopation, by stepping off beat; so i'd like to start a nation, a tribe or a team; one with no reservations just, a vibe and some steam; a group think to shout out 'thou shalt know peace' and to try it they're provided with some elbow grease; what i mean is, i think it's, so nice to be me; and the thing is the scene seems a singularity; but my brain goes, down more roads, than the branches of trees; and with more crew, i might do, more glancing with ease; so for multiples of loyal, one/two/three: i might try it royal, and become true We

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#poem #poetry #poem collection #master post

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bugheadfamily · 6 years

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This week the spotlight is on Anna ( @writeradamanteve )! Click the read more link below to get to know our member!

Spotlight by Mila, @jughead-jones | Graphic by Katie, @betty-cooper

Anna | @writeradamanteve

Name: Anna

Age: 40

Location: New Jersey

Any other languages aside from English people can contact you in?: Filipino.

Favourite Riverdale characters and ships?: Aside from Betty and Jughead, I do love the awfulness of Cheryl Blossom and spitfire that is season 1 Veronica.

Cheryl Blossom is unapologetically terrible, and in real life, I would absolutely HATE her, but there’s something to be said about a woman who just goes all in. I get that hardness in her, and I like it that she admires others for it, too. That Toni brings out her soft side is a plus, but I would prefer that she stays true to her character outside of her romantic relationship.

Season 1 Veronica Lodge was a champion of women. I loved that about her. I may not have bought the whole “Betty is my best friend” assertion, but I did like that she was doing it to make amends for her past. S1!Veronica wanted to do better and she looked at Betty and thought Betty was a good person to hang out with to further that. Veronica as a person is methodical. Deliberate. And those are characteristics that can be both good and bad. I like it that Veronica can go both ways. I also mean that in a very gay way. No amount of her sleeping with Archie will convince me that her character can’t be bi. I can’t even say I hate her in season 2. She seemed a little lost there, but she was deciding between her family and her principles. For a while she thought that both could coexist, but when she realized in the end that it couldn’t, she broke away. That’s badass.

As for Betty and Jughead, I have at least 500K worth of words in fanfic that expresses the many ways I love them. But to be clear:

I love Betty for being so steadfast in her beliefs. She may have her insecurities when it comes to how she looks and what her mother may think of her, but when it comes injustice and friends endangering themselves for sex, she isn’t going to let anyone prevent her from doing the right thing. She is a go-getter, from saving Pop’s to saving her relationship (especially when Jughead was pulling away from her). She is a master at wielding household items — a skill, we learned, she got from Alice, who’s clearly handy with a lamp. She’s kinky, and she can be scary stone cold — forcing Cheryl to testify the truth with blackmail, watching Jughead punch Chic in the face without flinching, drowning a man to get him to confess to his sins (although ask me some other time about the morality and racial undertones of that, as that is an entirely different conversation). But she also deeply values her relationships. She cares for her loved ones so much, friend or family. That makes her so strong.

Let me tell you the many Jugheads I love: Soft!Jughead, Smughead Jones, Curious Jones, Snowflake!Jughead, ProudBF!Juggie, and even HaplessSerpent!Jughead. I like him best when he’s writing and when he’s making literary references in regular conversation. I love how sarcastic he could be and how his transition from loner weird kid in Riverdale High to popular serpent prince in Southside High tugs at my heartstrings and makes me mad, too. Like Betty, he cares fiercely for the people he loves. His need to belong becomes real to him, after he tried to deny it for so long. As much as we all have our issues with Season 2 Jughead, it added certain dimensions to Jughead that I love to write about in fanfic.

Favourite moments from S1 & S2?: I think I loved most of season 1, but the moments that stood out to me most were these: When Betty was dancing happily in her Cheerleading uniform, when Betty and Jughead were searching Jason’s room and got caught, when Jughead and Betty went to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy together, when Betty rushed to SSH to save Jughead only to find him laughing at the lunch tables with his newfound friends, when Veronica stood up for Betty at the tryouts, when Veronica showed Cheryl compassion, when the girls all banded together to make Chuck suffer the consequences of his misogyny (again, I have words for this, but mostly — why only him? His wasn’t the only name on that playbook), when Cheryl calls people names, when Jughead protected Betty from her vandalized locker, and of course, when Jughead climbed Betty’s bedroom window. While I can’t get enough of Jughead throwing Betty against the kitchen counter, I have to admit I still loved those other scenes a whole lot more. That said, I will still hope for what I mention in question #7.

Season 2 — ah, my goodness. I don’t need to explain how S2 broke my heart in so many good and bad ways. While there were some golden moments, I think most of us are in agreement that there were so many things that could’ve been done better. However, I STILL do have favorite scenes in this Hell Season: Jughead running the gauntlet was amazing, Betty working on Reggie’s car, the entire street race sequence, every time Betty uses a household object to save people (a shovel, a rolling pin, a poker), Jughead and Betty disposing of the car--from her house to the swamp, that entire episode of “The Wicked and the Divine”, Cheryl and Toni finding one another, and the hunger strike scenes.

What are your hopes for S3?:

Bughead summer sex montage.

MOAR Bughead Detective Agency.

A slammin’ Riverdale Parents Flashback episode.

Joaquin stays and Kevin gets better with love and BDE.

Kevin and Josie becoming step-siblings.

Reggie and Sweetpea being half-brothers.

Veronica being the Speakeasy Queen.

Cheryl stirring trouble (even if I know I’ll hate her for it).

Archie getting a clue.

Other fandoms you’re into?: My thing is that I don’t usually fan hard on more than one thing. My past fandoms were Harry Potter, Teen Titans, Anime (many of them at once), Cowboy Bebop, X-Files, Star Trek Voyager, and Firefly. At present, I love Star Wars (all of them — eh, except maybe for Episodes 1, 2, and 3), Wonder Woman, and all the Marvel movies.

What are some of your favourite movies/TV?: Classics: Galaxy Quest, Tropic Thunder, Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, Forest Gump, The Matrix, Constantine, Clueless, The Breakfast Club, Transformers: The Animated Movie, Snatch, Firefly, Veronica Mars, Supernatural (Seasons 1 - 5), X-Files;

Most Recent: Pacific Rim, Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Rogue One, Ready Player One, Anne with an E, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Anthony Bourdaine’s old and new series.

Favourite books?: There are so many, fam, but here are the ones that first come to mind:

Harry Potter 1 - 6 (yeah, sorry, not a huge fan of the 7th)

Emma by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

All of Louisa May Alcott’s books

All of Sharon Shinn

All of L.M. Montgomery

Anne Marston’s Rune Blade Trilogy

Barb and J.C. Hendee’s Noble Dead Saga

The Infernal Devices Trilogy (Cassandra Clare)

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

All of Zilpha Keatley Snyder books

All of Paula Danziger books

Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi

The Terror by Dan Simmons

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Misery by Stephen King

Favourite bands/musicians?: I shall date myself, thanks:

Queen

Guns & Roses

Metallica

Nikki Minaj

Cardi B

Imagine Dragons

One Republic

The Killers

Lily Allen

Cake

Eminem

Amy Winehouse

Sting

If you could live in any fictional world which one would you choose and why?: Harry Potter, no doubt. I would like to live in a world that relies on magic. I would like to go to a magical school like Hogwarts. I would love to fight in a resistance to overthrow an evil sorcerer. Plus, I would really, really love to meet Hermione.

Favourite food?:

Ramen (the real stuff, not the dried instant ones)

Banh Mi

Bun bo Hue

Sushi

Filipino Food — particularly Adobo

Tacos

Mangos and strawberries

Favourite season?: Summer.

Favourite plant?: This is an odd question to me as I don’t have a favorite plant. They are just there and sometimes they give me grief when I have to tend to the outside of my house because they’ve gotten unruly on some level (like — Fall, why do you have to discard your leaves all over my grounds?)

Favourite scent?: Baby’s breath, food, and freshly changed bed sheets.

Favourite colour?: Victorian pink.

Favourite animal?: Cats and Owls (I am definitely a witch by heart).

Are you a night owl, an early bird, or a vampire?: I sleep late and wake up early. I am an old person who can go on 5 hours of sleep.

Place you want to visit?: Portugal or Prague is next on my list.

Do you have pets? If you do, tell us a little about them: I have two pets. Pootie is a cat. He is a gray tuxedo. He loves me best, but he also hangs around my eldest child a lot. Every once in a while, he bothers my husband. Bob is a hermit crab. Bob bores the hell out of me and I am equal parts terrified that I will find him dead in his cage and tired that I am still taking care of him. His previous companions, Larry and Curly, have perished. When I found them dead, I screamed. Hermit crabs are creepy as fuck when they leave their shells, like I can’t stand them that way. I don’t know why I am stuck taking care of Bob, but he’s here, he is under my care, and God help me, he’s a stubborn bastard.

Tell us a little about yourself?:

For work, I’m a web producer/web developer, and I maintain about 20 sites for my company.

I used to work in publishing.

I went to law school and quit.

I eventually married my high school sweetheart and now we have 3 children.

I was always attracted to women, too, but growing up, I was too afraid to come out as bi. It still intimidates me, coming out to new people now. Most times, I just let them draw their own conclusions.

Fun or weird fact about you?: There’s nothing weird about me that you don’t already know. Fun fact: I kickbox in the nearby UFC gym, and one time, I was practicing with Tai pads with a dude who kicked me in the leg by accident — he just “grazed” me, really. I TRIED VERY HARD to pretend that I was alright. That night, my leg was swollen, and three months later, I saw that same dude fighting in the octagon on TV.

Asks for fanfic authors:

How long have you been writing?: 20 years.

Which is your favourite of the fics you’ve written?: That is impossible to answer. Truly. So I’m going to close my eyes over a list of my stories and where my finger lands, that’s my fave. It’s Drive.

Favourite fic/chapter/plot-point/character you’ve ever written?: This is even harder.

Polly’s character arc in Wicked. I really love how I fleshed her out in that story

The development of Kevin and Jughead’s friendship in Harvest to Home

Jughead’s relationship with Archie and Jellybean in Drive.

Betty’s story arc in Drive.

The twists and turns of Wicked.

The rich ambience of Harvest to Home.

Betty and Cheryl’s friendship in Harvest to Home.

The text conversation in Drive.

Sweet Pea’s background character in Drive.

Cheryl’s character in Wicked.

The car chase scene in Drive.

The hotel scene in Cowboy Jones.

The Peitho kitchen scene in Cowboy Jones.

Which was the hardest to write, and why?: Wicked was hard to write. I had set out to write this story with the twists and turns in mind, and those twists were interlaced. I had to set stuff up all throughout the beginning and middle so that the end would make sense. It was also harder because of Season 2. The background of those episodes in contrast with what I had in mind tended to make me nervous about reader expectations. Like when Hal was suddenly the Black Hood on Riverdale, it felt odd to not make him so terrible in Wicked.

One of the hardest chapters I had to write was a chapter written in Cheryl’s POV. Delving into her psyche was a difficult switch to turn on and at some point, I was doubting whether I can do it, but I did it and there it was. And I don’t regret it at all.

How do you come up with the ideas for you fic(s)? (examples: Do you draw inspiration from real life? Listen to music? Get inspired by TV/movies?) Do you have an process to your writing?: Inspiration is different every time.

For Harvest to Home, I wanted to write a fic about a very domestic Betty who made beautiful things. While I was writing that fic, I was deeply into the show Fixer Upper because we had just moved into our own new home. I was absolutely inspired by the designs I saw on TV and our need to decorate our home. I wanted Betty to be so good at it that she wrote a blog about home making. I had a lot of inspiration for that as well, since in the publishing company I used to work for, I worked with a lot of chefs and homemakers who published books.

For Drive, I was inspired by images of Mechanic!Betty at the start of Season 2. I think I may have seen a couple of fics inspired by the movie Baby Driver, where Jughead drove the getaway cars, and honestly, I got a little mad that Betty was never the driver. So I wrote the damn thing, and suddenly, Jughead was drag racing in Season 2. I wrote that fic with a lot of alternative music in the background. I usually started my chapters with the lyrics of those songs that inspired me.

For Wicked, I started writing it for Halloween and it basically grew too large of an idea to make it to Halloween of that year. I was also hesitant about how the fandom would receive a fic where Betty was a witch. Then there came that article about how Alice was possibly a Spellman. WELL THEN.

Cowboy Jones was absolutely inspired by the Camp Bughead prompts. I figured since I hadn’t been driven out of the fandom by torches and pitchforks because of Wicked, I’d try for some sci-fi, a genre I really love. I aimed to misbehave with Cowboy Jones, so I told myself that this was going to be my smuttiest work yet. I had also put out an X-Files inspired bughead short called The Truth is Here for that same prompt.

I answered the question about my writing process here and some more about character development here.

Idea that you always wanted to write?: Kitchen Confidential type story, where Jughead is an asshole chef who is determined to make his restaurant succeed. Betty becomes his sous chef and shows him a thing or two about cooking and about life.

Favourite character to write?: Betty and Jughead, no doubt.

Best comment/review you’ve ever received?: Well, there are so many commenters who have been so fantastic, but my favorite comments come from those who want to have a discussion with me, mostly because I like to reply to all commenters to express my gratitude and it’s easier to reply when I can pick up a conversation.

Best and worst parts of being a writer?: Best part is finishing a chapter and posting it. Worst part is getting flamed. I have been fortunate enough to have a welcoming group of readers here, but I’ve had my share of flames in other fandoms. I always try to dig deep for something constructive in them — there always is something that can be so useful to my writing, but man, those are TOUGH to handle sometimes.

Do you have any advice to offer?: Few things:

Don’t let fear rule your life. Embrace that fear and get to know it. Find out what makes it frightening, then overcome it.

Practice. That is the only thing that will make you better at anything.

Learn from failure. It’s a bitch of a teacher but it’s the best lesson you’ll ever have.

Find work that you love. It always pays.

This is the eleventh installment of Bughead Family’s Member Spotlight series. Each week, a member’s url is selected through a randomizer and they will be featured in a spotlight post. In order to participate, please join the Bughead Discord (more information found here). Thank you.

#bughead #riverdale #bughead fanfiction #bughead family discord #bugheadfamily #member spotlight

37 notes · View notes

obannthepunished · 6 years

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uhhhhhh notes HURT WEEK im pains

"They call me eagle-eye fjord where i come from." "maybe raven. i dont know." that theory about Fjord being the Hawker is suspicious rn (Apparently theres a third i missed whoops) sam apparently similar thoughts maybe bc Nott brings it up

Jester finally teaching kiri basic phrases, like "go fuck yourself"

Beau + Fjord taking first watch

Caleb checking out the dodecahedron

(Unrelated odd point: i have a current dislike/distrust for liam, which is bullshit bc... i love liam. and caleb and vax. but apparently smt is wrong.)

Dodecahedron is Very Old, and has been shaped/polished Cay uses the haversack as a pillow

BEAU/FJORD Beau: "I think I messed up. I think I should apologise." I HURT? Oh beauregard. oh marisha. "i wanna try, I guess" F: I think he deserves that. He's been good to us. i regret not writing fic now 8(

"OOH, terrible" "YEP." "five" "five" (collective "ooh")

Nott + Jes second. they roll not great.

Tinkle tinkle "nnhnohfishnott"

Kiri is poofed up asleep aAW

trident goin for FRUMPKIN NOOO (pause whilst they look for range on dismissal)

Kiri wakes up "Go fuck yourself :("

Theyre waiting for fish head they could just reappear Frumpkin tho...

Jester is sacred flaming, Molly has a sword active + stabs, Caleb fire bolt, Nott fires an arrow, Fjord eldritch blast, Yasha stabby

Molly + Nott + Caleb miss Fjord hits, Beau hits, Yasha hits dunno bout jes

frumpkin poofs back but doesn't see anything else.

???? alarm lasts 8 hours, not until triggered yall it should still be up. they need to look up the spells smh

Nott messaging to tell yash to hide the bodies

LAst watch is Yash and Caleb i need to stop shortening names

Caleb asks Yasha for people advice :') He's writing it down... i love him Yashas advice is basically "Fucking Bathe" And cay confirms he keeps himself gross because people ignore him more that way 8( Baby

C: "Do you know what i miss? shaving." Y: "I could shave you right now with my sword. I've done it before, you know, to... not have hair on my arms-" Omg shes doing it omg theyre doing it omg I DONT HAVE TO DRAW FACIAL HAIR IN MY FANART ANY MORE FUCK <3333

cay forgets he has a dagger jesus fucking christ

i love everyone making comments + taliesins just amazed like, borderline heart eye emoji look at this whole scenario

M: (to Caleb) "Well done, she [yasha] likes you!"

Nott is Not Happy About Water N: I'LL STAY WITH KIRI everyone else: Convincing her to come N: I'll stay with kiri, and if there's any trouble... we'll see what happens

Fjord goes first, he sees, with his 60ft darkvision, architeture of room. mistly natural, some bits not.

Fjord botches his stealth roll but matt botches his perception even worse. and my thing crashed im so mad.

Fjord is Not a good swimmer. hes like. 30ft swimming speed. Things being left: Caleb's books (2) Molly's coat

travis willingham going "kiris gotta die" then dragging everyone who gasped through the dirt

beau gets fucking 37 on her stealth check Matt: "That's some vax numbers right there!"

The visual aid is... so extra. lights. smoke. what the fuck matthew. (note: when ur best friend is called matthew this is a phrase you say too much)

Surprise round for erryone but Molly and Yasha (purrsonally, i think they were too busy talking abt how beautiful cay is now ;3c)

everyone rolled shite for initiative tho

Caleb casting haste on molly O:

Fjord is very very adept at everything

everyone on crit role can do maths better than me 8(

the marrow fuck beau and fjord royally

watching call lightning forming + marishas face as she slowly realises :)

jes gets the first hdywtdt + crushes a fish with a lollipop

Caleb is taking blind potshots with the glove of blasting boyy. One even hits!

moll gets 3 attacks i love my beautiful devil child

N: Are you guys alive and do you need anything? you can reply to this message~ C: FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK N: oh,, alright.

Taliesin's relief when ashley actually hits is very good.

Beau goes down! D:

hi unrelated taliesin sticking his tongue out at sam fills me with indescribable joy

NEW: Horny twink gets double penetrated by feisty wet ones.

... which is to say two fish dudes stab molly.

Jes heals Beau, but we all know fine fucking well if she hadn't, Yasha would have done it on her next turn. still might since she's only on 11

Cay using dispel magic O:

Molly gets the second hdywtdt "I'm literally just a windmill at this point"

FJORD gets the third F: "I see Molly loojin' around, give him a little wink-" (murders) M: Fucking arsehole F: (witty comment) PEACE OUT (blinks out again)

"Sevens are scary" - Taliesin

Yash gets the next hdywtdt Xorhasian Neck Tie Jesus christ

I was right tho Yasha was seriously considering healing beau, it just takes her action

Two more fishfucks 8(

More call lightning

Sams flask says "lost my best friend over a bowl" and that hurtie

caleb is boutta die. Yasha is boutta die first lmao oh no. i love taliesin jaffe an inhuman amount. Yash gets pulled OVER beau and marisha makes like grabby hand motions which is VERY cute

ok NOW caleb boutta die. he Shield's, and then fragments "Caleb will remember this"

Beau looks at Yasha, looks at Caleb, and goes to CALEB (sobs) blasts a ki point and everything

Molly gets a nat 20 oh he's such a babe

Nott spending her turn justifying herself to Kiri

Fjord blinks back in and fucks up ANOTHER fishfuck

Yasha casting healing hands on HERSELF good.

"You dont have a printout of your character sheet????" "Oh yeah I do after you asked me nine times" liam wh

both yash and caleb are at ONE hp

B, spening her last ki point: HEYCALEBWESHOULDTALKLATER

Beau gets the HDYWTDT tho

Molly is Very Sick from losing haste

Caleb goes the fuck down Fails his first save

everytime tal says "im gonna try something weird" i heart eyes emoji shame he cant do jack fuck though

Nott Burning Bolt shoots the fishfuck for 24 damage jeeeeez doesnt die but drops lightning

Fjord: (appears, fails, disappears)

if Caleb permadeaths i WILL cry

PLEASE YASHA PLEASE GOD JESTER PLEASE THEY KILL IT IM CRYING SO HARD no like literally i am actually crying bc matt very deliberately did that so that he didnt kill Caleb

Jester uses her pearl of power to regain a slot, and use it to cast prayer of healing for SHIT rolls.

Jester goes back to Kiri <333 baby. baby bird.

Matt mercer keeps using words ive only ever seen written and im ALWAYS ???? about their pronunciation

Fjord finds some L00t Like boxes and longswords and a pool of water with dozens of metallic objects mostly outlawed diety symols. changebringer moonweaver. others i forgot. stormlord. everlight. asmodeus ooh, bane strife emperor. and tiamat.

"a little black bird that's fluttering to try and get dry" fuck thats so damn cute. Marisha has the :D face

Calebs books are dry

wooden box + pool are magic. like. WITHIN.

Enchantment in the box. Molly collecting the moonweaver pieces

JESTER FINDS TWO SYMBOLS FOR THE TRAVELLER? HOLY SHIT Different make, pure silver one, burnished bronze another door arch with the road

Molly gets 12-13 symbols

Nott mage hands just so good even drunk

in the box is a blade, gold, jewel encrusted Molly shoves Nott aside to get it cause its a scimitar style

Caleb finds the arch-heart symbol? Takes one

Yasha takes 4 symbols for the storm god.

Bane/strife emperor symbol Fjord is curious about chained coffin he throws it into the pool. nothing happens.

JEster goes to pll it out and gets a big catseye yellow gem, magical, but not a school of arcane magic. it has a line groove in it, very deliberate, an oval.

"something about that [orb] is very familiar"??? (Matt to Travis)

i was right about the orb being familiar

C: (abt the gold sword) This blade is called Summer's Dance C: "Mr. Mollymauk," M: "Mr. Caleb."

Blade allows user to cast Blink basically, and is stronk

official-europa replied to your post: uhhhhhh notes HURT WEEK im pains “They...

i think its probably misty step and not blink

official-europa replied to your post: uhhhhhh notes HURT WEEK im pains “They...

on the sword i mean

caleb tries to ID the orb

fjord touches it "sky is moonlit + cloudless, clothes not your own, nor body, overcoat + human skin. thick calloused skin. left hand stone. look down, see body of previous owner, dead in blood. natural landmass seawater night. flash. right hand grasps falchion. voice booms. potential. jams the stone into gut, cCONSUME. vanishes into belly. looks into water. REWARD." "Vandrin."

i dont kn ow what the fuck is going on.??? everyone else sees this o shit

oh shit is the eye the symbol of Fjord's patron?

"he was my mentor, a captain of mine. a man named Vandrin." Y: What happened to Vandrin? F: I'm not sure. he captained the ship i worked on for many years, and their was an incident. an explosion, terrible weather, waves, "i was knocked overboard" when f woke up he was back on shore

"how did you survive" "I'm not entirely sure."

explosion was sabotage.

the pool is saltwater.

Molly shoves Fjord's head into the water

comes up "You okay???" "Do it again" "Tap three times when you're done!" Fjord drowns

they take as much as possible up and out and decide to dynamite everything in. dramatic exit..

They take the bodies down and lay them in the swamp to rest and decompose.

Beau tries to pull Caleb aside and he just stonewalls her until she actually apologises.

Caleb "I give beauregard a hug and say 'idont know what im doing. just. go with it." BEau very AWKWARDLY hugs him back Beau consulting Fjord, Caleb consulting Yasha The entire other side of the table clapping.

Beau: UH. GOOD TALK. FRIEND. (awkward silence) Beau: Seriously though. Friend? (pause) Caleb: Uh. Ja. (brb dying)

there is a single yellow eye on the hilt of the falchion.

episode END

#Critical Role #Critical Role Notes

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alittleoptimistic · 7 years

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The Monster On Abington Street

There is a monster that lives on Abington Street. It creeps in dark corners and leaves the smell of burning in its wake. It oozes strange black goo and sometimes, late at night when every eye is shut and the moon flickers behind a cloud, you can hear it crackle a spiteful and melancholy challenge at the sky. People go missing, and they don’t come back, and the next morning the whole street smells burnt. Like burning beans. What sort of creature is this?

I, Benjamin Garrick, am going to find this monster and nothing as absurd as a bedtime is going to stop me.

I set out with the knife I took from Davy’s secret box under his bed, and, slowly, I open my window and let cool air waft into my bedroom. The wind speaks of dew and quiet and just that hint of burnt. The monster is nearby. I am glad Davy was gone this evening because it made it easier to get the knife. I think he’s gone to his girlfriend’s again...

Carefully, I ease my way down, catching the button of my shirt on the window ledge. It tears, and I say one of the bad words Davy says when Mom or isn’t around as the button pops and bounds downward to be swallowed by the yawning night.

I dangle by my fingertips, kicking my feet, and it hurts a bit, but I don’t know if this hurts less than letting go will. But then the wind speaks again and brings that smell, and I clench my jaw. I have a mission. A sacred duty.

I drop, and the fall isn’t nearly as frightening as I thought it would be. Landing as quietly as I can (which isn’t very quiet, to be honest) I scramble to my feet and poke my knife at that thick darkness breathing in slow groans around me. It flinches back at the touch of my blade. Or perhaps it is I who flinched.

The burning, smoky smell grows stronger.

Mom says the smell is the broken sewer pipe. She says Mrs. Nancy is always flushing things down her toilet she ought not to, and eventually, it’s messed up the entire street. This seems like an awful complex explanation when the true answer is fairly obvious. The monster leaves the smell as a warning. But Mom doesn’t see it that way, and Mrs. Nancy won’t admit to sticking rocks and toothbrushes and little stuffed cats toys down the toilet. She’s an old lady who has to be at least five hundred years old with more wrinkles than a face. She clutches her little golden cross necklace and holds it up when Davy walks near. That’s because he wears black and talks too loud and plays loud music and watches bad movies, but I think it still kinda shocks him every time she does that.

Carefully, I ease across our lawn, avoiding the orange street lights. Orange streetlights are gaps where things don’t quite line up correctly and everything becomes plastic, and I need my wits about me. Besides, I do want to bring the monster’s attention to me. Kneading the knife in my hand, I run my fingers along the initials engraved inside. D. G. Dad got it for Davy back when he was around a lot. He used to tell me he’d get me one when I turned ten, but I’m eleven now, and he’s gone. Mrs. Nancy said he wasn’t a good person, but I don’t see how that can be true.

That’s okay, though because when I get the monster, Dad will think that’s pretty cool. And he’ll know I’m old enough to have my own knife. Then I won’t have to take Davy’s. And then Dad will come back.

The smell is getting stronger. As I walk down the street, my shadow stretches before me, and cat ears grow from the top of its head. A tail swishes behind me and my fingers sharpened like claws. The shadow’s head tilts slightly in a confused, wild sort of way. This does not startle me. It is just the monster messing with my mind. Besides, if I could be anything, being a panther would be a good option for my current mission.

I press on until I reach Dr. Orn’s house. Dr. Orn hates everything. He hates the color yellow and he hates lawn clippings, and I think the only thing he doesn’t hate is giving people disgusting medicine. For the most part, the medicines are horribly tasting, and he thinks its funny to watch you squirm. In his defense, though, his medicine does work, and he is quite rich because of it. He is handsome and cheeky and has a car he takes to the car wash every three days because birds seem to love a nice, clear target. That’s another thing he hates. Birds. And I’d like to say he’d not very fond of children either. He used to babysit me and Davy, and every time we went, he’d spend the entire time reading us a list of rules until we passed out from boredom. Mom adores him. She thinks he should start his own radio show and give life advice.

Next to his house, there is an old house with ivy growing up the side and more of a dirt patch along the front than a lawn. The house is pressed into the earth by the many comments made by its neighbor Ms. May, who has garden flamingos and color coordinated flowerbeds. She likes to sit on her front porch with her hands glued to her hips, and she waits until someone walks past. Then, she catches them quickly with her words and makes to you listen to forty minutes of all the awful grievances she has gone through lately and how they all have sprouted, in one way or another, from the owner of the horrible house next door.

Mr. Dunkin, who owns the house with the ivy and the old rusted car and the tree that dips down lifeless limbs to tap at the windows on rainy, cold days, thinks Ms. May is amusing, I imagine. I personally think he lets it get this bad just because it irritates her. There are stories about Mr. Dunkin being mean to kids a long, long time ago. Mom used to always make us walk on the other side of the street when we passed by. Don’t want him getting any ideas, she’d say. Just to be safe.

I don’t know Mr. Dunkin, so I can’t say whether this is a necessary step or not, but many people believe it is. No one’s seen him in a long time and people are starting to talk about selling the house.

After passing his house and Ms. May’s house, I reach the end of the road. Beyond, a large forest stretches into infinity. It has woven branches and beaded eyes and is overall very temperamental. If there is something we all can agree on, it is that it is only a good idea to enter the forest when it invites you.

I don’t think the monster is in the forest this way. The forest smells like dirt and more dew and pine needles. No burning.

I turn and am about to head in a new direction when a flicker catches my eye. I squint at it.

Just between two houses on the left, something scampers. My heart bubbles up into my throat, and my grip tightens on the knife. If I kill this monster, things will be okay. I know they will.

Quiet as a panther, I glide across the lawns and sidewalks, and I press my back against the rough bricks of the house I’d seen the flicker near. Something skids again. It whispers something I cannot hear and shoves cold shivers down my spines. This monster is a thing of shadows and ash. Fire and darkness all at once. Taking a deep breath, I hold up my knife and step around the corner. All is quiet. All is dark.

A burnt darkness.

The air is heavy with smoke, but I still can’t see where the smell is coming from. The monster moves the air around me and propels me forward, and I cannot do anything but follow. Deeper and deeper between the ever narrowing crack between the houses. Soon both houses scrape my shoulders, and then I am turned to the side to continue on. And I cannot go back. I am pressed forward. A trembling sets into my bones like a great cold and I almost drop my knife. But I do not. I push and tug and struggle until finally, I reach the edges of the houses. A great black curtain covers the exit. When it brushes against my face, at first I believe it to be a spider web, but soon my mistake is rectified. I press against the curtain, and it gives. The darkness eases back, and the silence disappears. I am swamped in noise all at once. Drowning in it.

They are familiar voices, talking, laughing, arguing, murmuring, snickering, complaining. They are Abington Street. I push the curtain aside once and for all, and squint at the sudden light. Inside the forest behind the houses, they have set up a circle of flat stones jabbed into the earth. They sit in lawn chairs at picnic tables with red and white checkered table clothes inside the circle and no one appears to notice me. The smell of burning beans, of cooking, is overwhelming, and I realize suddenly, that this is where the smell is coming from. This is the source.

My knife falls to my side. Carefully, I ease forward. A large bonfire in the middle of the stone circle has a very large pot on it, and they are cooking some type of chili.

Their eyes are chilly.

One by one they turn to look at me. They are dead-eyed. Sharks. I see mom and Mrs. Nancy and Ms. May, and Dr. Orn and more, and they all fall quiet. Quiet as the dead.

Hello, little boy, they say. Hello Benjamin. Thought you’d join us early, did you

What’s going on? I ask.

They look at each other. They smile.

A feast.

Something is very, very wrong, and it isn’t until then that the feeling in my gut suddenly becomes something I can see with my eyes. Someone’s black clothes lay on the floor near the fire. I know those clothes. The fire dances screaming shadows twisting in agony across the stone circle. There are names written on the inside sides of the stones.

David Dunkin, says one.

Jason Garrick, says another. That’s my dad.

And many more names. But one stone stands out from the rest. As the crowd slowly eases closer, coiling tighter and tighter around me, my hands tremble and my vision blurs, but I can still make out Davy Garrick on the newest stone. The red paint is still wet.

Mom takes a step toward me and she smiles and it looks very nice. You are the good son, Benjamin. Eat with us.

She holds out the bowl. I take it and am shaking so bad the broth spills over my fingers. And I know, right then, why the street smells like burnt beans the night after someone goes missing.

I’m holding Davy in my hands. I’m holding him.

I won’t, I say. I want to ask why. I want to ask why so desperately. But I can’t. Abington Street exchange glances with each other and shrug. They moved closer until I can’t hold the bowl anymore. It falls to my feet and spills across my shoes, and I cannot move my knife, they are holding me so tight. Like an anaconda.

Like a snake. A monster.

Gulping down a breath, I shut my eyes as they press me into the earth and pull me down with their bodies.

I was so wrong. There is not a monster that lives on Abington Street.

There are monsters.

#short story #mine #creepy as heck #this is why people think i'm insane #cryptics #horror #fic #monsters

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my-northern-downpour · 8 years

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Happy Late Valentines Day!

To @goddesswan. Hi! I’m your CSSV and I’m sorry this is a little late. I wasn’t able to get to my laptop till today. But I hope you enjoy this story and I can’t wait to update it again. I enjoyed getting to know you!

Through the Fairy Ring (also here on AO3) Chapter 1

All she could hear was the thundering of hooves behind her as she ran through the forest. It was light enough that people could see, so there was no place to hide. She came to a stop in the middle of a clearing and looked in every direction to see which way she would go next. In front of her the clearing opened to what sounded like a stream. To her left and right, the forest grew thick with brush the deeper you went. And behind her the sounds of the hooves grew louder.

She decided to take her chance with the stream and went straight ahead. She knew anyone with half a brain would go to a water source to try and get away from people who were hunting them.

As she went forth, the sounds of the hooves grew fainter behind her until she could hear them no more. She continued through the field and was met with a hill the moment she hit the tree line. Looking around she could see that there was no safer way to get down than the spot in front of her, so she carefully started to slide down the hill, taking one step at a time and dodging trees.

At the bottom of the hill, her eyes focused in on her target and she smiled at herself. She had finally found it!

There, on the other side of the stream, was the buck that she had set out to find earlier that morning. It had eluded her all morning and most of the early afternoon, but now she had finally caught up to it.

Emma slowly pulled out her bow and equipped an arrow and carefully aimed at the animal that was about 200 yards away; an easy shot by her mother’s standards. As she was just about to let her arrow go, another arrow flew past her head and into the animal’s chest, dropping dead instantly. Her eyes were wide as she saw her hunt laying on the ground with an arrow that wasn’t hers.

“Nice try there. Thanks for leading me to him darling,” a soft voice declared behind her. Emma sighed and put her arrow back and bow away.

“Mother,” she moaned, “You know I had him! I was about ready to aim when you came in and shot him before I did.” Emma turned to fully face her mother at that point.

Queen Snow just laughed as she flipped her braided her behind her back and knelt next to her daughter. “Emma, you still have much to learn about the forest. Yes, your archery skills are nothing short of spectacular now. But you need to learn to read animals. If you did, you would have known that the buck had grown stiff and weary. He was getting ready to dash and you would have missed your shot if you had taken it.”

Emma couldn’t help but agree with her mother. She knew that she had more work to do if she was to know as much as her mother did. But being on the run from the Evil Queen kind of forced her to become very good very quickly or die trying. Emma had the luxury of learning at her own pace.

“You’re right. Maybe that will be the next lesson?” she asked her mother, hope quickly bubbling in her voice at the thought of moving on in the lessons. Snow just nodded her head and smiled as she watched her daughter jump up and down with excitement.

“Just remember, it’s still a race to see who will get the animal first. And I will still win,” Snow said with a wink to Emma, who in turn scoffed before headed to the fallen dear.

“Oh Emma, don’t worry about it! The dwarves said if we get it today, they would take it home and cook it up for dinner!” Snow called from the trees behind her.

She only smiled back at her with a little tint of rebellion in her eyes. “Well, that’s good that he won’t go to waste but I don’t think it’s fair that they have to come all the way out here to get it just to take him all the way home…”

“Emma Ruth…” Snow started calling, “I know exactly what you’re thinking and the answer is no! Don’t you remember the last time you tried that?”

Emma just shrugged her shoulders a little and looked back. “Okay, so I accidentally ended up in the swamps with the Ogres. Nothing bad happened. We now have a growing friendship with them because of it.”

Snow couldn’t help but drop her head in defeat. Of course, she had to bring that part up. How did she forget! It’s not like she couldn’t stop her anyways because no matter what…

THUMP!

Snow White looked up quickly from her spot and started running to where her daughter had just been. The area was now surrounded in a white, heavy smoke and she could hear someone coughing in it. She reached for her arrows, never knowing what was going to happen when her daughter used her magic for teleporting to other areas. Sometimes nothing appeared, sometimes birds or other small animals appeared. One time a child appeared and they cried the whole time until they were reunited with their mother.

The smoke in the area was starting to clear up and Snow could make out a small person in the middle of it. She started to put her bow away, not wanting to scare a child with it and got closer to help them up. As she got closer, the coughing started to turn to sneezing and she feared the child may have gotten too much smoke in their lungs... until she saw that it wasn’t a small child at all.

“Sneezy?” She cried. The dwarf just looked up at her and smiled and then went right back to sneezing. “Oh goodness. Well, at least that means she made it to your home this time,” she said as she helped him up and they started walking back to the castle.

-----

Later that evening, after much thanks from the dwarfs for dinner and three failed attempts to get back home, Emma sat in her room getting herself ready to turn in for the night. She sat in front of her vanity brushing out her long, golden hair and then weaved it into a braid for bed. As she sat, she pondered over her magic.

How come she was the only person in her family to have magic? No one else had ever heard of any ancestors being able to wield it. She had been told that it was because she was the product of true love and that sometimes those born because of it were blessed with magic. But that was only a legend. No one in this land was able to wield magic except for two people: the Dark One and Fairies. Although she had heard that fairies could bestow magic onto those they deem worthy, but they never gave it to a newborn. It was always an older adult. And she had been born with it.

Oh well. It didn’t matter anyway. The last person to have powers bestowed upon them was the Evil Queen who had been taken down by her parents many years ago. Ever since the Evil Queen’s reign the fairies had all but disappeared from the Enchanted Forest, leaving the place without magic for at least 20 years. That was, until Emma was born. And she was learning from her books pretty well.

Emma shook her head violently to get her thought out of her head. Every time she started thinking too hard on the subject she always ended up with migraines and the next day was horrible to get through. She got up from her stool and walked her way over to her bed and laid down. As she started to drift off to sleep she looked out her windows and out into the forest and let her mind wander to the next lesson she was to learn tomorrow.

----

The next day Emma had awoken with much anticipation. Her mother was going to finally teach her how to read the animals and find effective ways to communicate. She was always in awe when she would watch her mother calmly walk up to a woodland creature, gently talking to it, and just pick it up and start petting it, or the animal would come to her and perch on her arms. When Emma tried all she did was scare the poor creature away while her mother giggled behind her. She wondered why she didn’t teach her this first when they started this when she was five. Why wait until she was 16? Oh well, better late than never.

Or at least that’s what she had said this morning. It was already afternoon; the sun was at its highest peak and was beating down relentlessly on the princess and the Queen. The trees offered some shelter from the sun, but the shade was sparse as they were in the less dense part of the forest closer to the castle.

“Mom,” Emma cried, “can we please take a small break? It’s so hot out today!” She had taken a seat on a stump nearby.

Snow just turned around and looked at her poor offspring. “Emma, we need to get to the rabbit’s hole before long. If we stop, they’ll be gone by the time we get there!”

Emma only let out a loud sigh when she got an idea in her head. “Hey how about this. You keep walking, I’ll stay here for just a minute or two and then run to catch up with you. I know where the rabbit hole is so even if I don’t find you I can find it!”

Snow looked down at her daughter and closed her eyes. Didn’t she know running was only going to exhaust her more? When she opened them again she saw Emma bouncing in her seat and just smiled weakly. How else was she going to learn?

“Okay, but don’t be too long. If you get lost I may have to send Ruby out to find you.”

Emma’s smile was huge and it made Snow’s heart melt a little. Her baby girl was growing up and there was nothing she could do to stop or slow it down. She gave her a smile back and turned around to keep walking towards their destination.

Emma sat back further on her stump until she met the tree behind her and closed her eyes. It really was a beautiful day out. But it was just too hot for them to be doing anything. Even her father, who loves to train every day, decided to stay indoors today. Now that was saying something.

When she was sure her mother was far enough away that she couldn’t hear, or see her, Emma opened her eyes and pulled out a little bag of rice. She put one grain in her palm, covered it with her other hand, and began to chant silently until she saw a white light come from her hands. With anticipation, she opened her hands and let out a shriek of joy. In her hand was not only the grain she started with, but at least ten more! She had finally gotten the duplication spell down! She started putting the rice back into her bag, seeing as how it’s been way longer than the two or three minutes her mother had told her, and got up to start in the direction of the rabbit hole.

Emma had only walked a few yards when she came upon a peculiar site. Before her was a large circle of mushrooms, or better known as a fairy circle. She thought back to all the readings she’d done and wondered how it ended up here? These rings only appeared when a fairy was around who was willing to help out a human should they find their ring. And well, seeing as how no fairy had been in this land for 20 or so years, they were all gone, their magic taken with their fairy. Could this just be the way the mushrooms wanted to grow? Oh well, no matter. She had a rabbit hole to get to and a wolf to keep off her back if she was late.

And so, not even thinking twice about it, Emma began to step into the fairy circle to make her way to her mom, when all of a sudden her vision grew dark. The trees around her began to fade from her sight. The ground underneath felt like it was giving way.

And then, there was nothing.

#cssv #goddesswan #cs ff #my writing #captain swan

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chriskarrtravelblog · 4 years

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2020 Hay Festival goes online

The 2020 Hay Festival has launched a free digital festival, which is online until 31 May. The festival features novelists Hilary Mantel, Anne Enright, Elif Shafak, Roddy Doyle, Margaret Atwood, Ingrid Persaud, Polly Samson, Ali Smith and Jessie Burton; actors and comedians Stephen Fry, Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West, Sandi Toksvig, Vanessa Redgrave, Benedict Cumberbatch, Helen McCrory and Jonathan Pryce; and many more.

In honour of our favourite literary festival, we asked a host of speakers and literary lights, “What’s your favourite place to visit in Britain and why?” Here are their responses.

Martin Shaw, author of Courting the Wild Twin (Chelsea Green Publishing, hardback RRP £14.99)

I’m lucky, the place I most love to visit is the place I live, Dartmoor National Park. Dartmoor is amok with 365 square miles of granite tors, swamp, old growth oak forest and staggering views right out over to the grey teeth of the sea near Teignmouth. Be warned, it’s prone to mood swings, and the petrol gauge has a nasty habit of hitting empty at dusk. It has proper, unbridled spook. There’s a pub (the Warren Inn) whose fire hasn’t gone out since the 19th Century, and contains beer as dark and chewy as the inevitable storm overhead.

Brigit Strawbridge-Howard, author of Dancing with Bees (Chelsea Green Publishing, paperback RRP £10.99)

I fell in love with Northumberland on a school field trip, when I was just 13 years old. From the youth hostel in Wooler (still there today), we walked and picnicked in the Cheviots, travelled by boat to the Inner Farnes, and spent a glorious sunny afternoon exploring the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. I have returned since with my husband, my children and my grandchildren, and loved each and every visit. Northumberland has everything: history, walls, puffins, hares, romance, vast empty beaches and skies, castles, hills, rivers, rocks, and wild open spaces where you can breathe, and feel fully and completely alive. Definitely my favourite place in Britain to visit!

Lara Maiklem, author of Mudlarking (Bloomsbury, paperback RRP £9.99)

My favourite place to visit is a village on the Kent coast called St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe. It was my escape from London for years, I wrote part of my book here, and I have good memories of it. There is a small pebbly beach, which is perfect for seaweed collecting and pebble hunting, and a pub with views over the Channel to France, which is tantalisingly close. The walk from St Margaret’s Bay, over the white cliffs to Dover, is dramatic and moving. It is the front door of the nation, so as well as a sense of end there is also a feeling of welcome and beginning.

David Abulafia, author of The Boundless Sea (Allen Lane, hardback RRP £35)

Credit: Marit Hommedal/SCANPIX

I live in (and prefer) Cambridge, so to say that my favourite place to visit is Oxford might sound like a predictable answer. But it is the difference between the cities rather than their similarity that draws me to Oxford. The palatial grandeur of Radcliffe Square and the nearby colleges and libraries is not matched in Cambridge; nor does Cambridge make nearly as much use of the honey-coloured stone that is one of Oxford’s glories. And North Oxford, with its massive villas, parks and riverside walks, is a different and delightful world away from the crowds.

Miranda Krestovnikoff, author of The Sea (Bloomsbury Children’s, hardback RRP £12.99)

I love the island of Skomer, especially in May where it is washed with indigo as the bluebells emerge. This is also the season to see the puffins – characterful birds with rainbow-coloured beaks, who always seem to be in a hurry. They nest in old rabbit burrows, the same pair nesting in each burrow year after year. Standing in amongst them, you are surrounded by wheeling birds coming in to feed their newly hatched chicks or pufflings, closely followed by marauding black-backed gulls looking for an easy meal. At night, the nocturnal Manx shearwaters return to the island – tens of thousands of them. Poorly adapted to life on land, they land clumsily before waddling to the safety of their burrows. The sights and sounds of such huge numbers of these and many other seabirds is a real wildlife spectacle.

Jackie Morris, author of The Unbinding (Unbound, coming soon)

Credit: Davina Jelle

Two places draw my heart back. Both revolve around bookshops.

The first is Dulverton in Somerset, tucked into steep wooded valleys, where the trees colour the land, bird filled and raucous with rooks. Number Seven is the smallest of shops but so filled with beauty, it’s a real haven.

The second is Grasmere, where I swam in the lake that mirrored the hills. Where a heron in flight almost touched wing tips to fingers. Where I sat beneath a beech tree drinking lavender tea in Faeryland, talking of swans. Where Sam Read books has shelves filled with wonder.

Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland (Profile Books, paperback RRP £9.99)

I love wild bits of the British coastline, whether that’s northern Norfolk and the seals of Blakeney Point, or Jura and the crazed waters of the Corryvreckan, or the fossil beaches of Robin Hood’s Bay. For me, the best of the lot is the coastline of northern Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion, from Strumble Head, past the Teifi Estuary (with lunch at the market in St Dogmaels), on to Mwnt – with its gem of a chapel, and its tiny beach – and along to Penbryn beach. It’s as good as Cornwall, with a fraction of the crowds.

Stephen Moss, author of The Accidental Countryside (Guardian Faber Publishing, hardback RRP £16.99)

I just need to pop down the road from my Somerset home, to the Avalon Marshes. These former peat diggings, within sight of Glastonbury Tor, have been restored as nature reserves, and are now one of the best places in Britain for birds. In winter, they are home to the famous starling murmuration, and watching these huge flocks as they form patterns against the setting sun is simply unforgettable. In spring and summer, the marshes echo to the sound of warblers, newly returned from their African winter-quarters, while great white and cattle egrets, and the secretive bittern, feed amongst the reeds and pools.

Gavin Francis, author of Island Dreams (Canongate, hardback RRP £20)

As a boy my holidays would be to campsites of Fife’s coast; at night, as I drifted off to sleep, I’d watch the lighthouse on the May Island and dream of reaching it. In the Middle Ages its chapel was a place of pilgrimage; the whole island is now a National Nature Reserve and home to thousands of puffins, auks and gulls. In my twenties, finally, I went there as a volunteer nature warden, and the beauty and tranquillity of those weeks, the simplicity and the satisfactions of living and working there, have been a touchstone for me ever since.

Joseph Coehlo, poet and author of Poems Aloud (Wide Eyed Editions, hardback RRP £12.99)

I’m a huge fan of antique shops and Rye has a tonne of them, I believe around 50 odd. So Rye is perfect for exploring and getting lost and perhaps finding some treasure, or at the very least some lovely tea and cakes. Nearby Winchelsea is also very much worth a visit for the Parish of Winchelsea and its associated ruins. When you’re done with the ruins and antique shops and had tea and cake, the sea isn’t too far away for a paddle.

Mark Haddon, author of The Porpoise (Vintage, paperback RRP £8.99)

Very possibly the Pembrokeshire coastal path from Tenby to Abereiddy or thereabouts, excluding the Milford Haven oil refinery but very much including Skomer and Ramsay Islands. Running sections of it, early on a clear winter morning before everyone else is up and about is a particularly glorious thing to do. Sometimes, if I’m feeling cabined and confined, I will walk a section on Google Street View and even that makes my heart lift and swell.

Jenny Valentine, author of Hello Now (HarperCollins Publishers, paperback RRP £7.99)

I live in the landscape of the Black Mountains in Wales, rich and green, full of light and open spaces, so my favourite place to visit in the UK, for contrast, is my old home, London. I miss crowds and strangers and movement and Art and noise and restaurants and traffic and Film and conversation and histories on that kind of scale. I love the pace of it, the flow and mess and heart and guts. From Hackney to Southbank to Hampstead Heath, as a guest in the city there is always something to see, something to learn, something to get involved in.

Allie Esiri, author of Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year (Pan Macmillan, hardback RRP £18.99)

If you have never been, you may know the north coast of Cornwall as the backdrop to Poldark moodily riding his horse across the cliff tops. The area is protected by the National Trust and is largely uninhabited save for the odd flock of handsome sheep. If you take a boat out you can see the old smugglers’ coves where pirates – as the storylines of Poldark often plundered – used to smuggle in their illicit loot. I love the cliffs, the coves and the beaches and you have to stop me quoting from Kipling’s poem, ‘A Smuggler’s Song’.

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,

Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,

Them that asks no questions they isn’t told a lie.

Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Five-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark—

With brandy for the Parson and ‘baccy for the Clerk.

Laces for a lady and letters for a spy,

And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Running round the woodlump if you chance to find

Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine;

Don’t you shout to come and look, nor use ’em for your play;

Put the brushwood back again,—and they’ll be gone next day!

If you see the stable-door setting open wide;

If you see a tired horse lying down inside;

If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;

If the lining’s wet and warm—don’t you ask no more!

If you meet King George’s men, dressed in blue and red,

You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.

If they call you “pretty maid”, and chuck you ‘neath the chin,

Don’t you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one’s been!

Knocks and footsteps round the house—whistles after dark—

You’ve no call for running out until the house-dogs bark.

Trusty’s here, and Pincher’s here, and see how dumb they lie—

They don’t fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by!

If you do as you’ve been told, likely there’s a chance

You’ll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,

With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood—

A present from the Gentlemen, along o’ being good!

Five-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark—

Brandy for the Parson, ‘baccy for the Clerk.

Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie—

So watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Explore highlights from past editions at hayfestival.org/hayplayer

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Maple Quotes

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• A lone maple leaf resting on sand Have you ever been out for a late autumn walk in the closing part of the afternoon, and suddenly looked up to realize that the leaves have practically all gone? And the sun has set and the day gone before you knew it, and with that a cold wind blows across the landscape? That’s retirement. – Stephen Leacock • A river is the most human and companionable of all inanimate things. It has a life, a character, a voice of its own; and it is as full of good fellowship as a sugar maple is of sap. It can talk in various tones, loud or low, and of many subjects grave and gay…. For real company and friendship there is nothing, outside of the animal kingdom, that is comparable to a river. – Henry Van Dyke • A sad sort of vulnerability was wafting from her, making the night smell like maple syrup. – Sarah Addison Allen • A solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy ball, with the whole family gathered around to admire her before she goes. – Henry James • A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn’t it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures? – Ivan Turgenev • After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible. – Elizabeth George Speare • Again the blackbirds sings; the streams Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, And tremble in the April showers The tassels of the maple flowers. – John Greenleaf Whittier • And again it snowed, and again the sun came out. In the mornings on the way to the station Franklin counted the new snowmen that had sprung up mysteriously overnight or the old ones that had been stricken with disease and lay cracked apart-a head here, a broken body and three lumps of coal there-and one day he looked up from a piece of snow-colored rice paper and knew he was done. It was as simple as that: you bent over your work night after night, and one day you were done. Snow still lay in dirty streaks on the ground but clusters of yellow-green flowers hung from the sugar maples. – Steven Millhauser • Anne reveled in the world of color about her. “Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill–several thrills? – Lucy Maud Montgomery • Around in silent grandeur stood The stately children of the wood; Maple and elm and towering pine Mantled in folds of dark woodbine. – Julia Caroline Dorr

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Maple', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_maple').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_maple img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • But truth be told, I’m not as dour-looking as I would like. I’m stuck with this round, sweetie-pie face, tiny heart-shaped lips, the daintiest dimples, and apple cheeks so rosy I appear in a perpetual blush. At five foot four, I barely squeak by average height. And then there’s my voice: straight out of second grade. I come across so young and innocent and harmless that I have been carded for buying maple syrup. Tourists feel more safe approaching me for directions, telemarketers always ask if my mother is home, and waitresses always, always call me ‘Hon. – Sarah Vowell

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• Catch a vista of maples in that long light and you see Autumn glowing through the leaves…. The promise of gold and crimson is there among the branches, though as yet it is achieved on only a stray branch, an impatient limb or an occasional small tree which has not yet learned to time its changes. – Hal Borland • Consider the many special delights a lawn affords: soft mattress for a creeping baby; worm hatchery for a robin; croquet or badminton court; baseball diamond; restful green perspectives leading the eye to a background of flower beds, shrubs, or hedge; green shadows – “This lawn, a carpet all alive/With shadows flung from leaves’ – as changing and as spellbinding as the waves of the sea, whether flecked with sunlight under trees of light foliage, like elm and locust, or deep, dark, solid shade, moving slowly as the tide, under maple and oak. This carpet! – Katharine Sergeant Angell White • Do you think I’m wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it’s only noon. You couldn’t be something that hundreds of others are. – Jonathan Safran Foer • Everyone had a Japanese maple, although after Pearl Harbor most of these were patriotically poisoned, ringbarked and extirpated. – Barry Humphries • For anyone who lives in the oak-and-maple area of New England, there is a perennial temptation to plunge into a purple sea of adjectives about October. – Hal Borland • For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk in the tasselled meadow grasses, one looks up through a level roofing of maple-leaves at the vast, shadowless, and unsuggestive blue. – Edith Wharton • For watching sports, I tend to drink Guinness; early evenings always begin well with a Grey Goose and tonic with plenty of lime; and on a cold winters night, theres nothing quite like a glass of Black Maple Hill… an absolute peach of a bourbon. – Martin Bashir • Freezing concentrates sugar (maple sugar), alcohol, and salt solutions as efficiently as heating distils water or alcohol from solutions. Open pans of maple sugar can have the surface ice removed regularly (each day) until a sugar concentrate remains. Salts in water, and alcohol in ferment liquors can be concentrated in the same way. – Bill Mollison • I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows…. glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round. – John Burroughs • I always go to the lowest common denominator for that ingredient. So if I think squash, I try to think what it means to me — and if it doesn’t mean anything to me, I’m not gonna do well when I cook it. So [squash] means to me: fall, maple syrup, cinnamon, and things just come into your head so you can narrow the vortex and make it a bit smaller and you go with something because there’s no time. – Geoffrey Zakarian • I always have a good quality extra virgin olive oil. A cheap quality oil will end up cheapening your dishes. And I love sweetening my dishes with maple syrup. It has a bit of a bitter kick at the end that works wonderfully in savory dishes. – Nadia Giosia • I am passionate about tea, running, the idea that we are bound only by the limits of our imaginations, and maple syrup. – Misha Collins • I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October colouring. The sun came up on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air was keen and clear and full of promise. I knew something was going to happen. – Jean Webster • I drink maple syrup. Then I’m hyper so I just run around like crazy and work it all off. – Rachel McAdams • I grew up trying to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs, not Team Canada. Didn’t even know it existed. – Adam Oates • I happen to know everything there is to know about maple syrup! I love maple syrup. I love maple syrup on pancakes. I love it on pizza. And I take maple syrup and put a little bit in my hair when I’ve had a rough week. What do you think holds it up, slick? – Vince Vaughn • I have a maple leaf tattoo over my heart, quite literally, and my two favorite things on Earth are being in Canada and making movies. – Jay Baruchel • I like Toronto a lot, it’s a good city. The only thing that really annoys me about Toronto is that you’re turning Maple Leaf Gardens into a grocery store, which is absolutely nothing short of disgusting. – Rick Wakeman • I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers. – Leif Enger • I sit where the leaves of the maple and the gnarled and knotted gum are circling and drifting around me. – Alice Cary • I think maybe, if I could be a Canadian super hero, I’d have some kind of freezing power and some sort of maple syrup weapon. Could be a little sticky. – Nathan Fillion • I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple. – Janet Fitch • I used to go to Maple Leafs games all the time when Nic shot To Die For here in Toronto. This is a great city. I love it here. – Tom Cruise • I was cutting and threading pipe in the tunnels to get water into the shower rooms for athletics. I was repairing old metal windows, fixing cement walls where rain was coming through, and drying out the maple gym floors in hopes of removing the warping. – Tom Baker • I was just getting acquainted with the wood. I wanted to see if it was maple or pine. – Kurt Rambis • If it’s not 100 per cent pure maple syrup, it can’t be called ‘pure maple syrup. – Nancy Greene • If you’ve only got one day to live, come see the Toronto Maple Leafs. It’ll seem like forever. – Pat LaFontaine • I’m not from a maple producing area and so my maple syrup credentials are very much of the eating side. – Nancy Greene • I’m very proud to be wearing the “C” for the Maple Leafs. It puts a smile on my face everyday – Mats Sundin • In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you. – John Burroughs • In spring when maple buds are red, We turn the clock an hour ahead; Which means, each April that arrives, We lose an hour out of our lives.

Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks Fly southward, back we turn the clocks, And so regain a lovely thing That missing hour we lost in spring. – Phyllis McGinley • In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen. – Steven Millhauser • It is a poor observance of our first century as a nation if we run up a flag of surrender with three dying maple leaves on it. – Charlotte Whitton • It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light, colored and glowing like oak and maple in autumn, when the sun gold is richest – John Muir • Leaf fans loyalty is unshakeable. The fans keep coming back and it hurts, I have been there. I have lost in game six to go to the finals with the Maple Leafs, against Carolina and what a great final that would have been. – Curtis Joseph • Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer. – Sara Teasdale • Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow from my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me. – William Styron • Maples are such sociable trees … They’re always rustling and whispering to you. – Lucy Maud Montgomery • Maple-trees are the cows of trees (spring-milked). – Henry Ward Beecher • Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine,the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral, The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepest still, The yew obedient to the bender’s will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platane round, The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound. – Edmund Spenser • My end goal in the piano is to play Scott Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag. – Miranda Leek • My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves. – David Sedaris • My love of maple syrup. I’ve been known to knock back a can over a couple days: A swig here, a swig there, and next thing you know it’s gone. It’s a habit I have to stave off. I don’t want to lose all my teeth. – Rufus Wainwright • My uncle, Mr. Stephen Maple, had been at the same time the most successful and the least respectable of our family, so that we hardly knew whether to take credit for his wealth or to feel ashamed of his position. – Arthur Conan Doyle • No clouds are in the morning sky, The vapors hug the stream, Who says that life and love can die In all this northern gleam? At every turn the maples burn, The quail is whistling free, The partridge whirs, and the frosted burs Are dropping for you and me. Ho! hillyho! heigh O! Hillyho! In the clear October morning. – Edmund Clarence Stedman • October turned my maple’s leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from the twigs’ weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser’s fingers. – Thomas Bailey Aldrich • Oh! to be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able to believe. – Fanny Fern • One day the ‘Maple Leaf’ will make me King of Ragtime Composers. – Scott Joplin • Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom. – William James • Spring has many American faces. There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there. Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England. – Archibald MacLeish • That`s a maple leaf, Canadian, not just for being too European but too Canadian. Not so subtly putting [Ted] Cruz`s face inside that maple leaf there. – Chris Hayes • The approach to that movie wasn’t, ‘Lets make this movie about Amsterdam and maple syrup.’ The concept was, ‘Lets go to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is fun.’ So we flew to Amsterdam with our cameras and we saw what happened and then we got back and we sat down and we said, ‘What’s the movie here.’ That’s when we realized that the movie was ‘The Maple Syrup Saga’. – Casey Neistat • The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood’s edge creeps the skirting blaze, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush. – James Russell Lowell • The food that’s never let me down in life is porridge, especially with milk and maple syrup, which is delicious. Paris isn’t a porridge place, but I can buy it in London when I’m there and bring it back with me. – Marianne Faithfull • The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple-universe. – Annie Dillard • The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry’s cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I’ll put a trinket on. – Emily Dickinson • The rinsed foam swirled into one drain that always clogged come October when the maples dropped Canadian propaganda over everything. – Daniel Handler • The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills. – Bliss Carman • The spirit of the year, like bacchant crowned, With lighted torch goes careless on his way; And soon bursts into flame the maple’s spray, And vines are running fire along the ground. – Edith M. Thomas • The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown. – John Updike • The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised. – Henry David Thoreau • The summer ends and we wonder who we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree I passed the farms that made it Through the last days of the century And I knew that I was going to learn again Again, in this less hazy light I saw the fields beyond the fields The fields beyond the field – Dar Williams • The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. – Henry David Thoreau • The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. – Henry David Thoreau • The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets after summer rain on maples and sycamore. – Jack Gilbert • The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing–all of this [is] the integral community in which we live. – Thomas Berry • There is a beautiful spirit breathing now Its mellowed richness on the clustered trees, And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, Pouring new glory on the autumn woods, And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds. Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down By the wayside a-weary. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • There were so many miracles at work: that a blossom might become a peach, that a bee could make honey in its thorax, that rain might someday fall. I thought then about the seasons changing, and in the gray of night I could almost will myself to see the azure sky, the gold of the maple leaves, the crimson of the ripe apples, the hoarfrost on the grass. – Jane Hamilton • There’s nothing people like better than being asked an easy question. For some reason, we’re flattered when a stranger asks us where Maple Street is in our hometown and we can tell him. – Andy Rooney • This fastest of all games [hockey] has become almost as much of a national svmbol as the maple leaf. – Lester B. Pearson • This hill crossed with broken pines and maples lumpy with the burial mounds of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane of ’38) out of their rotting hearts generations rise trying once more to become the forest just beyond them tall enough to be called trees in their youth like aspen a bouquet of young beech is gathered they still wear last summer’s leaves the lightest brown almost translucent how their stubbornness has decorated the winter woods. – Grace Paley • To her bier Comes the year Not with weeping and distress, as mortals do, But, to guide her way to it, All the trees have torches lit; Blazing red the maples shine the woodlands through. – Lucy Larcom • We don’t want you convicted for condiment theft. You go to that prison, you’ll meet big-time operators. Maple syrup stealers. – Deb Caletti • We must keep these waters for wild rice, these trees for maple syrup, our lakes for fish, and our land and aquifers for all of our relatives – whether they have fins, roots, wings, or paws. – Winona LaDuke • We would much prefer to see ownership in the hands of the Maple Group, if only because we would much rather see Canadian ownership of our stock exchange. What we are first of all interested in is making sure that Montreal is able to preserve that niche or expertise. – Jean Charest • When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up, Opened in airs of June her multitude Of golden chalices to humming-birds And silken-wing’d insects of the sky. – William C. Bryant • When you were a kid, if you went to the Montreal Forum or a hockey game at Maple Leaf Gardens, which I did, there was a great feeling. The new stadiums don’t have it. Why don’t they have it? Building codes. – Frank Gehry • With the fans and the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, the way I’ve been treated here has been awesome. – Mats Sundin • Writing an informative yet compact thriller is a lot like making maple sugar candy. You have to tap hundreds of trees – boil vats and vats of raw sap – evaporate the water – and keep boiling until you’ve distilled a tiny nugget that encapsulates the essence. – Dan Brown • You cannot imprison me!” He bellowed. “I am Hyperion! I am-” The bark closed over his face. Grover took his pipes from his mouth. “You are a very nice maple tree. – Rick Riordan

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'a', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_a').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_a img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'i', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_i').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_i img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

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equitiesstocks · 5 years

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Maple Quotes

Official Website: Maple Quotes

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[clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

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inthenameofrosesiwillpunishyou · 8 years

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Adventure

I’ve lived in or visited multiple different states. I’ve enjoyed the sights, sounds, and smells of many different environments and eco-systems. I now live in one of the most beautiful states in America, Colorado. I haven’t done much adventuring, but I will soon.

I can’t say I have a favorite environment. I’ve stumbled across magical woods, trudged through mysterious swamps, and got lost in wild forests. I can however share some of my best memories of places that meant a lot to me.

I barely remember the couple years I lived in Florida, the state I was born in. I do have a memory of being very young and small. I was outside and we lived in an area surrounded by a bunch of Redwoods(I think that’s what they were calling but I was very young). I can almost vividly hearing birds chirping and looking up to see nothing but trees taller than any I had ever seen. The ground was super soft. not from grass but from dirt and leaves that had turned brown. This is my youngest memory. I remember feeling so tiny compared to these trees. I was completely awestruck. Looking back on it now I’m sure they weren’t half as big as I remember being a little over 2 ft tall, but the magic of the moment will stick with me, I hope, for many years.

I grew up for the most part in three different states. Louisiana, Minnesota, and Arkansas. Louisiana is the state I claim as my home state. I’m not a big fan of Florida and I barely lived there. Louisiana is an all around mysterious and eery state, but not in a bad way, like in a, using this word again, magical way. I am a witch by birth, when I was younger I did not know this because I didn’t know my father very well nor did I ever see him, but apart of me also sensed something...different or special about me. I was always drawn to nature and seemed the thrive when in it. So I classify myself as a nature witch.

Louisiana holds some of my worst and best memories. My great grandparents, and grandparents were farmers. Not livestock, just fruits and vegetables. One of my fondest memories, I’m tearing up remembering it, was being in the field with my great grandfather. I was in kindergarten at the time. I can still feel his hand rustling my hair. He and my grandmother taught me so much about gardening. We grew strawberries, corn, greens, cabbage, blueberries, blackberries, watermelon, potatoes, bell peppers, carrots, string green beans, there was a fig tree, peach tree, and I do believe an apple tree. I would spend hours in the field watering, fertilizing, weeding, I even talked to the plants. Finally when harvesting time came it was like winning an award. Nothing, and I mean nothing tastes better to me than homegrown strawberries, watermelon, and corn straight out of the field (rinsed under the house of course). The smells I remember make my mouth water. I never wore shoes when I was younger and if I did it was sneakers to school and flipflops at home. I loved feeling the grass in between my toes at my great grandparents. I lived with my grandparents 2 minutes up the dirt road. I raced my cousins so many times barefoot running up and down that road. It truly makes me nostalgic writing this. My grandmother and my great grandfather, and occasionally one of my great uncles, would harvest the fruit and vegetables. While me, my grandmother, and great grandmother would preserve the harvest. We made jam that was so damn good. My grandmother would have my climb the fig tree while she picked the ones closer to the ground. We would talk for hours and it was so much fun. I truly miss it. In my grandparents driveway is a Magnolia tree and a tree I don’t remember the name of, but it grows beautiful pink flowers. At the right time of the year the petals would begin to fall and I would pretend I was one of those girls in the anime I sneakily stayed up late to watch. It was so beautiful I would often sit in the gazebo placed slightly to the side of the trees and just watch the wind blow the flowers. I used to get the ones off the ground and decorate the gazebo with them. There is a ditch at my great grandparents right before the mail box. So they had a bridge with one of those crisscross pattern archways where my great grandmothers roses grew. Both of my great grandparents have passed away. I think about them everyday and the lessons they taught me growing up. I often think about watching my great grandmother draw her butterflies, she used glitter gel pens and they always turned out so gorgeous. My great grandfather used to give me dum dums and I would sit in his lap on the porch swing while he dipped and told me stories about the war, or meeting my great grandmother, or when my grandma and her SIX brothers (she being the only girl and the oldest) were young and played in the same yard I did. Along the fence that went down the road to the bus stop, wild honeysuckle grew. When I would walk home from the bus stop, with or without my cousins, we would often grab a couple to suck on. Louisiana is beautiful full of swamps, creatures, and an amazing culture that is worth visiting.

Minnesota was a little different. Or a lot different really. I saw snow for the first time there. I lived with my Aunt and her now ex husband. We had a nice townhouse in a rural area. Behind out house was a small, and not very thick treeline I treated like my own personal forest. Behind that small little forest was a huge open field I never felt like exploring, not to mention I would get in so much trouble for going that far out. I would run through those woods with my next door neighbor and/or cousins and build booby traps and little huts. To the left of our back yard was a small patch where they grew bell peppers, and peppers. When the left overs would die close to winter it had such a pungent smell. I’ve never smelled anything like it. It wasn’t bad per say, I actually was very fond of it. It would begin around Halloween time. I would rake the leaves to put into those big, orange, pumpkin yard bags they have during Autumn. I loved raking the garden remains because it smelled so good. I had to be super careful about rubbing my eyes or mouth though. The peppers were still spicy dead or not and the spiciness seemed to infest the whole garden. Halloween was great in that neighborhood. EVERY house participated. My Aunt and her husband would go all out and turn our garage into a super creepy scene that scared even teenagers. I loved driving through the neighborhood and seeing all the decorations, same went for Christmas. The snow was beautiful, but there was always so much. I loved it though. It didn’t stop me from going outside. I would spend around 2 hours tops at a time outside because my aunt is very protective and didn’t want me to get frostbit or sick. I often built snowmen and sometimes she would come out and help me. After playing outside I would come in and she always had hot coco waiting for me. There would be a bowl of Halloween candy on the dining room table which I would pick whichever chocolate I was in the mood for that day and drop it in my coco. I wasn’t in much wild nature besides at my cousins house. There were a couple duck ponds that were fun to play around even if we were told not to. Minnesota is so very pretty. The snowfall is so mystical, you would almost expect faeries to be fluttering around.

Arkansas is the state I just moved from. I have most of my worst memories ever in this state. I can’t complain though because, in some areas, its a truly beautiful state. At some point after turning 18 I met a cousin of mine and his wife. They introduced me to crystal mining and let me co-own their shop with them which they sold jewelry with crystals attached and crystals just by them self. Crystal mining is an amazing experience. It is so rewarding digging through dirt and mud and bugs to come across a beautiful little druzzy(term they used to describe crystals with no particular name). If it could still be my career, it would. It was an amazing experience and I would go back to crystal mining in a heart beat, but in my current location. I lived in an apartment underneath my landlords who happened to be a close friend of mine’s parents. They helped me learn a lot about myself and taught me anything I asked to be taught. The lived on top of a cliff, if you followed the concrete to the gazebo you would see the small path that led to the end of the cliff. Below was a lake. I spent so many mornings there drinking coffee or tea thinking, and meditating. My 20 birthday was spent with two people I hold very close to me on that cliff casting a fire spell to bring me luck for the next year of my life. In Arkansas I found many beautiful little hiding spots, because that’s mainly what I was looking for. Somewhere to hide, to get away for a little while. I met and married my husband in this tourist town that we lived in after we were married, I moved into his apartment. Often after 10 or 11 we would walk around downtown for exercise, Pokemon Go hunting, or just to go and smoke and get out of the house. It was one of the most magical places I had ever had the pleasure of enjoying. Night time was the best time, the spirits came out to play, and obviously there was a LOT less people. The town we inhabited happened to be a big Wicca/Pagan community and was full of hippies. So the energy was so much fun to feed off of. My most favorite, and last I’m going to share, memory is of this place my brother and his family, we have different dads, went swimming, help parties, and barbecued at called the blue hole. Besides having to watch for snakes, watch the current, and get used to the cold it was SO BEAUTIFUL. My brother’s dad always says “They don’t call it the blue hole because the waters always blue, its because no matter how hot it is that water is going to turn your lips blue!” Yes, the water was always this magical light blue color, and yes it was freezing cold no matter how hot it was. It is a circular body of water that derives from a fresh spring. There is a wall of cliff. which is the primary way people get into the water. It’s too cold to just wade in slowly so mainly everyone would dive in off the cliff side. People built a rope swing, and even installed a diving board. It’s a beautiful area I would advise visiting.

Other places I’ve visited include Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, New Mexico, Arizona, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Dakota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wyoming.

I would advise you, no matter what age, race, ethnicity, culture, sex, social class, etc to get out there and explore. Adventure. Learn this country or other countries. There is a beautiful world out there waiting for you to explore it!

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