#it just comes off as book readers putting themselvs on a high horse and complaining and creating straw men that they can attack

[coochiebandanna]

Are the hoards of loumand shippers who think that Armand did nothing wrong and are gonna have a “rude awakening” in season 2 in the room with us right now?

[tf2-hellhole]

can we get some fluffy tf2 headcannons? giving you full creative liberty over this one! :)

Idk if you meant tf2 x reader headcanons or just general head canons, so I did two sections for each merc; the first point is a general headcanon, the second is X Reader.

sorry this took forEEEEEEEEVER, I was just experiencing burnout and working on a prize for a contest on my server (BTW WE HAVE A NEW DRAWING CONTEST GO CHECK IT OUT)

Scout:

Scout is actually really self-concious about his intelligence. He’s not very bright and he knows it, and it makes him feel horrible. He had flunked out of high school and struggled in most of his core classes. He honestly feels really stupid and he hates when people point it out. But luckily for him, a lot of the other mercs understand what it’s like to be looked down upon and empathize with him. Quite a few of them help him relearn the skills he never mastered in school. Engie helps him with math, Spy sometimes helps him with writing, and even Pyro has him read children’s books to them to improve his reading.

Scout absolutely loves little casual dates. Stuff like going out to eat lunch, going to the movies, maybe just cuddling up in his quarters and watching a movie. He tries to plan one every week. His dream date is taking you back to Boston to meet his family and go to a Red Sox game. But obviously, since you’re both in New Mexico at the time, he’s going to have to shelve that dream for a few years.

Soldier:

Soldier is an excellent raccoon dad. At first, the other mercenaries thought they’d all end up dead by the end of the month when he first found them. But surprisingly, they are are very well cared for. They’re all fed regularly and basically have his entire assigned quarters to themselves. He loves every single one of them dearly, even the ones that hiss and scratch him every time. The raccoons, at least some of them, are kind of like weird, quiet dogs, and actually get along pretty well with most of the other mercenaries.

Soldier is a surprisingly very physically affectionate partner, and he’s not at all opposed to PDA. He loves hand holding, cheek kisses, cuddles, the whole nine yards. Whenever he’s particularly excited, he loves to run up to you, scoop you up into his arms, and press a hard, sloppy kiss to your lips. Of course, he’s careful to not hurt you, but he’s a very intense, emotional guy and he needs to express all that love he has for you!

Pyro:

Pyro is and excellent listener, so they’re a person a lot of the other mercenaries depend on to vent. Demo often comes to them to vent about his emotions, Scout, Sniper, or Medic will rant about what’s bothering them, and even Engineer will talk about his stress. And of course, Pyro doesn’t understand a lot of what is told to them, but they’re still happy to help them feel a little better, and they would happily do it a hundred times over to make their friends feel better.

Pyro has a hobby of baking and making candy/treats, and they love sharing everything they make with you. When they first gave you a treat, you honestly thought it’d be burnt or bad in some other way. But to your surprise, it was amazing! They’re actually and excellent cook, but they just love making sweet things the best. They’ll make you just about anything you could ask for without hesitation, but they’re best at making anything sweet.

Demo:

Demo obviously has the potential to pretty emotional when he’s drunk, there’s no doubt about that. But on the off-chance that he’s sober, he’s actually pretty sweet and considerate. Though he still is a rough-housing joker, he’s much more considerate of his friends’ feelings and has deeper and more meaningful conversations with them. He often likes to go to bars with his friends and co-workers on ceasefire weekends, having lots of fun conversation, drinking together, and generally causing chaos around town.

Demo, to put it simply, doesn’t like himself. He’s critical of everything, from his skills to race, because people have always put him down about them. His mother told him he’s lazy and unskilled too many times to count, just everyone makes fun of his eye, and many have made fun of his skin color. But you make him feel so much better about himself. Just the fact that someone so kind and gorgeous is actually with him makes him feel like he’s not as horrible as he thought. There’s been a couple of times where you’ve accidentally almost brought him to tears with a sweet compliment or show of affection, because he never thought in a million years that someone would love him and care for him like you do. He feels so blessed that he has someone like you.

Heavy:

I know the fandom’s decided that Engie is the Team Mom and makes the food, but I also think that Heavy cooks a lot too. He makes all of his own food, so he often makes a lot of extras to feed the team because a lot of them just eat junk food and Medic’s always complaining about their eating habits. Heavy often takes like half the food for himself (he does have a huge appetite and loves food, so he likes to take a lot) and just boxes up the leftover portions and leaves them in the fridge for the team to take. He says he’s only doing it because they can’t work properly if they’re unhealthy, but he also does it because he cares about their health. A little bit.

At first, you wouldn’t think Heavy’s the most cuddly guy. But surprise, he actually loves giving and receiving physical affection. He just doesn’t show it often out of respect for your boundaries, and doesn’t do it around others. His absolute favorite thing is to cuddle you against his chest. Sometimes it’s when going to sleep, or cuddling on the couch, or maybe just a quick hug. He just loves the feeling of your head resting against his chest and your arms trying (and failing) to wrap around his torso. It makes him feel like you’re safe. Nobody could ever get you when you’re wrapped up in his arms.

Engie:

You’d think Sniper’s the only nature nerd on the team, but Engie absolutely loves the outdoors, as well as animals. It’s because his father would often take him out camping every couple of months. It was often the only time he would get 1-on-1 time with his usually very busy father. So he does love the great outdoors, especially that of his home state. He especially loves animals. He was raised on a farm and helped take care of lots of injured wild animals with his mother. He absolutely loves pets and would like to have many when he retires. His dream is to have is own ranch, with horses and cows and a bunch of dogs and the whole shebang.

Engie absolutely loves playing the guitar, so of course he loves playing for you. He learns all sorts of sweet love songs to sing to you. He’s an excellent player and actually has a pretty decent singing voice (think Johnny Cash, he kinda has that singing style). I hope you like country music, because that’s all he’s going to sing to you until you give him some requests or he finds out your favorite artists or genres. You can tell how happy he is every time he gets to surprise you with a new song he learned, and he’d be a giddy, laughing mess if you sang along with him.

Medic:

You’d think this guy takes horrible care of his birds because of the environment he keeps them in, but his birds are actually exceptionally well cared for. He buys them only the best and most expensive bird food, gives them super high-quality water with vitamins n stuff in it, takes them to the vet regularly, the whole shebang. Yeah they get a little dirty from sitting around in his lab, but he always gives them a little bath at the end of the day to get all the blood and guts off.

Medic is honestly such a playful partner. Of course, around his co-workers he’s a little more professional; he still gives you soft touches, a kiss on the cheek, or a big smile, but that’s about it. In private, however, he’s such a sweetheart. He’s always sweeping you up into big hugs, kissing all over your face, and calling you all sorts of adorable nicknames in a variety of languages. It comes as a surprise, because you’d think he’d be a little more formal, but that’s really only for special occasions. It honestly brings him so much joy to have someone like you by his side, and every day he’s going to make sure you know just how grateful he is to have you in his life.

Sniper:

Sniper is an incredibly independent and self-sufficient man, but he’s also secretly a real mama’s boy. He loves his parents dearly and has a particularly close relationship with his mother. As well as sending them money every month, he sends them all sorts of gifts, letters, postcards, and souvenirs. He also makes sure to call them regularly. He goes home every couple of months to visit them, and one could see that he loves helping around the house and chatting with his parents. His mother loved gardening, so his number-1 favorite thing to do is help her in the garden.

Despite Sniper’s obvious lack of knowledge on self-care, he takes a lot of time out of his day to make sure you are happy, healthy, clean, and well-fed. He doesn’t hound you like a helicopter parent but he likes to ask how you’re feeling, if you’re hungry, stuff like that. It feels nice to know you’re taken care of or take care of you himself. If you switch it around and try to take care of him, however, he’s honestly baffled as to why you would care so much as to make sure he’s doing well. He does absolutely love the affection and attention he gets out of it though, it makes him feel loved.

Spy:

I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a head canon that Spy has a dog. Her name is Charlotte, and she’s an elderly Chihuahua. One would think he’d buy a French breed, but he found her out in the pouring rain one day and fell in love with her fluffy ears and spunky personality. She’s now 17 years old, extremely frail, missing most of her teeth, and extremely aggressive to anyone other than Spy, but he loves her dearly and pays for all of her medical expenses without batting an eye. And of course, she expresses her thanks with lots of kisses.

Spy loves dancing, and knows all kinds of dances, from flamenco to ballroom dancing to the Charleston to, canonically, disco. So of course, he’s dying to share all of the most romantic dances he knows with you. He’d love to actually teach you how to dance, rewarding you with kisses every time you finally get a move right and laughing softly when you make mistakes. But in reality, he just wants to use it as an excuse to dance with you against his chest and smother you in affection.

[sofwrites]

Polin - 50? 💛💛💛

50: putting a hand over the other’s mouth to shut them up

read this and more blurbs on ao3

“Do you know,” Colin began with a sly grin, “that Anthony has a property just a few miles from here? We could stop there instead. Tell your sister that one of our carriage wheels broke…”

Penelope’s head slowly turned to look at him, her lips pinched just slightly in an attempt to hide her amusement. “And it just so happened that it broke right by one of your brother’s homes?”

“We do always have remarkable timing.”

She squinted her eyes for a moment, as if really considering his proposition. They were on the way to a Featherington family meeting at Prudence’s home about an hour and a half outside the city. And although Penelope didn’t really want to attend any more than her husband did, she did feel rather guilty about the fact that they'd been absent the entire month prior.

Giving him an apologetic smile, Penelope shook her head. “We really should be there today. I sent them all my book last month and…” I’m worried about my mother’s reaction, is what she wanted to say. Colin didn’t need to hear it out loud to know that she’d been nervous about it for days. Taking in the tightness of his wife's lips, he gently pressed a kiss to the palm of her hand.

The reaction to Penelope’s book, The Wallflower, had been mostly positive. Oh, there’d been a few perturbed individuals who had seemed to pick themselves out of a few villains in the story (although Colin wholeheartedly claimed that anyone who did so was obviously projecting that onto themselves and had no standing to complain), but most of the ton had devoured it just as quickly as they used to devour the writings of her former alter ego.

However, despite the pleasant response, Penelope had been honest in her work. And that included quite a few pages devoted to how her mother’s choices for her wardrobe often made her feel as though she wanted nothing more than to blend into the background. She’d been reassured time and time again by her loved ones that she hadn’t been unkind, but Penelope truly didn’t want to hurt her mother. She was already aware of the stickiness in their relationship and wanted to keep things as amicable as possible. And with Portia spending more time with Prudence and her family, that meant taking the trip out to see her in person.

“I suppose you’re right,” Colin mumbled before his lips began traveling dangerously up her arm. Right as his mouth met the very base of her neck, he flashed her a grin. “You know, we do have another hour until we arrive…”

Although Penelope could feel her stomach flip in a painfully familiar way, she gave him a playful smirk. “And I suppose you’ll be snoring in the next thirty seconds?”

Colin cocked his head to the side in deliberation. “Actually, I’m not at all-”

Whatever word his mouth had been forming was replaced with a much… different sound in light of the rather precarious position of his wife’s hand. And very few comprehensible words were exchanged from thereafter.

Roughly two hours later, Penelope and Colin were sitting side-by-side atop a frilly canary-colored sofa, both silently imagining themselves anywhere else.

“And there I was,” Robert, Prudence’s quite spirited husband, paused dramatically, allowing the only relief their eardrums had been given in the previous ten minutes. “Two feet in the mud and about twelve too far from the deer!”

As he let out a roar of laughter, Colin gave an enthusiastic chuckle that impressively would have appeared sincere to anyone who didn’t know him well enough. He cast a sideways glance to Geoffrey, Felicity’s husband and the only brother-in-law in company that did not give him the desire to get trampled on by a horse. The gentleman locked eyes with him for a moment, wearing a rather pained smile on his face that quite plainly said, God, help us all.

“Pen,” Felicity interjected just as it looked as though Robert was readying himself for yet another hilarious anecdote. “I’ve heard your book sales have been quite good. A friend of mine actually asked if I could send her a copy because she hasn’t been able to find one anywhere.”

Colin beamed down at his wife, who smiled at her younger sister before sending a tentative glance towards their mother. “I’m sure she was just being kind. But I’ll make sure to send you a few more.”

After a moment of silence that was just long enough to be uncomfortable, Philippa said, “I’m still reading, but it’s very good so far. Nigel tried as well, but…” She let out a high-pitched piercing giggle as she looked at her husband with an expression that was so sweet and yet so empty-headed at the same time.

“Oh, you know me. Not much of a reader,” Nigel shrugged, his tone jovial rather than unkind.

Penelope gave them both a small, grateful smile for their efforts before casting another careful glance at her mother, who seemed to be avoiding her gaze. Colin could practically feel his wife building up her courage before she cleared her throat. “Erm, mother? What did you think of it?”

Everyone except for Philippa and Nigel (who were both far too blissfully unaware to notice) examined Portia, who turned to her third daughter with her best attempt at a pleasant smile. “I thought it was lovely.”

Penelope blinked a few times. “You did?”

“Of course, I did.”

“And what was your favorite part?” This question came from Colin, who was now focused on his mother-in-law with a quirked brow and an overly charming grin. Despite the expression on his face, Penelope felt his grip tighten around her waist.

Portia’s throat made a small lurch. “I couldn’t possibly choose. It was all very good.”

Without needing to see her, Colin could feel the disappointment mixed with relief radiate from Penelope. It was quite evident to anyone with half a brain that Portia hadn’t read the book. Perhaps hadn't even made an attempt to do so. And though that meant avoiding a potential rift, it also meant that she hadn’t taken the time to read and acknowledge her daughter’s achievement.

But as though Penelope could feel the heat rising in Colin, she squeezed his hand in warning. He glanced at her before letting out a quiet, resigned sigh. “Well, my favorite part of the story was the proposal. Although to be quite honest, some of my favorite details were left out.”

Felicity, who was quite aware of everything that had transpired on that day, leaned in with feigned interest. “Please do elaborate.”

“Colin,” Penelope whispered after sending her sister a swift glare. “They were there, I’m sure it’s no longer very interesting.”

He grinned at her, delighted by the way her cheeks were turning rosier by the second. “Nonsense, especially not when we did such a nice rendition earlier in the carr-”

There was a small squeak before a hand clamped itself firmly over Colin’s mouth, cutting the rest of his sentence off.

“I think I’m a bit hungry,” Penelope attempted to say casually, as if she wasn’t still holding her husband’s mouth shut. Their audience was staring at them with rather befuddled expressions. “Colin and I will go fetch something.”

Slowly, Colin pulled down her hand and flashed their family members an innocent smile. “Pregnancy, eh? Her appetite’s almost been as robust as mine.” He cast them a small wink as Penelope’s flush transitioned into a deep crimson. There were a few stifled laughs as Portia began to sputter.

“Come on,” Penelope nearly groaned, pulling her husband off the sofa and out the room.

“Do you even know where the kitchen is?” Prudence called after them.

Colin laughed, giving his wife’s warm cheek a peck. “Oh, we’ll find it!”

request a touching prompt

[mxpseudonym]

Just Good Business II

Pairing: Tommy x Reader

Reader Gender Expression: She/Her pronouns, "wife”

Summary: After your arranged marriage with Tommy Shelby, Tommy is MIA while you become one of the Shelby’s

Length: 1549 words (allegedly)

Warnings: Overtones of forced/arranged marriage, otherwise strong “My husband is clueless” vibes

A/N: Part III is very likely!

Part I | Part III

--

As far as things that sounded interesting went, marriage wasn't one of them. Sure, the lead up was fun enough, but a wedding wasn't a marriage, that was for sure. Your first few months with Tommy only confirmed it. 

You'd consummated your marriage on your wedding night, and even once more, when you decided that sharing the master bedroom was a must. But after that, Tommy was always gone. Over three months, you could count the number of times Tommy came to bed on two hands, and the times you actually woke up next to him on one. If he wasn't in London or Birmingham, which was nearly always, he was locked away in the home office. More than upset, though, it made you curious.

"He does everything on his own, for better or worse," Polly said when you got the Shelby women together for tea.

"Head as hard as a rock," Ada tsked Tommy, who wasn't there to defend himself. 

In Tommy's absence, you found yourself getting to know the rest of the Shelby's. It wasn't just relocating from many of your friends and your dubious relationship with your own family that made you cling to them. On occasion, when they allowed themselves to be, the Shelby’s were a lot of fun. 

"I can't!" You jumped back from the horse troughs and the goldfish swimming inside with a laugh. 

"Stop being a scaredy-cat, y/n," Finn teased, expertly picking up a fish with his bare hands. "You can't even touch one." 

"Lady's aren't used to slummin' it, Finn," Isaiah said, nudging his friend with his elbow. Along with meeting Ada for talks about politics and occasionally drinking John under the table, you'd gotten into the habit of throwing big picnics for your new nieces and nephews birthdays. John's small army allowed for two in a month, but that didn't stop you from rallying the troops. Between getting to frolic around the gardens barefoot and teaching the children how to catch fireflies, this was your favorite part about being married. Fish, however, was where your steady nerve stalled a bit.

"It's not too bad, sister," Arthur urged you. Tommy's older brother was sweeter than you imagined. You weren't a fool, you'd asked about the Peaky Blinders during your London escapades. Arthur being comparable to a rabid dog was amongst the rumors. But here he was, kneeling by the troughs and guiding your hand into the paths of goldfish. 

"You're okay. Just take a deep breath," Arthur said when you almost pulled away. The soft scales brushed against your fingertips making you shiver, but Finn and Isaiah's cheers of encouragement kept you going until you did it yourself. Arthur cleared his throat while you tried cupping your palms around one. 

"How's my brother treatin' you?" he asked.

"I don't see him much, but pretty well, I suppose. Big house, lovely new brothers, who's to complain?" You shrugged. 

"If Tommy gives you any trouble, you let us know," Finn said, high fiving Isaiah, who was shaking his head.

"Alright, simmer down, Finn," Arthur murmured, then turned back to you. "He's right, though. We'll talk sense into Tommy."

"Not that you can't do it on your own, Mrs. Shelby. The way Tommy talks about you, I bet you're keeping him in line," Isaiah joked. Arthur gave him a warning look while you raised an eyebrow. How did Tommy talk about you?

"Aunt y/n!" Katie came running around the corner, stopping any questions you may have had.

"Hello, birthday girl!" You hugged her when she was close enough. She really was a spitting image of John. 

"Can we eat cake?" She asked. 

"Yes, we can eat cake." 

The cake was eaten, gifts were opened, and Ada had just joined the children in a game of tag when Francis, the head of the house staff, came to you with word that your husband was home. 

People of habit always stay that way, so finding Tommy in his office was easy. Tommy was just about to pour a glass of whiskey when you entered after a brief knock. 

"You know, knocking doesn't mean you can just enter," Tommy said, looking over your birthday attire. It included a flower crown from Katie and no stockings. 

"Oh? What does it mean, then, Thomas?" You asked with more snap than expected. You did actually tell him about the birthdays. Whether or not he showed up was dependent on the stars aligning. He sat down the glass and turned to you with a sigh. 

"Alright, have at it. Go on and tell me your grievances."

There were so many things to say, you hardly knew which to choose first. Where the hell have you been? Where do you get off not greeting anyone in the house before hiding away? Are your manners lost somewhere alongside your damn mind leading to such a greeting? But the bridge of his nose was pinched between his thumb and forefinger, so you weighed your options and chose the most important one.

"Did you wish Katie a happy birthday?" You asked. He wasn't expecting that, you could tell. 

"No, not yet."

"Come on, then." You walked to the door and held it open until he walked out first. Seeing Tommy kiss Katie's cheek and slip her a coin was satisfactory enough, so you quickly got swept into the shenanigans going on by the gramophone. Polly told you that you looked wilder that day, and like one of the family. She also mentioned on her way out that Tommy stayed for a bit and could hardly take his eyes off of you while you danced with the kids. 

"Polly," you warned. The all-knowing matriarch put her hands up as a white flag.

"There are worse things than your husband loving you and vice versa," Polly said, ever so sly.

Love? After washing up, you thought about what she said while browsing the downstairs library. Of course, there was nothing wrong with loving your spouse, some would even say it was preferred. Even if one of you had something to confess, what did it matter?

"I'm sure you have some things to say to me," Tommy's voice broke through your thoughts and gave you a start.

"Fucking hell!"

"I did knock," he said, smirking a little. You looked over the robe and slippers you'd gotten him, knowing it made him feel too posh but not being able to resist a bit of teasing in retaliation for being ignored. 

"It's alright, I was just grabbing a book." You picked one up and walked towards him. "All I have to say is I don't like the way you talked to me earlier. I don't care how stressed you are." 

"I'm sorry," he apologized with no hesitation. You nodded and went to leave, only for Tommy to stop you. He pulled you back, his hands on your waist. Nothing prepared you for your husband wrapping his arms around your middle and resting his cheek against your belly. You slowly wrapped your arms around his shoulders. 

"Are you alright? Has something happened?" 

"I've got blood on my hands, y/n. Done things I'm not proud of," he murmured. You could only just make out what he was saying. "And I don't stop. I want you to be angry with me for bringing you along with this and putting you up in my house then leaving you alone. Talking to you how I did and putting you and everyone in danger." After a moment, you let out a chuckle.

"Thomas, what the fuck are you talking about?" You couldn't help it really, even when you looked down to see those distressed blue eyes. You pressed the back of your hand on his cheeks and forehead. "Are you ill, Sir?"

"I'm not. I mean it y/n, you've no idea what's gone on." Tommy shook his head and rested it on your stomach again. You scoffed at the man. 

"First of all, you haven't put me up in your house, you've put me up in my house, remember? I just let you live here sometimes," you reminded him of whose name was on the deed. It was for the sake of business, but it was also a gift. Tommy let the corner of his mouth tug up a bit. 

"Second, if you think your wife is dense, think again. Did you think I wouldn't do a bit of research? Ask around? I don't just sit around all day, Polly does like to keep me active, Tom. Plus, one of my mates works at that rum bakery, you think I don't keep tabs on you?" You gave him a knowing look. If you could catch him before he was out the door, you'd have already given him a lecture on getting involved with Alfie Solomons. 

"Ah," Tommy hummed. "That's why you told me to tighten up on security."

"Mmhm. Third of all," you grasped Tommy's face and made him look at you. "When I agreed to marry you, did I ask you where your hands have been?"

"No." 

"No." You shook your head. "And maybe that's my burden to bear, but I'll always look out for myself, don't worry. And I'm not scared of blood, Mr. Shelby." You leaned down and kissed his forehead. 

"Clever, bloody woman," Tommy murmured. 

"The cleverest," You agreed.

--

Tommy Tag List: @soleil-dor

[slasherscream]

A/N: couldn’t stop being haunted by this idea so here’s a carrie white imagine. concept? you’re a poet/avid poem reader and fall in love with the sweet, quiet girl named carrie who is your friend’s roommate.

                          You’d been upset that you hadn’t managed to get paired with your best friend as roommates in the campus dorms.

You two had applied to colleges together, not wanting to be separated just because you were entering a new chapter of your lives. You wanted to take this first huge step into adulthood together. 

You tried not to pout as you began to settle yourself into your own dorm room, your own roommate not yet arrived. You managed to unpack about half your things before your focus was overcome by the lethal combination of nervousness and excitement. Luckily you didn’t have to deal with your feelings alone.

Though you weren’t going to be sharing a dorm room you still happened to be on the same floor as your best friend, only a few doors away (for all your complaining you could’ve gotten it worse and not even been in the same building.)

Happily you bounded down the hall and without thinking threw open the door to your best friend’s room, mouth already forming their name in what was practically a shout. It died suddenly on your lips as you met the wide-eyed stare of a tiny, startled looking blonde. 

You nearly trip over your own feet in embarrassment. Your friend is already laughing at you from where they sit cross-legged on their bed, perfectly content in the familiarity of you making a fool of yourself, “Perfect timing as usual, we were just talking about you. Y/N       this is Carrie White." 

Carrie White, you quickly learn, is not really a people person. She’s friendly enough, and clearly sweet, but more than both those things she’s painfully shy. Shyer than anyone you’ve ever met before and you just came from high-school, a certified pit full of teenagers too nervous to ever assert themselves or be themselves.

To Carrie’s credit she is being herself, that much you can tell. She just seems…. afraid. Head down, hands fidgeting and tugging at clothes that were immaculate at the start of the day and wrinkled by the end of it from her unending fretting, arms always kept close to her body.

The way she held her already tiny stature made it seem as if she could blow away in the wind. Whenever you observed her, which was often, it looked like she wanted to melt into walls to avoid being so much as glanced at, as if the feeling of eyes on her skin was akin to someone putting out a cigarette on the side of her cheek.

You shared a lot of classes with her, both being freshmen. You found yourself gravitating towards her. Though she always seemed ready to bolt like a nervous horse you tried to engage her in whatever way you could. 

Part of you felt bad for her. You had come here with a confidence that came only with knowing someone you loved would be nearby, ready to catch you when you’d need it. It was terribly clear to you, somehow, that Carrie didn’t have that. You couldn’t imagine being completely alone in a new place. So you tried to make it as if she weren’t.

You became a fixture in Carrie’s life, much to her confusion.

You walked to and from classes with her, even the ones you didn’t share with one another. You were mindful of her quiet nature but constantly tried to engage her in conversation or learn something about her.

When you’d come to the dorm room she shared with your best friend the two of you actively tried to include her if she wasn’t studying, sometimes you even tried to distract her when she was, claiming she needed to take more breaks. You would bring her snacks you’d noticed she liked if you knew she hadn’t been out of her room for one reason or another. 

She had built up a lot of walls for her own safety regarding other people, she’d learned the hard way how they would hurt you if given the chance, but something about you was honest and good. She didn’t know if she was that great at judging the characters of others but she hoped desperately that you were as good on the inside as you were on the outside. She basked in your little kindnesses and freely given attention all while expecting the rug to be ripped out from underneath her. 

After just shy of a year even her heart, with its well built defenses, were weakened significantly by your gentle persistence. She didn’t think anyone would bother getting close to someone for months upon months just with the intention of hurting them. Even after all she’d been through somehow she still couldn’t imagine a cruelness like that living inside a person. 

"What are you reading?” she hardly ever began any interaction with you, instead always choosing to follow your lead, to talk or move or laugh at your cues.

“Some poetry. Would you like to read it with me?” You couldn’t help but grin at her, shocked that she’d approached you all on her own. After a moment of hesitation she sat down beside you and you tilted the book so she would be able to read along with you. So began a tradition. 

Carrie apparently hadn’t been allowed to read much literature growing up but she developed a thirst for it  quickly once exposed. You’d finally found something to bond over, something that made her speak up and let herself be heard.

You began to fall in love with her as you’d stay up late into the night talking about the themes of this book, or the romantic chemistry between the leads of a classic. Carrie had a soft spot for romantic classics. You began to pick up more of them for her and each one she eagerly devoured. You realized what a secret romantic she was as you watched her sigh dreamily as her eyes skimmed over the pages of Romeo and Juliet. You don’t know why you were so surprised by this. Carrie was a tender soul through and through.

It wasn’t long until you realized you were falling in love, which terrified you. It had taken so long for Carrie to even open up to you as a friend. You couldn’t imagine what she’d do if you confessed to her. Probably fly away like a scared bird, never to be seen again. 

So you couldn’t confess, you might be in love with her but you also loved her as a friend and if that was all you could be with her you’d take it gladly. Still, there were a lot of feelings in your heart. Too many, honestly, for you to keep bottled up. 

But then you were struck by the brilliant idea of being something of a secret admirer. That way you could tell Carrie how you felt but without any pressure on either one of you. You started off small, slipping pretty sheets of pink paper covered in even prettier words under her doorway. 

For the first few weeks after you began to give her notes she seemed on edge, eyes always drifting this way and that, as if looking for someone. You smiled to yourself knowing the reason why. Eventually, as time went on, she seemed to relax into the idea of being secretly adored, yearned after. You made it a point in your letters to tell her all the reasons she deserved to be loved, while making sure it wasn’t obvious you were behind the letters of course.

“I have hunger for your mouth, for your voice, for your hair.” you would write one day. And for the next, “I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.” Carrie smiled more sweetly and fully these days. Her walk ever so slightly more confident, knowing that at least someone thought she was beautiful and sweet and wonderful. Of course things couldn’t go on so perfectly forever. No luck was that good. 

Carrie had felt a little sick and decided to skip her last class of the day, a testament to how bad she was feeling. As she turned the corner she saw you bent down outside the front of her door, a familiar looking envelope in your hands. She couldn’t help the gasp that she let out and immediately your head snapped up to look at her. 

You both stood there frozen and gaping at one another before you slowly stood up, looking sheepish. “Well        I hope you’ve been liking your letters.”

Carrie doesn’t quite know what to say. Her first instinct is to believe that you’ve been playing a trick on her. You and your friend laughing behind her back that she could believe anyone would ever wax poetry about her, compare her eyes to the blue of the sky or her freckles to beloved, unknown constellations. But you looked genuinely distraught, hands clutching the envelope so hard it was crumpling in your hands. 

“It’s you?” Is all Carrie can manage to say but the simple words are loaded with all sorts of meaning anyways. 

“It’s me.” You sigh, “I’m sorry, Carrie. I’m probably not what you’ve been expecting. I just didn’t know what to do about how I feel about you and this seemed….easier." 

"Feel about me?" 

"Don’t act so shocked, I’ve been telling you how much I love you for months now.” Carrie’s heart soars as the words fall from your lips. No one had ever told her they loved her before, not even her Mother. They were the most beautiful words she’d ever heard. All of your letters, beautifully and carefully written as they were, couldn’t compare to those three simple words.

“You mean that?” at her question you finally meet her eyes with a fierce look in your own and defensively shoot back a “Of course I mean that." 

You’d never known Carrie White to be rash, it’s why you’re so surprised when you suddenly find yourself with your arms full of her and soft lips pressed innocently to your own.

Her hands are on either side of your face, keeping you still like she’s afraid you might pull back at any second. She doesn’t seem to know how to kiss exactly. Her lips are firmly pressed against yours but almost completely still for a long time, when she pulls away it’s only to kiss you again but this time the way you would kiss someone’s cheek. Your heart nearly bursts as you take in the blush on her cheeks. 

You don’t realize how long you stand there staring at her but she must take your stunned, happy silence as something else entirely because she begins to pull away. She doesn’t get far before you’re tugging her back against your body, gently. Tilting your forehead against hers you smile at her softly, "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.” speaking the lines of poetry you’ve so carefully memorized out loud is enough to make you dizzy with bashfulness but the expression on Carrie’s face before she leans in to kiss you again makes it well worth it.

[ficsandcatsandficsandcats]

Could I request an AU where Jaskier is a Prince and the reader is a stable girl or servant who fall in love with each other. Thank you! x

Fandom: The Witcher Pairing: Prince!Jaskier x Reader Word Count: 1,647 Rating: G Taglist: @heroics-and-heartbreak​ @whatevermonkey​ @mycat-is-mylove @mynamesoundslikesherlock​ @kemmastan​ @magic-multicolored-miracle​ @writingstudent​ @mlleecrivaine​ @coffee-and-stories​ @amirahiddleston​ @ultracolorfulnerdcollection​ @astouract​ @your-not-invisible-to-me @daydreamer-in-training @morelikebyesexual a/n: I love this idea! I’ve essentially written their Meet Cute and would enjoy going back to this specific little storyline in the future for other moments. Thank you!

Working as a maid for the King and Queen of Redania was hard work but also the best you’d ever had. You stayed busy but not overworked and you knew your pay was good compared to former jobs. They mostly stayed out of your way and you stayed out of theirs. It was your job to be invisible, to do the work and show no trace except for a pristine palace and a family that wanted for nothing. You loved when they threw parties because after getting it set up and ensuring that there was enough food, you were essentially free to do as you pleased. You had to make it look like work, but you found that as long as you held a feather duster you could look busy quickly. And inevitably you’d find yourself working very hard “dusting” the library. No one else entered this room, you weren’t sure the royal family themselves even did, but to you it was a sanctuary. The high shelves and rolling ladders affixed to them containing tome upon tome of history and literature and all manner of subjects all made your heart sing. You were on the ladder this night, feather duster tied to your apron belt, looking through a gorgeous book on butterfly varietals when the door to the library was thrust open so abruptly it shook the ladder. You grasped the edges just in time, clutching the book to your chest so it didn’t fall. You watched as a man walked in and you didn’t need to see the golden and sapphire encrusted crown to know it was the Prince. Your heart leapt to your throat and you stood frozen, clutching the boo, waiting for him to turn around and spot you.

He didn’t, though. He paced and muttered aloud to himself and the longer it went on the more awkward it got that you hadn’t made yourself known until you wondered if there was a way you could just sneak out without him noticing you. You slowly put the book back in its spot and cautiously tried to take a step down. Never before had you heard wood squeak louder than when your foot pressed down, not even fully placing your weight on the rung.

“Oh gods!” you heard the prince cry and the sound startled you so badly you jumped a bit, and that was all the push you needed to slip off the ladder. It was a very high ladder and you braced yourself for the marble floor, hoping idly that you didn’t bleed too badly for your friends to clean up, but you fell into a warm, firm body instead of the cold, hard marble. You’d squeezed your eyes shut as you fell but you forced them open, looking into the palest, most beautiful pair of blue eyes you’d ever seen.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” you replied and then as an afterthought, “Your grace.”

“Not that I’m complaining but, uh, what where you doing lurking above like a gargoyle?” he asked.

“A gargoyle would have been able to fly. Tragically it was more like a… penguin I suppose.”

“A penguin?”

“Well they’re flightless, your grace, they would have fallen.”

“Ah, indeed, well-reasoned,” a smirk twitched at the corner of his lips but he fought it, not wanting you to think he was laughing at you.

“What are you doing in here, though? If it please your grace?” you asked, cursing yourself inwardly for nearly forgetting the title again. You’d only seen the prince in passing but he’d always been different than his parents. His parents weren’t unkind but they were distant and unknowable as you imagined all royals must be to some extent. Jaskier, however, had a reputation for coming down to the kitchens to thank the cook for her excellent meal or snag an extra plate of food for when his witcher friend came to town. His parents didn’t like his association with the witcher but the staff liked the prince so well that they helped smuggle him in and provide him with food and lavished his horse Roach with attention and apples. It felt different with Prince Julian. You felt relaxed talking with him, which was dangerous, because you were after all a maid. And he a prince. And never the twain shall meet except in bizarre near death experiences, it seemed.

“I had a bit of a row with my parents,” he sighed.

“Oh I’m sorry,” you said with genuine regret in your voice. He nodded sadly and the pair of you let a quiet, companionable silence pass.

“Um, your grace?”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering whether I could stand now.”

Jaskier looked down in surprise, seemingly unaware he still held you in his arms and quickly but gently set you on the floor. You gave a little curtsey and began to move toward the door, the moment over.

“Wait,” he called, prompting you to turn around, “What were you doing in here? Not that I mind.”

You began to reach for your duster but instead you gave a little shrug.

“I was looking at the books,” you admitted.

“Oh? Which ones?” he asked, looking around the room as if he was just now noticing that it held books.

“Well this time it was the butterly glossary,” you answered. He cocked his eyebrow as he turned to you.

“This time, eh?” he asked. You blushed and your heart skipped a beat, both because you’d admitted to looking through his things and because of the roguish smile he fixed you with.

“Well… to dust them one must sometimes pull them out and really get around the nooks and crannies,” you muttered, miming the action to his great amusement.

“Ah yes, nooks and crannies,” he echoed in faux seriousness, a twinkle in his eye. You nodded decisively and he chuckled, shaking his head.

“Well if you ever find that there are specific books you’d like to spend more time giving a really detailed cleaning, just let me know and I’ll make sure you have access to them,” he said.

“Really?” you asked, eyes widening in surprise.

“Yes,” he answered, “But, there is a condition.”

You eyed him cautiously as he walked a bit closer to you, knowing well what some “conditions” were in some royal houses, though you’d never heard of that treatment being allowed here.

“I would like to be there when you read them,” he said.

“Be there?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod, “Just be there. I sometimes have documentation to go over and while I usually do so in my father’s study, I believe I’d find it much more tolerable if I had some company.”

“And by company you mean…” your voice trailed off, not sure you could actually accuse the prince of what you were insinuating but not wanting to agree to anything you’d regret.

“Fully-clothed quiet companionship,” he elaborated, “If you’re alright with it. I called it a condition but frankly I’m not going to enforce that. Of course you should read the books, nobody else does. Which is kind of a shame as I think of it.”

“Why do you want me to be there?” you asked, suspicious of this plan that sounded too good to be true.

“I get lonely,” he admitted a little sheepishly, “But you’re funny and I feel comfortable around you and I would enjoy spending more time with you, even if it’s just spent in companionable silence as we pore over our respective texts.”

You smiled at the idea though it startled you how readily you could imagine it. Him, sitting atop the large mahogany desk with a ledger in hand and you tucked up comfortably on the little setee across from it. Every now and then one of you would make an amused or thoughtful sound and the other would ask what it was and you’d share a fun or interesting anecdote or he’d share some news or idea he had for improving the kingdom. Yes, it was an easy, comfortable, peaceful thought and you were wary of how tempting it was. Worried about the feelings that may grow, feelings that could never become more than a dalliance at best. Still, you reasoned, you were getting ahead of yourself. He was a prince who could have anyone he wanted and you were just a servant. Likely he was telling the truth and just wanted another warm body around so he felt less alone in the sprawling palace. Yes, that would be fine. That should be safe.

“Alright,” you said with a nod and then held out your hand to shake on the agreement.

“Alright,” he echoed with a laugh, taking your hand in his and then raising it to his lips to press a soft kiss on the back of it. Your heart hammered beneath your rib cage and he caught the strange look on your face.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Um I was going to shake your hand but this is also acceptable,” you stammered awkwardly. He gave a little ‘oh’ of understanding and shook it twice firmly before letting it go.

“I should get back to maiding,’ you said, wincing at your inability to use words suddenly.

“I should get back to princing,” he agreed with a sigh, “But I needed this. Thank you…”

His voice trailed off and he squinted at you for a moment. You opened your mouth to offer the answer you knew he was looking for but he raised a finger to silence you.

“No, I’ll get this…… Y/N?”

“Yes your grace.”

“Ha! Yes! Thank you, Y/N, I look forward to seeing you again.”

You gave another low curtsey and then slipped out of the library, resting against the door and taking a deep breath. Yes, this would be absolutely fine. Just a nice, casual friendship with the prince. What could go wrong?

[mythiica]

Reader x Mitsunari Ishida - Oblivious

Title: Oblivious

Fandom: Ikemen Sengoku

Character: Mitsunari Ishida

Genre: angst because my blog is lacking angst >:)

Warnings: *cackles*, minor route spoilers

Intended Gender Audience: Female audience

Word Count: 1510 words

Other comments: okay so i did some research, historical mitsunari died in 1600 and shakespeare’s romeo and juliet was published in 1597, for the sake of the story, let’s say he managed to get his hands on a copy

❤️ ❤️ ❤️

You place the tray in front of Mitsunari and wait for him to see the food you’ve prepared especially for him. A few minutes crawl by, and you remain unnoticed. Even when you tap Mitsunari’s hand (which is holding the large book), he does not give you his attention. Laughing softly, you start to pry the book from his hands, and he finally looks up with wide eyes.

          He must have thought you were another warlord, because a whine presses between his lips only to disapparate when he sees you. “Oh… (Y/n). Apologies, I did not see you there.”

         “I know,” you giggle. “I brought you food though. You should eat something.”

         Mitsunari actually closes his book for a moment to examine the food on the tray. “Hm… this is very interesting though… I don’t suppose I could convince you to allow me to finish this chapter before I eat?”

         Raising an eyebrow, you inquire, “How many more pages left of the chapter?”

         “Well..” he starts, “just a hundred since this book doesn’t actually have chapters.”

         “A hundred?!”

         He pleads with you. “It’s so interesting though! I never considered using-”

         You yoink the book from his hands and hold it tight to your chest. “Eat. Now.”

         Mitsunari gives you a gentle smile and proceeds to take a dumpling.

❤️ ❤️ 💔

Mitsunari is sitting on a bench, engrossed in another book. Hadn’t you seen him holding a completely different novel just an hour ago? That one was at least a few hundred pages long, but he finished it?

         You take a seat next to him, and this time, he tips his head up to meet your gaze. “Hello, (Y/n). How are you?”

         “I am well, thank you. What book are you reading?”

         His eyes light up. “Ah! You see this is a very exciting account of the history of weapons in a very small village that became one of the biggest hubs for trade. The book goes into great detail about how they spent years mining the metal, and once they had a large enough supply, they started mass producing swords.”

         You nod your head. “Sounds interesting. Weren’t you reading something else earlier?”

         Mitsunari scoffs. “That book was the worst thing I had ever read,” he complains.

         “Did you… really just say that about a book?!”

         “It was a story of two children lovers, but then they can’t have one another because of their family’s feud.” He sets his book down to face you. “They end up getting married, but then they kill themselves. So unrealistic and dramatic. I’d much rather read things that are useful in life.” Mitsunari pinches the bridge of his nose. “And this all happens within a few days!”

         You laugh, realizing he was referring to Romeo and Juliet. “I don’t know.. It is sad, but it has some resemblance of love and romance. I mean, they did die for each other...”

         “I do not believe in such trivial things.”

         Furrowing your brows, you incline your head to the side slightly. “You don’t believe in love?”

         “Soul mates,” he replies rather sharply. “The only love one would need is a love for knowledge. Knowledge is power and allows you to expand your horizons.”

         You fumble with a string hanging off the edge of your kimono. “I suppose…” you agree softly, to embarrassed to say anything more.

❤️ 💔 💔

Nobunaga calls all of the warlords to an emergency meeting. You rush into the room and take a seat next to Mitsunari.

         “War has officially been declared, so we march tomorrow,” Nobunaga announced solemnly. “Mitsunari, you and Hideyoshi will leave at first light and travel to the front lines as quickly as possible. Take as many men as possible to hold them off from reaching the villages.”

         He continues to give out orders, and no one opposes him.

         “Nobunaga?” you ask with a soft voice. He turns to you, his eyes cold and glazed over. “May I help? I’ve been working on some basic medical training, and I could hel-”

         “The front lines are no place for a woman,” Mitsunari interjects. “As much as we’ve come to value you, you may not come with us.”

         You’re rather surprised by his abruptness. Usually Ieyasu would have scolded you for suggesting something like that, but you chalk it up to everyone being on edge because of the war. You let your head fall down between your shoulders. Your hair brushes forward in an attempt to hide the tears prickling in the corners of your eyes.

         “Come now, lass,” Masamune says, putting a hand on your shoulder, “I’m sure you can travel to one of the bases. If the soldiers see you there, it will boost moral and help!”

         Hideyoshi opens his mouth to protest, but then he finds truth in Masamune’s words. “Indeed… and there would be no need for you to travel directly to the front lines. Furthermore, perhaps it wouldn’t be the best idea to leave her alone in the palace. There is a risk that a recon team will come to capture it while we are away.”          Mitsunari does not look happy, but Nobunaga has the final say: you will go to the camp.

💔 💔 💔

You tend to the wounded in one of the secure camps. People rotate in and out of your care, allowing you to help them with arrow nicks and minor scrapes. Wiping the sweat from your brow, you tighten a bandage on a soldier’s arm before sending them off to rest.

         When a horse rides furiously into the camp, you’re surprised to see Hideyoshi calling men to follow him. He barks commands, and everyone scrambles around to gather their weapons.

         You run up to him and demand to know what is happening.

         “Mitsunari is having trouble at the front. They had more numbers than we initially estimated. Stay here and help get as many into fighting shape as possible,” he tells you before turning his horse in the other direction.

         Your heart sinks at the thought that Mitsunari might be in trouble. From the corner of your eyes, you can see a horse tied to a post. In the spur of the moment, you bolt towards it and hoist yourself up over the saddle. Grabbing the reins, you lurch forward, galloping out of the camp at high speeds. Soldiers shout at you as you whirr past them, but you’re not listening because you’re set on seeing Mitsunari.

         It doesn’t take long before the number of bodies you see littered on the ground increases. Blood covers the ground an ugly red-black color, and you hear shouts and metal clanging.

         Pushing forward, you reach the supposed ‘front lines’. Scouring the battlefield, your eyes finally land on Mitsunari. He deftly slices through opponents while dodging other attacks. Compared to the bookworm he was at home… he is completely now.

         Mitsunari is focused on the person directly in front of him, just as he would be a book. Likely, it helped him focus, but his senses failed him as he did not see the archer in the tree behind him.

         Jumping into action, you barrel down to his side, your horse pushing his out of the way as an arrow flies past your head. The force of the horses colliding sends the both of you off and into the dusty ground.

         “(Y/n)?! What-What are you doing here?”

         You pant heavily and push his sword arm up, blocking an attacker. Mitsunari takes charge, spinning around gracefully to run his blade through a soft spot in their armor. The man crumbles to the ground, seething in pain.

         Mitsunari turns back ground to you, wearing the most intimidating expression you’ve ever seen. “You must go back.”

         “No!”

         “Why not?”

         You look down slightly, but take a step closer to him. Mitsunari is about to say something, but you throw your arms around his neck and jump into his arms.

         He’s taken aback by this action and wraps his arms around you to hold you.

         “Mitsunari…”

         You start to slip from his grip, so he holds you and pulls you behind a tree for cover.

         “(Y/n), you’re much more strange than I thought.”

         But Mitsunari doesn’t hear a response. He looks down at you, but realizes that you threw yourself at him to catch an arrow instead of it going through his chest.

         He chokes on his breath and lowers you to the ground, examining your wound. Tears prickle in his eyes without him realizing it. The arrow had gone through your lungs, and Mitsunari had read enough books to know you… were dead.

         Mitsunari strokes your cold cheek when Hideyoshi arrives with reinforcements. He tries to talk to Mitsunari, but he’s completely zoned out, running his fingers through your hair and down your arms, searching for a lingering flicker of warmth.

         Bringing you up his chest, he presses a kiss to your forehead. “Died for one another, right? Is that what you said about that book? I wasn’t even listening…”

[recentanimenews]

INTERVIEW: Zack Davisson on Cosmic Horror and the Reality of Translating Manga

  Dark Horse recently released Gou Tanabe's excellent H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness manga, which features translation work by Zack Davisson. We had the fortunate opportunity to fire some questions in Zack's direction, so read on for some insight into the world of manga translation, supernatural scares, and more!

  *** 

  With Gou Tanabe adaptations like this, you're working from an English source as viewed through a Japanese author's lens. How did this affect your approach to translating At the Mountains of Madness? 

  Its been interesting. I work on the book with Lovecraft’s text right next to Tanabe’s. I use both an English and a Japanese version so I can see what specific phrases Tanabe intended to preserve, and what he changed. If he used Lovecraft’s language, I try to replicate that. If he wrote something entirely new, then I work to make it fit in and look seamless.

  It’s a somewhat time-intensive method that I haven’t done for any other project, but I think it is worth it to get it right.

  Were you already a fan of the source material? 

  Oh, absolutely. Looking at my shelves right now I have five complete collections of Lovecraft’s stories. I have the Arkham House editions, the S.T. Joshi annotations, and then fancy shelf decoration leather-bound volumes by Easton Press, Folio Society, and Gollancz. 

  I’ve been reading Lovecraft most of my life. I saw Michael Whelan’s amazing painted covers and convinced my mom to buy me the Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre paperback when I was probably far too young. Or maybe just the right age. 

  The sense of dread in Lovecraft's work can be difficult to get across in adapted form. What do you think makes Gou Tanabe's take on the material so special? 

  I think it is the fact that Tanabe takes the source material absolutely seriously. He approaches it with gravitas, free from modern “takes” or “spins.” In modern times Lovecraft often descends to parody or “Lovecraftian” where they do the August Derleth thing of taking his characters and writing new stories void of the original intent or nuances.

  Tanabe is the visionary director who says, “Hey! I’ve got an idea! Why don’t we stage Hamlet as Hamlet? Exactly as written? Not as a clever spin on corporate culture or boy bands or something like that? Just, as intended. Even in period costume?”

  Tanabe also has a grasp of mood, which is essential to Lovecraft. And pacing. And his art is simply phenomenal. 

  Beyond Tanabe, do you have a favorite take on Lovecraft? Are there any films or other forms of media you think have come close to capturing the essence of his horror? 

  Before Tanabe I would have said my favorite was Richard Corben’s comics. Although he very much made “Richard Corben comics,” his vision of Lovecraft was truly frightening on the page. No one does that grin of madness like Corben.

  For films, I can’t think of a single one that does it right. I love radio plays, however, and the Dark Adventure Radio Theater does excellent adaptations. I buy everything they make.

  Can you talk about your own encounters with the supernatural? How have they informed your work on titles like At the Mountains of Madness?

  I hold that it is perfectly acceptable to believe in weird things so long as they are of no consequence.  I have had a Loch Ness Monster sighting and gone hunting for mysterious ghost spots in Japan… Including my own house. I lived in one of Japan’s notorious jiko bukken haunted apartments.

  I like the idea of there being mysteries still in the world. I think it helps to believe in the supernatural at least a little bit in order to work in the genre effectively. When I am working on things like At the Mountains of Madness, I buy into them completely and allow myself to be amazed. 

  What scares you more, ghosts or the notion of greater cosmic horrors?  

  Definitely ghosts! I love Lovecraft, but I find cosmic horror to be too grand to be truly terrifying. Horror is personal. Sitting home alone in my own house, in the dark, working away and feeling that tingling feeling on the back of my neck that someone is standing behind me will always be more frightening than mythological scale frightmares.

  You've worked on plenty of titles I think it's safe to say many would consider dream projects, from the works of Go Nagai to Shigeru Mizuki, Satoshi Kon, and beyond. Do you have any favorites, and are there any specific authors or series you're still dying to tackle in the future? 

  It’s true. I’m fully aware I’ve been blessed in my career. I started out with a very specific agenda, of artists I wanted to work on and works I wanted to translate. When I finished Leiji Matsumoto’s Space Battleship Yamato I realized that I had accomplished them all. I had a bit of a crisis of purpose because… what then? Do I just start translating stuff I have no passion for just to cash a paycheck? That didn’t seem very fun.

  Fortunately, with artists like Gou Tanabe I was able to find new passions. I’d never seen Tanabe’s work before Dark Horse hired me for The Hound and Other Stories, but now I want to work on everything he does.  Discovering new favorites is the best feeling. And there are still piles of Shigeru Mizuki comics for me to tackle! 

  What is the most misunderstood aspect of translation? 

  That we are technicians instead of artists. Translating is writing. Plain and simple. I translate, and I write my own books, and they come from the same part of my brain. 

  Translation is like performing a cover song. My voice is never going to be the same as the original. There will be personal nuances and variations, turns of phrases that I will never be able to entirely mask. So, it’s a matter of making my cover version as good in its own right as I possibly can.

  It seems it's only been in recent years that translators have been more thoroughly and visibly credited for their work. Do you think the manga industry in particular is in a good place now as far as this is concerned, or is there more to be done to convey just how much influence a translator has over the final product? 

  Strangely enough, the opposite is true. If you look at the early days of manga the emphasis was on the translator. People like Rachel Thorn and Toren Smith were getting cover credit. My own idea on this is that manga was still strange, so companies wanted to put “English names” on the cover to dilute some of the “foreignness.” They also were having well-known comic writers like Lein Wen and Marv Wolfman doing adaptations.

  Then, when manga took off and TokyoPop boomed, things flipped. Manga artists themselves became the superstars and translators were hidden to prevent any perceived barrier between reader and artist. Readers didn’t like the idea that they were reading a translator’s dialog, not the author’s.

  I think things are settling into a better equilibrium now. Manga artists SHOULD be the superstars—they absolutely are; but readers should be aware of how much the individual translator affects the experience. There still is a way to go before we get there. One of my proudest accomplishments was getting translators listed on the Eisner Awards as part of the creative team.  

  Now we need to get manga letterers credit.

    I won't ask you to break down your personal process—you did a fantastic job of that in your TCJ article a few years back—but has it changed at all since then? 

  Thanks! And now, my process hasn’t changed much. Translation for me is intuitive. I absorb the original, process it emotionally, then think about how to portray those emotions in English. It's not a logical process.

  Is there any advice on the industry or translation work you wish you could go back in time and tell your younger self? 

  Hmmm…. Start earlier. I wish I had been brave enough to have been an exchange student in high school. Knowing my interests, some of my teachers encouraged that but I was too scared to step away from friends and family and everything I knew.  

  It took until my 30s to say, “fuck it” and throw away everything I knew to jump on a plane to Japan. And then I didn’t get into translation until I was almost 40.

  Working in comics was always a dream of mine, and it took me quite a while to find my niche. Things have worked out well, so I can’t complain too much.

  Are there any manga out right now (besides your own) that you're particular excited about? 

  Like many who work in creative industries I find I have less and less time to just be a reader. But I always try to keep up on a few things. Recently I finally tackled the mountain that is Lone Wolf and Cub, and I am hooked. One of the best things I have ever read. Classics like that are classics for a reason.

  I also wait hungrily for any new volume of Delicious in Dungeon. 

  Thanks for taking the time to do this, your work on At the Mountains of Madness is fantastic. Do you have any parting words for aspiring translators out there?

  Thanks! My main advice is to move to Japan. I don’t think I could have the life and career now if I hadn’t taking that plunge. I spent seven years in Japan, and that gave me the skills I needed to translate professionally. Jump into the deep end! You never know what is waiting for you! 

  ***

  If you want to see a sample of Gou Tanabe's work, check out our preview pages for a peek into At the Mountains of Madness. 

    By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[whatif-animagineblog]

Summary: You came into a small town wanting to help people, that was it, hopefully having a good life. The small town you found, Four Corners, was unsuspecting. A town you never expected to have the impact on your life as it and it’s resident Conman would have.

Chapter Summary: Coming back after an eventful trip forces some to reflect on their feelings and thoughts with trouble on the horizon.

Pairing: Ezra Standish/Reader (Rein in your horses. It’s slow burn)

Words: 2735

Warnings: Always pining.

CHAPTER SIX: Back in Town

PREVIOUS/ NEXT

You had only just gotten back to town the previous night and in the morning as you were making your walk to the clinic when Mary came after you. “Y/n!” You stopped to let her catch up. “This telegram came in for your the day before last.” You took it and smiled at her.

“Thanks, Mary. I’ll read it when I get to the clinic. Have a good day,” you took a few paces backward, smiling at her. “And thanks again.”

“No problem,” she grinned disappearing back into the newspaper office.

You continued your walk when you caught sight of Vin who smiled and touched the brim of his hat, “morning, Vin.”

“Morning Miss, Y/l/n.” He nearly passed you when he called for your attention again. “Hey, can you uh...Ya, see I got this tear in my jacket and I was wondering if you could stitch it up before I head out?”

“Well if I can handle people I think I can handle cloth. Sure, come on up to the clinic.” He grinned and fell into stride beside you.

“Thank ya.”

“Anything for you boys, Vin,” you smiled at him.

“So uh, Ezra didn’t get under your skin too much did he?”

“No,” you laughed, “Actually it was a really nice trip. He was great company.”

“He talks an awful lot.”

“So do I,” you answered opening the door to the clinic. “Sit down I’ll get you in a minute.” You pointed, while you headed over to a cabinet. “Moring Nathan.”

“Good Morning,” he chirped back. “Vin please don’t tell me you went and got yourself hurt.”

“No, I’m patching his jacket,” you answered unfolding the telegram.

Y/N, I AM GOING HOME. STAY AWAY FROM THE GAMBLER.

You groaned as you crumbled up the paper and threw it in a vague direction. “Hey,” Vin cried. “Watch it! What the hell was that for?”

You turned your head towards him and looked over at Nathan who was giving you an equally shocked expression. “Sorry.”

“What got you so riled up,” Nathan asked walking up to you.

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“That ain’t nothin’,” Vin stood, folding his arms. “Someone causing you trouble again?”

You shook your head, “Seriously y/n, “ Nathan spoke, “If you need help.”

“No,” you cut him off. “No. It’s just. My trip was not entirely uneventful. I ran into my aunt and she wants me back east. She said some nasty things about the town,” you bit your lip, “and Ezra.”

“What,” Vin asked. “She can’t have you.” You laughed and you shook your head.

“What’s this have to do with the telegram?”

“She let me know she’s going back to Illinois and left me with a warning.”

“Which was,” Nathan pressed.

“Stay away from the gambler,” you didn’t look at either of the men.

“Damn,” Vin cursed. “Ez was that bad?”

“No, he wasn't! He was was perfectly polite. A true image of a gentleman. At least while she saw him.”

Nathan eyed you a minute, “So she just doesn't want you hanging around him?”

“Well, she also got this idea in her head that I must fancy him.” You shook your head  “I tried to explain that it wasn’t like that. She didn’t listen.”

“It’s not,” Vin asked in a rare moment of his mouth being in front of his head.

“Of course not,” you grew defensive. “No. D-Does it seem like I do?”

Both men looked at each other then shook their heads. “No,” Nathan waved his hands dismissively. “No, it’s just you and him is close is all. People talk.”

“People? Like you,” you folded your arms.

“Nah,” Vin jumped in. “People who’ve got nothing better to do.”

“Which is most of the people here,” Nathan added and Vin nodded along. “Your aunt sounds like she’s trying to do what’s best for you.”

“Yeah,” you settled in a chair taking Vin’s jacket into your hands. “Except she doesn’t understand what I want. She doesn’t seem to understand I live for this town with its small population, dust, and fights. That I like the uncertainty and rotating cast of characters that waltz in and out.”

“I don’t think most ladies often see themselves digging bullets out of drunks and the fools that deliberately jump in front of them,” Nathan shot Vin a pointed look, who only smiled before saying:

“Well, I reckon she’ll be leaving you alone for the time being,” he shrugged.

“I think she is only going back to plan how she’s going to come here, call you all of you horrible names and drag me off. Nothing stops that woman.”

“Last time I checked,” Nathan put a hand on your shoulder. “Nothing stops you either.” You chuckled and he squeezed your shoulder. “Alright, I haven’t eaten yet. I’m going to head to the saloon.”

“I’ll join you,” Vin hopped up, taking his jacket out of your outstretched hand. “Thank you again. I really appreciate it.”

“Any time.” You sat back as you watched them leave and sighed. You wondered if Ezra knew that people talked about you and him. What he thought on the matter. Probably thought it was ridiculous. If you and he were meant to be you would’ve already been right? 

Then your heart sunk with the thought that if he heard what people thought he be mad. Upset at the prospect. That in truth he really only put up with you.  you shook your head trying physically dispell the thoughts that were madness. 

You sighed, this was crazy. To have your head swimming with thoughts of ‘does he like me?’ like a school girl. After all on that list of reasons to leave was relationships. The only inkling of romantic thoughts you had where when you were young then they became all about being a doctor and avoiding your poor lovesick shadow, James. It was with him you decided that you would never be as lovesick as he was.

But that wasn’t going so well. Damn him. 

The sun now hung high over the small down and Ezra was enjoying some time alone on top of the roof of the large hotel. With his jacket laid out next to him as he read his book, taking generous nips from his hip-flask.  Trying to distract himself from thoughts of you that had been plaguing him since the moment you arrived. They were getting worst, ever since you left for that last supply trip it was worst. He had a great time, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything. He wanted more of it. He wanted-

He was interrupted by the sound of a ladder clattering against the roof and the subsequent creak of the rungs being climbed. 

“I still can’t figure out how you get up here so easily,” Buck complained, taking careful steps. “Took me 15 minutes to find a ladder.”

“I have found agility to be useful in my past endeavors,” Ezra commented not looking up the book he was pretending to read.

“So, how did the trip go, Hoss?” Ezra looked up from his book, sticking his bookmark into the pages and setting it aside. Buck settled next to him on the edge, held out a small tin cup and produced a coffee pot.

Ezra held out his cup as Buck poured, “You didn’t make this right?”

“No,” Buck smiled. “I know how you feel about my coffee. Now answer the question.”

Ezra sighed pouring a healthy splash from his half-empty flask into his coffee. “What do you expect? It was remarkably uneventful from other trips I’m forced to take.”

Buck smiled and leaned in causing Ezra to lean away with an uncomfortable look, “You know what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t, actually,” Ezra took a sip from his cup, watching his friend carefully.

“Really? Come on Ezra! You spent all that alone time with Miss. Y/N and you are telling me nothing exciting happened?” Ezra’s head snapped to him, giving him a scrutinizing look.

“Now just what are you trying to suggest?”

“Well, it’s just that I’ve noticed the way you look at her Ez,” Buck’s voice became solemn. “You go out of your way; out of your comforts for her. Hell, you didn’t even complain when you had to take a four-day round trip.” Ezra didn’t answer looking into his cup. “Ezra. Listen, I just don’t want to see you lose your chance. She’s a great lady who obviously has feelings for you.”

Ezra’s lips pulled into a forced, wounded smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a chance with her.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Ezra was quite again. “You are just a glutton for pain huh?”

“What does that mean?!” Ezra twisted to face Buck, trying to fix him with an incredulous glare. To no surprise, it didn’t work.

“It means this sweet little filly blows into town. You two have this instant connection and you both look at each like you are the only ones on this goddamn earth. Ignoring us half the time when she waltzes in. So when are you going to stop being so goddamned stubborn and just take her out for dinner?” Ezra rolled his eyes and faced forward again. “Maybe a nice moonlit walk, kiss her on the hand at the end of the evening?” Buck nudged his friend with his elbow and chuckled a bit. “When are you going to do something instead of waiting for it to be too late?”

“Because,” Ezra snapped, breaking off Buck’s litany. “Because,” he repeated stalling as he thought to phrase it. For once he was blunt, “I’m scared.” Buck reeled from the sudden, dry honesty but rolled with it. It wasn't often Ezra was so vulnerable, but when he was, he really needed support.

“Scared? Ez, she likes you, a lot. I doubt that she’d turn you down.”

“It’s not just that. I’m scared o-of her saying yes too. What if I let her get closer and she doesn’t like what she finds? Then-then she’ll avoid me, and things will change. A-and if for some ungodly reason decides she likes the scoundrel I am, I don’t deserve her. I have done too many sinful things in my life to deserve someone as brave, bright, kind, and beautiful as her.” As Ezra spoke his voice softened and started to get thick with some emotion. Buck let out a long breath through his nose. “Mr. Wilmington,” he spoke after a short pause, in a low voice. It was steadier but still wavered. “As much as I appreciate your companionship and the coffee, I think I might like some time alone.”

“Don’t Mr. Wilmington me.” Buck sighed standing, “But uh let me just say one thing. I may not be as philosophical as Josiah or as smart as Nathan or you, but I know a great deal on love.” Ezra didn’t look up, but Buck knew he was listening. “I know that who we love and who loves us, despite what we think is not a choice. And I know for a fact that that it has nothing to do with deserve. You don’t get to decide who she thinks deserves her love, only she does. If she thinks you’ve earned it you have. And I trust that girl’s judgment.”

“Is that all,” Ezra looked up picking up his flask taking another swig.

“Yeah that’s it,” he started to walk away before he stopped, “Oh. take it easy on the whiskey. You do have to get down from here. And uh, you get pretty loose-lipped when you're all liquored up and I don’t think you want to tell y/n how lovely you think she is while explaining your broken arm.”

Ezra scoffed as he listened to Buck descend, lifting his flask to his mouth. He paused before sighing and screwing the lid back on and setting it aside. He looked out towards the edge of town and saw a small posse coming in. He huffed as he watched them, hoping they were not going cause trouble, he didn’t need this. He did not need some upset cattle ranchers or some men with a wild vendetta.

“I’m looking for a man named Ezra!”

“Damn it all,” He stood, moving to get himself off the roof, “I knew I should of used a fake name.” Ezra, after scaling down the same way he got up landed on his feet with a soft thud. Then his arm was being grabbed by none other than Chris.

“You want to explain to me why we have a gang of 15 men coming in looking for you?”

“Maybe it’s a different, Ezra,” Ezra grinned.

“It’s never a different Ezra with you. Why is he here? Who is he?”

Ezra finally pulled his arm away from Chris. “It was hard to see from the roof but I’m assuming that’s the man that was attempting to cheat me earlier this week. While I was out of town with Y/N”

“What happened?”

“I called him out for cheating after he played cards I had not dealt him. Really it was a horrible display, Chris. Anyone would be able to spot his failing efforts.” Chris fixed him with a stare. “I was told, after receiving some very unfair vituperations and an equally unfair punch that knocked me off my feet, to leave town in five minutes or they would ‘paint the walls with my blood.’ Understandably, I took my traveling companion and left.”

“Why didn’t you make sure they weren’t following you?”

“Don’t insult me, Chris. Of course, I did. I didn’t see them. I was as vigilant as I could be.”

“I think you would have seen 15 people, Ezra.”

“They must have a tracker with them. You can’t honestly think I’d want to bring harm to this town. After all, I’ve risked for them.”

Chris licked his lips as he thought. “Well, we better get out there. Find out what he wants.”

Chris, Buck, and Ezra stepped out into the road. The other men came to a stop looking down at the three. Chris stepped forward, “What can I do for you boys?”

“We are here for him,” the leader pointed to Ezra. “He accused me of cheating!”

“Were you?”

“Of course not! Look at him, if anyone was cheating it as him. He owes me.”

Buck stepped up and looked over at Chris, before turning his head back to the men in front of him. “I think a nice fair game is in order. Clean out your sleeves and play a few rounds. Clear the air. What do you say, Ez?”

Now Ezra stepped forward never removing his gaze from the men before him. “Sounds fair to me. I’m willing to prove my innocence. But I’m sure you gentlemen are all very tired from your trip I know I still am. How does tomorrow sound?”

The man shifted in his saddle, “Alright. Tomorrow. Then you’ll get what’s coming to you!”

“I shiver with anticipation,” was the deadpanned response. The posse rode away and Ezra turned to Chris. “Listen, I do not think our friends over there are going to leave so easily. You and Buck need to ride out and get the others.”

“What and leave you and Nathan here all alone? No way in hell,” Buck whispered yelled.

“I don’t like it, Ez.”

“Me either, I’m the one he wants to hang with my own gun belt. But the odds are much better if we have the others. I’ll stall as long as I can. Hell, I’ll lose on purpose!”

“That’s still a long ride, and Vin, Josiah, and JD are all in different directions,” Buck folded his arms.

“Then take Nathan and ride fast.”

Chris nodded to Buck to follow him, shouting over his shoulder as he walked briskly to his horse. “Don’t do anything stupid while we’re gone! And be careful.”

Ezra watched Chris take off and Buck run up the stairs to the clinic. “Aren’t I always,” he muttered to himself, looking around. Looking up in time to see you out on the balcony of the clinic looking down at him as Buck and Nathan took off on their horses. He had to force himself to breathe looking at you up there, his heart pounding. He tipped his hat and walked towards the hotel to get his belongings. “Damn her.”

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[literarygoon]

“The misery and the hope we shared”

A review of The Plague by Kevin Chong, Arsenal Pulp Press

By Will Johnson

When Kevin Chong first sat down to write The Plague, it was absolutely unnecessary for him to invent a new epidemic for Vancouver, as the opioid crisis currently ravaging the west coast is already sending a staggering number of residents hurtling to an early grave. By the end of 2017 the city had brought the average death rate down from around 150 per month to under 100, but the epidemic has soldiered on despite aggressive interventions by the B.C. government.

And while the average headline-reader still associates these deaths with the hardcore drug addicts of the Downtown Eastside, picturing homeless derelicts slipping from this mortal coil in shadowy alleys, a closer look reveals that those passing away include teenage athletes who have been prescribed painkillers, upper middle class couples with young children and a disproportionate number of people living in First Nations communities.

In other words: this is hitting just about everyone, from all walks of life — leaving us with even less of an excuse to look the other way.

*

Chong may or may not have had the opioid crisis on his mind while penning his latest novel, but his depiction of our society’s inability to grapple with the threat of imminent death feels both prescient and immediate, a clarion call for those who have become too accustomed to other people’s suffering. Lost in narcissism and materialism, Chong’s average Vancouverite has allowed their selective empathy to negate their ability to engage with others’ personal emergencies. Their solipsism has rendered them incapable of creating the sense of common purpose required to tackle a large-scale catastrophe.

“The city was made up, as it had always been, of people who worked too much for too little … this bustle precluded self-examination,” Chong writes in the introduction. “Yes, there were activists in the city, but those people seemed unhappy and disagreeable.”

The Vancouver he conjures has never seen a war, has yet to experience the great earthquake looming in our future, and contains citizens that “came together to for summer fireworks that celebrated … fireworks”. Because of this, “it was an anatomized city, a place in which the joys and fears were contained within the spheres of self and family” and “collective traumas were experienced but barely heard by the rest of the city.”

These days Vancouverites are being bombarded with social media campaigns that not only plead with your average person to care about the drug users dying all around them, but also to consider the humanity of those being taken from us prematurely. “People who use drugs are real people” is the repeated tagline, juxtaposed beside faces identified thusly: “Cousin, Student, Drug User, Friend”.

Not addressed is why we typically fail to see this truth, why we’ve become so skilled at ignoring the marginalized in the first place.

In The Plague, the city’s residents initially greet the health emergency with faux concern, failing to understand the gravity of their situation. “On their profile photos they posted pictures of themselves wearing surgical masks. Others, hoping to look medieval, wore black cowls, but resembled nerdy sorcerers.” They flee reality by taking in apocalyptic films, “which ranged from Vincent Price’s Last Man on Earth to Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, from camp to comedy.”

It isn’t until a full-out quarantine is called that people begin to take things seriously. “Our devotion to routine was how we sought comfort in the moments after the hot flare of annoyance tapered into disquiet — when we noticed, say, a co-worker absent from a meeting. Or when we saw entire aisles in markets picked clean.”

*

Chong’s sixth book could easily be placed within the genre of disaster fiction, which makes it perfectly suited for exploring the nuances and political realities of the opioid crisis.  

While his earlier novels include a coming-of-age story and an immigrant narrative, this is his first attempt at a larger scale epic. It has parallels with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which plays coy about the apocalyptic destruction that occurred before the opening, instead dwelling on the existential questions raised as his characters struggle for survival in its wake.

In much the same way, readers of The Plague finish the book with very little information about the disease that drives the action, the way it’s contracted or how it’s ultimately cured — meanwhile they know all about the characters’ interior lives. Both of these books have a parabolic, vaguely Christian texture, like you’re reading a carefully crafted sermon by someone who doesn’t believe in God.

And if you’re expecting something akin to a Stephen King door-stopper, you’re going to be mightily disappointed by The Plague. In Chong’s still-operating city we don’t have Walking Dead-style system breakdown, the characters brood and chat more than they do anything else, and there’s no Dustin Hoffman telling his superior “With all due respect, fuck you, sir” like in Outbreak. There are scenes that are funny, but more in the way that makes you cringe afterwards.

Chong’s book is inspired by the work of none other than Albert Camus, whose 1947 novel La Peste documented an outbreak in Oran, Algeria decades earlier. Ten years after its publication, during his speech accepting the Nobel Prize, Camus said of his writing “it was a commitment to bear, together with all those who were living through the same history, the misery and the hope we shared”.

Put another way, by critic John Cruikshank, he was depicting “man’s metaphysical dereliction in the world.”

For Camus, writing about a killer disease was his opportunity to tackle the Third Reich. For Chong, it gives him an opportunity to explore topics wholly unrelated to the action, everything from riots and sex scandals to gentrification and the changing role of contemporary journalism. And anyone who has spent any time in the Rainy City will find plenty that’s familiar, including the nihilistic materialism of its residents — though he doesn’t mention yoga pants even once.

And in both books there’s no Higher Power coming to save us. As McCarthy says, “There is no God, and we are his prophets.”

*

Into this setting Chong plunks three main characters: Dr. Bernard Rieux (who shares a name with Camus’ protagonist), an American writer named Megan Tso, and a city hall reporter named Raymond Siddhu. These three each engage with the health crisis in different ways, illustrating both how futile and how meaningful their actions are, at first ignoring all the dead rats with blood coming out their eyes until they’re forced to watch people they love suffer slow, hideous deaths.

When all is said and done, the crisis will last four months and cost 1400 lives, but somehow this feels beside the point.

“Everyone wants to make this health issue political,” Siddhu complains to Rieux, shortly after the first cases are reported. “Infectious disease doesn’t check your party affiliation. Suffering is universal.”

Though it may be new to them, the threat of disease existed long before these characters ever stepped foot on the page. In a televised speech, Mayor Romeo Parsons calls the epidemic “our founding condition” — reminding them that the city is named after an English officer of the Royal Navy who was faced with disease upon arrival. He describes the scene of first contact in the 1890s, noting that the First Nations populace had been decimated by smallpox before the settlers even landed.

“Captain George Vancouver did not see wealth and abundance but devastation. He found abandoned villages and beaches lined with decaying bodies. He saw canoes placed in trees, which upon closer inspection, held skeletons inside them.”

And just like any catastrophe, its the weak who end up suffering most.  “You don’t need to wear a tinfoil hat to see how disease disproportionately affects our most marginalized people, the poorest, the least privileged,” he says.

Chong has put a post-modern spin on the old Stalin quote “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic” by showing the meaningless ways public opinion can be manipulated when it comes to matters of life and death. For instance, the mayor’s rise to popularity is triggered by a YouTube video of him making a jump shot that was “widely shared and re-posted”, making people feel “pre-acquainted with him”.  

Meanwhile Tso is the author of a book called The Meaning of Death. She reflects there was “a look that people who organized death-related events cultivated. It wasn’t so plainly ‘alt’ as a high-school goth aesthetic.” She later notes that her marketing manager told her “to tell funny stories about the mummies of the Atacama Desert to make you feel comfortable about turning cemeteries into picnic spaces and taxidermying your pets.”

People will try anything to convince themselves they don’t have to feel other people’s pain.

*

Parsons is easily Chong’s most compelling character, but it isn’t long before he’s dragged off his high horse. Siddhu ends up breaking news of a sex scandal — the mayor mistakenly fucked his own long-lost daughter — and the beleaguered politician goes into hiding.

It’s hard not to see the parallels here with Chong’s former colleague Steven Galloway, whose own scandal has become a multi-year fiasco pitting different factions of the literary community against each other. However, it’s from this unlikely avenue that he comes up with the narrative’s most hopeful storyline, as Parsons discovers a new humility and joins forces with the front-line workers.

“This infection exposed everything that we had wanted to sweep aside. It’s allowed us to see others — not just the ones who looked like us — it allowed us to see them as equals. The disease levelled us,” he says.

Putting aside his political pomposity, Parsons ends up volunteering for The Sanitation League — a service started by Rieux that helps afflicted people outside the hospital system. In the most moving scene of the novel he sits by the bedside of a young girl about to die, witnessing her final moments alongside her parents. It’s cathartic for him, as well as the reader, because it puts a human face on what is primarily an abstract menace.

“Rieux did not need to tell him that this child was not responsible for her own death,” Chong writes.

Here’s where some would draw a distinction between those suffering from Chong’s plague and the people overdosing on fentanyl — they feel one is responsible for their fate, while the other isn’t. But this moralistic worldview allows onlookers to dodge feelings of complicity while ignoring a simple fact: it’s the world itself, and the treatment people receive from their societies, that maneuver them into places of vulnerability. This idea is explored in the book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by journalist Johann Hari, who has worked to humanize drug addicts and call for the legalization of all drugs.

“Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It’s actually going to deepen it,” he writes.

“So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.”

*

The most promising solution to the opioid crisis was pioneered in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver with the creation of the country’s first safe injection site — a move vehemently opposed by Stephen Harper at the time. Recently, Ontario premier Doug Ford made headlines for saying he was “dead against” them, despite the fact that they’ve been proven to be enormously effective at saving lives and helping addicts into treatment.

“Public opinion has slowly begun to turn against prohibition, and policy-makers are finally beginning to look at addiction as a health issue as opposed to one for the criminal justice system,” journalist Travis Lupick writes in his new book Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with Addiction.

For anyone who has loved someone with an addiction — as I have — safe injection sites provide an opportunity for caregivers to demonstrate to the vulnerable that they’re loved, that there are people out there willing to help. Out of crisis comes compassion. And as with The Plague’s Sanitation League, it takes people putting aside their personal comfort (and sometimes safety) to reach out to those on the brink. It’s Mayor Parsons’ willingness to personally participate that wins him Rieux’s approval.

“This is not about your personal business,” he says, shaking his hand. “It’s because I think your idea of suffering is grounded in reality.”

As the book draws to a close, Siddhu is amazed by how the Vancouver community has pulled together, telling Tso “I felt like I was in a community for the first time.”

She agrees.

“I’ve seen people risk their lives for strangers, people who would otherwise be unheroic."

*

Despite everything, inequality and injustice persist right to the end of Chong’s novel — just like in the real world. As the death toll rises, some residents barricade themselves in their homes to focus on renovations while others start new professions: “People were working as amateur massage therapists and running restaurants from their dining rooms.” Others come up with radically immoral ways of coping: “They raised online donation campaigns for friends immobilized by grief and then pocketed the proceeds.”

“I go out in the evenings more than I have in the past ten years,” Siddhu’s colleague tells him. “The city has never been livelier since the funerals started.”

Chong’s novel is bleak, it’s true, and the language purposefully keeps readers at arms’ length — at one point, there’s even a trigger warning. (“We are aware that the suffering of children can be acutely difficult and may prompt, among readers of this history, their own troubling memories.”) But in each of his main characters he’s found something of the human spirit to celebrate. At one point Siddhu is faced with his own powerlessness when a former journalism subject confronts him about how little has changed since he reported on the conditions she’s living in.

“You told me my words would make a difference, and I said you were full of shit,” she says. “It doesn’t matter anymore, I guess.”

The narrative isn’t without hope, though, and Rieux in particular stands out as an example of selfless giving. While speaking with Tso about his views on medicine, he gives a short speech on how he keeps going.

It’s the sort of thing that would work well as a personal mantra.

“I don’t have a view of life in an abstract sense,” he says. “I don’t care when it begins or how precious it is compared to a gorilla’s. I just want to help people.”

[cubaverdad]

The Fidel Castro Fair

The Fidel Castro Fair / Iván García Iván García , 21 February 2017 — The wood charcoal embers are slowly browning half a dozen kebabs with vegetables, pineapples and pieces of pork, while, on a shelf, the flies are hovering around the steamed corn cobs. From very early in the morning, Jesús, a chubby mulatto with calloused hands, gets on with cooking chicken, pork fillets and sautéed rice, to sell later in his small mobile shop positioned in a large car park, at the main entrance to the International Book Fair in Havana. A line of kiosks with aluminium tubes and coloured canvas tops offer local favourites, like bread with suckling pig, ham and cheese sandwiches, jellies, mineral water and canned drinks. "My kiosk specialises in dishes from San Miguel de Padrón. But the truth is that in this particular fair, sales are sluggish. Mainly because the organisers prohibited the sale of alcohol. You can forget about books and all that intellectual shit, you have to give Cubans beer and reguetón if you want them to feel happy – the rest is secondary", says Jesús. Thursday February 16th started off rainy in Havana. Idelfonso, a self-employed clown, looks up at the overcast sky and mutters, "if it starts raining again, they'll have to take the circus and its tent away, because no-one will bring their kids in bad weather. This fair has been pretty bad for us. No-one has any money, and those who do prefer to spend it on books and food", he says, in his bear get-up. In different parts of the car park, private businesses rent out inflatable toys for fifteen pesos for the kids to bounce about for thirty minutes, and five pesos for a quick ride on a horse. "Many families don't come to buy books. They would rather their kids enjoyed themselves playing with the equipment. There are hardly any amusement parks in the capital", says Rita, who deals with charging for the horses. Families and groups of friends lay towels out on the grass and picnic on a hill from where you get a unique view of the city across the bay. Gerard, a young man with tattooed forearms, feels uncomfortable. He tells his wife to go off with the kid to play with the inflatable toys while he complains about the lack of any beer. "These people are really party poopers. Whose idea was it to stop selling lager and nips of rum? I can't imagine it was because of Fidel Castro's death, as the bloke has been pushing up daisies for over two months now", moans Gerard, knocking back a lemonade as a temporary solution to the matter. Dora and Germán come from El Cotorro, in south west Havana, with two enormous bags to buy "fifteen or twenty boxes of drink. We have a cafe and we buy stuff here for ten pesos and then we sell them there for twenty. If we have time, we buy a few books for our grandchildren". The Book Fair always was a good excuse for thousands of Habaneros to amuse themselves. Kids skipping classes looking over displays of foreign books, inveterate bookworms, pseudo intellectuals who take the opportunity to come over as writers, the peripheral catwalk of hustlers and pickpockets selling tourists fake Cohíba cigars made in shacks in deepest Havana. But this time the organisers decided to put a stop to "sideshows which have nothing to do with reading", says Idalia, a Editora Abril bookseller, who adds: "The fair has been turned into a mess. Like a strip club. Hustlers who came to pull foreigners and people with money who have never read a book and were downing beers 'til closing time. The number of people coming here has definitely fallen, as nearly two million people came here two years ago. Now the numbers have fallen to less than half" says Idalia, who, in exchange for offering her opinions for Martí Noticias, asks me to buy some books. "The thing is, we get commission on our sales. And we aren't selling much", she emphasises. From the books on display, I choose the biography of Raúl Castro written by Nikolai Leonov, an ex high-up in the KGB and personal friend of the Carribean autocrat. The book, which looks good, costs 30 pesos, equivalent to three times the daily minimum wage in Cuba. According to the official press, it is the best selling book of the year. Idalia thinks differently. "You can put any rubbish you like on paper. They give the book, just like they did with Fidel's, as gifts to lots of people who attend events, and then they record them as sales. And, being prioritised by the printers, they have gigantic print-runs, and are on sale in all the bookshops in the country. But, I haven't seen too much enthusiasm among Cuban readers for Raúl's biography. Foreign lefties certainly do buy books dedicated to Fidel", she tells me. Although the present Book Fair is dedicated to Canada and the tedious state official Armando Hart Dávalos, the dead Fidel Castro is the prime actor. There is no lack of sets of Fidel Castro's speeches on the local publishers' stands, a revised edition of History will Absolve Me and cartoon books eulogising the dictator from Birán. "God help us! Fidel everywhere", says a lady walking through the Mexican pavilion looking for a diary she has promised her granddaughter. The foreign publishers are the busiest, in spite of the high foreign currency prices. They also sell pirate Leo Messi, Luis Suárez and Neymar teeshirts, as well as a collection of Barcelona and Real Madrid posters. A Mexican bookseller tells us that "We take advantage of the fact that Cubans like football, and so we push this merchandise". At midday St Charles Fort looks just like an informal flea market. A few serious readers sit down, leaning against the ancient cannons which protect the fort, in order to read George Orwell's 1984 or a Gabriel García Márquez novel. The less serious fill up nylon bags with books on spritual advice or magazines about fashion and cooking. Then they form a little queue at the exit from La Cabaña, to get the bus going to the centre of Havana. Few visitors know the dark history of the fort, an ancient prison and location of hundreds of firing squads for Castro opponents. The thing is that in Cuba the disinformation, fear of knowing the truth, and amnesia help people live apathetic and apolitical lives. Translated by GH Source: The Fidel Castro Fair / Iván García – Translating Cuba - http://ift.tt/2pTfJTH via Blogger http://ift.tt/2ojcY0K