#in the middle of a farm field in Illinois

[freepassbound]

Where did you go to see the eclipse?? Was it far? Sand dunes?

I went to Canada, on the north shore of Lake Erie - it was about a three-hour drive (with surprisingly little traffic). Technically speaking, I think it would just be one sand dune, or maybe one small complex of sand dunes - I didn't even know such a place existed along Lake Erie.

It was work. 😅

[chronicangelca]

through the jungle, through the dark

Link to this fic on AO3. Words: 2641 Date posted: August 5, 2024

Summary: Of course she was kidding, and of course he knew she was kidding. Even if there was some way to sneakily drop her and her truck off in the middle of the city that wouldn’t get them both caught, she thought this road trip was like some sorta rite of passage. She needed this, needed the last thousand miles stretching between her and the city.

Lana was just grateful her truck didn’t break down.

She’d had the stupid thing since she was 16, and Aunt Helen had it for at least a decade before that, and good, hard-working farm trucks just weren’t meant to haul a half a dozen boxes halfway across the country. The Kents had offered to chip in and help her buy a plane ticket out to the city, which had been awful nice of them, but even with the price of gas, it probably would have cost three times as much to take a plane and ship all those boxes to her new apartment. After she refused that as polite as she could, Jonathan had insisted that she let him drive with her, just so she didn’t have to make the near-24-hour drive all by herself and then move all those boxes up the two flights of stairs into her new apartment, but it would have been hell on his back—both the drive and the boxes—so she swiftly denied that, too.

Martha had given her a tater tot hot dish with aluminum foil wrapped over the top to keep it warm before she left and insisted that she call the second she got to the city. Jonathan had told her that if the busted AC got to be too much and she wanted to turn back around for home, nobody would blame her. Aunt Helen had insistently told her that she would always have a room at the old farmhouse if she wanted and then hugged her tight until her ribs ached and her face hurt from smiling so hard. And then she was off.

When Smallville was nothing but a speck in her rearview mirror, which didn’t take too long all things considered, she rolled down the driver’s side window with the hand-crank until her hair was flying every which way and turned the radio up to max volume and treated the corn fields rolling by to her very own crooning along to Johnny Cash.

Still, leaving home didn’t feel real until she saw the bright blue “Missouri Welcomes You” sign and pressed on the gas a little harder, until she was going closer to 10 miles over than 5. She’d never been outside of Kansas before, not even when Clark decided he was going to up and leave to go to that big fancy university up in Metropolis and she pouted and dug her heels in and all-but begged him not to leave. Those city folk’ll kill you, Kent, she’d insisted, even though she knew better than anybody that nobody could kill Clark, nor would anybody want to.

The heat did start to get a little unbearable once she’d been driving for almost eight hours, and by the time she had crossed the Mississippi and the radio stations started with Ws instead of Ks, she needed to stretch her legs. As a matter of pride more than anything, she waited until she’d crossed over the border into Illinois just so she could still say she’d never willingly set foot in Missouri, and she found somewhere shady to park the truck so she could hop out and stretch. Her back must have popped in at least three places.

While she was stopped, she got a call from Clark himself, and she couldn’t help smiling wide enough that the gap in her front teeth showed in the rearview mirror when she answered. “Just couldn’t wait until tomorrow, huh?”

He laughed in the awkward way he always did when he wasn’t quite sure if he was supposed to be laughing. “I just wanted to check on you. Ma seemed to think you were going to die of heatstroke before you made it here.”

Living in the city’d killed that country hick accent, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the same thing was gonna happen to her. “Well if you’re that worried about it, you can fly your big blue butt over here and pick me and the truck up to fly us the rest of the way.”

His laugh was a lot more natural that time. Of course she was kidding, and of course he knew she was kidding. Even if there was some way to sneakily drop her and her truck off in the middle of the city that wouldn’t get them both caught, she thought this road trip was like some sorta rite of passage. She needed this, needed the last thousand miles stretching between her and the city.

“Are you still planning on getting here at lunchtime tomorrow?”

She looked up at the sky, brilliantly blue with no clouds. The sun was beating down on the chipping paint of her teal truck, threatening to give her a sunburn through the windshield even when she got back in the car. Her only saving grace was the tree she was sitting under. Some birds were chirping not far away, and little bugs fluttered up from the grass between her toes.

“Yeah, I’ll be there for lunch,” she answered after a minute.

“I guess I’ll let you get back to it, then,” he said, in that way that indicated that he’d be smacking his thighs and standing up from an old, worn couch if they were talking in-person.

“Guess so,” she said back somewhat faintly, not fully paying attention. Even after he hung up, she took another ten minutes just to lay in the grass and stare up at the sky.

Once she was back on the road, she couldn’t help but notice that the country music they played on the radio was different the further East you got. Back home, it was all Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings. All the way through Illinois and beyond, there was more of a pop bend to it—older Taylor Swift and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. It wasn’t bad, it was certainly head-bobbing and finger-drumming worthy, but she didn’t belt it quite so loud.

She didn’t pull over again other than to get gas until it was almost midnight, straddling the border between West Virginia and Maryland. If she really wanted to, she probably could have pushed those last few hours to Metropolis and slept on a mattress on the floor in her studio apartment, but she didn’t really want to. Instead, she sat in the bed of her truck, surrounded by cardboard boxes with labels like “junk I forgot to pack until the last minute” and “the nice plates (FRAGILE!!!)” with a hot dish in her lap that she was eating straight out of with a fork. Even room temperature, Martha Kent’s cooking was enough to make her feel like she’d never left home, even though she was over a thousand miles away. Far away from the city like this, she was also able to get one last, real nice look at the stars before she was in Metropolis where the light pollution would mean she’d never see it again, or at least not for an awful long time.

Sleep folded over her like a warm blanket with the stars over her head and Elliott Smith crooning to her from her truck’s speakers, hot dish still uncovered between her knees.

That was why she was grateful her truck didn’t break down. When she woke up in the morning with the sun rising over her head and gospel music playing over the speakers, she realized that she never fully shut the thing off, and by all rights the battery should have died. That was the sort of miracle that followed you around when you were friends with Superman, she guessed.

The rest of the drive was unremarkable. Five hours of rolling hills and green trees, and then she was in front of her apartment building a few hours earlier than she expected to be and hauling some of the lighter boxes up the stairs. It made the muscles in her back and shoulders burn the same way chucking hay bales to the horses did. There was something almost nostalgic about it.

When Clark showed up, he looked miffed in a way that made her snort before either of them said anything. “You should have called me and told me you got in early,” he said, almost like a whine. It was adorable, and it reminded her of when they were 6 and 7 and he used to huff and get mad at her for racing ahead of him on the track at school. “You didn’t have to lug all these boxes up by yourself. I would have helped.”

“I’m a big girl, Clark, I’m plenty strong without help from Superman,” she teased, confident that the walls in her apartment were thick enough to keep anyone else from overhearing them. He grimaced and looked around all paranoid-like, anyway.

“I’m not helping you out as Superman, I’m helping you out as your friend,” he insisted, and, well, she couldn’t really argue with that one.

“Then you can help me out by putting together that bookshelf over there,” she said, with a nod of her head toward the cheap planks of numbered wood from IKEA. “And when you’re done with that you can start putting the books on it.”

For a long time, they worked together in silence. She got all of her dishes up on the shelves while he stared at the planks of wood like he was worried about snapping them right in half, which he probably was. After a while, she couldn’t take the quiet anymore.

“I was hoping you were gonna bring your little girlfriend,” she said, in a teasing but not quite condescending way, and she couldn’t help but grin at the way that his cheeks flushed. “Ma says she’s the sweetest thing on Earth, which is mighty high praise from Martha Kent. I can’t remember how old I was before she stopped calling me ‘feisty.’”

“Lois is plenty feisty,” he said, with a perfect mix of fondness and embarrassment that made her grin a little wider.

“So you’ve got a type then,” she teased back, and he rolled his eyes even though she could see the tinge of pink to his cheeks. “You don’t go out in the sun enough anymore. You’re paler ‘n Pete Ross, and your freckles are all gone.”

“I never had freckles,” he scoffed. She just shrugged her shoulders. She remembered those freckles and those dimples plain as day, but it wasn’t worth arguing about. “And I don’t have a type,” he added after a minute, when it must have seemed clear she wasn’t going to push the issue.

“Alright, you don’t have a type,” she conceded. Another argument not worth having. It wasn’t like she’d met this Lois gal to make any sort of judgment call about it either way, anyway. And it wasn’t like the fact that they’d dated for nine months in high school said much about his type now, anyhow. “So tell me about her then.”

He stopped and looked thoughtful for a minute, like he wasn’t quite sure what to say about her. Lana raised her eyebrows and leaned a little closer.

“She works at the Planet, too. She’s a little older than me—your age.” She rolled her eyes at that. Like she was several years his senior or something. They were in the same grade in school, it was just that her birthday was a couple months too late in the year to start the year before him. “She’s… stubborn. Curious. Intelligent. She’s got awful spelling, and it’s like she never learned how to turn on autocorrect or something.”

Lana snorted. “Don’t you have to turn that off?” She still had a flip phone. Those tiny smartphones that were manufactured to break after a year or two didn’t have the constitution for farm work any more than half the girls at their high school did.

“I don’t really know. I never really had any use for it, anyhow,” he said, and she could hear some of that country hick accent starting to bleed through again. No matter how much country hick you put in Clark, he was always the sharpest kid in their class.

“Well, she sounds nice,” she said, less because it was true and more because it was the thing that you said when someone finished telling you about their girlfriend—not that Lois didn’t sound nice, but Clark hadn’t given her all that much to work with. “Now that I live in the city you can’t keep hiding her from me.”

“I wasn’t hiding her from you,” he huffed, and she grinned again.

“Well good, because now that I live in the city I’m determined to meet her.” He rolled his eyes and got back to putting the bookshelf together, apparently a little less nervous about snapping all the wood planks in half. With all the dishes put away, she just sat cross-legged on the floor and watched him work.

She’d need to get furniture soon. Clark had done her the courtesy of finding her a mattress, which sat in the middle of the floor between them, but she didn’t have anything else other than the appliances the studio came with. A couch seemed in order, at least. A TV too, probably, at least before football season started. She’d grit her teeth and root for Kansas City’s team since they technically shared custody, even if it was formally for the Missouri half.

It took a little under an hour to put the bookshelf together. It probably would have taken less time if he wasn’t being so careful with it, but she’d also seen him pull door knobs out of doors without meaning to, so maybe the caution was warranted. “I think pizza’s in order,” she announced. That was what you did when somebody helped you move: You ordered pizza, and you sat on the floor and ate it and caught up. They’d already done the catching up, though, so they’d just have to eat in silence, she guessed.

Once the pizza was there, with extra cheese and extra sauce, they sat cross-legged next to each other with their backs pressed against the wall facing the window. Without a TV, that was the most interesting thing to watch. There was a bird fluttering up and down with nesting material. “So remind me,” he started, and she looked over at him. “Why Metropolis?”

She snorted. “I could ask you the same question.” He shrugged and caught a drooping string of melted cheese in his mouth before it fell off the slice of pizza in his hand. She looked back out the window, thinking for a while about her answer. Why Metropolis? It wasn’t like she didn’t have a life of her own in Smallville. She’d gone to college like she was supposed to, gotten a degree in business for lack of anything else that sounded more interesting. There were opportunities in Smallville, plenty of businesses that didn’t yet exist in the small town Midwest. But there was something about Smallville that just felt a little empty after Clark left it, and something about Metropolis that seemed a little brighter. It wasn’t that she needed Clark, specifically, but there was something he represented, she guessed, that she did need.

“Just seemed like the right thing to do,” she said with a shrug.

By the end of the day, her apartment mostly looked like an apartment. Sure, it didn’t have any furniture yet, but there were books on shelves and pictures on the walls. It didn’t look lived in, but it looked like a place someone might live, if that made any kind of sense. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” Clark asked, and she smiled. She missed hearing that, if nothing else.

“You sure will,” she replied, reaching up to ruffle his hair like they were teenagers.

[primmlife]

Review: The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport

Review: The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu from Tor.com. #bookcommunity #books #reviews #highlyrecommended

I grew up in a small farming village in the middle of Illinois. Outside of my small town, we were surrounded by fields of corn or soybeans, whatever was in rotation. Our big trips was to the capital city of Illinois, Springfield. It’s population of, roughly, 100,000 people was huge to me. While I loved growing up there surrounded by family, my mind was always elsewhere. Often, not on Earth. Any…

[sylviareviar]

@mundanemiseries

Equine Creek was a small town toeing the border between Kentucky and Illinois, just south of the latter. It was a sprawling countryside dotted with windmills, wheat fields, and horses. Lots of horses.

Despite the vast county's size, it was a relatively small town, where everyone knew everyone. There was only one of every necessary commodity, though popular chains were dotted all around just in case anyone wanted to spend some money someplace more mainstream.

In Equine Creek, there was only one elementary, middle, and high school. Only one local library. One central marketplace, where all five nearby farm owners congregated and competed over whose crops were raised better, or have the best prices. One shopping district, with one of each kind of store. One combined bar and diner, one dessert cafe, and one specifically breakfast-oriented one, too.

And of course, like all local towns, they had one massive rumor floating about. The rumor of a ghost who possessed a little girl several years ago.

This rumor started floating about the moment Sylvia and her siblings moved into their now-adoptive father's home. Rumors of the ghost family, that is. Up until Jack and Lucy made their presences known and kids got to know her siblings better, they'd been whispered about in some crazy conspiracy theory, too. But the rumors about Sylvia never stopped, even with her siblings trying to help. She was just too quiet.

"She's always with her siblings," some would say in hushed voices, though Sylvia could still hear them clearly. "I wonder if she would possess us if we got her alone."

Sylvia and her siblings had naturally white hair. That was part of what contributed to the ghost theory. From what she could understand, it was a medical condition-- one that made it more difficult for them to get vaccines due to increased sensitivity to viruses and bacteria, and weaker immune systems. It also made the three of them burn easily in sunlight. Hence, she was pale as a ghost. It didn't help her severe social anxiety made it nigh impossible to communicate with anyone outside her family.

These rumors often led to bullying, especially by kids who were frightened of her. Spilling milk all over her, her clothes, her sketchbooks, or her backpack was her classmates' signature attack. Sometimes they shoved her and laughed. Other times they tore out her beloved drawings, just to get her to say something.

It wasn't like they physically hurt her-- most of the time, anyway. And most of the time, she was with her siblings, and they wouldn't dare touch her when she was with them.

But today she was alone, and somehow, on a Saturday, a group of sophomore boys from her high school managed to corner her just outside the library, trying various ways to get her to say something. Currently, they were loudly shouting slurs at her, while she covered her ears and tried not to hear them.

[theoldhempfarmer]

"How Big Is Big?"

Dateline 7-27-23

The Summer heat is coming back with a vengeance in Middle Tennessee and that means no mid-day working in the fields. At Tennessee homegrown, we love growing Cannabis but not enough to risk heat sickness. So this means The Old Hemp Farmer can rationalize sitting in the shade and kicking back with a large glass of Iced Indonesian Coffee and vaping a little bit of our Sativa tinged “Hemp” flower and pontificate a smidge about the Cannabis Business. This morning’s topic is how big is the THCa Flower in Tennessee specifically and in general other states where THCa Flower is legal? Lee Crabtree and I study the Cannabis market attentively and all we can do is guess. Tennessee homegrown is in a gang of stores that sell Cannabis products and in those stores that sell THCa Flower, Pre-rolls and Vapes dominate their sales and its not even close. The only places in America where THCa Flower doesn’t dominate Cannabis sales are those states where it’s illegal or it has been forced into Recreational Cannabis. Since The Old Hemp Farmer is situated in Tennessee and we have a brand new quasi Recreational law that was recently enacted, that’s where we’ll start.

First, a little word about Tennessee’s new Cannabis law that went into effect July 1st, 2023. As the smoke has started to clear more and more people are realizing the unique qualities our Recreational “Lite” law that legalizes consumption and sales of intoxicating Hemp Derived Cannabinoids. This law has no pretext about the medicinal qualities of cannabis, HB0403 is about the sales of THC products made from “Hemp” that get you high. Since HB0403 went into effect, very little has changed in the stores where Tennessee homegrown Cannabis products are sold except some stores had to place products behind glass. Oh, and one other thing I do believe is that has changed is that more THCa Flower is being sold than ever. This is the same for any product edible or otherwise that has Delta 9 THC in it. Which leads The Old Hemp Farmer back to the intended topic, how big is the THCa Flower market in Tennessee? How big indeed? Yours truly knows that the demand for THCa Flower is considerably larger than what Tennessee farmers can produce at the moment. The huge demand for THCa flower kind of took everyone by surprise. For one thing, it was hard for merchants and consumers to believe that a loophole in 2018 Farm bill actually legalized a huge amount of Cannabis that formerly was considered Marijuana. Believe it or not THCa flower which is basically Marijuana has now been for sale in Tennessee for a couple of years now. Vape stores and smoke shop were the early adopters, it was the Cannabis consumer that lagged behind not believing that in Tennessee you could go into a store and buy Blue Dream that was grown in Oregon. (The reason Tennessee homegrown never really got into growing the higher percentage THCa Cannabis was because there was trepidation about the legalities.) I knew people that were driving to Illinois to get the same quality of THCa flower that they could get from a store within a couple miles of where they live or better yet have it delivered to their home. I can remember a phone call after suggesting to a friend to check out one of our vendor’s THCa flower. “I can’t believe you can buy weed in Tennessee!” And I had to tell him it’s not weed its THCa flower because it’s illegal to sell Marijuana in our state. So it took a bit for the good people of Tennessee to realize they could buy almost any Cannabis product they could in Colorado and some products like D8 THC that are illegal in a lot of states. Once there was the awareness of THCa flower being openly sold, the floodgates for demand opened. Tourism has also spurred on the increased sales in THCa flower. Tourism is a Billion dollar industry in Tennessee and it appears more and more that Cannabis sales are a growing part of those tourist dollars. Presently there is no way to accurately gauge Cannabis sales in our state but I’m going to venture a guess that because of tourism it’s probably about $200,000.000. That’s a lot of Cannabis, my friend, especially for a state that supposedly doesn’t even have Medical Marijuana. As you see, so far our newborn Cannabis law hasn’t inhibited sales, if anything, it seems to have grown larger but know that HB0403 is a work in progress, so things can change. Anyway as always, Hemp Dawgs and Hemp Puppies keep one eye on the weather and the other eye on the market.

Visit our Tennessee Homegrown web site to try our great products: https://www.tnhomegrown.com

Our Podcast - Full Contact Cannabis: https://fullcontactcannabis.podbean.com

The Wife's web site: https://www.theoldhempfarmerswife.com

[hanoverparkillinois]

Explore The Beauty of Hanover Park Illinois

Looking for a unique place to explore and call home? From its charming neighborhoods and top-rated schools to its welcoming community and abundance of things to do, Hanover Park is the ideal place to raise a family or embark on your next adventure. With its convenient location near Chicago, Hanover Park offers the best of both worlds – a small-town feel with easy access to big city amenities.

The village of Hanover Park is known for its diverse population, with residents hailing from all corners of the globe. This vibrant community celebrates its cultures and traditions through festivals and events throughout the year. Hanover Park is also home to a variety of businesses, including everything from retail shops to restaurants to manufacturing companies. There’s something for everyone, whether you’re interested in spending time outdoors, exploring the village’s history, or enjoying the arts. Popular attractions include the Historic Hanover Park Train Station, the Apple Orchard Golf Course, and the Summer Sunsations Concert Series. Hanover Park is a village located in Cook County, northwest of downtown Chicago.

The village is also home to a variety of businesses, including a number of top employers. Some of the largest employers in Hanover Park include the United Parcel Service, Panasonic, Dell and the Cook County government. The village has a strong sense of community, and there are a number of community events held throughout the year. These events include the Fall Fest, the Founders Day Celebration, the Memorial Day Parade and the Holiday Celebration.

In terms of recreation, Hanover Park has something for everyone. There are a number of parks located throughout the village, including the Hanover Park Sports Complex, which features baseball and softball fields, basketball courts, tennis courts, a playground and a walking trail. The village also has a number of golf courses, including the Cantigny Golf Club, which was ranked the No. 1 public golf course in the state of Illinois.

The city has a variety of parks, including a dog park, a skate park, and a community garden. The city also has a variety of recreational programs, including youth sports leagues, a senior center, and a variety of after-school programs. The city of Hanover Park is served by a variety of public and private schools. It also include elementary, middle, and high schools.

The city has a variety of single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums, and apartments. The city also has a variety of senior living facilities. Hanover Park is also home to a variety of cultural attractions, including the DuPage Museum of History, the DuPage Symphony Orchestra, and the DuPage Children's Museum. The city is served by two major airport hubs, O'Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport.

People lifestyle

A harmonious blend of carefully planned neighborhoods, recreation, shopping and industry provide the perfect environment for families and businesses to live and work. In the early years, the Village was largely agricultural with dairy farms and chicken hatcheries being the dominant businesses. The Village of Hanover Park is committed to providing a high quality of life for its residents.

The Village offers a wide variety of recreation and leisure activities including: over fifty parks, two community centers, an indoor swimming pool, an outdoor water park, an award-winning library, and miles of scenic trails. The Village also provides a variety of programs and services for seniors, youth, and families. Hanover Park is home to a diverse mix of businesses and industries. The Village is home to the headquarters of CAT Global, one of the world's leading manufacturers of construction equipment. In addition, the Village is home to a variety of small businesses and retail establishments.

Member Spotlight

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They are offering $29 New Patient Special which includes a consultation, exam, and adjustment. One can even schedule an appointment at night or on the weekends. If you don't have insurance, it doesn't matter!

Open nights and weekends, walk-in chiropractor, no insurance needed.

[homeofhousechickens]

The other day I visited the seven gates of hell in Illinois.

Urban legend states that if you drive through all of the bridges in order at midnight it will open a portal to hell. People say that each bridge is guarded by an evil spirit, such as ghosts, demons, hellhounds, ect

I can see why 1900s architecture smacked in the middle of a growing rural town can be perturbing to city folk and teenagers. These bridges are leftover from back when they used the railroads for mining operations in the area. They are thicker then typical modern bridges and are an interesting shape

That gates themselves are very cold, some people think it is ghosts but i think it is a swamp cooling effect due to the thick concreate shading the gates plus the small creek that flows parallel to most of them. Car accidents are also common at the gates but i think this is due to the roads small size, sharp turns, and blind spots that are common on the roads the bridges reside. Who knows?

Commonly people have mentioned seeing fires and men carrying weapons such as axes and scythes especially close to the last gate. I find these pretty amusing because right down the road before the seventh gate is a feed lot full of beef cows. When i went there was a fire going but it looked like it was to clear the pasture nearby. Of course i saw alot of men carrying farm tools as well and i cant help but wonder if those things people have claimed to have seen were just rural people going out about their buisness. The first gates are in more populated areas then it gets replaced with corn field and animal agriculture as you continue on. To me the drive was very pleasant and nostalgic.

I will say i likely accidently scared a teenager at the twin gates 3 and 4. He was sitting in his car and when we pulled up he yelled "yall good??" Part of the urban legend is that sometimes you see a ghost car so i wonder if the reason he jumped and yelled is because he thought we were the ghost car haha.

Gate number Five did give me a funny feeling. Its very overgrown and when you pass through it its very cold and it goes on a bit longer then the other gates. Its more like a tunnel.

Im sure people who are residents of Illinois read the first sentence and went "Yes of course the seven gates of hell are located here"

[therandomfandomgal-insta]

An (incomplete) list of my absolute favorite quotes from Rainbow Rowell’s Wayward Son.

“He looks like three kids in a trench coat pretending to be a complete wanker.”

“‘Surprise!’ Baz singsongs. ‘It’s your ex-boyfriend and his boyfriend and that girl you never liked very much!’”

“If you suggest brunch, they’ll be like, ‘Let’s change the world instead!’”

“It’s sitting in economy that’s making us gay.”

“If you can’t trust people with nose rings to be open-minded, who’s left?”

“‘Yeah. Do it, Snow. Live dangerously.’ Says the vampire teaching me how to drive.”

“I’ve never even heard of Nebraska.”

“‘For heaven’s snakes, Basil, I can’t believe you know what unicorns taste like.’”

“Illinois, land of the damned—a place that manages to be both hot and humid at the same time. You might well expect hell to be hot, but you don’t expect it to also be humid. That’s what makes it hell, the surprise twist! The devil is clever!”

“‘It isn’t a crime spree!’ Penny retorts. ‘We’re not robbing banks and murdering people.’ ‘Yet!’ I say.”

“Are we eating, I wonder. Or is this too tragic for eating?”

“‘Imagine the humiliation of dying at The Cheesecake Factory.’”

“Iowa is beautiful. It’s all gentle green hills and fields of maize. It reminds me of England. But with fewer people in it.”

“Iowa looks exactly like Illinois. I’m not sure why they bothered to separate them. Just an endless stretch of motorway and pig farms. (There’s the distinction: Iowa smells more like pig shit than Illinois.)”

“I must be being too English again. What a time to realize I should have been watching more Friends reruns.”

“That’s a very attractive way to die, I think”

“Something specifically American: a gun demon”

“Can coyotes drive cars? I know they can play poker, the Mage told me.”

“‘They might put up with you deviants wherever you come from, but this is Nebraska.’”

“‘I’m an American,” the goat-man says. ‘Fourth generation. My family came here to get away from the likes of you.’ ‘Magicians?’ she asks. ‘Indians?’ Snow says. ‘The fucking English,’ the goat replies.”

“I don’t know if goat devils have windpipes.”

“Oh. There’s the gunfire I was expecting.”

“(Because he was the least of at least six evils.)”

“I still don’t know what kills vampires—but I suppose I can rule out a chestful of buckshot.”

“‘I’m the most basic bitch possible.’”

“(I’m probably never going to have kids, because I owe at least three imps my firstborn.)”

“I was worried about who we were going to send into the lobby—the black guy, the white devil, the Middle Eastern girl, or the pungent vampire. (Probably the white devil, right?)”

[bauslut]

ii. what makes a man?

pairing: aaron hotchner x rowan rivers

word count: 3.840k

warnings: canon typical violence -- blood, gore, mentions of murder, discussion of murder, discussion of weapons, cursing, trauma, dealing with trauma, death of children

prev. | next

“here you are,” jj bore a kind smile as she slid a manila folder towards the brunette, “here’s your official welcome to the bau. i’m sorry it wasn’t on more.. positive terms.”

“oh,.it’s quite all right,” rowan’s eyes widened, “this is what we’re here--”

“she’s sitting in my spot,” rossi chuckled, “but i don’t mind.”

“are you sure?” rowan stammered, a rosy blush painting her cheeks, “i-i can get up and move--”

“don’t sweat it,” rossi nodded curtly, “there are plenty of open seats.”

“hey baby girl,” a wide, jovial, grin painted morgan’s lips as a woman entered the room, her blonde locks intricately woven into an up-do, “don’t you look delicious today?”

“as always,” the woman scrunched her nose, her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose, “how are you this morning baby-cakes?”

“hey there!” a chirp startled rowan, sounding from her left, “i’m emily, but around here, i’m referred to as prentiss.”

she was met with kind eyes, a warm mocha hue. they were bright, glimmering as they followed every minute movement as rowan studied her features. the woman was gorgeous without a doubt, with full lips and an oblong face. her hair was luscious, parted down the middle, styled into bouncy curls.

“hi,” rowan breathed, sticking out a hand, “i’m rowan riv--”

“i am afraid we do not have time for introductions,” a stern voice echoed through the space, “we are fbi agents, not kindergartners. we can have icebreakers or whatever it is you’re doing on the jet.”

rowan choked back a sharp retort as hotch strode towards a whiteboard, his spine straightened, chest puffed out slightly. sliding into her seat, her hands settled on the armrests, a puff of air exhaling from her lips. she was sandwiched between two seasoned agents, as morgan was munching on a bag of cookies on her left, prentiss sifting through papers to her right.

maybe if she just shut her mouth, she would blend in and he wouldn’t pay any sort of attention to her. which, wasn’t such a bad idea in the moment. the less he focused on her and berated her, the better.

“cookie?” morgan rattled the bag.

“not right now. thank you though,” rowan whispered, lips curving into a small smile.

“i’m about to begin discussing the case,” hotch shot rowan a glare, words barbed with venom, “so listen up.”

he pinned several images on the board, bile rising in rowan’s throat as her focus transitioned to the pictures. prentiss sucked in a shaky breath, while morgan muttered a strand of incoherent sentences.

the images progressively became more grotesque as they spanned across the board. mangled, beaten, and bloodied corpses were presented, the bile approaching the back of her mouth as she realized the age range.

the bodies were children, their jugulars slashed, lacerations and bruises littering their tiny frames.

“there has been a surge of murders in the rural farm town of homer, illinois. in the past week, there have been a total of five. all of the victims were children, with no specific physical attributes,” hotch cleared his throat, “however, all of them bear one aspect in common.”

“they’re all boys,” reid murmured, “from the images it appears as if they’re about ages eleven or twelve.”

“then they are pre-pubescent boys,” rowan’s voice was clear, pairs of eyes falling on her as she spoke, “i’ve seen something like this before, when i was working in columbus. we had a ring of traffickers who preferred this age range.”

“and?” morgan arched a brow, “why pre-pubescent boys?”

“hotch,” rowan nearly trembled as the supervisor’s cold gaze shifted on her, “i-if i may ask, were there any signs of assault or rape?”

“the severity of sexual assault varied on each victim.”

“you said that they have no physical attributes in common but looking at these photos,” reid shook his head slightly, “the brunettes are the only ones who have lacerations covering their entire bodies. the blondes, the only sign of violence demonstrated is the murder itself, the incision along the jugular.”

“could it be that our unsub has something against brunettes?” morgan inquired.

“potentially,” rowan blinked, scanning over the text, “it also says here in the autospies that the only boys who were sexually assaulted were the brunettes. i may be going on a whim here, but i think our unsub is lashing out on the brunettes for a reason. it could be power, dominance, you name it. perhaps the hair color is a stressor, or was the initial stressor. he might be reliving a traumatic event from his childhood.”

rossi whistled, “look at you, rivers. already building a profile and we’ve only met for five minutes.”

“sadly i’ve seen a lot of this before,” rowan let out a sigh, rustling through papers, “it also says here that the bodies were all found at homer lake forest preserve. i have a strong premonition that our unsub is male.”

“and what makes you say that?” hotch countered.

“by the way the bodies were handled,” rowan shrugged, “they were beaten, mutilated, and dragged through the woods. the amount of physical strength to do that is just an inherent trait males have."

“how were the bodies discovered?” jj bit her lip, a trace of fear glimmering in her icy blue depths.

“they were found by a new fisherman every morning around dawn, in the same location. they were located about half a mile from the entrance of the preserve,” hotch tossed the file onto the table, “our unsub is bold.”

“he wanted the bodies to be found,” rossi added, “he’s arrogant.”

“or he’s sloppy,” rowan remarked, “he’s devolving. he could be killing just on that need burning within him, with no remorse or any sort of emotion within him at all--”

“we need to get to homer as soon as possible,” hotch interrupted, glancing at his phone, “it’s ten o’clock in the morning. it’s only a matter of time before another body is found.”

“where’s the closest airport?” jj folded her arms across her chest.

“willard airport in champaign-urbana,” reid piped up, “other than that, the other closest one is in bloomington-normal.”

“and how do you know that?” morgan’s eyes widened.

“champaign-urbana is the home of the university of illinois,” reid swallowed thickly, “i’ve been there a few times. it’s an exceptional school for engineering, truly one of the greatest in the country--”

“all right, all right,” morgan stuck out a hand, “you answered my question.”

“wheels up in thirty,” hotch announced, plucking the file off the shiny wood.

rowan followed the others in suit, filing out of the space. trailing reid, she was the second last to leave the room, hotch right behind her, deep, smooth, voice filling her ears.

“i need to speak with you agent rivers.”

“yes?” she swiveled on her heel, facing the supervisor, folding her arms across her chest.

“i hope you’re aware that i do not tolerate any sort of childlike behavior. we’re not teenagers reuniting on the first day of class. i did not appreciate the interruptions in my conference room. you can socialize on your own time.”

“you’ve never once interrupted anything in your entire life? wow, you really must be mr. perfect. i mean look at you, all put together. i doubt you’ve even done anything wrong in your life you’re so per--”

“you realize you’re speaking to your boss with this tone, right?”

“i don’t fucking care,” tears brimmed rowan’s eyes, “this is my first day and it’s even worse than i could have ever imagined.”

“excuse me?”

“you’ve really made sure i’ve had a warm welcome to the bau, mr. perfect,” rowan scoffed, rolling her eyes, “it’s been an amazing first day, i’ll tell you that.”

for just a moment, hotch’s tough exterior cracked, a flicker of sympathy flashing in his gaze, “i’m sorry.”

“‘i’m sorry’?”

hotch paused, inhaling a deep breath, “i was going to write you up. however, i may have been a little too harsh on you. after all, this is your first day. strauss put in a good word for you, and i want to see your skill set out in the field. come on, we’re going to be left behind.”

******

“gotta love the midwest,” morgan placed his hands on his hips, chest rising and falling.

“you love it?” reid’s lips curled in disgust, “it smells like manure.”

“it smells like home,” rowan giggled, shouldering her way through the men, “c’mon, let’s go.”

“well she’s eager,” rossi chuckled, turning to hotch, “where are we setting up?”

“there’s the local p.d. in homer,” hotch slung his bag over his shoulder, “the station is only about four miles from the forest preserve.”

“i was doing some reading on the village of homer,” reid stated, “there’s only about one thousand people who live there. it’s such a tiny place, and as hotch mentioned, it’s only four miles from the preserve, surely the unsub lives there.”

“or he lives close to the lake,” rowan pointed out, “there are so many homes out there surrounding the lake in the countryside. with these rural communities, your neighbors could be a mile down the road, or miles away. it gives him the perfect opportunity to make frequent trips to the lake without being noticed.”

“you make a good point rivers,” hotch remarked, “we’ll have to keep that in mind when we investigate the lake and the surrounding woods.”

“this murder isn’t going to solve itself,” rossi cleared his throat, nodding his head towards the cluster of suvs, “we need to get to the police department and we’re losing time.”

stepping into the vehicle, rowan slid into the back seats, figuring that hotch would take the wheel, while rossi would sit shotgun. yet, curiosity buzzed in her mind as rossi took the wheel, while reid settled into the passenger seat.

“you’ve got to be shitting me,” she muttered as hotch thrust open the door, “rossi, are you usually the one who drives?”

“typically, no,” in the rearview mirror, rowan snorted when she noticed the shit-eating grin plastered on the agent’s face, “but i figured that you and hotch would love to get to know one another on the way there.”

“can i pick the station?” reid bounced in the seat, hands flying to the knobs and levers.

“pick something good, find an oldies station or something. maybe they’ll play back in black,” within seconds, the suburban was in motion, rossi revving the engine, “i plan on racing morgan, jj, and prentiss to the station. whoever loses has to buy dinner.”

“this is ridiculous,” hotch rolled his eyes, the vibration of his phone piquing rowan’s curiosity.

“by the way,” reid turned in his seat, facing hotch, “who’s been calling you so frequently today?”

“haley,” rowan tilted her head as the name spat from hotch’s mouth, “it’s not important.”

haley. from the sound of it, she was hotch’s significant other, girlfriend, fiancee, even a spouse, maybe. rowan’s eyes drifted downwards to his lap, where his hands rested on his knees. in the light, a golden band gleamed on his left ring finger.

so, hotch was married. he had a wife.

but there was something in his tone that was unsettling. were they fighting? having the typical lover’s quarrel? maybe that’s why hotch was so distant and cruel, he was constantly dealing with his marriage.

“so tell us a little about you, rowan,” rossi was far ahead of the other suburban, shades resting on the bridge of his nose, “i never got an icebreaker.”

rowan scoffed, fidgeting in the leather seat, “there’s not anything too riveting, i can spare you guys the details.”

in the corner of her eye, rowan felt his eyes pierce through her, digging deeps within the confines of her psyche. he was profiling her, desperate to get some sort of read. perhaps he was well aware of how uncomfortable she was by rossi’s query. the way her palms were slick against her pants, sweat prints clinging to the fabric. the way her cheeks were tainted pink, her jaw tightened, throat dry.

“didn’t you go to ohio state for undergrad?” reid licked his thumb, scouring through some novel or book.

“yeah,” she nodded, “i’m from a tiny town in ohio, called tiffin. i went to ohio state for an undergrad in psychology, along with a few minors in criminal justice, linguistics, spanish, so on. i stayed there for grad school since i loved the city, and the university. from there, the bureau picked me up from the academy, and i was thrown into the infamous case.”

“the child sex-trafficking bust,” hotch murmured, “i remember glancing over that in your file.”

“how long did that case go on?” rossi turned the radio dial, lowering the volume.

“longer than it should’ve been,” rowan brought a hand to her temple, a dull pain seeping into her skull, “hey, does anyone have ibuprofen?”

hotch’s eyes softened, concern painting his features, “i think i have some in my briefcase. hang on.”

rowan brought a bottle of water to her lips, sipping as hotch placed a couple of pills in her open palm. as he set them in her hand, skin grazed skin, her heart skipping a beat.

for someone as rough and callused as hotch, his hands were so utterly soft.

“thank you,” she whispered, “i appreciate it.”

“of course,” he murmured, “do you usually get frequent headaches?”

“yeah,” rowan admitted, a new wave of blush spreading, “i’m just prone to them i guess.”

“the humidity is also high today,” reid remarked, “and from the way the wind just picked up, along with the darkness of the clouds, i think it’s going to storm. your headache could be from the low pressure.”

“fantastic,” rowan threw her head back, squeezing her eyes shut, “you know reid, that’s kinda a myth.”

“actually research has been inconclusive.”

“how many did you take?” hotch nudged rowan, inflections of concern within his inquisition.

“six.”

“jesus christ,” rossi’s lips pursed, “are you trying to kill your liver?”

“we’ll see about that,” a giggle bubbled up in rowan’s throat.

as the suburban sailed down the interstate, her lashes fluttered, sleep threatening to pull her into its clutches. she blinked, rubbing soothing circles onto her temple, lips falling to a frown as a dull pain seeped into her forehead.

biting her lip, she fought back tears, inhaling a shaky breath. this was no place to show any weakness.

not with him around.

*****

“good afternoon, chief sellers. i’m supervisory special agent hotchner with the fbi,” hotch stated, his voice ringing with authority as he shook an officer’s hand, “and these are my colleagues.”

“thank god you’re here,” the officer’s voice was hoarse, wavering as he spoke, “it’s been a living nightmare these past few days.”

“i can only imagine,” jj murmured under her breath, “there’s someone out there killing little boys.”

“he looks so shaken up,” prentiss exhaled, folding her arms across her chest.

“we had most of the state p.d. flock out here once the second body was discovered,” chief sellers cleared his throat, his focus directed on hotch, “we’re all doing the best we can, but of course, as other duties call, we tend to be short-handed at times.”

“we’re going to do everything in our power to help,” rossi’s words were warm, brimmed with sincerity, “we’ll catch this guy, i promise.”

“and we’ll help you all in every way we can,” chief sellers nodded curtly, “anything you folks need, let us know.”

“should we start by heading out to the crime scene?” hotch inquired, “it might also be best to split some of us up.”

“of course,” chief sellers strode over to a pair of state officers, “these men will escort you to the scene. what else do you need?”

hotch’s eyes flickered over to his team, “i want morgan, reid, and rossi to go investigate the scene. prentiss and jj, would you speak with some of the locals? we need to gather as much information as possible in order to rule out anyone or gain essential details about our unsub.”

“what about me?” rowan coughed.

“you’re staying with me here at the station,” he commanded, “and you’re going to answer every phone call we get from garcia.”

“good luck newbie,” rowan rolled her eyes as morgan teased her, his breath hot against her ear.

“you might want to listen to morgan,” rossi shot her a wink, “you’re going to need it.”

“thanks,” the reply was a deadpan, the agent’s shoulders slumping as hotch approached her, “putting me on a short leash, are we?”

“you’re the one who understands the profile of our unsub the best,” he retorted, “and before you fire back with another verbal assault, think before you speak. this is your big girl job now. act like it.”

“don’t you think it’s interesting that the unsub stopped killing?” hotch murmured a few words of gratitude to an officer who handed him a coffee, cocking his head as he took a sip.

“do you think that there’s a reason behind that?”

“possibly,” rowan shrugged, denying the same styrofoam cup, “hey, where’s the closest gas station?”

“about half a mile away,” the officer replied coolly, “would you like a ride? a few of the guys and i are going to pick up pizzas for lunch.”

“i’m okay,” she paused, running a hand through her hair, “thank you, though.’

“you don’t like hot coffee?”

“i prefer iced,” the agent muttered, surveying the empty desks, “i assume they cleared some space for us?”

“indeed,” hotch huffed, “if your phone rings, assume it’s garcia.”

“i feel like i’m at columbus p.d. all over again,” the brunette slid into the seat, rolling a few inches as she plucked the file out of her briefcase.

“well this is nowhere near that,” hotch rolled his eyes, leaning against the wooden surface.

“well it sure feels like it,” his throat tightened as her eyes drifted upwards, locking with his, “it sure fucking feels like it. now, if you don’t mind, i’m going to look over the file.”

“would you like some company, agent rivers?”

“i’m sure you have ‘unit chief’ matters to tend to,” the words were barbed, hot and venomous as she spat them out, “hovering around your new recruit like she’s some child is quite ridiculous don’t you think?”

“i should have you turn in your badge right now.”

“you seem like you’re all bark and no bite. you scolded me only only hours ago about the conference room, threatening to write me up. that tough exterior of yours is only an act. or at least, i think it is. you’re not going to write me up until you have a valid reason to. also, like you claimed earlier, ‘strauss put in a good word for me.’ i know you won’t terminate me. plus, you just went through all of that paperwork to get me here. do you really want to go through all of that again?”

“you piss me off.”

“good,” she puckered her lips, “maybe you should chat about that with strauss hmm? she’d probably just tell you to suck it up and that i’m here to stay.”

hotch’s jaw clenched, prepared to retaliate, yet the vibration in his pocket distracted him momentarily, the shrill ringtone piercing through the air, “yes?”

biting her tongue, rowan glanced back at the file, bringing her hand to her cheek. part of her was wailing, screaming and kicking, fighting the urge to study those horrid images. but the other part was driven, adrenaline coursing through her veins, pumping into her body.

even the slightest detail that she hadn’t noticed initially would be immensely helpful to building the profile, piecing together who this deranged individual was. flipping through the photos, rowan’s eyes narrowed.

although the team held a short briefing before departing from headquarters, there was one minor aspect about the way the bodies were laying in the shrubbery. the boys were all on their backs, dried blood coating sliced flesh. not a single article of clothing framed their bodies, just the thin layer of briefs or boxers.

her heart lurched as one arm was pressed tightly against their sides, while the other was raised. right hands pointed upwards, three fingers: the index, middle, and ring. yet, the pinky connected with the thumb, almost as if the children were purposely holding up three fingers.

“garcia called with an update,” his voice floated into her ears, “with the bits and pieces fed to her from jj and prentiss, we still have a lot of ground to cover. are you up for a drive?”

“wait,” rowan held up a hand, “hotch, were you ever a member of the boy scouts?”

his brow furrowed, confusion settling across his features, “what?”

“just look,” she huffed, gesturing to the images, “look at the way the unsub left their bodies. it’s a clear message, almost like how he dumped the bodies in clear sight. his arrogance blinded him, goading him to taunt us. but little did he know i would see right through his bluff. i think he stopped the killing spree because he knew we’d be looking for him. it’s like he wants us to find him.”

leaning over, hotch’s chest hovered above her shoulder blade, a hand settling on the desk. the ghost of his badge hung over her cheek, a speck of white in her peripheral vision. a hum rose in his throat, “you’re onto something here. let me call garcia.”

“did i make a break in the case?”

“perhaps, but don’t let that get to your head,” the supervisor brought his phone to his ear, “hey, garcia, i need you to run something for me. how many boy scout troops are in champaign county?”

*****

“you up for some drinks tonight?” prentiss giggled, wrapping her jacket around her shoulders, “it’s all on me, especially since we should be celebrating your first case with the bau!”

“i’m fine,but thank you,” rowan beamed, “i still have a forty minute drive ahead of me. i shouldn’t stay out too late.”

“oh come on,” jj groaned, “we won’t be out for long. just a couple rounds.”

“pleaseeee?” garcia practically pranced over to rowan, jutting her bottom lip out, “we don’t know a single thing about you. hotch had you under his watch all day.”

“okay,” she exhaled, “a few drinks, and then i need to get to my apartment. i’ve barely finished unpacking so i’ll have to rummage for my towels and pajamas when i get back.”

“you have an apartment?” prentiss queried, “do you have a roommate or do you live alone? did you bring a boyfriend with you, by chance?”

rowan blinked, “uh, no. i live alone.”

“good thing you’re a fbi agent huh?” garcia winked, “c’mon, we know the perfect bar.”

“maybe we’ll get you loosened up and you can spill some secrets,” jj chuckled, the sound airy and light.

“sometimes,” rowan felt the corner of her lips tug into a wide grin, “sometimes i truly wonder what i’m getting myself into working with all these other profilers.”

*****

{feel free to ask for a tag or let me know what you think! :))}

tagging: @tempus-ut-luceant @daffodin @kleinbluu @inlovewithaaronhotchner @spencerreidsbitch @art-and-thoughts @criminallminds @ethade3

[americangothica]

Southern Illinois Gothic Farm:

I have seen a lot of Midwestern Gothic on Tumblr and decide to do a few about were I am from, the part of Illinois were corn fields give way to Shawnee national forest

*There is a dog barking. There is always a dog barking. No one around you has a dog.

*Corn swaying in nonexistent wind, something walks in the corn, act like you don’t see it.  In the off seasons you plant soy instead of corn. You can ignore the things that walk in the corn, pretend you don’t see them. But it is harder when soy is all that is growing. Soy only comes up to your knee

*You live around corn fields all your life but have never actually seen the middle of one. Has any one?

*The emptiness after the harvest, when the corn and soy are gone, the earth is black and clean underneath your feet. Safe, you tell yourself, it is done i am safe until next year.

*A tractor in the fields at three in the morning. Strange old songs and lights moving in patterns. Just another crazy old man getting an early start on the harvest, you tell yourself, and go back to sleep.

*There is something that walks in the cornrows we all know about it. We give it our blood and sweat and tears, and we never look it in the eye.

*Every fall the black birds come, hundreds of thousands of wings beating against sky, congregating in the trees outside of town and pick your fields clean.  You go out to shoo them away, you hate them, hundreds of yellow eyes, one gives a guttural squawk. It sounds a little like a language, one no human has ever spoken. But you still understand what it means, and give the bird a hand gesture in reply. You think about putting up a scare crow but some how the idea of its dark eyes looking at you in the night is worse then the birds.

*There’s an empty field on the edge of the forest. There’s no fence around it, but the deer stay away from it, so do dogs and the houses that border it never stay full for long.

*You’re chopping firewood when you hear gunshots ring out from a neighbors’ place across the woods. You keep chopping firewood. Deer season is still months away.

*Constant rumblings of bullfrogs, barking of dogs, the whining cry of June bugs and locust wings, none of it wakes you anymore. Nor does the sound of tires in gravel. The sound of boots in underbrush. We mind our own, and sleep like the dead

*Coyotes wail, dogs bark and things that are not coyotes or dogs howl back.

*The power goes out, and something stares at you from the corner of the room. You stare back. You are not terrified anymore, you know each other to well for that.

*Rats! Rats everywhere, they eat holes into the animal feed bags and chew at the sheet metal on the corn silos. They tap dance across the attic floor at 3am. You have declared all out war on them, after poison, traps and barn cats, the rats are still wining.

*Your grandmother keeps putting food out for stray cats. You don’t tell her the cats haven’t shown up in a long time. The things eating the food are not cats.

*It’s spring. the pollen starts to appear. It covers the buildings, the cars, the roads. it has been two days since you last left your house. But it is Monday and you cant put it off anymore you have to go two work. You step outside, you are choking. you are not surprised. you do nothing. you can not fight pollen. you can do nothing. you are still choking.

*People from out of town wonder why everyone in your town owns at least a few chickens. When ask why we all answer with the same old slogans. Chickens are such fun animals, you will never find something with more personality, and fresh eggs are just so much better then store eggs. The truth is they’re the cheapest animals to replace when the things come looking for a snack. It is better they take chickens rather then have them looking for other food.

*When you start finding the chickens with chest ripped open or heads bitten off, We know what it means. We know what lives in the fields and forest. We will do what we always do, walk the fence to look for holes and put out traps. We will trap a few but never enough to stop them. All we can really do is hope the hungry things will move on soon.

[fandomtrumpshate]

Fan Labor roundup (now with links!)

Folks, we had a whopping eighty-nine people sign up to offer fan labor this year, for a total of ninety-four fan labor auctions, and the range of things on offer is nothing short of phenomenal. It’s truly an embarrassment of riches.

The one and only drawback of this incredible response is that potential bidders could easily get overwhelmed by the task of perusing all ninety-four of these offerings. That’s why this post exists! It’s designed to offer you a sampling of the amazing offers we have this year, and to help you find and connect to the fan labor auctions that appeal to you most.

What we’re giving here is an overview of the specific kinds of support and expertise that our fan laborers are offering. While almost half of our fan labor offers are open to any fandom at all, fifty of the offers are fandom-specific in some way. It’s also the case that some fan laborers have restricted the ratings level that they are willing to work at. You can find out these details by reading each offering post carefully, or you can preemptively limit which auctions you see by searching multiple tags at once (e.g. “fanwork: fan labor: culture picking” + “fandom: teen wolf” + “rating: explicit”) Our post on searching tags explains how to do this.

The majority of our fan laborers are offerings beta work (though some of them are also offering others things, too!) This includes everything from SPAG (spelling and grammar) through developmental editing, helping you work out the basics of your story structure. We have a number of professional editors of various stripes (find them here, here, here, here, and here, and we are pretty sure there were a couple more we couldn’t turn up, sorry!) We also have a lot of experienced and insightful people even though this isn’t their day job. We also have a fan laborer who specializes in helping non-native speakers of English with English-language fic, and someone with professional expertise in upgrading translated works “from ‘rough draft’ to ‘sounds like a native speaker,’“ both of which may be of special interest to non-native English speakers writing in English. Check out the beta reading tag to see them all!

Some of our auctions tagged “other” (rather than beta reading) are offers to help you build your story from the ground up. We have a developmental edit offer, an offer for brainstorming, for plot and structure beta, and for cheerleading. We also have a couple of podfic beta offers in the other category: a beta listener for podfics and an offer for podfic editing!

Many of our fan laborers are also offering culture-picking or expertise picking. The culture-pickers can help you capture the nuances of a particular geographical region or of some other kinds of subculture; the expertise pickers can provide with you an expert’s knowledge of some specific skill or craft, or an insider’s view of a particular profession, or simply the insight into a kind of lived experience you don’t have yourself but want some of your characters to have.

We have a wide range of culture pickers to advise on the culture and speech patterns of various places, mostly (but not exclusively!) on various parts of the Anglophone world.

We have several Brit-pickers (here, here, here, here, and here) including some who can offer specific insight into London (here, here) Oxford, or Durham.  We’ve got some Yank-pickers (thanks to HugeAlienPie for this term!): find them here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) We also have some experts in the culture and geography of New York City (here, here) and the American Northeast more generally. We have someone who can tell you about Los Angeles, and someone to advise on Illinois and the midwest more generally. We also have an offer for the rural US, one for the American South, and one for rural Alaska.

 Outside the Anglophone world, we’ve got an India-picker, a France-picker, and a Czech-picker. We’ve also got community insider perspectives for you on both goth subculture and riot grrl subculture.

In terms of necessarily second-hand cultural experience, we have someone who can advise on ancient Greece and Rome, someone who can help with Victorian/Edwardian period language as well as French ancien regime. and a Star Wars slang-picker!

Our expertise and experience pickers cover an amazing array of topics. We’ve tried to organize it into sections as best we could... But honestly, some of this defies easy categorization.

If you’re looking for an expert in religion and/or mythology, we have people to help you with Hindu mythology, Norse mythology, American Catholicism, Ashkenazi Judaism, (two of these, one specifically for Good Omens,) an expert in oral history in general, and a someone with a PhD in religion.

If you’re writing about characters struggling with mental health, we have a lot of people who can help with that! People with experience of depression (here, here),  anxiety (here, here, and here,) PTSD, and someone who can talk about bipolar. We have a couple people who can advise on being chronically ill (here and here.) We also have a professional counselor who can help with mental health topics.

If your characters work in a particular field or profession, or if your story involves professional expertise, our fan laborers have you covered! In particular, we have many people to help with educational settings: a couple of professors who can help you get the details right in your college or university AUs (here and here,) several current and former secondary school teachers (an English teacher,  a middle school teacher (who can also help with science education), and a special education teacher. We also have someone who went through Bible School and can advise on that setting.

We have a couple people who can help you with legal-picking here and here, and if you specifically want to know about family law, we’ve got that too! We also have someone who can help with the bar exam (writing about it, not studying for it.) As for medicine and physical health, we have an expert in several aspects of medicine, and a nurse with experience in trauma and surgery. 

As for other kinds of professional and work environment expertise, we have someone with experience of small tech companies, someone else who can advise about the publishing industry, and two people in the translation industry (here and here.) We also have someone who has worked as a personal assistant and two people who have worked in libraries (here and here.) We have two fan laborers who have worked in disaster response (here and here.) We have someone with a longtime involvement in theater who can also advise about other performing arts )  And if you’re looking for information about the paint industry, someone’s got you.

If you’re centering sex or relationships, we have many folks with experience in BDSM (here,  here,  here, here) including a trained dungeon monitor, and a couple of people willing to advise on polyamory/nonmonogamy (here and here.) We’ve also got someone with firsthand knowledge of sex work (including online sex work).

In terms of sensitivity reading for sexuality and gender identity, we have nonbinary folks willing to help you think about enby experience (here and here)  and ace folks who can advise on asexuality (here, here, here, and here.) We have trans folks offering to advise about their experiences here, here, here, and here.

Other experienced-informed readings available are for fat experience, for addiction recovery, for tattoos and body modification, and for celiac disease. And, for your kidfic needs, we have someone offering to help you with parent/child relationships, and someone who can help you create a realistic toddler character.

Are you writing about animals? Our fan laborers include a professional veterinary technician and two people experienced in working with farm animals (here and here.) We also have someone who can advise on service dogs in your fic, and someone else to advise on raising kittens.

We’ve got lots of experts in craft and other recreational sorts of things. (This is a broad and messy category, we know. Work with us, here.) We’ve got people who can advise on American team sports and someone who can advise on circus performance. We have fan laborers who have offered to advise on martial arts, various kinds of dance, guns, and tarot.  We have a cooking and baking expert, and someone who does gluten-free baking. We’ve got experts to advise you on calligraphy, knitting (or yarn crafts more generally), origami, and of course taxidermy.

Finally, if you’re thinking about world-building, we have a professional environmental sciences researcher who is excited to help you with sci-fi or fantasy worldbuilding.

And if you want someone to help you set up a Fanlore page or help run a fanworks challenge, we have that covered too!

We also have nine people offering translation work of some kind. We have one offer that is for English into French, and two English-German offers: one to translate between German and English in either direction, another English to German only. We have one offer for Spanish to English,  someone who can translate lines of dialogue or indeed your whole fic from English to Czech, and another offer to translate from Russian to English. We also have a couple of people willing to work between French, Spanish and English in various configurations (here and here.)

[2021-iag-crop-tour]

Day 1 Recap

The 2021 IAG Crop Tour’s first day covered northern Illinois and southeastern Iowa. Quick bottom line - Moisture stress is not nearly as significant in Illinois as it is in SE Iowa. For what we saw, the Illinois crop is in very good shape. Farm management was the primary driver of yield results but nature played a more aggressive role in southern Iowa for corn. Beans were fair to good in Illinois and in need of a drink in Iowa. Nothing surprising today. I think the best observation was just about every field we entered could benefit from a drink (expect the corn field in Saint Charles which was close to black-layer)

The real answers will come tomorrow when we tour northwestern Iowa, southern Minnesota, and back into northern and northeastern Iowa. This has been the disputed production areas since the middle of June.

We will be coming back through more of Iowa and Illinois so we do not have yield guesses on those states just yet but stay tuned!

That’s it for Monday. This is the 2021 IAG Crop Tour Signing Off.

[sciencespies]

Civil Rights Icons' Mothers, Lost Ancient Cities and Other New Books to Read

https://sciencespies.com/history/civil-rights-icons-mothers-lost-ancient-cities-and-other-new-books-to-read/

Civil Rights Icons' Mothers, Lost Ancient Cities and Other New Books to Read

Anna Malaika Tubbs has never liked the old adage of “behind every great man is a great woman.” As the author and advocate points out in an interview with Women’s Foundation California, in most cases, the “woman is right beside the man, if not leading him.” To “think about things differently,” Tubbs adds, she decided to “introduce the woman before the man”—an approach she took in her debut book, which spotlights the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin.

“I am tired of Black women being hidden,” writes Tubbs in The Three Mothers. “I am tired of us not being recognized, I am tired of being erased. In this book, I have tried my best to change this for three women in history whose spotlight is long overdue, because the erasure of them is an erasure of all of us.”

The latest installment in our series highlighting new book releases, which launched last year to support authors whose works have been overshadowed amid the Covid-19 pandemic, explores the lives of the women who raised civil rights leaders, the story behind a harrowing photograph of a Holocaust massacre, the secret histories of four abandoned ancient cities, humans’ evolving relationship with food, and black churches’ significance as centers of community.

Representing the fields of history, science, arts and culture, innovation, and travel, selections represent texts that piqued our curiosity with their new approaches to oft-discussed topics, elevation of overlooked stories and artful prose. We’ve linked to Amazon for your convenience, but be sure to check with your local bookstore to see if it supports social distancing–appropriate delivery or pickup measures, too.

The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs

Ebenezer Baptist Church is perhaps best known for its ties to King, who preached there alongside his father, Martin Luther King Sr., between 1947 and 1968. The Atlanta house of worship proudly hails its ties to the Kings, but as Tubbs writes for Time magazine, one member of the family is largely left out of the narrative: King’s mother, Alberta.

The author adds, “Despite the fact that this church had been led by her parents, that she had re-established the church choir, that she played the church organ, that she was the adored Mama King who led the church alongside her husband, that she was assassinated in the very same building, she had been reduced to an asterisk in the church’s overall importance.”

In The Three Mothers, Tubbs details the manifest ways in which Alberta, Louise Little and Berdis Baldwin shaped their sons’ history-making activism. Born within six years of each other around the turn of the 20th century, the three women shared a fundamental belief in the “worth of Black people, … even when these beliefs flew in the face of America’s racist practices,” per the book’s description.

Alberta—an educator and musician who believed social justice “needed to be a crucial part of any faith organization,” as Tubbs tells Religion News Service—instilled those same beliefs in her son, supporting his efforts to effect change even as the threat of assassination loomed large. Grenada-born Louise, meanwhile, immigrated to Canada, where she joined Marcus Garvey’s black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association and met her future husband, a fellow activist; Louise’s approach to religion later inspired her son Malcolm to convert to the Nation of Islam. Berdis raised James as a single parent in the three years between his birth and her marriage to Baptist preacher David Baldwin. Later, when James showed a penchant for pen and paper, she encouraged him to express his frustrations with the world through writing.

All three men, notes Tubbs in the book, “carried their mothers with them in everything they did.”

The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed by Wendy Lower

Few photographs of the Holocaust depict the actual moment of victims’ deaths. Instead, visual documentation tends to focus on the events surrounding acts of mass murder: lines of unsuspecting men and women awaiting deportation, piles of emaciated corpses on the grounds of Nazi concentration camps. In total, writes historian Wendy Lower in The Ravine, “not many more than a dozen” extant images actually capture the killers in the act.

Twelve years ago, Lower, also the author of Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields, chanced upon one such rare photograph while conducting research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Taken in Miropol, Ukraine, on October 13, 1941, the photo shows Nazis and local collaborators in the middle of a massacre. Struck by a bullet to the head, a Jewish woman topples forward into a ravine, pulling two still-living children down with her. Robbed of a quick death by shooting, the youngsters were “left to be crushed by the weight of their kin and suffocated in blood and the soil heaped over the bodies,” according to The Ravine.

Lower spent the better part of the next decade researching the image’s story, drawing on archival records, oral histories and “every possible remnant of evidence” to piece together the circumstances surrounding its creation. Through her investigations of the photographer, a Slovakian resistance fighter who was haunted by the scene until his death in 2005; the police officers who participated in their neighbors’ extermination; and the victims themselves, she set out to hold the perpetrators accountable while restoring the deceased’s dignity and humanity—a feat she accomplished despite being unable to identify the family by name.

“[Genocide’s] perpetrators not only kill but also seek to erase the victims from written records, and even from memory,” Lower explains in the book’s opening chapter. “When we find one trace, we must pursue it, to prevent the intended extinction by countering it with research, education, and memorialization.”

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

Sooner or later, all great cities fall. Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia; Pompeii, the Roman city razed by Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 A.D.; Angkor, the medieval Cambodian capital of the Khmer Empire; and Cahokia, a pre-Hispanic metropolis in what is now Illinois, were no exception. United by their pioneering approaches to urban planning, the four cities boasted sophisticated infrastructures and feats of engineering—accomplishments largely overlooked by Western scholars, who tend to paint their stories in broad, reductive strokes, as Publishers Weekly notes in its review of science journalist Annalee Newitz’s latest book.

Consider, for instance, Çatalhöyük, which was home to some of the first people to settle down permanently after millennia of nomadic living. The prehistoric city’s inhabitants “farmed, made bricks from mud, crafted weapons, and created incredible art” without the benefit of extensive trade networks, per Newitz. They also adorned their dwellings with abstract designs and used plaster to transform their ancestors’ skulls into ritualistic artworks passed down across generations. Angkor, on the other hand, became an economic powerhouse in large part thanks to its complex network of canals and reservoirs.

Despite their demonstrations of ingenuity, all four cities eventually succumbed to what Newitz describes as “prolonged periods of political instability”—often precipitated by poor leadership and unjust hierarchies—“coupled with environmental collapse.” The parallels between these conditions and “the global-warming present” are unmistakable, but as Kirkus points out, the author’s deeply researched survey is more hopeful than dystopian. Drawing on the past to offer advice for the future, Four Lost Cities calls on those in power to embrace “resilient infrastructure, … public plazas, domestic spaces for everyone, social mobility, and leaders who treat the city’s workers with dignity.”

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman

Humans’ hunger for food has a dark side, writes Mark Bittman in Animal, Vegetable, Junk. Over the millennia, the food journalist and cookbook author argues, “It’s sparked disputes over landownership, water use, and the extraction of resources. It’s driven exploitation and injustice, slavery and war. It’s even, paradoxically enough, created disease and famine.” (A prime example of these consequences is colonial powers’ exploitation of Indigenous peoples in the production of cash crops, notes Kirkus.) Today, Bittman says, processed foods wreak havoc on diets and overall health, while industrialized agriculture strips the land of its resources and drives climate change through the production of greenhouse gases.

Dire as it may seem, the situation is still salvageable. Though the author dedicates much of his book to an overview of how humans’ relationship with food has changed for the worse, Animal, Vegetable, Junk’s final chapter adopts a more optimistic outlook, calling on readers to embrace agroecology—“an autonomous, pluralist, multicultural movement, political in its demand for social justice.” Adherents of agroecology support replacing chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other toxic tools with organic techniques like composting and encouraging pollinators, in addition to cutting out the middleman between “growers and eaters” and ensuring that the food production system is “sustainable and equitable for all,” according to Bittman.

“Agroecology aims to right social wrongs,” he explains. “… [It] regenerates the ecology of the soil instead of depleting it, reduces carbon emissions, and sustains local food cultures, businesses, farms, jobs, seeds, and people instead of diminishing or destroying them.”

The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The companion book to an upcoming PBS documentary of the same name, Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s latest scholarly survey traces the black church’s role as both a source of solace and a nexus for social justice efforts. As Publishers Weekly notes in its review of The Black Church, enslaved individuals in the antebellum South drew strength from Christianity’s rituals and music, defying slaveholders’ hopes that practicing the religion would render them “docile and compliant.” More than a century later, as black Americans fought to ensure their civil rights, white supremacists targeted black churches with similar goals in mind, wielding violence to (unsuccessfully) intimidate activists into accepting the status quo.

Gates’ book details the accomplishments of religious leaders within the black community, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Malcolm X, Nat Turner and newly elected senator Reverend Raphael G. Warnock. (The Black Churches’ televised counterpart features insights from similarly prominent individuals, including Oprah Winfrey, Reverend Al Sharpton and John Legend.) But even as the historian celebrates these individuals, he acknowledges the black church’s “struggles and failings” in its “treatment of women and the LGBTQ+ community and its dismal response to the 1980s AIDS epidemic,” per Kirkus. Now, amid a pandemic that’s taken a disproportionate toll on black Americans and an ongoing reckoning with systemic racism in the U.S., black churches’ varying approaches to activism and political engagement are at the forefront once again.

As Gates says in a PBS statement. “No social institution in the Black community is more central and important than the Black church.”

#History

[livedogcurtis]

Live Dog

“Anyone who is among the living has hope —even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!” - Ecclesiastes 9:4

Let me explain how this blog got its name:

They say you can’t give yourself a nickname. Others have to give it to you. It seems the one exception to that is rap artists. Well, I’m a 58 year old balding white guy. So, there is no way that I can be confused for a rapper, but if I was one, I would take the name of “LiveDog”! 

Why? Well, it comes from the Bible verse cited above (Ecclesiastes 9:4). This verse has helped me during many decisive times in my life. Let me give you a little background of my life to help you understand. I’m originally from a farm town in Central Illinois. As a kid, I was picked on fairly regularly. In today’s terms, I was bullied. My middle school and early high school years were not very fun for me. My daily goal was to just survive the school day by being as invisible as possible. That wore at my confidence, and it caused me to under-appreciate myself. 

Fast forward a few years. inspired by events that occurred in my life after graduating from college, I decided to pursue becoming as a missionary. During this time, those old feelings of inadequacy resurfaced. I began to think, “Who am I to think I could become a missionary?!” I’d think of all the great missionaries of the past – like, Hudson Taylor in China, Adonirum Judson in Burma or Jim Elliot with the Aucas in Ecuador. Or even the great believers of the Bible, like Paul traveling in Greece and Turkey. How could I compare myself to them?!

It was during this time that I was introduced to the verse, Ecclesiastes 9:4. “Anyone who is among the living has hope —even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!” 

I definitely felt like a dog. Not the cute little doggy laying faithfully by your side, but rather, like a scraggly street mutt - which is how dogs were viewed in the time of the author of the book of Ecclesiastes. Dogs basically served two purposes: 1) home security and 2) a garbage disposal. 

While being called a dog at the time was considered a very strong insult, being compared to a the lion was, and still is, viewed as a being noble and majestic. Like in Genesis 49:9 “You are a lion’s cub, Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness—who dares to rouse him?” 

In Ecclesiastes 9:4 there is an important distinction between the lion and the dog – one was dead and one was alive. So, no matter how great the lion was during his lifetime, he is of little use now since he’s dead. On the other hand, since he’s alive, the dog, no matter how lowly he’s considered, still has an opportunity to be useful.

In the same way, no matter how great those great missionaries and people of the Bible of the past were, they are of little use right now because of the fact that they are dead. Sure, their writings and deeds can still be an encouragement for us, but they are no longer able to physically ..., “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:9). Someone else put it another way, “Your best ability is your availability”.

After reading this and thinking it over, my outlook changed. I understood that I may be just a “dog”, but I can still be used by God!

Do you feel more like a dog than a lion? That’s ok, because God could use more “dogs” like us anyway. In Luke chapter 10, we read about Jesus sending out 72 people to minister – not the 12 disciples (the “lions”), but 72 other followers (the “dogs”).  

10:1 “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. 2 He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3 Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.”

What was the result of this step of faith? Let’s read on:

17 “The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.””  

There are less than 20,000 lions left in this world, but there are more than 525 million dogs. So much will be missed out if we rely on the “lions” to do all the work and not us “Live Dogs”!

In future blogs, my goal is to share what I’ve learned from my years of teaching God’s Word as either a missionary, pastor and teacher - One “Live Dog” to another. : )

[hellodeanna]

Started this blog because 2020 has been enough of a shit show that I felt it was time to write out my aggressions instead of complaining to my husband for the billionth time this week...

it’s October and instead of being in our current home state of Arizona, both C and I have been furloughed until....? Well, the current political climate will tell. Our jobs (yes, we both work for the same non-profit) are reliant on the national park nearby, and because funding has been cut, parks aren’t fully open and people aren’t being the tourists they were pre-COVID19, we will stay stuck in this holding pattern for the near future.

Applying to jobs feel like a joke when you’ve been working in a field that is literally halted because of the lack of tourism... Who wants to hire someone with such a specific career path?? receptionist? assistant? data entry?? I hated working those lowly positions before, and surely don’t want to do it again, but to even receive responses that my job applications won’t be moving past the application stage is quite disheartening.

Someday, I’m sure I’ll want to remember this stage of my life; after all, I am a very newly wed person and this shit show of a year is and will be historic... I imagine my grandmother living through the great depression and feel like these circumstances are fairly similar, but I want to preserve my own facts for my future family. Writing it all down should help, and frankly there isn’t enough paper in my planner/journal to write down my anger and bitterness.

So here’s the details:

In March, we got word that a virus called COVID19 was slowly seeping through the country. Because Arizona is such an Asian tourist destination with the Grand Canyon being nearby, and iconic Horseshoe bend being just over the ridge in our backyard, we were afraid, but it didn’t feel truly real. I was working alone in the archives at that point and truly felt that I would be safe to do my job despite the suggested stay at home orders. Within in maybe 3 days(?) that changed and we were forced to stay home. C and I took it very seriously, barely going out for groceries, washing our clothes in the bathtub (hell nah, to the laundromat) and laying low. We baked bread, we slept late and on warmer days we’d escape to the middle of nowhere in the desert to streak. Food began to get scarce by the end of March, and we had to drive a hour north to Kanab for meat. Produce was lacking too, but we were actively trying to eat all the food we had first before we panicked about where to get vegetables.

As April snuck in, we ventured out to camp several times in the Glen Canyon Recreation Area and Grand Staircase Escalante, and then there were the fires that forced us back inside. I never did follow up to learn if the fires around Grand Canyon and the Kaibab Plateau were accidental (lightening strike) or purposeful (rumors of a propane tank exploding), but they ravaged so much of the area that some days looked cloudy from the smoke. Exploring the area post fire was truly unbelievable - ash fields for miles.

C and I cancelled our 4.24.2020 wedding ceremony - which part of me is grateful we avoided the money and the awkwardness of a ceremony, but another part of me is bitter that I didn’t get to dress up and celebrate the love of my life. It was always a funny joke to us that we actually elope on 4/20, so we did just that, and feasted on s’mores and hot dogs post courthouse. Blunts and dabs instead of a true champagne toast - just the way we liked it. Oh by the way, I had bought this dress for $1200 which I didn’t wear and we barely got photos so that’s the part that still haunts me, and causes the immense amount of bitterness I’ve been feeling (especially now that it’s october, the pandemic is still alive and well, and I keep seeing people getting married with 150+ people in attendance *MaSkLeSs* like covid isn’t a thing still) Buying a dress that I can’t wear feels like I should have just saved that money to use for this season of indefinite unemployment.

Right after our wedding, we tried to go camping in California - which didn’t totally go as planned because everything was shut down, so we were forced to airbnb it (not really complaining). I finally got to dip my toes in the Pacific ocean, and we saw millions of Joshua trees. And shortly after our impromptu honeymoon, we set off for Ohio. This time we took the long way round, diving through New Mexico, Texas (stopping at a container home air bnb outside Amarillo), Oklahoma, Missouri (stopping at a secluded cabin on a Missouri Fox Trot Horse farm), Illinois, Indiana and Ohio in our hometown of Cincinnati. We stayed for 14 days to ensure we weren’t sick and attended a funeral service for C’s grandpa, who actually died on thanksgiving of 2019. 

After our Cincinnati reunion we headed back to Arizona, but this time the northern route, going up through Illinois to make a pit stop to wave at my cousins in Chicago, staying at a fishing shack in Wisconsin on the Minnesota border, going through South Dakota and staying in Deadwood (surprisingly I LOVED South Dakota), and driving through all the best cities in Montana. The idea was originally to explore Montana to see if it was a contender for possibly moving there in the near future, but like California, MT was totally shut down - Yellowstone was completely shut off on the highways. So we headed back through Wyoming, Idaho, and through the northern part of Utah that I’d never seen before.

So hands down, the perk of covid19 has been the off-the-grid traveling I’ve done. At this point I think I only have nine states left to go to until I say I’ve been to all 50.

So blah blah blah, we headed back to Page to host a few friends in a camping excursion and by the time July rolled around C and I realized that staying in Page was not realistic. We’d run out of unemployment and with all the work piling up back in Cincinnati, we made the heartbreaking decision to take the basics and head back to Ohio.

Well, after over two months of working odd jobs in Ohio, we’re still here. There’s gross family drama here, and I feel like I’m a total leech. We’re pulling money out of savings - you know, the money we either got for our wedding or got in celebration of our wedding (for what we hoped would be a honeymoon fund). I’m bitter, can you tell? I have no idea what’s next...

I think that’s enough ranting for today, so I’ll sign off.

until next time, fuck everything

[unfortunate-stranger-losers]

Right-Side Up AU, Part Three: It’s the End of the World {AO3} {tumblr} {Part One} {Part Two}

Chapter Eighteen → Investigating the Flayed

“Okay, so, I managed to get my squad to do something useful,” Hopper said, hanging up the phone. “They just got Ms Driscoll’s test results.” 

“And?” Mike asked, bouncing his leg. 

“Cold.” Hopper crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Very low temperatures. And her ‘seizure’- the way the nurse described it to Callahan, it sounds just like Max.” 

Max shivered. “So Ms Driscoll is flayed.” 

“I’m sorry, what?” Joyce asked. 

“Flayed. Like the Mind Flayer.” Max explained. “He controls people. Takes over their minds. They basically become him.” 

“If there are two flayed-” Lucas began. 

“We have to assume there are more.” El shuddered.

Mike bit his lip, and then looked down at his lap. “Heather.” 

“Who?” Hopper asked, moving forwards a bit, the wheels in his head turning. 

“Billy was doing something to her.” Mike said, hugging himself. “She was… scared. She was screaming.”

“I’m sorry, I’m lost.” Joyce said. 

“Me, too.” Hopper sighed. “Kid, who is Heather?” 

“She’s a lifeguard at the pool.” Max said. 

Mike narrowed his eyes. “Her dad is mean to Nancy.” 

“What?” Hopper said. 

“He’s her boss.” El said. 

“Oh, that son of a-” Joyce began. 

“Mike?” Lucas paused, turning to him. “We saw Heather. At her house.” 

“You went to her house?” Hopper asked. 

“Did we not… tell you that?” El asked, running over in her mind what they had and hadn’t told her father. 

“She must’ve been flayed.” Mike said. “And pretending to be normal, like Billy.” 

“Yeah, I know.” Lucas nodded. “But- Mike- what about her parents?” 

“What about them?” 

“Could they be flayed, too?” 

“I don’t-” 

“Lucas’s right.” El said, staring at her lap. “Billy was there, too. Why would he be there-” 

“Unless they were recruiting.” Max bit her lip. 

“We need to get over there.” Joyce said, clasping her hands together and resting her chin on them. “If we can investigate one of the flayed- find out how they’ve been flayed-” 

“We can stop them.” Lucas finished. 

“And the sooner the better.” Joyce sighed, her mind still on her sons. 

“I’ll drive.” Hopper said. “Get all the stuff you need. We’re moving out before I can get arrested.” 

“Why would you get arrested?” El asked worriedly. 

“Aren’t you the sheriff?” Max asked. 

Hopper sighed. “How do you think we got information out of the mayor?” 

El gaped as Max’s eyes widened, and then she said, “Wicked.” 

“You’re the coolest Dad.” Max nodded. 

“Of course. Of course the fucking car breaks down.” Nancy muttered, tying her hair back and staring down at the car engine. 

Jonathan was standing near the skinny tree they’d handcuffed the prisoner around- Alexei, he’d had managed to find out. Jonathan was attempting to communicate, but not very well. 

“You see, these rocks?” Jonathan held up two rocks. “This one is Hawkins. This one is the Upside Down. You guys are-” he clapped the rocks together. “Which is bad. So tell us what you’re doing so we don’t do that.” 

Alexei stared at him in confusion, and then Jonathan sighed. “That machine you’re building. Machine. Can you tell us about it?” 

“Machina?” 

“Yes! Machina!” Jonathan nodded. “Yes, good-” 

Alexei gestured- as best he could while handcuffed around a tree- to the car, saying, “Machina! Vroom vroom?” 

“Oh, no, no.” Jonathan sighed. “No, no, not the car. The machine, at the farm. Where we kidnapped you-” 

“Jonathan!” Nancy turned, holding out the keys. “I need you to try to start it.” 

“Why can’t you?” 

“If it doesn’t start, I’ll need to see what’s not working!” 

Jonathan sighed. “I’m- I’m making progress.” 

“Okay, well, make progress in the car on the way to Murray’s, yeah?” 

Jonathan sighed and walked to the car, taking the keys. “Okay, but I’m driving there.” 

“Okay, listen, the engine failing is not my fault.” 

“No but those dents are. Hop’s not gonna like that.” 

“We’ll say it was Russians. We’re blaming everything else on them, we might as well.” 

Jonathan hopped into the driver’s seat, and put the key in the ignition, turning it. Instead of starting, the engine made a strange, repetitive wooshing sound. 

“Great. Freaking perfect.” Nancy sighed, staring back at the engine. “Try it again?” 

Jonathan tried it again, and Nancy hoisted her feet onto the edge of the bumper, peering over the engine, the top of her head grazing the hood of the car. As she leaned over, she heard a hesitant call from Alexei. “Machina! Stop, stop!” 

“What?” Nancy turned, glaring at him. He started speaking rapid Russian, and Nancy groaned and jumped off the car, moving back over to him. “Listen, dude, I’ve been having a hell of a week, and you’re not making it any better-” 

Just before she could really start shouting, she heard a small crack from behind, and she whipped around, seeing a puff of smoke emerge from the engine. 

“Oh.” she said. 

“Oh, shit!” Jonathan shouted, rushing out of the car.

He’d only just cleared the vehicle, heading for the trees, when the engine full-on exploded, bursting into flame before their eyes, rising much higher than Nancy would’ve expected. 

Jonathan gasped, looking up from where he’d fallen in the dirt, while Nancy simply stared. Alexei repeated, resignedly, “Stop,” and she shut her eyes. 

“Hop is going to kill me.” 

“Well…” Jonathan said, shutting his eyes. “I guess we’re walking to Illinois.” 

Nancy sighed. “Is there anyone in Indiana who speaks Russian?” 

“Well, I’m all ears, Nance, you have any suggestions?” 

Nancy groaned and turned to their captive. “Come on, Alexei, we’ve got a long-ass walk ahead of us.” 

“Door’s locked.” El said, stepping back. 

“Okay.” Lucas clapped his hands together. “Mike, do you-” 

“On it.” Mike said, flicking his wrist and watching the red door swing open. 

Joyce glanced back at him, putting a hand on his shoulder as Hopper entered, a hand on the gun he’d managed to get a hold of. The kids followed after, with Lucas in front, saying, “We saw them all in the dining room, this way.” 

“Jesus, it’s freezing.” Joyce said, hugging herself. 

“What’d you expect? They’re possessed.” Max said, leaning onto El’s shoulder. 

“We don’t know-” El began. 

“Are we sure they’re not home?” Lucas asked. 

“Nobody answered the doorbell.” Joyce shrugged. 

“Stop.” they stepped into what must have been the living room, and Hopper threw out an arm, causing everyone to skitter to a halt. “Do you all smell that?” 

They inhaled, and Lucas stepped back, throwing his hands over his nose. “Oh, God.” he said. 

The others made their way to the kitchen, where several bottles were overturned on the counter and tables, sticky stains beneath them. Upon closer inspection, the bottles appeared to be liquid cleaners- dish soap, detergent, the full works. Joyce carefully moved to the edge of a counter that had been almost completely melted, which was… not a good sign. 

“Chemicals.” El moved to the table, kneeling down. “They’re mixing chemicals together.” 

“Hey, Hop, Ms Byers,” Max said, moving beside her sister and putting a hand on her shoulder, “Didn’t you say that old lady was eating fertilizer?” 

“What, you think they’re guzzling this shit?” Joyce said. 

“Either that,” Hopper sighed, “Or they went on one hell of a cleaning spree.” 

“Well, I didn’t eat chemicals.” Max shrugged. 

“So,” Mike said, biting his lip worriedly, “This is something new.” 

“Alright, Max,” El clapped her hands together. “Mr Clarke, fifth grade. What happens when you mix chemicals together?” 

“You create a new substance.” Max said. “You think they’re making something? If you drink this crap, it’ll kill you.” 

“Yeah,” Hopper said, looking around the dissolved corner of the counter, “If you’re human.” 

“Guys?” They turned, to see Lucas peering around the doorway. “I went to the dining room. You’re gonna want to see this.” 

“What?” Max asked, tensing. 

Lucas covered his nose again, as the smell of the chemicals drifted towards him, and he just said, “They never cleaned up, that’s what.” 

“What?” 

“El, Mike, when we came over and saw them in the middle of dinner- this is what they had, right?” 

The group hesitantly followed Lucas into the dining room, where he gestured towards plates and glasses still on the table, only half-finished. As El went to the table, nodding that, yeah, this is what they’d seen them eating, Hopper walked past them, to a space that looked like a living room, staring down at a wine bottle on the carpet. As soon as the others followed him, he knelt down, reaching for a dark stain on the rug. 

“Blood.” he said. 

Slowly, he reached over and grabbed the bottle, pulling it closer, to see a small splash of blood on the label. 

Hopper stood up, and Joyce moved past him, looking at another rug that looked like it had been pulled across the floor. “Billy or Heather could’ve dragged one of her parents,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “Which would’ve moved the rug like this.” 

“Which would lead us…” Hopper moved to the next room, pulling the door open and leading the group in after him. The children, silent and just watching the adults as they pieced everything together, kept their eyes on them as they led them into the garage, where the sliding door was still wide open. 

Hopper knelt by the remains of some rope. “They were tied. They had to have taken them somewhere.” 

“Why take them somewhere else?” Joyce said. 

“Maybe the Mind Flayer needs them to be in a certain area to possess them.” Max said, running a hand through her ponytail. “He could reach me in the field, but- but he’s not as strong now. It’ll just be a piece of him. Maybe he’s hiding somewhere.” 

“Somewhere,” Mike said, shivering, “That he didn’t want me to see.” 

“We need to find it.” Joyce said. 

Hopper nodded. “We find the source, we can stop him. Or, at least, whatever the hell he’s doing.” 

“How do we do that?” El asked. 

“What about that lady?” Lucas asked, turning to Joyce. “The one Nancy made you talk to, who was eating fertilizer?” 

“Ms Driscoll.” Joyce said. 

“If she’s flayed, she’ll know.” Lucas said. 

“She won’t tell us. He won’t let her.” Max said, shaking slightly. 

“Then,” Lucas said, “We just… set her free and see where she goes.” 

“Holy fuck, Lucas.” El said. 

“It’s not a bad plan, actually.” Hopper said. He took a deep breath. “I suppose you’re going to insist on going along?” 

“Of course.” El nodded. 

“Then,” Hopper said, “We’re going over there, and you all pray that I haven’t been reported by the mayor as a fugitive yet.” 

“How much farther is Illinois?” Nancy groaned, throwing her head back. 

“Well, gee, Nance,” Jonathan sighed, as he watched Alexei walk a little bit ahead of them, his hands still cuffed together, “It’s only another state. Maybe we’ll be there in five minutes.” 

“There’s gotta be a better way to do this.” Nancy said. 

“Maybe we’ll run into a bus station.” 

“Or a plane.” 

“Or Illinois itself.” 

“Or that Murray guy will just wander out to say hi to us.” 

“Or Alexei will find him.” Jonathan stopped, looking over. “Oh, he’s running.” 

“What?” Nancy looked up, shocked to see that, indeed, their captive was racing ahead. “Goddamnit!” 

“We’re bad at this,” Jonathan said, as they took off after him.

“Yeah.” Nancy admitted. 

They raced through the woods, with Nancy running ahead to yell when roots needed to be leapt over and branches needed to be ducked under. She pushed forwards, finally racing beside Alexei, who’d stopped and now was excitedly speaking quickly in Russian. 

“Son of a- listen, we- goddamn-” Nancy began. 

Then Alexei gestured forwards, and Nancy turned to see, up ahead, a 7/11. 

“Oh, thank fuck.” Jonthan groaned, sliding to a stop beside her. 

“Good work, Alexei.” Nancy patted him on the back. “Now let’s go get some fucking food.” 

“Um, you wanna take a guy in there handcuffed?” Jonathan asked. 

“He’ll be fine.” Nancy waved. “Besides, you know how Steve’s like at work. Nobody in there’s gonna give a shit. Probably won’t be the weirdest thing they see today.” 

“You know what, you’re right. But then what do we-” 

Nancy took Jonathan’s hand, raised his arm, and pointed him towards a parking lot full of cars. 

“No.” 

“Yes.” Nancy nodded, glee written across her face. “I’m gonna hijack a car.” 

“No, you’re not.” 

“Yes I am!” 

“We are so fucking screwed.” 

“That we are.”