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jinruihokankeikaku · 3 years

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"Communicating Doors" by The Extra Lens (John S. Darnielle and Franklin Bruno)

A somewhat close reading that got a bit out of hand, because I couldn't find any interpretations of this song online. First, the song in question -

Campaign down from Atlanta Five-hour drive to the coast...

So here's our establishing shot. We establish the setting - somewhere on the Atlantic or Gulf coast in the Deep South - Jacksonville, Destin, Pensacola, Mobile, Panama City, and Charleston/Folly/Sullivan's Island are all possibilities. But what really stands out about this line, and sets the tone for the song as a whole, is the usage of "campaign" - a protracted venture to establish political or military control. The narrator is on a mission. They're struggling against some kind of opposing force.

...brought whatever we thought we'd need To pierce the skin of a ghost.

So the extreme ambiguity here is deliberate; it's a device JD uses fairly often, usually to comic (or at least tragicomic) effect. The narrator's deflecting, ensconcing the truth in what seems at first a slightly awkward metaphor (do ghosts even have skin?) to avoid the shame or embarrassment of saying it in so many words (despite the fact that he seems to assume we already know what he's referring to). So what exactly is the narrator referring to here? This becomes...slightly more clear as the story develops, but here we get an important hint both as to whatever "whatever" may be, and as to the object of the narrator's campaign.

In JD's oeuvre, ghosts show up quite often indeed, and this isn't even the only time they appear to be less-ghostly than they seem - for example, in "The Young Thousands", "ghosts...are prepared to take on substance...[and] have been learning how to breathe," and in the unreleased "We Shall All Be Healed (Rose Quarter Drifting)" a ghost is referred to as having once been able to "bite" the narrator. An outtake from Get Lonely, "Keeping House", establishes this as explicitly and as matter-of-factly as anything, and several times over - "Cursing the moment that saw him draw breath / The ghost on your doorstep is starving to death.... [S]oaked wet with rain...he clutches his stomach / And howls at the pain.... [T]he ghost on your doorstep has to eat / Same as you." This example makes it clear that the ghost in question is a bodily thing, and that the narrator and his newly introduced cohort(?) mean to do it bodily harm.

What makes a ghost a ghost, then, if it's still breathing, still hungry, still contained within fragile skin? A few vague ideas come to mind, but as the narrative presses forward, a more clearly defined notion of ghostliness begins to take form.

Left your car at the hotel, rode up seventeen floors And checked ourselves into separate rooms With communicating doors.

So, there's the titular refrain. Before we unpack the really interesting part - that is to say, the character of the relationship between our narrator and his companion - it's probably important to establish what the term "communicating doors" could be referring to. I had a vague idea, but I wanted confirmation, so I searched the Web - and was rather surprised to find little in the way of architectural jargon, and a whole lot in the way of articles on a 1994 stage play of the same title, written by Alan Ayckbourn, which - without derailing this post even further - seems to be a sex-comedy slash farce slash thriller, set - perhaps notably - in a hotel suite that travels through time. Now, to be clear, I have no idea if John Darnielle and/or Franklin Bruno had even heard of this production, and it would be a stretch further still to suggest that they were inspired by it - it premiered in England and seems to have received little recognition beyond three sentences on Wikipedia and a number of (mixed) reviews. However, the play predates the song by over 25 years, and is the first thing that shows up when one enters "communicating doors" into one's search engine so, like, make of that what you will.

Incidentally, the term "communicating door(s)" doesn't seem to have a Wikipedia page of its own, or even a dictionary entry. However, a trip to the StackExchange "English" forum proved that I was not the only one asking this question! There were several answers presented, with the common consensus seeming to be that a communicating door is any door between two rooms, among which rooms neither was a corridor, antechamber, hallway, or other common/shared space. They're sharing a suite and a car, but they're staying in separate rooms. This ghost-hunting partnership is strictly business, I guess...

....and that brings us back to the question of what the deal with ghosts is. Our protagonists (deuteragonists?) want to harm it physically, which is something that - if the rest of JD's body of work is to be believed, can be done to a ghost. The ghost's not dead. It's not spiritual, divine, or even especially ephemeral. If we assume that its description precludes its being a literal lingering mortal soul, we might need, then, to return to other ghosts that haunt the discography of them Goats et alia. A brief overview of the mentions of ghosts in the Kyle Barbour's The Annotated Mountain Goats, which covers the vast majority of John Darnielle's public songwriting between the early 90's and the mid-2010's, suggests that ghosts are typically - but not always - difficult or painful to interact with, and in many cases are actively malevolent. They haunt not only former / temporary domiciles (see "Genesis 3:23", "We Shall All Be Healed", "The Young Thousands"), and doorways (communicating or no) (besides the song currently on the dissection tray, see "Keeping House") but also dreams and traumatic memories, sometimes even in "armies....numbers far too high to measure" (see Tallahassee's "Idylls of the King" and All Eternals Deck's "Outer Scorpion Squadron"). The common thread here is, of course, liminality: an old apartment, a hotel suite, an illicitly infiltrated childhood home, and the depths of troubled sleep are all points of transition, places one has left or is soon to be leaving. Ghosts - living, breathing, and hungrily biting as they may be - are remains, artefacts, vestiges lifted out of time. With that in mind, let's return to our narrator's campaign.

Lay on top of the covers, turn the fan up to full Chase a memory around my head - silver satin, and wool. Close the bar at the harbor, say goodnight in the hall Smash the lock with a midnight knock - and the rest I don't recall.

That seems to have escalated rather quickly. The narrator tries to cool off, both literally and figuratively, because it gets hot down here. Once alone, he continue his pursuit of "a memory" which is, if not identical to the "ghost" in question, almost certainly a sort of synecdoche for it. After an unspecified length of time in futile pursuit, he comes up with only a few disjointed shocks of fabric. Sheets, perhaps, which might seem like ghosts from a great distance- you see where I'm going with this. He comes up empty-handed, give or take, and reunites with his companion at a bar down by the Harbor (this is totally me projecting, but I want to believe that this reinforces my theory that it could be Charleston, a city known for having one of those). They stay there - presumably arming themselves for the hunt - until they are politely asked to not stay there anymore and leave without any quarrel whatsoever, I'm sure. They make it back to their suite more or less intact, return to their respective rooms from the hall (which is to say, through strictly non-communicating doors), whereupon - true to JD-narratorial-form, he recalls only "smashing the lock" on the titular doors before we fade to black by way of Franklin Bruno's delightfully jaunty instrumental bridge. (And...scene.)

When our narrator's anterograde amnesia abates, we return with a final verse and another establishing shot, perhaps from a balcony 17 stories above the harbor:

Stones rise out of the water; water eats at the stones. I know people who dig up graves Just to label the bones. All that poison we swallowed, seeping out through the pores And floating over the transoms Of communicating doors.

The particular significance of the water, and the stones rising out of it, is of course open to any number of interpretations, or none at all. However, I do think it's worth noting that the opening line in this verse is the only line in the song to describe the natural world. It's stated directly and impersonally, as though the curtains have pulled back to expose something primal and eternal. On this brief threshold between oblivion and wakefulness, the narrator is experiencing a moment of enlightenment and/or disillusionment. He witnesses the Earth eating itself from high above, and then returns abruptly to his internal monologue (though in this verse, of course, he could as well be addressing his companion as could he the listener).

The narrator's return from liminal clarity, the passing of the moment at which the veil between the ghosts and the rest of us is "pierced", is evidenced by his abrupt change in tone in the following line. He re-asserts is subjectivity twice, here, in one line - first by stating for the record that he "knows people" (of which people he is not one), establishing a degree of separation between himself and what he's about to say, and second by returning to his original evasive metaphorical conceit - which conceit is, of course, now totally transparent to the listener. These guys he happens to know "...dig up graves / Just to label the bones." The fact that he's not, of course, just referring to some guys he happens to know, is evidenced by the fact that the two (marginally) distinct euphemisms he uses - "piercing the skin of a ghost" and "digging up graves" are both idiomatic stand-ins for the same process - that of "chasing down [memories]", of reaching bodily into the past. The only difference here is that, in the final verse, he admits that he knows why "people" do this - something he'd been hitherto unable or unwilling to do. He knows the motivations of the people he's referring to - and he provides no evidence, because he doesn't need to. Both he and the person he's now addressing, presumably from within the same room, know what he's talking about.

Sometimes it becomes necessary - or, at the very least, comes to feel necessary to label the past, to classify it, because a memory without context is a frightening, saddening, and confusing thing. A memory without context is a hungry ghost, "scanning the hallways nightly....searching for a sign." And just as the rising tide, over millennia, eats away at stone, the things one doesn't understand about one's own past add up, eroding - first imperceptibly, then catastrophically - the terra firma of one's identity in the present.

"But," - to borrow a quote from "Going to Marrakesh" another, earlier Darnielle-Bruno collaboration - "it's not right, and it's not nice / to try to kill the same thing twice." As our narrator and his companion are sweating out the poison, imagining that all that's toxic within themselves drifting away, over the transom, across the threshold to another place and time - the question of the ghost's whereabouts remains unanswered. As is the case with so many of John S. Darnielle's stories, we, the listeners, don't know what happens next. We don't know what ghosts yet haunt our narrator. The narrator probably doesn't either. So it goes.

~~~

#john darnielle #the extra lens #communicating doors #tmg

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years

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The Mandalorian Fic -- And we are kind to snails

Gen, 3700 words. Story time on the Razor Crest! It was obviously way too early to introduce the kid to combat training, but there were other ways to prepare a child for the world, surely.

If that meant Din was occasionally stuck trying to imitate animal calls for the enjoyment and edification of a delighted and indefatigable one-person audience, so be it.

Can also be found here on AO3

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Din had, he was slowly becoming aware, created a monster.

“Da-wah,” the baby announced, reaching his arms out to be picked up and dropping the holodisc next to him in Din’s lap once he was safely positioned.

“...oh,” Din said faintly, slumping back a little in the pilot’s chair as he kept the baby steady with one hand. “Again?”

The baby turned wide expectant eyes on him, and Din — who had in fact been planning to troubleshoot the concerning noise one of the engines had been making the last time they took off — sighed. Well, he supposed that would be easier to get done uninterrupted once the baby was asleep anyway.

“Right, again,” Din agreed, and went to activate the ship’s holoprojector on the dashboard before sliding the disc in for the second time that day.

The reading had been a bit of a shot in the dark. It was obviously way too early to introduce the kid to combat training and he may never be suited for it in a way Din would be able to teach him, even in maturity — and for all Din knew about the kid’s species that might not even be within his own lifetime, it didn’t seem worth holding his breath on this one. There were other ways to prepare a child for the world, though, surely. It was probably a bit on the premature side for engineering too, since the kid still had a marked tendency to put everything he could pick up into his mouth at least once, which ruled out most of Din’s own expertise.

He’d mulled it over for a few days until a half-buried memory of his parents reading to him had presented itself for consideration. He no longer recalled what exactly they’d read — only the feeling of sitting nestled between them, his mother’s fingers running through his hair, the way his father’s voice had taken on a specific cadence when he read aloud. That they would sometimes switch off doing the voices for the dialogue so it became almost like a real conversation.

It was… well. He still remembered some of it.

Recognizing in himself no great talent for acting Din had elected to aim for something more practical, at least to begin with. In the end he’d chosen something he hoped would be both suitable for a kid and something useful to teach him and gotten, among a few other things, a holodisc that included information on and pictures of a great variety of animals from around the galaxy. Despite the breezy assurances of some people who were born and raised in the tribe, Din suspected that there was such a thing as too early an age to be introduced to the bloodthirsty treatises of Mandalore the Conqueror.

As it turned out the kid had taken to the whole thing with so much gusto that getting him to go to bed without reading at least a little first was starting to become a minor diplomatic incident. It didn’t seem to matter so much what they actually looked at — Din sometimes wondered if he could have gotten away with reading the ship’s manual aloud every night and had the same entranced reception. But for that space of time every night and sometimes during the day, the kid was glued to Din’s lap and poured his full undivided attention into whatever was set before him, and filling that time with anything less than worthy of that attention felt unacceptable.

If that meant Din was occasionally stuck trying to imitate animal calls for the enjoyment and edification of a delighted and indefatigable one-person audience, so be it.

The holoprojector sprang sluggishly to life and the image flickered until Din leaned forward to give the dashboard a succinct and practiced thump. He really should open that up and take a proper look at it one of these days, it’d been acting up for years and the components were likely older than him. “There we go. Okay, then. What are we looking at today?”

In the flickering light of hyperspace illuminating the cockpit he squinted at the small hovering icons that served as previews for the full articles, looking for one that seemed interesting or failing that an old favorite. Before he could settle on something the kid leaned forward and pointed at one of the icons with an intent yelp, so Din opened that one and gave a surprised huff of laughter when the large four-legged bulk of the creature rose from the holoprojector, its horned head immediately familiar where it was lifted in a silent roar. He hadn’t realized the disc included extinct species. The kid glanced up at him, waiting for him to start the normal routine of saying the animal’s name.

“That’s a mythosaur,” Din said, unaccountably pleased the kid had zoomed right in on it. “Our people used to ride them, a long time ago.”

The kid made a long intrigued coo and reached out towards the hologram, moving his hand like he meant to stroke the mythosaur’s horned, ferocious head.

“Too bad they’re extinct or we could’ve gotten ourselves one,” Din said, genuinely a little wistful. “Wouldn’t that have been something?”

Apparently the kid got just enough of that to fix Din with a wide-eyed look, ears perking up in breathless expectation.

Regretful to burst his bubble Din was forced to clarify: “I don’t have one. They aren’t around anymore.”

After a moment’s pause the baby took this revelation with somber dignity, turning back to the mythosaur. “Bah-ta,” he intoned, waving his little hand at the hologram like he was bidding the creature a solemn farewell.

“You still got one here, though,” Din said, in the hopes of softening the blow, tugging gently on the mythosaur skull pendant the kid wore around his neck most waking hours. ”See how they’ve got the same horns?”

The baby grabbed the pendant and glanced down at it, then between it and the hologram a few times, before holding the pendant up for Din’s inspection with a triumphant happy cry.

“Yeah. We keep the important parts,” Din said, grinning a bit at the enthusiasm.

The baby absentmindedly stuck the pendant in his mouth, small toes wiggling in contentment as he turned back to the hologram, clearly awaiting what was next. Biting his lip Din added ‘toy mythosaur?’ to his inner list of things to look out for in markets when he went to resupply and then read off the sparse information the holodisc’s compilers had thought worthy of inclusion.

“Remind me to find a more exciting version of this for you one day,” Din said as he closed the article. “There’s gotta be some better stuff about them out there.”

The baby gave a garbled sound around the pendant, idly swinging his legs while Din picked a new article at random, coming up with something aquatic and vaguely frog-like from a planet covered almost entirely in shallow oceans. The kid’s eyes sparkled.

“I think you’ll find that’s a lunch buffet too big even for you, buddy,” Din told him, moving through the different pictures of the sort-of frogs flitting between corals and strange tentacle-like sea plants. “They’re at least twice your size and squirt poison. Which apparently has psychedelic effects for some species. Huh. Let’s definitely steer clear of that, then.”

Quite apart from anything else Din had no idea how much the baby’s inexplicable mind powers were controlled by conscious thought and how much was purely instinctual — Din already felt out of his depth enough as it was with this, he could only imagine with dread the results of any unforeseen variables. If Din had already wondered whether the kid could lift himself into the air as well as things around him, it was only a question of time before the baby’s inventive and ever-active brain came up with the same idea. Din tried to keep it out of his mind most of the time, outside of the involuntary planning for endless contingencies he engaged in when he couldn’t fall asleep at night. One particularly fevered evening he had, for a while, seriously considered padding the entire ceiling of the interior of the Razor Crest, just to be safe.

After the frogs were duly ��ooh’ed and hungrily ‘aaah’d over they continued through a few types of bugs until Din used his veto by right of being the person in control of the holoprojector to get them over onto something else. He never knew the universe contained quite so many beetles or that they all looked basically the same. The Naboo guarlara got a raucous reception, though Din suspected this might have more to do with the fanciful and brightly coloured costumes of the royalty depicted riding on them than the animal itself.

Hm. Maybe hunting down a history book or two might be a good call, actually, and not just for the kid. Din had never had much of an interest in the subject himself — surely the world was bleak enough without going around dredging up the muds of ancient strife and suffering to cloud the waters even further. But these Jedi were currently the best lead he had on finding anyone like the baby out there, and if they had once been powerful enough to challenge a Mandalore… they had to have left tracks somewhere. He couldn’t imagine the Empire having tolerated information about formidable sorcerers, however ancient, being freely available, and sometimes knowledge faded surprisingly quickly if it was stamped out hard enough. Off the top of his head he was having a hard time coming up with anyone among his established contacts who might have an interest in banned literature on the side. People in his line of work did not tend towards bookishness, by and large. But then again they might have clients who did and who had the credits to back it up. It could be a useful trail to pursue, anyway, and less risky than trying to ask around about such a loaded subject in person.

What he’d do if he actually found these people was a bridge he’d have to cross — or burn behind him while fleeing blaster bolts, he could only wryly extrapolate from recent events — if he ever managed to get to it.

Still half-lost in thought Din switched to a new animal at the kid’s urging, then startled out of his distraction when the kid sat up straighter in his lap and gave a call of accusation and reproof that came straight from the depths of his little body.

“Huh? What’s wrong?” Din blinked at the hologram of the round-faced fuzzy creatures and tried to understand what was freaking the kid out about them.

“Eh!” the kid insisted, gesturing hotly at the hologram.

Realization finally dawned; Din had to push down a laugh. “Oh yeah, you had a little run-in with one of those on Sorgan, didn’t you. It’s called a Loth-cat, it’s a type of tooka. It’s not dangerous,” he added, chuckling a little despite himself when the small body in his lap remained rigid with outrage and resentment. He wrapped his arms more securely around the kid and stroked a calming hand over his side. “Some people keep them as pets.”

The kid still scowled distrustfully at the image of the Loth-cat like he found this very hard to believe, but burrowed closer against Din’s chest, tucking himself into the crook of his arm.

“See there,” Din said, pointing out the kittens cowering behind the bigger animal. “It has little ones to take care of. That’s why it’s hissing, it’s protecting them.”

Blinking slowly the kid seemed to consider this, his tiny hand wrapped around one of Din’s fingers. He gave a quizzical sound and looked up at Din, pointing at a kitten too.

“Uh-huh,” Din said. “It’s a baby. Like you.”

Softening slightly the kid lowered his hand again and tilted his head to one side.

“That’s the parent,” Din said, indicating the adult. “Buir. And they’re its children. Ade.”

He still couldn’t quite tell how much language the kid actually understood yet, but it felt like the right sort of thing to do, so he kept going.

“Together they’re a family. Aliit. I, uh. Don’t know if they really do clans, but it’s the same word.”

The kid gave a thoughtful sound and fumbled for a handhold on Din’s armor. Din gave him a squeeze, stroking his head when he butted his forehead against his palm to ask for it without taking his big dark eyes off the hologram.

“Every being gets scared and angry if its children are in danger,” Din said quietly, rocking the child gently on his lap. Since this one had sparked an interest, and to give the kid some time to get used to seeing the animal without fear, they read all the information provided, going through galactic prevalence, social structures, speculated planet of origin for the tooka, anatomy and behavioral patterns, history of domestication and hunting strategies. Din was almost sure most of it went right over the kid’s head, but the attentive tilt of his ears never wavered and he seemed to listen the whole way, even glancing questioningly up at Din when he fumbled a little in getting to the next page at one point and left a pause in the flow. Maybe the facts weren’t the most important part.

The last image of the article was of the Loth-cat asleep, its kittens tucked close all around it. Apparently reaching a place where he was ready to bury the hatchet and extend a gracious hand of peace the kid finally leaned forward and tried to pat the Loth-cat’s head like he’d done with the mythosaur, making a soothing sort of warbling sound.

“Yeah, we’re not gonna mess with its babies,” Din agreed. “It doesn’t need to be scared.”

“Nahwa-lah,” the baby babbled sagely, sitting back and leaning against Din’s side again.

“Well, while we’re on things you’ve already seen before...” Din did a quick search and found the large one-horned head he’d had the dubious pleasure of surveying from extremely up close several times.

The baby stilled in his arms, ears perking up.

“You remember this one too, huh. Guess it’d be hard to forget. Well, it’s called a mudhorn,” Din said. “In the capacity as your father, let me take the opportunity to advise you to learn from my mistakes and leave their eggs the hell alone. My vision still goes double sometimes if I turn my head too quickly.”

“Aaah,” the kid said, imperiously waving his hand in the way that meant he wanted the next page of the article, then let out a squeak when the next picture was a mudhorn contentedly grazing with its calf, plump and with a head nearly comically oversized, the horn only about the length of a human hand. The baby pointed to the calf, his excitement so radiant that Din had to smile.

“Yeah, that’s another baby. Actually...” Din knitted his brow as he scanned through the article until he found the section about anatomy and brought up a hologram of the mudhorn’s skull in profile. “Look familiar?”

The baby’s mouth turned into a little ‘o’ of surprise; he glanced up at Din, stretching up as far as he could to tentatively poke the edge of a shoulder pauldron.

“That’s right,” Din confirmed, twisting a little so the kid got a clearer view. “That’s our signet. Which you should rightfully get most of the honour for, honestly, I wasn’t doing so hot on my own.”

Running a three-fingered hand back and forth over the edge of the signet the baby babbled away, his free hand gesturing towards the hologram. Din nodded and ‘uh-huh’ed dutifully along until the kid’s story culminated in him throwing both his arms up with a shout and looking up at Din in a ‘can you believe it?’ sort of way.

“I did go flying a couple of times back there,” Din hazarded while sitting up straight again, and was rewarded with a firm nod. The kid chattered some more and patted Din’s breastplate as if in reassurance, pressing his small round cheek to the smooth metal and blinking cheerily up at him.

Din’s chest did some strange twisting things he didn’t quite understand.

“How could I be worried out there when I’ve got you watching my back, huh?” Din said thickly, cupping the back of the baby’s head in his hand and stroking his thumb along the downy crown of it, making his ears droop in contentment and his eyes slip closed as he craned into it.

Clearing his throat Din turned back to the hologram and indicated the bundle of nerves right behind the mudhorn’s jaw on the anatomy cross section. “Anyway, it went down so quickly because I managed to get it right here after you incapacitated it. Cut that connection and it’s lights out right away. Odd quirk of anatomy, but there you are. You’d do better to snipe it from a distance, though, under normal circumstances — if I didn’t have a set time I had to be back with the egg it probably would have been smarter to lie in wait until it emerged from the cave on its own, shoot it before it even knew we were there. Even tossing a few grenades into the cave would be a better choice than taking it on up close, if you don’t have to worry about the state of the egg. I’m sorry, I realize it is probably a bit on the early side for tactical reviews for you,” he added apologetically, as the baby blinked at him in what looked like well-meaning and attentive incomprehension. “...I’m not very used to having conversations about anything else. I’ll work on it.”

Thankfully the kid was already a far smoother conversationalist than Din and simply tugged on Din’s hand insistently until they could go back to the mudhorn calf, squealing happily as he spotted it again, so Din rather assumed he was forgiven.

The next animal was another bug, so Din quickly skipped it while the kid looked the other way. They detoured through the squills of Tatooine, who despite being largely composed of leathery skin, teeth, aggression and generalized malice got a much friendlier initial greeting than the small fuzzy Loth-cat had. Go figure.

Then they reached one that made Din trail off mid-sentence and grow quiet.

The creature itself was something small and pointy-faced and furry that lived in the high mountains of Alderaan — or at least it had, before, well. There was a twinge of something he couldn’t place in his gut; he’d heard about it, of course, since he hadn’t been actively living under a rock at the time and the destruction of an entire world is the sort of thing that fights itself to the front of people’s minds no matter where you go. It had seemed nearly absurd, though, hard to really imagine, enough so that he hadn’t thought much about it one way or another until he’d seen the look on Cara’s face when she heard the name of her homeplanet spoken by the wraith-like shade of the empire that destroyed it. She had looked the way Din felt hearing ’Mandalore’ from Gideon’s mouth.

This holodisc must have been put together a while ago. The creature wasn’t marked down as extinct yet.

Din glanced down at the kid, who was already looking up at him, getting a bit heavy-eyed but otherwise perfectly cheerful, not seeming to suspect anything was amiss. A collection of memories stirred in the depths of Din’s mind, though mercifully vague and transient — something about the beginning of the war, his parents’ voices, low and worried, conferring in the kitchen when they thought he’d fallen asleep, the slight brittleness to his father’s smile when he called him home from play in the evenings, just a bit earlier than he would have before. He wondered now if they’d been planning to leave or if they had surmised, probably correctly, that there would be nowhere truly safe to go and that the only thing they could do was to shield him from the worst of the fear.

He’d been frightened anyway, of course, but they’d tried. It seemed to him an ancient, unspoken sort of pact, that trying and that fear. A bittersweet creed all its own.

“Let’s skip this one for now,” Din said, as lightly as he could manage while he skipped the article and wrapped one arm more protectively around the baby. “Maybe another time.”

The kid didn’t seem to mind, only gave a contented yawn and turned towards Din’s chest in that way that meant drowsiness was finally catching up with him, his ears fluttering languidly. Din found a smile tugging at his mouth and started on the next animal anyway, in the knowledge that it would probably do the trick.

Din’s hunch was right; between the rdava-bird’s colouring and their mating calls the baby’s eyes were starting to slip closed every so often and he had curled himself up completely in the crook of Din’s arm, sucking absently on the pendant while he fiddled with the edge of the cloth of Din’s gambeson. Finally, in the middle of a description of the bird’s favoured habitat, his head drooped towards his chest and Din decided it might be time to call it.

“Time to sleep?” Din asked, stroking his thumb over the kid’s forehead. The baby gave a weak cry of protest and struggled to sit up a bit, managing to keep his eyes open for all of five bleary seconds before they fell closed again. “Sssh. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere, you can sleep. I’ll be here.”

Whether because of the words or simply the cadence of his voice the baby relaxed, gazing up at Din with soft-eyed sleepiness and the perfect trust that still made Din feel a little dizzy if he let himself think about it too hard. He swallowed and stroked the baby’s ear, rocking him slightly when his eyes finally slipped all the way closed and stayed that way.

“I’ll be here,” he repeated quietly, holding the kid for longer than he probably needed to before getting up to place him in his seat and tuck him in.

You have no idea how desperately I NEED Mando having to actually tackle a children’s picture book about mythosaurs and being persuaded by big hopeful eyes to do the voices, I’m probably going to have to write it for the sake of my sanity if nothing else

Title is from Fleur Adcock's poem 'For a Five Year Old', because the combination of that poem and this show, what is the word... absolutely devastates me emotionally.

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian fic #baby yoda #my writing #here you go it's literally just 3 000+ words of baby and mando being adorable and no plot lol #plot? who's 'plot' never heard of her

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anikkis-fantasirealities · 3 years

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“The Banquet Rooms of the Grandeur Campus”

③ Human Interest Story ┊ ʸᵒᵘ ʷʰᵒ ʸᵉᵃʳⁿˢ ᵗᵒ ᵍᵘᶦᵈᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ʸᵒᵘᵗʰ···ᵗᵒ ᵍᵉⁿᵗˡʸ ᵍᵉⁿᵉʳᵃᵗᵉ ʸᵒᵘⁿᵍ ᵍᵉⁿᵘᶦˢᵉˢ ᵃⁿ�� ᵍʳᵃⁿᵗ ᵍᵉⁿᵉʳᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᵍᵒᵒᵈʷᶦˡˡ·

꒰⁺˚₊·₍₍loading...₎₎ ✎...۪۫❁ཻུ۪۪ -ˏˋ 📨 ˊˎ-

༘✶ ㊉㈦〘 ⅯⅯ 〙⋆｡˚𓆟 ༉ ║ Posted : ０６/１５/２１° ｡༄ ‧₊˚ ๑ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ •ଓ.° ｡❍ ㈩㊇

- - ——— ꒰ An article by Nicole “Nikki” Elaine S. Chua ꒱

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ₊·͟͟͟͟͟͟͞͞͞͞͞͞➳❥ ࿐ྂ—͙❬₊° ᶦ ᵃᵐ ᵃ ᵇˡᵒᵍᵍᵉʳ ᵃᶠᵗᵉʳ ᵃˡˡ·“= ‹⸙͎

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On a scorching afternoon where the shouting of children, chasing each other after classes have concluded, and the chattering adults have started to lock up the messy rooms, there was not one place that was quiet. I, on the other hand, had a quest to fulfill under a time limit! The red ballpen flung onto my chair desk when white sheets of paper were clenced by my thin palms. I ran outside past our broken doorstep to our class, over the pastures, and on top of stone-edged floors. Time is ticking... 4, 3, 2, and those squeaky black dull shoes made it! In opening the slim door to the right side of the room, they were like glorifying gates that screeched wide open—awaiting for my arrival. Well, it wasn’t that dramatic, but I was perspired out of sprinting under the gleaming sun. My short legs wobbling for a tiny second. The beads dripping on my worried face were shaken when I entered the room at around the size of a studio-type residence.

It was normal for me to be an errand girl who assists her class and obey her teachers with respect, no matter what school my identification card is designated to. I grew up with that kind of personality: helpful, caring, kind, diligent, and patient. Hence, these exhausted shoes have travelled to many places across gymnasiums, libraries, storage rooms, and laboratories. Though, sometimes, my mind still can’t get used to such a huge room, like that of the faculty rooms. I still become staggered over the hectic aura of the space, where long tables sat in rows, and people in pink & blue uniforms kindling the noise from the outside within. I would look around to see piles of examination papers, rolls of cartolina squeezed into a box, and scattered gadgets for teaching being charged to full energy. This is an article featuring the 𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙀𝙧𝙖 𝙐𝙣𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙮: 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙎𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙤𝙡.

Throughout the years I’ve walked on those narrow corridors, and climbed up stairs to different floors of the vintage buildings, I also meet ways with many generations. One generation was younger than me—that of clumsy children innocently playing in the fields endlessly. The other was of my age, those who exist with me, as they attempt to finish their studies without tilting their heads to nudges of distraction. Then, there was this generation who were much similar to us—like students in a classroom laughing and sharing stories with each other. They had the knowledge of the world in their hands. In their arms, they carry heavier packages to unbox. Though, unlike the previous generations I meet who simply stepped up and down the stairs, the prudent grown-up smiled back to me, walking slowly pass my agitated shoulder.

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ㅤㅤ ❝ That room that I remember the most, ㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ was under construction before the pandemic began. ❞

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I had the desire to help them lift their troubles by standing by their side, but they refuse because it is the role they signed up for, and my position had no power to be elevated to their level. Though, through these words, I know I would be able to do something to display their everyday lives behind teaching the New Era youth, giving the best advice, and serving the school with unconditional love. I was given the chance to be closer to the people who inspired me to present the compassionate self with the direction, ambition, and deduction to offer my best contribution to the world I belong to.

At the back of those generalized comforting grins and caring embraces, come their different fairytales that make the generation a community of teachers—young or old, millennial or Gen X, whatever gender and status they may have. They were a social generation, with hundred of stories to unfold and share to the youth. That was one thing I admired about them the most.

Well, I have encountered many teachers in my life since entering school, but the memory that always stick to my mind is my experiences with the teachers of New Era University: Integrated School. For some, they would cover their face when they recognize their teachers riding on a public vehicle rushing to its detination. Others simply ignore their respected educators when they spot them being at school even if the sun has already tucked in for the day.

However, I was one of those students who waves and greets them with my two-front teeth sticking out in happiness—trekking my way to school, riding shiny metallic jeepneys, and walking through scrapped walls that used to be fully painted. The inspiration flows out when I’m with them—a witness of their trials and ever-changing biographies in their very own home, the school, itself. Yes, the school becomes their shelter, figuratively, because that is how passionate they are in the path they’ve chosen to wander upon.

Then, there’s this vague image that I always remember—a banquet room where teachers eat together side-by-side during lunch breaks. The clanging of plates and utensils compliments the happy vibe of the room. The meals packed in transparent plastic bags from the canteen look fancy because of the optimistic mood all throughout the proximity in between me and the busy adults. Oh, and how could I not forget to mention the signature pancakes by New Era University: Integrated School that some teachers indulge in the most?

The giggles never end when I hear their jokes from afar, while I am walking through their room to return the checked papers I’ve finished to my Filipino teacher in Grade 10. Everyone was like workers in a castle of royalty—busy and preoccupied with their own duties, yet working towards one united purpose, that together creates a vibrant mix of emotions in the great hall. The harmonized melody it produces once the sweat and tears has finally been paid off, truly, the lunch breaks are what makes the banquet more lively. It’s a feast to behold!

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ㅤㅤ❝ Whenever I catch my name, I return it, ㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤwith my good-natured, ‘Hi po, Sir and Ma’am!’ ❞

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On one side were the lockers, where old and new student’s projects filled the barren storage with interesting information. There are multiple brown wooden tables overlapped with colorful designs where groups of teachers sit together. The masters of Science sat at the bench to the wall at the right, while the experts in English stay behind a counter adjacent to the door on the right. People who speak of Filipino, Math, Computer, and MAPEH had benches next to each other in the middle of the bustling hall that was their faculty room. They are not divided, literally, for their workplaces are not distanced from one another. Each part of the table has a customized area per teacher, whose pictures of blood-related family and schedules are inserted under transparent cover—giving them motivation to carry on their sworn responsibility. However, just like BFFs who stick together, some teachers transfer to other tables to enjoy the rest of the day with their close co-faculty members.

They would talk about their personal lives, their interests, and at times, the students & problems they encounter in classes. Some gave glee, but of course, there were also those that gave headaches. That’s why whenever I am presented with a new subject teacher per grade level, I can understand if the they know me well from the narrations of the teachers who’ve handled me. They are aware of my struggles, efforts, and kindness as a pupil of New Era. They are familiarized with this face, the expression, and its body language.

Though, I am still proud that they recognize my batchmates dedication, too. Each teacher imparted values to all their children equally. There was no favoritism, and everyone gets a chance to participate. When we make mistakes, we are still accepted and loved. All this, even though they are humans who are aroused by intense feelings? No matter how impressive, or lowly we are, it is that chance to be better that we are most thankful about in this palace of high education.

All the pictures you’ve seen so far contain significant beings in my life as a student-soon-to-be-adult. That’s the magic of being someone not so known in society or history, but will remain a treasured person in your life—a special connection only you and that person understands, and not everyone else does. Even though I tend to stutter and zip my mouth when I am often in the loud banquet when I do not want to disturb the delightful get-alongs by our educators, eventually I am noticed and asked, “What are you doing here, Nicole Chua?” It’s the admiration that regardless if I was hidden or completely revealing of myself, they help me to speak out and be more confident with the adults. That is something that I also want to influence my classmates with, because these teachers outside lessons and activities are not so intimidating & looming at all!

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ㅤㅤ ㅤ❝ I can recall the cooked dishes and the grades for judging, and I cherish them knowing you cannot taste them again. ❞

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They are friendly, approachable, and absolutely considerate of the many kids they manage from Mondays to Fridays. Off campus is a different story that I can’t personally share for the privacy of their lives, though I would say it’s rough. It’s rough to come back home—to take care of your very own children while finishing school records, bringing along the stress from work into their real dwelling. They are not just mothers and fathers of the campus that caters hundreds of beautiful princes and princesses. They are also parents worried of their own children’s future.

The sicknesses, the loans, the quarrels, and the trickling hourglass—all this is what they must face in the cold, dry evenings. They are vulnerable to all these things that makes them a part of reality, and not just some fantasy with no flaws. It didn’t matter if they were in the coordinator’s office, the cookery laboratory, the office in the second floor, or that special place on the fourth floor. I was there to hear their encounters with their rude children, or the sweet marriage they had. If I clean harder, dart quicker, and volunteer even more, I can appreciate them who were not supernatural beings veiled in fiction. They sacrifice for that hope, that they will teach the next generations how to educate those after them, and those before them. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝙥𝙖𝙨𝙨 𝙤𝙣 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙢𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙤𝙨 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺.

One time, I was holding onto the dream of being a part of the school’s newspaper—it was my “𝗛𝗨𝗗𝗬𝗔𝗧” to fulfill the vision, reflected by that tender link I had with that story. The tension was still on me when I came to the opening. I had no clue why I felt that way, even if I’ve entered too many banquet halls at that point. Though, I was determined to open that door and introduce myself with the passion I had. She was someone I did not know so much back then, but now, I’m writing this article because of her instruction. Her proficient Filipino words, and the lectures she offered to us. There was the excitement, the uplifting compliments, and the will to keep on writing. This may be the last time that we will be coupled for education, but I’m hoping to see our names as staff on the front page. Am I too much, or was that a mysterious ending?

Teachers in general only want the best for their learners, for influencing their lives is the greatest fulfillment. They can be strict or relatable, but together, they spend the rest of the day in the banquet room, merrily toasting for a job well done. In this monumental learning institution, many important people shall rise and do their part in society, away from the fairytales and fictional playtime. Perhaps, next time, if you can also observe your own school’s faculty room, you can hear their stories—the sounds of a feast, and assist them in preparing for the afternoon festivities.

I hope you were able to see the beautiful reality of the teachers of New Era University: Integrated School with my own eyes. Do greet them hello, or help them in your tiny acts the next time you see them, and it will definitely brighten their day. Thank you for reading their ordinary tales! Come back again in another blog where my fantasies become realities! A Nikki reminder: let’s help one another to rise up to success, instead of degrading one another to failure!

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤ ❝ It’s the ultimate desire, and yet I felt so anxious, ㅤㅤ ㅤbut now we’re so close, yet so far between screens. ❞

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· * ✫ * ⊹ * ˚ . . 　　· ⋆ * . * . . · . · . * · . · · + . ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤ· ** ˚ . . + 　　· ⋆ * . * . . · . · . *

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ. . + 　· ⋆ * . * . . · . · .˚ ⊹ · * ✧ ⋆ · * . · . · · .. . .

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ· + ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ· * ✫ * ⊹ * ˚

ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ · ** ˚ . . + ㅤㅤ　· ⋆ * . * . . · . · .˚ ⊹ · * ✧

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ⋆ · * . · ㅤㅤ . · · .. . . · + .

ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ. · + . *

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤ ⋆ * . * . .

ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ . · ·

ㅤㅤ﹙dedication. ﹚ ୨˚୧ ˚ ༘♡.↳ ₊˚‧

This blog is dedicated to “I am a Teacher,” for her patience, remarks, rainbow scarfs, adorable dogs, and wonderful words given to me. You are My Most Precious Treasure in this writing journey, from blandness to vividness.

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ﹋﹋﹌﹌﹌「 🧁 」﹌﹌﹌﹋﹋

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ ┊彡 Credits

➥ Cover Edit

➫ Ma’am JB

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ

➥ First Blog Divider

➫ Sir Leo

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ

➥ Second Blog Divider

➫ Ma'am Eva

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ

➥ Third Blog Divider

➫ Sir Prince

➥ Fourth Blog Divider

➫ Sir Prince

➥ Fifth Blog Divider

➫ Teacher Med

➥ Source of Information

➫ The author’s encounters

➫ Briefly shared stories by her teachers

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ﹋﹋﹌﹌﹌「 end. 」﹌﹌﹌﹋﹋

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chaostheoryy · 5 years

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Flashes of You (A Reddie One-shot)

Summary: Richie’s childhood comes to him in flashes. It isn’t until he travels back to Derry, Maine and sees Eddie Kaspbrak that any of them start to make sense.

Word count: 2,185

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Language

A/N: This is my first time writing for Reddie and I’ve been in the It fandom for approximately 96 hours so forgive me if my characterizations are off.

For two decades, Richie’s childhood came to him in white hot flashes. He couldn’t fully recall a single event or a single friend’s name but he would see details and hear sounds so clear that he couldn’t understand why everything else surrounding these points on the road map of his mind was fuzzy.

The flashes would come at random. Sometimes he’d be going through the mundane moments of life like showering or eating. Other times the flashes would come to him in the middle of a gig. One moment he was setting up the punchline and the next he was staring at a massive statue of Paul Bunyan.

None of the flashes made sense and yet he knew they were somehow all connected: a crimson “V” scribbled over a sloppy “S”, an underground hammock, a pink polo, a fanny pack full of medicine bottles, the letter “E” carved into a wooden plank.

And oh God, the laugh. Every so often his ears would ring with the sound of a boy’s laughter — a sound so pure and contagious that he couldn’t help but smile every time he heard it. He didn’t know who it was that laugh belonged to, but he never wanted it to stop. He didn’t tell jokes for the fame or the money. He became a trash mouth comedian for that laugh.

***

When Richie got the call from Mike, his stomach flipped. Flashes bombarded him like lighting bolts striking the ocean. Blood, lifeless bodies, a red balloon, a condemned home surrounded by weeds. It wasn’t clear as to what these flashes meant, but Richie couldn’t deny that he was afraid. There was a reason he couldn’t remember his childhood. Something terrible happened in Derry, Maine and, frankly, he didn’t want to know what it was.

After throwing up and downing a couple of drinks to burn away the taste of his own bile, he made it out on stage for his comedy special. He was a mess, stumbling over his bits and forgetting the punchline to his opening joke. A man shouted “you suck” from the audience but Richie just smiled. That soft laughter of the boy was ringing in his ears again.

He wasn’t going to Derry tomorrow to follow through on some cryptic oath he couldn’t even remember making. He was going to Derry for that laugh.

***

The moment Richie stepped through the doors of the Chinese restaurant with Beverly and Ben, he locked eyes with a stranger across the foyer. His hair was slicked back, his brow creased with incessant worry. A small smile tugged ever so slightly at the corner of the stranger’s mouth and suddenly Richie felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Eddie.

The flashes started again, only this time with a wider scope: the crimson “V” scribbled over the “S” on Eddie’s arm cast, the underground hammock where Eddie draped himself over Richie and knocked his glasses off with his toes, the pink polo that Eddie loved to wear whenever he needed to convince his mom to let him hang out with the Losers, the fanny pack hooked around Eddie’s waist that held every stupid pill his dipshit doctor had prescribed to him, and the letter “E” carved beside Richie’s own initial on the kissing bridge.

Richie��s stomach flipped and a lump formed in his throat. Eddie Kaspbrak was the first person he had ever loved and it took him two decades to even remember that.

“Fuck me,” he muttered under his breath before following Beverly and Ben to the table. How he was going to get through this, he honestly couldn’t say.

***

Dinner somehow went even worse than Richie expected from a bunch of friends-turned-strangers getting together for the first time in twenty plus years. The food was great and the conversations were surprisingly lively up until the point Mike brought up the murderous clown from their childhood. All of a sudden the table started rattling and the bowl of fortune cookies turned into a smorgasbord of nightmares. Richie’s own cookie mutated into an eyeball with tentacles and attempted to crawl across the table toward him like a zombie. He couldn’t recall a time in his entire life where he had been more disgusted.

Amidst all the chaos, he kept his eyes on Eddie. The man was terrified, trembling in the corner as a cookie with the wing of a bat fluttered around and shrieked at him. The attack brought back more memories of his childhood, moments where he had done everything he could to protect and comfort Eddie — drawing Eddie’s eyes from the horrors of Pennywise’s illusions, pushing Eddie behind him to keep him out of harm’s way, firmly grasping Eddie’s shoulder whenever he was afraid to remind him that he wasn’t alone.

When the illusion stopped and the dust settled, Richie bolted from the restaurant as fast as he could. He couldn’t stay and face the facts. If he stayed, he was going to die. And, on top of that, he would be forced to come to terms with the ugly ass truth that was his feelings for Eddie. Being closeted for his entire life was one thing. Finding out that the man he had unknowingly been in love with for nearly thirty years was married to somebody else was a whole other level of suffering.

Standing in the parking lot, Richie was surprised to find Eddie at his side. Eddie wanted out just as badly as him and, frankly, Richie was relieved. If Eddie ran away just like him, they would both survive. The idea of going back to the life where he no longer knew who Eddie was sucked. But a life of oblivious wandering and shitty stand-up was better than a life where Eddie was murdered by a psychotic, shapeshifting clown.

Mike tried with every ounce of his being to convince them to stay and defeat Pennywise together but their will to live was stronger. Richie hopped in his Mustang and headed back to the inn with Eddie hot on his trail.

***

Neither Richie nor Eddie said anything to one another when they got back to the Derry Town House. They simply bolted up the stairs to their respective rooms and started packing. Having brought nothing more than a small carry-on sized duffle bag, Richie finished gathering his belongings before Eddie had even managed to lay his clothes out on the bed.

“What’re you moving in?” Richie teased when he peeked his head into Eddie’s room and saw the two open suitcases on the floor. “Look at all this shit.”

Eddie frowned. “Fuck off. I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing coming to Derry so how was I supposed to know what to bring?”

“I only own like two shirts. Guess I’m not in any position to judge.”

Richie eyed the pile of clothes and was drawn to a vaguely familiar shade of pink. A soft smile yanked at the corner of his mouth.

“Your style hasn’t changed much has it, Eds?”

Eddie followed his gaze to the pink polo laying by the foot of the bed. “Myra hates any outfit that’s not a suit and tie,” Eddie said as he continued folding his collection of dress pants.

“Well, somebody needs to pull the stick out of her ass ‘cause that shirt is bitchin’, man.”

Richie’s heart nearly soared when Eddie laughed. That was it, the whole reason Richie came back.

A long silence blanketed the room as Richie watched Eddie work. Twenty-seven years later and Eddie was still as precise as can be, making sure every article of clothing was folded into the same dimensions before he put them in the suitcase. Things had to be as perfect and clean as possible. At least, that’s what Eddie’s mom had taught him.

“Jesus Christ, would you pick up the pace? I’m gonna pass a fucking kidney stone before you finish packing,” Richie quipped to break the silence.

Eddie threw him a look. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, dickwad?”

“Not until Tuesday night when your mom and I meet up for our weekly date night at Olive Garden.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie snapped despite the amused gleam in his eye.

“I’m serious, Spaghetti. You better not cock-block me on my date or I swear to God I’m shoving those unlimited breadsticks up your ass.”

Eddie stopped all of a sudden, the shirt in his grasp hanging limply in wait to be folded. The expression on his face was almost impossible to read. Richie felt his chest tighten.

“Eds? You alright?” Richie asked hesitantly. “Look, if the mom jokes are too much, I can ease off-“

“No it’s fine. It’s just that no one’s ever...” Eddie’s thought trailed off. “How much do you remember? About our childhood?”

Richie adjusted the shoulder strap of his bag and shrugged. “Not much. Bits and pieces used to come back in flashes but I couldn’t even figure out what the hell they all meant until I got here. It’s like some fucked up jigsaw puzzle that my brain’s still trying to put together.”

Eddie laid the shirt in his hands down on the bed and leaned against the wooden post. “It doesn’t make any sense, man. How can we be best friends for years and then suddenly forget everything about each other once we separate? You don’t just-“ Eddie swallowed. The worry lines on his brow were even deeper than before. “I saw you on TV — one of your comedy specials. I looked right at you and, even though I had never heard your name before I just got this feeling like...Like I knew you.”

Richie felt like his throat was going to collapse in on itself. If Eddie had gone through the same things he had, what kind of flashes had come to him over the years? What pieces of Richie Tozier had stuck in his brain?

“Did you finish the special?”

“God no. It was terrible. I don’t know who the dipshit is that writes your jokes but he fucking sucks.”

Richie grinned from ear to ear. “I’m firing him the second I get back to New York.”

Eddie returned his smile with one of his own. “Good. You’re ten times funnier than any of the shit he writes anyway.”

Richie’s breath hitched. “Holy shit, Eds.”

“What?” Eddie’s eyes grew wide with concern.

“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever complimented me,” Richie joked, stepping toward Eddie with his arms outstretched, “Come here you little Smurf. I always knew you secretly cared about me.”

“Fuck that. I take it back!” Eddie tried to slink out of the way but Richie scooped him into his arms and crushed his entire body in a bear hug.

Eddie groaned as Richie squeezed him. “You’re gonna give me an asthma attack.”

“You don’t even have asthma, fuckhead.”

Eddie went still in his grasp, his squirming ceasing without warning. He was quiet for a long moment. Richie swallowed and eased his hold, worried he had squeezed too hard and hurt Eddie. But instead of slipping out of the hug when the vice of Richie’s arms loosened, Eddie reached up and clutched at Richie’s jacket, hugging him back. Richie’s heart skipped a beat.

“I missed you,” Eddie mumbled lowly, “Even though I didn’t know it, I fucking missed you.”

Richie felt breathless. His eyes burned, threatening to form tears he never planned on shedding. He tightened his arms around Eddie again.

“You’re such a sap,” he murmured, “It’s a miracle you got a woman to marry your wussy ass.”

Eddie slammed the toe of his shoe into Richie’s shin just hard enough to really make him feel it. “Fuck you.”

Richie smiled despite the pain ringing in his leg. “Fuck you too, Eds.”

They hugged each other tightly for a good thirty seconds before Richie pried himself away. “Would you finish packing your shit so we can get the hell out of here?”

Eddie stumbled backward. “Fuck. Yeah. Gimme like ten minutes and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“I’ll head down there now and make sure our psycho friends don’t summon the devil and get themselves murdered.”

“Good idea.”

Richie headed for the door only to pause in the doorframe when Eddie called his name. “What’s up?”

Eddie smirked, a familiar mischievous gleam in his eye that Richie had grown all too familiar with as a kid. “I probably should’ve told you this years ago but I fucked your mom.”

Richie rolled his eyes and flipped Eddie off. “Hurry up, asshole,” he grumbled before stepping out into the hall and leaving Eddie to finish packing.

As he made his way toward the staircase, Richie felt his chest swell with joy. Eddie had missed him just as much as he missed Eddie and, now that they were back together, they were joking with the same ease as they did when they were younger.

His entire adult life, Richie had wondered why he’d never fallen in love with anyone and now he understood why: Eddie Kaspbrak held his heart. Always had and always would.

***

Tagging: @justauthoring, @beepbeepstiney, @atownofeggs

#Tumblr changed it’s text format so I’m sorry for the long post #I couldn’t find the Read More tab???#Yikes #Hope y’all enjoy this though #Reddie #Richie/Eddie #Richie Tozier #Eddie Kaspbrak #It Fanfiction #It (2017)#It Chapter Two #Reddie Fanfiction #My fic #It (2019)

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jammatown919 · 4 years

Text

Estranged (Brainia)

Content: Maeve's birthday rolls around and brings up some painful memories for Nia.

Nia had managed to get through half her day without realizing. She'd gone through her entire morning routine, arrived at work, and made some good progress on her latest article, all while being blissfully unaware of what day it was. She was forgetful like that; it was why she set alarms for everything. The alarm she'd set for this particular occasion went off right at the start of her lunch break. Upon hearing the buzz, Nia's first thought was that Brainy was trying to call her. Perfectly normal. Instead, the words "Call Maeve" greeted her as she retrieved her phone from her purse. It was her sister's birthday. Her newly estranged sister's birthday.

Hastily, Nia silenced the alarm and moved to shove her phone back into her bag, but something stopped her. She really did want to call Maeve and pretend things were normal, but they weren't. Not a single word had been exchanged between them since their mother's memorial service; since Maeve had declared that Nia was not a real woman.

She understood why Maeve was upset; the powers she'd trained her whole life to receive had chosen Nia instead, and then Nia had lied about it. What she didn't understand was why Maeve used her anger as an excuse to invalid her sister's identity. To revoke the support that had been so vital during Nia's transition. Nia shook her head and stowed her phone away. It didn't matter why. What mattered was that Nia wasn't going to call the sister who had responded to an attempt to spare her feelings with downright cruelty. No matter how much she wanted to repair their relationship, it was not Nia's job to seek out an apology from Maeve. It was either coming or it wasn't, and considering how much time had passed, it probably wasn't.

For the rest of her work day, Nia tried in vain to get her mind off of her sister. Her concentration was pretty screwed at this point, so progress on her article had all but stopped. No matter what she tried, her thoughts always managed to circle back around to Maeve. To how they were probably never going to fix their relationship if neither of them took initiative. But you shouldn't have to, she told herself over and over, it's her responsibility to make it right.

Needless to say, Nia got absolutely nothing done between the alarm going off and the end of the day.

By the time she got home, she was considering a nap so she wouldn't have to think about anything for a while. She had a couple of hours before Brainy was due to be home. With any luck, she'd feel better afterwards and be able to make up what she hadn't been able to accomplish at work before bed.

Upon opening the door, however, Nia was surprised to find that Brainy was already home. Perhaps it was one of the DEO's rare slow days. She knew Alex would sometimes send him home early in order to give him in the breaks he never gave himself. Of course, he was still on call, but it was better than nothing.

"Nia Nal," Brainy, perched neatly on the couch, smiled over his shoulder at her. "How was work?"

"Are you watching Dateline?" Nia asked instead of answering his question. She'd suggested it to him weeks ago, but things had been busy at the DEO and he hadn't had the time nor the focus to watch much tv.

"Ah," Brainy glanced back the screen. "Yes. As per your recommendation. I find it quite frustrating."

"Really?" Nia inquired as she walked around the couch to take a seat beside him. Perhaps some quality time with her boyfriend was just what she needed to cheer up.

"I was able to identify the culprit quite early on." Brainy replied, casually slipping an arm around her. She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. "It wasn't difficult, and yet these detectives haven't a clue." He gave a little huff of annoyance, and Nia chuckled at him. God, he was cute.

"It wouldn't be a mystery if everyone caught on right away." She pointed out, only slightly teasingly. "We can't all be twelfth-level intellects."

"But the evidence is all there." Brainy protested. "How can anyone not see that it was his wife?"

"Spoilers!" Nia lightly thumped his arm and he fell silent with a small sigh.

For a few minutes, Nia thought that the show might be able to distract her, but that hope was quickly dashed. She couldn't focus on the unfolding mystery - although Brainy had been right in saying that the culprit was incredibly obvious - when her sister was still lurking in the back of her mind. Fortunately, however, she'd been both blessed and cursed with the ability to fall asleep anywhere, and she was already kind of tired. She'd nap to get her mind off everything, and hopefully she'd feel better once she woke up.

Falling asleep took no more than five minutes. Snuggled up against Brainy, it was easy to let herself drift into the dreamscape.

It presented itself in a way with which she was not familiar. All around her, there was nothing but dark, empty space. It seemed to be open, but Nia felt as if there were invisible walls on every side of her, closing her in, preventing her from leaving this one spot.

"Hello?" She called out, listening to her voice echo. No answer came.

All in all, not the worst dream she could've found herself in, though it did kind of defeat the purpose. She'd gone to sleep so she wouldn't have to think about anything, and now here she was, alone with her thoughts. Maybe this was the dreamscape's way of telling her that she needed to deal with this rather than just ignoring the problem.

But what was there to deal with? She still wasn't going to swallow her pride for Maeve's sake. Not this time.

You weren't supposed to get the powers.

What the hell? The dreamscape had never spoken to her directly; certainly not to tell her something like that.

"What?" She asked, not entirely sure that she'd heard correctly.

When are you going to stop playing hero?

Was that... Maeve?

"What are you talking about?" Nia called.

Why couldn't you save Mom?

Nia froze. That was definitely her sister's voice.

"Maeve?" She asked tentatively. "What's going on?"

Why couldn't you save her?!

The scream startled Nia back into the real world. She jolted upright, eyes wide and heart racing.

"Nia?" Instantly, Brainy's hand found her shoulder, squeezing gently.

"I'm fine." She muttered. "It was just a dream."

He gave her a look, and she realized how odd that must sound coming from her.

"A normal dream." She corrected. "It's fine."

"Regardless, it seems to have caused you distress." Brainy observed, his voice soft. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"We don't have to."

"I know that we don't have to." Brainy replied, removing his hand from her shoulder. "I asked if you want to."

Nia let out a sigh. She didn't particularly want to get into it, but maybe this was how she was supposed to deal with it. Going to Maeve to directly was out of the question, so talking about it with someone else would be the next best thing.

"It was about my sister." She said vaguely.

"You don't talk about her much." Brainy remarked. "I assume there's a reason for that?"

"Yeah," Nia replied. "I told you about how my powers were passed down from my mother. All our lives, everybody assumed that Maeve would get them because my mom had a dream when she was pregnant with Maeve that her daughter would inherit the powers."

"But your mother had two daughters. Once you came out, did nobody think that perhaps you would be the next Dreamer?"

"We'd already spent so long thinking it would be Maeve. Even I didn't consider that it could be me. I didn't even want it to be me." Nia looked down at her hands, recalling the feeling of fulfillment she got from using her powers. They were so much a part of her now that she could hardly believe that she'd spent so long trying to get rid of them. "Maeve didn't want it to be me either."

"She didn't react well?"

"No, she didn't." Nia's voice cracked, and she took a moment to compose herself so she wouldn't start crying. "She told me I shouldn't have gotten them because I'm 'not even a real woman'."

"She said that to you?" Brainy straightened, his voice as angry as it was disbelieving. Nia gave him a little nod.

"We haven't talked since." She sniffled, her voice growing thick with emotion as her eyes grew wet with tears. "Today's her birthday, and usually I'd call her and we'd catch up, but I can't just call her like everything's normal. A-and it hurts, y'know? We've always been so close, and I hate not being able to talk to her."

"I'm sorry." Brainy said softly. Slowly, gently, he wrapped his arms around her.

"It's not your fault." Nia mumbled, leaning into his chest.

"I know, but you're in pain," He said. "And for that, I am sorry."

"It'll be okay eventually." This was the thought that Nia was choosing to cling to. At some point, one occasion or another would force her and Maeve into the same room, and once they were together, they'd work it out. They had to. She couldn't for a second allow herself to believe that she was going to be permanently at odds with someone who had been her best friend for so long. "Doesn't make it any easier, though."

"Is there anything that I can do to help?"

"You're already helping."

He tightened his hold on her slightly, and she relaxed against him, sighing as he began running his fingers through her hair. Despite her fractured relationship with Maeve still weighing heavily in her mind, being here, tucked safely against Brainy's chest, made Nia feel like things were okay. And they would be. She wasn't sure how or when, but someday, things would be okay again.

#supergirl #cw supergirl #nia nal #brainiac 5 #brainy #brainia #tw: transphobia #arrowverse

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randombtsprincessa · 5 years

Text

Ad Infinitum

Author: Randombtsprincessa

Characters: Jin x Reader

Words: 1.8k

Genre: Angst

Summary: Jin is forced to watch you from afar as you carry on with your life...without him.

Warning: Amnesia, Accidents, Injury

He was doing it again.

The tall, long racks that held cans of something or the other, hid his tall, looming frame as he bent around the corner of it just so, watching and memorizing hungrily.

Her back was turned to him as she fiddled with the container of ice-cream, her friend to her side, watching fondly.

How long had it been?

A vague memory lit up in his mind as he recalled the last time he’d seen her but that was way too far away from his mind now. This was new. This was here and he needed to focus on that.

He couldn’t, however.

All his contact with her had been severed to watching her around the corners of buildings or the aisles of supermarkets. He hated it but he couldn’t do anything about it.

Just like that, he was leaning over way too much, his considerable weight pressing against the rickety shelving and with an almighty crash, everything fell, rack, cans and Jin.

There was a ringing silence as the last can stopped clattering and Jin’s cheeks burnt, with humiliation at being caught and guilt. This wasn’t in the plans, he thought as his eyes travelled up to catch your surprised ones.

Your eyes were the same, color reflecting from the lights of the store as you gaped at the near prostate man in front of you in concern. Her friend on the other hand, did not look pleased at all. She was surprised too of course, but her eyes weren’t widened in concern, it was more irritation. Irritation, aimed at Seokjin.

He understood, wholeheartedly.

“Oh my god, are you ok?” the words flowed from your mouth in a rush, matching the pace of your steps as you hurried over to him. Your hands were outstretched and Jin’s hands reached up automatically, wrapping his fingers around your smaller once.

The touch of your warm skin blazed through him, as you helped him get to his feet and led him over to where he friend stood, mouth stuttering as if she was going to say something but didn’t know what to.

“I…I was just…” Jin began, tongue clumsy in his mouth but you were already smiling, a dismissive beam to you.

“It’s ok, we all have those days, don’t we?” she asked, aiming the question to her friend who only returned a purse of her lips back, eyes flickering over to Jin in annoyance again.

Jin however was too busy staring at you, basking in that smile. He loved that about you. How you could make even a stranger feel close and secure around you with just a smile. He missed how he was always the cause of that smile once.

He was still holding her hand, the smoothness of it familiar skin deep to him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, a silent squeak to it voice as he tried to convey everything he was ever sorry for in the two words. He could never tell her how sorry he really was but he kept on hoping.

“Not to worry, these things happen,” she said, smile turned to him and he nearly quaked in his knees as he tried not to fall to his knees and hug her, and bawl.

“Y/N, come on, let’s go, we’ll get the chocolate.” Her friend said, already steering the shopping cart away.

Your hand fell from his as you turned to look at her and nodded. Jin’s hand was slower to return to his side, his skin already missing the warmth of yours.

“Well, I’ll see you around I guess,” you said softly, returning a last smile to him as you skipped away.

“Jin,” He called loudly, desperately and you turned to look at him again, “My name is Kim Seokjin,” he said, a lot quieter.

You nodded, “Well, I’ll remember that.” You gave him a last smile which he returned, albeit bitterly.

Even your friend turned to look at him, a parting look full of pity and sympathy.

He and she both knew that she wouldn’t.

Anterograde Amnesia

The affliction caused you to be unable to create new memories. Your particular case had also erased a good chunk of memories from the past; including Jin. You remembered your parents, your long time friends. All you did not remember were your recent made friends…and Jin.

When Jin had heard about the condition, he had studied it in depth but no matter how many books and internet articles he read, he could not make you remember him or your relationship. He could not make you realize that he was the one who belonged next to you, helping you pick ice cream, not watching you from the corners of buildings and shelves in shopping marts.

Your new friends had enthusiastically taken it upon themselves to incorporate themselves in your life so you could slowly remember them as you healed.

For Jin that was very much not at option, seeing as he had always kept you away from the sight of his company. The only one who knew about you was his members.

He had been in a concert when he’d gotten the call.

Even as he held a towel to his face to collect the dripping sweat from his hair, the frantic voice of your mother immediately told him the news could not be good.

You had been caught in a six car collision – some drunk bastard running off the road – and were critical in the hospital.

Jin had frozen, towel against his face as his eyes widened in fear, concern and bitterness. There was no way he would be able to leave as he so desperately wanted to – to race to your bedside. He would have to stay, complete the show and then sneak away.

Even as his members realized that something was wrong, he kept his mouth shut, not wanting to put everyone off their best but he definitely couldn’t hold back his mind from fluttering to his last encounter with you – just hours before the show.

It was a fight, short since he was in a hurry but in no way quiet. Some new rumor about him looking at one of his stylists had made Dispatch start the whole debacle and it had reached your ears.

Normally he wouldn’t be one to snap when you got insecure but he had been nervous, frazzled, nerves already harried and he had exploded, raging about your insecurities, your faithlessness in him. He could see the dip in her head, the hunch of your shoulders, wetness glimmering at the brim of her eyes but he was too gone, his mouth would just not until it was too late.

You left his house and he didn’t even bother to stop you, leaving for the show himself.

While he had been practicing his routine, you had been battling for your life.

He hadn’t even bothered to worry about you, not till he got the call and finally managed to slip away so he could see you, all plastered and wired to a hospital bed.

He had just stared at you, stricken, as the doctors informed him and your family about your brain injury.

“She won’t remember me?” Jin’s voice had sounded scratchy, even to himself, filled with unspoken terror at having her taken away from him.

“We don’t know just what she will remember with her condition. The scans show a light injury so it is possible she will heal on her own and begin to get her memory back and even start forming new patterns.” The doctor said, before sighing, “I must warn you of course, of how delicate the situation is.” He glanced at your mother who simply turned to look at Jin.

“We’ll appreciate you keeping some distance, in case the fight you had cause her more trauma.” She said, coldly.

Jin’s eyes had widened. Your mother knew he’d been the one to cause you to lie in the hospital and he had to leave shamefaced.

Jin had taken not knowing you as a form of repentance, vowing to always cherish you once you remembered him, he would gladly stay out of your life until you healed properly.

Of course, once his schedule turned demanding there was only a few times he could see you and that was never enough for you to remember him. It had gotten so bad that his focus never stayed on his work, leading to his manager finally learning about Y/N and giving him some time to spend with her.

That time was only spent in watching her from afar.

It killed him but he had no choice.

“We told you to stay away from her.” Your mother’s voice was hard, ice wrapping itself in her vocals as Jin sat at his couch, phone held tight to his ear, taking the scolding he knew he was going to get.

“It wasn’t my intention to cause her harm, Mrs. Y/L/N. please, I was just a little careless today.” He tried to defend himself but he could find no purchase in your mother’s voice.

“No Jin, you have your job which is more important to you than my daughter. If you hadn’t shouted at her she’d have never been in that crash.”

“That’s not true -,” Jin began, fingers tightening on the phone but your mother was adamant.

“I’m sorry Jin but you can’t see her anymore. Stay away from her.”

Dread was quickly pooling in his gut, making him grab at his stomach. “You can’t do that.” He whispered.

“Yes I can. I already nearly lost my daughter, I won’t go through that again.” She gritted before hanging up on him.

There was a pause as Jin dropped his phone to the couch, hands rubbing across his weary face, trying to wipe away the tears that welled up, but to no avail.

Your image that had been so strong in his mind was now fading away. You were fading away and he was terrified.

Picking himself up, he trudged to his bed, lying down to your spot and pulling your pillow to bury his face in, your smell light but still lingering.

Jin woke up with a start, eyes heavy and nose clogged from the tears he’d spilled into your pillowcase as he wondered what had pulled him from the nightmare of you dropping his hand and leaving forever.

Another string of loud bangs fell on his door and he sighed, tiredly, getting to his feet and walking to the offending sound and opening his door.

Hair wild, eyes bright with emotion and lips chapped and bitten into, your hand hung in mid air as you stared at him with something akin to panic.

Jin’s breath stopped, chest tight as he stared at you, lips parted to take gasping breaths before you spoke.

“Jin…Kim Seokjin,” You whispered and Jin finally broke.

Heavy, heart wrenching sobs fell from the man’s full lips, eyes scrunched yet he could see you clearly as his hands reached out, towards you.

You moved slowly and his fingers grabbed your shoulder, pulling you to him in a tight embrace, head on your shoulder and arms wound tight as your arms hugged him back, stroking his shoulder as he cried with relief.

There was no way he was going to let you go now.

He was given another chance. He would be grateful forever.

#jin angst #bts angst #jin fanfic #bts fanfic #jin #bts #jin smut #bts smut #kim seokjin #seokjin #bts seokjin #ad infinitum

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ill-will-editions · 5 years

Photo

THE YELLOW VESTS IN SAINT-NAZAIRE: “WE’RE RELEARNING HOW TO BUILD TOGETHER”

Reportback on the Second Assembly of Assemblies in Saint-Nazaire (April 5, 6, 7, 2019)

(Originally published in Lundimatin #188, April 23, 2019)

Last month, April 5, 6 and 7, the second “Assembly of Assemblies” of the Yellow Vests was held in Saint-Nazaire, after the first one in Commercy in January. The following article is a partial reportback on these meetings, offering an enthusiastic, albeit ambivalent, assessment. When “limits” and “disappointments” are mentioned, the author considers them despite everything as being part of a longer-term process: “democracy must be conceived as a painful learning process.” However, according to echoes reaching us from other sources, it would seem to be the forms of democracy themselves that are at least in part responsible for making those few days painful: obsession with voting, exacerbated formalism, massive presence of veteran activists, etc. While we think it is vital for the Yellow Vests movement to be able to organize nationally beyond virtual channels (Facebook, Telegram, etc.), it seems a bit sad that this process, in many ways, insists on using the same codes of the democracy that we are familiar with: elected representatives who vote on texts and get bogged down in conflicts that no one understands. Why not simply take advantage of moments like these to talk about different local situations, forge a sharper perspective on the state of the movement and its different parts, and even, perhaps, coordinate a few pertinent actions? —Lundimatin

***

In late January, an initiative by some follks in the small town of Commercy in eastern France sketched out a basis for structuring the Yellow Vests. The idea was simple: to coordinate a gathering of delegates from local groups all over France, with the idea of working out a horizontal structure for the movement that would apply the principles of direct democracy. A wild gamble, and a response to skeptics.

Two months later at the second "Assembly of Assemblies" in Saint-Nazaire, the roundabouts seem to have taken up the idea, as nearly 250 delegations made the trip to speak on behalf of local groups in the debates. It signals a success for the Saint-Nazaire organizers, but also a logistical challenge. One after another, potential venues for the meeting replied with rejections. No matter! The organizers hit back with wild inspiration: why not hold the event at the Maison du Peuple (the “People’s House”), where popular assemblies have been held every night for months? Why not rip up the ground floor of the old sub-prefecture, knock down the walls and see if it works? As the organizers are well aware, the institution of the People’s House is a powerful symbol, one that has already captured yellow imaginations pretty much everywhere in France. There’s something dreamy about occupying an old seat of power (a sub-prefecture) on a whim and transforming it into a place of life and organization. To use it to host an assembly of assemblies, making it the capital of yellow dissent for a weekend, only sweetens the dish. One power chases another.

Still, the context has changed. Two months have passed since Commercy. Along the way, that determination so common at the start of a struggle has had to come to terms, first, with fatigue, and then with doubts. The litany of “prefecture journalists,” combined with the banality of judicial and police violence, have worked tirelessly to undermine the struggle. For those who refuse to give up, Saint-Nazaire bears the vague promise of a new maneuver, a new front.

“It’s going to be complicated;” “We’re going to experiment;” “Not everything will be perfect.”

Given the delegates’ impatience, the local organizers proceed cautiously. The magnitude of the task is immense, and the three days of discussion won’t be enough. Plenary sessions alternate with thematic working groups. Beneath the large tents and kiosks that line the building, the crowd divides and subdivides until it reaches a reasonable size. In a hurry, the most motivated among them push through the beating rain to move from one group to another. It’s a well-designed formula, leading otherwise strangers to relax and get to know one another. A new feature of this second meeting is that groups are able to propose their own topics for discussion: “Municipalism” for Commercy, a “Charter of the Yellow Vests” put forward by Montpellier, or “People’s House” from Saint-Nazaire, etc.

These small discussion groups place the emphasis on lived experience. The violence of the repression is countered with the relief of learning that one is not alone. Everyone narrates their actions, astonishing the person sitting next to them with their audacity or creativity. Blocking the economy, recreating local ties, producing for all, taking back the roundabouts, imagining a different way to organize life, targeting certain businesses, pressuring the authorities, developing popular education, fighting against bad housing, attacking the symbols of the disaster: everyone is pushing their emergency, hoping to win support.

Local experiences are mixed up in an immense melting pot of revolt and desire. Pages are covered in ink, meetings planned. Folks learn about practices they had no clue existed: blocked Airbus factories in the southwest; occupied tollbooths, liberating toll roads for several weeks on end; alternative “citizens’ markets” feature local, often organic, goods and services each week; etc. As one miffed delegate put it: “How did I not know? It’s weird that nobody talked about it. Shit.” The idea of a large platform for information is brought up again, to no longer depend on anyone. Of the 70 accreditations granted, a good portion of the red media badges adorn yellow vests: many Facebook Page editors, autonomous media crews and independent journalists and documentary teams are present. Criticism has turned into action: people telling their own stories, taking back control of their words, freeing themselves from all delegation.

It’s in these smaller group that the pulse of the movement can be taken. More so than in Commercy, determination is on display and there’s nobody left who doubts the process. Four months of struggle have gone by and transformed even the most recalcitrant. There’s nothing left to do but get organized. Get organized, to believe again. The idea of a more thorough coordination is discussed at great length. An idea that wins support: remobilize, then attack simultaneously pretty much everywhere. The calendar promises its share of opportunities: April 20, May 1, the European Union elections, not to mention the G7 in Biarritz late August and the 2020 municipal elections.

But when all the delegates gather in the plenary assembly, the atmosphere is different. Here, they’re experimenting with the most complex, utopian aspects of direct democracy, and in Saint-Nazaire there are a lot more people present than in Commercy, maybe even too many. The first cracks begin to show in the assembly. The folks with the microphone try to be reassuring despite the time that flies by at full speed. Managing to agree on enough points to put out a call by Sunday evening appears complicated, but nobody wants to give up on it.

The first draft of a joint text is finally submitted to the assembly on Sunday around noon. Disappointing. A certain number of agreements from the working groups seem to have been left out. Some decry a scam, others commiserate in frustration. In fact, the text itself was intended to be minimal to get enough votes to pass, even if it means disappointing the more ambitious delegates. Other, more focused, thematic and concrete texts are proposed simultaneously that win votes more easily and are passed. Each issue has a different text addressing it: the European elections, repression and the cancellation of jail time, citizen assemblies and convergences with environmental struggles, etc. For the first time in three days, the rain stops — the sun gives smokers hope again.

Although the afternoon is well underway, the dream of a call from Saint-Nazaire still seems far off. Some refuse to give up on it, as a limited number of amendments are agreed upon. Do political prisoners need to be discussed? What about amnesty, or the annulment of sentences? A last-minute amendment is adopted without really any debate: the goal of exiting from capitalism. The text is adopted by a very large majority. Once more, the delegates’ voices can be heard rising in the main hall, “We are here, we are here…” But this time is different. Hundreds of sub-prefecture squatters vibrate with yellow fever. The call isn’t perfect, but it’s a symbol and it’s done, honor intact. A stubborn joy is palpable.

The consensus, however, lasts only as long as the chant. The last-minute amendment on capitalism doesn’t go over well: “a disgusting stab in the back,” according to one delegate. Poorly chosen words, too connoted, too divisive, not sufficiently representative of the yellow vests in their diversity. Others castigate the assembly for not formally putting concrete directions and strategic proposals into writing. In vain: the text has been voted upon, it’s final. But the memory of the consensus achieved in Commercy fades away.

This weekend of April 6, 7 and 8 was historic, but for those who placed their hopes in it, it served above all as a reminder: democracy must be conceived as a painful learning process. This is what the Saint-Nazaire team recalls a few days later in a message addressed to participants:

“Just like in Commercy, we can make these three days into something foundational, especially in the lessons to be learned, in the mistakes not to make again. This real democracy that we’re building and inventing happens in real time, in all its complexity, and over time, in all its lengthiness — not in the quickness of the time of those we’re fighting against. We only have four months of experience but what a long way we’ve come in such a short time!”

Despite the disappointments, a plan is set in place for another Assembly of Assemblies in early June. Two groups have already offered to host and direct this third gathering, which promises to be decisive.

[Edited 5.13.2019]

#GiletsJaunes #France #yellow vests #gilets jaunes #democracy

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

City of Celluloid

by Dan H

Sunday, 01 September 2013

Dan has seen the City of Bones movie.

Uh-oh! This is in the Axis of Awful...~

I first reviewed Cassandra Cla(i)re's City of Bones in the halcyon days of 2008.

Today, Kyra and I went to see the movie!

Umm...

Long time readers (or people who read the review I linked to above) may recall that I found the original book of City of Bones so blisteringly incoherent that I was barely able to write about it in any kind of sensible manner.

The movie is worse.

Kyra and I saw this film in the tiny, crappy screen at the Odeon on Magdalen Street, an experience we shared with about a dozen other people, all of whom seemed to be having a similarly terrible experience.

Just as with the original book, I really don't know where to start. Because this film is awful in nearly every conceivable way.

Let's start with the good bits:

Good Bit: The Cast are Actually Pretty Cool

Jamie Campbell-Bower is actually really good as Fanon Draco. In the book, I felt that his constant wisecracking revealed less about the character's emotional turmoil than about the author's desire to show off her ability to write one-liners. Campbell-Bower's delivery, though, actually manages to create the impression that I always felt the book was aiming for but failed to achieve – that Fanon Draco is hiding behind playful or dismissive language in order to avoid confronting his feelings.

Lily Collins is a bit generic as Clary but then, really, what does she have to work with. She's … a girl? She has special powers? She's hot for Fanon Draco?

Robert Sheehan (the guy that plays Immortal Kid in Misfits) does a reasonable turn as Simon, although again there isn't a huge amount to do with the character. He wears glasses (temporarily). He has a raging case of nice-guy-syndrome. Meh. I swear he's taller in this than he is in other stuff.

Perhaps most excitingly (even more excitingly than Jamie Campbell-Bower, and I love Jamie Campbell-Bower), Jonathan Rhys Meyers does a fabulously scenery-chewing turn as Valentine. And boy does he need it, because if he stopped raging around and roaring for ten seconds, you might have to ask yourself what the holy fucking hell is actually supposed to be happening, and then you'd probably have to go and cry.

Incidentally, I think it probably says something about the way things work in Hollywood that the teenage protagonists of this film are played by actors in their mid twenties, while their father is played by an actor in his mid thirties. Clearly Valentine was extraordinarily sexually precocious (even if we ignore the fact that Collins and Campbell-Bower are the best part of a decade older than the characters they portray, Rhys-Meyers' Valentine would still have to have started breeding at nineteen to have two seventeen-year-old kids).

Good Bit: It Is Quite Visually Interesting

Part of the fun of this kind of film is that it lends itself quite well to spectacle, and in the beginning the film-makers do a really good job of establishing a visual style, whether it's the Hogwarts-esque grandeur of the institute, the hundreds of Shadowhunter runes that Clary draws in her sleep, or the grotesque, body-splitting demons.

Some of these images might come from the book. I honestly don't remember. I'm pretty sure that the device of Clary drawing Shadowhunter runes is film-only, and I seem to recall that the entire concept of Demons being able to possess people is contrary to book-canon (where Demons are fairly specifically greebly monsters that eat you).

Having said the film is quite visually interesting, I should backtrack a little and say that the film is quite visually interesting in kind of its first half. After they get to the Institute things just get very, very lazy. Big generic flappy-winged monsters. Generic black-and-red demons who look weirdly like the dudes that the Zin send after you in Saints' Row IV

Although Valentine does make a pentagram out of swords. For which plus ten points for swords, minus six points because the pentagram is such an obvious symbol.

And now the rest:

Bad Bit: What The Fuck Is Going On?

So Clary is drawing runes. Then she meets a guy who only she can see. Then later other people can see him.

Then her mum gets attacked by dudes who are looking for the Mortal Cup, so she drinks some kind of magic coma potion because that is apparently the thing you do in that situation.

Then Clary gets attacked by a demon, and the guy rescues her.

Then they do a lot of running around, and the guy who we saw with her mum earlier said he was only hanging out with her to get the cup.

Then they go to this place called the institute. Some people are vaguely rude to Clary. Others aren't.

Clary works out that Damien from Gossip Girl is both gay and in love with Fanon Draco, despite the fact that he has said one sentence and been on screen for eight seconds.

Then Clary goes to see the Silent Brothers. This is one of the bits that are vaguely visually interesting. She has a vision where she sees the name Bane (well, actually she see a series of dots, but Fanon Draco realises that the dots are really, umm, the spaces around the letters in the word BANE witten in block caps. Because her brain stored the negative image. Apparently).

Then they go to see a Warlock. It is vitally important that before they do this that (a) Clary get dressed up in sexy clothes and (b) everybody including Clary take the time to observe that she looks like a hooker, because while it is important for women to dress sexily, it is also important to remember that women who dress sexily are gigantic whores.

The warlock agrees to help them because he is gay, and therefore fancies Damien from Gossip Girl, because all gay men are instantly attracted to all other gay men. The warlock is not wearing any trousers. I am not making this up.

The Immortal Kid from Misfits is captured by vampires for no clear reason.

Something something werewolves something something.

Then there is a scene in a garden where it is all romantic and you know it is romantic because they kiss, but also because there is an extraordinarily loud and intrusive love song played over the top.

Then I think Clary works out where the Mortal Cup is, because she is drinking tea while reading a book, and suddenly the teacup goes inside the page like a picture.

Then they fight a scary black woman.

Then Clary gets the Mortal Cup. Then the man with the grey hair opens the big water portal and Valentine comes through.

Then there is a really, really long fight scene.

No, I mean, like really, really long.

I mean, like half an hour in a two hour movie.

There is a flamethrower. Why is there a flamethrower?

Clary does magic with her glowing dildo pen to freeze some demons.

Did I mention flamethrower?

Grey hair man is a good guy again?

Valentine is everybody's father.

They win?

More glowing dildo magic?

Clary and Fanon Draco drive away on a motorcycle. At a slow walking pace.

Potentially Hilarious Bit: Deviations From Canon

The thing I find most uplifting about the Mortal Instruments movie is that now not only will there be fanfiction based on a novel series based on fanfiction of a different novel series, but there will now be schisms within that fandom between book fans and movie fans.

I read City of Bones five years ago, so I don't really remember it at all well, but I'm pretty sure there were some pretty big changes from book-canon. I'm almost certain that the final confrontation in the original book doesn't take place in the Institute, and Valentine's motivations in the movie are a lot less morally ambiguous, in that he's fairly explicitly trying to take over the world with an army of demons rather than just wipe out the downworlders (I might also point out that the word “downworlder” only appears once in the entire movie).

At the risk of sounding like a horrible nerd and closeted Cla(i)re fanboy, I was strangely irritated by the fact that Valentine, in the film, is able to summon an army of demons by using sort of generic magic, since in the book of City of Ashes a major plot-point is that he needs the Mortal Sword for exactly that purpose.

Other changes form canon just made sense. For example, in the film, Valentine more or less states outright that he used the same kind of memory magic that Marcus Bane used on Clary in order to make Fanon Draco forget that he was raised by the most famous and reviled person in the history of his people. Now actually I'm pretty sure that this isn't possible under book-canon. Shadowhunter magic is runes and only runes, you'd need a warlock for a memory-block, and there's no way that Valentine would have gone to one. But here the film-makers did basically the best they could with what they had. The alternative would be to just go with what it says in the book, which is that Fanon Draco just completley failed to realise that the man who raised him looked exactly like the man whose picture is all over the Institute.

The film also strongly implied that the man Fanon Draco remembered as his father wore an enormous hood at all times.

On the subject of Fanon Draco's heritage, the film inexplicably chose to keep the nonsensical “M turned upside down” plot point from the book, and translated to a visual medium it has exactly the problem I pointed out in my original article. During the climactic scene, when Fanon Draco is staring at his hand and realising to his horror that what he thought was a W is actually an M, the camera is showing us the ring from the other side as it has more or less consistently throughout the entire movie so we are only just seeing it as a W when for us it has been an M for the rest of the film.

Also, the scene with the ring is also pretty much the first time we learn the surnames of either Valentine or Fanon Draco.

The final change from book-canon is to do with the … umm … incest.

A major plot point in The Mortal Instruments is that Clary and Fanon Draco want to be together but can't because they're brother and sister. At the end of the final book, it turns out that Valentine actually isn't Fanon Draco's father at all, he just did weird angel-blood experiments on him while he was still in the womb.

Now I could be wrong, but I think the film-makers really didn't want two and a half movies in which their male and female leads spent half their time seriously contemplating incestuous sex, so they put the “not his real father” line in before any of the other revelations. So now after Valentine shows up in the Institute, he has a conversation with Hodge, where Hodge says “hey, if you really wanted to screw with those guys you could lie and tell them they were brother and sister.” This somewhat alters the context of everything that happens next, and everything that will happen in the next two films.

So umm, yeah. That's City of Bones: the Movie. It may actually be worse than the book.Themes:

TV & Movies

Cassandra Clare

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~Comments (

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http://ronanwills.wordpress.com/

at 14:01 on 2013-09-01Robert Sheehan is in this? I'm really hoping he's destined for better things, so this better not end up derailing his career.

Anyway, I was hoping to see a review of the movie on here so now I can satisfy my curiosity without actually watching it myself. I have to admit some of the clips they released actually looked fairly entertaining, but I guess they're not indicative of the movie itself.

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Dan H

at 15:22 on 2013-09-01I think it depends on what you mean by "indicative". There are certainly a lot of entertaining clips, it's just that there's nothing stringing them together. It's like the film is a two hour long trailer.

This is more or less exactly the same problem that I had with the book. There are quite a lot of cool scenes, but they just sort of happen one after the other with no real throughline or sense of arc.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 15:44 on 2013-09-01I'm kind of morbidly curious about what keeps the Clare train going. It looks like she's making money off her work and everything, but I have to wonder how she feels about the terrible reviews her work gets even from critics who like and praise popular writers like Whedon and Rowling. Something tells me the poor woman isn't just in this for the money.

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Arthur B

at 22:24 on 2013-09-01

Isn't this part of the usual weirdness with American media wanting to cast teenagers in sexually provocative roles but not, for obvious reasons, wanting to show actual (or even simulated) underage action on screen? I literally just started watching

Vampire Diaries

and half my viewing time so far has been spent yelling at the screen WHY ARE YOU STILL IN SCHOOL GET A JOB YOU SLACKERS

(Though to be fair, the fact that all the high schoolers are grown-ass adults makes the whole thing less creepy in some ways.)

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Cressida

at 22:55 on 2013-09-01A video review from The Nostalgia Chick; I'm curious what Ferretbrainers think...

http://blip.tv/nostalgia-chick/the-next-whatever-the-mortal-instruments-and-ya-adaptations-6635563

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Arthur B

at 23:19 on 2013-09-01My thoughts are "Woah, holy shit, a TGWTG reviewer who offers interesting insights and doesn't rely heavily on gimmicks, fake rage and wAcKy ChArAcTeRs, how rare is that?"

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Michal

at 00:56 on 2013-09-02I was actually about to post that video. Needless to say, I find her points to be very good ones.

My thoughts are "Woah, holy shit, a TGWTG reviewer who offers interesting insights and doesn't rely heavily on gimmicks, fake rage and wAcKy ChArAcTeRs, how rare is that?"

The good ones gather at Chez Apocalypse. Kyle Kallgren of

Brows Held High

is also very erudite and worth watching, especially his more recent videos. (Even better, the crossover between Nostalgia Chick and Brows Held High in which they review

Freddy Got Fingered

is truly something to behold)

I'm kind of morbidly curious about what keeps the Clare train going.

There are very few writers who are purely in it for the money, even the bad ones. I can assure you E.L. James probably enjoyed writing

Fifty Shades of Grey

very much and did not think "my

Twilight

fanfic will make millions!" But if there is a sentiment towards material gain behind Clare's work and writing, it can probably be summed up by

this enormous tour bus

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Fishing in the Mud

at 17:04 on 2013-09-02

I can assure you E.L. James probably enjoyed writing Fifty Shades of Grey very much and did not think "my Twilight fanfic will make millions!"

No doubt. But with Clare, I get the sense she doesn't want to write dreck and doesn't want people to think she writes dreck, but may not fully understand how to get better.

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http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/

at 09:10 on 2013-09-03

with Clare, I get the sense she doesn't want to write dreck and doesn't want people to think she writes dreck

Obviously there's a non-trivial number of people who don't think that she writes dreck. She was a massively successful fanfic author, after all, to the extent of getting a professional publishing contract off her fanfic (and despite her books' debt to Harry Potter, unlike E.L. James she hasn't sold her fanfic; she had to write something from scratch and sell that). And I have seen other YA authors rave about her, though it's not clear to me how much of this is liking the books and how much liking her. Either way, she's got a community (and readers) who give her validation, and if the film of her book has been panned it will be pretty easy for her and her fans to take this as the result of adaptation decay rather than a reflection on the source material.

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Dan H

at 13:11 on 2013-09-03To be fair to Cla(i)re, I do think she's improved over the years. City of Bones was a gigantic incoherent mess. City of Ashes was a slightly less incoherent mess, City of Glass and Clockwork Angel were sort of okay. I mean they still had all of the annoying stuff that I'd expected from Clare's writing, but they actually told a story that made some modicum of sense.

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Alice

at 13:52 on 2013-09-03Either way, she's got a community (and readers) who give her validation, and if the film of her book has been panned it will be pretty easy for her and her fans to take this as the result of adaptation decay rather than a reflection on the source material.

This should be taken with a massive pinch of salt and a [citation needed], but the impression I got was that during the film production process, Clare had talked a lot about how closely involved with the film she was, but once it became clear the film was a flop, she backpedalled and began downplaying her involvement.

Then again, she's not in the business of making films, she's in the business of selling books, and she's pretty good at that.

And I have seen other YA authors rave about her, though it's not clear to me how much of this is liking the books and how much liking her.

Wasn't Maureen Johnson accused of being part of a YA Mafia (including Johnson and Clare) who were somehow all in cahoots and conspiring to get each other published? Because there happened to be a bunch of (aspiring/new) YA authors living in NYC at the same time who were friends and liked to hang out and write together, and happened to all get published to varying degrees of success/popularity? It all seemed a bit storm-in-a-teacup-ish to me, because, well, they were all in the same business, in the same city, and about the same age. And once two or three people become friends they're likely to make friends with each other's friends, especially if you're all in the same boat like that. And sure, they might have been able to help each other with getting agents and that sort of thing, but that's not quite the same thing as getting your friend published & on the bestseller list...

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http://alula-auburn.livejournal.com/

at 19:51 on 2013-09-03I've found the commercials amazingly bad, even for the parameters "that type of thing." Like, it's possible I've blocked it out, but I don't recall the Twilight ads looking so badly put together, in terms of picking out lines to quote or images to use.

Of course, I don't quite see how all the people involved in making a film didn't get the difference between something like Harry Potter or Twilight, which for better or worse penetrated the wider culture (even my extremely pop-cultural illiterate dad could identify Harry Potter as something with a school of wizards, and Twilight as vampires) and this--I think if you didn't have at least some sense of what the books were about the commercials would look even more pointless. (Which was kind of how I felt about the other YA fantasy flop? Beautiful Creatures? Southern accents and witches or something? I still don't know.)

I've not read the TMI (lol) books, but I did read the somewhat-annotated Draco trilogy in an overwrought, sleep-deprived unmedicated-for-a-chronic-pain-condition haze, and I can vaguely see how her style could be sort of compelling for the right sort of pretentious youthful mindset. (I didn't know about the plagiarism stuff then--I barely had a sense of fandom; I was a total naif.) But how it's held up to much more than that I don't know. I also don't know anything about TMI fandom--if the books have much if any staying power outside either that brief, pretentious adolescent window (which can almost be endearing in its own way) or the somewhat incestuous-seeming YA reviews. But there are adults, I guess, who find the ponderous self-absorption of the Twilight books (at least, that's the tone I saw in the quoted lines I read) to be good and profound writing.

That said, I find John Green tiresome and the bit of Maureen Johnson I read didn't do much for me. I don't know if I've had bad luck lately in my YA choices (I read Thirteen Reasons Why because I got it for free), but I've seen a lot more of that faux-deep heavy tone, which to me does not indicate a "maturing" of YA. (But I have personal reasons to be snippy about "literary" YA, so.)

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Alice

at 20:44 on 2013-09-04I've found the commercials amazingly bad, even for the parameters "that type of thing."

I don't know that I thought they were that unusually terrible (within the parameters of "that type of thing", at least), but I was confused by the number of English accents on display, particularly Jace's. Is he meant to be/sound English*, or is it just that Jamie Campbell Bower can't do a US accent?

*I don't remember him being pegged as English in the book, but I read that years ago and don't remember the details.

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Cammalot

at 21:42 on 2013-09-04One odd thing -- virtually every review I've read of this film has complained that Jayce is "a thousand years old" or similar and either doesn't act it, or shouldn't be macking on Clary at his age. Is that something that the film made particularly confusing? I don't recall him or any other forefront character being anything like an immortal in the book -- I mainly remember Isabelle being 14 and acting a bit precociously vampy.

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Dan H

at 19:26 on 2013-09-05@Alice

That confused me as well. I don't think I've ever *heard* him do an American accent, but the guy is an actor, surely he can learn? Is it that Valentine has an English accent because he's the villain, and Jace has an English accent because he was raised by Valentine? Or am I giving the film too much credit.

@Cammalot

One odd thing -- virtually every review I've read of this film has complained that Jayce is "a thousand years old" or similar and either doesn't act it, or shouldn't be macking on Clary at his age. Is that something that the film made particularly confusing?

*Everything* in the film is particularly confusing. The film makes no real attempt to explain anything, and there's one line where Jace says something about his people having been doing something "for a thousand years" and the way he says it I can see why somebody who wasn't familiar with Cla(i)re's work might think he was talking from personal experience.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 00:04 on 2013-09-06Fanon Draco must retain his English accent to remain fuckworthy. This point is not negotiable.

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Dan H

at 01:14 on 2013-09-06A tiny part of me is *incredibly* sad that they didn't cast Tom Felton as Jace.

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Cheriola

at 04:31 on 2013-09-06

While I agree that the wish to sexualise teenagers is probably part of the practise of

Dawson Casting

, the reasons for it are also based in labour laws. It's much less of a hassle to work with adults who can work a full day and don't still have to get high school lessons on the side / won't suddenly leave the franchise in order to start college. And you don't run into problems like the Harry Potter movies with teen actors who age faster than their characters or suddenly look a lot different than their characters are supposed to. (e.g. the actor playing Neville became quite handsome.) Plus, even if there is the occasional prodigy, most actors really do need drama school before being anywhere close to good enough to portray actual characters, instead of just being 'cute'.

Clearly Valentine was extraordinarily sexually precocious (even if we ignore the fact that Collins and Campbell-Bower are the best part of a decade older than the characters they portray, Rhys-Meyers' Valentine would still have to have started breeding at nineteen to have two seventeen-year-old kids).

Really? It's considered "precocious" to be a horny 19-year-old egomaniac who doesn't use condoms? Seems in keeping with the power-high invincibility complex and the lack of care for other people's problems that usually characterise a stereotypical villain like that. I mean, it's not him that would have to care the baby, unless he wants to.

Also, the scene with the ring is also pretty much the first time we learn the surnames of either Valentine or Fanon Draco.

I've skim-read the book article to know what you're even talking about, and... Wait, his surname is Morgenstern?! She took a character who was a blatant Hitler metaphor and made him ethnically Jewish? That... Wow.

One can only hope that she simply wanted a German name (because all Germans are Nazis...) and thought it would be cute to use one that doubled as a Lucifer reference (it means "morning star"), and that she simply didn't do any research on German name origins. [It's one of those names that the Jewish population of the Holy Roman Empire chose when they were forced to adopt surnames in the 18th century. Usually it's pretty-sounding compound words not refering to a profession - like Goldblum(e) ("golden flower"), Bernstein ("amber") or Lilienthal ("valley of lilies").]

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Fishing in the Mud

at 11:55 on 2013-09-06I think some reviewer pointed out that the "Morgenstern" thing is one more reason the film won't work for anyone old enough to remember

Rhoda

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Alice

at 14:09 on 2013-09-06I've skim-read the book article to know what you're even talking about, and... Wait, his surname is Morgenstern?! She took a character who was a blatant Hitler metaphor and made him ethnically Jewish? That... Wow.

Well, Cassandra Clare is herself Jewish, so I imagine she was aware of what she was doing when she introduced the Morgenstern reference (along with its cultural/historical baggage). :-)

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Cheriola

at 15:37 on 2013-09-06Really? Huh. Well, it's her right then, I suppose. I just wonder what went through her mind that she thought saying "Yeah, our guys could be just as bad, given half a chance" and feeding into 'zionists want world domination' myths was a good idea.

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Arthur B

at 15:43 on 2013-09-06Is it not possible for Clare to be both Jewish

and

ignorant of the name's history, so she plucked a name which sounded German to her out of thin air without researching it?

I suspect she was going for the "Morgenstern = Morning Star = Lucifer" deal rather than the "Morgenstern = Jew" angle, after all.

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Alice

at 16:14 on 2013-09-06Is it not possible for Clare to be both Jewish and ignorant of the name's history, so she plucked a name which sounded German to her out of thin air without researching it?

I suppose it's possible, but I'd honestly be very surprised if she didn't read Morgenstern as sounding Jewish, even if she didn't know about the historical origins of the name.

I suspect she was going for the "Morgenstern = Morning Star = Lucifer" deal rather than the "Morgenstern = Jew" angle, after all.

Yeah, same. I suppose the thing with Morgenstern is that it's an obvious enough reference that her readers are fairly likely to catch it (and feel all clever and intellectual), while still being a recognisable surname. (She could have used the Greek form if she'd wanted to be more pretentious than usual, but "(h)eosphoros" doesn't really lend itself to turning into a surname that's easily pronounceable in English.)

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Dan H

at 17:53 on 2013-09-06

Really? It's considered "precocious" to be a horny 19-year-old egomaniac who doesn't use condoms?

I was thinking more of the scenario in which he'd started having kids at eleven rather than nineteen (and I'm using "precocious" here in the sense of "premature" rather than "talented"). Although even nineteen doesn't *really* make sense if we look at the way that the history is played up - it's never suggested that Valentine got Jocelyn pregnant accidentally, or that he had kids unusually young.

Valentine is clearly *supposed* to be in his early forties at least, it's just that then he wouldn't be in the narrow window during which Hollywood decrees actors the right age to be sexy.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 23:07 on 2013-09-11

oh my what a shame who could have forseen rhubarb rhubarb

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Fishing in the Mud

at 02:03 on 2013-09-12Yeah, if it hasn't managed to turn a profit in a good three weeks, I don't blame anyone for backing off. The standards for bestselling books are a whole lot lower than for movie blockbusters.

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Dan H

at 16:02 on 2013-09-12

The standards for bestselling books are a whole lot lower than for movie blockbusters.

I assume you mean "the revenues expected from bestselling books are a whole lot lower than the revenues expected from movie blockbusters". Because for most other expectations (plot, characterization, that sort of thing), bestselling books and blockbuster movies are pretty much on par.

Also: I've been poking around the forums on Rotten Tomatoes and some of the discussions are hilarious. I particularly like the people complaining about Jace having a British accent, and the other people saying "No, that makes sense. They grew up in Idris, which is in Europe, so they'd naturally have picked up British accents."

Because all European people have British accents, you guys.

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Cammalot

at 20:11 on 2013-09-12

Because all European people have British accents, you guys.

I've long enjoyed listening to the variety of accents with which Swedish people speak English. (This is a tangent, but not a joke. There was a little honest-to-goodness rivalry in one of my classes between the ones who'd learned with a North American/U.S. accent and the ones who'd learned received pronunciation [capitalize?] -- two of these were siblings on opposite sides -- and they all ganged up on the lone Norwegian.)

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Dan H

at 22:37 on 2013-09-12

This is a tangent, but not a joke.

Three Swedes walk into a schwa?

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Shim

at 23:10 on 2013-09-12

Three Swedes walk into a schwa?

...and say "əw!"?

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Fishing in the Mud

at 01:16 on 2013-09-13

I assume you mean "the revenues expected from bestselling books are a whole lot lower than the revenues expected from movie blockbusters".

Right, sorry about the word salad. Yesterday was a long day.

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http://elsurian.livejournal.com/

at 05:24 on 2013-09-13In the halcyon days of 2008

Jesus Christ, has this franchise really been around for 5 years?

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Cammalot

at 18:13 on 2013-09-13

Three Swedes walk into a schwa?

Hee.

I want to make some sort of vegetable-based pun now, but I got nothin'.

Jesus Christ, has this franchise really been around for 5 years?

And going on what, nine books? (Gotta admire the productivity.)

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Dan H

at 19:05 on 2013-09-13Is anybody else feeling really freaking old right about now?

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Cammalot

at 19:55 on 2013-09-13Yes!

(Although that's partly because at today's freelance gig, I just met a coworker who was born my first year of college.)

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Dan H

at 21:58 on 2013-09-13Ouch.

I'm particularly looking forward to our next couple of GCSE intakes, which will be the point at which I start working with people who were born in the 21st century.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 00:44 on 2013-09-14Yeah, I just found out half the people I report to directly at work are younger than I am.

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#Ferretbrain #Cassandra Clare #The Mortal Instruments #Axis of Awful #Dan H

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fireflysummers · 6 years

Text

Remembrance

An ABOT Attic AU One-Shot

At age five, Tsubomi learns to keep a secret.

At age ten, she learns the cost of lying.

At age fourteen, she learns how not to get caught.

But most important of all, Tsubomi knows how not to forget.

I...really love Tsubomi? We didn’t get nearly enough screentime with her in-canon, so I wanted to explore her a little bit in this AU of an AU, without altering the set timeline.

Also, I think ther’es something important and incredibly powerful about somebody remembering you, even when they don’t have to. Even when it would be easier to forget.

TW: Mention of kidnapping, abuse, character death (abot and attic au specific events). Extreme helicopter parenting and pressure.

I’m piggybacking off the work of @phantomrose96 @sandflakedraws

ABOT Attic AU Masterpost

At age five, Takane Tsubomi meets Kageyama Shigeo on the playground of the local daycare they both attend. Years later, she barely remembers that first meeting—only that he was odd, despite looking nearly identical to a dozen other little boys like him. Before long, she becomes accustomed to him quietly shadowing her, not quite left out but certainly not a part of the conversations she held with the other children.

It’s almost a month before she learns at least one reason he stands apart from the mob. It had started with a game of kick the ball, which Shigeo is admittedly awful at. After making his team lose a third time in a row, some of the meaner boys steal the football and toss it over the fence, as if to communicate once and for all that they were done playing.

“We can tell the teacher to get it for us,” Tsubomi says, honestly expecting her strange, sort-of friend to walk away dejectedly, or maybe even start crying. She knows she might have, if she weren’t already too stubborn. But instead, Shigeo stares balefully at the ball on the other side of the fence, as though willing it to return.

And then, it does.

Almost of its own volition, the ball picks itself up off the ground, and soars gently into Shigeo’s outstretched arms, just as the teacher calls the students in from recess.

“Can balls fly?” Tsubomi asks her mother that evening, after playing vaguely with her dinner for several minutes.

“Depends how hard you hit them,” her dad pipes in, voice jovial despite the not-joke being astoundingly unfunny. “You thinking of following in your old man’s footsteps, going out for the baseball team?”

Without ever answering her question, her parents begin down a tangent about signing her up for baseball when she gets old enough, about summer camps and sports teams. A conversation about her without ever once looking her way. Tsubomi oes back to playing with her food while her parents drone on, their lack of answer for some reason answering her question anyways.

At age five, for no other reason than spite alone, Takane Tsubomi learned how to keep a secret.

The natural drifting away from Shigeo happened so slowly that Tsubomi was almost unaware that it happened. Somewhere down the line, he had gone from Shigeo-chan to Mob-kun, an almost friend to a sort-of stranger. Years later, she realized that he always seemed to exist in those twilight spaces—not quite right, but certainly not wrong either.

They attended the same elementary school, sometimes sharing classes, more often not. It didn’t take long until Mob was at the back of her mind. He was, after all, so easy to lose in a crowd.

At age ten, though, they share a class in the spring semester. She’s already learning to balance sports and grades and pretending to like all the other girls and boys in the class, just as her parents expect her to, and this keeps her so preoccupied that it takes her time to notice Mob at all.

She catches him by the shoe racks after class one day, though. He’s struggling with a backpack that’s just a little heavier than it should be, trying to coordinate between the backpack, his shoes, and his jacket.

“Hello Mob-kun,” she greets. He glances up at her, obviously delighted that he’s being acknowledged at all. For a moment, Tsubomi feels a brief pang or regret that she’s put her old friend so far out of mind. Instead of dwelling on it, she pushes the conversation forward. “Are you going somewhere today?”

“Yes,” Mob nods, solemnly, “I’m going to meet my shishou today.”

“Your shishou?” she prompts, when it’s clear he’s not going to be more forthcoming.

“Yes,” Mob says again, shoes and jacket now on, backpack slipped over it shoulders. “He teaches me cool tricks. Like. Um. Do you remember the dog?”

“Of course!” she says, as though that were something that could be forgotten easily. This gets another soft, delighted smile from the other boy, as though he’s relieved that one of his peers actually remembers his existence. “Could you show me what you’ve learned?”

“Oh…,” he says, shuffling his feet and glancing at the door, as though aware that he was losing time. “I have to go, I think though. He wanted me to be on time today. But maybe I can show you the new tricks later?”

“Okay,” she agrees, suddenly aware that she has piano lessons before long, and also needs to get going. “Later then.”

And although her thoughts are quickly consumed with piano practice and then extra tutoring and on and on and on. And yet, this time, the other boy did not drift out of her mind completely. She can’t recall the last time she’d actually told one of her classmates that they would have to meet again later, and actually meant it.

There is, however, no ‘later’ for her.

That night, Mob’s face is broadcast across every television screen in the city.

The first day, Tsubomi tries to convince her parents to let her help, even in some small way.

“I saw him!” she tells them, “Before we left school yesterday! I can help!”

Her parents look at each other, and then back at her.

“Lots of people saw him yesterday,” her mother says, voice gentle to the point of brittleness. “I’m sure that there were others—we can’t…you can’t get caught up in this. It may be dangerous.”

For all her stubbornness, Tsubomi is smart. She knows when she has no chance to argue against her parents, and that one of those times has arrived. In addition to their regular strictness, there’s an odd note in both their voices.

Fear, her mind supplies. And suggests that maybe, she too, should be afraid.

But all she feels is anger.

The next few weeks bleed into each other. Tsubomi is squirreled away in the safety of her own home. Normally, this would be a welcome reprieve from the onslaught of school and social and lessons. Instead, though, she’s left listening at the door as her parents whisper, trying to keep the panic out of their voices.

She doesn’t even bother asking her parents directly about it anymore. She already knows what sort of answer she’ll receive.

Instead, Tsubomi fetches the newspaper out of the trash, after her father is finished with it, carefully clipping out articles, then disposing of it as inconspicuously as possible. These articles, she keeps tucked in the inside of her math book, since she’s long suspected her mother of snooping in her personal diary. She pores over these, in moments she’s certain she’s been left to her own devices, making notes, trying to connect pieces.

She tries to ignore the queasy feeling in her stomach, when the steady flow of articles slows to a trickle, and the reporters begin referring to “the body of Kageyama Shigeo” rather than Mob himself.

The breaking point arrives almost three months after Mob vanishes, seemingly into thin air. She’s since been allowed to return to school, to her lessons, most likely because her parents are concerned that too much free time will give her…odd ideas.

More than once, Tsubomi considers reaching out to Ritsu, who she also considers a friend. But if she thought her parents grip was tight, it was nothing compared to the invisible cage the Kageyamas had constructed around their remaining son.

Ritsu, for the most part, kept his head down. A lot of people spoke about his heartbreak, but Tsubomi couldn’t see where they saw broken. All she can see is rage.

She doesn’t manage to stick around long enough to see if broken ever arrives to Kageyama Ritsu. Her own breaking point arrives, and she hates that it comes in the most mundane fashion.

After school one day, between cram school and dance lessons, Tsubomi trips on the backpack that she’d thoughtlessly left on the floor. She can only watch in horror as her books slide out, newspaper clippings escaping their secret place. Can feel the coldness in her mother’s gaze that freezes her where she stands, as her mother examines the months of clandestine investigation.

At age ten, three months after the disappearance of Kageyama Shigeo, Tsubomi learns the cost of lying.

By the age of fourteen, Takane Tsubomi has not only mastered the art of lying—she has, more importantly, mastered the art of not getting caught.

If it hadn’t been for her last, fateful encounter with the police, and for her parents rage at discovering her own investigation into things, she would perhaps have let the matter die. Let it sink into her memory as a tragedy that was easier to simply…forget. All the other students did. He was, after all, so easy to lose in a crowd.

But she didn’t forget. There was nothing much she could do, but she tried to do more than not forgetting. She remembered.

It took her a while to recollect all of the articles her mother had disposed over, and even longer to recompile her notes. But by the time she was through, she’d also added any and all details about that strange, shadowy boy that was so, so easy to forget. Notes on his mannerisms, memories of childhood playdates, even a crude sketch of what he’d worn the day of his disappearance.

Tsubomi even went so far as to ask Mezato Ichi, from the next class over, for advice under the guise of potentially joining the journalism club. Mezato didn’t fall for it, she knew, but Tsubomi was a tough nut to crack—she’d ensured that. By now, there were layers on the layers until not even her parents could tell the difference between her true face and the masks she wore to fool the world.

(Had they ever known the difference?)

And so, at age fourteen, Takane Tsubomi was perhaps the only person to note when one Isari Tetsuo, primary investigator on the Kageyama Shigeo case file, vanished. Admittedly, there was very little said about it, and after bribing Mezato with an inside interview with the school’s tennis team, she’s learns that it is (most likely) a cases of infidelity.

Still, she adds it to her notes.

In the middle of her second year of middle school, Tsubomi finds herself uprooted without warning. Her first thought is that her investigation has once again been discovered, and is relieved to learn that it is merely her parent’s usual nosiness.

They’d noticed something off about her. Not in her grades or her sports or her social life. By all accounts, those were flawless. (Tsubomi had ensured that.)

But she seemed troubled, most likely by the string of violence surrounding the local delinquent gangs. They worried that it was disturbing her studies and pursuits, and besides, they’d found a middle school that would properly prepare her for the gold star high school she would be admitted to.

(They didn’t ask her thoughts on the matter, and Tsubomi knew better than to offer them.)

Almost overnight, it seemed, Tsubomi was swept from her childhood home into a completely foreign area.

It could be a good thing, she reasons. New students. New school. New beginning.

But no. The show must go on.

And for the first time in four years, she tries to let Mob slip from her mind.

Over a year later, Tsubomi has almost convinced herself to forget Mob. Almost, multiple times, thrown away the dozens of notes and newspaper clippings she’s compiled. Almost, but not quite.

That small, stubborn part at the core of her soul refuses to let go. Not yet.

And then, just like that day five years prior, Kageyama Shigeo is on the news again.

When she first hears the report, she freezes, blood running cold. She knows in her heart that Mob is dead. There’s no way he could possibly be alive—what would the point have been? She’s steeled herself time and again for the day she hears that they have found his body. Hates herself for all the times she’s imagined him, buried in a shallow grave in some out-of-the-way abandoned lot.

She thinks she’s prepared herself for every possible outcome.

She has not prepared herself to hear that he is alive.

Certainly not alive and well, but alive.

For the first time in months? Years? She can’t remember anymore. But for the first time in a long time, she feels tears welling up in her eyes, and does not fight to push them away.

She has her own smart phone by now, and while it is regularly checked by parents and heavily restricted in its general network access, she has long since learned how to avoid her parents suspicion. That said, her initial searches did not bring much to light—the news world seemed just as baffled as she is by the sudden turn of events.

She hears everything from kidnapping, to possession, to corrupt cops working the case. It takes time to sort through all the conspiracy theories. Even after the mainstream has let the case rest, and let the Kageyama have a little peace, it’s difficult to piece together exactly what happened.

Despite the rush of guilt that comes with it, she cannot help but feel vindicated to learn of the discovery of Officer Isari’s body, that his disappearance was, in fact, connected to his long running case. She sees the face of his widow on every report she reads, recounting his bravery and her relief to finally have a place to lay her husband to rest properly.

And even there, the facts don’t seem to add up. She checks and checks her notes, but cannot reconcile the length of time between Officer Isari’s disappearance, and the reappearance of the long-lost boy. But, the press likes to tie things up with a pretty little bow. She knows this from her time spent in the company of Mezato. Some part of her tells her that she should be satisfied with this. It is, after all, a happy ending.

It isn’t enough though. If it was….well, she wouldn’t be Takane Tsubomi.

The next day, for the first time in her entire life, Tsubomi skips school.

Without asking permission, she instead catches the train back to the only place she calls home.

#abot #a breach of trust #mob psycho 100 #takane tsubomi #mp100 #my fanfiction

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mybeautifuldecay · 6 years

Text

[dr]Outlander Fic: Blind Date - Part Three.

Part One. Part Two.

Alright, so this is an obvious anomaly now because I looked at the dates that I first penned this fic and the first part was 29th December 2016 and the second 21st January 2017. How has it been nearly a YEAR? I mean, I know I’m a bit lackadaisical, but this might be another level of leisurely.

Anywhoo...I’ve included links to part one and two simply because I’m sure it’s a dim and distant memory for most now - especially with all this immense fic that’s floating around these days <3

Now, back to my sloth-hole!

Au revoir et bises à tous...for now.

Closing the door softly behind them, Jamie waved his hand towards the freshly made bed. Blushing he glanced at the hotel room’s sparse features, embarrassed that he’d covered the chair in so many shirts that it wasn’t possible for Claire to take a seat. But Claire didn’t mind. Captivated by the twinkle in his sea-blue eyes, she had completely ignored the tepid features of the room. Instead she continued to look at Jamie, a quizzical look behind her whisky irises.

“So, Mr Fraser,” she began, running her finger along the length of the small dresser that ran from just behind the door down towards the bed, “this is not the type of decor you would choose for your own apartment then?” Picking up on his obvious discomfort she suddenly took note of her surroundings, her eyes flitting from Jamie’s to the pale, anemic walls as the seconds ticked by.

Smiling bashfully, Jamie glanced towards his lap and back to Claire as she steadily made her way closer to him. “Ach, no. It’s a wee bit...plain, aye?”

Perching herself on the edge of the bed next to where Jamie now sat, Claire slid the side of her pinkie finger against his leg. She could still taste the lingering kiss from earlier, the subtle brush of his lips covering hers just before they’d been so rudely interrupted. She wanted to pick straight back up from where they’d left off but now, in the middle of a West London Travelodge, Claire felt suddenly quite shy.

Embarrassed that she’d let her libido guide her, she went to pull her hand away, fear getting the better of her as she crossed her ankles tight.

“You dinna have to be afraid of me, Claire,” Jamie whispered, nudging her shoulder and turning towards her as the dim bedside lamp flickered slightly plunging them into a faint orange glow as the bulb reignited itself. “If ye just want to talk, get to know one another better. We can just do that. We don’t have to...do...anything else. No’ if you don’t want to.”

He was mumbling now, filling up the silence with words to try and quash Claire’s growing anxiety. But it wasn’t that she didn’t want to…

“It isn’t that,” she broke in, eager to shatter any misinterpreted signals, “I just feel…”

“...bare.” Jamie interjected, his hand shifting so that he could take hold of her gently and pull her closer.

“Yes,” she replied, “something like that. I feel like this should be too forward, you know? That we should have swapped numbers first and talked. Gone to a bar. Had a drink or two. But now we’re here, and it happened so fast - just like the kiss in the green room.”

“Is it too fast though?” He questioned, getting closer and closer, his eyes closing to slits as he tilted his head, his lips inching towards Claire’s.

Claire’s breathing quickened as she felt the heat of his body angle towards her. “I d-don’t think so.” She stuttered knowing full well that, although convention suggested that - yes - it was too fast, it felt *good* to be wanted. Recalling their meeting, Claire thought about his comments regarding dying alone. When she and Frank had parted ways she’d had similar thoughts about her own dating situation. Not wanting to embroil herself with anyone else she’d thrown herself into work and had barely surfaced for air. But that had been three years ago now; three long, cold years, and she was coming to the end of her residency in the city. Maybe this was the time to make a change.

“Won’t your sister be back?” She asked all of a sudden, glancing around the room, breaking the intense spell they seemed to be under. There was no sign of female life in the room itself but that wasn’t to say it didn’t -or hadn’t- existed.

Placing his fingers gently beneath her chin, Jamie guided Claire’s gaze back to him as he shook his head. “No, her and her husband, Ian, have their own suite,” he whispered, ending his sentence with a short, sharp kiss.

Claire’s misgivings melted away as Jamie rubbed his nose soothingly against hers simply breathing the same air as her until she’d made up her mind to completely throw caution to the wind. He could feel it in her almost immediately and he smiled to himself as he joined his lips to hers once more.

“This is weird, right?” Claire sighed, her hand coming to rest against Jamie’s bare chest, just between his solid pectoral muscles. He still hadn’t re-done the top buttons of his shirt, making it easy for Claire to make immediate contact. “Us. Finding one another in that studio and being here all within the same night.”

“Weird, but no’ wrong, aye?”

“Yes. Not wrong...just strange.”

“Are ye comfortable; happy?” Jamie asked between kisses.

“God yes,” Claire returned, butterflies dancing the fandango in her tummy as she said the words. “It’s unnerving,” she admitted, “but not in a bad way.”

“I ken…” Jamie muttered, trailing off as he ran his palm along the underside of Claire’s chin and down to the top of her blouse. “Can I?” He asked, his tongue peaking out to run along Claire’s lips as she nodded slowly. Extracting her from her clothes became his sole focus now, his eyes closed tight as he kissed and caressed her parted lips surfacing only for a breath now and again.

Half naked, panting briskly and in desperate need of Jamie’s body writhing against her, Claire fumbled with the clasp on her bra as Jamie shimmied out of his trousers. Sounds of their disrobing ricocheted around the small room making Claire’s chest throb in anticipation. She’d barely been touched since her seperation and Jamie’s large, warm, inviting hands against her flesh sent shocks of pleasure rolling through her over and over. Craving more, Claire pushed Jamie down onto the much abused mattress. He bounced a little as he fell, his curls coming rest in tiny ringlets around his head as he slid Claire’s skirt upwards to reveal her underwear.

“Take them off,” she moaned lowly, rolling her hips down as she came to rest on top of him.

Mustering up the energy, Jamie ran his hands along the inside of her thighs, his wrists scraping the backs of them as he reached under the elastic of her knickers, dragging them down as far as he could reach. Pushing them over her knees, he waited until she’d managed to shimmy herself out of them before pulling her legs apart. Her breasts sat snuggly against his chest, the feel of them making the hairs on his arms stand upright as they settled against one another with ease.

“You...still have your...pants on,” Claire panted in-between kisses, her hips rolling once more to indicate her problem. Wanton as she was, she didn’t care about the lewd motions she was making so long as he removed the last barrier that existed between them. Clenching her thighs either side of his, she managed to get her arm down far enough to tug at the waistband of the offending article as she tried to rid him of the annoying fabric.

“Oh god, Claire,” Jamie gasped, aiding her in pushing the material down as far as he could. Legs trapped now, he was at her mercy and happy to be there.

Claire took full advantage and placed her hand carefully against him. “Jamie,” she sighed, wrapping her agile fingers around him and stroking upwards. She was gentle, reverent almost, as she touched his aching flesh. He wanted her, and badly, the growing desire throbbing softly in Claire’s palm as she shifted her hips to allow him close enough.

Unable to think clearly, Jamie felt the moisture of her as she twisted her hips, forcing herself down as slow as she dared to go. But he could tell she needed him as much as he needed her and it wasn’t long before - using her hands against his chest to keep her upright - she was rising and falling against him at such a fast pace. He could barely match her, his hips raising off the bed and slapping noisily against her as she fell down to meet him.

She was glorious, her luscious curls sitting over her right shoulder, bouncing carelessly against her neck as she sat astride him. His boxer shorts still prevented him from twisting her over, but he was happy as he was, beneath her, enjoying the twin pleasures of being inside her whilst at her mercy.

“Give me yer mouth...Claire,” he half sighed, half groaned, his shoulders pushing him off the bed as he tried to close the gap between their lips. He could feel the mounting tension within him and not only did he *not* want to finish before her, Jamie also didn’t want it to end with her so far away. “Come here, please?”

Letting her body almost bonelessly flop forwards, Claire concealed both of them inside a cocoon of her hair, letting his hands grip onto her arse, guiding her movements as she did as she’d been asked. His mouth was beautifully soft, his reddened lips tasting vaguely of whatever corporate beer they’d had at the BBC. A mixture of that and fresh air she decided as the rub of the over-starched linens began to grate painfully against her irritated knees.

“I’m going to…” she keened, her fingers finding purchase in the flat pillows just above Jamie’s head as she dug her nails into the strangely hard duck-down.

“Let go, Claire.” Jamie whispered against her lips, holding her hips against his, flush so that the hairs on his pubis rocked subtly against her swollen flesh.

Crying out, Claire let her mouth open only briefly to release the pressure that’d been building within her since their tet-a-tet on the plush sofa of the green room back in the White City studios. Her tongue dove straight back into Jamie’s mouth, sealing their lips tight as she held on just long enough to hear him come apart beneath her.

-- --- --

Bleary eyed and sore, Claire and Jamie both lay side by side, the aftermath concealed below them at the foot of the bed as they curled carefully around one another.

“I dinna want to leave tomorrow,” Jamie confessed quietly, his eyes closed as he leaned to kiss Claire on the forehead. “Is that madness?”

“Then stay.” Claire replied, her fingertips running circular patterns against Jamie’s bare chest. “You don’t need this place, you can come to mine...if you’d like?”

“Ye dinna have to work?”

“Not tomorrow, no,” Claire answered, her body suddenly reawakened at the idea that she didn’t have to say goodbye to Jamie so soon.

“Alright,” Jamie agreed, a contented smile creeping across his face, “One more day then?”

“Yes,” Claire sighed, sliding her leg up and along his atop the thin hotel bedding, “one whole day.”

#outlander #ficlet #drOUTLANDER Fic #Jamie X Claire #blind date au #Blind Date

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freshginandtonic · 4 years

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I Just Haven't MET You Yet: Thoughts on the Super Bowl of Fashion

The Met Gala is the the Olympics of fashion. As my title suggests, it has been called the Super Bowl of fashion. Athletes train for years - buffed and polished to an inch of their life to go out there and achieve excellence in sport. For the Met it’s excellence in fashion. Once a year, we (or at least my mother and myself) wait with bated breath to see what everyone wears.

As many of us are currently, I am working from home at the minute - today before I started my commute (15 seconds from my bed to my desk), instead of activewear I decided to put on my designated fancy ass velvet dress I bought about four years ago that I now wear to any vaguely formal occasion (with an abundance of tape to deal w how low cut it is) - and a puffer jacket (it’s cold af in my room) to commemorate the gala.

This year’s theme was supposed to be ‘About Time: Fashion and Duration’ I googled this concept and found the following information on the Met’s website: “it will explore how clothes generate temporal associations that conflate past, present, and future. Virginia Woolf will serve as the "ghost narrator" of the exhibition.”

My thoughts on this are as follows: firstly, ‘About Time’ is a great film if you haven’t seen it. Secondly, clothes conflating the past present and future - it’s a big yes from me. Thirdly, can Virginia Woolf serve as the ghost narrator of my entire life? What an idea.

The co-chairs this year were going to be Anna Wintour, Meryl Streep, Emma Stone, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Nicolas Ghesquiere. I mean, that list in itself is like a dream party list because you just know you’ll be getting a Streep-Stone-Miranda musical number in between drinks and dinner. I also don’t really know what being a co-chair of the event MEANS, but I’m guessing its some kind of vague organisational role where but you defer to Anna on everything - basically a school captain and principal set up.

For those of you who want a quick crash course in the, who, the what and the why I’m even talking about this gala thing here’s the tea: The Met Gala is the annual fundraising gala for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City and marks the opening of the Costume Institute's annual fashion exhibit. Vogue have just done a video to explain the history so pls get enlightened.

However if you want more than 6 minutes and 50 seconds of how it all works, look no further than the 2016 documentary ‘The First Monday in May’. The film covers the months leading up to the 2015 Gala and the night itself. The theme that year was ‘China: Through The Looking Glass’, and it was all about the impact of Chinese design on Western fashion over the centuries.

The film is a huge eye opener into the pressure, time constraints, and sheer elbow grease that goes into the event. It’s also the closest thing to The Devil Wears Prada I’ve seen since ‘The September Issue’ . Anna Wintour flits around the museum with her sunnies and her giant cup of Starbucks, and scenes of Anna’s assistant and event organisers excessively vetting people from the guest list (“Josh Hartnett? What has he done lately?”) are amazing but also can you IMAGINE watching it and seeing them bitch about you?! Quelle nightmare.

Also if you’re a nosy Parker like me fun fact you can pause on the shots of the seating charts, and see who’s sitting next to who - I managed to squint and see Baz Luhrmann next to Jennifer Lawrence, Amal Clooney next to Tom Ford, and‘Jared Leto TBC’. How ominous.

As I mentioned earlier the show I work on covers the Met Gala - and yes, thanks to the time difference ‘the First Tuesday in May’ really doesn’t have the same snazzy ring to it. So come last year we were prepared to report on it - in 2020, I recalled it fondly, and also stressfully with my bosses video calling me at 7:30 this morning to remind me it was Met Gala Day and giving me a triple bypass in the process.

From my memory, the Queen of Camp at the 2019 gala was Lady Gaga - I remember watching her pink carpet entrance at work (I was the Met Gala producer that day - definitely not a real thing) and realising that every time I looked up at my screen she had a different outfit on - I believe there were four in total, which gave me palpitations at the time as I had to have three separate slabs of overlay to show the transition between her looks - but now a full year later I can appreciate her sheer artistry.

The 2019 theme was ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion.’ The exhibit was inspired by Susan Sontag's 1964 essay that defines camp as "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” It’s something that Sontag describes as “esoteric - something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques.” It seems to me that’s the best way to describe the Gala itself? Something out of the ordinary, opulent and pretty much unattainable to normal people looking in from the outside that manages to seduce us all every year.

There were so many great looks last year I can’t possibly go through them all, so quick honourable mentions to the following: Harry Styles , Ezra Miller, Lily Collins, Irina Shayk, Kim Kardashian, and Hamish Bowles to name far too few. Also some great online stuff came out as well: this movie trailer for the event and this brilliant video showing how the Vogue social media team handled the event.

Despite all this, I have to say that yes, while the ‘Camp’ year was, indeed shit hot, and I lived for every moment of it, my favourite year was in fact 2017.

The theme was ‘Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination’, and after 13 years of Catholic education and living with a deeply religious grandmother who keeps a bunch of icons around our house I can firmly say Alleluia and Thanks Be to God. The main thing I remember from this year was this amazing video that Vogue put up (and apparently took down as I had to find it on Facebook) showing celebrities flouncing around the museum in their finery.

My friend Georgie and I were going through our favourite looks from previous years over Zoom last night, and while she had gone for looks from like 1974 to present day, literally all of mine were from 2017 bc I loved them all so much. Plus looking through I remembered that Shawn Mendes and Hailey (now) Bieber were a couple for about 30 seconds.

I must particularly make mention of Zendaya, Emilia Clarke, Greta Gerwig, Ariana Grande, Bella Hadid, Rihanna, Kate Bosworth, Blake Lively, Lily Collins, Kim Kardashian, Chadwick Boseman, Cardi B and Priyanka Chopra who, although perennially irritating since becoming Priyanka Chopra Jonas, cannot be ignored for her excellent use of red velvet here. As you can probably tell I found it REALLY hard to narrow that all down.

I am someone who decided at least five years ago that they would one day attend the gala (I haven’t quite figured out why I would be invited, but even Kim Kardashian started as a plus one so there’s hope for me yet). Every year I look at red carpet as my altar, the stars the saints and angels (yeesh, can you tell I went to Catholic school - and I actually believe this garbage). I don’t know how a short walk up some stairs to a museum became so fraught with power but there it is. Every time I go out in something approximating a ballgown (bringing it back to the red dress, people) I imagine how I would walk, who I would talk to, what my hair would look like (very important), and who I would have at my table (slightly less important than hair). And of course, addressing Anna (through her all things were made, for us and for our salvation, maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is seen and unseen etc).

Maybe she would look at me and nod approvingly with a wry smile (please refer to the end scene of the Devil Wears Prada to see exactly how this would happen, but hopefully the smile would be a bit warmer than what you would give an ex-employee) and I would walk on, secure in the knowledge that Anna and I had connected on a deeply spiritual level. Then I imagine I would head straight to the bar to recover.

NOW KEEP READING HUN

A quick note for people who want to read fun stuff/watch fun stuff about the Met Gala to compensate for this trash year, here are some funky links to what Vogue has going on:

Anna Wintour Addresses the Met Gala and Florence + The Machine Performs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HptQEYkMrVQ

Thinking of the Met on a Not-So-Typical First Monday in May https://www.vogue.com/article/moment-with-the-met-vogue-global-conversations

25 Years of Met Gala Themes: A Look Back at Many First Mondays in May https://www.vogue.com/article/met-gala-themes

Only at the Met: An Oral History of the World’s Most Glamorous Gala https://www.vogue.com/article/the-complete-met-gala-oral-history

See the Costume Institute’s New (Though Postponed) Show About Time https://www.vogue.com/article/costume-institute-about-time-preview

The Most Unforgettable Met Gala Beauty Looks—According to the Hair and Makeup Artists Behind Them. https://www.vogue.com/article/met-gala-makeup-artists-hair-stylists-instagram

Naomi Campbell Breaks Down 30 Years’ Worth of Met Gala Magic https://www.vogue.com/article/naomi-campbell-life-in-looks-met-gala-video

A Look Back at a Decade of Stunning Met Gala Interiors https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/a-look-back-at-a-decade-of-stunning-met-gala-interiors

Sarah Jessica Parker Shares a Playlist Inspired by the Met Gala Theme ‘About Time: Fashion and Duration’ https://www.vogue.com/article/sarah-jessica-parker-met-gala-about-time-playlist

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mysfitalyss · 7 years

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Does anyone else do this or am i just crazy

Does anyone else have issues with their mind just going on and on, and then suddenly one thing makes you think of another, then another, then suddenly you’re dwelling on a memory from the past that isn’t necessarily bad but not exactly good, and it stresses you the fuck out but you cant stop?

okay for example, long story ahead so bear with me here...

in sociology, like... years ago, there was this basketball player, right? she sat behind me and this other girl. This other girl was in band with me. We were definitely nerds. Now, Girl 2 and i weren’t exactly great friends, but i think if i recall right, she was the only one in the class i knew so i sat with her and talked.

Anyways, so one day the teacher was giving a lecture about... something something social circle differences and bullying and how that affects society in later life, i dont recall exactly what the topic was. What I do recall was what happened in the lecture.

The teacher posed a question, something to the effect of, do people consciously decide on their social rankings or is it like outside influence, yada yada yada. Now, most of the class went with the latter. Outside influence. If you’re a jock, its because of outside influence shaping you into a jock. If you’re a nerd/social outcast, its not your fault.

Now, this basketball player, she thought otherwise. And, lemme say now, this girl was a bitch who was rude, hateful, judgmental, and honestly... not super intelligent.

Her view point of it was that it was our decisions. If we were popular, its because we made ourselves popular and we chose to have a ton of friends and be super cool. If we were nerds, its because we made ourselves nerds. We chose to be outcasts, its our faults we were social hermits that were bullied. Her logic was, we deserved to be bullied and outcast, because its our fault we didn’t choose to be popular or athletic.

As you can imagine, her telling people that spawned quite the powerful argument.

Girl 2 was pissed. She got so heated in the argument. Now, i was pissed off too. I was socially ostracized, bullied, harassed, made fun of, yada yada yada because i was ‘weird’ and ‘a nerd’. And to hear that I deserve that because I ‘chose’ to be a weird nerd instead of popular and athletic was like a personal attack.

We argued back and forth with this girl. She was telling us basically what we were doing was pointless and useless, and used the example of the pep band we were in. Said that we were a distraction, we were annoying and stupid, and said that theres no point to us at the games because her ‘music’ was better and they could just play that instead. She was saying that nobody should be in band because it was worthless and dumb and would take us nowhere, like her playing basketball would. that we wouldn’t get ‘rich and famous’ off playing some ‘stupid instrument’, and that’s our fault because instead of playing sports and getting good at them, we were wasting our lives.

I got pissed off and was like, okay, if by your logic, nobody was in band, nobody played instruments and learned music, then nobody would be around to make the music she listens to. She argued that theres no instruments in her music, mostly rap, saying it was all technology and computers. And i was like, are you absolutely stupid? Who makes the technology to make the soundtracks to the rap music? Who writes the music, who plays and records it? People who, like us, have musical educations. There wouldnt be a music industry, or movie soundtracks, or nothing without things like band and the like.

She then tried to argue that we were wasting our lives being nerds, we wouldnt get anywhere knowing what a Pythagorean theorem was, the way she would playing ball. Like, how she was going to be a top WNBA star player, and we would just be idiots who know calculus alone and jobless.

So I was even more pissed. And I told her, basically, when she was sitting in some physical therapist’s office with a career ending injury praying that the therapist can give her her livelihood back, the physical therapist who has a doctorate because they were a ‘nerd’ who focused on their schooling instead of learning how to be an athlete, then she could argue to me that point again.

I dont recall how it all settled down, i just know i was infuriated, near tears, and it was not a good class.

ANYWAYS WOW I JUST RAMBLED

My point being, that’s been... God, i dont know... like... 5? 6 years ago? And yet I clearly and distinctly remember this event the way I do, and ISTG at least once a week, my mind finds something to lead itself back to this confrontation, and i think of it so much i get so violently angry and upset over it all over again even though i literally never saw the basketball player again, and it literally doesnt affect my life at all, not even in the ever so slightest bit. YET I STILL DWELL OVER IT. No matter what I do.

This isn’t the only memory this happens with, and I can’t for the goddamned life of me figure out why my mind does this? And how to stop it?

Its so stressful!! My mind stresses itself the fuck out over something that happened years ago, is not even vaguely relevant, and has nothing to do with anything in my current life.

Why do I do that? Does anyone else have issues with this or am I just super crazy? Cuz like... God i want to know, and i cant google search it without getting cliche self help articles on “how to stop dwelling on the past”

#mysalyss talks #rambling #im pretty sure im just crazy #this isnt the only weird thing my brain does #this is just one of the many things #ugh #mind shit

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takadasaiko · 7 years

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Demons at the Door: Chapter Fourteen

FFN II AO3

Summary: Tom, Liz, and Howard visit Ocean City to try to recover some of Tom's missing childhood memories and the Board makes their decision. Actions

Chapter Fourteen: Echoes from the Past

They had a twenty-four hour reprieve before the Board made their decision and Tom and Howard had elected to use that time digging into Tom's disappearance as a child. The decision to go out to Ocean City had surprised Liz, but she had made sure to wrap up the pile of paperwork involved in their deal with Halcyon before she'd left the Post Office that night so that she could get up at the break of dawn and drive out to the Maryland beach the next morning.

Clouds had been building as she drove, but they looked ready to break open by the time she pulled up to the address Tom had texted her with. She stepped out of the the car, gaze sweeping the little street. Many of the houses looked lived in, but considering these were the busier beach months it was hard to say if that was normal. An elderly woman with a dog was out on her front lawn and gave a friendly wave that Liz returned slowly.

The front porch was screened in and she found that door unlocked, but she paused when she reached the front door, unsure if she should knock or walk in. She hesitated there a moment before she heard something behind her and turned, seeing a car pull up along the curb at the street, parking behind her own. Tom unfolded out of the driver's seat and Howard out of the passenger, and Liz pushed back out through the screen door to meet them on the sidewalk. "I see Tom got to make the call on the rent car," she teased, motioning to the Mustang they had driven up in.

Her husband tried for a smile, but as she moved closer she saw all the signs that he hadn't slept at all the night before. He looked tired and stressed, physically and emotionally, and she reached out so that her fingertips brushed his. He took her hand immediately and gave it a squeeze. "Thanks for coming. Always the bad timing, right?"

She tightened her grip. "Don't worry about that. You guys are on a time crunch. What do we have?"

"We spent the better part of last night pouring over police reports and articles and information that my own investigations turned up," Howard explained. "Nothing has jogged any memories of that night."

"Trauma, especially in children, has a way of burying itself deep," Liz murmured. "This is the house? Do you think it'll spark something?"

"We're going to see," Tom answered.

"I know you guys have probably gone over it in detail, but walk me through what you know from that night, Howard."

They made their way up to the house and Liz's father-in-law pulled a key from his pocket as he spoke. "We spent every summer out here. Longer once Chris - Tom," he corrected, "- was born. It was our time away as a family. We'd been out a couple of weeks by that point and I don't remember exactly what set it off, but Scottie and I ended up in a shouting match late that night."

Liz risked a glance at Tom as they stepped into the old house and Howard reached to switch the lights on. Tom stood frozen, looking over his surroundings carefully, but she couldn't tell if he recognised anything or not.

"We'd both probably had too much to drink and I stormed out. Ended up spending the night at a motel down by the pier. I came back late the next morning and the whole house was crawling with police and Scottie…" He swallowed hard, his gaze distant as if the memories were vivid enough to see play out in front of him. "She said our boy had been taken in the night. No forced entry, no real sign of struggle. He was just gone. She blamed herself, and at the time I thought she was a grieving mother taking on more than she was responsible for."

"And now?" Tom asked.

"Now I believe it was a long game. If she was ordered or if it was her choice, I don't know yet, but I think that she set this all into motion. She took you, set herself up as a victim to be protected - especially after the car wreck - and pushed everything that's happened into motion. She's a strategist. A talented one. To try to deny that would set us up for failure from the start."

"But to predict all of this?" Liz asked, disbelief colouring her voice.

"It's the ripple effect," Tom answered with a shrug. "You go into the scenario with a catalyst to set of a chain reaction of events. You may not know the exact ramifications, but if you know the mark well enough, if you're good enough, it's possible."

"You sound like you've used it before," Liz murmured and her husband shrugged.

"I have. Plenty of times, but never on this scale. It's… if she did, she really is the best I've ever seen."

"Take a look around, son," Howard prompted. "If you can remember that night - anything about that night - it can help us piece things together."

"How close is it to the original setup?" Liz asked.

"Exactly. All the furniture is in the same place, all the same. Nothing's been moved."

"How is that possible? Did they stop renting it out?"

"I bought it after the police finished their investigation. David that rented it to us each summer was never going to get it back out there after the publicity and I wanted to conduct my own investigation, so I bought the home. It's ironic. Scottie had been trying to talk me into making an offer on it for years."

Tom started forward, his expression unreadable as he looked over the living room in detail. Liz started to follow, but Howard caught her by the arm, holding lightly. "Give him a few minutes."

She froze where he was. If it was her, if she was wandering through the house where the fire had happened and trying to recall that horrific night, she wasn't sure she would want to do it alone. Tom was focused though, and she wasn't sure that he'd notice if she was there or not.

Liz stood back, watching and waiting. If he needed her, she'd only be steps away.

There was something familiar, yet not about the house. It reminded him of his nightmares with the memories just out of his grasp. He reached for them, trying to grab on, but they slipped away.

Tom moved through the house room by room, trying to hold onto the possibility of a memory. He was vaguely aware that Liz and Howard were following at a distance, hoping for something he wasn't sure he could give.

He wound back through the hall past master bedroom, an office, and the kitchen with its door that led out towards the beach. There was one room in the back and he pushed at the door that was halfway closed.

It was a child's room. His room, he thought, and he paused at the door. It was exactly how the script that Lucy Game had been given described, not one thing out of place. The bed was pushed up against the far wall, the blue comforter showing signs of age after nearly thirty years, a couple of stuffed animals still piled on it. The bed ran parallel to the wall with double windows that, if the curtains were pulled back, would show the ocean not too far away. A rug covered part of the wood floor, starting under the bed and stretching toward the opposite wall where shelves held toys that a four-year-old little boy would have treasured.

Toy cars, dinosaurs, and a single red tug boat that caught his attention were on the lowest shelf, which would have been the easiest for him to reach at that age. He reached out, picking up the boat and turning it over in his hands, a ghost of a memory taunting him.

"Do you remember where you got that?"

Tom turned, finding Howard at the door. "It's familiar," he murmured, studying it and trying to will the memory into place. He closed his eyes, focusing on it, and he could almost see a pair of hands that held it, handing it to him and the excitement over, but he couldn't recall the face.

He loosed a frustrated breath and moved to take a seat on the bed. Soft footsteps followed him and Liz sat with him. She didn't say anything, but her presence helped. She looped her arm through his and leaned in.

"Your nightmare," she said after a long stretch of silence. "You told me that it's usually the same man trying to push you under the water. Do you ever see part of the house or anything that might be familiar?"

"It's just the beach," Tom answered reluctantly, but then sat up a little straighter. "There was a door."

"What?"

He didn't wait to explain, but stood and Howard barely shifted out of his way as he rushed out of the room. Liz was right. The nightmare was the closest thing to a memory that he had. If he could prove it true or untrue maybe it'd break the memories open like a crack in glass.

Tom barely stopped long enough to unlock the back door that led out to the beach. The sky has darkened considerably since they'd been inside and he felt rain splash down against his skin as he picked up his pace, something that he couldn't pinpoint driving him forward. It was an adrenaline rush, like the feeling of fight or flight had been kicked into overdrive. His breath was coming to him in short gasps by the time stopped on the beach, the water lapping over his boots and soaking his jeans around his ankles. He was shaking, flashes of memories mixing in with what he saw as he stood there.

He'd been asleep.

There'd been someone that came into his room. He couldn't remember the face, but he remembered not being afraid of him. The man had scooped him up, and the next thing Tom thought he remembered was taking off across the sand and being run down at the waves, his face shoved under the water and held there. He had no idea how long he'd struggled or what more there was to it, but he'd tried to get away and the man had nearly drowned him to stop him.

"Tom?"

He stiffened at the sound of his name and turned. His expression must have been something close to terrified because Liz was reaching out very slowly and very carefully, making sure not to touch him before he saw what she was doing. "Honey, are you okay?"

He wasn't sure when the scattered rain drops had turned into something more, but they were both drenched as they stood on the beach and he shook his head. "No," he answered, the word riding out on a breath.

Liz stepped forward, wrapping her arms around him and he folded in. "I tried to get away and he nearly drowned me," he whispered after a long moment.

"Who, babe?"

"I don't know."

He heard her make a soft sound. "Remind me never to tease you again about not being able to swim, okay?"

That pulled the barest of laughs from him and he made a small sound of agreement.

"Tom?"

"Yeah?"

"We should get back inside."

He nodded, not trusting his voice, and Liz shifted so that one arm was still around his back as they walked towards the house in the pouring rain.

Howard liked puzzles. He enjoyed solving them. All those little pieces that looked so disconnected coming together as a whole gave him a sense of satisfaction. The more challenging the puzzle, the more he enjoyed it once he reached the end.

The puzzle of what had happened to his son that terrible night that he had disappeared had been one that he'd worked worked over in his mind for years now, but there had been key pieces missing.

One of those pieces had been Tom. He had needed him to remember who took him. He had hoped he could remember. That could have led to Scottie's handlers. Howard was certain that there were others somewhere within his organisation and until he found them, none of them would be safe and Scottie's people would win.

It had seemed so important that he remembered until Howard had seen his son - grown now, and no longer that helpless little boy - standing in the rain, memories that had been deeply buried slamming into him with a force that looked like it could have knocked him over. Howard had known this could be painful. He knew it likely would be. He had expected that and accepted that. This, somehow, seemed to be where he was finding his line.

Maybe it was the house. Maybe it was everything they were up against. Or maybe it was that terrified look in Tom's eyes that didn't fade once Liz had gotten him in. Howard couldn't be sure. All he knew was that they were running out of time and if they arrested him, he wasn't sure how he was going to help Tom get through this alive.

They'd taken him from his father once. He wasn't going to let go again. Not if he could help it.

Howard looked up at the sound of the old wooden floors creaking under feet and Elizabeth Keen rounded the corner, still towelling her hair off from the shower that she and Tom had hopped into after getting caught in the pouring rain. Apparently his daughter-in-law was as well acquainted with a go bag with extra clothes as his son was. "How is he?" Howard ventured.

Liz sighed, taking a heavy seat in a chair across from him. "Confused, upset, frustrated. Not remembering is bad enough, but remembering the worst of it is even worse."

"Hm," Howard hummed softly, his gaze turning back to the rain. "May I ask you something, Liz?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "I won't promise you'll like the answer, but sure."

"Did I do him more harm than good by coming back into his life?"

Liz was quiet for long enough that Howard glanced her direction. He found her expression thoughtful. "Tom's stubborn. He knew about you before you came to him. He just… got this idea stuck in his mind that he couldn't look for answers without it somehow replacing Agnes and me. I'm not even sure where he got that one, but he held onto it pretty tight. Honestly, I think part of it was that he was scared the truth was worse than what he'd sort of just come to accept about you guys."

"What was that?"

"That you didn't care. That you abandoned him." She leaned back in the chair a little. "After Agnes was born and things settled down, he was a little more curious about you specifically. I mean, between Frank Phelps and McCready, he knew he didn't have anyone to base being a good dad off of."

"He seems to be doing a fair job without any role model needed," Howard murmured fondly, thinking of the way Tom had been with Agnes at the birthday party.

"He's great, but questions still come up. When your plane went down he started fixating on it. Absolutely obsessing. Then you popped up and…." She closed her eyes. "I told you the other day to walk away if you aren't willing to put him first, but you helped him. I think the way you came back was wrong, but not that you did."

Howard nodded after a long moment. He'd spent the last several years pushing back decades of emotion and focusing on the task at hand. There was a lot of pain involved in what Scottie had done, but dwelling on that only made him sloppy, and that was something they simply couldn't afford. He had felt the need to become more calculated and more ruthless than he'd been before to survive, and maybe - if he took a moment to be honest with himself - he'd treated his son in a similar way. He'd treated him as the operative that he was without, holding back on the affection he did feel. After this was over. That's what he'd told himself. Maybe waiting had done more damage than he'd ever thought.

"He used to wait outside my office door when we came here," he said after a long moment, the memory of his son looking up with those big blue eyes from where he had been playing with one toy or another and waiting as patiently as a toddler could coming to mind so vividly it could have been yesterday. "I thought I'd have time."

"You do," Liz told him, her voice pointed. "Now. Don't screw it up."

She was smirking just a little and Howard managed a thin smile in return, turning when a floorboard gave a loud creak. Tom stood there, looking slightly less overwhelmed than he had when Liz had guided him back inside, and he looked between them. "Don't let me interrupt."

"Your dad was just telling me a story about how adorable you were as a kid," Liz said, a little mischief in her smile and she managed to draw a hesitant smile from him.

"Not a total terror?"

"You were very well behaved," Howard answered.

Tom snorted a laugh. "Yeah. Frank and Eva would argue on that one. I never heard the end of how much trouble I was to them from the first day in." He took a seat in a chair next to Liz and his gaze shifted to the rain outside. "If everything goes the way we're hoping and the Board gives me a chance at this, I'm going to talk to Agent Lamb about having Scottie transfer to Halcyon custody."

"That's risky," Howard said, watching his son carefully.

"We need all sides if this if we're going to get to the bottom of it, and she won't talk there. It's like she's afraid of someone listening in. I know you don't think-"

"I don't, but this is your investigation. If you think you can get the truth from her, do what you need to."

Tom stared at him for a moment and he nodded slowly.

Howard's phone began to buzz in his pocket and he reached in, recognizing the number. "Albert. Has the Board reached a verdict?"

"We're close. You'll need to wrap whatever you're doing and come in."

"We're on our way." He hung up and looked to Tom. "Are you ready for this?"

"As ready as I can be."

They checked for weapons at the door, asking both Tom and Howard to empty their pockets as well. Apparently Howard's stunt weeks before when they had infiltrated the building had stuck with the Board members and the new situation had them on high alert.

They were escorted in to where the table was already full, Maggie Ellis at the head. "Howard, Tom, have a seat."

Tom shot his father a quick look, but Howard's focus was on the Board. The only armed personnel that had been outside were Halcyon employee. No cops, no feds. That seemed like a promising sign of nothing else.

"We've been over the evidence that Mr Keen left with us and have done our own DNA test," Albert McKinney said. "The results matched, which means that with both Howard and Scottie… unable to continue in a leadership position, the majority shares are legally passed down to you once the death certificate is reversed."

"Good," Howard answered, finally glancing towards Tom. "Then it's settled."

"There's some alarming information about you in here, Howard," McKinney continued. "Your methods have been…. unorthodox at times, but if this information is true, it looks like the key to putting Scottie behind bars was entirely fabricated by you."

"Not entirely," Howard argued. "Scottie is a deep cover agent and she did kidnap and hold Dr Whitehall without his consent. I'm also fully convinced that she was the one that sabotaged my jet. Two pilots were killed in that crash."

"We are well aware, Howard, but until the full evidence has been presented at the end of Mr Keen's investigation, the Board has decided to place you under house arrest."

Howard snorted. "Under what legal authority?"

"The Board has decided to try to keep this in house until we have all the facts," Ellis chimed in, "but if you refuse to comply with their demands, they will be forced to take the evidence your son presented to the authorities."

Tom looked over to see Howard's calculating expression. "Hey," he said quietly. "Let me get to the bottom of this."

Howard met his gaze and the younger man saw the struggle there. Finally he nodded. "Be careful."

"You too."

"I have a meeting set with our legal team to start the process of reversing your death certificate," Ellis told him. "We'll have Howard escorted home. Once everything has cleared the courts and you sign the paperwork you'll have full control of the case, access to all parties involved, with just one stipulation."

There it was. There was always a but. "What's that?"

"The Board wants to be kept apprised of any movements," McKinney answered. "The investigation needs to be completely transparent. Do you think you can handle that, Mr Keen?"

"But I'll have full access? My team too."

"As long as we're confident you're looking for the truth, yes."

"Seems fair enough."

"Then let's reverse a death certificate," Maggie Ellis said with a small smile and motioned towards the door.

Tom took one last look back of the Board and his father. He was all in now.

Notes: One of the things I was sad about was that we didn't get really dive into why Tom was taken as a kid. I hope we still will in S5, but until then, I'm really pleased to be able to poke at it in this story. I just wrapped up writing chapter sixteen today and it's super heavy on Scottie's backstory for this particular fic. I'm a little bouncy over it. I had some high hopes for her redemption arc here and I'm really enjoying the ride so far :D

Next time - Christopher Hargrave comes back from the dead, someone is watching Scottie's every move, and Tom faces off against a new type of danger.

#the blacklist #the blacklist redemption #the blacklist: redemption #tom keen #elizabeth keen #howard hargrave

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existence-overwhelming · 7 years

Text

A Glimpse

"When you're alone is when you can count your friends."

Having sat in the attic and gathered dust for half a decade, it had been a welcome change to have the twit, Courage, return. It was refreshing to have someone capable of producing inquiries and conversations that didn't revolve around vinegar-based cooking recipes. And it had been made even sweeter when the now adolescent nitwit had expanded horizons, a greater vocabulary, and an educated mind. Now he could measure up to the tiniest fraction of what his computer knew. It, the computer, even appreciated the organic water bag's presence, although it would never admit it. For a week following his return, the computer actually felt content with its sedentary existence, just as it had once before Courage's departure.

But then, out of nowhere, the twit had up and vanished. Gone-utterly and completely. The computer hadn't felt angry or disappointed or saddened, it lacked such organic weaknesses. However, it did feel curiosity. It felt curious as to why such a softhearted simpleton would ever want to disappear, seemingly without a trace, from a place he obviously enjoyed. The computer dedicated several layers of its immense attention, over the lapse of two weeks, simply to reason and speculate and then fabricate a roster of people Courage faced over the years that were likely responsible for his disappearance. It found the sheer number of people that would want the twit dead amusing. Then another day was spent on narrowing the list through cross-referencing and simple logical reasoning. And on the second day of the adolescent's third week of continued absence, at last, the computer had narrowed everything into a tidy list comprised of no more than five people, one organization, and a gang. If given more time, it knew that the list could be made even shorter, but something interrupted the process-the arrival of a person it hadn't expected to make a reappearance.

Due to the restriction it had to the immediate vicinity of the room, it was set up in, it hadn't known a visitor arrived at the farm until she strode into the room. It didn't even get the chance to fully assess and subsequently formed speculations on her sudden visit, because, without a word, she approached its platform with a purposeful gait before taking a seat on the rickety wooden chair scooted under an equally shoddy wooden table. She then put her hand together and rested her chin on them, elbows and forearms propping up her head, as her facial features sat heavy with a look of contemplation. The woman, who bore a vague semblance to a feral feline, remained silent and motionless for several minutes, and at no point did she give the computer an inkling about her purpose or identity; though it vaguely recalled Courage making a diary entry regarding a woman of a similar appearance. So, diverging from the norm, it would be the first to start the conversation.

On its dull blue screen popped a nondescript chat box that stuck out from the normal blue hue of the monitor, as it was a mixture of white borders and black boxes that eventually would contain white text. Near the top began a sentence, the start of what the computer hoped to be both an explanatory and enlightening conversation. It read in a bland and angular font, {If I may be bold, exactly who are you and why are you here?} Upon its completion, a small interface popped up near the bottom of the window. Suffice to say, the entire thing left the woman bemused-the computer found it comedic. It watched as she jerked back in response to its question, then slowly recompose herself as she seemed to deliberate on what the appropriate course of action was for dealing with its inquiry. After a short lapse of idleness, she finally decided on what to do: hesitantly take to the keyboard and type a response to its question.

{Who is this? How did you get onto Courage's computer?}

The computer detested organics who answered a question with a question, an ignorant one at that. From its tower came a low humming sound: its version of a sigh.

{I do so despise explaining what I am to twits like you, so I opt not to do so-just know that I am a... an acquaintance with the organic known as Courage.} A small part of its synthetic consciousness took pleasure in the comical visage of anger and irritation that formed on the woman's face. {Now, I ask once more, who are you and why are you here?}

A minute passed before the woman managed to regain the motor functions required to make use of a keyboard.

{I'm sorry but I don't give out personal information to strangers on the internet, especially ones that somehow can access another person's computer without physically interacting with it. So, if you want to know, you have to answer me first-and frankly, I do not care for your attitude, whoever you are!} Her rebuttal seemed to please her, for after hitting the enter key she wore a smug grin and crossed her arms over her chest like someone relishing a hard-won victory.

To this the computer sighed once more, a deep long sigh brimming with annoyance. It concluded that the route it first tried would ultimately lead to a dead-end, and while it could concede to the organic's stubbornness, it had too much of an ego to admit defeat. So, basing its next course of action on the familiarity the woman inspired, the computer perused the entirety of its memory, scavenging for anything and everything that could relate to the woman's mannerisms and or appearances. In a mere fraction of a second, the synthetic located several logged conversations it carried with Courage that contained references and even a description of the woman sitting before it. The artificial intelligence even discovered a name: Kitty.

Back it went to the chat window and it drummed up another bit of text, {Your name is Kitty, a woman of middle age, and you have a homosexual relationship with a woman named Bunny-oh, how quaint. You work as a business woman while Bunny fills a part-time role in a flower shop. Once, many years prior to now, Courage performed one thing or another that's left both of you indebted to him, yet he's never once brought it up. And before you ask how I could possibly know all this, as your nonplussed mien tells me you're about to, allow me to enlighten you: I am Courage's computer and I know everything he's done outside and inside of the little world I have in this attic. Now, if you'd be so kind as to divulge the reason you've come-I have my theories as to what might have brought you here, but speculations can only go so far.}

Every word on the screen caused Kitty's eye to widen further and her face to scrunch up more and more as if she was a young babe seeing a spider for the first time. The computer once read an article regarding the psychological impact one could deliver on another being simply by revealing even an iota of that person's personal information, something said man or woman believed to be unknowable due to their privacy. The article described many possible reactions, and one of them vaguely resembled the expression she wore so plainly. Secretly, it had always wanted to conduct experiments regarding this curious occurrence in organics, but the only information it wielded was what it could glean from the chaotic maze of the internet and what Courage regaled it with-there wasn't exactly an abundance of viable subjects with which it could conduct tests on. Thus, it couldn't help but feel satisfied with itself at having found a participant, although less than willing. However, the matter regarding her purpose and the speculations it fabricated were more pressing than the need to perform such things.

{I am sure discovering something that cannot be counted among the living, by definition, suddenly having access to one's personal history is disconcerting, so I will allow you to find your composure once more. When you are once again in control of all your mental faculties, I request that you answer my question as I did for your own inquiry.}

The window then closed and left the wide-eyed, startled woman to her thoughts, as she stared blankly into the blue screen of the monitor. It found the look adorning her face incredibly amusing to behold, especially for the prolonged state she wore it for. However, even the comedic visage grew droll after viewing it for so long, and it truly did wish to have its inquiry answered. So it was ready to construct yet another sentence, one with the express purpose of instigating her into responding, when Kitty's hands tentatively returned to the keyboard-quickly reopening the window from before. Each keystroke was slow and meticulous, like an expert chess player deliberating over each move, as the response grew longer and longer-eventually coalescing into a singular length of textual elaboration. Then she sent it.

{If Courage trusts you enough to divulge such information, if you are who you say you are, then perhaps you can help me. Currently, I am trying to locate his whereabouts, and I was given reason to believe that, somewhere on this property, someone in Courage's household may hold the key to finding him. Where or who lead me to this reasoning is of no concern, all you should be concerned with is this-I wish to find and retrieve Courage from wherever he is being kept-as I have reasons to believe he is currently a prisoner of Katz. I assume you know of Katz, considering you know of both me and Bunny. So, now that I've told you why I am here and what I hope to accomplish: will you help me?}

At first, there were no words the piece of software could formulate a response befitting the woman's concise explanation. In truth, the curt and straight-to-the-point style in which she wrote invoked vague feelings of respect. Organics had such an irksome tendency to add superfluous fluff and floweriness in what they wrote-the mere fact Kitty hadn't almost impressed the computer. But the faint admiration was short-lived. Quickly, the keyboard clicked and clacked as the keystroke after keystroke were issued by the program living within the hardware. As the keyboard withstood the unseen assault, the mouse inched this way and that until the on-screen cursor hovered over and then clicked the icon representing the minimized chat interface. Once popped up, the enter key was hit and a new message appeared.

{As you undoubtedly did not know, I made my own efforts towards solving this conundrum you have presented. I do believe the location and retrieval of Courage would benefit us both, so I shall offer my help in every manner possible. Now, if you'd be so kind as to press the red button with an X printed on it-found on the interface of the computer tower-then we can begin.}

Visage bemused anew, Kitty slowly regarded the aforementioned red protrusion with dubious skepticism. She seemed to weigh the risks, comparing them with the rewards, before finally resigning to the fact that her efforts were bootless in the face of such odds. Thus, she left the embrace of the rickety pine wood chair before sidling up to the tower. Watching, the program impatiently waited as the woman hesitantly reached to click the flashing protrusion. It felt as if an eternity passed before her petite digit fully pushed the button, of which remained depressed, but once she did it seemed as if someone toggled the fast-forward option.

Without warning, the entirety of the tower's interface receded into a hollow pocket before a solid stainless steel sheet slid down into where the interface once was. Kitty immediately jumped back and landed on her rear, shielding her face with her arms. Then the plethora of cords and wires connecting the various aspects of the program's synthetic abode became animate: swinging and thrashing about until they ripped out of the wall sockets. Once free, they pulled the monitor and keyboard and mouse atop the tower-something fastened and moored each firmly into place-before shunting the table out from underneath itself. Rather than clatter against the decrepit floorboards, however, the excess of cords wove themselves together to form two strong, long hominid legs that connected to a makeshift pelvis, which in turn was attached to a humanoid torso. This torso effectively rendered the tower, mouse, and keyboard as naught more than the viscera of its synthetic chest cavity, while the monitor jutted out like the neck and head. The monitor displayed a basic digital rendition of human facial features. And then the remaining cables intertwined to form whip-like appendages out either of its synthetic shoulders. Thus, the process was complete.

Still covering her face, the computer's new body regarded and observed her for a moment before stepping forward and looking down upon the woman. No footsteps were heard, though, as little to no weight was carried in the stiff gait it possessed. So when Kitty felt the touch of smooth wires snake about her wrist, saying she freaked out and struggled against the program was an understatement. But such resistance simply irritated the computer and resulted in it forcibly grabbing and restraining her arms before jerking her up onto her feet. Then the clacking of a keyboard pierced the sounds of struggling, preceding a monotone and clearly synthetic voice.

"Would you cease this meaningless waste of time? There is a ninety-six percent chance that Katz will retain the self-control he's exercised thus far, and every second you spend struggling only furthers the likelihood of Courage's demise."

At this, the business woman ceased to struggle and bored holes into the floorboards. Then, after a moment, the computer set her down and approached the lone window of the attic.

"Now then, shall we save the ignorant little twit?"

Begrudgingly, she moved to join it. But when it opened the window lattice and motioned to wrap its cords about her midriff, she looked up and jabbed an accusatory finger up at the monitor.

"No tricks!" she hollered pointedly.

"Oh, come now, I'm only a self-aware intelligence program living within the restrictive confines of an archaic computer who's now been given free reign-why would I ever want to trick you?"

This was how their relationship began, and it would be how it carried out from now till forever.

#⚠️ Out of Existence ⚠️#Personal Project #Fanfiction #Courage the Cowardly Dog #Kitty #Computer

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