#is still marginally better & more sensible than what we actually got

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

I started watching Merlin again a few months back because my favorite podcasters were doing it after reaching the end of their Supernatural podcast, so for a while now I've been loping through at a civilized pace, watching 1 episode per week in advance of the podcast, and I was just about in the middle of season 3 -- coincidentally around the exact point I got distracted and lost interested in it the first time I watched -- when Netflix informed me they're yanking the show next week for inscrutable Netflix reasons. So this week I've bailed through the whole back half of the show so I wouldn't have to figure out how to download it or whatever, and man, you guys. It got weirdly dark in the last two seasons! Like there's a whole episode about the bewitched knights wandering lost in a hellish wasteland while failing to rescue Guinevere from being tortured and brainwashed and I'm like -- this is the same show that features other hit plotlines such as "Anthony Head is tricked into marrying a troll who farts constantly" right? It took a turn, is what I'm saying.

Anyway, I basically enjoyed it, in that it's (for once in my life!) written to provide basically consistent and sensible payoffs for the conflicts it establishes and also Colin Morgan is just a really likeable and compelling performer, but like -- I do think it's ultimately a more or less fatal flaw to the show that Arthur kind of -- sucks. He really is kind of a garbage dude, and initially you're kind of like, oh okay, he's youthful and reckless and spoiled, but the show is going to be about how he matures into the Great King of Prophecy, and I appreciate that the key to that is going to be the way he comes to realize that the Common Folk in his life, both Gwen and Merlin, are the best people around him. And kiiiind of? I mean, he does improve marginally, but oh my God he really just is largely a dipshit right to the end, isn't he? Like very late in the game, well into the Full Flowering of Camelot, the conflicts are still along the lines of "Arthur is fully going to execute someone for trumped-up reasons and Merlin has to gingerly plant the idea of maybe not doing that in his head because god knows he'll be having none of it if you try to be direct about the gruesome mistake he's making." And the man's daddy issues, Jesus Christ! I love a good fictional daddy issue, but there's a line, and the line is that if the ghost of your asshole of a dead father half-murders your wife because he thinks you could do better, you're allowed to speak sternly to him! Very sternly! But no, Arthur's like, Dad, I have to ask you to leave now please, because I'm an adult now and you are dead. Buddy! Buddy!!! He clocked your wife unconscious and tried to set her on fire, we passed I Need You to Go Now *several* exits back!

Anyway, it's stuff like that. He's a better king than Uther was, but the bar is in hell, and judged on his own merits, Arthur is -- kind of a petty curmudgeon, and not entirely not a tyrant, and he never *did* fully get around to that restoring magic business that was supposedly the point of the whole show. Which in and of itself is okay and kind of interesting -- it was almost a bold statement about the inherent moral vacuity of dynastic monarchies, like actually if you raise a person to believe the right of rulership is in him by blood, the very *best* you're going to get is a guy who's okay sometimes, unless he doesn't feel like it, in which case you're fucked until you can figure out some way to work him around. Which is basically what Arthur was, as a king. It's like Junior Varsity Game of Thrones. It's not bad.

But they so clearly wanted you, the audience, to go all in on Merlin's fear and sadness as Camlann and Mordred and the fall of Camelot looms, and Morgan's acting his ass off and I would like to play along and grieve the tragic loss of Arthur Pendragon and the end of a golden age, except Arthur's really just a dudebro with the bare minimum that qualifies as a conscience and actually the whole last two seasons were shot more like a gothic horror than a golden age, and I don't think I found it as reassuring as I'm supposed to that this guy is coming back at some point. Not to speak for the British, but -- thanks but no thanks, is where I personally stand on that business. Avalon can keep him.

Which -- again, if that's the point, it's a brilliantly sly deconstruction of the mythology of the True King. But it's kind of not framed like that's the point. I actually couldn't tell for sure. All of this sounds like I didn't like the show, but I think I did! It had some genuinely moving elements and decent production values for TV and some good performances and a dragon. I liked the dragon, he's probably my favorite character.

[meetmeatthecoda]

Oh gosh i had this dream where in the s8 finale liz actually killed red like he asked but then she got shot and bled to death in the street anyway??? And that was just the, end of the show? And when i woke up it took me like an actual twenty minutes to realize that was a dream WELP

Hi, anon 🥰 Omg 😳 .....to be honest? And this might be a controversial opinion, so prepare yourself... *whispers* this would have been a better ending 😭🥲😐 I mean, certainly not preferable, but at least there's some poetic symbolism in it all. Like, Liz was the death of Red like he always feared she would be, Liz's stupid-ass quest for answers & her stupid-ass ridiculous past still came back to bite her in the butt like she always feared it would & - most importantly - they would not have had to contradict canon by saying that Red could possibly live without Liz which is naturally the only important thing to me as a die-hard Lizzington shipper lmfao fml Like... is it an equally horrible, depressing, & useless ending for the show, rendering every original plot-point & struggle since the pilot completely & utterly moot?? ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY. Does it make slightly more sense & give slightly more emotional closure than the bullshit they tried to pedal in the finale, albeit in the most heart-breaking, Shakespeare-level tragedy way?? .....I mean, maybe lmfao Anddd that's the really sad part imo 🙃🙃🙃 Anyway, I'm sorry you had to suffer through this awful dream, anon, it sounds horrible & I think your brain should apologize to you for cooking it up LOL but thank you for sharing with me & much love to you, of course!! ❤️

[that-gay-jedi]

Who's your favorite star wars character and why are they your fav?

Thank you for sending me my first ask! It's definitely Anakin but the WHY always says more than the who or what :)

So.

Partly I just. I really like villains, fallen heroes, monsters, antagonists and baddies in general, specifically I feel so connected to them all because their stories are never THEIR stories, and that's something that due to my own upbringing and probably some of the marginalized demographics I belong to I feel in my bones.

From a writing perspective there's the satisfaction of seeing a complex, dynamic and well-studied character, especially someone who has both literally and mentally worn so many faces and in a way has lived many different lives. There's some kind of incredible emotional alchemy that happens when I try to reconcile TPM Ani with Vader, or Vader with ghost Anakin, etc.

And then there's how the PT so admirably invokes elements that made classical tragedies from Greek to Shakespearean great and then makes them so digestible to our contemporary sensibilities. Anakin's downfall is a narrative that tilts on all these axes of Choice and Fate, of Virtue and Fault, and of our ordinary human lives and the cosmos and all the messy ways they mix. That tragedy element is in turn very well served by how the OT managed to create a mythos so popular that people forget it's scifi (AND I happen to love scifi, so there's that).

Aesthetics, like DEAR GODS the aesthetics. I dunno I've always had some kind of gender thing for tall pretty men with a certain aura and it gives me gender euphoria to watch him sweeping around in flowing robes looking dramatic. I grew up in a time and place where secondhand gender euphoria was almost the only gender euphoria people like me ever got, so I derive a deeply personal sense of comfort and fulfilment from engaging with the aesthetics of RotS Anakin and any character who hits me in a similar way.

Even though I never saw *ANY* Star Wars content at all until 29 there's this element of how much my younger self would have loved Anakin, like, edgy moody millenial me who was actually using those stereotypes about mall goth teen angst as a way to wear my very real trauma in a relatively socially-safe if somewhat coded way and, by reducing its hiddenness, actually rob that trauma of some of its power and loosen its hold on my life.

And then with Anakin it's like. In a lot of ways his underlying emotional makeup seems so similar to mine in ways that are so painful and so healing to acknowledge, I just- his most Dark Side moments in AotC, RotS and TCW are so true to who I still have to work so hard every day not to be, not necessarily in their severity but in their overall flavour and direction. I so rarely get to see that in heroes OR villains, and the fact that he was both just-

That's not just darkness, that's *MY* darkness, to the point that if I can care about and admire Vaderkin then surely I'm capable of loving myself too, of seeing someone with all my most unattractive and deepest most toxic impulses as someone worth fighting for, someone who deserved better... even someone capable of redemption.

Luke saying "I'm a Jedi, like my father before me" while fully knowing who his dad is is some kind of potent antidote (that I didn't even know I needed) to the damage that both my personal traumas and the early exposure to media that villainized queerness, disability, and neurodivergence did to my psyche.

Relatability kind of comes full circle back to visual elements too. Anakin is shown crying so often and we never once get the slightest suggestion in the movies that he's any less of a warrior for it- nor any less of a man. In a society that both demonizes women and has gendered the hell out of how people experience and express emotions, I can't begin to describe how refreshing it is to see a male character, and one we're supposed to empathize with, shown breaking down so often in multiple ways. Strong and rapidly changing emotions, the outward expression thereof, fear, sadness and even an intense and painful desire for human connection are all disproportionately attributed to women, and shunned. And yet we have Anakin. That the terrifying gravitas of Darth Vader comes from that same person is a statement in and of itself.

Speaking of Vader's power, despite a lot of veeeeery problematic dimensions to how disability is portrayed in the SW universe, he remains one of the most intimidating fictional characters to have prosthetics that don't function identically to Anakin's original legs, which is to have had to *adjust* to an injury, and to have both such conspicuous adaptive equipment and such combat prowess that we the audience associate his medically assisted breathing primarily with a battle that could spell the end of all our protagonists. Having lost a chunk of my own mobility and acquired chronic pain, I find myself wishing for more characters who are never physically the same again, yet have a type of agency and power that isn't purely mystical/cerebral, nor indirect.

I'm sure there's more, but I'm gonna stop here and say thank you again for asking.

[trek-b]

New Thoughts on Turbo Space

Okay, to be fair to Discovery and the "turbo space" thing, the Memory Alpha article on “That Hope Is You Pt. 2” does point out something I'd forgotten:

The interior workings of Discovery shown regarding the turbolifts and the ejection of the warp core suggest that the vessel has technology that is rendering it bigger on the inside, presumably related to the upgrades received in "Scavengers". The crew of Enterprise NX-01 encountered a 31st century vessel with similar technology in ENT: "Future Tense".

Yes, the ENT crew encountered that timeship from what was their future and is now DSC's past (it's always strange to think they've now gone past what seemed like Star Trek's far future and that far future is now past) and yes, that ship was bigger on the inside. So okay, the MA article posits this could've been a result of Disco's 32nd century upgrades but here's the thing—they'd already depicted enormous empty spaces inside the ship in season two, long before they ever got to the 32nd century.

Also, if it were a result of those future technology upgrades, why didn't anyone mention them? Indications seem to me that the show's stance is that those voids have always been there despite their not making a lick of sense...unless that technology was developed  sometime after ENT’s time and we just never heard of it before...Why the show seems to be so invested in that idea I'm not sure but what we saw in “That Hope Is You Pt. 2” looks big enough to actually fit Discovery inside itself...(and don’t think part of me doesn’t want to see an episode where somehow that happens: another thing I’d like to see on DSC is more weird episodes...I mean if you’re going to have this shipboard void weirdness, you might as well get REALLY weird with it; hey, maybe it IS a city, maybe Disco’s crew could visit it and have first contact with the people of the city inside the ship).

Speaking of weird, it's a little weird that none of this has ever been addressed directly in dialogue—it's completely unacknowledged by the characters...I mean in the season three finale it was addressed kinda implicitly because characters had to deal with the prospect of falling out of a turbolift car but I'm pretty sure no one’s really talked about how there’s all this space inside the ship that clearly couldn’t be inside the ship.

And here we were thinking the turbolift just traveled through shafts tucked inside the normal nuts and bolts fabric of starships and not...apparently another dimension.

- I'm not the only one who thought the inside of Discovery looks like a vast Blade Runner-esque city (you might note Trek Core was also where I snagged the screenshot at the top of this post)...as portrayed in the season three finale it was marginally more sensible than the weird track thing in season two Claire Little also referred to in the linked review...

But yeah...I still don't get it--why take something pretty simple and suddenly make it incredibly complicated? What next? Will we learn the doors on Starfleet vessels are themselves actually micro transporters that automatically teleport anyone stepping across their thresholds a fraction of a millimeter forward? 

It's better than the Kelvinverse's infamous Enterprise brewery but only marginally. Perhaps it's another feature of Post-Classical Trek that they want to imply these ships are the size of Star Destroyers even though that doesn't mesh with decades of canon or all the external reference points on the ships (windows, bridge, docking ports, shuttle bays etc).

Maybe they'll try to explain it eventually, maybe not...actually I think at this point, I'd rather them just not, just leave the weirdness: there's lots of weirdness that is still canon so what the heck, just let it simmer for the rest of time.

[reidgraygubler]

sunflowers, daisies, lilacs, dahlias (spencer reid/reader)

Title: sunflowers, daisies, lilacs, dahlias

Requested: yes, was a request someone sent to @imagining-in-the-margins​, but I took it of her hands :) (So i get this is sorta hard to do but i was wondering if you could write a spencer x nonbinary (gender-neutral pronouns) reader where reader isn’t out to the team yet but spencer finds out somehow and the reader is afraid he’ll reject them but instead he confesses his feelings and just starts info dumping about third genders in other cultures and the roots of binary america, etc. just like fluffy and accepting. once again, i get it if you don’t want to/can’t but that would be awesome)

Couple: spencer reid/non-binary!reader (they/them pronouns)

Category: fluff

Content Warning: swearing (if any), misgendering, usual criminal minds case work stuff, bi!spencer, lgbt+ history lesson, platonic cuddling (or is it?), kissing (not platonic), Doctor Who season 12 spoilers (weird, I know), afab!reader

Word Count: 4,110

Summary: reader comes out as non-binary to their best friend, Spencer, after they notice he changes the pronouns he uses to talk about them and after the team misgenders them.

A/N: pom (aka @imagining-in-the-margins​) posted this in her discord and said if someone had any ideas for this, we could have it. and i loved the request so i took it off her hands. im also non-binary and only out to a few friends, so this piece is dear to my heart. also, i wrote reader as afab, since that’s also me, but also the request says that reader isn’t out to the team yet, and i had to give reader a gender. so im sorry about that. that’s where the mis-gendering comes in. spencer’s nickname for reader is bumblebee when they’re friends, but once they start dating it’s honeybee… bc reader is…  enbee… thank you all so much for the support! i really do appreciate it. check out my masterlist!

{***}{***}{***}

It was a new day at work. A new day, a new me… Kinda, not really. It’s still old me. I’m just trying to figure out the new me. I think that makes sense. It makes sense to me, so that’s all that matters, I think.

Maybe today was the day I came out to the team as Non-Binary. That’d probably help my feeling of garbage. Not even my own family knew about my little secret. So that’s been something I’ve seriously been thinking about, telling everyone that I was Non-binary and preferred they/them pronouns. 

I kept my head low as I stepped off the elevator and onto the floor of the BAU. The good news is, people weren’t rushing around like I was partly expecting them to be. The bad news is, when I got to my desk, there was a stack of files, waiting to be looked over. And the unfortunate part was, I wouldn’t get to get through half of them, because something told me there was a current case we had to go on. 

That something being Emily Prentiss standing outside her office, looking for everyone on the team. I looked up at her with a pout as she nodded towards the conference room. I looked back at the stack of files before grabbing my go bag and going up to the conference room.

Everyone was already there, waiting for me. Although, I was usually late, in a sensible fashion. So I quickly took my seat beside Spencer and remained quiet as Penelope and Emily told us about the case.

{***}{***}{***}

“We can go to the most recent victim’s house, interview the siblings,” Spencer spoke up as we both walked up to Emily. I looked up at him and nodded, silently agreeing that I could go with. It’s not like I had anything better to do anyways. Tara and Luke were at the newest crime scene. David and Matt were with the ME. And Emily was about to go interrogate the suspect. So, going with Spencer would give me something to do. 

“She’ll have to conduct the interview,” Emily looked up from the file she was reading and right at me. I looked down, away from anyone who was possibly looking at me. Getting mis-gendered was something I was used to, by now anyways. But, for some reason, this time it really bothered me. Emily doesn’t know, it’s fine. It’s mostly my fault anyways. And, I guess it bothered Spencer too, because the expression on his face shifted from normal to… annoyed.

“Of course, they can do the interview. They’re the most like the victim,” Spencer looked at Emily before looking back at me. I looked at him and smiled softly. It was more of a nervous smile than anything else. A change, and correction, in pronoun… I hadn’t exactly told anyone that I preferred different pronouns, I had honestly gotten used to the unfortunate misgendering.

“I can do it, I’m perfectly capable of it,” I smiled at Spencer then over at Emily. So much for a change.

“Then that’s settled, she’ll do it,” Emily looked up at Spencer and smiled before allowing us to leave. I dropped my shoulders as I glanced at Spencer, who was glaring daggers at Emily. He wasn’t usually one to glare at his superiors, especially Emily. 

“We should get going, don’t you think,” I whispered as I looked up at Spencer. He finally looked down at me and nodded. “And, you can do the interview, if you want. I get that I’m a lot like the victim’s sister. But, you do interviews better than me,” I laughed and shook my head. 

“We can do it together. That’s the only way you can get better at interviewing,” he returned the laughter before following beside me. 

“That’s true,” I smiled at him. 

{***}{***}{***}

“I know we always do this, but thanks for letting me stay the night after hard cases,” I looked over at Spencer as he got in his car. I readjusted the grip on my bag as I looked away from Spencer.

“Of course, sleeping over at someone’s house after a case makes it easier to relax, especially after hard cases,” he looked over at me with a smile, “We can order Chinese food if you want,”  he added as he looked back at the road.  

“Yeah, I think I’d like that,” I nodded with a smile. Sometime between solving the last case, and the jet landing I gained the courage to bring up what happened before the interview. You know, the whole they/them thing… With Spencer. I still don’t know how he knew to change my pronouns. 

He was talking about something, it sounded like an episode of Doctor Who.  I sort of felt bad about that too, because I was hardly listening. I was one of the only few people who actually watched Doctor Who with him, and thoroughly enjoyed his commentary. 

“And then the Doctor, who, have I mentioned is a woman now, is in fact the Timeless Child. Did you know that?” He glanced at me as he went on. Again, I felt bad because I wasn’t totally paying attention. “Of course you knew that, we watched the episode together,” he continued to ramble about the episode.

“Spencer,” I spoke, my voice just loud enough for him to hear.

“Mhm, what?” he glanced over at me for a quick second. I looked at him, my mouth opening and closing a few times before actually saying what I was thinking. Which was...

“How did you know?” I asked, my voice a bit of a whisper. I was a little bit scared. How did he know? Sure, Spencer knows everything. But I’m not exactly… Out to the team, let alone Spencer. I don’t think I told him. 

“How did I know what, Bumblebee?” Spencer glanced over at me for a brief second. I sighed deeply as I looked over at him. 

“You used 'they'… When you and Emily were talking about me and the interrogation… You used 'they' and 'them' when you talked about me… How’d you know? I haven’t told anyone…” I whispered as I looked over at him. He stayed silent for a long time. I wasn’t too sure what he was thinking, but it made me very nervous. 

“I saw you at the library with a book about gender/sexuality history and science… And I saw you looking at a non-binary/gender non-conforming forum the other day. So, I connected the dots,” Spencer looked over at me as he pulled to a stop at the red light. I swallowed roughly as I looked at him. “I didn’t mean to off-”

“You didn’t offend me, Spence,” I whispered and shook my head before dropping my gaze from him. My fingers fiddled with the seatbelt across my lap. I could feel my heart going a million miles an hour, and no matter how hard I tried to calm it… nothing worked. “I just… I haven’t used the words out loud before… I’ve haven't told anyone… I mean, I’ve just figured it out myself,” I shrugged again. I glanced at him as he started going again. “I’ve always known I didn’t really identify as… Ya know… And I guess just recently I finally put a name to it,” I sighed as I pressed my head into the headrest. Spencer glanced at me, again. He was obviously trying to keep his eyes on the road, but he was very concerned about our conversation.

“You’ve never said it out loud? Or told anyone?” He asked, clarifying what I had just said. I swallowed roughly and nodded.

“Yeah, I just…” I stopped, letting my words trail off. My thoughts ran wild. If I just said that I was non-binary, it’d make my life easier, I’d be so much happier. So, why haven’t I just come out and said it? “So, say it now. It’s just me,” Spencer whispered as he looked over at me for the briefest second. My heart stopped with his words, and suddenly my mind was quiet. “No one else to hear."

“What?” I spoke, my voice a breathless whisper. I looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. 

“Only if you want to. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.” Spencer’s voice was soft as he spoke. I looked over at him, feeling my stomach do an anxious flip.

“What if it changes the way you think about me?” I asked, feeling my throat tighten up around the words. Out of all of the friends that I had, Spencer was the only one I didn’t want to lose. In a weird way, I felt like he understood me. Like we were both the outcasts of the team, for our different reasons. 

“Why would that change the way I think of you?” Spencer looked up at me and I shrugged. I stared at him, feeling my face twist up in confusion. Even his face had some confusion on it. 

“I don’t know. People usually…” My words trailed off again, not knowing what I was exactly wanting to say to him. “You’re not mad at me? Or hate me or anything…? Right…?” I asked, my voice wavering slightly in fear. Fear of what? I was scared he would resent me. It wouldn’t have been the first, or last, time someone resented me. So, why would I expect him to not resent me? 

“Why would I hate you? Because you’re finally more comfortable with yourself? Or want to be more comfortable with yourself?” Spencer looked at me as he furrowed his brows. I looked down at my lap and shrugged. “You still haven’t said it, but we’re talking about it like you did,” he pointed out. I dropped my shoulders as I looked over at him. 

“You really want me to say it,” I laughed dryly. Spencer smiled at me and shrugged.

“Only if you want to. Just think about how much better you’ll feel,” he offered. I looked down at my lap and sighed.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” I looked back up at him and smiled, “I’m non-binary.” I could feel a certain weight get lifted off my shoulders as I looked at him. Spencer also had a genuine smile on his lips as he looked at me. Like, he also seemed happy with my words.

 “There’s nothing wrong with that, you know,” Spencer smiled at me as he pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building. I glanced at him before laughing. “I’m being serious,” he chuckled lightly.

“I sure hope there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re the one who encouraged me to say it!” I laughed as I unbuckled. Spencer returned the laughter before looking over at me.

“Then, why do you care what the team thinks?” Spencer asked as he searched for his apartment keys. “Their opinion shouldn’t matter. It’s your life,” he shrugged and looked up at me once he finally found his keys.  

“Everyone on the team is all my friends and all my family…” I whispered as I looked over at him, “I don’t know what everyone will think,” I knew he wanted me to say it out loud to the team, but I was avoiding it. It’s not that I’m not ready. I just don’t want him to think differently of me.

“When has anyone on the team thought bad of you, Bumblebee?” Spencer asked again before parking the car. I swallowed roughly and looked back down at my lap. Of course, when I actually cut my hair short the first time… I had gotten a horrible haircut and everyone commented on it. “No one’s going to think anything bad about you if you come out,” he reassured. I sighed deeply as I looked towards the ground.

“Yeah, but I don’t care about them Spencer,” I rolled my eyes. I rolled my eyes because even though I do care what the team thinks, I think I care more about what Spencer thinks about me. But, I didn’t want to tell him that.

“Then, why were you so worried about it,” Spencer looked over at me before getting out of the car. I stayed in the car for a moment, silent with my thoughts. He’s got a point though. Why was I so worried about it? Of course, the team was my family. I don’t think I could risk losing the team for being… well, me. Maybe Spencer was right. Who am I kidding? Spencer’s always right. About everything. Maybe I should just tell the team… I’d feel a lot better.

I stayed quiet as we walked into the apartment building. In fact, we were both silent. Which was a rarity in our friendship; one of us was always talking, and it was always Spencer. He always had something to say. I wondered what he was thinking about in that head of his. Until I didn’t have to wonder...

“Native American people have a third gender, generally called two-spirit, where the person takes on roles more or less attributed to the opposite sex or both sexes,” Spencer suddenly started an info dump. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I read this exact thing in a book not too long ago. But, it meant so much to me that he wanted to tell me this.

“When europeans came along, they came with the strict gender binary rooted in Puritism, which put heavy emphasis on community and the importance of procreational (heterosexual) marriage within,” he paused to glance at me, probably to make sure I was still listening. And I was. There would be nothing to stop me from listening to him. 

 “Once the colonizers became a country after the american revolution, they wanted to get as far away from britain as possible. Part of this came with separating themselves from the effeminate man of Britain, whom they saw as feminine and dainty. As a result, they made the American Man, who is basically Teddy Roosevelt in that he is rugged, bold, strong, brutish, daring, and able to survive on the frontier and provide for his family,” he continued as he unlocked the door to his apartment. It was nice to be in a familiar place that felt like home, and felt safe.

“In comparison, the woman was supposed to be the American Housewife who stayed at home, cooked the meals, and raised the children. Thus, the American binary,” Spencer continued his info dump, clearly not knowing he was talking outloud. 

I just stared at Spencer with the utmost adoration in my eyes and face. A small smile grew on my lips as he continued to ramble and info dump about stuff I was newly introduced to. I don’t know why I didn’t tell him sooner, I’m sure he would have been a big help. “That’s very interesting, Spencer,” I smiled at him and cocked my head to my shoulder. Spencer looked at me, a slight panicked look in his eye. 

“I’m… I’m sorry, was I rambling?” He stopped talking and looked at me after a moment of him talking. I shook my head, silently telling him he wasn’t rambling, even though he totally was. At this point we had parted ways, but still held the conversation between rooms, and across his apartment, him being in the kitchen while I stayed in the living room.

“Anyways… I could continue going on about it all. How WW2 influenced the LGBT community and how Nuclear Families messed it all up too,” he spoke before stepping out of the kitchen and leading me to his bedroom. 

“I’m sorry, what?” I looked back at him with furrowed eyebrows. I was honestly surprised with that tiny tidbit of information. “Go on,” I raised a brow as I looked at him. I got comfortable on the bed while I waited for him.

“Yeah! The advent of urban areas provided the perfect place for sexuality and gender identity expression,” he continued talking as he stepped into the bathroom to change, and even continued while in the bathroom, “Many single people suddenly began moving from rural farms with family and religion to urban apartments on their own or with someone of the same identity/gender/sex,” he finally concluded before stepping out of the bathroom. I looked at him and cocked my head to my shoulder. I didn’t have anything to say after he rambled on, so we both stayed silent as we got comfortable in bed. 

“How do you know so much about gender identity and the LGBT community?” I asked, turning to face him more. Spencer looked at me with a nervous smile before looking out to the blanket spread out over us. 

“Oh, I, uh… I did a lot of research when I saw you in the library… And, after I saw you on the forum,” Spencer looked at me and nodded. I could sense that he was lying, and he knew that I could sense it. So, I raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sure this is the exact reason,” I smiled before shifting down the bed to get comfortable, “No other reason?” I looked up at him. 

“Nope, no other reason,” he looked down at his book before shaking his head. I could tell there was definitely something, and I could tell he wanted to tell me. But, I won’t force it out of him, just like how he didn’t force it out of me.

“Well, if you have something to tell me… I won’t force it outta you,” I looked over at him with a smile. Spencer glanced at me before grabbing for a book on his nightstand. I shifted down the bed and looked at my phone. “No one’s going to think anything bad about you,” I glanced at him again, repeating the exact things he said to me early in the evening. Spencer glared at me before looking back in his book.

“You’re the worst,” 

“You’re worse than me, Spence,” I laughed as I looked at my phone. I grinned as I browsed random social media. “It’s okay, I get it,” I shrugged before falling silent. 

“I suppose it’s only fair,” he spoke out loud after a moment of silence. I looked up at him, watching as he shifted in his seat. He closed his book before looking down at me, “I guess I’ve been in the same boat as you for a while… Not knowing what anyone would think if I came out, fearing that they’d hate me or judge me,”

“Spencer, you’re the most loved person on the team. No one would ever hate you or judge you,” I sat up before turning to look at him. Spencer looked up at me and nodded. I’m glad we could both agree on that. If anyone hated Spencer Reid, I can guarantee that they’d have a whole fleet of FBI agents on their ass. “You can trust me with anything, Spencer,” I whispered before reaching out for his hands. He looked down at where our hands sat before cocking his head to the side.

“I already trust you more than anyone on the team,” he smiled and chuckled with a nod, “I’ve never told anyone except for one person,” he whispered as he looked up at me.

“That’s okay,” I shrugged as I looked at him. 

“I’m bisexual,” he whispered, his eyes dropping away from my. I stared at him, taking a deep breath. A small smile tugged on the corner of my lips as a worried look grew on Spencer’s. 

“Was that so bad?” I whispered as I fell forward to give him a hug. Spencer laughed as he embraced me. “It felt good, didn’t it?” I backed away from him slightly. Spencer smiled and nodded.

“Like a weight off my shoulders,” he laughed as he looked back at me, “Thanks for that,”

“No, thank you, Spencer, I really needed you and your wonderful words of wisdom… I’ve been struggling with my sexuality a lot, ever since I was a teen really, and you just being there helped,” I smiled at him as I got comfortable in the bed. With that, we fell into a comfortable silence. Sleep wouldn’t find its way to us anytime soon. I think we were both still reeling on the adrenaline of the day. 

But then, I started thinking about our conversation in the car. When I had mentioned I was worried about him (or anyone else) thinking differently of me. I mean, that’s been a fear of mine for years. Someone can go from loving you to the ends of the earth to wanting to be on the furthest end of the earth just to be away from you. So, my fear was totally valid. I didn’t want to lose my friendship with Spencer, or anyone on the team.  

I quickly glanced at Spencer, noting that he was still quietly reading his book. He seemed at total peace with, well, everything. How did he do it? How did he get out of his head after a rough case, and after such a serious conversation? There were too many things I wanted to know, and too many questions I wanted to ask… Why not just ask them?

So, I did...

“Earlier, when you said me being non-binary wouldn’t change the way you think of me… How do…” I paused for a minute, trying to figure my next set of words. Because I could say something wrong, and it’d be the end of everything. “What do you think of me?” I looked up at him as I spoke. He smiled softly and nodded. It was probably a mistake, asking him what his thoughts were on me. I could only think of the worst. Well, I shouldn’t say the worst possible. Worst case scenario was that he was faking it all and he actually hated me. Well, don’t be too hard on yourself.  

“Well, you know,” Spencer shrugged as he shifted closer to me. I looked up at him before leaning away from him. 

“No, I don’t think I do know,” I stared at him, furrowing my eyebrows. He looked at me, dropping his book to his lap and slumping his shoulders slightly. 

“I love you… Okay? I love you whether you’re they/them, she/her, he/him, I don’t care, as long as you’re happy. If you’re happy, then I’m happy, because that’s all that matters to me. Your happiness,” he rambled for a minute. I just stared at him, feeling my shoulders relax as he spoke. My heart rate raised as he continued to talk about how he really felt about me, and I wished he said something sooner… “Hearing Emily misgendering you, and knowing what was going through your head… Sucked… It sucked watching! You deserve the best things…” He continued on, not caring that he was still rambling.

“Spencer,” I whispered, resting a hand on his shoulder to gain his attention. 

“And it’s ridiculous how long I’ve been in love with you too! I should have said something sooner but I didn’t! I don-”

“Spencer!” I shouted this time. It wasn’t an angry shout, though. No, the giggles in my voice and joyful smile on my lips told a different story. And that seemed to get his attention, considering he stopped talking and looked at me. His eyes scanned my face, landing on the joyous smile on my lips. 

“Yes?” He asked softly. I nearly fell into his body, and face, as I let my excitement get the better of me as I tried to kiss him. Spencer laughed as he lifted his hands to my shoulders to make sure I didn’t crash into him.

“I love you too,” I smiled as I looked up at his face. His eyes landed back on my face, his smile becoming soft as he looked at me. The expression his face held showed me that I was now his everything. And, it was a new feeling. I would never get used to a feeling so… grand. But, it was a feeling that I loved, and knew it’d be around for a long time. “What do you think the team will say?” I asked, looking at Spencer as he cupped my face in his hands. 

“About what, Honeybee?” he retorted, his voice a soft whisper. 

“About us, you and me being, well, you and me,” I tried to bite back my smile but failed when Spencer smiled back.

“Who cares what they think… I just care about you,” he smiled before pulling me back in for another kiss. 

“I think I like that answer." 

taglist: @itsmyblogandillreblogifiwantto​ , @thebluetint​

[makeste]

BnHA 6th Popularity Poll Reaction Post - Risky Spoiler-Dodging Edition

hey guys, so seeing as the results from the 6th popularity poll were leaked today, I figured I would do a separate reaction + analysis post this year, rather than piling it in as an extra on top of the chapter reaction post tomorrow. I figure this makes more sense anyway, since they’re really two completely different things. also this way I can write as much as I want lol.

also, just fyi, I am still completely unspoiled for chapter 293. and probably the smart thing to do to keep it that way would be to log off tumblr and hold off posting this until tomorrow, but I apparently have no impulse control today so oh well. anyway, so I’m hoping you guys will keep this spoiler-free if you don’t mind! as always, I would prefer to just jump right in completely unaware tomorrow like Troy returning to the study room with the pizza boxes lol.

okay so this first part is just going to be my predictions. fyi I am writing this part on Wednesday night, and then I’ll add on the results part on Thursday or Friday (ETA: Thursday, apparently, since I am impatient.)

okay so first of all, just as a refresher, this poll was open to Japanese voters from Aug 3 to Sep 30. meaning chapters 279 through 285. meanwhile last year’s poll took place around the tail end of the MVA arc. so between then and now we had Heroes Rising, the Endeavor Agency arc, and the War arc up to the part where the 1-A kids took on Gigantomachia in Gunga, and started battling Tomura in Jakku. so technically only a couple of arcs, but a LOT of stuff going down in them. oh and season 4 of the anime as well

so! firstly, I predict that my truculent africanized honeybee son will hold on to his crown at #1, coming off a year in which he did some internship-boosted soul searching, borrowed OFA in movie canon, and finished out the voting period as the my-body-moved-on-its-own character development MVP. like CALL ME CRAZY lol, but I’m pretty sure his title is safe. and then after him will be Deku and Shouto as usual

Aizawa should hopefully also have a strong showing because the dude had a banner fucking year. reunited with his old dead friend, took on Tomura with his hopelessly inept hero pals, and then chopped his fucking leg off. he had better be in the top 10. his fucking leg died for this, idk what else he has to do

Endeavor also stands a decent chance of doing well given the internship arc and the final episode of season 4. which I’m sure will go down just swimmingly if that does happen lmao. especially if he somehow manages to rank higher than...

Dabi, which I don’t think he will btw, but you never know. anyways though, but I’m thinking Dabi’s going to have a stronger showing than in past years (in the last poll he only got 367 votes and was ranked 19th). mostly because of his fight in the Gunga mansion, and his cheekily censored name reveal to...

Hawks, who is also going to rank pretty high here, I think. might be he loses some points for killing off Twice, but his back was basically to the wall there. and he has always been very popular, and I think season 4 will also give him a boost, along with his heavy involvement in the first half of the War arc

Tomura was already in 6th place last year and I think he cracks the top 5 this year. he’s gotten exponentially more popular since the MVA arc, and got a boost in the last poll even though his flashback had only just barely happened, and he hadn’t finished Awakening yet and all that stuff. anyway, so he’s only gotten cooler and more tragic since then so I think he makes a big play here

Kirishima, Momo, Tokoyami, and Mina should also hopefully do well, since the poll opened right in the middle of all that Gigantomachia action, and Toko had just got done being an absolute badass and protecting his birb dad. I don’t think he’ll quite make it to the top ten, but he should

and last but not least, I’m hoping that Mirko will come out and take the polls by storm, although I have no clue how popular she is in Japan lol. she’s clearly Horikoshi’s favorite though. she SHOULD be everyone’s favorite, but I mean, we’ll see how it goes

anyway that’s it as far as predictions! and so now, through the magic of writing stuff at different times, we will fast-forward to the part where we actually find out the results!

OH MY GOD YES, STEAMPUNK KHLKSLLKL. HERE FOR IT. JOLLY GOOD SHOW. 5 STARS

Kacchan looks SO COCKY and SO HAPPY and SO ADORABLE, YES I SAID IT. he is adorable as FUCK. I don’t quite know what it is about this particular Kacchan that just screams “LOOK HOW FUCKING CUTE MY STUPID, LOUD SON IS WITH HIS BIZARRE WINDOWPANE-LOOKING CONVERTIBLE SUNGLASS GOGGLES and his POORLY TIED CRAVAT”, but I think it’s because he looks like if a Digimon character and a FMA character had a baby

anyway, so it looks like most of the people present here are more or less who we expected to see. except that I can’t tell for sure if that’s Dabi or Shindou, and if it’s Shindou I’m going to punch somebody in the face so you will have to excuse me

Iida wearing a TRENCHCOAT and a TOP HAT with ENGINE EXHAUST GOGGLE ACCENTS is my new favorite Iida of all time. take note how there is no possible way he can wear those goggles with them sitting on top of his hat like that. plus he’s already got glasses on. these are just purely for aesthetic and IF THAT AIN’T JUST THE STEAMPUNK WAY

Deku out here speaking softly and carrying a lead pipe. Kacchan you best look out. seems like he’s done watching you take first place year after year while he languishes in the number two spot. your only hope is that he trips while attacking you because his boots are unbuckled

Shouto’s standing over there with the rest of the non-first-and-second-place characters, but what are the odds his results are actually within spitting distance of Deku’s same as always. anyway he doesn’t mind, though. also his outfit is by far the most sensible one here, but if you look closely he’s got some sort of fire extinguisher/jet pack thing strapped to his back that’s got a control switch on his belt. Shouto are you jetpacking or putting out fires

Kirishima out here all “I’m not sure what steampunk is so I’m just going to take off my shirt and pose”

AIZAWA WITH THE EYEPATCH SKLKSDLKFJLSKJLDFKJSLDFFJLDKSJFL:KS. SIR. SIR. also, lowkey furious that Horikoshi refuses to show us the automail leg that he is clearly sporting here but which we just can’t see, SHOUTO MOVE GODDAMMIT

Endeavor has TWO fire extinguisher-slash-jetpacks. THE BETTER TO... WHATEVER. look at you here in the top ten again. you really live for that controversy

HAWKS OUT HERE WITH HIS STEAMPUNK BEATS BY DRE AND HIS WEARING A RING ON EVERY FINGER. nice to see you’ve still got your wings there, kiddo. then again Deku still has both of his arms too so who even knows what is going on

BUT SERIOUSLY THOUGH, IS THIS DABI OR SHINDOU. as if I don’t know the truth deep down in my heart. y’all I am gonna flip lmao. it’s not that I dislike Shindou, strictly speaking. but just... I can’t explain what it is, but if you put him and AFO next to each other and told me “you can only punch one”, I would be having a serious crisis. just, THIS FUCKING GUY, idek. STOP SMILING

Tomura looks like he just wandered onto the set here by mistake and has no idea where he is or what is going on. it’s because you’re wearing a bigass severed hand that’s blocking your entire view, Tomura. just take the hand off your face my sweet murder dumpling

anyway! so I managed to also find a link to the full poll results while somehow managing to avoid spoilers, and then I wanted to compare the results to last year’s poll, and so I made... this

hopefully you can all see this. if you’re on desktop you might be screwed, but on mobile you should be able to click and enlarge it. I mean, assuming you actually give a fuck about boring poll analysis spreadsheets lmao

anyway, so there were actually 13k fewer votes cast this year which is a bit of a surprise. is the series not still growing in popularity? do people apparently have better things to do during their quarantine lol

anyways but despite this, and despite getting 8k fewer votes overall, Kacchan still managed almost twice as many as his closest competitor. well fought, Deku. please put down that pipe

I somehow always underestimate the power of ship popularity to influence these things. but for example, it looks like Present Mic got that Vigilantes Trio bump. ride that wave for all it’s worth my man! hell, you got me on board

Iida fucking Tenya somehow got some sort of POWER BOOST out of NOWHERE which I can’t explain at all lmao, but I’m here for it. NOT BAD FOR AN OLD MAN

Sero managed to get the exact same number of votes in both 2019 and 2020. clearly the most loyal fans in the business

Mirko being all the way down at #20 is, of course, a travesty, and I hereby nominate her to be the one to punch Shindou in the face

ngl though, the lack of a single female character in the top ten hurts just a bit. it’s not overly surprising, but still. the worst part of it is that even if you kicked Shindou to the curb and moved everyone else up one slot, it would still be all dudes since Mic beat out Momo by a margin of a little more than a hundred votes. hard to stay mad at Mic for too long, though. ah well

Tomura actually lost a bunch of votes which is a genuine surprise to me. I know the villain standom isn’t as dominant in Japan as it is in Western fandom, but still. you can go ahead and punch Shindou too I guess

Tokoyami lowkey doubled his vote count over the past year while hiding down there at #18. he is slowly becoming more powerful. biding his time

anyway so I think that’s it! I mean not really, but I’m getting kind of tired lol. so just, you know, insert the usual gripes at Overhaul’s ranking here, although we can be happy about Magne making her way onto the list (r.i.p.), and Mineta and AFO taking a very satisfying slide down (all the way out, in AFO’s case; good riddance you bum). Hadou also got a huge boost which is awesome. Mustard’s persistent ownership of the #36 spot will forever remain a mystery to me, but oh well

anyways, this was fun. and I really do feel like everyone is looking away on purpose so that when Deku brains Kacchan with that pipe in about two seconds from now, there will be no witnesses, oh my fucking god

[ohnobjyx]

Would it be that impossible for dd and gg to come out as a couple (provided they respected censorship and didn't talk about it with the media)? I read the other day that homosexuality is not illegal in China, just talking about it and showing in the media, so could not someone as brave and crazy as dd attempt to come out outside of the media? after all they are the first 3 shipped real couples in china, they do have support. Coming out willingly would also save them from being eventually outed..

Hi, anon! (*this blogger cracks her neck and gets ready*) Let’s get into it!

Disclaimer: fake fake fake. Why would you think that we believe in bjyx?

Preface: this post might not be exactly a controversial opinion, since I think many will have the same one. However, it’s alright to disagree: we all have our own perception of the matter, which is coloured by our own experiences (let’s just say that an absolute objective view is difficult). I present here with the most objective post (at least in terms of data and facts) I could write.

Oh, and you all might have noticed, but being concise is not my forte. I tend to digress.

First of all, I assume that the concept of “coming out outside of the media” means that they could have told just close friends and family, without announcing it to the media.

But how would we know that they have done it? (and I don’t mean we should know for sure, ofc). For all we know, they may have already done this, and, from my pov, they probably have. Without entering in “fake” rumours:

TTXS bros know something (repeating myself for the nth time). From the way DZW jumps in whenever it remotely looks like dd is slipping up, how WH poses his questions, how QF teases him. It all seems references to a real, tangible thing, instead of baseless friendly teasing. It’s also very interesting that they have stopped their matchmaking mission and have instead started to defend why dd is “single”.

Their parents are their cover. Even if dd parents didn’t watch TTXS, wouldn’t someone else watch it and ask them about it? Wouldn’t they wonder about the supposed clothes that dd sends home, the medicine, the market stroll? Maybe I’m just projecting, but I wouldn’t use my parents as a shield if they weren’t aware of the situation behind it, because I’d be subjected to their questioning later. That’s why, unless I wanted to tell them or I had already told them, I wouldn’t use my parents as an excuse. So, once is alright, but dd has done it several times, and that, for me, means that his parents know.

That’s what I would consider “coming outside the media”. Of course, this doesn’t involve us fans, and it’s their decision, of which we probably will never hear about (or, at least, not soon, and that’s fine!). 

In my opinion, it’s also the best course of action, especially with all the rumours that are always circulating about them. It wouldn’t be a “brave and crazy” course of action, but rather the most sensible and rational, since it’s the best way to avoid misunderstandings with your friends and family. It’s also considerate for his friends at work, just so they know what to expect when they are on stage and it allows them to understand dd’s reactions.

(Again, we are talking about dd because that’s who anon asked about. I think gg’s circle is less close to him, so it may not be the case with him, but I don’t know enough to say what would happen).

Just let’s suppose his TTXS bros didn’t know anything and just kept trying to act as matchmakers for dd. That’s the kind of situation that’s bound to be uncomfortable for everyone because dd isn’t the kind of person who’d lie (and he doesn’t fast enough to improptu questions). 

The second thing I wanted to talk about is their fans’ support. I want to talk about numbers.

I’m going to explain why I only take the c-fans data as reference. We int fans don’t really count, because we don’t affect their careers directly, as c-fans do. Of course, our support is very useful in showing how many people are rooting for them, like what happened when Roseonly’s livestream with gg was live. And I like to think that they would feel better knowing that there are a lot of people in Chn and overseas that support them and whatever there is between them.

So int-fans do contribute to give more views and likes to their Roseonly livestream (if they can access it, which isn’t always the case), but they won’t buy the roses and impact with real money, so to say.

We don’t really participate in their endorsements, many won’t stay long enough to watch more dramas from them (and I do understand that the lack of eng subs is the main problem), and many don’t/can’t/don’t know how to push them up in the charts. We’ve talked before about how the c-ent industry doesn’t really need the int audience to make a lot of money, and to be highly profitable, and it still applies in a smaller case, like a single idol. 

That’s why I think that in matters of real, tangible fan support, c-fans still make a bigger percentage (around 80-90%) of their support.

So, as of now, there are 3 supertopics in w/ibo that features gg/dd (let’s leave the difference in supertopics for another day, but I don’t support the discussion about people’s sex life, thanks for your understanding):

BJYX. The largest supertopic (top 1) with a wide margin from the others. It has 2.570.000 fans.

ZSWW. It’s the number 5 in the CP supertopics, with 910.000 fans.

LXFY. The number 23 in the CP supertopics with 590.000 fans.

All of them added make 4.070.000 fans. But we have to take into account the overlapping in these three supertopics: many people (like me) are following the three supertopics at the same time. That’s why, in a not scientific way, I’m guessing that those 4.070.000 come to around 4.000.000 once you take out the people that are following the three at the same time.

Even 4 million people is still a huge number of people: that’s more people than the population of the capital of my country, and one tenth of the total census here.

Yet, in China, it means 4 out of every 1400, which translates into 0′003%. It’s also from a very specific demographic (mainly female and young). Of course, it doesn’t mean that they won’t get support from other people if it ever got out, but they can’t know what would happen then for sure.

It means that, in actual 3D world, there are a lot of people who don’t know about their CP. I read the other day some tumblr blogger saying that “we bxg are in our own little bubble, not that many people know about their cp” (was that you, @jcisthebestfightme?) which I agree a lot with. I mean, my w/ibo account and tumblr is filled with bjyx/yizhan, so much that it’s easy to forget that I arranged it to be like this, but that the majority of the people don’t receive so much info about them, nor they analyze their every move like we do.

The only thing they can know for sure is what general population thinks about same sex relationships.

In a recent poll I saw, with thousands of answers about what netizens thought of the legalization of same sex marriage in Taiwan, the supporting votes didn’t get to 50%. In Taiwan, public opinion was like this around the time same sex marriage was legalized:

An opinion poll conducted in November 2016 by the Kuomintang found that 52% of the Taiwanese population supported same-sex marriage, while 43% were opposed. Another poll commissioned that same month found similar numbers: 55% in support, and 45% in opposition. Support was higher among 20–29-year-olds (80%), but decreased significantly with age. (Wikipedia)

(I just want to say, I can’t wait for the younger generations to take over).

More data: the public stance in China could be described as: “no approval, no disapproval, no promotion”, and the public opinion is becoming more and more tolerant, but there’s still a deep-set homophobia, as in only 5% of the lgbt people comes out completely (around 20% comes out to their family), and around 80% of gay men are married to women due to social and family pressure (ofc, these data is from a few years ago, and new polls and surveys are needed, but don’t expect them to carry out a wide-range survey about this nor I think the situation has changed drastically).

In my opinion, society is slowly taking more steps towards tolerance first and acceptance second. One of their best achievement was the lgbt community and many netizens’ refusal to allow w/ibo to instate a ban on content related to homosexuality, which led to w/ibo actually reversing its decision and stop banning that content in less than 3 days.

However, the fact that a lot of people express their support doesn’t take away the truth of a lot of people openly opposing it (let’s remember that there weren’t so many antis to start with in 2/27, but its effects were undeniably large and unjust).

(If any of you read more data about lgbt rights in China, please remember that Hong Kong receives a lot more Western influence, and that public opinion in HK does not represent the actual situation in mainland Chn. Ofc, because they’re more open to lgbt, there are also more data and polls carried out in HK, so a lot of info is HK based).

Leaving this kind of data aside, let’s take another matter of numbers. While they have in total 4 million fans in the supertopics, dd has as of now 35,400,000 fans following him on w/ibo and gg has 26,690,000 fans.

One thing I’m sure they are aware of is the discussion that arises from time to time between the solo fans and the bxg. Another thing they must be aware of, specially dd, is that their fanbase has a lot of females who are their fans, not just because of their talent, but also because they’re single and therefore they can fantasize about being with them.

All in all, even though a lot of people support them, there would be also quite a number of “disappointed” people, with the danger of them becoming antis.

So while I do think they appreciate it, and leave clues specifically for us, and dd goes as far as interacting with bxg, I also feel that gg and dd might not see widespread support, enough so they’d feel comfortable coming out completely with the current public stance on homosexual relationships in Chn.

(And again, from my pov, they aren’t in the closet with their family and friends).

And last, but not least, does “coming out respecting the censorship and not talking about it with the media” mean that it would be known by the general public, or, at least, their fans (in a very hypothetic case, since I don’t know how this could be achieved)? Because then, even if they didn’t talk about it with the media, it would be as good as coming out publicly.

In an idol’s life there’s no “private” and “public”. There’s only “public” and “secret” (and by secret I mean things they “hide” in public/don’t talk about, even though people next to them might know about it). The line between public and private is very very blurred in the c-ent industry.

I always remember the case of an actor who had an affair. Because of his affair (he was married and had a son), he lost endorsements, he was taken out of tv programs and literally erased from filmed episodes. The things he did in private affected very directly his job (I don’t approve of the affair, but the consequences it had surprised me a lot). 

So, while I do think that gg and dd are getting bolder with time, when they were both very startled by the “you’d lose your job if you were in a relationship” phrase, the fear was real and palpable. However, I’m aware that that was their stance a year ago, and that a lot of things have changed (heck, we’ve gone through a pandemic, something I couldn’t have imagined a year ago), so I’m going to observe how they act from now.

That’s why, “coming out willingly would also save them from being eventually outed..” is true, but it’s also true that it would push them into a storm I’m not sure they’d come out completely unscathed. And it may be selfish, but I don’t want them to be the ones who test the public’s tolerance to gay idols.

I think I’m missing my point, so I’ll spell it out: if they want to come out, I’ll support them with everything I have, as I think many fans will do. If they ever prove us wrong dating another person, be it male or female, I’ll support them as a fan too. But I would like any action they take to be decided by them, instead of pressed by fans who just want a confirmation at any cost.

I’ve seen people saying that if they were really together, they should be “honest” with themselves and the audience and come out publicly. In my opinion, it’s easy to judge when you’re not the one who might lose something if you take a step in the wrong direction, and it’s not your income and your job in the line.

I’m sure (reminding you all that I believe that bjyxszd) that they’d come out completely if possible. I’m also sure that they have consulted with managers and public relations experts (and their team would have talked with them about it even if gg and dd didn’t bring it up). Therefore, I strongly believe they are doing what they think is better at the time being. 

To sum up: I’ll support whatever they do, but I don’t want others to push them to do things they don’t want/aren’t prepared to do. They are already between a rock and a hard place, so whatever they do with their relationship is absolutely their call.

So, anon, I hope I have answered you, but I leave here a short summary for you in the case the info was too scattered for you:

Would it be that impossible for dd and gg to come out as a couple (provided they respected censorship and didn't talk about it with the media)? I read the other day that homosexuality is not illegal in China, just talking about it and showing in the media, so could not someone as brave and crazy as dd attempt to come out outside of the media?

They might have come out to friends and family, and, based on dd’s interactions with the people around him and the words he has said, I do believe he has. Because gg is also an honest, sensible person, I think he might have done the same.

after all they are the first 3 shipped real couples in china, they do have support 

Chn is a big country. That means that in terms of public support, sometimes numbers that would be astronomically high in other countries, is not so much in Chn. Translating numbers into percentage, a 1% means 14 million people.

So it’s true that they have a lot of people supporting them, of course. 2 million people is a lot of people, especially considering that many don’t know about them. But when you have to take into account the general public (because it’d be a scandal), since their fans aren’t the only ones interacting with them, it’s still a low number.

Coming out willingly would also save them from being eventually outed.. 

That’s true in the case of family and friends. But if you’re talking about being outed in the media, that’s not possible. Known by the fans = Public.

And remember that in this case, the media wouldn’t talk about them, since talking about homosexuality in the media is prohibited. The problem would come from within the industry and the antis.

[nothingeverlost]

The Most Brilliant Idea, or how Sirius Black Accidentally became a Romance Novelist (HP, Wolfstar)

In which Sirius has a Brilliant Idea, Remus is gainfully employed, James is clueless and Lily is always right.

Unmitigated fluff with minor references to the first war, AU because James and Lily didn’t die.

II

It started with the classified, the first bit of proof that everything that happened was really Moony’s fault.  There was always a classified ad in the kitchen, even when Moony was working, part of his optimistic opinion that any job could and would end.  The classified ads were always marked in pen, and one could tell just how Remus thought his prospects fared based on how he’d marked a job.  Some were viciously scratched out (potions expert and anything with ‘night shift’ in the description) some were circled multiple times (he usually came away dejected from those interviews, things he actually wanted but rarely got) some had question marks and some had a single bold circle.  It was the single circle ones that were the best prospects.

On this particular Tuesday morning while Sirius drank his tea and dripped jelly on a story about Minister Fudge’s election, the only ad that was circled was one looking for a book editor.  It was commission work, the sort of things Moony did from home sometimes.  It suited him, both because he was such a stickler for commas and spelling and because the flexibility meant that moons didn’t present a problem. The only downside was that it was sporadic work, a book at a time, and didn’t bring in enough income to make Moony feel like he was Contributing to Household Things.  Sirius always rolled his eyes.  Moony was the most stubborn person he knew.

It was then that he had his Most Brilliant Idea.  What Remus needed was a constant stream of editing.  Someone who would keep him employed on a regular basis with things a lot more interesting than editing a technical manual on the care and keeping of flobberworms.

“Lily I need to borrow some books.”  When someone had a Brilliant Idea they had to start right away, so his first action was to floo to the Potter home.  He was distracted for half an hour by Harry who insisted on a hippogriff ride and a sword fight, and he wouldn’t be a proper godfather if he said no to either, but after that it was strictly business.

“The only books we have here that you don’t have are meant for a three year old.  You and Remus had quite the library between you,” Lily replied after telling both him and Harry they could only have two biscuits.  Sirius took a third, but split it in half so it didn’t count.  After all, two and a half was practically the same as two.

“Not true.  Moony and I don’t have any of those girly books,” he said with his half a biscuit in his mouth.

“You want to borrow my romance novels?” Lily asked, puzzled.  “I don’t know who you’re trying to date, Sirius Black, but romance novels aren’t actually meant to be used that way.”

“Like I need help,” Sirius said with an eye roll.  Sure, it had been a while since he dated but that was totally his choice.  He had a lot on his plate right now with a godson that needed his attention and Moony needing looking after and his three days a week working for Quality Quidditch Supplies.  “They’re for Moony.”

“Somehow I doubt he knows that.”  Lily rolled her eyes right back at him.  “Take as many as you like, and don’t worry about when you get them back.  It’s not like I have much time for reading when I have three boys to look after.”

“Something you want to tell me, Lils?”  He looked at her stomach pointedly and wondered if they were really ready for another Prongslet.

“Yeah.  You and James are more work than Harry and he has the excuse of being three.”  But she gave him a bag for the books and sent him home with a plate of biscuits, warning him that she would tell Remus that she’d sent them so not to eat them all in one go.  It was like she didn’t trust him or something.

Once he had the books stage one of The Plan could begin.  He’d read a few of the romance novels when he was bored and they seemed like the easiest book to write.  Certainly they weren’t anything Moony read so he could borrow a bit from others and no one important would be any the wiser.  Over the next few days he spent most of the time Moony wasn’t around reading, stashing the books in the closet so they wouldn’t be seen in case Remus came in his room for late night chats or early morning bed sharing.  It was a habit that they’d never quite left behind in school, especially when either of them had a nightmare.  With the war almost two years gone the nightmares weren’t as frequent but they were always a good excuse if he needed company.

Stage Two of The Plan had a few false starts, as writing a book proved to be a little trickier than he figured, considering how many books he’d read.  Finally though after twenty-six days he had a story written.  The pining of Sigmund G Toadsnatch for Anastasia Flower ended in a passionate snog and a happily ever after.  It was time for Stage Three.

“I need your help.”  The moment Moony was gone for the day he popped around to the Potter home again, this time with manuscript in hand.

“Harry managed to get jam in his hair at breakfast and I have to give him a bath.  Can it wait?”  Her arms were full of a squirming toddler, anxious to greet his ‘Padfoo.’

“I’ll give him a bath,” he offered.

“The last time that happened you flooded the bathroom and transfigured the soap into a boat.”  She carried Harry up the stairs.  Sirius followed.

“He came out clean, though.  Mostly.”  He might have missed a few spots, but no one was perfect and there had been an important battle with a giant squid that looked a lot like Harry’s toes to wage.  “I need to know if you have any friends that have girly writing and want to earn a few quid.”  He plopped himself on the edge of the tub after stowing his manuscript on higher ground.  

“You need what?”  it was really quite impressive how she managed to run the bath, undress Harry, and listen to him.

“Alright, so this is the part where I have to swear you to absolute secrecy.  Unbreakable vow kind of stuff.  You can’t tell anyone what I am about to tell you, not even James.”

“You know James and I don’t keep secrets.”

“It’s not a big secret, just a little baby one.  The more people who know the more likely it is that Remus will know that people are keeping something from him and then the whole thing will be ruined.”  Besides Prongs would never let him hear the end of it if he knew what Sirius was doing.

“I will consider not telling him, once I know.  That’s the best I can promise.”

“I guess that will have to do.”  He was certain she’d see reason, or more importantly his side of things.  “Now about your friends.”

“Do I even want to know what girly writing means?”

“You know what I mean.  When you pick up something and you know a girl wrote it because there’s little hearts above the I’s and the ink changes color.”  Not that Lily had ever done things like that.  Her writing was perfectly sensible, not that it mattered.  Moony would recognize her handwriting.

“Your handwriting is pretty fancy, with all those loops and the illustrations in the margins.”  Lily made a few loops of her own, sending bubbled cascading into the tub to entertain Harry.

“One of the many skills a pureblood snob is required to learn, according to my dear old mum.  Trust me I’ve tried mimicking James but it’s useless.”  James wrote in a barely legible scrawl that only those with practice could read.  Sirius envied him, though it had led to an accident or two over the years especially in potions and what time they were supposed to meet.  “But it doesn’t matter, Moony knows my handwriting and that’s the whole point.  I need someone to copy over my writing so he doesn’t know it’s me.”

“I think I need more focus and perhaps something to drink.  Hold on a minute, will you?”  Lily finished up Harry’s bath, keeping him long enough to dry his hair but giving up when he decided to squirm out of her hold and run away without his togs on.  She shrugged.  “Won’t hurt him to air dry.”

“James said the same thing once.  It works better in a warm house and when you’re three, rather than when you’re thirteen and it’s snowing out.”  He’d won the dare, though, and claimed it was worth it.

“Yeah, I remember that.  Thought he was mental then.  Now I know he is.”  Lily headed for the kitchen and started a pot of tea brewing.  “Now please tell me you’re not trying to get me to help you prank Remus.  You know my rules.”

“It’s not a prank.  It’s a Brilliant Idea to help Moony.  You’re going to love it.”  He couldn't hold it in anymore.  “I’vewrittenabook.”

“Excuse me?”

“A book.  I’ve written one and I’m going to send it to Moony to edit it, and then I’m going to pay him.  But he’s not going to know it’s me so he’s going to accept the money without being his stubborn prideful self.  When he’s done I’ll have another story ready and then he’ll be gainfully employed and happy and he won’t have to worry about what happens to his job when there’s a moon.  Brilliant, right?”

“I’m still on the bit where you wrote a book.”  Lily poured the tea and set a slice of quiche on a plate for Sirius.  The spinach was in small enough bits that it didn’t actually look like a vegetable and he might not notice that under all the cheese he’d actually eaten something green.

“It’s not hard.  I read the books you had and I wrote something like it.  Boy meets girl.  One of them annoys the other.  There’s secret longing and someone trying to keep them apart and then they snog and everyone’s happy except the evil bloke who ends up in a cellar or something.”  He shrugged and ate the food Lily had given him without much thought.  He’d been so excited about the next stage that he hadn’t bothered with breakfast.  “The book’s not really the important part, though, and there have to be bits to fix or else Moony won’t have anything to do.  What’s important is that Moony doesn’t know it’s me.  I have to rent an owl once it’s ready and send him a letter about a job.  I have a name picked out already.  Marmaduke Gaylord from Gaylord’s Romantic Press.”

“I don’t know why anything you come up with should surprise me anymore, Sirius Black.  It’s completely bonkers and there’s probably fifteen different ways it could go wrong.”  Lily reached across the table and covered one of his hands with her own.  “It’s also unfailingly kind and possibly crazy enough to work.”

“Of course it will work.”  Any doubts he’d had he’d buried down deep enough that he wouldn’t have to worry about them for a while at least.  Probably not until the whole thing exploded in a very Sirius-like fashion.  

As it turned out Lily did have a friend that could use a little spending money and had hand writing that, while not containing any hearts, was feminine enough to satisfy Sirius and more importantly wouldn’t be recognized by Remus.  She rewrote the manuscript in her own handwriting.  Sirius borrowed a typewriter from Arthur Weasley to make an official looking offer from the Gaylord Romance Publishers.

Stage Four was well timed, as Moony’s job in a muggle bookstore ended that week after the third time he’d had to miss work the morning after a full moon with no explanation.  Sirius had made sure he was tucked into bed with a water bottle and a cup of tea with a warming charm that would last at least an hour, then nipped over to Diagon Alley to rent an owl for a single trip.  The offer letter and manuscript were bound together. For an added bit of cleverness he’d asked the clerk to delay the delivery until afternoon so that Sirius could be home when the owl arrived.

“What could be so important about a romance novel that they’d be willing to pay this much?”  By afternoon Moony was feeling well enough to be on the sofa instead of in bed.  Sirius glanced at the letter Remus handed him and shrugged. 

“Dunno, mate.  Guess there’s enough people reading them to make it worth their while.  The girls at school all read them.  Tripped over them all the time in the common room.”

“They’d be better off reading Austen,” Remus groused but he was also quick enough to send off an acceptance letter with the owl.  Sirius had a plan for that as well, and a newly rented owl post box.

“I’ll give you some quiet to work.”  Sirius locked himself in his room, using the time to start his second novel, the story of five sisters all sorted into the same house  and the rich pureblood transfer student who seemed rude but was secretly shy.  The prat’s best friend was cheerful and had a crush on the main character’s sister.

“Comma,” was the comment he heard the most from the other room.  ‘Why’ and ‘bloody hell’ and ‘you can’t do that to the English language’ were also common exclamations.

“Sounds like it’s going well,” Sirius said when his stomach was too loud to ignore.  

“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read and the romance is dreadful but there are some bits that are hilarious, actually.  Don’t know their goal but as a satire it’s not bad.”  The stack of papers in front of him was all marked up in red ink worse than the first essay he’d ever written for McGonagall.

“I thought romances were supposed to be all sappy.”  His main character had declared his love seventeen times.  That was what girls wanted, wasn’t it?

“Fortunately I’m only supposed to edit the grammar and not the sap.  I’m over my head on that sort of thing.  Imelda Carson seventh year said I was the most unromantic boy she’d even snogged.”

“Imelda Carson is an idiot who is now breeding pink pygmy puffs and is completely single because no bloke was romantic enough for her.  Besides you don’t like girls, remember?”

“I like girls just fine.  I just don’t want to snog any of them or…”

“Smash your bits together?”  Sirius offered.

“Yeah, exactly what I was going to say,” Remus said dryly.  “I’m starved and close to going cross eyed from this editing.  Whose turn for dinner?”

“I’ll start some steaks.”  Sirius danced towards the kitchen.  The Plan was going perfectly.

II

It seemed silly, really, to have a wonderfully written and perfectly edited novel and not do anything with it.  The original plan didn’t take into account anything outside of making sure that Remus was employed, but when Sirius collected the edited manuscript from the owl post it seemed a waste to just throw it away or lock it up somewhere.

“I need a name.”  It was just before lunch when he flooed to Godric Hollow, finding Harry just up from his nap and more than excited to use uncle Padfoot as a climbing toy.  

“You know some people do give a little notice instead of barging in all the time.  There’s a lovely front door on this house I don’t think you’ve seen in two years.”  Lily winced when Harry’s foot found a foothold on Sirius’s crotch, but really the man deserved it.

“Other people aren’t nearly as entertaining as me.”  Sirius winced as well and moved Harry’s foot a little higher, regretting it when the lad’s next handhold was his ear.  “Now about that nom de plume.”

“I thought you were only writing so Remus could have an editing job?”

“Yes, but that’s no reason not to share my genius with the world.”  He waved his manuscript over his head.  

“How many times did Remus threaten to throw up while reading this drivel?”

“Only once but he edited that bit out.  Not even I can be perfect my first time out.”  Lily, of course, rolled her eyes for approximately the 42,596th time since she’d first met Sirius.

“If you’re serious about this we should do it properly.  No more ridiculous names.”

“I’m always Sirius.”  He couldn’t resist.  After all the joke never got old, no matter how many times Lily groaned.  “Too bad I can’t use my name.  Imagine how dear old mum would roll over in her grave if she knew the sacred Black name was attached to a romance novel.”

“Sirius.”

“You’re right, Lils.  If she got too excited she might reanimate and the world is not ready for zombie Walburga.”  He shuddered dramatically at the thought, making Harry, now perched on his shoulders, laugh and say ‘again.’  Of course he obliged.

“Leave it with me and I’ll sort it out.  I’ll have Molly redo a clean copy and send it off to Mary who’s a junior editor and a publisher.  We’ll see what happens, alright?”

“This is why I love you, Red.”  Sirius gave her a kiss on the cheek and handed her the manuscript so he could get down to what was really important; teaching his godson how to make bubbles in his milk.

II

Three months later Phaedra White was a published author.  Sure, there wasn’t an enormous amount of money in a single book, but it was more than what he’d spent to pay Molly and Remus so it seemed profitable enough, and he was more excited than he’d expected to see it on the shelves of the bookstore..

In the next year ‘Phaedra’ wrote nine more books.  More importantly with actual connections in the publishing world he was able to recommend Moony’s services to other authors, to the point that he began to worry that if Remus had too much work he might turn down the requests from Marmaduke Gaylord to edit Phaedra’s books.

“Get the bucket, Pads, I’m going to be ill.  This is the worst thing I've ever read.  Not only do I want to vomit but I think my eyes are bleeding.”

“It can’t be that bad.”  His own book had arrived that morning but Sirius hadn’t known that Remus had started on it already.

“I don’t know how Gilderoy Lockheart got my name but I’m never editing a book for him again.  Not only is it nonsense that clearly didn’t actually happen, but it’s badly written as well.”  It was hard to tell from Moony’s tone what offended him more, but it was probably the bad writing.

“Wasn’t there a Lockheart a few years behind us in school?  A gormless little thing that spent more time on his hair than anything else?”  They didn’t usually pay much attention to Ravenclaws, but if he remembered correctly the boy had annoyed them enough that they’d pranked his hair blue once.

“That’s the one.  What he knows about defense against the Dark Arts would fit in my little finger.”  Remus pushed the manuscript away.  “I can’t even look at this again until I have some chocolate.”

“I picked up a new stock from Honeydukes when I was at Diagon.”  Rule number one for the care and keeping of your Moony was to always have a supply of chocolate on hand.  “Why don’t you grab a bar and we’ll go out for a walk.  It’s beautiful outside.”

“What would I do without you, Pads?  Why don’t we pick up some curry while we’re out, my treat?”  It was a plan, and they left the house shoulder to shoulder.  Later that evening after he’d eaten Remus returned to his work.  Sirius found him laughing, his shoulders relaxed, and not a single bucket around.

“Back at the Lockheart?”  he asked.

“No, I’ve given myself a respite and picked up the latest White novel.  You know this bloke is improving.  It’s really kind of nice to see the balance of romance and friendship in here.  Less sap and more affectionate teasing.”

“I thought that romance writer you edit for was a woman?”  Sirius held his breath for a moment.  Did Moony Know?  He couldn’t possibly.  

“I’m sure that’s what they want people to think, probably because most romance novels are written by women and I’d imagine they sell better.  But I’m practically certain this is a bloke writing this.  If the book centered around a flying motorcycle didn’t tip me off, the fact that the details about female anatomy are more vague than the male anatomy seems quite a clue.”  Remus shrugged.  “I don’t suppose it really matters, though.”

“No, I don’t suppose it does,” Sirius agreed.

II

“I need help.”  The next morning Sirius showed up at the Potter house in the middle of breakfast, not knowing what time it was.  James was still home, which was not the most favorable thing that could have happened.

“Help with what?” Prongs asked as he broke a banana into pieces for Harry.

“Nothing at all,” Sirius lied.  “Just a question for Lils about a girl thing.”

“Dating someone you haven’t mentioned to us yet?”  James cocked his head to the side.  “It’s been a while since you’ve mentioned anyone.”

“Yeah, well it gets to be all the same after a while, doesn’t it?”  Truth was he hadn’t had a date in ages.  His free time was taken up with writing, and the rest of the time he was with Remus, or Prongs and his family or both.  Lily had them over to dinner once a week at least, somehow thinking they couldn't take care of themselves properly.  His social life worked out pretty well, except for the lack of shagging.  He did miss that sometimes, but not enough to bother with finding a date.

“Not when you marry the love of your life and the most perfect person in the world.”  James, of course, couldn’t help looking at his wife.  Sirius was torn between wanting to gag and feeling a tight ball in the pit of his stomach that he’d never felt before.

“It’s been six years since you married her, Prongs.  You are going to be a little less sappy at some point, aren’t you?”  Of course considering how close they’d come to losing each other it was understandable.  And Sirius was happy for them, but as a sibling it was his job to raz James as much as possible.

“If you don’t like it you do know where the fireplace is, Sirius.”  Lily was careful when she stood up, her belly now heavily swollen.  Potter number four was due in less than a month.  “Come on, you can wash up dishes for me while you tell me what you need.”

Dutifully he followed her, ignoring Prongs’ questioning look.  When the water was running he looked around to make sure they weren’t followed.  “I need to know more about girls.”

“Excuse me?”

“Moony’s figured out that Phaedra White is a bloke.  Says there’s not much detail about women’s bits and things in there and that it sounds more like a bloke or something.  I don’t know.  My first thought was that I could use some polyjuice and spend an hour as a woman but that’s a month of work just to make the potion plus it tastes disgusting.”

“I’m not going to ask why you know what polyjuice tastes like.  I don’t want to know who you were or when or if my husband was involved.”  Lily rubbed her stomach absently.  “Your books are selling surprisingly well, I wouldn’t change things now.  Besides you should know at least the basics about women.”

“I know that their breasts are nice and soft, most of them like to snog, and redheads have very good aim.”  Or maybe it was just one specific redhead, who proved his point by throwing a spoon at the back of his head.

“Obviously rumors at school had to be taken with quite a few grains of salt and I know some girls exaggerated because it was good for their reputations for it to be known that they snogged the ‘great’ Sirius Black”  Lily’s voice was dripping with sarcasm and she stuck out her tongue for good measure.  “But you did date a fair bit, and I myself witnessed at least some snogging.  Are you saying you never…”

“Did the no pants dance?  Nah, girls are nice for kissing and easier for dating but for the whole naked tango I prefer a blokes ‘bits.’”  

“Huh.  I was dead certain about you and that Hufflepuff in sixth year.”  Lily shook her head, bemused.  It wasn’t like Sirius had ever hidden the fact that he liked boys as well as girls.  “But if you’re here to ask me about my ‘bits’ that’s where I draw the line.  We’re close, Sirius, but not that close.”

“You are the best sister a bloke could ever hope for, Lil my love, and as such that is a completely disgusting idea that I would never suggest.  I was thinking you might have a friend.”

“I am not pimping out my friends to you, brother dear.”

“You try to set up Remus sometimes.”  And somehow each time Remus came down sick and couldn’t come to dinner.  

“I worry about Remus being alone.  Do you know when he last went on a date?”

“Sometimes in the seventies, probably, and he’s not alone, he has me.  What could be less lonely then having me as a roommate?”  Other than a bit of time during the war he and Remus had lived together since leaving Hogwarts.  It worked well for them both, and honestly the idea of Remus dating made his left shoulder blade go all tense.  They took turns making dinner and washing up, cleaned the flat together on Mondays and read out bits of their books to each other as they shared a sofa in the evening.  If Remus was spending his time with someone else there would be less of the enigmatic little half smile that made his day better.  And at some point Moony would have to share his furry little secret and what if they took it badly and hurt him?  Or worse, spread it about?  Sirius would have to kill them and then he’d go to Azkaban and then Remus really would be alone.  It would be a disaster.

“Sirius have you ever considered…”  Lily stopped, wincing a little and struggling to pull herself up.  “This little one has great aim and likes to kick mummy’s bladder.  You’ll have to excuse us, Sirius.  And find your own dates.”

II

He did find his own dates.  Three of them, in the next month, and twice with the girl from the local coffee shop.  And though the snogging was nice he just couldn’t get interested enough in taking it farther, not even in the name of research.  Sighing he decided he was just going to have to keep doing what he was doing.  Besides, having Moony suspect that a romance novelist was a man was a far sight from having him suspect that it was the man he lived with so he was still safe enough.  After all who in their right mind would think that Sirius Black was writing romance novels?

When he got home from his last date he found a note stuck to his door in Moony’s careful hand.  The word ‘St Mungo’s’ might have worried him if not for the ‘Baby Potter on the way’ underneath.  He took a minute to change into something more comfortable, remembering that Harry had taken hours to arrive, and apparated to the maternity ward.

“You brought work with you?”  Remus was already there, sitting in the waiting room with a quill in one hand and a stack of pages on his lap.

“You know how long Harry took to make an appearance.  Might as well pass the time in a useful manner.”  Remus looked up at him, head cocked to the side.  “How was the date?”

“Bit boring, to be honest.  I think I’m out of practice.”  Dating used to be more interesting, but halfway through he’d found himself wishing that he was on the sofa throwing popcorn at Remus and asking about his latest book.  The editing of the Lockhart book and its ridiculous lies was keeping him well entertained.  “Speaking of the sprog, where is my favorite godson?”

“Lily’s friend Molly has him.  The one will all the redhead kids, you remember?”

“Yeah.”  Molly happened to be the friend that rewrote everything he wrote.  No reason for that to make him nervous, though.  “She was Gid and Fab’s big sister.”

“Yeah, she was.”  It was never easy to think of the casualties of the war so Sirius tried not to think of them, not even the ones with hair and hearts like fire who he’d shagged once.  Gideon had been one of his first crushes in school, and a compatriot in war.

“What are we working on tonight?”  Sirius tried to take a look at his papers.  “Anything good?”

“Something very frustrating, at the moment.  The latest Phaedra White.”

“I thought you said her books were getting better.  Seemed to me you quite enjoyed the last one.”  He took great pride in the fact that he’d made Moony laugh more than once, and that it came back with hardly any notes other than the usual missing commas and split infinitives.  The ending, Moony had declared, was only as sappy as was  necessary for that sort of story and not bad at all.

“It’s stupid.  I’m just the editor, there’s no reason for the direction of the plot to bother me so much.”  Sighing, Remus put the quill down.  

“I’m sure the author is grateful for your notes.  You said she’s listened to them before, hasn’t she?”  Of course he knew the answer.   He’d written three thank you notes for changes the Remus had suggested, and every time Remus had been right.  Merlin’s pants, Phaedra White was actually making best seller lists and had been mentioned in Witches Weekly twice, and Sirius wasn’t too full of himself to know how big a part Moony played in that.  His publisher was trying to make him do a book signing at Flourish and Blotts, and didn’t understand why he kept saying no to the publicity.  

“This isn’t the same situation.  It’s not a small change to a scene, it’s the whole romance that feels wrong.”

“You read me a bit the other night, between the bloke and his best mate that made you laugh.”  He’d found the byplay between his main character and his friend to be the most fun part of the book to write.

“That’s the whole problem.  Byron and George have this great relationship.  The scene where George is trying to convince Byron to go on the date feels almost like…”

“Like what?”  There were times that Sirius totally wished he could talk through scenes with Remus while he was writing.  He’d had to bite his tongue more than once when he remembered that he hadn’t sent a story to Moony to edit yet.

“Like he was trying to cover his own feelings for his friend.  The chemistry between the two blokes is more natural and interesting then the bits with Byron and Melody.”  Remus picked up his quill again.  “Now you see why I can’t write that suggestion. I’m not about to tell someone to trash half their story and turn it into a gay romance.”

“Moony, w-”

“She’s here.”  The door to the waiting room crashed open and Prongs came running out, tripping over his feet in his hurry.  “I’m a dad.”

“You’ve been a dad for almost five years, Prongs,” Sirius couldn’t help but tease him.  

“But never to a girl.”  It was funny how big Prongs’ eyes could get.  “Merlin’s elbow, I have a daughter.”

“Most of the bits are the same, mate.  You’ll be alright.”  Remus shoved his papers and quill into a bag and took out a flask.  “I think this calls for a drink.  Not too much, or Lily will kill us all, but just to celebrate.”

“You think of everything, Moons.”  Sirius shouldn’t have been surprised, it was very like Remus, but there was something about drinking out of the flask immediately after Moony’s lips had touched it that felt different.

“You’re brilliant, both of you.  In a minute we can all go in and you can meet my daughter.”

“Poor Lils, she’s got three kids on her hands now.”  Sirius pointed to the dopey looking expression on Prongs’ face.

“I think you mean four kid, Pads.  After all she has to deal with you as well.”

II

“Her name is Olivia Marlene.”  Lily had that exhausted but happy glow of a new mother when they were let in to see her.  The baby she held looked pretty much the same as Harry the first time they’d seen him, the dark hair on the top of her head and the splotchy looking face.  

“It’s a good name.  Strong.”  Moony nodded solemnly.  “Marlene would have been proud.”

“Marlene would have rolled her eyes and called me daff,” Lily said with only a hint of moisture in her own eyes.  “But if my daughter is half as fierce she’ll be able to do anything.”

“Moony, ready to say hello?”  James took his daughter from Lily and held her close to his chest.

“Let Sirius go first, I’ll hold her in a minute.”  Sirius had been the first five years ago, when Harry had been born.

“Sirius will have his turn but it should be her godfather first, Remus.”  When Lily spoke Sirius had the good fortune to be looking at Remus.  The look on his face and the way his knees buckled were priceless.

“Alright there mate?”  Sirius caught him around the waist and helped him to stand up again.  “Welcome to the club, by the way.”

“So will you, Moony?” James looked at him expectantly.

“I think you’re mental to ask me.”  But Remus carefully took the baby and held her, touching her cheek with a single finger.  Sirius felt for a moment like he’s turned into liquid marshmallow, watching the two of them.

“Welcome to the world, Olivia Potter,” Remus said softly.

It was in that moment that Sirius Black, author of almost seventeen romance novels, realized that he was in love with his best friend.

II

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave the country.”  Somehow Sirius made it through the next week.  He wasn’t sure how but it seemed only fair to give Lily a bit of recovery time before bothering her.  A week was as long as he could wait, though, and on the eighth day he flooed over.  

“That’s a bit of a dramatic reaction to not being chosen as godfather for our Olivia.”  

“What?  No, of course you should have gone with Moony.  Brilliant choice.  Probably should have picked him for Harry, bit of an unfair advantage Olivia has.”  Sirius flopped down on the armchair across from Lily.  “Where are the sprogs, by the way?”

“Baby’s sleeping.  Harry and James are at the park so Harry can run off some energy.”

“Prongs is probably the one that needs to run off the energy.  He’s walking on clouds, that one.  Reminds me of the week after you finally said yes to a date.”  Sirius was pretty sure James hadn’t slept for two days straight.  For a week he also hadn’t shut up, even when he did finally sleep.  He’d been well stuck on Lily long before they’d dated.  Sirius finally had an idea of what that was like.

“Probably.  Now tell me what you’re running from.”  Lily put on her best getting-ready-to-mock-you expression.

“Nothing really, only the most stupid thing I’ve probably ever done.”

“I’ve seen some of the stupidest things you’ve done, Sirius.  Many of them.  Unless you’re going to tell me you have to flee the country because aurors are after you I very much doubt it’s as bad as you think.”

“I’vefalleninlovewithMoony.”

“I’m going to need you to actually take a breath at some point, sweetie.  You’re going to turn purple if you don’t and then I’m going to have to explain to James and Harry why you’ve passed out on the floor.”  Lily patted the empty seat on the sofa next to her.  “Now come over here, take a breath, and tell me again what you said.”

Sirius, erring on the side of caution, took three breaths, decided that wasn’t enough, and took three more.  “I’ve fallen in love with Moony.”

“Now there, wasn’t that easier to say the second time?”

“You knew perfectly well what I said.”  Sirius narrowed his eyes.  “You tricked me.”

“Only for your own good.”  She leaned in and wrapped her arms around him.  “I know this bit is scary but you’re going to get through it and you’re going to do it without fleeing the country.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?”  Maybe having a baby did something odd to your ears.  

“You’ve finally figured out that you’re in love with Remus.”

“Finally?”  Sirius stared at her.  

“Finally,” she confirmed.  “Other than this month because of your crazy idea about your books, when was the last time you dated?”

“Dunno.  That carpenter maybe?”  Sirius had wanted to find out just what else he could do with his hands.  The answer was quite a bit.  Unfortunately not so much in the brain department and even less in the sense of humor department.

“That was three years ago.  What is Remus’s favorite dinner?”

“Steak with mashed potatoes and lots of gravy, popovers, peas.”  It was a meal he liked to make a day or two before a full moon when Moony was feeling a bit low.

“And for dessert?”

“Chocolate, of course.  I found a chocolate fondant recipe the other day I thought I might try.”  Moony was happy to have a chocolate bar but Sirius liked to find new desserts to try.  Moony was always pleased when there was a new dessert.

“Who is the first person you see on Christmas morning and whose present do you spend the most time picking out?”

“Moony, of course.  We live together.”  Last year Moony had put a ridiculous ten galleon restriction on gifts, insisting he didn’t need anything extravagant.  His silly Moony hadn’t thought to specify that it was only a single gift, though.  Sirius had brought thirteen, but they were all under ten galleons each.

“And when you’ve had a really shitty day who is the first person you seek out?”

“Moony.”

“And when something wonderful happens who is the first person you want to tell?”

“Moony.”

“Are we seeing a pattern yet?  And before you tell me it’s just being friends let me remind you that you have created a whole career for yourself solely because you wanted to make sure that Remus had work that he could take pride in.  The entire existence of Phaedra White is basically one really long love letter, which is a bit over the top even for you.”

“I’ve been in love with Moony this whole time?”  It didn’t feel wrong when he said it.  Maybe later he’d be able to look back and figure out when exactly it all started, but for now it seemed to be enough that it was true.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were always going to figure it out in your own time.  I couldn’t make you go any faster and risk it not happening at all.”  Lily kissed his cheek.  “If I’d said yes to James in third or fourth year maybe we would still be where we are.  Or maybe I would have written him off as a ponce and I wouldn’t have him or my babies.  Things happen when they’re right, and you can’t rush them.  Or run away from them.”

“What if he doesn’t feel the same?”  Remus rarely dated and never said anything about marriage.  “What if I ruin everything?”

“What if he does?  I don’t have the answer.  I think you have to trust Remus and yourself enough to give him a chance to hear how you feel.”

“And if I fuck it all up?”

“Your friendship has survived war and betrayals and pranks gone horribly wrong, as well as seven years of sharing a dorm and about as long sharing a flat.  I don’t think it’s going to fall under the weight of loving him.”

“You better be right, Lily Potter.  If you’re not I’m going to be crashing on this sofa after I flee the flat in embarrassment, and I shed.”

II

Talking to Moony, of course, was a far too direct and logical choice.  It took an hour for Sirius to decide that no, that just wouldn’t do.

“You alright, Pads?” Remus asked when he spent the second hour after he returned home pacing.

“Just thinking about Christmas,” he answered distractedly.

“It’s May, I think you have some time before you need to worry.”  Remus caught his hand as he walked past.  “You look like you have one of your headaches.  Why don’t you sit down and I’ll give you a massage?  Or I could read something to you?”

“No books.”  Books are what had gotten him into the whole mess in the first part.  How could he tell Moony how he felt without also confessing the whole story of Phaedra White?  Why had he never considered that at some point Moony would have to know about The Brilliant Idea?  “I think I might just go to bed.”

“I’ll bring you some tea, it will help you sleep better.”  True to his word Remus showed up ten minutes later with a cup of tea, cream in first and half a spoon of sugar, just the way he liked.  He’d valiantly tried to fall asleep in those ten minutes, but had failed completely and sat up to accept the tea.  

“Thank you.”

“You know you can tell me if something is bothering you, right?”

“There’s no one in the world I trust more than you,” Sirius said honestly.  The tea was too hot still but he sipped it anyway, knowing he’d either burn the tip of his tongue or the roof of his mouth but not caring.  

“It’s a bit odd, isn’t it, Prongs and Lily having two kids now?  They’re well and truly settled, like proper adults.  Might make someone think about it a bit, wonder if they’re wanting something different.”  Remus settled on the edge of the bed, looking up at the ceiling as if he could see the stars overhead.

“Do you think about something different?  Finding your someone and settling down with a couple of sprogs?”  

“Merlin no.  That sort of life’s never been for me, even if I could find someone who wasn’t put off by my special little problem.  Besides I like things the way they are.  You know how much I loved marking up papers with red ink in school and I get to add commas and edit dangling participles to my heart’s content now, with the added bonus of actually making a proper amount of money.  And I couldn’t possibly ever be lonely or bored with you around.  If I want to play with a kid I just have to pop over to see Prongs and Lily.  Seems to me being a godfather is like the best bits of being a parent without all the rest.”  Remus shrugged and looked sideways at Sirius.  “I always figured you’d follow James’ example at some point.”

“I would have had to start developing a crush more than a decade ago, wouldn’t I, to really emulate Prongs?”  It made him stop and wonder for a moment, tea slopping over his chin as he stopped halfway to his mouth.  Just when had he started falling in love with Moony?  Maybe he was more like Prongs then he thought, with less of the whinging.  He couldn’t remember a time when making Moony smile hadn't been a priority, or when Moony touching him hadn’t been a comfort.

“Not like that, of course.  I mean the whole home hearth and family sort of thing, and making me a godfather.”

“I like my family just the way it is.”  It was a little too close to the truth, and Sirius faked a yawn.  “Night Moony.”

“Night Padfoot.  Sleep well.”  Despite being the first to say goodnight, Sirius was a little dismayed that Moony actually left his room.

II

The next day Sirius stopped by to pick up his post, finding a rather sizable cheque, yet another request for a book signing, and the edited return of his most recent book.  Remus must have mailed it when he’d been with Lily.  Flipping through the pages he found the usual red marks adding commas and rearranging the occasional unclear sentence structure, but nothing about the plot of the novel.  He hadn’t made any of the suggestions that he’d mentioned at the hospital.

Sirius took the book home and read through the story again.  Remus was right.  The supposed romance of the story felt flat and predictable when compared to the banter between the best friends, and George was clearly nurturing a crush on his friend.  He only wanted Byron to be with Melody because he thought it was what his friend wanted.  It was a mess.  Sirius was a mess too, but at the moment it was a lot easier to fix things for Byron and George.  All he had to do was cut half the book and rework the rest to make sure two best friends realized that they were actually in love.

When he was done he sent it off to Molly with a bonus payment and a warning that he might not be needing her help anymore.  She sent it back three days later with a cheerful little note letting him know that her twins kept her quite busy and while it had been fun to read his stories first she was fine with the change in things.  Also it was her favorite story yet.

“I need to borrow my godson.”  The day after he sent the manuscript back to Remus for editing he left the house early in the morning.  He couldn’t bear to be around when Moony saw it for the first time.  Better to let him read it and get it all over and done with at once, no matter what way it came out.

“You’re not back on the fleeing the country plan, are you?  Because you can’t take Harry to Spain.”  Lily raised one eyebrow.

“Why would Sirius flee the country?”  James held his daughter but stared at Sirius in confusion.  “You didn’t actually break into your cousin’s vault at Gringotts, did you?”

“I decided anything Narcissa owned would probably have cooties.  Not worth the risk.”  Sirius shrugged.  “I won’t even take him out of the county, Lils.  I promise.”

“Pads?  Lily?” James pushed, not having a clue what was happening but suspecting that his wife knew a fair bit more.

“Not now, Prongs.  I’ll tell you tomorrow if the world doesn’t crash around my ears today.”  

Lily, fortunately, said yes and Sirius was able to mostly distract himself with a trip to the zoo and far more ice cream than an almost five year old and a twenty-five year old should eat.  He returned Harry in time for tea but warned Lily that he probably wasn’t very hungry.

“I’m proud of you,” Lily said before he left, kissing his cheek.

“I’d probably be proud of you too if I knew what the bloody hell was going on,” Prongs added, kissing his other cheek.  Sirius said thank you to them both, decided against the floo, and apparated home.  He sat on the front stoop for half an hour before daring to open the door.  The flat was completely silent.  

“Moony?”  Maybe he wasn’t at home.  Maybe he hadn’t gotten the package or had been too busy to read it today.  Maybe he had read it and had run for the hills.  Maybe he hated it and hated Sirius and was in his room packing for a trip to Zanzibar.  For a minute he worried that Moony really was gone because the flat, even Moony’s room, were empty.  The last place to check was what they grandly called the balcony, which was really just a fire escape with a upside down rusty cauldron as a seat and a single pot with a dittany plant they barely kept alive.  Moony sat with his back to the wall, looking out at the view.  They were lucky enough to be on the side of the building that looked out over a park rather than another building.

“Hey.”  He settled on the sill of the open window, which was the only other place to sit but also meant that Remus couldn’t go anywhere without stepping over him, which could come in handy.  “How was your day?”

“I read a book.”  Moony didn’t look at him.  Sirius couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all, other than that he looked like he should be smoking.  They’d both given it up when Harry was born, though, and that went double now that Oliva had come along.

“Yeah?”  He took a deep breath and waited.

“Yeah.  I thought it was weird, at first.  It’s the same Phaedra White book I just edited, and I thought it was a mistake until I got through the first couple of chapters and it’s been completely rewritten.  I didn’t say anything about the story to anyone, other than you, but it was like they looked inside my head and saw how I wished the story had been written.  George was so certain that Byron was going to propose to his girl but instead there’s this scene, this magical scene where Byron says that he couldn’t fall for Melody because he was already in love.  That it had been George all along.  Sometimes your best mate is also the love of your life.”  Remus was still staring down at the park and Sirius wanted to shake him, or beg him to turn his head, or just kiss him and take his chances that Moony wouldn’t throw him over the side of the balcony.  

“Do you think that’s true?” he asked.  “Even when the best mate is a complete disaster who might be keeping a secret or two, but only because they want their best friend to be happy and not have to worry about anything?”

“Do I think that Byron and George are in love?”  When he finally turned, Moony had a perfectly inscrutable expression on his face, the one he used in school that let him tell McGonagall that he didn’t know anything about a prank that had in fact been his brainchild.  When he used it on anyone else it made Sirius smile.  Facing it himself was agonizing.

“Do you believe that sometimes your best mate can also be the love of your life?”  He’d channeled everything he felt and thought into Byron.  Remus set a great store in books and the written word, and Sirius hoped that maybe works written in black and white would make his argument for him.

“I think the hardest thing to believe is that I could possibly be that extraordinarily lucky.”  With the blink of his eye Sirius could see all the vulnerability Moony had been hiding.  The hope and the fear, the trust and the love.  The love he saw there knocked the breath out of him.

“Merlin, I think you just scared five years off my life, you were that hard to read.”  He pulled himself through the window and squatted in front of Remus.  “Do you really think you could love me?”

“You deserve to be scared, you bloody git.  You had me secretly editing books you wrote and somehow you became an author for the lark of it.”  Remus rubbed his forehead, like he did when something was puzzling him or the writing of something was particularly confusing.  “I’ve been in love with you for ages, Pads, and I find there’s generally very little thinking involved.  It’s a simple fact.”

“I don’t think there’s anything simple about it.”  Sirius Black was the author of seventeen and a half books, and it seemed to him there was only one possible option for what came next.  He kissed Moony, of course.  Kissed him like Byron had kissed George, like Psych had once kissed Cupid and Darcy had kissed Elizabeth.  The kiss had been brewing up inside him for some time and he did not stop until the air was gone from his lungs.  And then he said the words that he planned on repeating every day for the rest of his life.  “I love you Moony.”

“I love you too, Phaedra White.”

Sirius groaned, and laughed, and kissed his Moony all over again.  It was Absolutely Brilliant.

[degenerate-perturbation]

Viv Reviews: Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

As part of my quest to read every edgy Harry Potter knockoff, I read Wayward Son.

I liked it much better than Carry On. Carry On was a confusing mess and I don’t really remember anything that happened in it. Wayward Son is a much more tightly plotted, emotionally coherent book, with many good ideas.

Is it good? No.

But here are some things I liked about it:

The plot construction. Checkov’s guns are ably placed in the first act, and fired in the third. The twists make sense, without being telegraphed. The story clips along at a reasonable pace and there is a consistent sense of motion and dynamism throughout that made me want to keep reading.

The Americana. I love all magical Americana. However, it is possible to fuck this trope up (see: CW’s Supernatural.) Wayward Son does this trope without fucking it up, and I’ll give it credit for that.

The inherent hilarity of British people interacting with America and being completely befuddled. For the duration of reading this book I felt about 4% more patriotic. There is a scene where the main characters are gearing up to fight the villains with magical spells but this is America and the villains brought guns and they just shoot them. This is hilarious and exactly what would happen.

The villains. The concept of a bunch of Silicon Valley techbros becoming vampires as like a biohacking project is brilliant, because I know so many people who would do that. I would do that. Las Vegas being run by old-school vampires and the two groups hate each other for Vampiring Wrong is also brilliant.

I really enjoyed the new muggle character. Shepard is a muggle who knows about magic and just really likes it and wants to be around it as like, a hobby. I would totally be this guy. Between him and the Silicon Valleys vampires I feel like the American characters in this book are spot-on as types of people who would exist in a setting where magic is real. So few urban fantasy books get this right, and Wayward Son kind of does!

Most of the characters do have coherent, detectable emotional arcs. They aren’t well-executed. But they exist! This is more than I could say for the previous book. Draco/Baz struggles with existing as a marginal vampire in mage society, or abandoning humanity to exist in vampire society. Hermione/Penelope takes a long series of L’s and comes to realize that she can’t actually do everything herself and should really have asked for help. Harry/Simon is depressed about not being a main character anymore.

The fact that Draco is a vampire for no obvious reason doesn’t seem as weird in Wayward Son as in Carry On because vampires are a major element of this book’s plot.

Harry and Draco’s relationship in this book is on the rocks, and it starts out seeming like they are going to break up. They still bicker a lot, despite being boyfriends, which makes perfect sense for people who disliked each other for most of the time they knew each other. This creates a fine thread of emotional tension throughout the story (I love conflict!) that, unfortunately, goes nowhere.

Here is what I did not like:

THE POV CHANGES. 

Oh my god, the POV changes are fucking intolerable. Do you guys remember those old fanfics where there was a POV change literally every paragraph and every event got described from 4 different characters’ point of view? This book does this so egregiously that part of me wonders if in fact Rowell is making the book bad on purpose to fit with the fanfiction thing--because her other books are fine! I know Rowell can write a perfectly respectable love story, so really, what gives?

This is really just one thing because I think all of the book’s flaws boil down to this supremely irritating structure. Here are some issues that I feel arise from it:

Characters do not really develop their relationships to each other, because all of their emotional turmoil happens in their first-person internal monologue. Simon and Baz never really work through their relationship issues because they do not talk to each other until the very end of the book. They live completely inside their own heads, straightfowardly telling the reader how they are feeling, without having to tell each other.

Similarly, I thought Penelope and Shepard were going to be a developing couple. They would make sense as a foil to Simon and Baz’s established (and crumbling) relationship, they interact quite a bit, Penelope gets dumped at the start of the book by her boyfriend for traits that Shepard explicitly values, and on a meta level, it is sensible to pair the most magical mage with a muggle. But they don’t really interact much on the page. I think about how much more interesting this relationship would have read if Penelope had worked through some of her issues with this guy, but she didn’t.

As a result, the character’s arcs do not really go anywhere satisfying, because they are all so inside their own heads! Without playing off each other, they don’t have opportunities to develop in a natural way. She just privately thinks her to herself that she’s in over her head, and that’s the end of it. We don’t see anyone challenge Penelope on her overconfidence or see her confess vulnerability to anyone. We don’t see Simon and Baz argue about their relationship; we just see them mutually, separately worry about it.

The other problem I have with Simon and Baz is that their relationship takes place entirely in terms of dramatic overwrought romantic inner monologue. The one time they interact with each other romantically on screen--we don’t actually see it! We just see ping-ponging POV of “He means the world to me” and “I only ever wanted him," which is wildly inconsistent with how they actually interact with each other, which is mostly tense in petty bickering. And that would have been perfectly fine if, say, it had lead to a break up and subsequent make up. That would have been a good trial-by-fire for this relationship! But it doesn’t happen. I’m left asking over and over again, why do these characters love each other? Why does he mean the world to him? Why should I care?

This is related to another issue with the book is that, like a fanfiction, it seems to require the context of “canon” events in order to make emotional sense. Simon and Baz keep referring back to their dynamic as roommates that hate each other to contextualize their present love for each other. But we never saw any of that happen! I don’t feel attachment to their pre-existing relationship because the pre-existing relationship is an informed quality.

And this is the problem with Simon himself, as a character. His arc in this book is about overcoming his depression and the burnout of being an ex-main-character. He and Penelope keep referencing adventures they’ve had that we weren’t there for, so how am I supposed to feel a sense of bittersweet nostalgia for then? It’s like hanging out with a group of friends who keep making inside jokes I don’t get. It’s alienating, and does the opposite of make me relate to these characters.

If I was reading about Harry Potter’s ex-main-character depression, this would read totally differently, because I would have already read seven years’ worth of Harry Potter’s wild adventures. A fanfiction about Harry’s post-traumatic stress about all those events would be perfectly suitable fanfiction subject. A book about Crypto-Harry-Potter’s post-traumatic stress over events we weren’t present for does not work nearly as well.

Finally, the dynamic of this trio does not work. What really worked for Harry, Ron, and Hermione is that each one of them was the awkward third friend. In Wayward Son, Penelope and Baz both have a relationship with Simon, but not really each other. And since the characters stay in their own heads, a new dynamic doesn’t really have space to develop.

Also, the prose just, isn’t very good. J. K. Rowling was not a master of prose, but Harry Potter felt magical. It felt like a fairy tale. With Wayward Son, I am Once Again reminded of this Ursula Le Guin quote, from her essay, “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie”:

Many readers, many critics, and most editors speak of style as if it were an ingredient of a book, like the sugar in a cake, or something added onto the book, like the frosting on the cake. The style, of course, is the book. If you remove the cake, all you have left is recipe. If you remove the style, all you have left is a synopsis of the plot.

This is a recipe for a book. A good recipe, with many good ingredients, but it utterly lacks style, making it just good enough to disappoint me.

Apparently there is going to be a threequel. Obviously I am going to read it.

[littleeyesofpallas]

Was chatting with a coworker the other day and two things crossed my mind...

that I've been at this weeb shit so long that I forget what I just sort of take for granted and what might not be commonly known little factoids, and

that VIZ's attempt at a monthly Shonen Jump magazine has been gone so long most people probably never saw them. (nevermind the old RAIJIN Graphic Novels that tried the same thing)

So, here's some fun little things you might not have known about manga if you've only ever read English publications and/or digital scans...

For one, there's the matter of print formatting... In general, Japan actually uses their own standards for print that tend to differ from those in the US; The JIS(Japanese Industrial Standards) series A and B. Magazines like the typical anthology format manga are printed in JIS B5, which is comparable to the US Letter standard, or the ISO A4.

This was the same format that RAIJIN Comics printed in as well, and although I don't have a copy of the old English Shonen Jump for reference, if memory serves they printed in the same format as well in an attempt to really sell that "authentic" manga feel. Sadly, I don't know that the effort or attention to detail was much appreciated. Neither published a volume comparable to a Japanese weekly or even monthly serial magazine, though --not by a long shot. But this might not be the most practical for comparrison, since there actually just isn't much of an English language equivalent format. (unless you count actual magazines that happen to include comic illustrations or miniscule comic strip segments)

Despite the mammoth size of a serial magazine, Japanese tankoban are actually smaller than the North American equivalent. But notably the Japanese small book format isn't just a matter of contending with nearest print standards... What I believe is the JIS B40(although I could be wrong) tends to be the standard print size of small books in general, not just manga, and it's a print size that is only marginally smaller than VIZ's standard size manga, but with the very particular benefit of being deliberately portable. The small difference in size is the difference between a Japanese manga fitting in my coat pocket where as the English equivalent can't.

(I realize I photographed a copy of Shonen ACE, and not Weekly JUMP, but I measured a copy of Weekly JUMP for the thickness and not the copy of ACE; the copy of JUMP was around 506pg, while the copy of ACE was 570pg. Those are both older though, and the most recent digital copy i have of Weekly JUMP actually had around 520pg)

And I don't think it's always addressed just what a difference there is, culturally, in how Japan approaches the print medium. It's kind of an old cliche by this point, and I don't know how accurate it's remained in the past decade or so, but the quintessential image passed around between comic nerds has always been the Japanese bullet train; A place packed with commuters all passing their transit time with isolated preoccupation with music and/or reading, with manga being the king of this time killing arena. And its not just about sheer popularity driven by interest, American comic vendors have long envied the sheer accessibility of manga in Japan.

Here in the U.S. we used to have a thriving newsstand retail scene for comic books, and a kind of similar ease of grab and go comic purchase, rather than the explicitly niche interest driven "direct market" model that has been slowly but surly strangling the comic market ever since. But in Japan serialized manga has remained in relatively quick, impulse friendly, arm's reach of readers on the go. And what lubricates that business model more than anything is price.

I still remember a time when VIZ dominated the English manga market by offering at $7.95(and am I crazy or am I remembering a time when it got down to $6.99?) but now'days it's settled on a low end of $9.99. You know how much the recent vol.29 of My Hero Academia goes for? ¥484. That's less than $4.50.

You know how much that big ass magazine with 500+ pages and 21 different series goes for? Do you think it's more or less than the little pocket-size tankoban? Did you guess something close to ¥290? That's less than $2.75. But how does something bigger in both page size and page count managed to sell for less???

There are a few secrets to that, but one is that the things are packed to the gills with ads. But that's the boring answer. The other feature contributing to keeping an accessible cost on weekly/monthly manga is something we don't think about much in the U.S.; it's the paper and print quality.

The nice little books are printed in what you might expect as far as starch white paper and clean black inks, but those big honkin' phone book(do people still know what phonebooks look like??) size magazines are printed on cheap recycled pulpy newpaper with typically rough print jobs. This is most noticeable in the quality of solid blacks, and when scanning the texture of "white" space.

(I tried to take individual photos of different series chapters to show off the fact that the paper is differently colored... but my phone's camera seems to be smart enough to auto balance that kind of thing when there's no other context to anchor it to. (It doesn't help that it's night and my lights have a harsh yellowing glow to them.) but on th left you can still kind of see the different paper colors; this particular issue alternated every 3 chapters between pink-ish, green/gray, a kind of off-white/gray, and sepia, but I've also seen blue-ish, oranges, and a different shade of yellow different from the sepia-ish one.)

Back in ye olden days when it came to fan scanlations, more slapdash teams and projects would often stumble over levels in photoshop (too much black and the pulpy paper texture shows up as grainy shadows, but too far white and the edges of lineart get crunchy and ugly) but those who had more robust readership and a regular streamlined flow of work, we'd actually go in and touch up the solid blacks and whites by hand. We'd also redraw art to erase overlaid text so the type setters could lay the new English in over top.

(Weekly Jump: Left, Bleach tankoban: Right)

They do however keep a few coveted color pages in better quality paper and ink. In contrast, the standard quality tankoban actually don't include color pages at all, and just print what had been color pages in grayscale. There are also all kind of irregularities between publishers and special editions and such, but on the most basic level this difference in quality both keeps serial prices down, while also incentivizing tankoban purchase.

In the U.S. we might still have the draw of an ad-free reading experience in our TPB, but the print quality between a biweekly issue and a TPB are basically the same. Incidentally, even though manga are generally drafted at a much larger scale than even the serial magazine proportions anyway, the scaled down size of the tankoban also serves to sharpen the image. When put side by side the nice clean tankoban print looks noticeably better than the serial.

Now'days the English scanlation scene seems to be conducted almost entirely through ripped digital releases (at least as far as I can tell with popular, regular weekly titles) which is great for quality, frankly, but it does kind of lack the charm and personal touch of a band of amateurs finding round about solutions to a convoluted bootlegging pipeline. But obviously I'm a little biased.

[edit]: Oops i posted this without really ending it in any sensible ro conclusive way... I feel like ive lost sight of the point since i first drafted this but I guess its mostly just me pining after if we could just get super cheap, disposable quality, bulk manga in that classic Japanese magazine model to work here in the states. I already tend to sell manga in big runs, even at $9.99+, and frequently I'll have customers put volumes back, or clearly want the next volume but just can't afford it and wait to come back. If I could sell these customers more volumes, and more importantly more titles, at the same price, I would love to. I would love to see these things fly off the shelves. I would love to see people keeping up with multiple series. I would love to see someone look at a 44vol long series and actually feel like that's a number of volumes they can afford.

[thessaliadpdx]

Interlude: Field Marshal Zhuāngyuán Rallies the Troops. Chuntian Cao Gets the Girl. Master Yuanyuan, Ahem, Third Master Shen, Gets His Fourth Apartment.

Unbeknownst to Shen Yuan, he was the subject of much concern. Back at the Shen Family Estate, Da-ge smacked Er-ge upside the head. An embarrassment to the Shen Family name! Little Brother was raised better than that! Baba would have been disappointed! Mama would have cried! 

Er-ge drooped and nodded in agreement. “Yes, Da-ge. I’ll go over and apologize as soon as he will see me.”

The Brothers Shen worked themselves into a froth about their family’s Yuanyuan getting a roommate. They weren’t the only ones. The other residents of the Shen Family Estate were also deeply concerned. Upon hearing that Shen Yuan was to have a long-term houseguest, Steward Zhuangyuan fretted about Shen Yuan being deprived. Master Yuanyuan, ahem, Third Master Shen couldn’t possibly accommodate a long-term guest in his cramped, pokey little apartment! (Shen Real Estate Agent: “Pokey? It’s 360 square meters with four rooms!”) In Steward Zhuangyuan’s opinion, Master Yuanyuan only picked it because it had decent light. They should have rented another apartment in the same building and made it into a studio. 

Steward Zhuangyuan recollected the effort required to make for Master Yuanyuan’s, ahem, Third Master Shen’s current apartment passable. Only two years ago, it had been a struggle. The Shen Family employees had done their best, but the steward still felt it barely up to standard for a Shen. Thank goodness Master Yuanyuan was so biddable. Steward Zhangyuan remembered when the frighteningly tiny young master had first come home, barely larger than a grapefruit. He remembered all the hospital stays thereafter. Everyone did, and they worried about Master Yuanyuan so, counting the months until the next time. So far it had been two years, but everyone still held their breath.

Master Yuanyuan was the last reminder of the late Madam Shen, the artistic genius and gracious mistress. (Steward Zhuangyuan declined to remember all the times she screamed and threw oily paintbrushes at her husband’s head. He usually deserved it.) Master Yuanyuan, unlike his older brothers, was a gentleman, a scholar, and an artistic genius in his own right. (Steward Zhuangyuan also declined to remember all the times Master Yuanyuan screamed and threw ink brushes at his father and brothers when they denied him things they perceived as for his own good. They usually deserved it.)

At the very least The Young Master had needed a studio, a study, an office, a game room, a master bedroom and a guest bedroom for that questionable friend of his. (Shang Qinghua: “Hey! I’m a nice guy! I didn’t know he was sixteen when he read my book!”) Master Yuanyuan, as sweet and good-natured as ever, kindly suggested that he could tutor students in the dining room, and place bookshelves against the wall. He also suggested that the living room also be used for gaming, movies, and music. 

Upon hearing that, First Master Shen gleefully called the Chairman of Hangsong to send their latest TV, something experimental. Six people from Shen Construction marched into the apartment. Four reinforced the living room wall, added a wall mount, and installed a 250cm television. Two wired the room for the TV, added a home theater sound system from Onsuhi, and a GM6 with the lastest games, some of which were review copies. The two grinned at the other four. Testing was an essential part of installation, right? 

Auntie Chu had found the tiny 20-square-meter kitchen marginal, at best. The appliances were old and shabby. (If the refrigerator could talk: “Hey! I’m only two years old and I cost 6899 yuan! Rude!” The stove just cried, greatly aggrieved. uwuwuwuwu) Auntie Chu nodded her head firmly. She knew what to do. Meals would be delivered every day from the Shen Estate, and new appliances must be ordered.

First Master Shen gleefully did more research. He looked for something modest, and called Chufang Bangshou for a French-door refrigerator, complete with pull-out drawer for cold cuts and snacks, and a pull-out freezer. A steal for 23,000 yuan. Then he called Zhu Rong Stoves, and ordered the four-burner self-cleaning convection gas range with the 50,000 BTU wok burner. He also ordered a fume hood. A trifling 60,000 yuan.

The previous six people from Shen Construction carried in the refrigerator, stove, and hood. An additional seventh person went with to hook up the natural gas. The Head Chef certified in Medicinal Cuisine Auntie Chu lightly walked behind. Finally, several Shen Estate kitchen staff rolled in a couple coolers. Under Auntie Chu’s gimlet eye the Shen Construction workers carefully attached and installed the new refrigerator, fume hood, and stove. 

Auntie Chu pronounced herself satisfied, and waved at her assistants, who promptly opened coolers of prepped ingredients and set up additional burners. Under the famished, yearning gaze of the Shen Construction crew, they whipped up a banquet and laid it before the workers. It was like Lunar New Year and Great-Grandfather’s 100th birthday and the Grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary all at once. They would have to save a year for food this good, assuming there was a place that served it.

Auntie Chu said, “Testing is an important part of installation. Yes?”

Seven heads bobbed up and down like chickens.

Auntie Chu and her assistants left. The original six grinned at each other, then at the seventh. The TV, music, and gaming systems needed to be tested again. Testing, indeed, was an important part of installation.

The 8K 200Hz TV was a beast compared to what any of them had at home. The seventh looked around when they heard a glass shatter. Wow, just wow. 

This was probably going to be the last time they could play, and they all mourned silently.

Next was Auntie Wu. She inspected the apartment with white gloves, found dust, and sniffed at the substandard work. Filthy. (Housekeeping: “She wiped the back of the fridge! Unfair!”) The laundry service left a wrinkle in some sheets. (Laundry: “Hey! The main pressing iron is down! We did them all by hand and on time!”)

Auntie Wu decided that the Shen staff would dust daily, and launder everything at home. The conditions were abysmal. Master Yuanyuan was so brave. Her mouth wobbled. She’d never imagined he’d live this long. She’d been terrified that dust would cause him to have a bronchospasm and die. She had to call the ambulance so many times, even though a doctor and three nurses resided on the grounds.

Driver Siji had donned some old clothes, approached the car service manager and had asked for directions to S University. The manager said that he would have to use GPS. Driver Siji told Steward Zhuangyuan that the manager couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag. (Service Drivers: “Hey! He can’t find his way out of a paper bag! That’s why he doesn’t drive!”) He also found a footprint in one of the floormats. Lazy. (Driver: “Hey! I just went to pee!”)

Driver Siji had decided that they would have one of the Estate staff on site. There would have to be three, for twenty-four-hour coverage. Driver Siji remembered when he used to drive Young Master Yuanyuan to University at age ten. Master Yuanyuan was so tiny, a skinny little bird with thick, goggle-like glasses. Driver Siji had worried that he would trip and break a bone. 

Driver Siji had reported to Madam that The Youngest Master seemed exhausted, and suggested that it might be better for him to stay at home. The fiery Madam Shen said that The Youngest Master would attend University as long as he wished, until he said otherwise. Madam Shen then inquired if Driver Siji needed to be assigned elsewhere. Driver Siji wanted to kowtow in the face of such ferocity, but bowed deeply instead and apologized for his presumption. Appeased, Madam Shen accepted his apology and said he would resume his current duties, as he was the best driver they had. Grateful, Driver Siji wanted to walk backwards to the door, like in an Imperial drama.

#####

Head Gardener Huayuan had much better luck. Upon first inspection, the shrubbery was cheap and ill-shaped. No flowers brightened the neighborhood. Pretending to be a prospective student’s grandfather, he performed a little investigation of his own. Landscape Supervisor Xiang was a sensible person, a very good seedling. She had a master’s degree in horticulture from Q Agricultural University, first in her class. She picked this job to support her mother back home. After a while, the usually stand-offish childless widower said, “Call me Grandpa.” 

Xiang Hua’s mouth wobbled a little bit, because her grandfather died when she was young, and she missed him terribly. She discussed with the very knowledgeable Grandpa Huayuan the city’s push for water reduction. She also confessed her dream to see wild birds live where she worked. The kindly retiree understood the difficulty of maintaining such extensive grounds with such a tiny budget. Naturescaping was the perfect solution, and letting native plants grow wild created nesting sites and fed local insects, which in turn fed the birds. 

Such a wise and creative person must be encouraged. Grandpa Huayuan and Xiao Xiang discussed favorite flowers, and Xiao Xiang described her collection of orchids in her tiny apartment. Grandpa Huayuan described some of the orchids he’d seen in private collections. He’d even seen the gardens of the Shen Estate. Xiao Xiang sighed. She’d seen a feature article in a floriculture magazine.

A couple days later, the usual seven from Shen Construction had arrived to install bookshelves. The actual job only required three people at the very most, but they slunk off anyway. 

Incidentally, their supervisor reported the information to The Big Boss as ordered. Big Boss Shen had wanted updates on all work done on Third Master Shen’s apartment. Big Boss chuckled and waved his hand. They’re the best we’ve got, he said, and they all work hard. They deserve a little reward. Testing is a necessary part of installation, no?

The supervisor nodded.

Additionally, one of the junior gardeners rode along, holding a basket. He was to meet someone named Xiang Hua, the landscape supervisor. The delivery was of upmost importance. Head Gardener had told the junior that his mission was vital to the Shen Estate Gardens. He was to deliver the basket, and report back without delay. The junior had nodded so hard his chest wobbled. Upon finding Landscape Supervisor Xiang, he thrust the basket into her hands and scurried off. 

Xiang Hua, curious, opened the basket. Inside was a rare orchid she wouldn’t have been able to afford, assuming she could find one for sale. Next to it was an envelope. 

The letter read: 

“Xiao Xiang, I must apologize for my deception. I originally came to inspect the landscaping to see if the environs was worthy of our Third Master. I have not had such a lively conversation with a junior in a very long time. 

Someone with your gifts is wasted here, and should be working in an environment where you can learn and grow. Come and work for Grandpa Huayuan instead. 

Sincerely, 

Huayuan Yuan, Head Gardener, Shen Estate Gardens”

The letter named a salary that was twice what she currently made. It also mentioned that living quarters and meals were provided. Her mother would be able to live there if so desired.

Xiang Hua, a country girl raised on a poor family farm, started to cry. It was a dream come true. 

Chuntian Cao, the lead worker of her construction crew, noticed a young, tiny, pretty woman reading a letter and crying. Taller than most men at 180cm, she lumbered over to see if she could help. Chuntian Cao was a woman of fine tastes and knew a good thing when she saw the Meimei, or Little Sister, in distress. The wet, reddened eyes like a little white rabbit’s rendered Caocao helpless. The callused fingers dusty with a little dirt made Meimei even more of a catch. A hard worker with such pretty features would make for a perfect wife, especially for a plain fisherman’s daughter. She really wanted to give Meimei a hug and eat some tofu, but now was definitely not the time. 

She sidled closer to Meimei and silently offered a hug. “Hey there, Meimei. Why so sad? Some dumbass said goodbye?” She wrapped her arm around a lightly muscled shoulder. She looked down, and noted the delicacy of a collarbone. She dropped her voice. “Does Meimei need someone beaten up?” She rumbled. “I’m good at that.” She didn’t lie. At 90 kilos of muscle from pulling nets then hauling lumber, Chuntian Cao packed a deadly punch. She loved beating the shit out of people who deserved it. Unfortunately, the guys at Shen Construction were well-behaved. She went to bars instead.

Meimei plastered herself against Chuntian Cao in a hug and bawled. It was like an idol drama, only Chuntian Cao was the school grass, and Meimei was the school flower. She resisted eating the tofu, but it was really hard. Chuntian Cao waved at her crew and mouthed at them to go on up. They grinned at her and waved back. Xiao Hu, that fucker, made kissy faces. She wanted to gesture back, but her hands were occupied.

Meimei hiccuped, “I just got the best news in my life and I don’t know what to do!” She held out the letter with a trembling hand.

Chuntian Cao read it. “Old Man Gardener offered you a job? He told you to call him Grandpa? I’d never believed it if I hadn’t seen it!” She gave Meimei a squeeze. No eating the tofu, Caocao. Be good. 

Meimei snuggled up and held on tight. Caocao looked up to the heavens and breathed in deep. She sighed, and bit her lip. It was even better when the tofu ate you. She patted Meimei on the head. “Gonna come and work for us?”

“Mmm?” Meimei looked up, dazed.

“I’m with Shen Construction!” Chuntian Cao said proudly. “I’m the lead worker of my crew. Wanna come up and hang out with us? I’ll introduce ya!”

Meimei pressed close enough that the only way she could get closer was for Chuntian Cao to crack her chest open and spread her ribs wide. For such a sugar-sweet armful, Caocao would be perfectly willing to do so. Would Meimei top? Caocao sincerely hoped so.

“Okay,” Meimei said.

Meimei’s name was Xiang Hua, and she ate and gamed with the crew. The now-eight workers knew this was their last chance at testing the systems, so they were going to do their best. Beer, snacks, fried chicken and barbecue were the order of the day, and a merry time was had by all.

At the end of Caocao’s first date with Xiang Hua, Caocao got pushed down backwards on her own bed. Xiang Hua straddled her hips. Xiang Hua said that Caocao was the Meimei, and Meimeis did what their Jiejies, their Big Sisters, told them to.  

Caocao sighed with happiness. Fucking finally. She was so tired of being a Jiejie. Everyone assumed that a 180cm, 90 kilo, plain-faced girl wanted to be a Jiejie. Caocao had always insisted she wanted to be a spoiled little Meimei instead, but no one believed her.

They got married in the Shen Estate Gardens the following year. Mama Xiang teared with pride, then flew back home to the countryside. Caocao cried with relief that her mother-in-law wasn’t going to live with them. Huajie hummed with pleasure when she made her little Caomei apologize with desperation.

Caomei, with the help of a fertility clinic and amazing health benefits, bore two babies by her Huajie. Mama Xiang cried at being Grandma Xiang. Grandpa Yuan cried at being Great-Grandpa Yuan. The spoiled little Caomei had little ones to spoil in turn. She loved it.

Huajie, now Assistant Head Gardener Xiang, smiled with satisfaction--a tigress overlooking her tigress and their little tiger cubs.

#####

Steward Zhuangyuan gathered the senior staff, and cobbled together a plan of action. The apartment had been upgraded as best they could. The winning crew from Shen Construction had moved everything in. Auntie Wu’s staff had put it to rights. Auntie Chu’s staff had stocked the refrigerator, arranged the utensils, flatware, and glassware. They had made meal plans. 

Master Yuanyuan smashed all the plans to bits. Auntie Wu’s staff were only allowed over once a week. She cried into her handkerchief. Auntie Chu’s staff were only allowed to drop off pre-prepped meals for him to cook himself. And that was only every three days. She sniffled discreetly. Driver Siji was only allowed to send someone when called, and only when called. No hanging around the garage, “just in case.” Driver Siji wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

First Master and Second Master commiserated with Steward Zhuangyuan, but there was nothing they could do. The late Madam Shen had made it very clear to the two that Yuanyuan was to make his own decisions, and they were to butt out. Yuanyuan was smart enough to understand what he was and was not capable of, and they needed to respect his wishes. And that, was that.

Occasionally they forgot, but that was for another time.

Finally, the cherished but astonishingly unspoiled Master Yuanyuan moved in, quite pleased with his cozy abode. Only 360 square meters with four bedrooms! Nice furnishings, but not too grand! Having the latest electronics was okay. He was now a solid member of the middle class!

Shang Qinghua, good friend and sponge extraordinaire, hated to break it to his best friend that his “middle class apartment” was solidly in the upper five percent. Shen Yuan’s face fell. The personal services kicked him up to the upper one percent. Black lines filled Shen Yuan’s face.

Shen Yuan’s plan of having a place near the campus that wouldn’t terrify his students failed utterly. His more privileged students, ready to intimidate “Some guy named Shen Yuan my parents forced me to see,” were intimidated in turn by his exquisite manners and knowledge at such a young age. To the manor born, so to speak. After hearing from their parents that he was one of Those Shens, they meeped instead of roared. 

His underprivileged students, in awe at the surroundings, were even more in awe with this friendly Young Master. Their favorite professor in Classical Chinese had referred them, and they had worried they wouldn’t be good enough. Later, they felt honored to be tutored by the nicest rich person they had ever met, a true genius. He was obviously better off than the snooty rich kids at the university, but he didn’t act like it. He was so cool, he’d invite them to game when their session was over. He was even pretty enough to be the school flower of the entire campus! 

#####

That was then, but now Master Yuanyuan had a houseguest. Would Master Yuanyuan finally come home? Please say yes! 

Steward Zhuangyuan received a call, but it was not the call he wanted. Instead of returning to where he belonged, Master Yuanyuan was going to move into a villa instead. A villa! How horrid! 

[lizziedoesvetpath]

How to get the most out of your pathology submission (part 2)

Aaaand we’re back with part 2 of making a good pathology specimen. Today: What makes a good biopsy specimen? There are surprise pictures in this one but you’ll have to keep reading to find out of what (nothing gory, promise)

1) Take a good sample: 

1a) Sample new, fresh lesions, not really advanced ones, if possible. This applies to skin (take the edge of a lesion or one that’s been there a couple of days, not 3 weeks) and a lot of other organs (if the liver looks cirrhotic, sample the most normal looking bit not the really nodular, fibrotic part). This is because these are the most diagnostic sections - the centre of an old lesion is usually just haemorrhage, necrosis, and fibrosis, none of which are bringing you any close to a diagnosis.

1b) Make your sample a sensible size. Really big samples don’t fix well, so if you need to take something large (a whole spleen for example) consider sending it overnight, fresh, and CHILLED. Miniscule samples are hard to trim and less likely to have good diagnostic information in them, so if it doesn’t have to be an endoscopic punch biopsy, don’t make it that.

1c) Please don’t cut into a tumor just to take a look. If you cut part way into your mass so you can see what’s in the middle, it makes it a lot harder for us to read margins because of the way the ink runs. I understand the urge, and I fully understand that you might not want to submit if it turns out to be something like at abscess, but cutting into it will make it harder for us to read margins and that does take away from what you’re getting. Aspirating is fine, but please try to avoid making cuts!

2) Fix your sample well! A poorly fixed sample will not only be delayed at the lab while we wait for it to fix, it’s also not going to give results. Why is it delayed? Unfixed biopsies are hard to trim well. We have to cut anything you give us into thin slices to even start the process of making a slide, and if it’s not firmly fixed we can’t do that well. Why is it going to give bad results? The longer we have to wait for something to fix, the more the cells are going to autolyse (break down). There is far less information in autolysis than in a sample where the cells look exactly how they did when they were still attached to the animal.

How do you fix a sample well? You should have a formalin:tissue ratio of 10:1 (if using 10% buffered formalin). That means ten times as much formalin as tissue. It’s annoying, I know, but it’s worth it. Also, if the sample is really fatty, consider using more formalin. Fat will partially dissolve into the formalin and make it less effective. For samples that are really bloody (spleens!) try to minimise how much blood makes it into the jar, because this fills up the formalin and then the formalin is wasted fixing all those loose blood cells instead of the tissue you actually want us to look at.

3) Use a sensible container: A good container should be hard to break (for posting, plastic is usually better than glass) and water tight (screw on lids are best). Most importantly, it needs to have a wide opening! If you have to squish your sample through the top when it’s fresh, we are not going to be able to get it out fixed. Samples fix to be very firm, so it won’t squish any more, and they often fix in weird positions - so if it’s something long and thin, it might fit through fine when you can hold it out straight but it won’t when it’s fixed curled up in a ball. Ideally pick a container where the opening is the same diameter as the container. That way you know that if the container is the right size, so is the opening. Good containers look like this:

Bad containers look like this:

4) Make margins or areas you are concerned about clear: If you are particularly worried about one part of a sample, that needs to be easy for us to figure out, and it needs to take into account that things look different once they’re fixed. For example: if you are submitting a uterus you just took out, and you think one ovary looks a bit off but it’s not 4 times the size of the other, find a way to show on the sample which one you’re worried about. Telling us left or right isn’t helpful when it gets to us and isn’t in the animal any more. It’s safer to assume that we won’t know what’s what by the time it gets to us. So you should utilise things like sutures, ink, or separate jars (cut the funky ovary off and submit it in its own pottle!) to make it obvious. And write down what that means on your submission form!

4a) Using sutures well for identification: Write down the colour and look of the suture you’ve used (eg: blue, smooth nylon or purple woven). This is especially important if you’re trying to mark out several things. You can also use different lengths of ends (but make it obvious, cut them very short and very long). More knots is hard to interpret, but more pieces (if they’re nice and close together) can work. We can take the sutures out once we’ve got all the infomation we need so it’s a good way to tell us things without risking negatively affecting what information you’ll get back.

4b) Using ink for identification: Ink can be great if you know what you’re doing. We ink things all the time to identify margins, so you need to make sure that what you’re doing won’t impede how we can then interpret it. If you really want to use ink, I would suggest calling your diagnostic lab and asking for advice. One thing you can do is ink a non-critical surface. What does that mean? If you’re submitting a skin mass, put ink on the haired skin side only. We don’t need any diagnostic marking on that surface because the top side isn’t a surgical margin. So if you want to put some ink on the hairy side, showing us which margin is which, that’s fine! Avoid putting ink on any aspect of the sample you have cut through, because those are the ones where ink can give us serious diagnostic information, so if it’s not done right you are going to lose out. In general I would say that the best markers you can use are ones that we can take off. Ink is permanent so again, if you’re not sure, don’t do it.

I think that’s everything I wanted to cover today folks! For posts on necropsy, histology, and filling in a submission form, check out the “pathology saturdays” tag. And as always, feel free to send in any questions or suggestions for future topics you might have!

[uhrichhenry64791]

BEST KITCHEN KNIVES

Looking for a lot of kitchen blades isn't the most straightforward thing on the planet. There are innumerable varieties and brands at stores like Sears and online. Do you get a 8 piece set? 12 piece? Wha

t blades are remembered for the cutlery set? A few blade specialists we conversed with at our neighborhood cooking stores like Sur La Table referenced that 2 or 3 blades is all that most home gourmet experts truly need. The 8 inch culinary expert's blade is the most significant in an assortment/set, all the others are simply additional items. 

At the point when I got hitched we requested a blade set from Sears and got a 12 piece set with steak blades included. Different blades were a paring blade, slicer, culinary expert's blade, 8 inch bread blade, boning blade, and an utility blade. I should state we have utilized them everywhere on throughout the long term, some more than others.

 As of late, as my better half has gotten even more a home culinary specialist master, we chose to investigate another arrangement of kitchen blades. She has consistently grumbled that the Henckel kitchen blades we have are not sharp enough for her loving.

Purchasing Guide - We began taking a gander at audits we discovered online where they tried huge numbers of the top brands available in their test kitchen. Purchaser Reports has done articles throughout the years on kitchen blades and their latest posting had a speedy summation of the "best kitchen blades" in light of cutting execution, handle comfort, handle balance, edge type, set size, and generally speaking worth.  

likewise highlighted some master audits of kitchen blades on their site and we additionally discovered superb input in their proprietor remarks segment (those that had purchased the cutlery sets). Again and again we read that the Wusthof Trident Classic 8 piece set was the best by and large, however it is expensive at about $300. 

The gourmet specialist's blade in this set does well in food readiness - minces, hacks, cuts effortlessly state most proprietors. What should the blades be made of? Hands down the first class blades are totally made with high-carbon hardened steel. Blade specialists state this material makes them easy to clean and hone. 

The following interesting point is - Are the blade cutting edges produced steel or stepped steel? Manufactured blades will be somewhat heavier than the stepped ones, and they are additionally more costly. Eventually, you need a blade that is anything but difficult to control in your grasp and one that fits ergonomically enough to give you the best cutting activity. Equalization is a word that surfaces regularly in surveys and weight is a key segment in this. It's not in every case simple to test cuts out in stores, so you'll need to go with the audits or evaluate your neighbors new set at some point. 

The most noticeably awful surveys we discovered were for kitchen cuts that were difficult to hold (handle issues) and for those that were too light restricting the capacity to hack and cut with accuracy. You'll see that the less expensive stepped steel kitchen knive sets from Chicago Cutlery ($60) and Oxo ($100) still give enough slicing execution to the normal home gourmet specialist that they are considered "extraordinary worth" purchases by many. 

The top brands are Wusthof, Oxo, Mercer, Henckels, Tramontina, Chicaco Cutlery, Cutco, Ginsu, Shun, Cuisinart, KitchenAid, and R.H. Forschner by Victorinox. You can see the top of the line kitchen cuts here.

The Wusthof 8418 8 Piece Knife Block Set at about $300 is viewed as a fantastic arrangement of kitchen cuts that should keep going you quite a while. You get a 3 1/2 inch paring blade, 4 1/2 inch utility blade, 6 inch sandwich blade, 8 inch cook's blade, 8 inch bread blade, shears, and a 9 inch honing steel. 

It incorporates the santoku blade, however you can purchase that independently on the off chance that you need for $80. You get totally adjusted blades, extraordinary cutting exactness, and a lifetime guarantee on the blades. The Henckels Twin Professional S fashioned 7 piece set is another success on a few locales and comes enthusiastically suggested.

In spite of the fact that not considered the "best", the Victorinox Kitchen Knives are first class in a few sources and they get fantastic proprietor remarks on locales. The R.H. Forschner by Victorinox 8-Piece Knife Block Set at $130 is a quality kitchen blade set that incorporates a 4 inch paring, 8 inch culinary expert, 6 inch boning, 8 inch bread, 10 inch cutting, and 10 inch honing steel and kitchen shears. 

The edges are produced using high carbon and don't recolor in addition to they are built with end to end length for equalization and quality. Look at all the most well known Victorinox kitchen cuts here.

It appears to be that a lot of gourmet experts are continually looking to the items that originate from Japan for the best quality and cutting accuracy. The best Japanese kitchen blades are conceivable those made by Global. Worldwide kitchen blades are not modest and huge numbers of their sets incorporate only 3 or 4 blades that accomplish all the work. 

Their 9 piece blade block set sells for $575 on yet you can locate the more affordable 3 piece set for around $175 with a chef's, utlity, and paring blade included. The 3 piece empty ground santoku blade set is sensible evaluated and proprietors state the blend of light weight and impeccable equalization make these blades simple to utilize. They are sharp and decisively slice through any food you toss at them.

The stepped steel blades from Chicago Cutlery and Oxo are sold at $100 or less and gracefully any gourmet expert with all the apparatuses they need. The Chicago Cutlery Metropolitan set incorporates 8 blades and sells for generally $60. The Oxo Good Grips is somewhat more costly at $100 however you likewise get 14 pieces in this cutlery set. 

The Oxo blades rate well for solace and parity in the handle making for a smooth cutting encounter. In spite of the fact that you will see a marginally sub-par cutting execution in these stepped sharp edges contrasted with the fashioned edges from Wusthof and Henckels, they actually carry out the responsibility very well and convey "great worth" in the kitchen.

[grigori77]

2019 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30.  GLASS – back in 2000, I went from liking the work of The Sixth Sense’s writer-director M. Night Shyamalan to becoming a genuine FAN thanks to his sneakily revisionist deconstruction of superhero tropes, Unbreakable.  It’s STILL my favourite film of his to date, and one of my Top Ten superhero movies EVER, not just a fascinating examination of the mechanics of the genre but also a very satisfying screen origin story – needless to say I’m one of MANY fans who’ve spent nearly two decades holding out hope for a sequel.  Flash forward to 2016 and Shyamalan’s long-overdue return-to-form sleeper hit, Split, which not only finally put his career back on course but also dropped a particularly killer end twist by actually being that very sequel.  Needless to say 2019 was the year we FINALLY got our PROPER reward for all our patience – Glass is the TRUE continuation of the Unbreakable universe and the closer of a long-intended trilogy.  Turns out, though, that it’s also his most CONTROVERSIAL film for YEARS, dividing audiences and critics alike with its unapologetically polarizing plot and execution – I guess that, after a decade of MCU and a powerhouse trilogy of Batman movies from Chris Nolan, we were expecting an epic, explosive action-fest to close things out, but that means we forgot exactly what it is about Shyamalan we got to love so much, namely his unerring ability to subvert and deconstruct whatever genre he’s playing around in.  And he really doesn’t DO spectacle, does he?  That said, this film is still a surprisingly BIG, sprawling piece of work, even if it the action is, for the most part, MUCH more internalised than most superhero movies.  Not wanting to drop any major spoilers on the few who still haven’t seen it, I won’t give away any major plot points, suffice to say that ALL the major players from both Unbreakable and Split have returned – former security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has spent the past nineteen years exploring his super-strength and near-invulnerability while keeping Philadelphia marginally safer as hooded vigilante the Overseer, and the latest target of his crime-fighting crusade is Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), the vessel of 24 split personalities collectively known as the Horde, who’s continuing his cannibalistic serial-murder spree through the streets.  Both are being hunted by the police, as well as Dr. Ellie Staple (series newcomer Sarah Paulson), a clinical psychiatrist specialising in treating individuals who suffer the delusional belief that they’re superheroes, her project also encompassing David’s former mentor-turned-nemesis Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the eponymous Mr. Glass, whose life-long suffering from a crippling bone disease that makes his body dangerously fragile has done nothing to blunt the  genius-level intellect that’s made him a ruthlessly accomplished criminal mastermind. How these remarkable individuals are brought together makes for fascinating viewing, and while it may be a good deal slower and talkier than some might have preferred, this is still VERY MUCH the Shyamalan we first came to admire – fiendishly inventive, slow-burn suspenseful and absolutely DRIPPING with cool earworm dialogue, his characteristically mischievous sense of humour still present and correct, and he’s retained that unswerving ability to wrong-foot us at every turn, right up to one of his most surprising twist endings to date.  The cast are, as ever, on fire, the returning hands all superb while those new to the universe easily measure up to the quality of talent on display – Willis and Jackson are, as you’d expect, PERFECT throughout, brilliantly building on the incredibly solid groundwork laid in Unbreakable, while it’s a huge pleasure to see Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark (a fine actor we don’t see NEARLY enough of, in my opinion) and Charlayne Woodard get MUCH bigger, more prominent roles this time out, while Paulson delivers an understated but frequently mesmerising turn as the ultimate unshakable sceptic.  As with Split, however, the film is comprehensively stolen by McAvoy, whose truly chameleonic performance actually manages to eclipse its predecessor in its levels of sheer genius.  Altogether this is another sure-footed step in the right direction for a director who’s finally regained his singular auteur prowess – say what you will about that ending, but it certainly is a game-changer, as boldly revisionist as anything that’s preceded it and therefore, in my opinion, exactly how it SHOULD have gone.  If nothing else, this is a film that should be applauded for its BALLS …

29.  THE PEANUT BUTTER FALCON – quite possibly the year’s most adorable indie, this dramatic feature debut from documentarian writer-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz largely snuck in under the radar on release, but has gone on to garner some well-deserved critical appreciation and sleeper hit success.  The lion’s share of the film’s success must surely go to the inspired casting, particularly in the central trio who drive the action – Nilson and Schwartz devised the film with Zack Gotsagen, an exceptionally talented young actor with Down’s Syndrome, specifically in mind for the role of Zak, a wrestling obsessive languishing in a North Carolina retirement home who dreams of escaping his stifling confines and going to the training camp of his hero, the Saltwater Redneck (Thomas Haden Church), where he can learn to become a pro wrestler; after slipping free, Zak enlists the initially wary help of down-at-heel criminal fisherman Tyler (Shia LaBaouf) in reaching his intended destination, while the pair are pursued by Zak’s primary caregiver, Eleanor (Dakota Johnson).  Needless to say the unlikely pair bond on the road, and when Eleanor is reluctantly forced to tag along with them, a surrogate family is formed … yeah, the plot is so predictable you can see every twist signposted from miles back, but that familiarity is never a problem because these characters are so lovingly written and beautifully played that you’ve fallen for them within five minutes of meeting them, so you’re effortlessly swept along for the ride. The three leads are pure gold – this is the most laid back and cuddly Shia’s been for years, but his lackadaisical charm is pleasingly tempered with affecting pathos driven by a tragic loss in Tyler’s recent past, while Johnson is sensible, sweet and likeably grounded, even when Eleanor’s at her most exasperated, but Gotsagen is the real surprise, delivering an endearingly unpredictable, livewire performance that blazes with true, honest purity and total defiance in the face of any potential difficulties society may try to throw at Zak – while there’s excellent support from Church in a charmingly awkward late-film turn that goes a long way to reminding us just what an acting treasure he is, as well as John Hawkes and rapper Yelawolf as a pair of lowlife crab-fishermen hunting for Tyler, intending to wreak (not entirely undeserved) revenge on him for an ill-judged professional slight.  Enjoying a gentle sense of humour and absolutely CRAMMED with heartfelt emotional heft, this really was one of the most downright LOVEABLE films of 2019.

28.  PET SEMATARY – first off, let me say that I never saw the 1989 feature adaptation of Stephen King’s story, so I have no comparative frame of reference there – I WILL say, however, that the original novel is, in my opinion, one of the strongest offerings from America’s undisputed master of literary horror, so any attempt made to bring it to the big screen had better be a good one.  Thankfully, this version more than delivers in that capacity, proving to be one of the more impressive of his cinematic outings in recent years (not quite up to the standard of The Mist or It Chapter 1, perhaps, but certainly on a par with the criminally overlooked 1408), as well as one of the year’s top horror offerings.  This may be the feature debut of directing double-act Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, but they both display a wealth of natural talent here, wrangling bone-chilling scares and a pervading atmosphere of oppressive dread to deliver a top-notch screen fright-fest that works its way under your skin and stays put for days after.  Jason Clarke is a classic King everyman hero as Boston doctor Louis Creed, displaced to the small Maine town of Ludlow as he trades the ER for a quiet clinic practice so he can spent more time with his family – Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color, Stranger Things), excellent throughout as his haunted, emotionally fragile wife Rachel, toddler son Gage (twins Hugo and Lucas Lavole), and daughter Ellie (newcomer Jeté Laurence, BY FAR the film’s biggest revelation, delivering to the highest degree even when her role becomes particularly intense).  Their new home seems idyllic, the only blots being the main road at the end of their drive which experiences heavy traffic from speeding trucks, and the children’s pet cemetery in the woods at the back of their garden, which has become something of a local landmark.  But there’s something far darker in the deeper places beyond, an ancient place of terrible power Louis is introduced to by their well-meaning but ultimately fallible elderly neighbour Jud (one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from screen legend John Lithgow) when his daughter’s beloved cat Church is run over. The cat genuinely comes back, but he’s irrevocably changed, the once gentle and lovable furball now transformed into a menacingly mangy little psychopath, and his resurrection sets off a chain of horrific events destined to devour the entire family … this is supernatural horror at its most inherently unnerving, mercilessly twisting the screws throughout its slow-burn build to the inevitable third act bloodbath and reaching a bleak, soul-crushing climax that comes close to rivalling the still unparalleled sucker-punch of The Mist – the adaptation skews significantly from King’s original at the mid-point, but even purists will be hard-pressed to deny that this is still VERY MUCH in keeping with the spirit of the book right up to its harrowing closing shot.  The King of Horror has been well served once again – fans can rest assured that his dark imagination continues to inspire some truly great cinematic scares …

27.  THE REPORT – the CIA’s notorious use of torture to acquire information from detainees in Guantanamo Bay and various other sites around the world in the wake of September 11, 2001, has been a particularly spiky political subject for years now, one which has gained particular traction with cinema-goers over the years thanks to films like Rendition and, of course, controversial Oscar-troubler Zero Dark Thirty.  It’s also a particular bugbear of screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum, Contagion, Side Effects) – his parents are both psychologists, and he found it particularly offensive that a profession he knows was created to help people could have been turned into such a damaging weapon against the human psyche, inexorably leading him to taking up this passion project, championed by its producer, and Burns’ long-time friend and collaborator, Steven Soderbergh.  It tells the true story of Senate staffer Daniel Jones’ five-year battle to bring his damning 6,300-page study of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program, commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee, into the light of day in the face of increasingly intense and frequently underhanded resistance from the Agency and various high-ranking officials within the US Government whose careers could be harmed should their own collusion be revealed. In lesser hands this could have been a clunky, unappetisingly dense excuse for a slow-burn political thriller that drowned in its own exposition, but Burns handles the admittedly heavyweight material with deft skill and makes each increasingly alarming revelation breathlessly compelling while he ratchets up the tension by showing just what a seemingly impossible task Jones and his small but driven team faced.  The film would have been nought, however, without a strong cast, and this one has a killer – taking a break from maintaining his muscle-mass for Star Wars, Adam Driver provides a suitably robust narrative focus as Jones, an initially understated workman who slowly transforms into an incensed moral crusader as he grows increasingly filled with righteous indignation by the vile subject matter he’s repeatedly faced with, and he’s provided with sterling support from the likes of Annette Bening, delivering her best performance in years as Senator Dianne Feinstein, Jones’ staunchest supporter, the ever-wonderful Ted Levine as oily CIA director John O. Brennan, Tim Blake Nelson as a physician contracted by the CIA to assist with interrogations who became genuinely disgusted by the horrors he witnessed, and Matthew Rhys as an unnamed New York Times reporter Jones considers leaking the report to when it looks like it might never be released.  This is powerful stuff, and while it may only mark Burns’ second directorial feature (after his obscure debut Pu-239), he handles the gig like a seasoned pro, milking the material for every drop of dramatic tension while keeping the narrative as honest, forthright and straightforward as possible, and the end result makes for sobering, distressing and thoroughly engrossing viewing.  Definitely one of the most important films not only of 2019, but of the decade itself, and one that NEEDS to be seen.

26.  DARK PHOENIX – wow, this really has been a year for mistreated sequels, hasn’t it?  There’s a seriously stinky cloud of controversy surrounding what is now, in light of recent developments between Disney and Twentieth Century Fox, the last true Singer-era X-Men movie, a film which saw two mooted release dates (first November 2018 then the following February, before finally limping onto screens with very little fanfare in June 2019, almost as if Fox wanted to bury it. Certainly rumours of its compromise were rife, particularly regarding supposed rushed reshoots because of clashing similarities with Marvel’s major tent-pole release Captain Marvel (and given the all-conquering nature of the MCU there was no way they were having that, was there?), so like many I was expecting a clunky mess, maybe even a true stinker to rival X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  In truth, while it’s not perfect, the end result is nothing like the turd we all feared – the final film is, in fact, largely a success, worthy of favourable comparison with its stronger predecessors.  It certainly makes much needed amends for the disappointing mismanagement of the source comics’ legendary Dark Phoenix saga in 2006’s decidedly compromised original X-Men trilogy capper The Last Stand, this time treating the story with the due reverence and respect it deserves as well as serving as a suitably powerful send-off for more than one beloved key character.  Following the “rebooted” path of the post-Days of Future Past timeline, it’s now 1992, and after the world-changing events of Apocalypse the X-Men have become a respected superhero team with legions of fans and their own personal line to the White House, while mutants at large have mostly become accepted by the regular humans around them.  Then a hastily planned mission into space takes a turn for the worst and Jean Grey (Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner) winds up absorbing an immensely powerful, thoroughly inexplicable cosmic force that makes her powers go haywire while also knocking loose repressed childhood traumas Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) would rather had stayed buried, sending her on a dangerous spiral out of control which leads to a destructive confrontation and the inadvertent death of a teammate.  Needless to say, the situation soon becomes desperate as Jean goes on the run and the world starts to turn against them all once again … all in all, then, it’s business as usual for the cast and crew of one of Fox’s flagship franchises, and it SHOULD have gone off without a hitch.  When Bryan Singer opted not to return this time around (instead setting his sights on Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody), key series writer Simon Kinberg stepped into the breach for his directorial debut, and it turns out he’s got a real talent for it, giving us just the kind of robust, pacy, thrilling action-packed epic his compatriot would have delivered, filled with the same thumping great set-pieces (the final act’s stirring, protracted train battle is the unequivocal highlight here), well-observed character beats and emotional resonance we’ve come to expect from the series as a whole (then again, he does know these movies back to frond having at least co-written his fair share).  The cast, similarly, are all on top form – McAvoy and Michael Fassbender (as fan favourite Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto) know their roles so well now they can do this stuff in their sleep, but we still get to see them explore interesting new facets of their characters (particularly McAvoy, who gets to reveal an intriguing dark side to the Professor we’ve only ever seen hinted at before now), while Turner finally gets to really breathe in a role which felt a little stiff and underexplored in her series debut in Apocalypse (she EASILY forges the requisite connective tissue to Famke Janssen’s more mature and assured take in the earlier films); conversely Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler) and Evan Peters (Quicksilver) get somewhat short shrift but nonetheless do A LOT with what little they have, and at least Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult still get to do plenty of dramatic heavy lifting as the last of Xavier’s original class, Raven (Mystique) and Hank McCoy (Beast); the only real weak link in the cast is the villain, Vuk, a shape-shifting alien whose quest to seize the power Jean’s appropriated is murkily defined at best, but at least Jessica Chastain manages to invest her with enough icy menace to keep things from getting boring.  All in all, then, this is very much a case of business as usual, Kinberg and co keeping the action thundering along at a suitably cracking pace throughout (powered by a typically epic score from Hans Zimmer), and the film only really comes off the rails in its final moments, when that aforementioned train finally comes off its tracks and the reported reshoots must surely kick in – as a result this is, to me, most reminiscent of previous X-flick The Wolverine, which was a rousing success for the majority of its runtime, only coming apart in its finale thanks to that bloody ridiculous robot samurai.  The climax is, therefore, a disappointment, too clunky and sudden and overly neat in its denouement (we really could have done with a proper examination of the larger social impact of these events), but it’s little enough that it doesn’t spoil what came before … which just makes the film’s mismanagement and resulting failure, as well as its subsequent treatment from critics and fans alike, all the more frustrating.  This film deserved much better, but ultimately looks set to be disowned and glossed over by most of the fanbase as the property as a whole goes through the inevitable overhaul now that Disney/Marvel owns Fox and plans to bring the X-Men and their fellow mutants into the MCU fold.  I feel genuinely sorry for the one remaining X-film, The New Mutants, which is surely destined for spectacular failure after its similarly shoddy round of reschedules finally comes to an end this summer …

25.  IT CHAPTER 2 – back in 2017, Mama director Andy Muschietti delivered the first half of his ambitious two-film adaptation of one of Stephen King’s most popular and personal novels, which had long been considered un-filmable (the 90s miniseries had a stab, but while it deserves its cult favourite status it certainly fell short in several places) until Muschietti and screenwriters Cary Joji Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman seemingly did the impossible, and the end result was the top horror hit of the year.  Ultimately, then, it was gonna be a tough act to follow, and there was MAJOR conjecture whether they could repeat that success with this second half.  Would lightning strike twice?  Well, the simple answer is … mostly.  2017’s Chapter 1 was a stone-cold masterpiece, and one of the strongest elements in its favour was the extremely game young cast of newcomers and relative unknown child actors who brought the already much beloved Loser’s Club to perfectly-cast life, a seven-strong gang of gawky pre-teen underdogs you couldn’t help loving, which made it oh-so-easy to root for them as they faced off against that nightmarish shape-shifting child-eating monster, Pennywise the Dancing Clown.  It was primal, it was terrifying, and it was BURSTING with childhood nostalgia that thoroughly resonated with an audience hungry for more 80s-set coming-of-age genre fare after the runaway success of Stranger Things.  Bringing the story into the present day with the Losers now returning to their childhood home of Derry, Maine as forty-something adults, Chapter 2 was NEVER going to achieve the same pulse-quickening electric charge the first film pulled off, was it?  Thankfully, with the same director and (mostly) the same writing crew on hand (Fukunaga jumped ship but Dauberman was there to finish up with the help of Jason Fuchs and an uncredited Jeffrey Jurgensen) there’s still plenty of that old magic left over, so while it’s not quite the same second time round, this still feels very much like the same adventure, just older, wiser and a bit more cynical.  Here’s a more relevant reality check, mind – those who didn’t approve of the first film’s major changes from the book are going to be even more incensed by this, but the differences here are at least organic and in keeping with the groundwork laid in Chapter 1, and indeed this film in particular is a VERY different beast from the source material, but these differences are actually kind of a strength here, Muschietti and co. delivering something that works MUCH better cinematically than a more faithful take would have. Anyway, the Loser’s Club are back, all grown up and (for the most part) wildly successful living FAR AWAY from Derry with dream careers and seemingly perfect lives.  Only Mike Hanlon has remained behind to hold vigil over the town and its monstrous secret, and when a new spree of disappearances and grisly murders begins he calls his old friends back home to fulfil the pact they all swore to uphold years ago – stop Pennywise once and for all.  The new cast are just as excellent as their youthful counterparts – Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy are, of course, the big leads here as grown up Beverley Marsh and Bill Denbrough, bringing every watt of star power they can muster, but the others hold more interest, with Bill Hader perfectly cast (both director and child actor’s personal first choice) as smart-mouth Richie Tozier, Isaiah Mustafah (best known as the Old Spice guy from those hilarious commercials) playing VERY MUCH against type as Mike, Jay Ryan (successful on the small screen in Top of the Lake and Beauty & the Beast, but very much getting his cinematic big break here) as a slimmed-down and seriously buffed-out Ben Hanscom, James Ransone (Sinister) as neurotic hypochondriac Eddie Kaspbrak, and Andy Bean (Power, the recent Swamp Thing series) as ever-rational Stan Uris – but we still get to hang out with the original kids too in new flashbacks that (understandably) make for some of the film’s best scenes, while Bill Skarsgard is as terrifying as ever as he brings new ferocity, insidious creepiness and even a touch of curious back-story to Pennywise.  I am happy to report this new one IS just as scary as its predecessor, a skin-crawling, spine-tingling, pants-wetting cold sweat of a horror-fest that works its way in throughout its substantial running time and, as before, sticks with you LONG after the credits have rolled, but it’s also got the same amount of heart, emotional heft and pathos, nostalgic charm (albeit more grown-up and sullied) and playful, sometimes decidedly mischievous geeky humour, so that as soon as you’re settled in it really does feel like you’ve come home. It’s also fiendishly inventive, the final act in particular skewing in some VERY surprising new directions that there’s NO WAY you’ll see coming, and the climax also, interestingly, redresses one particularly frustrating imbalance that always bugged me about the book, making for an especially moving, heartbreaking denouement.  Interestingly, there’s a running joke in the film that pokes fun at a perceived view from some quarters that Stephen King’s endings often disappoint – there’s no such fault with THIS particular adaptation.  For me, this was altogether JUST the concluding half I was hoping for, so while it’s not as good as the first, it should leave you satisfied all the same.

24.  MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN – it’s taken Edward Norton twenty years to get his passion project adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s novel to the big screen, but the final film was certainly worth the wait, a cool-as-ice noir thriller in which its writer-director also, of course, stars as one of the most unusual ‘tecs around.  Lionel Essrog suffers from Tourette syndrome, prone to uncontrollable ticks and vocal outbursts as well as obsessive-compulsive spirals that can really ruin his day, but he’s also got a genius-level intellect and a photographic memory, which means he’s the perfect fit for the detective agency of accomplished, highly successful New York gumshoe Frank Minna (Bruce Willis).  But when their latest case goes horribly wrong and Frank dies in a back-alley gunfight, the remaining members of the agency are left to pick up the pieces and try to find out what went wrong, Lionel battling his own personal, mental and physical demons as he tries to unravel an increasingly labyrinthine tangle of lies, deceit, corporate corruption and criminal enterprise that reaches to the highest levels of the city’s government.  Those familiar with the original novel will know that it’s set in roughly the present day, but Norton felt many aspects of the story lent themselves much better to the early 1950s, and it really was a good choice – Lionel is a man very much out his time, a very odd fit in an age of stuffy morals and repression, while the themes of racial upheaval, rampant urban renewal and massive, unchecked corporate greed feel very much of the period. Besides, there’s few things as seductive than a good noir thriller, and Norton has crafted a real GEM right here. The pace can be a little glacial at times, but this simply gives the unfolding plot and extremely rich collection of characters plenty of room to grow, while the jazzy score (from up-and-comer Daniel Pemberton, composer on Steve Jobs, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) provides a surprising complimentary accompaniment to the rather free-form narrative style and Lionel’s own scattershot, bebop style.  Norton is exceptional in the lead, landing his best role in years with an exquisitely un-self-conscious ease that makes for thoroughly compelling viewing (surely more than one nod will be due come awards-season), but he doesn’t hog ALL the limelight, letting his uniformly stellar supporting cast shine bright as well – Willis doesn’t get a huge amount of screen time, but delivers a typically strong, nuanced performance that makes his absence throughout the rest of the film keenly felt, Gugu Mbatha-Raw continues to build an impressive run of work as Laura, the seemingly unimportant woman Lionel befriends, who could actually be the key to the whole case, Alec Baldwin is coolly menacing as power-hungry property magnate and heavyweight city official Moses Randolph, the film’s nominal big-bad, Willem Dafoe is absolutely electrifying as his down-at-heel, insignificant genius brother Lou, and Boardwalk Empire’s Michael K. Williams is quietly outstanding as mysterious jazz musician Trumpet Man, while Bobby Canavale, Ethan Suplee and Dallas Roberts are all excellent as the other hands in Minna’s detective agency.  It’s a chilled-out affair, happy to hang back and let its slow-burn plot simmer while Lionel tries to navigate his job and life in general while battling his many personal difficulties, but due to the incredible calibre of the talent on offer, the incredibly rich dialogue and obligatory hardboiled gumshoe voiceover, compelling story and frequently achingly beautiful visuals, this is about as compulsively rewarding as cinema gets. Norton’s crafted a film noir worthy of comparison with the likes of L.A. Confidential and Chinatown, proving that he’s a triple-threat cinematic talent to be reckoned with.

23.  PROSPECT – I love a good cinematic underdog, there’s always some dynamite indies and sleepers that just about slip through the cracks that I end up championing every year, and one of 2019’s favourites was a minor sensation at 2018’s South By Southwest film festival, a singularly original ultra-low-budget sci-fi adventure that made a genuine virtue of its miniscule budget.  Riffing on classic eco-minded space flicks like Silent Running, it introduces a father-and-daughter prospecting team who land a potentially DEEPLY lucrative contract mining for an incredibly rare element on a toxic jungle moon – widower Damon (Transparent’s Jay Duplass), who’s downtrodden and world-weary but still a dreamer, and teenager Cee (relative newcomer Sophie Thatcher), an introverted bookworm with hidden reserves of ingenuity and fortitude.  The job starts well, Damon setting his sights on a rumoured “queen’s layer” that could make them rich beyond their wildest dreams, but when they meet smooth-talking scavenger Ezra (Narcos’ Pedro Pascal), things take a turn for the worse – Damon is killed and Cee is forced to team up with Ezra to have any hope for survival on this hostile, unforgiving moon.  Thatcher is an understated joy throughout, her seemingly detached manner belying hidden depths of intense feeling, while Pascal, far from playing a straight villain, turns Ezra into something of a tragic, charismatic antihero we eventually start to sympathise with, and the complex relationship that develops between them is a powerful, mercurial thing, the constantly shifting dynamic providing a powerful driving force for the film.  Debuting writer-directors Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell have crafted a wonderfully introspective, multi-layered tone poem of aching beauty, using subtle visual effects and a steamy, glow-heavy colour palette to make the lush forest environs into something nonetheless eerie and inhospitable, while the various weird and colourful denizens of this deadly little world prove that Ezra may be the LEAST of the dangers Cee faces in her quest for escape.  Inventive, intriguing and a veritable feast for the eyes and intellect, this is top-notch indie sci-fi and a sign of great things to come from its creators, thoroughly deserving of major cult recognition in the future.

22.  DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE – S. Craig Zahler is a writer-director who’s become a major fixture on my ones-to-watch list in recent years, instantly winning me over with his dynamite debut feature Bone Tomahawk before cementing that status with awesome follow-up Brawl On Cell Block 99.  His latest is another undeniable hit that starts deceptively simply before snowballing into a sprawling urban crime epic as it follows its main protagonists – disgraced Bulwark City cops Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Tony Lurasetti (BOCB99’s Vince Vaughn), on unpaid suspension after their latest bust leads to a PR nightmare – on a descent into a hellish criminal underworld as they set out to “seek compensation” for their situation by ripping off the score from a bank robbery spearheaded by ruthlessly efficient professional thief Lorentz Vogelmann (Thomas Kretschmann).  In lesser hands, this two-hour-forty-minute feature might have felt like a painfully padded effort that would have passed far better chopped down to a breezy 90-minutes, but Zahler is such a compellingly rich and resourceful writer that every scene is essential viewing, overflowing with exquisitely drawn characters spouting endlessly quotable, gold-plated dialogue, and the constantly shifting narrative focus brings such consistent freshness that the increasingly complex plot remains rewarding right to the end.  The two leads are both typically excellent – Vaughn gets to let loose with a far more showy, garrulous turn here than his more reserved character in his first collaboration with Zahler, while this is EASILY the best performance I’ve seen Gibson deliver in YEARS, the grizzled veteran clearly having a fine old time getting his teeth into a particularly meaty role that very much plays to his strengths – and they’re brilliantly bolstered by an excellent supporting cast – Get Rich Or Die Tryin’s Tory Kittles easily matches them in his equally weighty scenes as Henry Johns, a newly-released ex-con also out to improve his family’s situation with a major score, while Kretschmann is at his most chilling as the brutal killer who executes his plans with cold-blooded precision, and there are wonderful scene-stealing offerings from Jennifer Carpenter, Udo Kier, Don Johnson (three more Zahler regulars, each featured with Vaughn on BOCB99), Michael Jai White, Laurie Holden and newcomer Miles Truitt.  This is a proper meaty film, dark, intense, gritty and unflinching in its portrayal of honest, unglamorous violence and its messy aftermath, but fans of grown-up filmmaking will find PLENTY to enjoy here, Zahler crafting a crime epic comparable to the heady best of Scorsese and Tarantino.  Another sure-fire winner from one of the best new filmmakers around.

21.  FAST COLOR – intriguingly, the most INTERESTING superhero movie of the year was NOT a major franchise property, or even a comic book adapted to the screen at all, but a wholly original indie which snuck in very much under the radar on its release but is surely destined for cult greatness in the future, not least due to some much-deserved critical acclaim.  Set in an unspecified future where it hasn’t rained for years, a homeless vagabond named Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is making her aimless way across a desolate American Midwest, tormented by violent seizures which cause strange localised earthquakes, and hunted by Bill (Argo’s Christopher Denham), a rogue scientist who wants to capture her so he can study her abilities.  Ultimately she’s left with no other recourse than to run home, sheltering with her mother Bo (Middle of Nowhere and Orange is the New Black’s Lorraine Toussaint), and her young daughter Lila (The Passage’s Saniyya Sidney), both of whom also have weird and wondrous powers of their own.  As the estranged family reconnect, Ruth finally learns to control her powers as she’s forced to confront her own troubled past, but as Bill closes in it looks like their idyll might be short-lived … this might only be the second feature of writer-director Julie Hart (who cut her teeth penning well-regarded indie western The Keeping Room before making her own debut helming South By Southwest Film Festival hit Miss Stevens), but it’s a blinding statement of intent for the future, a deceptively understated thing of beauty that eschews classic superhero cinema conventions of big spectacle and rousing action in favour of a quiet, introspective character-driven story where the unveiling and exploration of Ruth and her kin’s abilities are secondary to the examination of how their familial dynamics work (or often DON’T), while Hart and cinematographer Michael Fimognari (probably best known for his frequent work for Mike Flanagan) bring a ruined but bleakly beautiful future to life through inventively understated production design and sweeping, dramatic vistas largely devoid of visual effects.  Subtlety is the watchword, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t fireworks here, it’s just that they’re generally performance-based – awards-darling Mbatha-Raw (Belle) gives a raw, heartfelt performance, painting Ruth in vivid shades of grey, while Toussaint is restrained but powerfully memorable and Sidney builds on her already memorable work to deliver what might be her best turn to date, and there are strong supporting turns from Denham (who makes his nominal villain surprisingly sympathetic) and Hollywood great David Strathairn as gentle small town sheriff Ellis. Leisurely paced and understated it may be, but this is still an incendiary piece of work, sure to become a breakout sleeper hit for a filmmaking talent from whom I expect GREAT THINGS in the future, and since the story’s been picked up for expansion into a TV series with Hart in charge that looks like a no-brainer.  And it most assuredly IS a bona fide superhero movie, despite appearances to the contrary …

[papasquatte]

Urbex Summoning

“Guys, I can’t tell you how bad of an idea this is.” the whine in my voice was evident, even to me. But I couldn’t help it considering what they intended to do. I passed the bag of equipment to Susan and climbed through the window, determined nonetheless to see this debacle thought to the end. Tony played his flashlight over the graffiti scared walls of our surroundings and spared me a withering glare. 

“ For the last time, shut the fuck up dude.” 

“Look, even if you don’t believe in the supernatural there could still be druggies or scrappers in here.” Susan handed me the bag back with slightly more force than was necessary, momentarily driving the breath from what I would call my lungs. As I staggered back I was unceremoniously shoved forward by Dan as he came through the broken window. He was carrying our sound equipment and was probably the most burdened of all of us and in no mood to dodge around people. 

“There’s four of us” he pointed out as he pulled his bag through.” Any drugie or scrapper’s probably not going to come here in more than one’s or two’s. Worse they’ll do will try and scare us off.” He glanced around the room and frowned. “That might be for the best, or we’ll have to stage something to make it more interesting.” 

Ryan stuck his head back into the room. “I’d prefer not to have to. Hallway’s clear this way of crap and the floor's still sound.” 

“Well spirits aren’t always accommodating when it comes to filming.” Dan walked over and stuck his head out to look the other direction. "We could split off into teams tonight.”

Susan crossed her arms and glanced at me. “Doug’s got a point. I’d rather stick together.”

Dan waived dismissively back at her. “ It’ll be fine.”

Thwarted in my attempt to logic us back out the window I cut to the heart of what was actually getting my hackles up. “It’s not just druggies man. You’re messing with things you don’t understand.”

Susan punched me in the arm. “What’s this ‘you’ stuff? Why the hell did you even come if you’re not going to participate?”

It was a good question, and one I did not want answered truthfully if I could help it. Instead I hefted the camera bag and muttered, “ you’ll need a cameraman.” 

She took the bag from me and unzipped it. “Any of us could

have been the cameraman. But fine, if you want to then here’s the rig. Get it set up and for the love of all that is holy, stop bitching. I had to hear this for two hours on the car ride here, and I swear if you open your mouth to whine one more time I’ll shove that GoPro so far down your throat you’ll have to drop your pants to record anything.” 

    I busied myself getting the GoPro into the steadicam rig while everyone else was issued mics by Dan and got themselves set up. 

    “Alright lads and ladies, here’s tonight’s agenda.” Tony clapped his hands together in an unnecessarily business like fashion, “We’ll be doing the introduction here.” He waived vaguely around the room. We’d picked a first floor window that had been broken for years as our entrance. It was screened from the outside by a hedge and led into a fairly unobstructed patient room. It was clear we’d not been the only ones to favor this entrance as the graffiti lay thick and graphic on the walls. “Then we’ll break off into two teams and shoot some investigation work for about forty five minutes.”

    Dan put up his hand. “ I thought we were doing voice over.”

    “We can decide that for sure later. But I’d like us to have an in person introduction ready in case we go that route.”

    “It’s easier than driving back two hours to shoot it later.” Susan put in.

    Tony nodded, “the voice over is mostly for the B roll stuff anyway. Maybe narrate some of the history of the place over less than interesting footage.” He played with his clip on mic, adjusting it in some tiny way that was more nerves than necessary. “ Anyway, I see us doing about forty five minutes of investigation shoots in teams of two. EVP work, that sort of thing. That should put us at about 11:30. That gives us about ten minutes to head down to the morgue in the basement and be set up by midnight.”

    My gut twisted into knots.

    “Can’t we just do a seance or a Ouiji board session? Why does it have to be demon summoning?” The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I knew I’d lost this argument. It was one we’d have several times while on the way over here and I’d lost every one of those too.

    “Because everyone does seances or plays with that damn spirit board.” Tony snapped. “ If we want anyone to watch our videos we need to up the ante.”

“Must we up it that high?”

Susan put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s just pretend man, none of this is real.”

I bit back my first response. These idiots were about to die over a Youtube video and here they were telling me to calm down. 

“Hey,” Tony smacked me on the chest, as if that would improve my mood. “ film me doing the intro already.” 

“Hey, why do you get to do the intro?” Dan crossed his arms and postered in what he clearly thought was a ‘badass’ pose.

“Oh for fucks sake,” Susan muttered by my arm, “here we go again.”

“What?” Tony faked a nonchalant attitude. “I didn’t know you wanted to do the intro. Why don’t you do the voice over stuff later?”

“Oh and let you edit it with your own audio?”

I shifted position and recentered the camera on both of them. “Guys, why don’t you just do the intro together?” I may not have been able to get them to give up this fool’s errand, but I could at least keep them from fighting, again. Plus their gormless expressions as they realized they’d not rehearsed the intro in tandum gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Tony glanced between themselves. “Wait, who’ll say what?”

Susan for her part, could think on her feet. She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a steadying breath. “Dan, you do the intro, Tony you come in for the history and then I’ll step in for the ritual.”

    Tony had enough sense to defer to her. I centered Dan in the shot and counted him in.

    “Hey guys,” he threw a causal and not to code salute at the viewers, “it’s us, the Bootectives, and we’re here at the Pendleton Mission Hospital with another great video for you.” I could just catch Tony putting his face in his hands off camera. If Dan noticed, he was at least professional enough to ignore it this time. “Pendleton Hospital is about twenty five miles north of its namesake city. This whole area is saturated in psychic energy and we’re here to investigate it.”

    Susan signaled Tony as I paned over to him. “In its heyday Pendleton Mission was a tuberculosis hospital so,” he hefted one of our dust masks, “we brought ourselves some protection. Even if there’s no latent TB bugs, Pendleton Mission has been abandoned for the last thirty years, so black mold is a real possibility and we want to be safe.” I caught Susans eye and she got herself into position, sliding in next to Dan off camera. “And guys, we’ve got a real treat for this investigation.” He did unnecessary finger guns to point me towards Susan. I caught the tale end of Susan’s glare in the video, which, I felt the viewers would appreciate. 

        She hefted a book that made my insides turn to water. "We’re going to try and summon a demon.”

    The book itself wasn’t the problem. It was a rather unassuming brown cloth book printed probably in the late eighties. It wasn’t bound in human skin like some of the more ostentatious occult books I could name. Nor was it written in virgin blood. Which, lets face it, clots far too quickly for that sort of macabre gesture. No, it was typed with sensible margins, copy edited, and published by absolute frothing madmen. 

 Not cultists mind you. No, you could alway rely on cultists to get something wrong. The worst they could usually accomplish was to summon some Carrion-class table shaker and strand the poor thing here. But this book. This had been written by sensible men, in sensible shoes, who didn’t actually believe in any of the stuff they were writing about. It wasn’t real. So what did it matter to them if they wrote down and published the exact steps for summoning a Slaughter-class demon. And wouldn’t you know it? My group of would-be ghost enthusiasts just happened to find it in the dirt smelling, used book shop down the street. I could have slapped the authors. 

 Susan went on, oblivious to me mentally running in circles, waving my arms and screaming.I thumbed the record button again to end the clip and nodded at Tony. Thinking about the book again was giving me a headache.  

“Alright,” Tony clapped twice as if the act alone would turn off the recording I’d already stopped. “Check your mic’s and lets get exploring.”

“Be careful out there guys.” I couldn’t help myself, I’m a worrier at heart and I did like these idiots. “ Try and stay within line of sight of your buddy at all times. We don’t know who else is here or how stable the building is the further in we go. I don’t want to see anyone showing up on the evening news.”

The others rolled their eyes and gave the same badgered “ok’s” my mother henning always got at this point. Thankfully no one argued with me. I guess since I wasn’t actively trying to end the investigation, they couldn’t fault my better judgement.  We paired off and moved out. 

By mutual consent and habit Tony and Dan paired off while I joined Susan and headed out. Dan and Tony both held a flame for Susan so I tended to be her exploration buddy so she didn’t  have to put up with their antics. It was an arrangement I was quite happy with to be fair. 

I held no particular interest in her, not that she wasn’t nice, she was just overly young for me. I simply preferred her cool headed skepticism. She always tried to find the rationale behind an event, looking for the logic in the situation. This was in stark contrast to the boys who’d feed off each other's paranoia and jumped at every shadow. Better for the audience, but more frustrating for me who was just there to enjoy the scenery. 

As we headed out Susan turned to me. “ Do you want to film or be in the shot?”

“Film,” I thumbed the record button again, “it’ll be easier to keep the ghosts out of the shot then.”

She laughed and I smiled like I was joking. “Right.” Susan started off down the hall. “We’ll shoot some B roll stuff for them to narrate over, and then I’ll jump at a few shadows and say I’m walking through cold spots or something. By then we can head off and meet them for the ritual and be out of here in time to do a sunrise shot.”

“Oh Gods, don’t remind me about the ritual.”

Susan glared back over her shoulder at me but softened, my face must have been paler than I thought for her to notice in the wane light of our flashlights. “Come on dude, it’s not real. We’ll be fine.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because,” She shrugged, “we’d have gotten evidence of it by now.” We continued down the corridor as we talked, passing decrepit room after decrepit room. I panned the camera into each to give the futur viewer a look at the horrible conditions of the place. It was about what you’d expect from an abandoned building left to the elements. The floor was covered in a mix of waterlogged carpet and ceiling fragments. The corridor and rooms choked with the detritus of years, either left to rot or thrown here by later generations. Graffiti "artists” had redecorated the walls in the sort of school yard vulgarity that was somehow universal in these places. Nothing the viewer hadn't seen in hundreds of other Urbex videos online, but I panned around none the less.

There was a lot of decay to take in, but the panning actions I was doing were for another reason. It was the perfect cover for my erratic movements as I stepped around the Blind Spirits and other spiritual flotsam. They were too weak to affect the material world. They were even too weak for the electronics of our equipment to pick up, being mostly echos and psychic imprints. They were however, unpleasant to step through if you were sensitive to the paranormal. Like stepping on an melting ice cube in a sock, they didn’t hurt but left an unpleasant lingering feeling.  Susan barged right through them, apparently numb to the spiritual realm. Personally I think she’s a younger soul, probably hasn’t gone around the bend too many times and been steeped in the supernatural. Old souls tended to resonate more. 

“What?” I raised her an eyebrow. “You mean dick heads like us? Or ‘real’ paranormal investigators?” A shadowy hand reached out of a crumbling doorway towards her. I angled the camera so it stayed out of shot and glared at it until it went somewhere else. 

“Anybody.” She waived her hand about, going right through an orb. I shrugged. In the end, I’ve always thought it was better that people didn’t know what to expect.

“If it was easy, would it be fun?”

    She snorted and shined her flashlight into another room. I almost recorded it, but caught myself just in time. There was a shadowy figure in a nurses outfit in the corner. Her eyes appeared to have been hollowed out and the look on her face told me she was reliving some terrible thing she’d probably done to someone. I turned and let her get on with it. “All I’m saying is that it’s better not to poke things we don’t understand.”

    Susan turned back to look at me. “Fine, would it make you feel better if I messed up the ritual?”

    “Really?” I must admit the prospect cheered me greatly.

    “Yeah,” Susan stopped and turned to look at me. “It’s not like it’ll make a big difference. I’ll smudge something or other.”

    “I’d like that a lot actually.”

    “Fine then, let’s go fake some ghost shit.”

    We spent the next forty five minutes doing just that. To be honest, I missed it more than I’d like to admit. In our early days the gang just went to “creepy” places, few of them ever really haunted. I’d rig up some  wires and mechanisms to make chairs rattle and items fly off shelves. While the others jumped and pointed. I’d been damn good at it too. But then our channel had blown up and the guys kept pushing us into deeper and darker places where some real serious shit had taken place. The culmination of all this was their insistence on this damnable ritual.

I’d missed just going through abandoned places and enjoying the scenery. There was something about urban decay that cheered me up. Maybe it was just that, after everything that had been done to this planet, it was nice to see nature gently taking something back. Eventually it would reclaim it totally, and the psychic energy could dissipate. 

We wound our way around to the basement slowly. Not really talking too much, just enjoying the stillness. We eventually ended up in the basement, and Tony's ritual site.The boys had beaten us there and started setting up. It was depressingly gothic. All it needed was a ram’s skull to complete the image of satanic barbarism. Susan picked up one of the jet black candles.

“Really?”

“Hey, Hey, Hey,” Tony scuttled over from where he’d been drawing glyphis, in red chalk no less. He snatched the candle from Susan and crouched to put it back. “I had those precisely placed.” He repositioned the candle along some invisible mark only he could seem to see. 

Despite Susan’s assurance, apprehension twisted my gut again. I’d have preferred it if we didn’t complete this farce at all if I was honest. Something of my mood must have shown in my face because Tony looked up at me.

“If you touch something I’ll break your hand, just go in the corner and film us.”

I nodded silently. All I was pray to whatever Gods were listening that what Susan planned on doing wouldn’t summon something equally likely to get them killed. I really should have known better, nothing in the ethereal helps without a price, and many of the Gods have a disgusting sense of humor. However, at that moment I was unaware of what that night would cost me and simply stood by to let them get on with it. 

It wasn’t until they started chanting that I felt something was wrong. It was when they were casting the words of binding, to be precise, when the circle flared into life. It pulsed with a malevolent red energy that overwhelmed our flashlights and threw disturbing shadows against the wall. 

“Cool!” Tony seemed overjoyed. I could have killed him, if I could move. The other two looked more than a little startled that anything had happened at all. I abandoned the camera and tried to move from my spot against the wall, but my feet were cemented in place with a force I could not break. From my vantage point I tried to read the glyphs that had been chalked out in the circle. It wasn’t long before I saw what had happened.

It had been Susan after all. They say if you give a monkey a typewriter and enough time it will eventually produce Hamlet. That sort of one in a million luck had apparently just happened. Susan had been as good as her word and messed with one of the glyphs. However, the particular glyph she had chosen to deface was a very delicate one. 

The light from the circle snapped from bright red to a sullen garnet. Shafts of sparkling light lanced up from the now open portal like demonic sparklers. I felt the pit of my stomach drop out as the three of them scrambled for cover.

The rune Susan had chosen to play with had ment “strongest”. It was, in-fact, the rune that had scared me the most. But with one extra stroke in exactly the wrong place Susan had completely changed it. Instead of “strongest” it now stood for “closest”. 

The world dropped away as if I’d fallen through a trapdoor, closely followed by the feeling of being slammed against a wall. This wall, was the inside of the circle. I had just enough time to look up at my friends pale faces before the next bit of unpleasantness started. The sparking bars of light began to bend inward. Where they touched me, illusion was stripped away and my true self was forced into the material plane.

This was unpleasant for all present. Besides feeling like my skin had been ripped off like an all-over bandaid, even the prettiest of celestial beings was never meant to be seen by man. Let’s just say there’s a reason the standard angelic greeting is ‘Be Not Afraid’. Infernal on  the other hand, we took it to another level. Lovecraft didn't capture half the unpleasantness with his fiction.

I could see their minds begin to crack as I unfurled and roiled outwards, slamming into the psychic bars of my prison. I attempted to use my ‘hands’ to cover the more unpleasant bits of my anatomy and tried to ‘turn’ away as much as I could. It wasn’t much, but it helped enough. 

“What the FUCK happened?” of course Susan was the first to recover. Maybe she wasn’t as young a soul as I’d thought. 

“Uh,” I rumbled in my manifold voices. “Look, I said I couldn’t tell you how bad of an idea this was.”

[prairiesongserial]

10.14

The group hadn’t stayed long at Neta and Josie’s, just long enough to load up the bikes and figure out where they were going next. If there really were going to be bounty hunters and gangs out looking for them, Val didn’t want to bring that trouble on Neta and Josie’s household. They didn’t deserve that, not for warning them and being as hospitable as they could be under the circumstances. Val wasn’t about to see any other innocent people have their lives destroyed by gangs on his behalf.

For lack of anywhere else to go, Friday had suggested traveling back towards the Mississippi River, and making their way back west from there. Cody had agreed, saying that at least the way back to Vegas would be familiar territory, and John had reminded everyone that he and Cody knew people in Texas who had helped them before. It was doubtlessly more words than Val had ever heard John say before, but still a good point. Texas was a good checkpoint to work towards - closer than Vegas or Oregon, with allies that might provide shelter when they arrived.

They’d set out on the city streets under cover of night, sticking to back roads far out of the way of the bustling bars and nightclubs on the waterfront where Friday had led the novitiates. Val was still annoyed that she’d done it, but annoyance was by far one of the least important things he’d felt today, and he didn’t feel like picking a fight when they were in the middle of quietly skipping town. Instead, he let the annoyance simmer in the back of his mind, grimly setting his focus on the task at hand until everything else barely registered. For once, his anxiety had paid off; now that one of the worst case scenarios had happened, he was feeling a supernatural sense of calm.

“When can we start the engines?” Friday asked, hushed, as the bike she and Val were pushing bumped and clattered over the road. She’d changed out of the habit she’d borrowed and into some clothes from her pack, a loose, sensible shirt and jeans. Val was happy she had - the habit would only have attracted more attention the farther they got from the convent, especially with the way Friday had been treating it like a costume or a game to wear.

“I’ll tell you when,” Val said, just loud enough that John and Cody could hear from behind them. The bike headlights were off, but he could have navigated the streets around the convent blindfolded, even after so many years away.

As he walked, Val found that he was holding his breath, and had to remind himself every so often to let it out. It made his chest hurt, a little, and his jaw ached from clenching his teeth. It wasn’t fair, that he had to leave New Orleans like this. It wasn’t fair that Neta and Josie were going to have to explain to the convent what had happened, and that until the Mother heard the full story, she was just going to think he’d run away after their meeting. It wasn’t fair that he didn’t know when he’d be able to come back, or even send a letter. Val wondered if this was how Cody had felt, when the Dead-Eyes had first started to pursue him. Judging by the grim look of determination that had flashed in Cody’s eyes when they began going over the plan to leave, it was at least similar.

Even though he was expecting it, the causeway still took Val by surprise as it came into view. He’d forgotten exactly how massive it was, a miles-long set of parallel bridges that extended well past the horizon, from one end of Lake Pontchartrain to the other. He’d never actually crossed it before - had never needed to - but it was an easier way into Mississippi than circling around the lake and passing through Baton Rouge, which wasn’t so inhospitable to gangs. Or worse, having to muddle through swampland.

“Big fuckin’ bridge,” Cody murmured from behind him, strained. He had been doing most of the work pushing his bike, presumably to save John from overtaxing his bad knee.

“Hope no one’s afraid of bridges,” Val said, under his breath. It was a miracle that the causeway hadn’t simply crumbled into the sea yet - as far as he could tell, it was only well-maintained because it didn’t see much use. Happily, that was another point in their favor when it came to taking the causeway.

“Well, it’d be too late for any of us now if we were,” Friday said, practically. They were nearly at the turnoff into the causeway, and she had stopped pushing the bike. In another moment, she was sitting astride it, gripping the handlebars and jerking her head to motion for Val to get on behind her.

“I’ll drive,” she said. Val didn’t have the energy to argue, and got on the bike.

John and Cody seemed to be having a similar discussion, but more quietly, talking in hushed voices next to their bike. Eventually, John secured his cane with one of the saddlebags, and climbed onto the front of the bike. Cody followed him, sliding his arms around John’s middle, and Val watched them with some interest, a little in awe of how coordinated they seemed.

“You can turn the engine on,” he said to Friday, who did just that.

The bike hummed to life as Val leaned forward to wrap his arms around Friday, wishing more than ever that he had a helmet. There were no headlights or taillights in sight in either direction, which was heartening, and Friday must have felt the same way, because the bike was rocketing onto the causeway just as soon as she’d flipped the headlight on. Val looked behind him, taking in the shoreline as it began to disappear from view, then to his left, to the parallel bridge. John and Cody were there, keeping pace effortlessly, Cody’s chin resting on John’s shoulder. He looked like he was saying something into John’s ear. Whatever it was, John laughed at it, and Cody laughed, too.

“Val,” Friday said sharply, startling Val back into looking ahead of them. He knew Friday well enough to hear when she was starting to worry, and it didn’t take him long to figure out why her voice had gone sharp. 

The causeway had crossovers between the two bridges every couple of miles, and the first one had come up on them fast. The bridges weren’t well lit by any means, but the few lights that remained were more than enough to illuminate the silhouettes of a scattered group lying in wait on the crossover, each of them sitting astride a bike of their own.

Val swore under his breath and looked across the causeway to John and Cody. Evidently, they had noticed the upcoming ambush as well, because they were speeding up. John was hunched over the handlebars, practically bent double on the bike, and Cody was leaning the other way, sliding a shotgun free from where he’d belted it to the saddlebags. Val decided to take the hint, and reached for the pistol holstered at his waist. He didn’t want to shoot anyone, not if he could help it, but the folks waiting for them in the crossover probably didn’t feel that way.

“Speed up!” he told Friday, yelling to be heard over the noise of the bike. 

Either she heard him, or she’d seen enough to get the idea, because Friday did as requested. The bike shuddered underneath them as the speedometer needle crept up. Val decided not to watch it - he didn’t want to know how fast they were going. They blew past the crossover just behind John and Cody, giving the bounty hunters - Val assumed - no time to properly blockade the way forward, and forcing them to give chase instead. Val looked over his shoulder to see the bounty hunters doing just that, splitting into two groups and dividing themselves across the two bridges of the causeway.

Friday was hunched over the bike just as low as John was, now, and they were whipping along the causeway at a pace that nearly stole the air from Val’s lungs. There was no sign of land in any direction - the lake was the only thing to see for miles, a vast, blue void that stretched out below the parallel bridges. Val grimly fixed one arm around Friday’s waist, and tried not to think about what might happen if they were to crash, or fall in.

He looked back to see that the bounty hunters were gaining on them. John and Cody, on the other bridge, seemed to be having more luck, almost as though they’d done this before. It was too dark for Val to catch more than brief glimpses of them, but he could see their bike’s headlight forging ahead steadily, and hear the occasional booming sound of the shotgun as Cody kept the hunters at bay. Val supposed he had better start following Cody’s example.

As if the thought had summoned them, two hunters rode up on either side of Val and Friday, making a valiant effort at flanking the bike. Their own bikes were sleek and black, and they wore reflective black helmets, rendering them effectively faceless. They drew in closer and closer, trying to trap Val and Friday between them, until they were so close that Val could see his own face reflected in the riders’ helmets. If either of them got any closer, they’d be close enough to reach out and touch.

“Val,” Friday said, at the top of her lungs, “far be it for me to tell you what to do, but -”

Val got the idea. He took the safety off the pistol and fired twice, straight down, into the back tire of the bike to their left. There was very little margin of error, there - if he missed, he would probably hit one of their own tires, and Friday would lose control of the bike. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and the hunter whose bike he had shot dropped back, spinning out towards the low guardrails of the causeway.

Val didn’t spare the result more than a glance. There was still the bounty hunter on the right to worry about, not to mention the ones still behind them. The one flanking them faltered for a moment, looking back at the bike Val had effectively destroyed, and Val seized the opportunity to unload a couple of bullets into their tires, as well. It worked just the same as it had the first time, the bounty hunter valiantly trying to crest forwards even as their tire exploded under them and the bike went flying. Val grimaced, and said a very quiet prayer that he hadn’t actually killed either of the hunters.

They were approaching the second crossover, now, and no one was waiting for them there. Val chose to interpret that as a blessing, because it meant there were only a finite number of bounty hunters to deal with, and they probably hadn’t brought reinforcements. The relief only lasted for a moment as they passed the crossover, and vanished a moment after, as Friday hooked the bike into a U-turn so sharp that Val nearly fell off.

“Hang on,” Friday said, abruptly. Val took the advice, gripping her so tight he was sure it would leave bruises on her stomach to match his own.

“We’re turning around?” he asked, his voice cracking as he raised his volume.

“Trust me!” Friday yelled, zipping back towards the crossover and passing through it, onto the other side of the causeway.

Val watched the group of bounty hunters that had been chasing them move past, on the bridge they had just been on, and understood immediately. It would be several miles until the next crossover. Those hunters were stuck riding alone, with no quarry to catch, until then, and the hunters on this bridge were now facing two gunners who could pick them off.

“Okay,” he said begrudgingly, unsure if Friday could hear him, “I trust you.”

If Friday had heard, she didn’t show it. Instead, she deftly wove the bike around the bounty hunters on the bridge, accelerating it to its limit to catch up with John and Cody and ride alongside them. John seemed focused only on the road, but Cody noticed, his eyes going wide behind his riding goggles. After a moment he nodded, apparently understanding what Friday was going for, and adjusted his grip on the shotgun with a grim sort of smile. Val wondered how Cody could find it in him to smile at all, and reminded himself that this was not Cody’s first time being chased down on the road. It was probably getting to feel a little ridiculous for him.

The chase continued across the length of the causeway, Val and Cody picking off the bounty hunters’ bikes whenever they could get a clear shot. Some of them  were more adept at weaving around gunfire than others, and some had bikes armored with extra sheets of metal. Val was in the process of reloading his pistol for the third or fourth time - he’d lost count - when Friday let out a wordless cry. He thought for a moment that she’d been shot, but she was pointing with one hand, and he followed the line of her finger to see that the shoreline had appeared on the horizon.

Val swallowed, hard. Once they were on land, evading the bounty hunters would become easier - there would be other roads to take, places to hide. He was sure that the bounty hunters knew this, and that they were going to fight tooth and nail to prevent the group from leaving the causeway, at any cost. But as the shoreline grew from a tiny line in the distance to a great strip of land, rushing up on them quicker than Val had prepared for, he felt a sensation bubbling in his chest that might have been hope.

Friday and John pushed the engines at nearly the same time, the bikes speeding towards the end of the causeway, towards land. Val glanced over to find that John’s face was stony, his jaw set, and wondered if driving the bike for so long was aggravating his knee injury. He and Cody were going to have to switch, at some point - but they could worry about that once they lost the bounty hunters.

They were gaining on the shore. Val took a deep breath, letting the smell of bike exhaust and burnt rubber fill his lungs, only to cough it out when the bike headlights caught on what was waiting for them at the other end of the causeway. Tiny points of light glittering in the dark. Reflecting the headlights and the last remaining lights of the bridge. The same reflective eyes Val had seen on the children in Oklahoma City. But he doubted that these were children, and he doubted that the mutie nest they were about to drive into would be much friendlier than the bounty hunters on their tail.

He heard Friday gasp sharply, and knew that she’d seen it too. There was no turning around, now - they still had to leave Louisiana before daybreak, if possible, and even if they went back down the other side of the causeway, they’d be caught eventually. They had to keep moving. They had to drive through the mutie nest, if they had any hope of escaping with their lives. Val couldn’t help but feel like he was being punished for assuming that nothing at all was wrong with the causeway that no one drove on anymore.

The bikes rushed towards the end of the causeway, and the highway rushed up to meet them. Val adjusted his grip on his pistol. He felt sick at the prospect of shooting more muties, but if he had to, he would. Just like he’d shot the bounty hunters’ bikes. No use pretending those riders hadn’t been seriously hurt when their bikes busted under them.  He was scared, sure, and the hope in his chest had been replaced with a pang of anxiety, but at least he had something to focus on that wasn’t his own thoughts.

As the bikes gained on the muties, and the muties began to move, several things happened in rapid succession. There was a sharp crack, and a brilliant flash of light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, and Val wondered hysterically if he had just been struck by lightning. He felt the bike wobble underneath them as Friday struggled to control it, and thought he heard the noise of muties shrieking, though his ears were ringing so violently that it was hard to say. A smell filled the air that was worse than bike exhaust, a metallic, burning smell that stung the insides of Val’s nose and throat. His senses were so overwhelmed that he barely realized that he couldn’t actually see anything until Friday stopped the bike.

As the white light gradually began to fade from his vision, Val blinked rapidly, trying to reorient himself. Friday had stopped the bike in the middle of the road, not too far away from John and Cody, who both looked about as disoriented and distressed as Val felt. Some of the bounty hunters had managed to stay on their bikes as well, but some had wiped out, and were lying scattered across the road. The muties were nowhere to be seen. Evidently the lightning strike - or whatever it had been, had scared them off.

“What the fuck was that?” Friday asked, a little too loudly. Val had to assume her ears were ringing, too.

The horrible smelling smoke was still clearing, blowing away in great clouds that made Val cough. He realized, belatedly, that a man was walking through the smoke towards him, and wondered if he was still hallucinating. Maybe he had died, just then, in that brilliant flash of light, and was about to be judged at the gates of Heaven. Or maybe he was in the process of dying, fantasizing about an angel coming to take him away from the mortal plane.

Val’s opinion on all of this changed rapidly as the man emerged from the smoke, and turned out to be wearing a jacket that seemed entirely made up of gold sequins. He carried a cane that looked nothing like John’s, much more decorative, with a handle carved in the shape of some animal, and his hair was like nothing Val had ever seen before. It was two different colors, one a reddish-brown and one platinum blond, split directly down the middle.

The man’s eyes caught on Val’s, and Val was startled to find that they were two different colors, too. One was so brown it seemed almost black, and the other was a bright, clear blue.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice low and smooth, his brow wrinkled in concern.

It took Val a moment to realize he was being spoken to, and when he did, he swallowed and nodded. He wasn’t sure he could speak properly at the moment, and if he could, he knew his voice would be much too loud, like Friday’s had been.

“Good,” the man said, with a nod, and then moved past the bike, towards where most of the bounty hunters lay on the road.

“Listen up, all of you,” he said. His voice was louder, now, and so clear that Val could hear it perfectly. Val turned on the bike to look, and saw that the man was holding his arms out, cane still clutched in one hand. “Get out of here, and tell your friends not to come after these four again. They’re under the protection of the Madsen and Graves Circus from now on, and if I see any of you skulking around the caravan, you’re not getting away alive next time.”

One of the bounty hunters on the ground moved weakly, and said something Val couldn’t hear. The man in the sequined jacket reached behind him, under his waistband, for just a moment, and then there was a gunshot that Val could hear, as clear as day. The bounty hunter who had protested before went limp on the ground.

“Any more objections?” the man asked. There appeared to be none.

The man turned and made his way back towards John, Cody, Val, and Friday, a little smile pulling the corners of his mouth taut. There was a nauseous feeling in Val’s stomach that he thought might have been disdain. He could tell that Friday felt the same way, judging from how she bristled when the man got close.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, practically snarling.

“I’m Johannes Madsen,” the man said, his smile stretching wider, wide enough to show teeth. “And you belong to me now.”

10.13 || epilogue 10