#it's from a poem about being fifteen and suffering

[ghostsofmemories]

from bigger dreams of mine

[aaknopf]

Martyr!, the poet Kaveh Akbar’s propulsive debut novel, tells the tale of Cyrus Shams, the son of a lost mother (victim of a 1988 U. S. Naval snafu in the Persian Gulf that killed 290 people on a commercial airliner) and the long-suffering father who emigrated to Fort Wayne, IN with his baby boy. We meet Cyrus as a student of poetry at Keady University and a reformed addict. In this excerpt, he’s at the local open mic with his friends; we also share one of the poems from Cyrus’s bookofmartyrs.docx, helpfully supplied by Akbar, the poet behind the fictional poet.

. .

The Naples Tuesday night open mic had become a mainstay of Cyrus and Zee’s friendship. It was a small affair, not much to distinguish it from the myriad other open mics happening elsewhere in the country—except this was their open mic, their organic community of beautiful weirdos—old hippies singing Pete Seeger, trans kids rapping about liberation, passionate spoken-word performances by nurses and teenagers and teachers and cooks. As with any campus open mic, there was the occasional frat dude coming to play sets of smirky acoustic rap covers and overearnest breakup narratives. But even they were welcome, and mostly it felt like a safe little oasis of amongness in the relative desert of their Indiana college town, a healthy way to spend the time they were no longer using to get drunk or high.   Naturally, Naples didn’t have its own sound equipment, so Zee would usually show up fifteen minutes early with his beat-up Yamaha PA to set up for Sad James, who hosted every week. Sad James was called this to distinguish him from DJ James, a guy who cycled nightly through the campus bars. DJ James was not a particularly interesting artist, but he was well-known enough in the campus community to warrant Sad James’s nominative prefix, which began as a joke but somehow stuck, and to which Sad James had grown accustomed with good humor, even occasionally doing small shows under the name. Sad James was a quiet white guy, long blond hair framing his lightly stubbled face, who played intensely solemn electronic songs, punctuated by sparse circuit-bent blips and bloops, and over time at Keady, he had become one of Zee and Cyrus’s most resilient and trusted friends.   On this night, Cyrus had read a poem early, an older experimental piece from a series where he’d been assigning words to each digit 0–9, then using an Excel document to generate a lyric out of those words as the digits appeared in the Fibonacci sequence: “lips sweat teeth lips spread teeth lips drip deep deep sweat skin,” etc. It was bad, but he loved reading them out loud, the rhythms and repeti­tions and weird little riffs that emerged. Sad James did an older piece where the lyrics “burning with the human stain / she dries up, dust in the rain” were repeated and modulated over molten beeps from an old circuit-bent Game Boy. Zee—a drummer in his free time who idolized J Dilla and John Bonham and Max Roach and Zach Hill in equal measure—hadn’t brought anything of his own to perform that evening, but did have a little bongo to help accompany any acoustic acts who wanted it.   On the patio listening to Cyrus talk about his new project, Zee said, “I could see it being a bunch of different poems in the voices of all your different historical martyr obsessions?” Then to Sad James, Zee added, “Cyrus has been plastering our apartment with these big black-and-white printouts of all their terrifying faces. Bobby Sands in our kitchen, Joan of Arc in our hallway.”   Sad James made his eyes get big.   “I just like having them present,” Cyrus said, slumping into his chair. He didn’t add that he’d been reading about them in the library, his mystic martyrs, that he’d taped a great grid of their grayscale printed faces above his bed, half believing it would work like those tapes that promised to teach you Spanish while you slept, that some­how their lived wisdoms would pass into him as he dreamt. Among the Tank Man, Bobby Sands, Falconetti as Joan of Arc, Cyrus had a picture of his parents’ wedding day. His mother, seated in a sleeved white dress, smiling tightly at the camera while his father, in a tacky gray tux, sat grinning next to her holding her hand. Above their heads, a group of attendees held an ornate white sheet. It was the only picture of his mother he had. Next to his mother, his father beamed, bright in a way that made it seem he was radiating the light himself.   Zee went on: “So you could write a poem where Joan of Arc is like, ‘Wow, this fire is so hot’ or whatever. And then a poem where Hussain is like, ‘Wow, sucks that I wouldn’t kneel.’ You know what I mean?”   Cyrus laughed.   “I tried some of that! But see, that’s where it gets corny. What could I possibly say about the martyrdom of Hussain or Joan of Arc or whoever that hasn’t already been said? Or that’s worth saying?”   Sad James asked who Hussain was and Zee quickly explained the trial in the desert, Hussain’s refusing to kneel and being killed for it.   “You know, Hussain’s head is supposedly still buried in Cairo?” Zee said, smiling. “Cairo, which is in which country again?”   Cyrus rolled his eyes at his friend, who was, as Cyrus liked to remind him when he got too greatest-ancient-civilization-on-earth about things, only half Egyptian.   “Damn,” Sad James said. “I would’ve just kneeled and crossed my fingers behind my back. Who am I trying to impress? Later I could call take-backsies. I’d just say I tripped and landed on my knees or something.”   The three friends laughed. Justine, an open mic regular whose Blonde on Blonde–era pea-coat-and-harmonica-rack Bob Dylan act was a mainstay of the open mic, came outside to ask Zee for a cigarette. He obliged her with an American Spirit Yellow, which she lit around the corner as she began speaking into her cell phone.   In moments like these Cyrus still sometimes felt like asking to bum one too—he’d been a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker before he got sober, and continued his habit even after he’d kicked everything else. “Quit things in the order they’re killing you,” his sponsor, Gabe, told him once. After a year clean he turned his attention to cigarettes, which he finally managed to kick completely by tapering: from one and a half packs a day to a pack to half a pack to five cigarettes and so on until he was just smoking a single cigarette every few days and then, none at all. He could probably get away with bumming the occasional cigarette now and again, but in his mind he was saving that for something momentous: his final moments lying in the grass dying from a gunshot wound, or walking in slow motion away from a burning building.   “So what are you thinking then? A novel? Or like . . . a poetic mar­tyr field guide?” asked Zee.   “I’m really not sure yet. But my whole life I’ve thought about my mom on that flight, how meaningless her death was. Truly literally like, meaningless. Without meaning. The difference between 290 dead and 289. It’s actuarial. Not even tragic, you know? So was she a martyr? There has to be a definition of the word that can accom­modate her. That’s what I’m after.”

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.

Browse Kaveh Akbar's poetry collections and follow Kaveh on Instagram @kavehakbar.kavehakbar.

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[homomenhommes]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

1854 – Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (d.1891) was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent movement, Rimbaud influenced modern literature, music and art. He was known to have been a libertine and a restless soul, travelling extensively on three continents before his death from cancer just after his 37th birthday.

At the age of fifteen, Rimbaud was showing maturity as a poet; the first poem he showed his tutor, Georges Izambard, "Ophélie", would later be included in anthologies as one of Rimbaud's three or four best poems. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, Izambard left Charleville and Rimbaud became despondent. He ran away to Paris with no money for his ticket and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for a week. After returning home, Rimbaud ran away again to escape his mother's wrath.

From late October 1870, Rimbaud's behaviour became outwardly provocative; he drank alcohol, spoke rudely, composed scatological poems, stole books from local shops, and abandoned his hitherto characteristically neat appearance by allowing his hair to grow long. At the same time he wrote to Izambard about his method for attaining poetical vision through a "long, intimidating, immense and rational derangement of all the senses. The sufferings are enormous, but one must be strong, be born a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet." It is rumoured that he briefly joined the Paris Commune of 1871, which he portrayed in his poem L'orgie parisienne (ou : Paris se repeuple), ("The Parisian Orgy; or Paris Repopulates"). Another poem, Le cœur volé ("The Stolen Heart"), is often interpreted as a description of him being raped by drunken Communard soldiers, but this is unlikely since Rimbaud continued to support the Communards and wrote poems sympathetic to their aims.

Rimbaud was encouraged by a friend to write to Paul Verlaine, an eminent poet, after letters to other poets failed to garner replies. Taking his advice, Rimbaud sent Verlaine two letters containing several of his poems. Verlaine, who was intrigued by Rimbaud, sent a reply that stated, "Come, dear great soul. We await you; we desire you," along with a one-way ticket to Paris. Rimbaud arrived in late September 1871 at Verlaine's invitation and resided briefly in Verlaine's home.

Rimbaud and Verlaine began a short and torrid affair. Whereas Verlaine had likely engaged in prior homosexual experiences, it remains uncertain whether the relationship with Verlaine was Rimbaud's first. During their time together they led a wild, vagabond-like life spiced by absinthe and hashish. They scandalized the Parisian literary circle on account of the outrageous behaviour of Rimbaud, the archetypical enfant terrible, who throughout this period continued to write strikingly visionary verse. The stormy relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine eventually brought them to London in September 1872, a period about which Rimbaud would later express regret. During this time, Verlaine abandoned his wife and infant son (both of whom he had abused in his alcoholic rages). Rimbaud and Verlaine lived in considerable poverty, in Bloomsbury and in Camden Town, scraping a living mostly from teaching, in addition to an allowance from Verlaine's mother. Rimbaud spent his days in the Reading Room of the British Museum where "heating, lighting, pens and ink were free." The relationship between the two poets grew increasingly bitter.

By late June 1873, Verlaine grew frustrated with the relationship and returned to Paris, where he quickly began to mourn Rimbaud's absence. On 8 July, he telegraphed Rimbaud, instructing him to come to the Hotel Liège in Brussels; Rimbaud complied at once. The Brussels reunion went badly: they argued continuously and Verlaine took refuge in heavy drinking. On the morning of 10 July, Verlaine bought a revolver and ammunition.That afternoon, "in a drunken rage," Verlaine fired two shots at Rimbaud, one of them wounding the 18-year-old in the left wrist.

Rimbaud dismissed the wound as superficial, and did not initially seek to file charges against Verlaine. But shortly after the shooting, Verlaine (and his mother) accompanied Rimbaud to a Brussels railway station, where Verlaine "behaved as if he were insane." His bizarre behavior induced Rimbaud to "fear that he might give himself over to new excesses," so he turned and ran away. In his words, "it was then I [Rimbaud] begged a police officer to arrest him [Verlaine]." Verlaine was arrested for attempted murder and subjected to a humiliating medico-legal examination. He was also interrogated with regard to both his intimate correspondence with Rimbaud and his wife's accusations about the nature of his relationship with Rimbaud. Rimbaud eventually withdrew the complaint, but the judge nonetheless sentenced Verlaine to two years in prison.

At 21, Rimbaud quit writing and sought other employments to help him travel widely in Europe, The Dutch East Indies, and North Africa where he developed an infection in his leg in 1891. He shipped back to Marseilles, where the cancerous leg was amputated. He died in November of that year.

1926 – Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu (d.2015) was a British Conservative politician well known in Britain for founding the National Motor Museum, as well as for a pivotal cause célèbre in British gay history, his 1954 conviction and imprisonment for homosexual sex, a charge he denied.

Lord Montagu was born in London, and inherited his barony in 1929 at the age of two, when his father, the 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, was killed in an accident. He attended St. Peter's Court School and Ridley College in Canada, Eton College and New College, Oxford. He served in the Grenadier Guards, including service in Palestine before the end of the British Mandate. On coming of age, Lord Montagu immediately took his seat in the House of Lords and swiftly made his maiden speech on the subject of Palestine.

Lord Montagu knew from an early stage of life that he was bisexual, and while attending Oxford was relieved to find others with similar feelings. In a 2000 interview he stated,

"My attraction to both sexes neither changed nor diminished at university and it was comforting to find that I was not the only person faced with such a predicament. I agonised less than my contemporaries, for I was reconciled to my bisexuality, but I was still nervous about being exposed."

Despite keeping his homosexual affairs discreet and out of the public eye, in the mid-1950s, Lord Montagu became "one of the most notorious public figures of his generation," after his conviction and imprisonment for "conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons," a charge which was also used in the Oscar Wilde trials in 1895, and remained on the books until 1967.

On two occasions Lord Montagu was charged and committed for trial at Winchester Assizes, firstly in 1953 for allegedly taking sexual advantage of a 14-year-old Boy Scout at his beach hut on the Solent, a charge he has always denied. When prosecutors failed to achieve a conviction, in what Lord Montagu has characterised as a "witch hunt" to secure a high-profile conviction, he was arrested again in 1954 and charged with performing "gross offences" with an RAF serviceman during a weekend party at the beach hut, located on Lord Montagu's country estate. Lord Montagu has always maintained he was innocent of this charge as well ("We had some drinks, we danced, we kissed, that's all.") Nevertheless, he was imprisoned for twelve months for "consensual homosexual offences" along with Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood.

Unlike the other defendants in the trial, Lord Montagu continued to protest his innocence. The trial caused a backlash of opinion among some politicians and church leaders that led to the setting up of the Wolfenden Committee, which in its 1957 report recommended the decriminalisation of homosexual activity in private between two adults. Ten years later, Parliament finally carried out the recommendation, a huge turning point in gay history in Britain, where male homosexuality had been completely outlawed in statute law since 1533.

In a 2007 interview, when asked if he felt that he and his co-defendants had been instrumental in the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain, Lord Montagu said,

"I am slightly proud that the law has been changed to the benefit of so many people. I would like to think that I would get some credit for that. Maybe I'm being very boastful about it but I think because of the way we behaved and conducted our lives afterwards, because we didn't sell our stories, we just returned quietly to our lives, I think that had a big effect on public opinion."

The story of Lord Montagu's trial is told in a 2007 Channel 4 documentary, A Very British Sex Scandal.

1995 – Dalton Maldonado is an American high school basketball player and LGBT rights activist, who came to National prominence whe he shared his harrowing tale of intimidation when he came out at a high school basketball game in Kentucky.

In 2015, he was featured as one of the most influential people in the LGBT community by the magazine Out and he was named "Person of the Year" by Outsports. He grew up in Kentucky and became known after coming out after a basketball game. His coming out gained national attention after being featured in Outsports magazine. Maldonado wants to make sure no other teen endures the harassment he received after coming out in December 2014.

Following reports that he had been harassed because of his sexuality by the rival team from Bryan Station High School, both schools were challenged in the press. Both schools said that they had conducted internal investigations and denied any wrongdoing. The Fayette County Public Schools administration's investigation concluded that the event "was inaccurately reported and mischaracterized" by media.

After coming out, Maldonado's picture was left out of the two-page spread that commemorated his basketball team in his senior yearbook. In addition to the team photo, there were individual call-outs for every member of the team except Maldonado. His school, Betsy Layne High School, claimed that the omission was accidental and that the school district "holistically supports Dalton Maldonado just as we do all our students". They point out that the book includes 15 photos of Maldonado, including many that show him playing basketball.

Maldonado has a fragrance released by Xyrena called Formula 3, sales of which will support the LGBT sports organization "You Can Play". Fragrance industry analysts Basenotes claim that this is "the first signature fragrance from an openly gay athlete".

Maldonado was invited to speak at The Atlantic's inaugural LGBT summit in Washington D.C. in December 2015, aiming to "convene wide-ranging conversations on queer identity in America, at the end of a game-changing year in arenas from politics to pop culture".

1941 – South African police are called in to quiet a disturbance at a gold mine caused by the dismissal of 122 miners for refusing to stop dances in which boys are squeezed and kissed.

1987 – The US House Judiciary Committee voted 21-13 to approve a bill requiring the justice department to collect statistics on hate crimes, including anti-gay violence.

1987 – Over fifty ACT-UP members were arrested during an act of civil disobedience protesting President Reagan's lack of action in the AIDS epidemic. Another demonstration of about 150 people was held across the street from the United Nations building during the UN General Assembly's first debate on AIDS.

1997 – Portugal's first Gay and Lesbian Community Centre opened in Lisbon.

[isfjmel-phleg]

I'm rereading Mother Carey's Chickens, a 1911 children's book by Kate Douglas Wiggin, mostly because there's a subplot in it which I think might be relevant to my search for portrayals of CEN in children's literature of this era (...and guess what subplot got axed in Summer Magic, a loosely adaptated 1963 film version--but that's another issue). Anyway, this time I found myself unexpectedly sympathetic toward a character Wiggin does not want the audience to be very sympathetic toward.

(and wow, this got longer than I expected and is A Rant, sorry!)

Basically, the book is about the Carey family--a widow and her four children--who have suffered a significantly finanical decline after the father's death and have to move into a new house in a small town and make a lot of sacrifices and adjustments, while having various slice-of-life adventures. Not longer after the move, their cousin Julia comes to live with them.

And Wiggin really hammers it into the reader's head that Julia is annoying. She's "the pink of perfection" (a phrase memorably used in a song in the 1963 film), she knows it, and she never lets anyone forget it. (Think a female version of my OC Josiah, and you're probably not far off.) She won't shut up about the rich family she used to live with, and she can't be bothered to join the others in anything so demeaning as chores. She's so dull and imaginative that "she bored her own mother terribly." She has no sense of humor, she's no fun, she's tidy and clothes-conscious, she gets perfect grades in school--in short, she's the worst and nobody likes her. Even Mrs. Carey admits "frankly" that she doesn't like Julia.

And the other children are understandably frustrated with her and very vocal about this among themselves. There's friction between her and the Careys--and the Careys don't always come off looking very good either, although the narrative doesn't recognize it. The two oldest children (who are about fifteen and fourteen, I think) even go so far as to write a poem mocking Julia's appetite (and, by implication, her weight) and tacking it up in her room. Julia in tears shows it her aunt, who finds it funny and has to struggle to show the proper sympathy. Julia protests that the family she used to live with never mentioned her appetite and instead encouraged her to eat. Mrs. Carey concedes that her older children can get carried away with joking and forgot Julia wasn't used to it.

And then she adds, "And don't forget, my dear, that in a large family like ours we must learn to 'live and let live.'" So clearly it's Julia's fault for being so oversensitive about just a joke, right? Because nobody likes her, and she had it coming. She needs to learn to have a sense of humor!

Eventually, Kathleen, the younger Carey daughter, in a moment of provocation lets it slip that Julia's father is the reason the family has so little money (long story). An angry Julia tells her aunt. Kathleen feels horrible about it and apologizes profusely, but Julia is not immediately forgiving and points out what a victim she is here--as a fatherless girl and a guest in their home.

And then Mrs. Carey gives her A Speech (emphasis mine):

"You are wrong there, Julia. I fail to see why you should not take your full share of our misfortunes, and suffer as much as we, from our too small income. It is not our fault, it is not yours. You are not a privileged guest, you are one of the family. If you are fatherless just now, my children are fatherless forever; yet you have not made one single burden lighter by joining our forces. You have been an outsider, instead of putting yourself loyally into the breach, and working with us heart to heart. I welcomed you with open arms and you have made my life harder, much harder, than it was before your coming. To protect you I have had to discipline my own children continually, and all the time you were putting their tempers to quite unnecessary tests! I am not extenuating Kathleen, but I merely say you have no right to behave as you do. You are thirteen years old, quite old enough to make up your mind whether you wish to be loved by anybody or not; at present you are not!"

Does Julia deserve to be informed that she has been standoffish and unhelpful and whiny and needs to be a team player? Absolutely. Blaming her for the Carey children's behavior though? Not so much. And to tell anyone--especially someone so young--that whether she is loved is solely up to her and currently no one loves her--is incredibly harsh and uncalled for.

The narrative consistently presents Mrs. Carey as The Ideal Mother, so there is no recognition of the hurtfulness of such a comment. Instead, it's that comment in particular that is presented as what finally prompts Julia's character development.

Not to be loved, if that really were to be her lot, rather terrified Julia. She secretly envied Nancy [Carey]'s unconscious gift of drawing people to her instantly; men, women, children,—dogs and horses, for that matter. She never noticed that Nancy's heart ran out to meet everybody, and that she was overflowing with vitality and joy and sympathy; on the contrary, she considered the tribute of affection paid to Nancy as a part of Nancy's luck. Virtuous, conscientious, intelligent, and well-dressed as she felt herself to be, she emphatically did not wish to be disliked, and it was a complete surprise to her that she had not been a successful Carey chicken.

At this point, I am feeling sorry for this child, obnoxious though she can be. This girl has a father who isn't in her life much and a mother who was flighty and bored with her and either died or left the picture when her daughter was five so she was raised by a governess and has been trying really hard to be everything her mother wasn't--well-behaved and responsible. And now after living with an apparently kind and accepting family, she's been transplanted to an unfamiliar environment with cousins who complain about and mock her. No one is listening to her; no one is bothering to help her. She talks about her friend's family so much because that's all she knows. As annoying as her displays of perfection are, it's her flawed attempt to seek love and validation. She feels inadequate compared to her outgoing and universally adored cousin Nancy (who co-wrote the mean poem and has been the most vocally critical of her--guess her heart doesn't run out to meet just everybody!), and the narrative faults her for lacking the right sort of personality. Apparently the only acceptable way for her to earn love is to make an effort to be more like Nancy. And Julia desperately wants to be loved.

But there are people who love her unconditionally! She points out that her friend, the daughter of the family she used to live with, always loved her. Mrs. Carey replies, "Then either Gladys has a remarkable gift of loving, or else you are a different Julia in her company [...]"

Ouch.

She then proceeds to accuse Julia of committing "the sin of causing your brother to stumble" by provoking her cousins' annoyance. Kathleen, though, doesn't agree and apologizes again. And Julia takes pity on her, shows some affection, and they make up.

From here, Julia is on the road to character development, and Mrs. Carey gets all the credit for it. And sure, Julia has learned that she needs to be more helpful and less critical, but she has also learned that love is earned and that her family will only accept her if she toes a certain line. Is this really any different from her previous efforts of performing perfection?

And anyway, it bothers me that the narrative is so merciless to her. Yes, she's got major issues that she needs to grow past. But is being a girl exhibiting the results of a problematic upbringing enough cause for the level of vitriol that she is given? Couldn't there have been a more effective way to prompt her character development than for a family member whom she respects to tell her she's unlovable? Wiggin's narrative extends compassion to the flaws of characters like Nancy but withholds it from others (not just Julia). Why? Why are some people more deserving of understanding? Because they're the main character?

And that's never really struck me before, I've always read this book at face value, but somehow today I ended up with emotions about Julia Carey. Who knew. If you've got this far, thank you for coming to my Rant.

[riverdamien]

The Odyssey!

"Sloughing Towards Galilee!"

May 9, 2024

The Feast of the Ascension!

The Odyssey!

Poet C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) expressed this understanding most beautifully in his famous poem “Ithaca”:  

Ithaca has now given you the beautiful voyage.   Without her, you would never have taken the road.  With the great wisdom you have gained on your voyage,   with so much of your own experience now,   you must finally know what Ithaca really means. [1]  

National Mental Health Month!

During this "Mental Health Month" I am reflecting upon my journey. Raised in a small southern town we never heard the term "mental health", depression, too was never talked about, and seeing a psychiatrist. "O my god", you are crazy.

There were no therapists within 300 miles. When I was caught acting out sexually with a fellow adolescent at fifteen my pastor, a conservative man, brought my "sin" forth in a sermon, shaming me, and my mom took me to a shrink, of course, no one knew. And what did he do: gave me anti-depressants. All he said as he wrote the prescription was "masturbation is normal, just don't get caught."   And so the shame continued and continued for many years to come.

And so began my "Odyssey", where I sunk into "darkness", and depression, and suffered with it for years. Being called to ministry I played the game of being "straight", and my depression became worse, until I came "out", and my "odyssey" continued onto the streets of L.A., with a good therapist, and finally here in San Francisco, where I had a caring shrink for 15 years, who through therapy and meds, opened my life up to new fields of joy! And the "odyssey' continued!

Shame was always a large part of my life, largely from my religious upbringing, but the positive was I had encountered the living Christ and through experiencing his grace of freedom, knowing that he loved me no matter what, and called me to ministry was my salvation!

My former denomination within days after coming out removed me from my parish, tried to stick me into conversion therapy, and my many, many friends stopped speaking to me and turned their backs on me. Talk about shaming!

When I returned to ministry in a queer church what I found was they wanted to duplicate the straight church as far as they could, and thus began my process of decentralization. In so doing, they were inadvertently continuing the process of shaming. The biggest blessing I was given was being ordained a bishop (to get rid of me)  and forming the Society of Franciscan Workers, Inc.

And thus my "odyssey" continued into "coming home"! Respecting others wherever they stand! I view the Church, and on Ascension Day we are reminded of Christ "ascending" to his Father symbolically to become the head of the church. A church of love and grace. He became the Cosmic Christ, embracing all without judgment. My faith is in the Universal Christ, the One who is a part of all expressions of God, and in non-expressions, the One who is found in loving our neighbor as ourselves.

I was "spiritually" homesick for years, it was a dulling grief. It was not depression, so much as an uncomfortable unknowing that I was coming to the end of one thing and the beginning of the next. It was fearful and yet joyful.

For me this journey of mental health has been returning home to where God dwells, I'm no longer interested in making it a quick visit so I can run back to the world of "what other people think" and " what I can get done".

Today I simply "listen" to others, without judgment; I have no judgment on anyone, seeing all as children of the Divine.

Leaving the first half of my life was scary. Most of us have the first half of life hustle down. The thing is, I am just never, never homesick for the first half of life. . because it has never really been my true home!

========================

Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.

Post Office Box 642656

San Francisco, CA 94164

www.temenos.org

paypal.com

415-305-2124

Fr. River Sims, D.Min., D.S.T.

Director

Prayer of St. Brendan!

"Help me to journey beyond the familiar

and into the unknown.

Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.

I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,

and somehow, make my obedience count for You"

------------------------------------------------

(Temenos and Fr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social--Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!

================================

[acemapleeh]

Hair, even apart from death, was an important keepsake of Victorians. Parents would frame strands from their children’s first haircuts, friends exchanged locks like friendship bracelets, and others braided and framed strands alongside poems. It wasn’t always about death, even when it was in memorial to someone who died. It was about sentiment and emotion.

Featured above are another two from the collection of Arthur Kirkland.

Select here for Alfred and Matthew

The first is written, ‘In memory of my dearest daughter, Charlotte Evelyn Winifred Kirkland, 14 October 1848.’ The first epidemic of scarlet fever prevailed in Auckland, New Zealand in the year 1848 though worse breakouts would come in years later. Charlie was still a considerably small child at this time, their island home not having yet experienced any major economic booms or population growth (that wouldn’t be until the next decade with the discovery of gold). Children aged between five and fifteen were most likely to contract the disease and Charlie was most unfortunate to have been a victim. Needless to say, Arthur was patient and calming during this time (front wise), doing his best to comfort the frightened child who hadn’t any encounters with death personally at this point. 

The locket featured here was one that Arthur kept personally though a second was created that combined both Charlie’s and Jack’s hair that they would wear as part of their everyday wardrobe in the form of a brooch. The design was more ornate, a combination of gold and onyx with each lock of their hair curling outwards from the other.

The second reads, ‘John “Jack” Irving Sylvester Kirkland, mourn’d but not without hope 29 June 1864.’ Jack was resilient, not unlike Arthur’s eldest. His home had its diseases, the child even contracting both smallpox and measles in 1789 and, later in 1866, respectively. He recovered and got back up, not wishing to worry his younger sibling. What he wasn’t immune to was sheets of metal. Clarke's Circus was being hosted in town that summer. As he and his family passed through the field it was held in, the force of the wind from a severe storm tore large, iron roofing sheets from the circus building and blew them across the road. Jack was struck on the head and knocked to the ground. He was suffering from two wounds to the head and a fractured skull, with brain matter protruding. Arthur knew sending him to the hospital would be a death sentence but their London home was even further away. He did what he could to patch up his son, just to hold on until he could get a doctor summoned. He wouldn’t dare allow his children inside the horrors of a medical clinic. Matthew carried him to their family carriage, all going as quick as could be. His thoughts never quieted the whole night. The sheets had been up rather high, if Matthew hadn’t bent over to pick up the hat that blew off his head, it would have been him that would have been the tallest there. It should have been him struck in the head.

Jack died around midnight that evening.

[fipindustries]

the dream of xanadu

so i was doing some thinking over some old texts that i read from borges, specifically this one: the dream of coleridge.

you should definetly go read it but if you dont have the time here is a quick summary of what it is about.

it talks about colerdige’s famous poem,  “Kubla Khan”, which is basically a description of this fantastic palace built by the king  Kubla Khan in xanadu, and how this poem came to coleridge in a dream but the writer was never able to complete it.

then borges goes on to reference some old text,  the General History of the World by Rashid al-Din where the author describes that the idea for a palace also came to Kubla khan in his dreams.

so that is a pretty neat coincidence, first the idea to build the greatest palace in the world in Xanadu came to Kubla Khan in a dream and then one of the most beautiful poems in history about the palace in Xanadu came to coleridge, also in a dream. Borges draws a very interesting connection between both of these.

The first dream added a palace to reality; the second, which occurred five centuries later, a poem (or the beginning of a poem) suggested by the palace. The similarity of the dreams reveals a plan; the enormous length of time involved reveals a superhuman performer. To inquire the purpose of that immemorial or long-lived being would perhaps be as foolhardy as futile, but it seems likely that he has not yet achieved it. In 1691 Father Gerbillon of the Society of Jesus confirmed that ruins were all that was left of the palace of Kubla Khan; we know that scarcely fifty lines of the poem were salvaged. Those facts give rise to the conjecture that the series of dreams and labors has not yet ended. The first dreamer was given the vision of the palace and he built it; the second, who did not know of the other’s dream, was given the poem about the palace. If the plan does not fail, some reader of “Kubla Khan” will dream, on s night centuries removed from us, of marble or of music. This man will not know that two others also dreamed. Perhaps the series of dreams has no end, or perhaps the last one who dreams will have the key.

now this is where you put on your tin foil hats my friends.

borges was right.

Barely fifteen years after borges published this essay in his book “other inquisitions” a young, lets say, computer scientist called Ted Nelson (who suffered from ADHD and so was quick to forget what he was doing with the minimal distraction (!)) was starting to kick around the idea of a revolutionary new software that was supposed to be thre greatest invention of mankind, meant to change the face of the world, to usher in a new age of information sharing, a giant global hyperlinked database with all the information in the world. The hypertext system known as Xanadu.

i really cant do justice to the whole torturous story behind this project, just please go and read the link, suffice to say it was either the mad dream of some prophetic visionary or the biggest con by the most shameless of crooks. The greatest piece of vaporwave never developed, 30 years in the making, thousands of dollars, man hours and different sets of teams working on it, and it will never be completed.

i hereby propose that the Xanadu software was the third instance of this phenomena Borges descrives thusly:

Perhaps an archetype not yet revealed to men, an eternal object (to use Whitehead’s term), is gradually entering the world; its first manifestation was the palace; its second was the poem. Whoever compared them would have seen that they were essentially the same.

did you catch the subtle horror in that last paragraph? Whatever archetype this Xanadu entity is, trying to enter into our world through our dreams, all i can say is that a part of me is relieved that so far it has been foiled thus far, yet i worry for how long will providence manage to keep Xanadu away from manifesting into our reality.

[septembersghost]

i just think dean winchester ----

essie and i were having a conversation about the self, it really was not about dean, but also, we are who we are, so beneath the delicate surface, there he was anyway.

and she said to me, about fiction, and the trouble with this trend of empty nihilism within it lately, of going through struggle and tumult and trauma and suffering, to come out the other side and off the edge, only for recovery to be killed where it stands, of the cop-out excuse of saying, “the story writes itself/it had to be this way/we go where it takes us”: “being creative is taking power back from the uncaring reality.” 

and i’m thinking...we’re doing that, here, actually, all of us who love him, love the story, love whatever characters and aspects of it that we love - we are taking power back from the uncaring reality.

we were talking about our inclinations and juxtapositions, the beautiful frills and the chill in the gloom, and she said: "in fact it’s ABOUT that contradiction, it’s about the ways they interact and gnaw pieces out of each other, it’s about the monstrous being less monstrous in the light and the soft being less soft in the dark.”

i can’t consider contrasts like that and not think of dean, the reason why i call him a poem of opposites, why i’ve spilled the virtual ink of thousands of words in meta and poems and graphic posts and tags for years, in writing that never was posted anywhere, in lines of reflection and story which exist only in my head. why she makes her wonderful art, or why someone else writes fic, or someone else creates whatever they create.

i said: this is why he laid claim on us, and we looked at him and saw a kindred flame, and thought, "of course, of course it's you." it always was.

that september night, fifteen and a half years ago, when i was lost and desperate for any guiding force, any source of light, true star or trick of it, to lead me to a shore, he emerged from the shadows in that dark. and i’m such a girl, which was part of why we were having this conversation, aspects of that in ourselves, whatever that even is, intrinsically or simply presentationally, and the differences therein. it doesn’t have any bearing on what we connect to or feel, or what characters resonate in us, but for me, it speaks a bit to the curious, necessary vitality he instantly had, and which never wavered. me, that odd little girl who loved pink and fairytales and roses and vintage lamps and antique boxes and twinkling lullabies, who was soft and maybe too sensitive and maybe too free with her kindness, but also the odd little girl who was drawn to the moon, and spooky, rundown houses, and the faint rustle of leaves when no wind should be blowing them, and the ghosts at the windows of our homes and our hearts, and the flash of silver in candlelight, and the vampire who allures even when you can see the danger of their fangs. it would not have been predictable, on the surface, that it would be him. it also could never have been anyone else. (rough on the surface, but you cut through like a knife; as if you were a mythical thing...) i’ve described it before, the secret garden of all i love, the room in its center where he exists, but to say it again - there was an empty room in my heart that i didn’t even know was there until he walked into it with a lit match. a glancing brush across a hand, and a touch of trigger pressure, and a whisper of bravery, and green eyes in the sunlight and a silhouette under cover of stars in the night. it was there, waiting for him, it simply had to be unlocked.

and she wrote: “the thing inside me that loves him existed long before i knew him but when i found him it had found itself a name. there was always a space in me that he fits into wholly and perfectly. he is me just as he is you, and all of us who feel that way about him. that’s why he can’t die, not until the very last of us is gone. and even then, we know nothing ever really disappears from the internet, and all the love for him we’ve poured poured into it, it may stay for longer still.”

which just, unsurprisingly, made me start to tear up. whether if it was fifteen years or five years or four months or two weeks ago when we met him and embraced his story, if we, if anyone, keep the door open that let him through, he is never going to walk back out again. he is there, incandescent and contrasting, devotion and danger and reason and mystery, all the pieces that make him who he is reflecting in the pieces that make us who we are. he can’t be killed in us, and thus he really can’t die at all, because as much as he never truly lived in our world, he’s actually always alive in it. we have a name for a niche in our souls that we would not have without him, and a snatch of melody in a heartbeat that he allowed us to hear. everything we create, all we share, the love we so ferociously, tenderly give, not only to him, but to one another because of him, is only alive because he existed. the facets of ourselves that we’ve polished and come to understand, he helped to reveal.

annie said to me the other day: “he really is magic, no wonder it connected us all.”

if this story was about love - and i maintain, always, that it was - love as home, love as defiance, love as a weapon in our arsenals, love that is consuming, love that is healing, love as the only true act of free will and agency, love as a force so radically human it becomes sacred and divine - that exists and lives and blossoms, and we move through the world with it surviving every day. we don’t enact it in any other realm, we make it real here. he comes alive and stays that way a little bit each time we do, and every piece of it we leave here is everlasting.

[robininthelabyrinth]

AU where Nie Mingjue's mom is good friend with Madam Yu so he's the one that has an arranged marriage with Jiang Yanli

Some of Jiang Yanli’s acquaintances among the well-born young ladies of the cultivation world whispered about how much of a shame it was that Madam Yu got into that big fight with her dear friend Madam Jin during the latter’s pregnancy, a fight that very nearly came to blows and led to the dissolution of a long-lived friendship, the abandonment of a promise made in childhoood; you could have had Jin Zixuan as a fiancé, they sigh, and isn’t he so beautiful?

Beautiful, yes, like a star in the sky. Too high for someone like Jiang Yanli to reach: she’d heard about Jin Zixuan, the way he sneered at girls with low cultivation or poor face values, girls like her, and she didn’t deceive herself to think that things would be different if he’d stayed engaged to her the way Madam Jin sometimes too-loudly still hoped he would be.

It was too late for Madam Jin’s ambitions, though. Jiang Yanli had a fiancée, and he was nothing to be ashamed of, even if he was seventh on the list of most desirable young masters rather than third.

Nie Mingjue was tall and handsome, a powerful cultivator who was fierce in appearance and temperament – fire amid coldness. Maidens trembled to approach him, even though he was the only one on that list who was a sect leader in his own right; whoever married him would immediately become the undisputed Madam Nie, and never need to worry about a cruel mother-in-law, though of course there was always the man’s own temper to consider.

Jiang Yanli wasn’t worried about any of that.

He’d always behaved very properly towards her, bringing gifts and speaking formally and never once losing his temper even when she’d been recklessly mischievous; he was only five years older, but that made a difference when you were young, and she’d been extremely annoying as a child. She’d been fifteen the first time her mother had deliberately withdrawn her servants, leaving them alone together.

Jiang Yanli had almost convinced herself by then that he didn’t really want her, that he’d only accepted the marriage as a means of being filial to his departed mother’s final wishes, but then he’d taken her hand and lifted it to his lips, pressing a searing hot kiss to her palm that made her blush.

“Your mother would like us to settle this marriage sooner rather than later, but I don’t agree,” he said, in his straightforward way – blunt, often tactless, but always honest, and the more examples she saw of marriage, her mother’s, Madam Jin’s, the more she appreciated it. “There’s going to be a war soon, and it’s not yet sure who will win and who will lose.”

Unspoken was that Nie Mingjue himself was the most vocal advocate for that war – Wen Ruohan had murdered his father – and that it was only the fierceness of the Nie that kept the Unclean Realm from being Wen Ruohan’s first target. If she married Nie Mingjue now, she risked being drawn in.

“And when the war is over and won?” she asked, feeling unusually daring, even emboldened by the appreciation in his eye – not of her looks, nor her cultivation (she didn’t flatter herself unduly), but of the future they might make together. “What then?”

His stern, angry face relaxed, just for the briefest moment, into a smile – he had dimples, who knew? – and his hand squeezes hers. “I don’t know you well enough to say whether or not we would be well matched, but a good marriage is a vow, something to strive towards, not something you get handed to you. I would be proud to have you as my wife, if you would want me as your husband.”

That was what her mother wanted most, Jiang Yanli knew – more than political advantage (the Jin would be better, given their proximity, wealth, and absence of another heir, although Nie Huaisang, charming child that he was, was hardly considered a serious threat by anyone), more than anything.

She wanted her daughter to have what she’d never had: a marriage to someone who would devote himself to her.

Jiang Yanli smiled and squeezed his hand back. “I would, very much.”

In the years to come, she would make her way to Qinghe through dangers unnumbered, fleeing the destruction of her home; he would be there to welcome her, a distant and formal greeting that respected her status and would have upset her if she didn’t know it was his way – it wasn’t until the very end of the evening, when he was escorting her to her room, that he pressed his lips to her forehead and promised to help avenge her parents, his stiff and awkward way of saying that he was relieved that she was safe.

She would be waiting by his beloved baby brother’s side for news of the war, bursting into tears of relief when he sent word that Wei Wuxian had been found, that he’d joined the Sunshot Campaign under his command, the combined armies Nie Mingjue led by now universal acclaim; he would rant to her, confiding in her his concerns about Wei Wuxian’s newfound demonic cultivation, and listened seriously to her assurances that she knew his character best of all; she would spend weeks by his bedside as he slowly healed from the injuries he’d suffered during Wen Ruohan’s final defeat, understanding without words that he quietly resented how those who would soon be his sworn brothers had left him out of their plans, admiring how he put those feelings aside in favor of forgiveness and forging a new path forward with both of them.

She would accept his offer of help in rebuilding the Lotus Pier; when Jiang Cheng, prickly as ever, questioned his motives, he’d said that his bride deserved a proper home to be taken from, and had made Wei Wuxian laugh for the first time in months when he’d told him preemptively there would be no corpses allowed at the wedding, no matter how they might match the color scheme. He would tell her about his rages, about the Nie sect’s cultivation, the risk he ran of an early death, and the possible solution his sworn brothers had come up with for him; she would spend her days studying how she might best help him herself.

When the rumors began to circulate about Wei Wuxian, it was not just Jiang Cheng who defended him; it was an unquestioned hero, a man known to be just and upright even to the point of rigidity.

“They trust you because they know you’d put righteousness above family,” Jiang Yanli said, standing by his side – his way of reminding the world to watch what it said, because she would be Madam Nie soon enough and he would permit no slight against her – and she was close enough to feel it when he laughed. It was a rare sight, though more common in these days without war; she’d even convinced him to stop nagging Nie Huaisang about his saber practice more than twice a week, and Nie Huaisang had been so over the moon that he’d written her a poem comparing her to a goddess (it hadn’t been very good, but she appreciated the effort). “A-Xian knows it, too. He says we should come ourselves to Yiling to satisfy ourselves; he trusts you to be fair.”

“I appreciate the faith,” her soon-to-be husband said, shaking his head. “They’ll still accuse me of bias in his favor, on your behalf – and they may be right.”

“But they won’t question you,” she said confidently. “We can still fix this.”

(And then one day she heard music –)

[tmabigbang]

Masterpost of TMA Big Bang 2020 Fics

To prevent clogging up anyone’s dash, we have put all of these fics under a read more since there are 28 wonderful fics created for this bang, which makes for a bit of a long post! Below the cut are links and summaries to all the fics created for this bang! 

In addition to this post, you can also check out our fic page (which you can find here)! The fic page includes links to all the fics, art, and the team members that helped create them! You can also use some basic filters for rating and oneshot/multichapter to find fics.

Thank you again to all our participants, and we will see you next year!

Your Job’s A Joke (You’re Broke) by @bisexualoftheblade and @desert-lily

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27590578

Summary: Working at the Magnus Institute was stressful by default. With monsters, mayhem, and potential primordial entities, it has very little expectations for being a comfortable job. However, everyone is allowed to have a little fun sometimes - even an archivist, their assistants, and their really creepy boss. Fueled by spite and a rampant lack of heterosexuality, they all try to balance their work life with a bit of fun and a healthy dose of bullying twelve-times divorced Elias Bouchard.

I Know The End by @williammatagot

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27947966

Summary: Except, for all that beautiful poetry, Eliot was wrong, because the world doesn’t end with a bang, sure, but it doesn’t end with a whimper, either. It ends with the distant-yet-deafening voice of the man Martin loves shouting through a ragged, wild throat--I open the door. (The world ends, Jon shatters, and Martin tries to fix it. The house tries, too, in its own way.)

From the Depth of the Spiral by @trickstergod14

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27842941

Summary: Michael had no idea what was going on. He suddenly woke up in the tunnels under the Magnus Institute with no memories of the past seven years after that fateful trip to Sannikov Land. Watch as he slowly spirals into madness, regaining his memories while strengthening his bond with the Distortion along the way. Can he hide all this from the other Archival Assistants? What will happen when Jon wakes up from his coma? And what does the newly crowned Distortion Avatar, Helen, have to do with all this?

Every Word I Say is Kindling (But The Smoke Clears When You’re Around) by @ohnoimdeathing

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27956897

Summary: The unknowing left Jon stirring in the nightmares of others, watching their torment and suffering and making everything worse. He wanted to wake up, to go back to Martin, Tim, Basira, even Daisy. But he didn’t know how to. Until a voice told him to choose Though, to be honest, he doesn’t remember actually making the choice to stay a monster and live rather than be human and die. The only injury the doctors will talk about is his missing eyes, and why are all the doctors Scottish? At least Martin is here.

Spinning ‘Round (like two sides of a coin) by @awayofunderstandingit

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27835756

Summary: Time is a construct. What we know as past, present, and future all exist at the same time, ad infinitum. • Guided not by time but a spoken word poem, follow along the lives of two intertwined souls, Timothy Stoker and Sasha James. The story of their friendship from the time they meet, through growing apart, to when they fall back together, and through their time working at the Magnus Institute. Witness slices of their lives—not memories, memories would suggest the past—as they exist, ad infinitum, even at The End.

retrouvailles by @jet-siquliak

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27818092

Summary: The Magnus Institute burns. The archivist, for all intents and purposes, burned with it. In a dingy hospital room lies what remains - Jonathan sims. weak, powerless, and insignificant. On Jon’s last day in the hospital, Martin awakes from a coma, unscathed. Melanie King kicks the dirt that once housed the institute. Tim stoker wakes up in the middle of nowhere. Elias Bouchard is dead. No one knows where to go from there. Or: the destruction of one home and the making of another.

Still, I’ll Always Keep the Memory by @revolutionnaire-e

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27932125

Summary: [MARTIN turns, stepping out of the shadows towards him. It is blood, not tears. His left eye is not his own. His eyes never shone that blinding green, never shone with such malice or self-satisfied pride.] MARTIN BLACKWOOD Pleasure to see you again, Archivist.

Making Home by @cuddlytogas

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27664805

Summary: After the events in the Panopticon, Jon and Martin rush to leave London. But making their home in an idyllic safe house isn't that easy: between the layer of dust, and Forsaken still clinging to Martin's heels, it could be some time before they reach an understanding.

called your name ‘til the fever broke by @corpsesoldier

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27845161

Summary: Basira made a promise to her partner. At the end of the world, a monster comes and demands she keep it.

assorted family photos by @lesbianbirds

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27903979

Summary: When setting off on a research trip, it is advised that you prepare yourself for certain oddities that may greet you. or; key moments in a world where the entities are weaker and everyone got a bit more therapy

Timothy Stoker’s Guide to Dating by @pezilla

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27841267

Summary: Timothy Stoker has a lot of advice when it comes to matters of the heart, online agony aunt, gossip monger and general love guru. He has a list and he sticks to it. Or he did. That was before he took a job at the Magnus Institute and before he met three of the most fascinating and frustrating people to ever come into his life. Rule #7 under no circumstances fall for a co-worker. Yeah, that rule was starting to become a problem.

Running the Institute by @drowsy-salamander

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27878306

Summary: Caroline Ferguson, the entirety of the Magnus Institute's legal department, is furiously ignoring any weirdness that could be going on in her workplace, from the tech issues to the vanishing colleagues to the everything about Artefact Storage, Caroline will turn a very deliberate blind eye. They're are not her problem. Now if only those murders could also stop.

kindred spirits (not so scarce as I used to think) by @pollylittlehigher-littlelower

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27914821

Summary: An Anne of Green Gables inspired AU, set in modern day England. Jon and Georgie are childhood best friends, but the two stop talking after a falling out. Even doing their best to avoid each other, Georgie struggles to escape him, even while dealing with her own mental health issues and a blossoming romance with her housemate, Melanie. Is Jon truly the kindred spirit she once considered him? Or will the two eventually part ways for good?

Friends of Empty Graves by @artswaps

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27974807

Summary: After the coffin, she cuts her hair. Who is Alice Tonner? People are searching for her in the space she left behind, in the person she was. Daisy looks elsewhere, and tries not to choke.

just let the feeling grow by @ajkal2

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27838447

Summary: Jon is a musician. He plays songs for a living. Except love songs. He doesn't do love songs, and he makes this quite clear with anyone interested in working with him. Except his manager has booked him for a wedding. Without asking. With days before the festivities start, Jon needs help. Desperately. He won't get it from his hosts, the Lukas family. He certainly won't get it from his manager. However, there's a certain amateur poet on the Lukas' staff who has a talent for making love sound genuine.

World Cold and Hard, Moth Boy Warm and Soft by @lcjenkinswriting

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27827491

Summary: Jon, a young moth fairy, leaves the nest in search of a place that feels like home

tapes winding forward by @ghostbustermelanieking

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27858721

Summary: Martin ignores him, stops him mid-sentence to say, "Jon, what have you heard about time travel?" --- Martin and Jon wake up two years in the future. It goes about as well as can be expected.

MAG 26.5: Beach Episode by @ebenrosetaylor

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27882746

Summary: Sasha is aware of the rising tensions in the archives after Martin was stalked by Prentiss and after she had her own encounter with Michael. In an attempt to boost morale and bring them closer together, Tim suggests that they all visit the beach to unwind and get their minds off of all things paranormal. Sasha takes it upon herself to make sure that everyone has fun and relaxes, but she forgets to give herself that luxury.

Rewrite The Rulebook by @radiosandrecordings

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27823774

Summary: "Panic! Bloody panic! I've been out since I was fifteen and never once actually brought someone home. I think I just wanted to seem like I had my life together, y’know? Mainly I just... I think I just wanted someone to be there with me, so I wasn't just alone with her the entire time. A bit of comfort.” There was pause as Martin let out a dramatic sigh, seemingly relieved to ramble out his thoughts. "... I could go with you. If you want."

A Test In Patience by @talking4the1

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27917749

Summary: Elias is going about his day as the new head of the Magnus Institute in 1995. Some spreadsheets to do, meetings to attend mundane and supernatural. Nothing seems out of place until The Eye calls him to Bournemouth.

Of Mothers and Memory by @loverdontleave

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27856585

Summary:  There is a story to be told, of two people, a mother and a son. Of their history together, and the sacrifices they made for each other. Perhaps they loved each other once, but that thread of connection has weakened on one end, fraying away. And it is so, so cold.

Would That I Were Golden Dust by @that-one-girl-behind-you

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27734197

Summary: The world is a lot more dangerous with your soul walking by your side, and Entities aren’t shy about feeding on golden Dust.

Till Death, Parted by @bigowlenergy

Ao3 Link:https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27749680

Summary: Jon gets caught after ripping out Gerry’s page by Trevor & Julia, and through a comedy of errors ends up engaged as an excuse. Somehow, Jon gets out alive, Gerry is freed, and they have the two hunters accompanying them as bodyguards - and as best man and best woman - without a fight. Living alone in Gerry’s London safe house afterwards will be totally fine. Jon is fine. He knows what coping is and everything! Totally fine.

The Spoken Word by @drumkonwords

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802708/chapters/68066326

Summary: Jon wants. Their pinky twitches — stretching and curling to the tune of something musical. The song of wanting, with its motifs of long, low notes. Starting quiet and mumbling up into Jon’s chest until the strings of their heart vibrate like the strings of a double bass and all they can do is wonder who’s tune they’re matching. But they know.

First Aid by @platypik

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27948284

Summary: Jon is certain Martin has been acting strangely all morning. When Martin offhandedly mentions he took a bad tumble off the tube to work, Jon suddenly Knows that the fall had given Martin a nasty fracture. Despite his desperate pleading, Martin stubbornly refuses to let Jon drive him to the hospital. In fact, it seems he would much rather take care of it himself than have Jon worry and fuss over him. Jon would disagree.

Burning Bright, In the Forests of the Night by @triffidsandcuckoos

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27915400

Summary: The safehouse bursts into flames at their backs. You can choose to change the path. Just be ready for what else you might change.

i’ve been static for too long by @furryjefferson

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27887878

Summary: Jonathan Sims ends up with a stranger’s phone on the way home from work. All signs point to the Magnus Institute, and all roads lead to its mysterious archivist: Martin Blackwood.

through the clouds like a moonbeam by @digital-waterfall 

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27877402

Summary: After passing through the Vast’s domain, Jon is left with an unexpected surprise-- a pair of wings. Unsurprisingly, Martin finds them beautiful. Also unsurprisingly, Jon does not.

[hpdabbles]

Number 1 Fan

Since I am tired, I’m just going to post the bullet points for this dream I had a few days ago and it was mostly due to @childotkw because I spent waaay to long on their blog (which is amazing) right before bed. I added a few more when I woke up but here it is.

Harry time travels to the year 1943 due to a accident involving Ron and Hermione arguing about how time travel can change the time line if someone were to go further back then when they were born and thus not run into their past self claims the redhead. Ron was right and now Harry is stuck in the past. He is seventeen to Tom Riddle’s fifteen. 

Now with the war going on no one really cares about Harry or where he came from- most assuming he is a refugee- and he doesn’t grab a lot of attention. He has funds due to sealing the Potter and Black vaults into a tattoo he has on his left pec but he’s bored. 

Harry decides to sign up for duelist competitions as he has always been good at that. The British Ministry of Magic isn’t really part of the war against Gellert Grindelwald so he thinks he can relax a little and let Dumbledore handle it. For once not be the Hero. 

Harry rapidly becomes a dueling champion but he doesn’t get famous until he is drafted for the National Duelist Team. His fame skyrockets as he soon becomes the youngest on the British team and the undefeated. Much like Lockhart he is turn into a teen idol, with screaming love-stuck fans at each of his matches and indorsed merchandise. 

One of his first matches before he was on the NDT, Tom riddle accompanied Orion Black and Abraxas Malfoy to watch the aspiring rookie making waves in the amateur duels. He went only to make good connections with the Pureblood Heirs but is left awestruck by Harry’s performance. He couldn’t look away from the handsome teenager throwing men twice his age and weight like rag dolls. Tom thinks Harry looks Feral and Collected all at the same time. He gets a big fat crush.

Tom after that becomes Harry’s number one fan. He never misses the result of Harry’s matches in the newspaper or Radio, always fights his way to the front of the store selling Harry’s new merch and even starts a club. Ordinally the club was meant to study Dueling techniques and spells, but it morphed into Tom gushing about the hot new duelist for hours instead. The club surprisingly gets a lot more members when words gets out it’s a fanclub for Harry the Undefeated. 

Dumbledore of course notices Tom’s new extracurriculars. He is suspicious at first but once he realizes that Harry is distracting Tom from Grindelwald-like tendencies he is super supportive of the club. He even organizes for Harry to come give a speech at Hogwarts to “inspire” young people to work hard. (Read: Force the magic of Love onto Evil Child) 

So distracted is Tom he actually stops trying to find his father and the Chamber of secrets because Harry the Undefeated, love of his life, man of his dreams might actually come to Hogwarts! He may get to meet him! In! Person!

Harry of course accepts and is horrified to see a Tom Riddle screaming his head off, covered head to toe in his merchandise and wearing Club Founder/President stash for his fanclub when he arrives. What kind of trick is this?

Harry thinks Tom Riddle is Up To Something when in reality Tom is just writing poems about Harry’s green eyes and fanfiction of them falling in love in his diary. 

Harry is offed the teaching position for the Defense Against the Dark Arts after his speech from Dumbledore but Headmaster Dippet doesn’t allow it due to Harry not having any Owls or Newts. He is fine with that but breaks so many hearts when he leaves Hogwarts. 

Tom cried for three days and Orio almost threw himself out a window after having to hear Riddle’s woes. “He’s so handsome Orion...Did you see his eyes!? They look like the killing curse!...He’ll never love me!”  “Grim I beg thee, end my suffering”

Unknown to Tom, Harry was worried about Tom Sr. and had spent a few months on trying to find the man. When he did, he carefully creates a muggle business to partner with Tom Sr. and offer him help for what he went though.

He unknowingly inform the man of a son he didn’t know by implying he knew a teenager who looked like him. Tom Sr. takes it upon himself to verify this claim and finds Wools Orphanage. He meets Tom for the first time that summer. 

Tom Sr. is ~Gay~ which is why the love potion hurt him so much. He is expecting to hate his son for reminding him of the witch but is actually met with a boy who is ~Bi~  who reminds him of himself with a love for a man he can not have and thinks “Well I won’t have any heirs anyway. Mom and Dad are desperate for the line to continue.”

 He takes Tom away from Wools and is quite please with his new heir for Tom has the perfect mannerism, pose and accomplishments- when he’s not squealing about some duelist. The grandparents are just happy to have someone who will live on with the name they don’t care he’s gay and magic. They would take anything at this point.

Tom Sr. grows to accept the magic world only because they allow gay marriage and any world that does that can’t be all bad. Besides his son is a riot.  Evil maybe but a riot.

Harry is not happy to find Tom with his dad the next time he goes for tea especially when the boy looking at him like he hung the sun and the moon but also like he isn’t breathing. 

“F-father I can’t believe it... you know Harry!? Omg I meeting Harry the Undefeated.”  *Wheezing Hormonal gasps of a teen who never learn to Emotions correctly* ”I can’t believe it. Harry the Undefeated here...in the flesh....you’re so pretty”  “Come near me and I’ll cut off your arm”  “You have a pretty voice.” 

Just Tom Riddle being Harry’s number one fan messing up the time line and Harry wanting a break for once in his life from this madness. 

[fanfic-writers-bingo]

PROMPT LIST

List of all prompts with descriptions that will be available on the BINGO form. More will be added eventually!

- 5+1: Five times your character/pairing did or experienced something and the one time it was different. ex. 5 times *character* failed a test + the 1 time they passed.

- Adoption fic: A fic involving adoption in some way.

- Afterlife: A fic involving the afterlife.

- Age Difference: A fic involving age difference, usually between a couple but you can interpret it however you like.

- Agent/Assassin/Hitman/Spy: Where the character or their love interest is an agent, assassin, hitman, or spy.

- Aging up: Taking a character and aging them, so say there a character who is fifteen in canon but age is an important part of the story so you age them up.

- Alpha/Beta/Omega (ABO): A fic involving the omegaverse where humans take on wolf-like qualities such as but not limited to mating, heat cycles, knotting, and scenting.

- Amnesia: Where a character suffers from amnesia wether there is a medical reason or they just woke up one day with no memory.

- Angels/Demons: A story in which the main characters are either angels or demons. Love interest are usually opposites.

- Angst: A story that invokes feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity

- Apocalypse: Any story involving any kind of apocalypse, think The Walking Dead, World War Z, Resident Evil, I Am Legend, Legion, etc. 

- Arranged/Forced Marriage: A story where a character(s) are in a forced/arranged marriage. Usually by their parents but can sometimes be for political or social reasons.

- BDSM: BDSM includes a wide range of practices and role play. Can be used in a sexual context but it is not always a sexual dynamic.

- Baker/Chef/Personal Chef: Where a love interest is a baker, chef or personal chef.

- "Bareback Mountain" AU: Alternate universe inspired by the film Brokeback Mountain, usually in m/m fiction.

- Based on a movie: A story based on a movie.

- Based on a painting: A story based on a painting.

- Based on a poem/quote: A story based on a poem or quote.

- Based on a song/lyrics: A story based on a song or song lyrics.

- Bodyswap: In which two (or more) characters switch bodies. Often to be taught a lesson but that isn't always the case.

- Break-up: A story revolving around a break up or maybe beginning with a break up that leads into a happy ending.

- Car accident: A fic involving a car accident.

- Character Death: Major or minor. Character death is just that, the death of a character.

- Childhood/Highschool Sweethearts: A story about childhood or highschool sweethearts.

- Coffee Shop AU: In most cases, one half of the main pairing is the barista and the other is or becomes their favorite customer; in some stories the whole cast works at a coffee shop.

- College: A story taking place in college.

- Confessions of Love/Lust: One character confesses feeling of love or lust.

- Confessions of Love/Lust--Under the influence: One character confesses feeling of love or lust while under the influence.

- Crack: Crack Fic is any story whose premise and events would be completely implausible in Canon. Also usually a fic not meant to be taken seriously.

- Crime/Mystery: A story involving or revolving around a crime or mystery.

- Cross-dressing: Where one character dresses as the opposite gender. Usually used in NSFW fics but doesn't have to be written in a sexual context.

- Cross-over: Where one fandom crosses over with another fandom(s).

- Cuddling for warmth: Where two love interest have to cuddle together due to coldness and usually results in the confession of feelings.

- Dance AU: Any story that involves dance. Could se something like Step Up or Dirty Dancing.

- "Dear John" AU: An AU based on the move Dear John where one half of a couple is away in the military and the other is in their home state waiting for them to come home. Can be written many different ways.

- "Didn't know they were dating": In which two character are basically dating or show all of the characteristics of a couple who is dating but they are both oblivious to it until someone in their lives points it out.

- Domestic Life: A story showing the domestic lives of two characters, usually in a relationship.

- Doppelgänger/Evil Twin: In which a character has a doppelganger or evil twin who wants to take over and ruin their lives.

- Dub-con: Dubious Consent, usually in a sexual context. Can be written many ways but one examples is two people having sex while under the influence of alcohol or other substences.

- Elf AU: Where one or all characters are elves.

- Enemies to Friends back to Enemies to Lovers: Where two people start out as enemies, become friends, revert back to enemies and then become lovers.

- Enemies to Lovers: Where two people start out as enemies and become lovers.

- Episode tag: A fic based on a particular episode.

- Fake Dating: Where two characters pretend to data and usually end up developing feeling for one another.

- Fantasy AU: And story that takes place in a fantasy world or involves fantasy elements such as but not limited to magic, faries, and witches.

- First Time: A fic about someones first time. Usually in a sexual way but could be first time doing anything.

- Fix-it: A chance to fix a scene you just know could have/should have turned out differently.

- Forbidden Lovers: In which two characters are forbidden from being together, usually by a parent.

- Forced break-up: Two characters who are forced to break up, could be because of a parent or to protect their love interest.

- Found Family: Where characters who are mostly unrelated bond together and form their own family unit, relying on each other for love and support.

- Friends to lovers: Friends who become lovers.

- Genderswap: In which one or more characters are written as the opposite gender.

- General AU: The opportunity to write in any AU such as but not limited to soulmate AU, sex worker AU, etc.

- Ghosts: A fic involving ghosts in some way.

- Hate sex/Enemyslash: Where two people have angry rough sex. This could be a couple who is mad at one another or a hero and bad guy that give into their sexual tension.

- Highschool AU: AU that takes place in highschool.

- Historical AU: AU that takes place at a point in history that is not the present.

- Horror Movie AU: Story based on a horror movie/book.

- Hurt/Comfort: Where one character is hurt and another comforts them.

- Hurt on the job: Where a character is hurt at their job.

- Hybrid: A fic involving or revolving around hybrids of any kind.

- "In denial": Where a character is in denial about something wether its feelings, a break up, grief or loss.

- Isolated/Trapped: Where a character is isolated in some way or trapped.

- Kidfic: A fic that involves kids.

- Kidnapped: A fic that involves or revolves around kidnapping.

- Kink: Any NSFW kink of your choosing.

- Knotting: Part of the ABO universe, used in a sexual context.

- Left for dead: Where a character is left for dead in someway.

- Loss of parents: A fic that involves or revolves around a character losing their parents.

- Lovers to Enemies: Lovers who become enemies.

- Mafia/Mob: In which a character or their love interest is involved with the mob/mafia.

- Magic AU: Alternate universe in which magic is prevalent.

- "Magical healing cock": In which a characters cock is able to heal their partner in some way, shape or form.

- Marriage: A fic involving or revolving around marriage.

- Merpeople: A fic where a character or characters are mermaids.

- Missing scene/Deleted scene/fill-in scene: A chance to write a scene you feel was missing, deleted, or needed to be filled in from a time gap.

- Modern AU: A fic that take place in modern day times.

- Mourning/Grieving: In which one or more character are grieving the loss of something/someone.

- Mpreg/Fempreg/Magical Pregnancy: Any kind of pregnancy fic that did not happen naturally.

- Mutual Pining: Where two people are pining for one another.

- Next Generation: A fic that focuses on canon characters kids.

- Non-Sexual Kink(s): A story involving kink that is not inherently sexual.

- Nostalgia: A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.

- Oblivious Pining: Where one or both characters are very obviously pining, well obvious to everyone else but oblivious to one another.

- "Only one bed": In which two characters much over come the sacred obstical of sharing a bed and usually results in confession of feelings or smut.

- Original Character(s): A fic involving or revolving around original characters.

- Pastfic/Backstory: A story that focuses on the past or back story of a character.

- Pining: Where one character is pining for another.

- Pirate AU: AU involving pirates.

- Porn/PWP: Self explanatory, shameless smut.

- Pornstar: In which one or more characters are pornstars.

- Pre/Post series: Taking place before or after a series started or ended.

- Presumed Dead: Where a character is believed to be dead even though they really aren't.

- Prison: A story that takes place in prison.

- Requited/Unrequited Love: A story revolving around if love is being returned or not.

- Roommates: In which two characters, usually love interest, start off as roommates.

- Royalty: Where one or more characters are royalty.

- Secret Dating: When two characters are secretly dating.

- Secret kid: Where a character had a kid that the never told anyone about or someone shows up with the news that the character has a kid they didn't know about.

- Secret Virgin: Where a character hides the fact that they are a virgin.

- Sex Compulsion: Heat fic, fuck or die, sex pollen, etc.

- Sex Kitten: In which a character uses their sexual appeal usually to corrupt their more innocent partner sexually.

- Sex Magic: Sex involving magic.

- Sickfic: A fic involving someone being sick.

- Snowed in: Where two characters end up snowed in somewhere, usually leading to confessions of feelings or smut.

- Songfic: Fic based around a song.

- Teacher AU: In which one or more character are in a teacher roll in a school setting.

- Theatre AU: In which one or more characters are in a theatre setting.

- Threesome/Foursome/Fivesome: A smut fic involving 3-5 people.

- Vampire/Werewolf: A fic where the character or characters are vampires, wolves or humans.

- Wedding: Fic involving or revolving around a wedding in some way.

- Whump: Where a character is hurt, be it emotionally or physically.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

@dressrosaa and anyone else unfamiliar with pretty little liars, a postmodern tone poem about girlhood and violence, an experiment in storytelling divorced from linear time about how all cops are bastards and dads are even worse, one of the most bafflingly homophobic pieces of media i have ever seen despite the fact that the showrunner for all seven seasons is literally a lesbian like GIRL are you OKAY blink twice for I NEED THERAPY:

pretty little liars tells the story of four friends: spencer hastings (deranged genius/former and future speed addict, perfect); hanna marin (blonde shoplifter/recovering bulimic, an angel we don’t deserve); emily fields (gay swimmer, has no personality but it’s hard to tell if that’s because pll is homophobic or because shay mitchell CANNOT act but is almost hot enough to make up for it); and aria montgomerry (the fucking goddamn worst i know it’s wrong to hold this much hate in my heart for a sixteen year old who spends the ENTIRE show being sexually preyed upon but in my defense it is fiction and frankly barely even that; truly the relationship between pretty little liars and our normal human understanding of narrative is tenuous at best; the point is if aria were real she would be deserving of infinite compassion but she is not so she just sucks). a year after their queen bee alison disappears, her body is found, at which point they all start getting texts from the mysterious “A,” who knows their secrets with NSA-bugging-a-therapist’s-office precision and seems to have nothing to do in life other than to torture them into constantly endangering themselves or betraying each other or doing other horrible things that will then hang over their heads for 800 years.

PLL is sort of like what if a classic dead blonde whodunit has a nightmare octopus baby with jj abrams “mystery box” storytelling spliced together with a sense of pacing even more deranged than the magicians at its most unhinged; the reason i make so many jokes about its lack of interest in physical spacetime is because it’s technically canon that two and a half entire seasons, during which among other things spencer has a nervous breakdown and an addiction relapse and goes to rehab and then gets out of rehab T W I C E, takes place between the first week of school and thanksgiving break. it is not by any means a “good” show and it’s pretty clear that any “ideas” in it were there by accident, but watching 6 seasons in a month was one of the most enthralling television experiences of my life, and it really does love to remind you that no men on earth are good (*except for hanna’s street rat hacker boyfriend caleb played by tyler blackwell whose face makes me feel extremely safe who is the most perfect dreamboat in the history of televisual dreamboats). part of its unhinged M. O. is of course keeping you constantly guessing about who “A” is, taking you through like 7000 red herring reveals (along with some real reveals later retconned as beta-A’s working for the real A - i’m telling you this shit is fucking nuts) in which we spend a couple episodes thinking (if we have never watched a television show before) that so and so must be A, only to have their nefarious behavior explained away by some other mechanism.

i’m giving this context because i am taking your inquiry about the throwaway reference i made as a chance to explain my favorite of the A fake-outs, which centers on ezra fitz. who is ezra fitz? he is a demon in human disguise. he beats out craig manning on degrassi for worst fictional boyfriend in the history of teen melodrama. he is a dude who macks on a fifteen-year-old aria montgomery at a bar the weekend before school starts and then turns out to be, surprise! HER ENGLISH TEACHER. because the show, despite being incredible and amazing and iconic, is also very bad, their relationship, which goes on and off the entire seven seasons and winds up endgame, is sold as like a torrid and angsty secret affair, and not the creepiest thing that has ever happened. despite the fact that ezra is the closest the show has to a male lead and played by the second hottest dude on it, in season 4 they were running out of A candidates and started giving us shady clues to ezra’s shadiness, discovered and mostly put together by spencer, who simultaneously was coping with the stress of trying to get into an ivy league college while also saving herself and her friends, all of whom take turns sharing one brain cell leaving her to do all the thinking, from the constant assault of a blackmailing emotional terrorist who at this point has also tried to kill them several times. one time aria winds up in a box on a train next to a dead body and also it’s halloween and adam lambert is performing on the train, god when riverdale season 1 was good i thought riverdale was like what if pretty little liars but on purpose but with the benefit of hindsight clearly PLL had what riverdale fucking WISHES it could.

in order to deal, spencer has fallen on her old pill-popping ways (for, just to reiterate, the second time after leaving a mental institution in the span of like 10 weeks), and JUST as she is on the verge of really PROVING that their english teacher is A, she suffers a stimulant-induced psychotic break i.e. gives the show their framing device for doing a Theme Episode around the theme of Film Noir, where everything is in black and white and everyone talks funny. you can watch a clip here to get the flavor. sidebar at this point alison has appeared to every single character i think and it’s like still fully a mystery whether they all individually hallucinated her at times of stress or if she’s secretly alive. once again this show owns.

anyway her friends totally freak on spencer when she tells them her theory, because she is literally the only person in town with a brain, but then we get this amazing episode where aria (a child) is at her english teacher’s cabin for the weekend and he’s acting exactly like a serial killer the entire time and she starts to have doubts and has a very tense ski lift ride with him and THEN! THEN what’s amazing is that ezra is NOT A, but in explaining why he has been acting so shady despite not being A they manage to somehow make him not ONLY worse than an english teacher who was fucking his high school student but ALSO make him POSSIBLY WORSE THAN AN ACTUAL MURDERER IMO, because it turns out that he met alison briefly before she died/fake died and then got obsessed with her death and SO he came to town and got a job at the school AND MADE OUT WITH THIS DEAD TEENAGE GIRL’S EQUALLY TEENAGE FRIEND IN THE BAR THAT DAY AND PURSUED A SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH HER AS HER ENGLISH TEACHER.............................................. IN ORDER TO DO RESEARCH FOR A TRUE CRIME BOOK. LITERALLY the most incredible thing i have ever witnessed on television. it’s SO incredible and PLL is SO far from being what you could call a “normal” “story” that my love for it is not even diminished by the fact that aria eventually takes him back because this show is evil and she is stupid (again i would NOT say that of an ACTUAL child victimized by an english teacher/pathetic truman capote wannabe, but aria is made up and not around to hear about how bad she sucks and i hate her) (my god she’s so bad guys like you simply cannot watch the show and retain empathy for her it WILL break you). it does help that in between those things ezra gets his dumb ass shot. yeah for “love” or whatever but like he deserved it i’m not gonna complain.

anyway i hope that helps clarify matters. just to stress the important part, this is not in the top 10 most deranged things that happened on this show. one time A snuck into a dentist’s office and knocked hanna out with laughing glass and implanted a tiny strip of paper in her gums which when the liars extracted it later read DEAD GIRLS DON’T SMILE. another time for a fashion show they were getting dressed up and one of them realized she was wearing a corset made of human finger-bones. they all go to jail because they have been framed but then on the way to jail they get kidnapped in an underground bunker styled to look like their childhood bedroom where A makes them milgram experiment each other for three weeks. watching this show will literally change the structures of your brain. i heard it’s finally legal in oregon now.

[brightlotusmoon]

I'm still putting together the full "Pale Sunlight Clouded" fic that started as random snippets after I analyzed 2016 Mikey a little too hard, but I had forgotten about this extremely random scene from much later in the story, in which I unapologetically plug my autistic ADHD semi self insert.

(Hey, remember twenty years ago when she would have been considered a Mary Sue just by existing and would have been shunned, and now that's all changed? Remember fifteen years ago when we were still fighting to even have fanfiction for bullies to complain about? What a wild ride fandom has been on.)

-

Touching a human like this, holding hands, outside of the ones he already knew, was a strange, unexpected, extraordinary dream. Michelangelo took deep breaths while his head pounded too heavily. He was sure the girl could sense it through that… that bond she’d formed with him. He shakily reached out with his own mind and hit a thick wall.

He heard a breathy giggle and looked up, away from their tightly clasped hands. He blinked. Avalyn was gazing directly into his eyes as if she was searching. She smiled.

“Okay.” she squeezed his hands. “Eye contact isn’t so bad, as long as I focus and don’t talk much. Thanks for humoring me.”

He frowned. “Okay, but I really was paying attention. I love listening to you.” Internally he flinched. That was flirting. He didn’t have his confidence anymore. It hurt.

“Hey,” Avalyn said, “it’s all right. Clinical depression is a monster in lots of ways. But sometimes you can cuddle with it.”

He nodded and bit his lip. “So, like, since you’re like me with all the… I mean, like, the depression and epilepsy and the ADHD… what about your telepathy? Am I gonna pick up on that too?”

Cocking her head, she smiled in that slow way that made his heart flutter. “You already have enough of your own but I can help. Like just a minute ago when you touched my shields.”

Mikey squeezed his eyes shut. “Yeah, sorry, that was rude.”

Her giggle was sultry. “Pfft, I was accidentally hitting people’s natural shields since before the psionics kicked in. If everything I’ve ever done is rude I dunno where I would be. You’re fine. It’s just in our neuropsychology to be curious about everything. Besides, you guys are ninjas, ninjas build strong psychic walls. I can crumble them if I wanted to.”

Mikey raised an eye ridge.

“I won’t, of course. But I could.” Avalyn gave him a sharp smirk.

He snorted. “Is being blunt a thing all autistics share?”

“For me to know and you to find out, silly. Now seriously, we’re here to meditate on your ideations.”

Michelangelo scrunched up his nose. “I think I hate that word.”

She was in his surface mind. She knew what he thought. “But that’s what you did, you had ideations,” and she stretched her hands so they circled his bandaged stitched wrists. He felt the warmth of of her palms radiate into the clumsy knife wounds and tried not to tremble.

It was still a sore subject. Literally, he still felt bruises from where he’d grasped his own arms too hard, from where Raphie had been tightly holding each of his hands while a scared Donnie had yanked thread through his skin and that had been just last week and still…

“I didn’t mean to, though,” Mikey scowled.

Avalyn sighed and suddenly she finally looked much older than twenty. Mikey realized his hands - maybe her hands - were shaking.

She looked right into his eyes again like a well of secrets uncovered. He sucked his a breath at how that bright hazel was made brighter by the gold rings. Why did she have to be so beautiful, it made him ache.

“Mikey…” this mysterious disabled psychic human girl sounded sad and tired and he wanted to hold her, and the way she said his name was honey and rushing streams and so so patient and kind and gentle and he wanted to cry… “Mikey, you asked me to help you. You understand what’s happening to you very well. You know it can’t keep going like this. Your whole family is in a panic over you. I think you finally need to stop denying things.”

He swallowed. He could feel her mind, gently paused right in front of his like a hesitant hug. All he had to do was let down the wall and she would connect with him and they could begin this strange recovery process that even Casey didn’t understand.

And he was afraid.

She was doing something to him and it took his breath away, sweeping him up in a fluid joy, moonlight shimmering over rippling water. He felt like telling her she was a poem.

“Yes. I want you to help me,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to keep watching my brothers suffer over me.”

Avalyn grinned. “That’s a fantastic step, Mikey.”

"Awesome," he breathed. "This is awesome."

[punkandsnacks]

Between Wolves & Doves, Chapter One; Lifeblood.

Author: @punk-in-docs​ and @adamsnackdriver​

Also on AO3

Trigger warnings; This is a slow burn story. NSFW comes later, but there is gory descriptive violence in this later on- I’ll tag the chapters with warnings-

Synopsis: Vampire!Kylo x OC love story. Inspired by BBC’s Dracula. Also inspired by Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.

He’s been stalking this earth long since civilisations can possibly fathom. Before records even began. He sneers at the fact that this pitiful young world has only just begun to see his reign of it. 

He’s dined with moguls, emperors, princes. He’s consorted with bloodthirsty ruthless Queens in their courts, and whispered into the ears of powerful King’s, whose names still echo through millennia. 

In his myriad of centuries gifted to his immortal self he’s been many many things. He’s been a lowly pauper. A crusading knight. An assassin. A sell sword. A soldier. A wanderer. A simpering suitor and a voracious unyielding lover. Aimlessly lost in time- besieging this earth. Ripping it apart and drinking what’s left.

He was made in the hinterland between snow and dirt and pine trees. Crusted with ash and blood and gouged from battle. Born anew. Sired from the hell-mouth of war. He was made in 789 AD.He’ll come undone, one bitter winter night, in England, in 1816.

   ~  ~  🥀 ~  ~  

 Hampshire, England. 1816.

Winters here were always of the bitterest kind.

Everything hardened by frost. All of nature slaughtered and gnarled and made ugly by it. Everything deadened and driven away until yellow spring sunshine butters it all up. The ground wintry solid and as unyielding as the bite of stinging chill in the air.

Every loud footstep from under her cracked boots crackled and crushed with ice-crusted mud. Her treads echo off about her in the oppressive silence of the air.

Iris Ashton walked along the lonely pale road. The path ahead scattered with linen-white snow, thick like cloth, settling down in ghostly sprinkles - like fluttering ash.

Snow comes from a sky as thick and as soft as a eiderdown. Graphite grey smeared all over the horizon signaling the worst yet to come. Sky is heavy and blotted with it. Flecks already kiss and cling at her hair and her blue wool coat collar.

She can feel them land and melt on her cold numbed lips. Feels her raspy silver breath run them away.

The trees in the dark wood surrounding her on either side of the ribboning track and the pallid ground; stand majestic and strong. Like a darkly Prussian-blue swathed army standing silent attention. Frost crawls determined up their sturdy trunks. The horizon peeping through the trees is white, like a puff of spilt flour. The craggy black tips of the regimented trees scrape at the thick churning sky.

One hand laden with her heavy wicker basket. Hanging solidly down by her thigh. Handle creaking so under her glove from it’s heavy contents. Her elbow is locked straight and aching fully from the strain of it.

Mother had sent her off on one of her errands; paying calls to give some wrapped linen food parcels to the church. Cold meats and half-loaves of day old bread to give to the poor and needy. And on the way back she’d stopped and called for tea with her doddery great Aunt Lavinia. A more belligerent old dragon never drew breath.

Iris was her favourite of all the Ashton girls. All three of them. Unfortunately the lot of being the eldest and families general paragon of hope, fell onto Iris. Next was her sister Flora who is fifteen, and then there was Posy, at sixteen.

A whole compliment - a bouquet - of Ashton ladies. As the gossip columns always so proudly and wittily declared.

Iris was the level-headed, sensible elder sister at three and twenty. The one who was seen and never heard. The one with unremarkable grey eyes and fair skin. Her teeth were supportable, and her conversation was, well, fine, really.

She didn’t have dazzling honey blonde hair or a sultry head of brunette curls. Her hair was brown. Not chestnut. Not sizzling auburn blaze. Just. Brown. Like mud. Like bark. Like flat Turkish coffee.

The sensible Ashton girl, with eyes as dull as dust, and hair the colour of twigs.

She was pale, with a oval face and a stout figure that was passably pleasing. She had a fine bosom that some men liked to gawp at, and mother insisted she had a touch of child bearing hips. Which would strongly come into her favour when she’s married. As she had once said;

“Your future husband will be much delighted with such a valuable commodity, Iris.” Her Mother remarked once when she was a young girl and she was tugging and yanking her long hair into a plait ready for bed.

Iris can remember how badly she wanted to do something out of spite purely to ruin that chance. But really she couldn’t alter the shape of her skeleton with much ease.

Maybe she wasn’t a diamond of the first water. She’ll never be one of those girls who glide elegantly through a ballroom like a bevy of silk swathed swans. Preening, poised and primly perfect.

To her own mind and credit she was just - plain. Tolerable.

Adequate.

She is sometimes remarked to be too acerbic with her tongue, or her remarks. She’s certainly got a backbone and another quality that stumped men of the ton - a mind of her own making. She doesn’t suffer fools and she likes to venture that she is a blue stocking with a decent and level understanding of this world.

She’s sufficient- she supposed. Simply that and nothing more. She’ll never have poems written about her, or have a man declare he fell wildly in passionate love with her with one glance.

It suits her well enough. The fact that she looked like a dusty dull unrefined ornament next to her polished preening sisters. She’d rather fade into the wallpaper than be a dazzling spectacle of ridiculousness, like that of her two siblings.

Her simpering, inane sisters. Who flirt with any man donning a scarlet coat in the Militia. Flora and Posy, who worry obsessively about ribbons, and seek to pay no mind to anything, of any real consequence.

Iris is never one for fits of jealousy, but she is sometimes envious of their light-hearted puerile, worries. About making up their bonnets or, the next ball, or the most unbecoming stain on their new pelisse.

Aunt Lavinia greatly despised the merest sight and intimation of the younger Ashton ladies too. Iris is usually requested to go to tea with her Great Aunt, alone.

“Silly chit of a girl. The pair of them.” Was her relative’s most favoured and overused phrase.

She’d cackle it as one of her clawed elderly hands - talons - gripped her teacup. And she wouldn’t be happy until she’d griped and moaned and complained about every beast and man put on this earth. For they’ve all been put there with the sole purpose of vexing her greatly -Naturally.

Tea today was no different to any other occasion she pays a visit.

Iris sits with the sniping old matron in her freezing-cold front parlour with a piffling fire barely going. Her Aunt is always bedecked in enough black muslin to cover all of Hampshire.

A black lace matron cap staunchly on her head. Black fichu covering at her shoulders. An inky shawl on her arms and on each of her skeletal fingers sit glimmering gleaming rings which clackclackclack and scrape when she moves and points that every disapproving finger. Big fat stones of amber and ruby and topaz weighting down her frail claws.

Iris always teeters politely on the most uncomfortably hard settee opposite her. Cradling the hot spode bone-china cup of tea that her Aunt shoves in her hands. Sugar staining sickly saccharine on her lips - she never let her guests have unsugared tea.

Quite why she is the favourite Ashton, Iris has no clue. She is always interrogated by the woman as she barks nosy question after nosy question at her.

“Yes, Aunt. No, Aunt. I don’t believe so, Aunt.” As the harridan gripes about beef or sugar or candle taxes, or the local Reverend, or the gaudy new fabric on display in dressmakers window.

A whole ream of grudges being spewed out that wrinkled puckered mouth. Face pale, craggy and screwed up with lines like a sheet of crumpled parchment paper.

Her dark eyes shine forth like raisins sunk deep into scones. Glittering black and always always always dissatisfied with the whole world, and determined to find fault with everyone in it.

Iris brings her the ointment her Aunt asked for. She was suffering a hacking cough that worsened in the winter. Lavinia insists its a damp affliction brought on by unclean air.

Iris bought the woman a bottle of liniment rub, spiced with rosemary oil, camphor and spirit of wine. Her Aunt harrumphed at her offering. Stabs her walking cane into carpet in disfavour. Shoves the bottle away and insists Willow bark tea is what will cure her ailment.

Next she’ll be insisting on leeches and blood letting to balance out the humours-

Iris doesn’t fight her stubbornness - it’s a battlefield over which she will never win or hoist a flag of victory.

She drinks down three more cups of the cloying tea, interrupts the interrogation and insists rather bravely that she must be on her way - for Lord and Lady Hearst are throwing a ball this evening. On their vast estate. And she needs to scurry home to ready for it. That earns her another harrumph in response. Lavinia detested balls.

“Breeding ground for senile men and stupid women. And all that inane leaping about they now call dancing...” She grimaces.

The whole county is in uproar for this ball - little else to recommend or appreciate in this bleak dull midwinter. Whispers flourishing around town seemed inclined to favour that a mysterious Lord from the continent is in attendance tonight...

A Lord. From Bavaria no less. Apparently he owned a vast castle high up in the snowy forest smothered mountains.

Quite why he’s bothered to travel the length of Europe to this savage spit of society in the Hampshire countryside, she cannot fathom. If she was lucky enough to live in a castle, she’d never be seen again.

She recounts that scrap of gossip about the prospective Lord to her Aunt. Who thunks her cane loudly on the floor and scoffs in derision;

“Foreigners are always a grave source of disappointment - and they are so riddled with lice and ill bred manners.” So wisely declares Aunt Lavinia.

She says that about anything to do with anything and anyone not born or formed on good british soil.

She had said the very same thing last week about the pews at Church-

She leaves the little bustling hamlet. Shuts her Great Aunt’s warped cottage door. The wood shuddered, catching on the doorstep. Her arm shot through with needles of pain. Aches slipping up her back, her neck and sparking her shoulders. She hooks the heavy basket onto the crook of her elbow and sighs as she plods homeward.

Away from the small tudor, mouldy mustard walls of Lavinia’s cottage. A pretty little house. Always cold. Formed of thick stone walls and mahogany creaking stairs. Austere bare furniture sparsely filled every room. Wedged into a street with crossed glass windows and a petticoat brown tiled roof.

It was a meagre six miles from here to home. And she appreciates the walk. Or atleast she might be more inclined to favour it, were her coat more substantial.

As it is the blue wool thing is possibly a might too small for her now. It tugs and pinches so across the shoulders. And the hem ends right up her calves. Pebble-grey Kidskin gloves on her fingers, knuckles knotted stiff and her fingertips are tingling with cold.

The hem of her plain cotton voile dress, is dark with damp from the snow. The bluebell cobalt of it leeched darker at her hem. She’s shivering because her stockings aren’t the warmest wool. Her legs are trembling cold and she only wore her lightest chemise. However she is glad she bothered with the scarf.

She hadn’t put on a bonnet today. She can’t stand the fuss of one. Ribbons flapping at her ears. It was uncommon - but she went without.

Simply tied her hair back into a low coiffured bun secured with a snip of wheaten muslin. By now and with lugging this basket across all of the Hampshire countryside, some straggles of hair have come loose. Flopping uselessly to her shoulders.

She ducks her chin into her scarf to escape the exposure of a battering bitter gale, and continues trudging on with wearied, aching determination. She always trudges on. She has too. Is always the one who must endeavour to continue, no matter how bleak she feels.

It gets tiring, carrying great tonne boulders of expectations on her shoulders. She likes to think she bears the task nobly.

As her Mother takes great pains and lengths to always endlessly remind her; she is the vessel in which all hopes for the survival of the Ashton family, are stored.

She will make a good marriage match; to a gentleman of high rank or fortune - preferably both. She will save the estate from destitution. Her sisters from ruin. And her father from debtors prison. She will be the one to keep her family in the moneyed style to which they are accustomed. They will not lose Westwell to the bailiffs.

They have risen far within the ranks of society. And they will not lose their clutch or their pride. Or their respected place among it. Her fathers estate is not a vast one; but it is more than his father before him had. A meagre merchant selling spices and furs out of Putney during the Restoration.

Now the Ashtons are country gentry. With a modest dwelling of an estate, abutting a working farm. Westwell. A manor house of not much splendour and merely thirteen rooms.

Built of gold cotswold stone with huge white windows looking out onto a self-effacing garden of some prettiness. There was a pond where swans flocked in summer. Enclosed wilderness all around. A plank of wood swing hanging off one big oak chestnut that stooped over the front of the house. To the back the garden is walled, full of sculpted beds and privets and the wide green lawn is rather uninspiring in this decimating winter

They had one gardener. Two maids. A cook and a Housekeeper. They live comfortably and hardly ever exceed their income.

Her mother hopes to change that this calendar year. She wants her eldest daughter promised to someone upstanding and rich.

Iris thinks her shrew of a mother would settle with wedding her to any man . So long as he looks pleasing in a cravat, and still has all his own teeth.

She treks on through the snow. Hoping. Dreaming. Dreaming for so many unattainable things.

Wishing her basket was lighter. Wishing her parents had sired a son. So that this evening she wouldn’t have to be bound into a pinching dress, and paraded around the Hearst’s ballroom as if she’s some prized slaughter pig at a county fair.

Wishing that she could instead stay home in her untrimmed, plain nightgown. No laced stays crushing her ribs. With a hot brick at her feet. A dog-eared Swift novel in her hands. Cracked open to the good passages. She’d read by tapered candlelight and be perfectly contented, poised to encounter spinsterhood.

Instead, a painful evening of savage society awaited her.

Poison filled smiles from nasty debutantes or their matronly mama’s. Sniping at her dress or her hair or her pale skin, or her lack of fortune. Crushed mangled toes from dancing with some portly red-faced Lord-whoever-from-wherever. One who stank of port, had bad breath, and tried to pinch her bottom with fat lecherous sausage fingers, when he thought no one was looking their way.

She has no aspirations for marriage or love. She’s not a fool. She doesn’t have her head swimming with fancies from novels. No rapturous desires of tall, sable-haired men, with chiseled marble bodies seducing her astray. No cloaked villain sweeping her away in the dead of night to send her to ruin, to then have her dashing savior ride in on horseback to rescue her.

If she’s one thing at all - it is sensible. She doesn’t like to reflect on the proposition of marrying some stranger simply to arrange the business of money and bearing him heirs. She’s not a broodmare-

She’s a woman. She has a thumping proud heart and a strong-working brain and she hopes there’s more measure to her life, than submitting her body and weak will over to be governed and quieted by a future, faceless husband.

She’s sure many girls of three and twenty have felt this way. She’s sure many generations upon generations of them will continue to do so, until women cease to be sold like chattel - or like cattle at market.

Sold solely to men for the priceless untarnished commodity that lay between their thighs. And based and viewed purely on that frail scrap of fleshed dignity, alone.

She wraps her coat tighter around herself. Distinctly feeling a sense of dread starting to slither sickly cool up her spine from the prospect of the evening ahead.

Mother will wrangle her into her finest restrictively crushing silk gown. Have the maid tug and pull her hair and wrench it into a pleasing style. Jabbing hair pins in her head. Mother will see to it that she splash plenty of Yardley’s water of jasmine blossom, orange and lavender on the pulses at her wrists, and at her neck.

Then, she’ll be practically shoved into the chest of every single eligible gentleman in the room tonight in the hope they deign her to be pleasing. She’ll be pushed and prodded and maneuvered and pummeled-

And she’s exhausted. She only hopes she finds the strength to endure such torture-

She kicks through the frosted ground. Pebbles scatter and skit in her wake. She nudges the sparkling white stones with the toe of her cracked brown boots. Her feet were slowly growing numb. Toes stinging with cold. She should have worn some thicker stockings. Then again, money was not exactly a moderate opulence at home. They had to husband their resources as a family very carefully- which meant Iris couldn’t have some new leather half-boots for romping about the wilds of the countryside.

But she could have as many new hair combs, fans, or gloves and embellished stockings as she wanted. Anything that might help snare a man into visions of matrimony. Not wasted on such a thing as a new wool coat to help keep her warm in winter; or boots that didn’t let the muddy puddles seep in.

For appearances sake, the Ashton’s wealth went solely into ballgowns, perfume and finery for their girls. Some household money of course went into sensibilities like candles, meat, flour and soap. Iris was taught that she should be hugely grateful for everything that was lavished upon her.

Flora so often griped at her that she was so lucky to have such amounts spent on her. She got new gowns of printed cottons and muslin and silks and whatever she wanted. Where her and Posy had to make do with alterations and hand-me-downs to their dresses and bonnets.

Flora was so blinded by jealousy and immaturity that she didn’t quite look - really look at her sister - and realize that Iris didn’t really want any of those things-

She ruminated on all tonight might bring her. She wondered what kind of state her silly sisters would both be in when she gets home. Already donning their paper curls, lacing each other into their stays and chemises already. Arguing over who wore the best pair of silk slippers they had between them.

Mother will be in one of her bitter moods. Trying to determinedly order all her girls ready for tonight.

Moods sour with each other already and they’d be seething and spitting nasty fury at Iris. She had new things especially for this ball tonight. New pair of satin gloves and a printed silk dress. They did not. They never did.

Iris would lend Flora her old reticule - the one Mother had bought for her from Bond street. And she’d give Posy her pearl hair comb to slide into her auburn coiffure. A little balm to both of them to gently encourage some sisterly affection. She didn’t want to be at war with them all night.

She’s halfway down the narrow pale road, kicking snowy stones, when an almighty sound kicks up over the horizon, barreling in her direction. She turns her head back and hears the distant rhythmic rumbling of hooves hitting track and the clack and creak of enormous coach wheels.

Hardly surprising when this is the biggest road leading back to Pembleton, her little village.

She sees through the fog of snow, a huge black shape dominates the road. Moving fast. She lifts her skirts and steps onto the crunching grass so that the raring coach might pass her safely by. At the tremendous speed it’s going she reckons she didn’t have long before it caught up to where she’s walking.

She hears it gaining, closer and closer. Wood and hooves and snorting horses eating up the distance of the road. She dares a glance at the impossibly loud and fast carriage.

It’s a beastly thing. All looming black wood. A black liveried driver in grey wool coat. Two footmen clad the same, on the back stand. Black sturdy luggage safely stowed on the roof. Two hulking beasts of shimmering onyx shire horses are stamping and galloping and heaving the great thing along with no difficulty. Silvery wisps of air pour from their nostrils and the dripping whites of their eyes look nearly devilish past their full cupped blinders. The tack of black leather lost on their gleaming coal coats.

The noise is deafening now. It’s almost passing her. Kicking snow and frosty gritted mud out from under the churn of the hungry wheels.

She’s curious as to who could possibly be residing in such an opulent coach. No one from these parts, she’s certain of it. The richest Lord from here was two villages over on a vast estate. Lord Hexham. Who was one and eighty and had a hunched back. And he was a doddery old recluse. He hardly went raring around town in such an imposing manner.

When it draws level with her she dares a vertiginous glance up at the small arch of the door. A crest is splashed there in gold and scarlet. Like a splash of blood on a gold sword scabbard. Or a healing wound.

It’s no shock that the crest there is unfamiliar to her. It’s entwined with wolves and scarlet banners, and a shield crossed with swords. Some monstrous carnivorous coat of arms perhaps? Maybe this person’s ancestor’s had won victory in some ancient bloody battle dating back to the Normandy landings.

She looks up from the door and to her very great shock, she glimpses a man’s face.

It was a dark carriage, drawn to privacy with scarlet velvet curtains covering at the windows. But the one this side closest to her is peeled back.

Her heart thumps loud in her neck and her chest claws with slight panic and embarrassment having caught this gentleman’s eyes.

Such savage, unyielding eyes.

Bitterly black. Slicing outwards from an alabaster pale face. She barely made out features of a full proud face. A blunt roman nose, full pouting lips, and raven sable hair. Length; rakish.

It makes her inhale a sharp breath. Quickly averting her gaze. Embarrassed. Lowering her eyes.

Gawping openly at the upper echelons was never a good idea. They probably held her in the same standing as that of the mud on the bottom of their very polished boots.

He was probably some uppity Duke or Earl who didn’t wish to be gazing at the common stock. She looks to her feet. Feels the wind whip at the tendrils of her hair. Unfolds them from her scarf and whips them back over her face. Baring her neck. Snow lands on her skin. Flecks of it melt ripping like bee stings onto her hot throat.

Pale, corded, thrumming throat. Bared to the wind and the snow and the cold-

He can hear her pulse and it’s like a sweet sirens call.

She feels the strangest sensation then; no one was looking at her. But it feels like they did. It feels as if eyes are pinning her down. Raking over her skin and assessing her.

When she looks back up, dazed, the rattling loud coach is past her now. Off into the distance, into the snow.

Foggy white and smeared and blurring into the horizon. Roaring away up the track road. Away from her sight. She blinks after it’s wake. Snow tangling into her lashes. She’s shivering now if she wasn’t before, and she can’t fathom why.

She switches the basket into her other arm. Let’s it take the painful strain of the still heavy thing. Items within clunk and thump around. She steps off the crusted grass and back onto the stony pave of the hard road.

She continues on; winding homeward. She thinks about her silk gown, and new pearl earrings. And then of darker things; like devilish horses, and eyes. Eyes darker than inky shadows and deeper rich, like charcoal.

As the coach thunders off into the snow. Rutting and cracking over every bump on the road, Kylo shifted back on the scarlet bench seat. He lifts the curtain on the back window with a suave flick of his fingers, and set his black gaze once more back down the track road.

Looks back upon the lone girl in the blue coat who was walking there.

The scent of her still cloyed up in his throat - Oh, and in all the best ways.

He scented her from a mile down the road. Lavender, clary sage and sharp heat of bursting peppermint on salty skin.

The musk of her made him pant and his chest ragged. His arousal and bloodlust stirred in his chest. The drooling gnashing hell hounds of his appetite waking up and baying to be fed.

He watches her hair sway over her neck. A big gust of frosty wind blew her flavour right into his path.

His eyes rolled back in his head as he savoured her.

It made his mouth water. He’d all but outright moaned. It’s been a few moons since he last fed. His nails dig into the upholstered scarlet bench. Muscles strained. Veins corded tight in his body. Pulled taut.

His butler, Jomar. Speaks up from where he is sat opposite.

Blue silk Dastar covering his silver hair. His goatee beard was arrowhead shaped and always neatly trimmed. It stood out all the more from his bronze skin. His Punjabi cadence Kylo always thought was like cinnamon dashed in milk. He had a comforting warm voice.

“I wonder, shall you like the society hereabouts, your lordship?” He seeks curiously. Melting walnut eyes finding Kylos over his gold half moon spectacles, and looking past the small red leather backed Voltaire, open in his hands.

Lord Ren smirks. His eyes glimmer. Cool and hungry. Silver black like daggers.

“Absolutely.” He wets his lips. “The local cuisine looks delicious.”

     ~  ~  🥀 ~  ~  

[stetervault]

Hey buddy, do you have any favorite can div steter fics x

Lmao I actually couldn’t figure out what can div meant when I saw this ask last night and it was bugging me so much, and then I went to bed and woke up this morning and literally my first thought was OH canon divergence.

So ok here are some off the top of my head:

steel bars and blood-slick hands by Corpium

When Deaton whisks Peter’s burnt, gasping body away to Eichen House, everyone else pays the price, Stiles most of all.

drowning in the sea of you by Corpium

Beacon Hills was perfect for Stiles growing up, but now, with werewolves, hunters, and an anxious best friend running around, it’s turning into a place too chaotic for an empath like Stiles to handle alone. And pain killers can only go so far.

Chances by Corpium

Claudia is still alive (and sick) when Stiles and Scott search for a body in the woods.

Tremors by Corpium

(Stiles has a taste for him now. All Peter needs to do is wait.)

Lucky Penny (Tastes Like Copper on Your Tongue) by pibroch (littleblackdog)

When Peter woke up, he spent a good fifteen or twenty seconds earnestly wishing that whatever had hit him had the courtesy to kill him outright. Because this? This was bullshit.

AKA the time I decided to give Peter all the nice things, but made him get hit by a car first. Like you do.

Sympathy for the Devil by KouriArashi

Stiles gets a job as a hospital orderly and finds himself becoming strangely attached to the catatonic man on the long-term care ward, and finds out that there’s a lot more to Peter Hale than there seems…

this is the wolf by pprfaith

In which Peter watches Stiles, at sixteen, five, seven, always.

Five Times Stiles Pulled One from the Oven (and One Time Somebody Else Did) by Guede

Five times Stiles’ baking changed the course of history in Beacon Hills (and one time somebody stepped up for him). Or, Stiles Stilinski: Baking is Magic!

The Devil You Know by Twisted_Mind

He’s so tired, in every way it’s possible to be tired. He tried going for a walk tonight to prevent a panic attack, and ended up being rescued, dazed and bleeding, by Peter Hale. There are so many things wrong with that sentence he doesn’t even know where to start. Panic attacks. Being stuck inside his brain sucking so hard he needed to be alone and moving. The sense of relief that came with crashing into Peter.He shouldn’t be okay with this. He didn’t give Peter permission to sleep in his bed. His dad will be home soon. Peter’s more than a decade older than him. Peter can’t be trusted.

But he’s tired, and this feels so, so good.

Into the Sea of Waking Dreams by Green

“Nothing is happening to me,” Stiles says slowly.

“You’ve been acting weird,” Derek says.

I’m being haunted by my dead mate, Stiles wants to say, but he swears he can hear Peter humming. If it’s not real, he doesn’t want to know.

(S2 AU in which Peter haunts Stiles instead of Lydia.)

For Great Justice! by Green

Stiles is a vengeance demon, drawn to Peter just as he’s waking from his catatonia.

“Whoever did this? We will make those fuckers suffer. I promise you.”

We are Who We Choose to Follow by kiranightshade

The road is dark. Stiles is maybe a little suicidal. But maybe there’s someone left to live for after all.

Going Through Hell (Your Heart in My Hands) by Ceris_Malfoy

There’s a reason Stiles always knows things he really, really shouldn’t. There’s a reason why Peter respected his choice all those months ago. There’s a part of Stiles he hides from everyone, even himself.

And then this Darach comes and steals the center of his world right out from under him, and nothing will ever be the same.

Especially not for Peter Hale.

The Choices We Make by Therapeutic_Steter

“You’re quite the clever one, aren’t you?” Peter mused, voice like honey.

“I like to think so.“

“What’s your name?”

“Stiles.”

Peter smiled slowly, looking like a cat that just caught the canary. “Well hello, Stiles,” he purred, eyes flashing a bloody red.

Stiles grinned victoriously. Viciously.

The hunt was on.

Once Upon a Dream by Ragga

It was like the door was on fire.

Stiles stood there, staring. As the realization sunk in, he slowly reached for the doorknob. He grabbed it. It burned, as if blazing hot and freezing cold at the same time. He was stuck, fascinated, and then the door clicked-

-and he was blasted with rage and grief so powerful the next thing he saw was the ceiling of his room.

Who was that?

Bite by wynnebat

“I don’t want to be like you,” Stiles says, but in some ways he already is. In other ways, they only become similar as the years pass.

At Home in the Ash by thegirlwhoknits

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you. Whoever did this, they killed my only family, too.”

Climbing up onto the bed, she lays her head on his shoulder and moves his hand to rest over her heart. “You need a pack, right? Maybe…maybe I can be your pack, and you can be my family. I’ll help you get better, and then you can help me kill them.”

From Ashes Rebuilt by ambersagen

“You shouldn’t be alive,” Stiles finally admitted. He sounded sorry, smelled like anxiety and hunched in on himself as he fell back from Peter to land in the dented chair. “I heard the doctors telling your niece. She wasn’t quiet about it, and no one cares if I’m around anyway so I heard the whole thing, about your burns. I snuck in to see you.”

“Like a sideshow freak,” Peter sneered, starting to understand.

“Like a miracle,” Stiles corrected.

Into Eden by GracieBirdie

Stiles deciding to bring home the stray alpha he’d hit with his jeep probably made him certifiable, if it hadn’t turned out Peter was as crazy as he was.

Too Much Of A Good Thing by GracieBirdie

Stiles can’t just leave Boyd and Erica chained up in a hunter’s basement, and if the only person willing to listen to him when he asks for help is a formerly dead psychopath? Well, Stiles supposes he could do worse. But of course nothing in Stiles’ life is ever just that simple…

All The Things We’d Do by GracieBirdie

Stiles’ time travel spell doesn’t work out quite right but he figures he should make the best of it, starting with Laura Hale.

Our Skin, Our Bones, Our Silent Poems by taylorpotato

Peter is a Deaf werewolf. Stiles is a CODA (Child of a Deaf Adult). They’re a kind of unlikely pair. But sometimes things you wouldn’t think of as a good combination, end up turning out to be the perfect combination, you know?

What it Means by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids)

“Do you think I don’t know what a bite on the wrist means??”

Peter had not, in fact, thought that Stiles would know what it means, but he wasn’t about to let him know that.

The Chasm and the Clash by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids)

Stiles has dreams of the Alpha after he dies. It makes no sense. He didn’t know Peter before… did he?

Did Peter know him?

And why does his head hurt so much?

Everything You Deserve by Areiton

You think about it. More than you should, you think about it. About what would have happened, if you had bitten Stiles instead of Scott.

Waiting for Pack by DiscontentedWinter, hisaribi

This isn’t the first time Stiles has woken up in a different world.This isn’t the first time that Peter has been caught in a place where time doesn’t exist.Except this time they have each other.

Save Me by DiscontentedWinter

Peter is the Alpha.He’s nobody’s savior.Not his pack’s. Not his town’s. And not that kid’s.But sometimes salvation goes both ways.

With Great Power by Triangulum

Stiles has known what he is since birth (and before, really), though his father doesn’t. He thinks his mother suspected, had an idea that her son wasn’t really her son. She was perceptive that way, and Stiles wonders if she maybe had a touch of magic. He thinks that’s why when her disease seized her, she screamed that he was evil, that he was trying to kill her. That he wasn’t really hers. Everyone had chalked it up to the dementia getting worse, but Stiles wonders how much of it was her being unable to contain her suspicions and letting them run wild. Once Claudia dies, Stiles is truly the only one who knows he’s other. That is, until Peter.

Razor Edge of Danger by Triangulum

It starts with Gerard. After the clusterfuck of Stiles crashing into the kanima with his jeep, Jackson’s ‘death’ and werewolf resurrection, Lydia and Jackson go off together, Scott goes after Allison, and Derek, broken and hurt from yet another betrayal and use of his body against his will, takes Isaac and leaves, unable to look at any of them. That leaves Stiles standing next to his battered jeep, arms wrapped around his aching ribs. No one so much as looks his way. Except for Peter.