#the bones of saint nicholas | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ninja-muse · 1 month

Text

Last month I clearly posted my wrap-up a day too early because I ended up DNFing a book that same day and therefore starting another. I don't think that'll happen again, but I'm making sure to schedule this for the first just to be sure.

Anyway, this was an all right month of reading—some greats, some simple okays—and a very good month for not acquiring books. Only one ARC came home with me, I offloaded three, and I'm almost certainly not going to buy any books in the last day of the month, but I still have 12 hours. That might change, in which case this post will also and you'll never know what I originally typed. Yeah, that worked well. Darn used bookstores!

You already know how much I liked The Briar Club. My other top reads were A Desolation Called Peace (anyone surprised?), Wandering Stars (outside my wheelhouse but good), and Nicked, which is also out in the summer and was my solo ARC haul of the month. If anyone thinks "gay medieval heist novel" sounds like a good time, they should pick that up. Also, anyone who likes cats and picture books needs to pick up Floof.

And my lows might as well start with my DNF from last month, I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons. I was really hoping it would pick up and I could push through, but it was just the wrong sort of silly for me. (I ended up going home without a book, then binging Most Ardently over the next couple days after my Libby hold came early.)

I also found The Deerfield Massacre to be odd—less rigorous than I'd have liked, a little wobbly on its thesis, doing a poor job of balancing "this must have sucked for the survivors" with Indigenous perspectives and an awareness that the Europeans were, in fact, colonizers. And A Letter to the Luminous Deep sounded so good, but I found it slow and couldn't quite connect to the characters or world.

I don't know how May is going to go, in terms of reading, so this book might end up being my review of the month, but I'm enjoying it so am going to rec it now: Evelina! Frances Burney was one of Austen's favourite authors and I can absolutely see why, and how she influenced her. If you like Austen's novels, you should 110% pick this up, because it's got romantic troubles, a highly embarrassing family, a number of awkward balls and parties, and all manner of drama. Why hasn't this been adapted? It should have been years ago.

Lastly in bookish and/or life news, my store's latest Indie Bookstore Day party was a rousing success and I don't think my legs have recovered yet from all the walking. My ability to socialize almost certainly hasn't. (It's been three days.) Thank goodness for book lovers and my fellow booksellers. Couldn't have done it without all of them.

Click through to see everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

A Desolation Called Peace - Arkady Martine

The war with the aliens is not going well and Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass are called on to help. Which won’t be easy, but it’s harder because politics.

8.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 main characters (bisexual, sapphic), 🏳️‍🌈 author

library book

Wandering Stars - Tommy Orange

150 years in the life of a Cheyenne family, before and after the events of There, There.

8/10

largely Cheyenne cast, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (multisexual, nonbinary), Cheyenne-Arapaho author

warning: genocide, alcoholism, addiction, drug use, self-harm

library book

The Briar Club - Kate Quinn

A new boarder moves into Briarwood house in Washington, D.C. in 1950, upending the dull day-to-day. Four years later, someone dies. Out in July.

8.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 POV character (bisexual), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (sapphic), Black secondary and minor characters

warning: domestic abuse, murder, race riot

reading copy

Nicked - M.T. Anderson Brother Nicephorus accompanies the saint hunter Tyun and his piratical crew on a mission to, erm, liberate the bones of St. Nicholas. Out in July.

8.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (Achillean), major 🏳️‍🌈 character (Achillean), major Central Asian character, Muslim secondary characters

reading copy

Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook - Terry Pratchett with Stephen Briggs and Paul Kidby (illustrator)

A collection of Nanny Ogg’s recipes and thoughts.

7.5/10

gifted/off my TBR shelves

Most Ardently - Gabe Cole Novoa

Oliver Bennett yearns to live on his own terms, under his real name, and kiss boys. Unfortunately, the first boy in question, one Fitzwilliam Darcy, might like him as Oliver but hates his “other self”.

6.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 main character (trans man), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (gay, bisexual women), 🏳️‍🌈 author

warning: deadnaming, misgendering

library ebook

Slippery Creatures - KJ Charles

When various threatening men appear in Will Darling’s bookshop seeking information he doesn’t have, Will turns to the first helpful person he meets—an aristocrat named Kim.

6.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonists (bisexual man, achillean), Black Welsh secondary character

library ebook

A Letter to the Luminous Deep - Sylvie Cathrall

In 1002, E. and Henerey begin a correspondence. In 1003, her sister and his brother begin to piece together what might have happened to them.

6.5/10

POV character with anxiety disorder, 🏳️‍🌈 POV characters (lesbian, bi man), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (sapphic, achillean), brown-skinned secondary character

reading copy

Hansel and Gretel - Neil Gaiman with Lorenzo Mattotti (illustrator)

An illustrated retelling.

7/10

off my TBR shelves

The Deerfield Massacre - James L. Swanson

The story of an infamous raid in 1704 New England, and the way it’s been mythologized since.

5/10

warning: racism, violence, murder, murder of children

library book

Picture Books

The Pie Reports - Hayley Lowe

Noor and Granddad love pie, but there’s an ocean between them, so they meet every week to eat pie on video chat. Then one day, Granddad doesn’t log on—he’s having a blue day.

🇨🇦

Floof - Heidi McKinnon

A day in the life of Floof the cat.

DNF

I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons - Peter S. Beagle

Robert doesn’t want to be the country’s dragon exterminator on the best of days, but then Princess Cerise meets Prince Reginald. Out in May.

Currently reading

Evelina - Frances Burney

Evelina travels to London and learns that the only thing more distressing than suitors is her newly discovered family. Inspired Austen.

off my TBR shelves

The Demon of Unrest - Erik Larson

The story of the six months leading up to the American Civil War.

warning: racism, slavery

reading copy

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin

A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Victorian detective stories

disabled POV character (limb injury), occasional Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 10 + 2 Yearly total: 42 Queer books: 5 Authors of colour: 2 Books by women: 4 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 0 Classics: 0 Off the TBR shelves: 2 Books hauled: 4 ARCs acquired: 1 ARCs unhauled: 4 DNFs: 1

January February March

#books #booklr #bookblr #reading wrap-ups #life updates #read in 2024 #rec lists

13 notes · View notes

morvantmortuary · 5 months

Text

the night before -

The Morvants have their own Christmas Eve traditions.

warnings: allusions to child death and animal death, some gore, necromancers being creepy and possessive.

(I wanted to get this up earlier tonight, but my sister in law got in and I got distracted visiting, so! consider this a late night bite for the nocturnal crowd 🖤

As always, you can read this for just your favorite, or you can read it as though you’re dating a combination of all three - so long as you don’t mind your bed being very crowded at the end 😜)

All three Morvants share memories of the looming dread the holiday previously inspired:

The skeletal revenants that glowered through the House in the days leading up to the gathering — ritualistically sweeping, dusting, and mopping until their fingers fell off, or their task was complete and they immediately collapsed again into a heap of paper-thin skin and bones (that the boys then had to sweep up themselves and return to the basement).

The continued frustration of Maxi and Hector being constantly shooed out of the kitchen, despite both eagerly wanting to help prepare for the festivities, and being forced to go sit uncomfortably with the other men of the family as they visited before The Night’s Trial. Not to mention the guests of They Who Decide, who lounged around smoking eye-watering cigars and drinking heavily in the parlor while they talked of their grim variations of business.

The fury of a protesting Rora repeatedly being near-dragged back into the kitchen by her mother’s iron grip at her elbow, no matter how often she tried to slip away, or fake cramps or a headache in the later years, because Mathilde insisted it would be Rora’s duty to be hostess of such glittering evenings herself one day.

(Hector, to this day, swears that whatever dish Rora was forced to touch during the cooking process always tasted bitter. Like her anger had seeped into the food itself.

Rora, when asked, would simply say it was a trace amount of the cyanide her mother had caught her trying to slip in when her back was turned.)

The stiff, uncomfortable clothes - starchy old-fashioned suits for the boys, a tulle nightmare-confection for Rora, all with entirely too much ancient lace and in a grim grave-shroud white for the season.

They would be buried in them, after all, if they failed. As Vincent so loved to remind them.

Where other children waited eagerly for Christmas Day, eyes bright with the hope of presents to come, the three little ones all felt dread piling up in the pits of their stomachs like snowdrifts for weeks in advance. Each door of the antique wooden advent calendar revealed another implied threat — behind one, the baby teeth of a long dead relative who had neglected his necromancy studies. Another displayed two desiccated little slips, barely bigger than moth wings: the eyelids of a little girl who wasn’t asleep when Saint Nicholas arrived.

None of them cried when they took turns unveiling each grim reminder. They stopped all that carrying on when they were seven and eight, respectively, even when the occasional wet specimen — already milky white from a century of preservation — made one of them shiver, unsettling their breakfast in their stomach.

The little cabinet of horrors sat on the mantle all the way up to Christmas Eve, Vincent’s recitations of how each souvenir came to reside there echoing in their heads as they went about their Yule preparations.

Maxi would join his father in the embalming room, preparing for his teenage apprenticeship that would be his destiny. He learned how the dead would whisper anything they could still remember, too terrified to remember restraint, and how to salt the wards in the House’s guts that kept madness and death where they belonged.

Hector’s father would take him into what would one day be repurposed as his dark room, where he would study how to make himself a better vessel for the dead (until his mother Esperanza found an excuse to spirit him away, and showed him how redraw the boundaries within his own head).

Rora would be left alone with Mathilde, who would at first be eager for the prospect of time shared with her only daughter… until she sulked and snapped her way through every attempted lesson in the Things A Lady Should Know, be it cooking or sewing or coquetry. When Mathilde at last threw her hands up in disgust, waving Rora away, she would be left to her own devices… as well as her grandfather’s taxidermy diagrams and tools.

The three would study as diligently as each knew how, learning whatever tricks they could that might give them a way to survive the encounter.

At midnight, they snuck into each other’s rooms - a different one every night, so they might avoid any lurking ears or spectral gaze - and traded what little they knew. It was against the rules of the challenge, and if caught, they would all have to pay the price.

But none of them wanted to see the others lost. Especially to the black teeth and sightless eyes of that ancient wretched thing.

Though they had no way of knowing it yet, this would be only the first instance of breaking every rule they were ever forced to learn,

Ten Christmas Eves, they survived.

Every one of them made it out of the midnight maze one way or another, some years by the barest strands of ectoplasm.

Sometimes Saint Nicholas stole a strip of skin, a hank of hair from their scalp — anything it could get its bone-thin hands on, desperate to sate the aching hunger that plagued it. Hector lost one of his back molars the year he turned fifteen, and saw the creature place it right in his own jaw before he fell back through the other side of the dark.

They found each other every time as dawn broke over the cemetery on Christmas Day, wrapping each other in the by-then damp blankets that had been left out for them on the frozen ground, and watching the light push back every scrap of night left to make sure the creature in red couldn’t find its way back out to them again.

Then Hector was taken away to Mexico when he was sixteen.

Rora died the day she turned eighteen.

Hex completed his last run through the midnight maze by himself, and Maxi’s first Christmas Eve not spent fleeing in terror happened in a House where the only voices were those of the dead.

Those years, they all agreed, were the worst.

Christmas Eve with you is so different, for them, it’s surreal.

While Halloween holds his heart, Maxi doesn’t mind Christmas so much anymore. After years of keeping only to the traditional decorations so his late ancestors didn’t complain - red candles, white lights, garlands of dried herbs that had been handed down for generations - he finds he actually enjoys dressing up the House when you’re around.

He lets himself be silly now, hanging black stockings with skulls and crossbones for each of you on the mantle, decorating a tree with peculiar and morbid little ornaments - many of which are now momentos from the odd places the two of you end up together. He insists on watching Nightmare Before Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life at least once each season, in pajamas with hot cocoa, and he has a whole other repertoire of cookie recipes that he only makes in winter.

(If he holds you a little tighter and kisses your temple during George Bailey’s shouts of delight as he realizes he’s alive again, you don’t notice enough for it to strike you as odd.

You’ll never know how happy you made him to be alive again, too.)

He relishes the hunt for the perfect present, spending all year making notes to himself about the things you want but hesitate to buy yourself, or what you’re still trying to convince yourself you need. He wants to take care of you in any way he can, and if that means giving you permission to let yourself have something, then he’s happy to grant it.

A pattern returns from your more intimate moments, though: he focuses all his attention on you, eager to please, but the minute you show him any attention in return, he’s so overwhelmed he nearly forgets what he wants altogether.

You’re enough.

Every Christmas morning he wakes up in your bed with you, unscathed and unbloodied, unafraid, is more than enough.

Christmas Eve, however, he still insists on the two of you staying at your place.

He frames it more as wanting a break from the House, with all the decorating he’s been up to, and that’s sort of right. But truthfully, it’s because he’s certain he’ll never be able to sleep there on Christmas Eve as long as he’s on this side of the Veil.

At night, after the two of you have finished your last sugary snacks, and he’s held your back against his chest until you slip into a seamless sleep, he still lies awake until he absolutely has to move. He kisses the soft center of your cheek before he does, as if that itself is a spell of protection for the brief time he’s away.

He pads on silent feet to your living room, pausing at your fireplace with a wary glare to ensure his contingency measures are still in place.

The fine strand of silver-coated wire glints in the light, stretched taut across the width of your firebox and deceptively smooth for how sharply razored it actually was.

On your hearth, there are wards and glyphs in an unrecognizable dialect, all written in something the dull color of dried blood.

Subconsciously, he sucks the tip of his index finger as he turns towards your front door, the faint taste of iron filling his mouth.

Toeing into his shoes and sliding on his coat, he steps outside onto your porch as silently as he can manage. When he hears no noise from your bedroom at the creak of the floorboards of the soft squeak of the door hinge, he finally closes the door.

While you sleep, warm in your bed and your sugarplum dreams, he circles your house counter-clockwise seven times, trailing salt behind him as he speaks in a dialect of Louisiana French you’ve never heard from his lips in the daylight.

When he hears the slow, rhythmic ring of distant sleigh bells, he doesn’t stop or hesitate. He keeps one eye on the moon, iris reflecting solid red in the winter light.

He’s not a crying little boy anymore. He can fight back now, and he knows damn well how.

If he speaks the invocation a little louder, a challenge to the listening dark, he doesn’t realize it.

He’d take apart a centuries-old shambling corpse of Theseus of you. In a heartbeat.

When he enters your house again, the salt border over the sparse ice on the ground gleams with a tinge of red like bloody snow.

After checking the fireplace one more time, he finds the most central, load-bearing wall in your house. It has to be this one. No other will do.

He sets his left palm against it, feeling for something… before he sets his right one against it as well, satisfied. He leans his forehead in the space between them, and as his eyes close, the words tumble out of his mouth on an exhaled sigh.

If he’s learned anything in all of this - how the flesh and the sinew of a body calls to him above all else, how blood controls the flow of life, how decay is the purest form of devotion - he knows how to protect you.

And he’ll do it with everything he has, to his last breath.

Then he’d come back and do it again, so long as you were still alive.

The heater in your house kicks on briefly as something seeps deep through the wall, starting and stopping in a perfect imitation of a single human heartbeat.

Satisfied for now, Maxi abandons his shoes and his coat, padding his way silently back towards your room.

When he passes the innocuous milk and cookies waiting on your coffee table, he mutters a curse for the devourer to choke on them, long and hard.

He’ll spend the rest of his night with one of his hands under your heart and the other wrapped around his scalpel.

If he looks a little tired in the morning, when you kiss the edges of the bags under his eyes, he’ll only grin and tell you he was too excited to sleep.

Hector is used to loud, crowded Christmas Eves, whether it’s warm and welcoming with his mother’s family, or cold and cramped with the elite of They Who Decide.

The ones he spends alone with you, however, are always his favorites.

Hex, for not liking to sing too much, is nearly always humming something cheerful under his breath when the two of you are together. He’ll sing quietly along to the remixed and traditional carols from his childhood that he has on a playlist dancing in small, shuffling steps through the kitchen as he prepares his next creation. If it’s a baked good, there might be a few pleading prayers in between verses, oscillating between languages, desperately trying to thwart the curse that causes some of his most beautiful creations to end up frosting-side down on the floor.

If it’s something he’s cooking, though, then whichever of your houses he’s in will be pleasantly warm and delicious-smelling for the rest of the evening, and even a bit into the next day.

When he’s not in the kitchen, then all the man wants is to be warm, and his favorite way to be warm is with you. He’ll spend all his time sprawled across your couch, keeping you next to him with a fuzzy blanket, or tucked into the other half of his hoodie. Being colder than you, he breaks out his collection of fuzzy socks, only sliding one off when he sneaks his toes onto the back of your knee to shock you awake from an afternoon doze.

His presents, while maybe not as obsessive, are still thoughtful. Something that makes him think of you, even if it’s not something you strictly need, per se. It’s also more likely to be something the two of you can share somehow: a movie you both wanted to see, a video game you can tag team on, a bottle of some really lovely mezcal to split after Christmas dinner. Something to give him an excuse to spend more time with you, even though he already loves being attached your side.

He’s going to be here forever. He’ll make sure of that.

He also would insist on spending Christmas Eve at your place — he knows the ghosts in the House very well. They’re family, after all.

But even that doesn’t mean shit on a silent night.

He makes sure to serve your favorite at dinner that night, getting you nice and pleasantly full and sleepy on something delicious. If you drink, he’ll encourage you to imbibe a glass or two, maybe three. Anything that will get you through this evening as quickly and painlessly as possible, to make sure there’s no risk of you waking up.

He couldn’t stand it if that scarlet-suited fucker ruined it for you.

He knows what that’s like.

He’s a restless sleeper, but he lays still with his lips to your shoulder until your breathing settles, and he can watch the gentle little twitches of your deepest dreams. He only moves when he’s sure it won’t disturb you, and even then, he lingers for a moment, caught by the curve of your eyelashes against your cheek. He has to remember to take a photo of that sometime. Capture it against film, so the beauty of it can be seen for long after you’re both gone.

He slips out to your living room, checking the precautions he’s set up for the umpteenth time: the firebox wire is fit in place, and he’s strung its match across the bottom of your bedroom door for good measure.

He can be hard to reach, sometimes, if his soul wanders away from his sleeping body. He’s not about to risk drifting off on the job when it comes to you.

If he’s lucky, he’ll remove it in the morning, and you’ll never be the wiser.

But better safe than sorry.

On the brick floor of the firebox is a thin scattering of terra-cotta colored ash, the scent still heavy on the air as if something beautiful was freshly burned. On the back wall are etchings of the same color: wards, drawn with a smoldering stick of his mother’s incense.

He isn’t sure if the remaining curls of smoke are actually comforting, or if it just smells to him like coming home after a long time away.

Seating himself in the dead center of your couch, he lets his head fall back, his hair spreading across the tops of the cushions. He puts his hands, palm-up, out to either side of him, arms limp like he excepts to fall asleep at any moment.

He listens to the soft sounds of your house, the settling of the floorboard, the winter wind tapping at the windows.

Like the ends of fingers, flesh gnarled away at the tips down to bone…

When he thinks he hears the faintest hint of crunching ice, he closes his eyes, and his chest falls still.

For a few minutes, there’s nothing. Utter silence, muffled by the cold against the glass panes.

His fingers twitch, moving like they themselves are dreaming.

When he opens his eyes again, breathing deep like he’s just come up from under water, both hands are being solidly held.

He sits up, looking to his right — and sees a stranger in a white nightdress.

Her features are pale, her lips blue like she was kissed by frost. Her hair hangs around her face like it’s still faintly damp with clammy sweat, and her eyes are glazed, even when it’s obvious she’s trying to focus on his face.

When he looks to his left, his heart drops.

Seated next to him is a young boy, no older than eight or nine. His clothes look like something out of a period film, patchwork at the knees of his pants and elbows of his jacket like they’ve been darned and re-darned multiple times.

His skin might have been tan, but the full color of it is lost under a disquieting yellow from underneath.

He must have been sick.

When he smiles at Hex, hopeful, one of his teeth is still missing.

Hector sighs, returning the smile somewhat guiltily.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

Quietly, he looks between them, and explains what they need to do. Where they need to stand, and for how long.

What to do if Saint Nicholas tries to talk to them.

They listen, and when he finishes, they sit so still he’s almost afraid they don’t understand.

But as one, they both silently rise to their feet, and turn in opposite directions. The woman exits through the back wall of your house, melting through like water. The boy, holding himself straight and proud with the weight of his new responsibility, marches through the front wall and out onto the porch.

With a quick look over his shoulder, and another smile through the window, he begins to circle your house.

Hector stays until they’ve both covered one counter-clockwise rotation, then rises to his feet. His joints crack a little as he does, and he winces slightly.

Before he heads back to your room, though, he looks over to where the milk and cookies are perched on your coffee table.

He uses both hands to flip it the bird. He put red pepper and cayenne in that shit, he hopes it hurts like hell going down.

Rora has… never been much of one for holidays. Especially not the ones that require being performing for family. She was already reminded every day how much she disappointed them by being something other than the perfect debutante; the holidays only heaped that on in spades.

But you. You are an excellent reminder of the joy that can be found by being alive.

In an attempt to make some cash (the whole ‘being undead’ thing kind of hampering the legal on-boarding process at most companies), Rora would be spending the season harvesting fresh mistletoe and American holly out of the swamp to make her own wreaths and decorations. She figures, having already established herself as a local artisan (to the degree that taxidermy dressed in burlesque gear counted as art — which maybe you would argue for more than her).

She wouldn’t drag you along to come foraging with her - unless you wanted to, in which case, you’d be more than welcome.

But she would be happy to spend the month joining you in whatever holiday traditions you preferred, as long as you didn’t mind her braiding and weaving various forms out of her plants when she did.

You’d sit with your head on her shoulder, your eyes torn between the black and white movie on the screen and the skillful work of her nimble hands. While you wrapped presents or trimmed your own tree, she’d be a chair away, working on her latest projects (until you needed help reaching something on the tree itself, in which case she’d immediately shoo you off the ladder like you were something fragile and take your place).

The only time her hands would stop were when the two of you were getting ready for bed — or when she’d abruptly appear next to you when you were reading or watching something, holding a sprig of fresh mistletoe over your head with a sly smile on her face.

For the holiday, you would find at the end of a silver chain a resin pendant, encasing a smaller sprig of mistletoe.

Rora, at your request, would put it on you immediately, her eyes glowing the same soft green as the leaves inside…

And then immediately bend down and enthusiastically kiss your chest, all over and then some.

She was only human, after all.

Mostly.

She, too, would insist on your house for Christmas Eve.

The House didn’t frighten her. Nothing really frightened her anymore, after being dead for so long.

Save for something happening to you. She would do anything, bend this world and the one beyond to her will, if it meant she could keep you from seeing a tenth of what she’d had to endure.

The mistletoe and holly served a dual purpose, you see. For every so many sprigs and boughs set aside for her little stand at the local flea market, she set one aside for you.

In the winter evenings, when you were busy with your own holiday secrets or blissfully asleep, she would tinker with the branches and the leaves, waiting for them to dry and diminish of their original hue before she infused it with some of her own.

On Christmas Eve, after she’d thoroughly worn you out before bed (she couldn’t cook, but she was always delighted to dine) and laid out milk and cookies both laced with enough cyanide to kill a horse (it wouldn’t work, it was just for her own catharsis), she set to work on her true, intricate design.

Yes, she uses the firebox wire, same as the boys. They’d been using it since they were thirteen, she wasn’t about to abandon tradition. But she also etches her own runes around your mantle, hiding them after with a garland of beautifully arranged plants that seems to nearly glow with just how verdant they are.

When the whole fireplace almost seems alive with fresh greenery, she settles herself on the hearth, pulling on the protective smock she wore over her clothes for all her taxidermy projects.

After a deep breath, and a moment to angle her arm around the firebox wire, she shoves her hand as far up the chimney’s throat as she can manage it.

She grumbles as she searches, wincing at the ash that falls while she moves her hand over the bricks and around the lintel - and nearly smashes what she’s looking for.

Oh-so-carefully, moving as slowly as she can, she frees the pathetic little bundle from its tomb before bringing it back down to her own eye level like she’s holding a handful of diamonds.

It is, in fact, a collection of mouse bones.

Small, sad, discolored from age and long shot of any fur it might have once had in life, the skeleton nearly crumbles apart in Rora’s hand.

She holds it close to her face, poking through it with her index finger as she counts. When she knows for sure she has the skull, and enough limbs for it to work, she folds the tiny remnants into her delicate fingers.

What happens next is hidden by the dark veil of her hair, her own deep green shining between the strands as she whispers something in Latin.

Around her, a breeze gathers in your perfectly still house, tiny whispers seeming to echo off the walls.

When she raises her head again, the scars from her own resurrection are a deep, pulsing green -

But the mouse skeleton is standing upright in her palm, assembled like it hasn’t been in years.

The eyeless little thing looks up at her, and if it had a nose to sniff and ears to twitch, it would.

She smiles at it - a soft one, one she usually only saves for you - and kisses the tip of her finger before pressing it to the tiny arc of the dusty skull.

The mouse, at first surprised despite its featureless face, presses back.

Rora strokes her finger along its spine, watching it shiver its little vertebrae in happiness as she whispers to it.

She holds her hand back to the firebox, and with some gentle urging, the little skeleton skitters onto the bricks again. Glancing back over its tiny scapulae, it eyes her with its empty sockets, before scrabbling its way back up into the chimney from which she pulled it.

Rora stands again, dusting her hands off on her smock before just standing there. Waiting.

Then, just as whispers had filled your house before, a new breeze sweeps along something else: squeaks.

As she listens, the tiny, echoing squeak develops yet another echo. Between your floorboards, she can see the hint of a deep green spark, which in turn seems to split itself in two.

She stares down, watching the green spark divide itself over and over as tiny echoing squeaks grows into a veritable chorus.

When it finally stops dividing itself, she stamps twice on the floorboards, and a mass of something that grows vivid green rattles incessantly in the direction of your chimney.

A small army of skeletal creatures in varying states of assembly squeezes its way out between the cracks in your floor, the pieces throwing themselves into the firebox and up the flue like some sort of horrific reverse vacuum.

Rora supervises until an entire extermination van’s worth seems to have shoved itself up your fireplace, glowing a nuclear green that fills the whole room, before it at last falls deceptively silent.

Smiling like a cat, she steps out of her smock, depositing it behind a chair and out of sight before sauntering her way back to your room.

Let that dead fuck try his luck against her new darlings.

She’d been wondering how well that petrified skin would hold up against thousands of little tiny teeth.

When she crawls back into your bed, you barely even stir when she pulls you close.

You will never know the terrors that lurk in the depths of old magic.This time of year will always be joyous for you.

They will each and all make sure of that.

(if you read this far, I hope your holiday is going swimmingly - or at least, less stressful than theirs. :’D thanks for stopping by and sharing part of it with us! 🥰♥️

merry creepmas to all, and to all a good fright! 🖤⚰️)

#slasher ocs #southern slasher ocs #necromancer ocs #queer horror ocs #original queer horror #christmas at the mortuary #morvant mortuary #maxi morvant #maximilian vincent morvant #hector morvant-casares #hex morvant-casares #hector emile morvant-casares #aurore morvant #rora morvant #aurore marie morvant #daniel brühl fc #diego luna fc #eva green fc #monsterkisser fics

18 notes · View notes

witchyfashion · 7 months

Text

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen…but do you recall the most petrifying Christmas figures of all? Not all children fear just a lump of coal in their stockings. Discover the terrifying Yuletide fables that have horrified kids for generations.

He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake. This lighthearted song is a bit more ominous in the context of other Christmas traditions. From beasts that threaten to cook children into stew to sinister crones who snatch little ones from their beds, you won’t find any dancing sugar plums here. Outside of the heartwarming Christmas tales we all know and love, there are an abundance of frightening stories to chill all who hear them to the bone. Discover folklore from all corners of the world, including:

Krampus (Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and northern Italy), a demonic half-goat monster who drags chains and whips bad children with birch sticks, or stuffs them in his sack to take away

The Kallikantzari (Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Turkey), goblins who come out during Advent to cause mischief

Père Fouettard (France, Belgium, Switzerland), Saint Nicholas’ eternal cannibal manservant who deals with naughty children

Hans Trapp (Alsace-Lorraine, France), who roams the countryside disguised as a scarecrow and goes door to door on Christmas looking for children to feast upon

Gryla (Iceland), the giant ogre who emerges from her cave on Christmas to hunt children and cook them into stew

Mari Lwyd (Wales), a creature with a horse’s skull and a long cloak that is followed by a group of chanting people

Frau Perchta (Austria and Bavaria), who slits the bellies of bad children and stuffs them with straw

These tales are sure to leave you wishing for the Grinch. Whether you are a fan of history and folklore, you love learning about different cultures, or you just want to give a holiday gift that will bring the joy of Christmas to that lucky someone (just kidding), The Scary Book of Christmas Lore is for you. ’Tis the season! Is it beginning look a lot like Christmas, yet?

https://amzn.to/49IdLLI

#krampus #gryla #mari lwyd #creepmas #scary yule #scary christmas #goth christmas #goth yule #dark yule #hans trapp #frau perchta

25 notes · View notes

loiladadiani · 9 months

Text

Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich (1869 - 1918)

Sergei Mikhailovich was the 5th son and 6th child of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaievich.

Sergei grew up to be an artillery man like his father and at one point would occupy the same position as his father in the Imperial Military hierarchy. He was intellectually bright but seems to have had a “variable” disposition which did not endear him to many. In his youth he had been in love with Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, who preferred to marry his brother Sandro instead.

When the future Tsar Nicholas II left his ballerina mistress to marry Alexandra, he charged Sergei with taking care of her and he did…as a matter of fact, he never stopped taking care of Mathilde, even assuming paternity for a son who was most likely fathered by Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich, the man Mathilde eventually married.

Sergei was dismissed from his powerful position in the military amidst scandalous rumors involving Mathilde and the illegal sale of weapons, etc. In the Spring of 1918 he was brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks, along Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna.

You may not know some things about him: 1. Enjoyed choral music and sang in a choir that he supported and rehearsed at the New Mikhailosky Palace, where Sergei lived with his brother Nikolai.

2. Towards the end of his life he suffered greatly from bone pain probably related to rheumatoid arthritis

3. Most likely than not he had an illegitimate son by Countess Barbara Vorontzova-Daskova, née Orlova, the widow of Count Ivan Illarionovitch Vorontzov-Daskov (1866–1897). The child was adopted by a friend of his mother, Sophia Vladimirovna Dehn. There was never a relationship between father and son

4. He would probably have been able to leave Saint Petersburg in time to avoid being murdered but he stayed behind when Mathilde left to take care of her financial affairs

5. Among the objects on his body after his murder, there was a gold pendant in the shape of a potato on a gold chain, the emblem of the "Potato club “ which Tsarevich Nicholas, Sergei, some of his brothers and friends had formed in the days of their youth. There was also a small gold medallion with an emerald in the middle, which had been a present to Sergei from Mathilde many years earlier. It contained her portrait

6. Of all the children of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, Serge was the only one who had blue eyes, inherited all the way back from his great-grandfather Tsar Pavel.

#russian history #imperial russia #nicholas ii #romanov family #vintage photography #mathilde kschessinska #grand duke sergei alexandrovich #Barbara vorontsova-dashkova #grand duke mikhail nicholaievich #grand duke andrei vladimirovich #grand duchess xenia alexandrovna

20 notes · View notes

live-the-fangirl-life · 1 year

Text

How to Wreck a Sleigh

Aelin Galathynius x Rowan Whitethorn

Rowan Whitethorn, an elf, reluctantly finds himself in league with Aelin Galathynius, a human, when she appears at the North Pole. Because nothing ever goes to plan.

* Written for 12 Days of Rowaelin: How to Destroy a Sleigh in 3 Steps

Main Masterlist | Fic Masterlist | Read on Ao3 | Wintery Collection | 12 Days of Rowaelin

2438 words

*******

Rowan Whitethorn’s day had not gone how he planned.

With only a week before Christmas, the whole of Santa’s Village was bustling with elves on their way to the Workshops or the Bakery as others headed towards Wishlist Watch or the Stables. He could barely cross Saint Nicholas Square without spilling his hot chocolate.

They were in crunch-mode, and there was still so much to get done.

He was going to go to his station in the Gift-Wrapping Emporium, where he would spend his morning wrapping as many toy swords and stuffed animals as he could. Then, he was going to go listen to the Solstice Singers caroling group perform in the Square.

He was going to end his day by sitting in the Snow Globe Sanctuary to watch the northern lights streak across the sky through the high, glass-paned walls.

What he was absolutely, indisputably not going to do, was find a human wandering around in the Elvish Aisle, agree to help them despite neither having a clue of how she'd gotten there in the first place, steal a sleigh, and crash-land said sleigh into some human’s roof.

That was not his plan.

But, if the Great Figgy Pudding Fiasco taught him anything, it was that things rarely went to plan. And that Polar bears really, really like figgy pudding.

The wind whipped through his hair, and he blinked hard against the cold gusts as the sleigh dipped in disjointed jerks. Clouds became fog; fog became rows of houses lined up beneath them, getting closer with every impending second.

“No! No, up, up!” Rowan tugged hard on the reigns, the muscles in his arms straining with the effort, but he was no match for a team of trained reindeer determined to land. “Wait! Stop!”

The crash was inevitable.

Squeezing his eyes shut, his teeth slammed together as every bone in his body was jarred and ringing. Plumes of displaced snow fell around him in the wake of the collision as Rowan reopened his eyes. His heart was beating nearly out of his chest, his breathing coming heavy; the adrenaline, panic, and physical ache had him in a stunned stupor.

With a mental check over himself, he decided that could’ve been a lot worse. Dropping the reigns, he turned around and peered over the seat to look in the back of the sleigh.

“Still alive back there?”

A head of golden hair popped up from beneath a candy-cane patterned blanket that must've fallen loose during their landing. The woman was breathing harder than he was and met his gaze with wide, incredulous eyes.

“Who taught you how to drive this thing?” she groaned with an almost delirious laugh and rubbed a spot on the back of her head. “That. Was. Awful.”

Rowan rolled his eyes, huffing, before getting out of the sleigh to find his footing on the roof. “Don’t be dramatic, it wasn’t that bad.”

He leaned against the side and crossed his arms as Aelin heaved herself out to stand next to him. Then she pointed sharply down to the ground below where half a dozen shingles lay fallen in the snow.

“You crash-landed us.” She said irritatingly slowly as if he hadn’t been in the sleigh with her and kept pointing. “Those are part of the roof; they should be up here,” she stomped her foot which sent another puff of snow up before gesturing to herself. “And I should be down there.”

“You want to go down there? Be my guest.” He interrupted dryly. “I’m pretty sure you’re still a long way from home. Good luck with that.”

She glared and kept talking like he hadn’t said anything. “On the ground. Where I won't be killed by any insane elves who never, ever should be allowed to drive – fly – ever.

The man boredly looking down at her was the furthest thing from a Christmas elf as Aelin could have ever pictured. She always thought of elves as short, cheerful, fantastical creatures who spent their days making toys. She had a bone to pick with whoever designed the whole elf persona in movies and television shows.

The several inches he had over her meant she had to crane her neck back to look him in the eye, not exactly one of Santa’s little helpers. And the knitted green fabric that stretched across his arms, pulled taught as he crossed them over his chest, made her wonder what sort of workout regimen elves committed themselves to. Or if that was just him and she lucked out on which elf she stumbled into that morning.

Rolling his eyes again – they would get stuck like that if he did it some more – Rowan spun around and didn’t pay her a second look as he told her, “You’re fine.”

Oh, and he was absolutely not the nice, cheerful personality she was prepared for.

He ducked between the two lines of reindeer to look at the damage to the front of the sleigh. Part of the landing gear was splintered and the shiny red paint was chipped and scratched from where it first nosedived into the roof. He walked around the opposite side of the sleigh and prodded with the controls before climbing back out to stand next to her.

Aelin had been silently watching his inspection and waiting for him to say something. Her breath was coming out in white puffs of air, and it annoyed her that Rowan looked completely unperturbed by the chill. She supposed he would be used to it at the North Pole, but his lack of discomfort did not make her feel better.

He still hadn’t said anything. When she opened her mouth to question him, Rowan grumbled, “The directional calibrators are jammed, It's not going to be telling us where to fly anytime soon.”

“Huh.” Aelin wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but she did have one method for fixing broken things. She swung her leg back and kicked the side of the sleigh.

“What are you doing?” Rowan whirled on her in disbelief. “Don’t hit it, that never works.”

She didn’t say her method was effective. Arching a brow, she asked, “Have you ever fixed a damaged sleigh?”

There was a pause before he reluctantly admitted, “No.”

“Then how do you know it won’t work?”

She lifted her foot to kick it again, but Rowan grabbed her arm and pulled out of leg’s reach. “Oh, for fiddlesticks,” he cursed. “Stop that!”

Aelin wrenched her arm from his grasp but nodded. “Okay, okay, okay,” she muttered to herself, barely able to keep her head straight through the day’s events.

She had woken up in the snow without any idea of how or why. Her first thought was that she’d had one too many cups of eggnog the night before, but when she sat up and looked around, instead of being on someone’s lawn, she had woken up in the middle of a forest filled with pine and fir trees. Her day had gotten a million times weirder when the first person she had seen had snowy silver hair and pointed ears and then had looked at her like she was the crazy one when she'd asked him where she was.

Aelin still wasn’t sure how he had convinced her it was all real.

She took a long, slow breath. “Someone will come to find us and help once they notice you haven’t come back.”

The elf’s wince didn’t go unnoticed. It was the first reaction she’d seen that wasn’t coated in annoyance or disdain.

“What?” She asked, her voice filled with dread.

“Well,” Rowan drew out the word and leaned against the sleigh. “I’m not exactly…authorized…to use the sleigh—”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

“—so, I snuck it out. I didn’t log my departure into the system.”

Aelin blinked. “The system?”

“Frosty Flying. It’s the latest in reindeer-based flight operations. It was actually a pretty big deal when we first got it.”

She stopped him and tried pulling him back on track before she had a nervous breakdown. Correction: another nervous breakdown. The first had come when Rowan snuck her through the Gingerbread Gallery and she saw the candied houses magically building themselves. She was convinced it was all an elaborate dream.

“Rowan.”

“Oh, right. It keeps meticulous records of all sleigh riding and flying maneuvers.” At her blank stare, he continued. “We make sure all sleighs are in perfect flying condition, it is one of the most crucial parts of the Christmas delivery.”

Aelin blinked at him again, and for the first time, Rowan had an inkling of concern about her mental stability.

“Right.” She repeated slowly. “You snuck it out. But back up, ‘all’ sleighs? As in more than one? As in, no one will notice this one’s missing?”

Rowan shrugged with a nonchalance that wasn’t helping. “Doubt they’d notice soon enough to be of any help. We have an entire warehouse of sleighs on stand-by. You’d be surprised how many are decommissioned after trial runs. Weather, collisions, faulty controls – they’re not as easy to operate as it looks.”

“So…no one knows the sleigh is gone or that you’ve even left the Pole at all.”

Earlier, when he had left her hiding behind the stables and told her to wait because he would handle it, Aelin went along with it because why not?

He rolled his eyes at her again and loosed a long-suffering sigh which she thought was entirely unfair. “That is what I just said.”

“Fiddlesticks.”

***

“What about the reindeer?”

Rowan had been digging around in the back of the sleigh in search of some food or tools that would help when Aelin’s voice cut through the night air.

“What?” He asked, seeing her standing next to the reindeer nearest the sleigh. He was about to warn her of the animal’s temperament, but it simply turned its head to the side and let her pet it, nudging her shoulder with its nose affectionately. Rowan never got that reaction from the reindeer. He pulled himself over the seat and leaned over the front of the sleigh.

“The reindeer,” she said again, sounding hopeful as she kept petting the animal between them. “What about Dasher and Dancer and Prancer?”

“These aren’t Dasher, Dancer, and Prancer.” He told her flatly. “And if they were, which they aren’t, they’d be up at the front.”

Aelin nodded as if she understood her mistake and quietly hummed to herself On Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen...

“But these guys are not them. That’s Gingerbread, Sugarplum,” he pointed to each and finally patted the back of the one nuzzling her face, “and Tinsel.”

“Let me guess,” she sighed as her shoulder slumped. “Backup reindeer for backup sleighs.”

Rowan sprung forward and clamped his hands over Tinsel’s ears. “No. We don’t use ‘backup’ it makes them feel bad. They get temperamental about that. They’re part of our reserve team.”

Tinsel only tried shaking off his hands to munch on his fingers twice, which Rowan counted as a win.

“Should I even ask how many reindeer are on the reserve team?” A question Aelin never thought she would ask.

Rowan straightened with only a small glare at Aelin, to which she raised her hands placatingly and hoped he would explain.

“Around forty or so.”

“Forty?” She gaped.

The flat look he shot her screamed that she should know that was a stupid question.

“What happens when December 23rd comes around, and Vixen catches a cold?” He implored, not expecting an answer as he crossed his arms and brushed some freshly fallen snow off his sleeve. “He’s very friendly. Too friendly. Before you know it, the whole team is sick. They can’t be responsible for pulling the sleigh when they aren’t on their A-game. Not that we would ever push them into flying when they’re sick, that’s just rude. That’s why we have so many reindeer in reserve.”

“Plus, they’re cute,” she added helpfully. Then she nodded, “You have reserves for your reserves.”

“…for our reserves.” An involuntary shudder coursed through him as he remembered when they needed to use them. “Do not ask me about the Candycane Cough of ’99.”

“The…” Aelin shook her head and sat on the edge of the sleigh. Rowan saw the look on her face and felt a pang of guilt for dousing her hope that someone would come to save them. He lowered himself down to sit next to her and found the press of her shoulder to his made him feel the same warmth as a steaming cup of hot chocolate after being out in the snow for hours.

“How is this not some sugar-induced nightmare?” Aelin whispered.

Rowan wasn’t sure if she meant to say it out loud, but he responded anyway, arching a brow and bumping her elbow with his. “Do magical reindeer pop up a lot in your nightmares?”

She huffed a laugh. “No.”

“Flying sleighs? Elves?”

“No and no.” She glanced sideways at him with a small smile.

“Then I’m pretty sure you’re not having a nightmare.”

“A normal dream, then?” She tried again, and this time she sounded more like herself.

Leaning back, Rowan fully faced her and smirked. “Am I something you would dream about?”

She laughed, and Rowan’s grin grew as the spark in her eye returned.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged airily. “We’ll have to see if you show back up.”

With a wink, Aelin stood up and reached her hand down to him, pulling him to his feet to stand beside her.

“I want to try one more thing.” That was all the warning he got before she swung her leg back again and aimed a final kick at the sleigh.

She was rewarded as it miraculously shuddered back to life. It was so unexpected that both Aelin and Rowan stumbled back, arms instinctively wrapping around the other as they regained their footing on the roof’s tiles.

They both stood, opened-mouthed, as they looked at the sleigh

“Did that seriously just work?” Rowan muttered incredulously.

As Aelin laughed and flashed him a bright smile, he accepted that it had worked.

“Come on! Let’s get this baby back in the air and to the Pole so we can figure out how to get me home without getting stranded again.” She was still grinning, waving him in, “and so you can hide the evidence, Mr. Reindeer Thief.”

Maybe his day hadn’t gone to plan, but it was certainly one he wouldn’t forget. He, decidedly, did not want to.

“But this time,” Aelin insisted excitedly, “I get to sit up front.”

*****

Taglist:

@acourtofsnakes @a-frog-with-a-laptop @astra-ad-mare @autumnbabylon @backtobl4ck @bankerfrog @becarefuloflove @camerooonchiu @captain-swan-is-endgame @charlizeed @cookiemonsterwholovesbooks @doubt-less @earthtolinds @elentiyawhitethorn @feyretales @goddess-aelin @highqueenofelfhame @jorjy-jo @julemmaes @leiawritesstories @lemonade-coolattas @llyncooljones @mariamuses @moodymelanist @morganofthewildfire @nerdperson524 @rhysiedarling @rowaelinismyotp @rowaelinrambling @rowanaelinn @shyvioletcat @stardelia @superspiritfestival @sv0430 @swankii-art-teacher @thegreyj @the-lonelybarricade @the-regal-warrior @tomtenadia @westofmoon @whimsicallyreading @rowaelinscourt

#rowaelin #aelin x rowan #rowan x aelin #aelin #Rowan #rowan and aelin #aelin and rowan #rowaelin fluff #rowaelin au #wintery #aelin galathynius x rowan whitethorn #throne of glass #rowaelin fic #tog #aelin galathynius #rowan whitethorn #12daysofrowaelin

66 notes · View notes

relaxing-n-podcasting · 6 months

Text

Glenn Close Playlist made entirely out of rock and Christmas songs!

Description of why each song was added below the cut

Don't Fear the Reaper: Song Glenn plays when being chased by the grim reaper

Carry on my Wayward Son: Episode title of s1 episode 48, also can be interpreted as Glenns message to Nick after choosing imprisonment

I Fought the Law: Getting arrested by the court, also being replaced by Jodie as Nick's father

Back in Black: Glenn returning with a 12-pack after breaking out of prison

Sweet Child of Mine: Glenn cares about one thing other than himself - Nick. His only remaining family. I know the original song is about the main singer's girlfriend at the time, so could also be interpreted as him mourning Morgan, but the child interpretation makes me actually sob.

Highway to Hell: Glenn's death scene and how his actions throughout the series culminated in the court arc.

My Own Worst Enemy: He sabotages himself so much it's unreal. Especially listening to the trial episodes when the other dads desperately try to get him to stop ruining his own case fjsndn

Jump: Glenn references this while in the battle axe of hatred

Rock and Roll All Nite: 🤘

Shoot to Thrill: Glenn and his iconic gun

Fell in Love with a Girl: Glenn stealing Morgan from Jodie

I Wanna Rock: He wants to rock.

Free Bird: Another song Glenn references in the battle axe of hatred.

Bad Reputation: Glenn doesn't care about his bad reputation.

You're Gonna Go Far, Kid: Glenn's passing on Bill's parenting to Nick, encouraging the same bad habits.

Owner of a Lonely Heart: Glenn dropping the emotional distance he has and processing the loss of his wife and son.

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer: I remembered that Glenn covered Christmas music and this one is acoustic but fits Glenns vibe/sense of humor.

Jingle Bell Rock - Metal Cover: Jingle Bell Rock but if it was modern rock. Glenn Close Trio definitely did a cover like this.

Wanted Dead or Alive: He's a criminal who broke out of jail, baby! Also Bon Jovi is classic.

Fortunate Son: Glenn grew up with Bill Closes influence and therefore was predisposed to not really having a normal life.

Wake Me Up When September Ends: Glenn doesn't really start to deal with Morgan's death until the end of season 1, matches the songs theme of grief so awful it feels easier to avoid.

Seven Nation Army: Glenn leveling up like a million levels due to the deck of all things.

You Give Love a Bad Name: Either a commentary on Glenns parenting (he loved Nick but neglected him) or Glenn is singing it at Jodie due to jealousy/to prove he was a better father.

Bad to the Bone: Glenns very choatic and is interpreted by the justice system as evil.

I Won't be Home for Christmas: An (anti) Christmas rock song mostly picked for the title and him not being with Nick during the Christmas season. Also the main character goes to jail and can't have a Christmas tree which feels metaphorical.

We Built this City: I imagine it as Glenn wanting Nick to remember him by referencing songs he taught to him when he was young.

Let it Snow: More Christmas rock, done by a trio!

Little Saint Nick: Nick was probably atleast partially named due to the association with Christmas and Saint Nicholas. Also a classic rock Christmas song Glenn would cover, while missing Nick during a tour.

All Star: Another one with Glenn vibes. Also dangers of rock and roll life style.

Holiday/Boulevard Broken Dreams: Glenns outward attitude he presents (Holiday) versus the feelings he's trying to hide (Boulevard of Broken Dreams). Also I hyper fixated on the American Idiot album like a month ago and could go on a whole rant comparing Glenn and Jesus of Suburbia but won't go into that brain rot for the purposes of making this post not super long didndkdk.

Summer of 69': Glenn probably getting into music as a kid due to looking up to his dad, similarly Nick getting into music due to Glenn.

American Idiot: Glenns anti-establishment attitude. Also even if he's not explicitly queer he has something going on. "Your dad's gnc as fuck""You're insane".

Dani California and Californiacation: Glenn being a rock musician in Los Angeles and the history that comes with that (namely the use of drugs and the "rough" life style associated with the rock life style in LA). His own self-destructive tendencies (Californiacation) and his love of Morgan (Dani California).

Run Rudolph Run: Christmas song by classic rock musician!

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home): Glenn and Nick's first Christmas without Morgan.

The Distance: Glenns tendency to try to look flashy, even at the expense of working with the team (ie the scene with Erin).

Say it Ain't So: The cycle of neglect from Bill to Glenn to Nick. The mention of drug use and both Glenn and Nick having to act like they don't care and partially blaming themselves for neglect.

Livin' on a Prayer: Glenn trying to raise Nick by himself after Morgan died unexpectedly.

We're Not Gonna Take It: More anti-establishment. Fight for Your Right: Another classic rock. Also Glenn tending to be irresponsible and prioritize having fun over his responsibilities.

Live Wire: In one of Glenns dad facts, Freddie says that Glenn read the Mötley Crue biography to Nick, but censored all of the inappropriate content, making it very short.

Barracuda: Glenn vibes. E

Enter Sandman: Referenced by Glenn in the podcast. Also the reference of "Never-ever land" and themes about Glenn not having fully grown up by the beginning of season 1.

Big Ride: The song Glenn sings to incite the prison riot.

Folsom Prison Blues: Referenced during the prison riot episode intro.

For Whom the Bell Tolls (in Japanese): Glenn's death scene at the end of the season.

Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer: More classic Christmas song as a rock cover. The energy is very fun. Sidenote: My Spotify recommended songs are filled with Christmas rock songs after making this playlist. I am Jewish . This is a cry for help.

Run, Rudolph, Run: Modern rock take on the classic Chuck Berry Song. Probably what a cover the Glenn Close trio would do would sound like.

The Gambler: Glenn quotes this at the rest of the party. Also Glenn being really good at making plans/making the best of circumstances (Oakvale, prison, making Hell play Christmas music, etc.)

Godzilla: Vibes. Also my dad likes classic rock and always wants me to play this on my school's music request app.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas: Welcoming message from Hell!

Sweet Emotion: Mentioned in one of the last episodes I think. Glenn really just is winging life at this point, so valid of him.

Don't You Forget About Me: Mentioned in one of the last episodes of season 1. Glenn hopes Nick remembers him.

#Glenn Close #dungeons and daddies #dndads #dndads odyssey #dndads glenn close #playlist

10 notes · View notes

9leaguesofmirrors · 7 months

Text

Bones of St Nicholas moodboard

@haras24 suggested that I make a moodboard based around The Bones Of St Nicholas. I think this episode is criminally underrated, hopefully I did it justice

#reece shearsmith #steve pemberton #inside no 9 #inside number 9 #in9 #the bones of st nicholas #the bones of saint nicholas

17 notes · View notes

orthodoxydaily · 1 month

Text

Icon, Saints&Reading: Wednesday, May 1, 2024

april 18_may 1

Holy and Great Wednesday_ Great Lent

NEW MARTYR JOHN THE TAILOR OF LOANNINA, AT CONSTANTINOPLE (1526)

The holy martyr John Kulikos was born in the Greek district of Epirus, in the city of Ioannina. His parents were pious, but he was orphaned at an early age, and he went to Constantinople. With the means left him by his parents, he built a small stall in the city bazaar and was occupied with trade.

He loved to work, he honorably filled all his orders, and his business was successful. However, his soul did not yearn for earthly blessings, but for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Saint John lived during difficult times. Constantinople was under the dominion of the Turks, and Christians were subjected to oppressions. Many Christian tradesmen and merchants went over to the Moslem religion. Saint John reproached them for their betrayal of Christ, and he also sustained the unwavering in their faith. The apostates were filled with hatred for Saint John, and they desired his ruin. The saint knew this, but was not afraid. He was willing to suffer for Christ.

On Great and Holy Friday he went to his spiritual Father and asked his blessing to seek martyrdom. The priest counselled the youth to examine himself and to prepare himself by fasting and prayer, so that at the time of torture he would not deny Christ. Saint John prayed ardently to the Lord to strengthen him. At night on Great and Holy Saturday he saw himself in a dream, standing in a fiery furnace and singing praises to the Lord. Interpreting this vision as an indication to go to martyrdom, Saint John received the Holy Mysteries and asked the priest’s blessing.

When Saint John arrived at the market, the vexed tradesmen began to reproach him that he had promised to renounce Christ, but that he was not fulfilling his word. In reply, the martyr declared that he was a Christian and had never renounced, nor would he ever renounce Christ.

Then the envious merchants had him arrested. The judge tried to persuade Saint John to accept Islam, for he respected him as a skilled master craftsman. But the martyr steadfastly confessed himself a Christian. For several days, they wearied him with hunger and thirst, and beat him without mercy. They sentenced the martyr to be burned alive.

Saint John met his sentence with joy. When they led him to the blazing fire, he went boldly into the midst of the flames. The torturers, seeing that Saint John was prepared to die in the fire, pulled him out and beheaded him with the sword (+ 1526). They then threw the martyr’s head and body into the fire.

Christians gathered up the bones of the martyr which remained from the fire and reverently brought them to the cathedral church.

VENERABLE EVTHYMIUS (1435) , ENLIGHTENER OF KARELIA, FINLAND, and THE RIGHTEOUS ANTHONY and FELIX

According to an ancient manuscript Hemerologion (Ημερολογιον), Saint Euthymios was born in the second half of the XIV century. From his youth, he felt drawn to the monastic life, so when he reached adulthood, he traveled north around the year 1400 in order to live as an Anchorite. Later, about 1410, several disciples came to him, begging him to guide them in the monastic life. On the shores of the White Sea in Karelia, 34 versts from Archangelsk, they built a monastery dedicated to the Holy Wonderworker Saint Nicholas of Myra in Lycia (December 6), with cells for the monks.

At first, nothing seemed to go well for the monks, who had settled in an area inhabited by pagans. Saint Euthymius knew, however, that in the place where they labored, one day the monastic life would be firmly established, and the Faith would flourish.

In 1418, the Venerable Anthony and Felix, the two devout sons of Martha Boretska, the wife of a government official (посадница) from Novgorod, were drowned at the mouth of the North Dvina River while exploring the land. These young brothers were buried at Saint Nicholas monastery. In life, they were distinguished for their works of charity, and their grief-stricken mother asked Saint Euthymius to pray for the sons who had been taken from her. Subsequently, their names were included in the manuscript Lives of the Saints of Saint Nicholas Monastery.

In 1419, the monastery was destroyed by Norwegian invaders, who descended upon the monastery, burned the church, and killed several of the monks. Saint Euthymius decided that he would rebuild the monastery, and Martha Boretska gave a large sum of money for the monastery to be rebuilt over the graves of her sons.

Saint Euthymius reposed peacefully in 1435, and was buried at the monastery in Karelia, as were his disciples Stephen the Ascetic, Isaiah, and Nikanor.

In 1641, Saint Euthymios of Karelia was glorified for his apostolic labors in Karelia, and his holy relics were uncovered in 1647. Now they rest in a hidden place within the monastery.

A Church Service has been composed for Saints Euthymius, Anthony, and Felix. They are commemorated on April 18, and again on May 21, the Synaxis of All Saints of Karelia.

Source: Orthodox Church in America_OCA

JOHN 12:17-50

17 Therefore the people, who were with Him when He called Lazarus out of his tomb and raised him from the dead, bore witness. 18 For this reason, the people also met Him because they heard that He had done this sign.

19 The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, "You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!" 20 Now there were certain Greeks among those who came up to worship at the feast.

21 Then they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." 22 Philip came and told Andrew, and in turn Andrew and Philip told Jesus.

23 But Jesus answered them, saying, "The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. 24 Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.

25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.

27 Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify Your name. Then a voice came from heaven, saying, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again."

29 Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, "An angel has spoken to Him." 30 Jesus answered and said, "This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake.

31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. 32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.

33 This He said, signifying by what death He would die. 34 The people answered Him, "We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever; and how can You say, 'The Son of Man must be lifted up'? Who is this Son of Man?"

35 Then Jesus said to them, "A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light. These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them.

37 But although He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him, 38 that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke: Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?"

39 Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: 40 He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, Lest they should see with their eyes, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them."

41 These things Isaiah said when he saw His glory and spoke of Him. 42 Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue;

43for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. 44 Then Jesus cried out and said, "He who believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me.

45 And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me. 46 I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness.

47 And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. 48 He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him-the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.

49 For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. 50 And I know that His command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak.

MATTHEW 26:6-16

6 And when Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, 7 a woman came to Him having an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil, and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table. 8 But when His disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, "Why this waste? 9 For this fragrant oil might have been sold for much and given to the poor. 10 But when Jesus was aware of it, He said to them, "Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me. 11 For you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always. 12 For in pouring this fragrant oil on My body, she did it for My burial. 13 Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her. 14 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests 15 and said, "What are you willing to give me if I deliver Him to you?" And they counted out to him thirty pieces of silver. 16 So from that time he sought opportunity to betray Him.

#orthodoxy #orthodoxchristianity #easternorthodoxchurch #originofchristianity #spirituality #holyscriptures #gospel #bible #wisdom #faith #saints

4 notes · View notes