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acircusfullofdemons · 10 months

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For the ask meme: questions 1-10 for the last 3 paras you’ve daydreamed about PLUS whatever questions Emory can/wants to answer 😈 (<- evilly gets you to talk about your paras) (if it’s not too much of an undertaking). -👁️‍🗨️

[ ASK GAME] || Last 3 paras I daydreamed about were Ozzie, Neil, and a few canon characters from their source that don't have para/maac equivalents yet (save for maaybbee Lucky Moth & Arachne). SO I'm gonna force Emory to answer these as well! (/j he's being nice today lol)

1.) What’s your name? Pronouns?

Emory: My name is Emory. I don't really care about pronouns, but [Luka] uses he/him for me.

Ozzie: Dr. Oswald Octavius, but most people call me "Ozzie", and I encourage you to do the same! My pronouns are he/him.

Neil: Oh I have a name. A human name. A totally normal, believable human name. That I will share now! ....N...Neil...? Yes, that's it. My totally normal and legal human name, that is definitely in any name-finding systems you may or may not have. My pronouns are....uh. None of your business (he doesn't know what they are, I use he/him but tbh I doubt he'd care what you'd use).

2.) What’s your gender and sexuality?

Emory: Being an...interdimensional being, I don't exactly have either of those. The sexuality that describes me best is asexual I believe. I feel no attraction to anything. Gender? I am a cat. Cats don't have gender.

Ozzie: I'm a cis, bisexual male.

Neil: People have tried explaining "gender" to me and I still don't get it. I have sex with Ozzie. Is that anything?

3.) How would you describe your aesthetic?

Emory. Libraries. Old books. Cats, naturally.

Ozzie: Oh let's see...lab coats, octopuses, robots, turtlenecks, am I doing this right?

Neil: Teeth. Claws. Sports? Is it supposed to be things we like? Then Ozzie. Fighting. Food, but specifically ice cream and doughnuts.

4.) What are your hobbies?

Emory: Reading, traversing the different paracosms/dimensions, watching [Luka]'s life play out.

Ozzie: Well, I mostly try to take care of my actuators, they're quite a handful! But I also like to read, I've taken up knitting recently! I will admit, most of my time nowadays is spent teaching Neil how society works.

Neil: Eating, sleeping, fighting. I used to fight Lucky Moth as a hobby, but that was less of a "hobby" and more of a "job". But now I help him fight crime! That's definitely a hobby, I don't do it all the time. I dunno. I'm pretty active in general, so I've tried just about every outdoor activity there is.

5.) How old are you? (Can be as vague or specific as you feel comfortable!) Does your age change at all? If so, which age are you most frequently? Do you “act your age”?

Emory: Hm. Old. I consider myself ageless. There is a version of me in Phantasmagoria that was portrayed as 19, though that happened long ago and

(Ozzie doesn't have a determined age yet, somewhere around 45-51?? His FC is 70 which. damn Alfred Molina is still hot af.)

Neil: I. I don't know...Somewhere around Ozzie's age, I guess? An adult?? I'm told I'm like a toddler sometimes.

6.) What’s the name of your paracosm/source (if applicable)? How would you describe your paracosm/source? (Can be a physical description or like a summary of the plot!)

Ozzie & Neil are the Spiderman villains Doc Ock & Green Goblin respectively. They're my own personal take on the characters, namely wanting to see different variants of them like we saw different spiderpeople in Spiderverse. A lot of their characterizations take inspo from the live action Spiderman films — the ones that star Tobey Maguire & Andrew Garfield. Their subcosm/volume name in MaaC is "A Plague of Octopuses", because Neil's alias is Plague & Ozzie is, well, octopus themed.

Emory: My "source"? Let's see. I was always "part" of Phantasmagoria, though it isn't exactly my "home". I consider that the now defunct paracosm "At the Graveyard", [Luka]'s old Creepypasta paracosm. That is where my backstory technically originates from. Phantasmagoria is like living in a video game. At the Graveyard was mainly about Slenderman hiring a Seer/Medium/one who could see ghosts to deal with the ghost problem. I never had a problem with the various ghosts there, but that might be because I'm a cat and ask for things nicely.

7.) Do/Did you consider yourself a veritbond?

Emory: yes.

(the other two are regular paras so. they cannot answer this question. personally, I don't consider them as such.)

8.) Are/Were you a primpara (“original character”), a fictpara (para from a show/movie/game/book/comic/etc), a fictpara (someone the host/daydreamer knew or knew of IRL/thisverse), or somewhere in between?

Ozzie & Neil are fictparas! Technically. I've definitely put way to many headcanons & aus into them at this point (even tho it's been...like 5 days lmao someone help them). So like most of my "fictparas", they're actually a horrible mix of prim/fictpara lol.

Emory is a primpara, but based/inspired by a number of fictional talking cats (Cheshire, Binx from Hocus Pocus, The Cat from Coraline, Salem the Cat), however his main inspo was all the different Stan Lee cameos the MCU had. I wanted something like that for Phantasmagoria, a character that was somehow always there, yknow? Anyway. I have a draft of Emory’s opinions on those kitties that I keep forgetting to post.

9.) Are/Were you a parame (“main character”)? If not, do you know the parame?

Emory: I keep watch over everything happening, so I find myself in close proximity to the ever-changing parames. Neil seems to be the current parame that's getting focus, though unfortunately I haven't gotten a chance to met him in-paracosm yet.

(yeah he doesn't really interact with MaaC as a whole idk why :/)

10.) Are/Were you a paraself (“self insert”)? If not, do you know the paraself?

Emory: Do I know the — I wish I could say I didn't. Vincent has caused a great deal of trouble — especially as Entropy. Though I'll admit, Calypso is more tolerable, if I had to choose out of the two.

12.) What is your level of awareness when it comes to daydreams? Are you aware of other paracosms? Can you access them or are they unreachable to you?

Emory: The Daydreams are like a play for me, almost. I have my "role" that I fufil to the best of my ability. I can access everything there is, whenever I wish to. Very useful for when I don't want to be part of a current situation.

13.) Do you have any control over a paracosms, paras, or daydreaming? Do you have any control over yourself in daydreams?

Emory: I can block off paracosms if I wish. I don't do it very often because [Luka] is a toddler that needs to be entertained 24/7.

(RUDE >:()

18.) Do you interact with the MaDD or ID community at all? Why or why not?

Emory: I've managed to convince [Luka] to set up a blog for me on here. They've gotten as far as typing a pinned post and saving a few drafts. Both of us go back and forth on doing so. For me, it doesn't really matter. I just want something to resemble my library, and if I can get it through a measly little blog, then fine. I can't control [Luka]'s body, just ask them nicely to type things for me (as they are so generously doing now), so there isn't much that can be done if they don't want to do something.

44.) If you feel comfortable, show us what you look like! (picrew, ArtBreeder, art, etc)

[Luka] has shared drawings of my where I'm a black cat with magenta eyes. This is an accurate depiction of me. I also have a "human" form that I use less often, but will if necessary. I believe everyone is familiar with my cat form [source] [source], so here is what I look like as a human (art by [Luka]):

and edits [Luka] has done of me:

#paraportal #luka answers #player: blue bubonic #console: mad as a crow #game: a plague of octopuses #oswald osborne #neil o'brian #console: phantasmagoria #emory warwick #game: as the world falls down #omg this took so long. mainly bc of formatting.#had to pspsps emory to come to front so he could answer lol #i love Neil’s answers. he has no idea whats going on lmaoao #still figuring out ozzie n neils personalities so. yeha.

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newamsterdame · 4 years

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a deadly education is tone-deaf at best and racist at worse; not the cure to jkr anyone was hoping for

Harry Potter’s massive cultural impact means that we haven’t seen the last of magic schools set in Britain, and we probably won’t for a long while. In some ways, the fantasy genre’s response to Rowling’s work is tiresome. In others, it’s exciting—because a generation of readers and writers have grown up to bring their own perspective to the limits of Rowling’s work and push it beyond the limits of its author. However, if you’re looking for a transgressive magic academy book that interrogates the limited morality, inclusivity, and perspective of Harry Potter, you should put Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education back on the shelf and keep looking.

A Deadly Education tells the story of Galadriel “El” Higgins, a half-British half-Indian sorcerer attending a magic school where the consequences of any mistake might mean sudden death. El is a loner by nature and circumstance, but walking alone in the halls of Scholomance might mean being attacked and devoured by one of the school’s monsters. This puts El on a crash course with Orion Lake, the shining hero of her year who takes it upon himself to save the lives of his fellow students, including a less-than-grateful El.

The set up honestly sounds pretty good—a prickly protagonist, a heroic rival-slash-love interest, a deadly setting, and the potential for deep lore in magic and world-building. Unfortunately, not only does Novik fail to deliver on any of the premises’ strengths, she also chooses to weigh her narrative down with reductive, tone-deaf, and downright racist details.

El’s particular class of magic relies on language. El speaks English and Marathi, and picks up Sanskrit, Hindi, Latin and Old English in her study of language-based spells. It’s a little uncomfortable that Novik lumps dead and defunct languages like Latin and Old English together with actively spoken ones like Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish, but that isn’t where Novik’s faux paus end. El approaches languages like computer programs to be downloaded onto her hard drive. Despite languages being the basis of her magic, she has no personal connections to the ones she’s speaking. She views other students and their languages the same way, identifying groups of students as “the Mandarin speakers”, “the Arabic speakers,” etc. Novik seems clueless about the relationships between the languages she’s building her world’s magic around, putting Sanskrit tombs in Baghdad and declaring that the Scholomance has a library aisle containing all of India’s languages. (About 800 individual languages are spoken in India, fyi.)

This clinical approach to diversity extends from language into character. El doesn’t try to make many friends, and honestly it’s not hard to see her classmates don’t try to befriend her, either. She doesn’t describe her classmates as people—she describes them as assets. And while that could be explained away by the premise that half her classmates won’t make it out of school alive, and El needs allies more than friends to survive, it doesn’t make it any better when El refers to others exclusively by the language knowledge they offer her. A character named Ibrahim has no personality or backstory, but he conveniently pops up when El needs someone who knows Arabic. A character named Kaito is thoughtlessly grouped in with the Mandarin speakers. An Argentine character exclaims in Spanish when she’s excited or relieved. There’s an uncomfortable distinction between the languages that get written out in the text—Spanish, French—and the ones that get narrated away—a character exclaims in Mandarin.

Novik goes out of her way to let us know that the population of Scholomance is diverse. There’s a group of South and West African students (only one of whom is named, and none of whom are important). There’s a “civilized” enclave of magicians in Toronto who value family and human life more than other groups. One character might graduate and go to Bangkok, but he’s looking to secure himself a place in Shanghai instead. Naomi Novik really knows the names of cities on at least four continents, and she’s not about to let you forget it!

But aside from names, languages, and cities, Novik has given no thought to what diversity means, or who these characters are if they come from diverse backgrounds. El calls on “Mandarin-speaker,” Yi Liu, exclusively by the name Liu. Is Liu meant to be this character’s first name? Or her surname? El doesn’t call anyone else by surname, but Liu is a Chinese surname, one of the most common in the world. El’s father is a Marathi-speaker from Mumbai, but El has no personal connection to Indian culture. Her father’s family prophesied that El would be a destroyer, and other than that rejection El has nothing to say about India or half of her culture. She refers to her Indian relatives in clinical English descriptors (my father’s mother, my great-grandmother, my uncles), even though she is purportedly fluent in Marathi and should know words like Panaji, Aaji and Kaka. El says that her Indian family is from an old Hindu enclave, and yet they have djinn as servants. (Djinn aren’t a typical part of Hindu cosmology, though they are a significant part of Islamic texts.)

Making El biracial seems like an afterthought, not something that affects her character in any way. It just creates some truly unfortunate optics, like when El goes on a three-paragraph description of how unnecessary she finds showers and how dirty she is at any given time. El’s father died making sure her pregnant mother (and therefore, El herself) would live, and yet El barely thinks about him. His name is mentioned once in the entire book. El complains that (presumably white) British people “assume she speaks Hindi” or call her the color of weak tea. But her Indian heritage is a veneer placed on top of a character who is otherwise just a default white protagonist.

All this adds up to a character (and a world), that reads as nothing so much as colonial. El feasts on the languages of others for her own edification, power, and survival, but she doesn’t see her classmates as people, and she doesn’t see language as a living thing related to real cultures. And I’m given to believe that Naomi Novik holds the same views, what with how she throws around the word “mana” as part of her world-building without considering its roots and real-life meaning to Polynesian and Melanesian peoples.

However, nothing makes the cultural tone-deafness of this book more evident than this passage:

Dreadlocks are unfortunately not a great idea thanks to lockleeches, which you can probably imagine, but in case you need help, the adult spindly thing comes quietly down at night and pokes an ovipositor into any big clumps of hair, lays an egg inside, and creeps away. A little while later the leech hatches inside its comfy nest, attaches itself to your scalp almost unnoticeably, and starts very gently sucking up your blood and mana while infiltrating further. If you don’t get it out within a week or two, it usually manages to work its way inside the skull, and you’ve got a window of a few days after that before you stop being able to move. On the bright side, something else usually finishes you off quickly at that point.

El’s pithy commentary about imminent death aside, I have a hard time reading anything but casual and thoughtless racism from this passage. The nefarious and deliberate myth of dreadlocks being unhygienic (and by extension, Black people being endemically dirty) is pervasive to this day. And Naomi Novik decides to include this passage in a book that has no major Black characters, in which dreadlocks never even come up in any meaningful way, just to remind us that in this magic world of hers, dreadlocks are dirty! Monster insects nest in them! The consequences are death! There was no good reason to include this passage, and all it does is draw on inaccurate and racist myths and perpetuate them into a world where anti-Black racism is never contended with. Although, I suppose, why would it? El never has need of any languages from the West or South Africans.

A Deadly Education bills itself as a subversive, even feminist, response to Harry Potter. But just like J. K. Rowling, Naomi Novik is a white author who uses other cultures thoughtlessly to build her own magic world. Other cultures and peoples exist, but only to serve the aims and needs of white (or mostly white-coded) characters. Novik has no empathy, no care and apparently no ability to Google anything about the cultures she wants to draw on. And the result isn’t just insulting—it’s boring. The world-building in this book is as dry and dusty as any history written by 19th century British colonizers.

Using some foreign names and making your protagonist biracial does not shield your work from racism. It does open you up to more pitfalls in depicting other peoples and cultures, if you don’t care to look out for them.

It would be nice to close by saying that despite its flaws, A Deadly Education is an enjoyable book. But it isn’t. It’s just a badly-researched, emotionless story told by rote.

#a deadly education #naomi novik #book reviews #quality text blog

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queenlua · 3 years

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You're a druid and an ex-evangelical, right? What does being a druid mean to you? How did you get from evangelicalism to where you are now? And of course feel free to ignore this if it's nosy. (sincerely, a Christian who wants to leave but who doesn't know what to do)

this is going to make me sound ignorant as hell, lol, but i'm happy to share

under a cut because this got very long, sorry, lol.

my personal progression was: "vaguely christian -> VERY christian -> christian agnostic -> agnostic/atheist -> agnostic/druid -> some sorta druid-neopagan-animist thing." i guess i'll just go through what made me switch between each of those, and close out with some high-level thoughts that may be helpful for you?

okay, so when i was

VAGUELY CHRISTIAN,

i went to Sunday school every week because That's What You Do, and because my whole hometown was very southern Baptist, i never questioned the veracity of its teachings much... until they ran a whole weekly series on "why [x] is wrong," where [x] is some other group

e.g., we had a week on why Mormons are wrong, and i didn't bat an eye because i hadn't even known Mormons existed until that moment

then we had a week on why Muslims are wrong, and that... bothered me, because i had a friend who was Muslim, and she was just objectively a better person than me, and i was like "any universe where she goes to hell and i don't seems really fucked up"

then we had a week on why EVOLUTION was wrong, and that just absolutely threw me, because while i hadn't thought about evolution much (i think i was in fourth grade or so), it seemed common-sense? scientists thought highly of it? "adaptation over time" just seems logical?

so i went to the public library every day after school for like a week, read some Darwin and some science books, and came back to my Sunday school teacher with, like, an itemized list of objections to the whole "evolution is wrong" thing. and he came up with some standard Answers In Genesis rebuttals, and i did more research and came back the next week with more science, and we repeated this a few times until he was like "lua, you just gotta take some things on faith"

which. lmao. full existential crisis time, because no matter how hard i thought, i couldn't *not* believe in the science, but i also didn't want to go to hell, so i was like "maybe if i believe SUPER HARD i will SOMEDAY be able to unbelieve the condemn-me-to-hell bits"

so i decided to become

VERY CHRISTIAN

and my frantic googling for shit like "proof of god" and "god and evolution" *eventually* broke me out of the Answers In Genesis circles of the internet, and into some decent Christian apologia, like, think First Things and various Catholic bloggers. and there, i found some way to square my gut sense that evolution was right, with a spiritual worldview.

like, i remember finding some blogger who said:

"young earth creationists get tripped up when they try to explain stars that are millions of light-years away, and end up basically arguing that God's tricking us somehow, and—no! my God lets you believe in the evidence of your eyes, my God does not demand that you make yourself ignorant or stupid, my God expects you to use your brain"

and i just started crying at my computer, because no one had ever said "using your brain is Good and part of God's will," i was like *finally* here's someone who won't tell me i'm going to hell for just *thinking* about things

(st. augustine does a much better riff on a similar theme, fwiw, but i only found him later)

still, it was an uneasy fit, because, the more i learned and read about world history, the more it seemed... weird... that the One And Singular Path To Salvation was... the successor to some niche desert cult... which didn't even occur at the *beginning* of written history, like, it was all predated by that whole Mithraism thing, etc... and like, sure, i could trot out all the standard theological talking points for why Actually This Makes Perfect Sense, but gut-level-wise, the aesthetics just seemed kinda dumb! and no level of talking myself out of it made that feeling go away!

so at this point i started referring to myself as a

CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC

i mean, not aloud. i still lived in southernbaptistopia and i didn't want, like, my hair stylist to tell me i was a horrible person. but in my *head* i called myself Christian agnostic and it felt right.

and i started church-hopping, which honestly was really fun, would recommend to anyone at any point. i visited the fire-and-brimstone baptist church, the methodist church, the episcopalians, the universal unitarians, etc.

unfortunately, while this gave me *some* new perspectives, each of the places either had the same shitty theology as my old megachurch (i remember the *acute* sense of despair i felt when i was starting to jive with a methodist church... only for the dumbass youth minister to start going on about evolution), or, they just lacked any sense of the *sacred*. like, the Church of Christ churches, with their a capella services, *definitely* had it; i felt more God there in one service than i did in a lifetime of shitty Christian rock at the megachurch. but their beliefs were even *more* batshit, so. big L on that one.

having failed to find a satisfactory church, i was basically

AGNOSTIC/ATHEIST

by the time i went to college, but honestly pretty unhappy about it; while it was harder than ever for me to actually *connect* with the divine, i didn't like thinking that my previous experiences of the divine were total lies. because my shitty evangelical church, for all its faults, could not *completely* sabotage the sense of God's presence. there were real moments in that church where i do believe i experienced something divine. mostly mediated by one particular youth minister, who in hindsight was the only spiritual teacher in that church who didn't seem a bit rotten inside, but! it was something!

so when i happened upon a bunch of writings on the now-defunct shii.org (that's the bit that makes me look WILDLY ignorant, lol), i was utterly captivated.

said author was a previous archdruid of the Reformed Druids of North America, an organization that was formed in the 1960s to troll the administration of Carleton College (there was a religious-service-attendance requirement; they made their own religion; their religion had whiskey and #chilltimes for its services). however, this shii.org dude seemed to take it pretty seriously. he was studying history of religion and blogged a lot about his studies, both academic and otherwise. while RDNA had started out as a troll, that didn't mean they hadn't *discovered* something real in the process, he said.

this, already, was going to be innately appealing to me; i've got a soft spot for wow-we-were-doing-this-ironically-but-now-it's-kinda-real? stuff in general.

in particular, shii.org’s discussions on the separation of ritual from belief was really interesting to me: most religions/spiritualities have *both*, but like, you can do a ritual without having the Exact Right Beliefs (if there even is such a thing!), and it can still be useful to you, it can have real power. (he had a really lovely essay, speculating on the origins of religion as just a form of art, but that essay is now lost to the sands of time, alas.)

(note that i wouldn't really recommend seeking out *recent* writing by the shii.org guy; he kinda went full tedious neoreactionary-blowhard-who-reads-a-lot-of-Spengler at some point? sigh.)

the shii.org guy led me to checking out a bunch of books on the history of neopaganism & also books by scholars of religion in general, and the more i read, the more excited i became. and i started doing little ritual/meditation stuff here and there.

then i was fortunate enough to attend some events with Earthspirit (this was when i lived in Boston), which cemented my hippie dalliances into something more real. the folks there, being from Boston, were all ridiculously overeducated (a sensibility that appeals to me), but also, being the kind of folks who drive out to a mountain in the middle of nowhere for a spiritual retreat, they tolerated a full range of oddities (everyone from aging-70s-feminist-wiccans to living-on-a-farm-with-your-bros-Astaru to dude-who-started-having-weird-visions-and-is-just-trying-to-figure-out-the-deal to Nordic-spiritualist-with-two-phds-from-Scandanavian-universities-on-the-subject, etc), which gave me a lot of room to explore different types of rituals, ceremonies, "magic", etc.

(polytheism in general lends itself well to this sort of easy plurality! i can believe other people are experiencing something real with their gods, and i can be talking to a totally different set of gods, and that’s just all very compatible, etc)

anyway, i started calling myself

AGNOSTIC/DRUID

around then, because i knew i'd found *something*, something that felt like all the realest moments i'd ever had in nature, and all the realest moments i'd ever had in that shitty megachurch, but i wasn't quite ready to put a theology to it.

but, idk, you do the thing for a while, and you start encountering some things that you may as well call gods, and you realize you're in pretty deep, and you ditch the "agnostic" bit and just throw hands and start describing yourself as

SOME SORTA DRUID-NEOPAGAN-ANIMIST THING

because that's the most precise thing you can muster. in particular, the druid bit resonates because nature's still very much at the center of my practice; the neopagan bit resonates because i'm not especially interested in reconstructing older traditions or being faithful to any actual pre-Christian traditions, and animist resonates because what i sometimes call gods seem to be tied pretty tightly to the land itself. it's all very experiential; all this mostly means i'm some weird chick who sometimes grabs a car and drives out someplace very lonely and hikes for a while and does some hippie shit to try and talk with the land or the god or whatever is there. and sometimes i come back from it changed, or refocused, or what-have-you, and hopefully i'm better for it. i'm aware this makes me look a little ridiculous, and is an unsatisfying answer, sorry!

WRT YOUR SITUATION

i don't know you or your situation, obviously, but if i wanted to give former-me some advice to save her some angst, i'd say

-> Christendom itself is far wilder and more diverse than many churches lead you to believe. if you still want to be Christian on some level, and it's just a shitty church that's convinced you the whole project is fucked, i'd honestly explore, i dunno, your nearest Quaker meeting. they're invoking the Holy Spirit with regularity but they're not raging douchenozzles about it.

-> if you're specifically interested in druidism, i found John Michael Greer's "A World Full of Gods" really nice. (caveat: Greer has *also* gone full right-wing nutjob these days, sigh, so like. would not recommend a great swath of his writing. but that one's good)

-> deciding that a just God wouldn't give me a brain and then ask me not to use it was hugely comforting to me. like, that was the start of the whole process, that was what made me feel ok searching for other churches and trying to find something that fit. obviously you should take this with 800 grains of salt, because obviously i'm no longer Christian, and thus maybe i'm just some poor misguided fallen soul, but... i still kinda believe that! maybe if you can make yourself believe that, it'll seem less scary?

idk, happy to answer more questions, sorry for the long ramble, hope it helped~

#druid stuff

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self-proclaimed-chaotic-good · 3 years

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The Road Ahead | Adam Milligan x Reader

Words: 2279

Warning: None, except some typos and Adam not being in this one as much.

A/N: How does writing work again? What do you mean I have to type it out? I’m thinking of a series name for this to organize these continuous oneshots. No promises of regular updates. It’s only when I can.

Continuation of [True Winchester Fashion] and [Night at the Museum].

The museum director hummed softly to herself as her heels echoed through the empty halls of the building. The exhibit was coming along nicely and her contact had come through and found an actual grimoire. Finally, her years of searching were finally over. If only she had brushed up on her Latin, then she would have had no problem translating it herself. Her senior curator had fallen sick after a week of trying to translate the ancient book, which left the college student rookie to translate. She had kept an eye on you for some time now. She had seen the potential in you, the potential of witchcraft. It takes practice and intelligence to master it and she had only wished the matrilineal side of her family had kept on the tradition of passing down the defunct coven’s knowledge. No matter. Blood of the coven is thicker than water of the womb, as they say. You make your own family.

With each passing week of you translating the grimoire, more incidents had been occurring around town. She wanted to approach you about it, to help you control the power of the book, but it would mean revealing her intentions too soon. She had watched you run in fear when the growing number of creatures had reached the museum. Then, those damn FBI agents had to get involved. They stopped by the museum after you had reported the bodies of the security guards that night and she had to pretend to be a clueless director that had limited knowledge about the objects in the museum and the history they hold.

It would be a matter of time before the grimoire gets out of control.

Exiting the museum, she felt a cold presence behind her. She spun around and saw a woman with the reddest hair, palest skin, and radiating the most powerful energy she had ever felt. The woman’s red lips split into a smile, a chill running down the director’s back telling her that it wasn’t a friendly one.

“Who are you?” she asked, taking a step back.

“Oh, dear. Oh, sweet dearie. You dare mess with magic and not know who I am?” The woman chuckled, taking a step forward. “I’m Rowena, the most powerful witch that ever graced this horrible planet and… the current Queen of Hell.”

“Queen of Hell. You must be joking.”

Rowena stared her down and the director suddenly felt her knees giving out. “I have been told that I have a grim sense of humor, but I do not joke about this. And you, missy, must think that witchcraft is a joke. What was it? Some kind of soul searching, finding out who you are from your family tree? Think you could feel close to them if you get a fancy old book and a cauldron?” she said mockingly. “What’s your name, sweetheart.”

“Joana Faith,” she gasped as the weight on her shoulders lifted.

Rowena hummed. “You. You need to fix this mess. As much as I love chaos, I love organized chaos and I’m not going to let some amature run around with a powerful grimoire like she’s in Harry Potter. You watch yourself, because I will also be watching you, Joana Faith.”

“Alright, alright.” Joana slowly picked herself off the ground. “And what about those FBI agents that have been snooping around? How is all of this going to be explained?”

Rowena rolled her eyes, a mix of irritable fondness in one gesture. “Those boys. They probably already know by now. As long as you set things right, you don’t have to worry about them. You do know how to stabilize that grimoire, right?”

“Well…”

Rowena rolled her eyes again.

Adam felt Michael’s presence in the back of his mind, asking to take over. “I can help,” the archangel said. Adam nodded, taking a step back and allowing Michael to take control.

“I don’t know what to do,” you moaned, clutching your head between your hands as eerie figures began to crowd around the windows of your apartment.

Your eyes landed on the grimoire, the leathery surface and crispy pages drawing you in like a magnet. Heat radiated off of the old padlock as your hand drifted closer. There were ancient powers in that book, power to change things, to manipulate them, and to end things. And the grimoire chose you.

You could hear Adam’s voice, but it sounded like you were under water. You couldn’t catch what it was, but you felt your heart pick up in panic. This wasn’t right. This was something that you don’t know about… but maybe you can learn to.

Firm hands gripped your shoulders as you were yanked away from the grimoire. Adam’s hazel eyes were looking down at you, but it didn’t feel like Adam. You still couldn’t understand what he was saying. He frowned, pressing two fingers onto your forehead. Heat spread through your head, brightness filling your vision as if you were pulled out of the ocean.

“Sam and Dean will be coming to deal with the monsters outside, but I need you to focus.” He paused, watching as your eyes still drifted down to the grimoire. “That thing doesn’t call to just anyone, you know.”

As you calmed yourself, so did the noises outside, the dark shadows disappearing from view. Your eyes snapped back to him. “What does that mean?”

“It means, my dear, that you have a gift and a curse,” came a Scottish woman’s voice.

You spun a head around and saw a red haired woman and Joana who looked haggard. The red haired woman rolled her eyes at her.

“Oh, please, you want to be a witch and you can’t even handle teleportation,” she chided. She looked over at you and Adam and smiled. “Hello, Michael. Fancy seeing you here. Playing college student, I see.”

“Rowena,” ‘Adam’ said with a curt nod, “You’re here for the book.”

“Of course I am. Even if the Winchesters deal with those monsters outside, there’ll be more coming if we don’t get that book under control. You,” Rowena sauntered over to you, “How much of the book you’ve read already?”

“Almost all of it,” you said sheepishly.

She hummed, looking almost impressed. A grimoire would be difficult for a beginner, but for someone who had no experience to make it that far into the book is a feat in itself. Maybe you’d be useful to her in the future, or maybe become a potential apprentice.

“Well, you two are glad that I’m here. Listen up, I’m about to give you a Witchcraft crash course and I expect you to pay attention. You wouldn’t want me to visit you when I’m upset. Michael, help those boys outside while I sort this out, would you?”

Adam stood up and gave her a look of warning. “Make sure (Y/n) is safe-”

“Or else what, dearie?” she smirked. There wasn’t much use arguing with the Queen of Hell, especially if it was Rowena Macleod.

He glowered before turning to you. “It’s going to be okay,” he assured you.

You watched him disappear with a small gust, strands of your hair flying out of your face and loose paper flying off the table. “What do you mean by Michael?” you asked Rowena.

“Oh, he didn’t tell you? Your boyfriend Adam is the vessel of the archangel Michael,” she said nonchalantly, “but we’ll unpack that later. We’ve got work to do.”

There was an energy that coursed through your veins that you never knew was possible. It was invigorating, like you could fly or punch through a wall. Rowena warned you about becoming too power hungry.

“Ambition is good, but too much can kill you,” she said, then added with a smirk, “Unless you find a way to cheat death, I suggest you know your limits first.”

After the incident with the grimoire, everything seemed to go back to normal. Your friend, who the Winchesters had saved from the vampire den also had no recollection, convinced that she was drugged and kidnapped while your other friend was not so lucky in getting out. The two of you mourned all the same, but only you knew how she really died. No one in town even remembered what happened with the disappearances and the killings, except for you and Joana. You now see her in a different light, knowing what her main goal was in creating the Salem witch exhibit. Her talk with Rowena seemed to humble her and she regarded you with a little more respect than she used to. The exhibit was still ongoing, but this time, no dangerous objects for display. No, that grimoire stayed with you after Rowena helped the two of you contain it. It was now imprinted with you and under your care. You didn’t know where to start.

Adam had disappeared that night and no one remembered him, either. It was as if he had vanished along with everything that was unnatural, like some weird fever dream. Rowena had said that he was a vessel to an angel, the archangel Michael of all things. In any other circumstances, you would have had a hard time believing it, but with the grimoire and the monsters and witches that came with it, it was just another piece to the universal puzzle found. Now you know the truth. The things in stories like the werewolves, the vampires, the witches, and even angels and demons, were all real, and there were people that dealt with them within the shadows. They come and go and only a few even notice them. They save lives without any recognition or reward. Hunters, they were called. The Winchesters.

After graduating college, you weren’t sure what you wanted to do. There was the museum library, but it was no longer what you wanted to do. Now that you have discovered witchcraft, you wanted to know what you could do. Maybe you could help people, too, like Adam and his brothers.

You cleared up your desk at the museum as you snacked on the brownies that a senior curator had brought in for your last day. They were sad to see you go, but you told them that you had applied to a museum in the city and wanted to see where you went from there.

“You are always welcomed back here,” one of them said as they hugged you.

Your last stop was the cemetery where your friend had already left flowers. She didn’t talk to you all that much, saying she needed more time with her family and had sought professional help to cope with your mutual loss. Maybe it was for the best. You still blamed yourself for your mutual friend’s death after all.

You turned to leave and was immediately faced with Joana. She had dropped her perky and enthusiastic mask that she had kept up around others and offered a sympathetic smile instead.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said, “I didn’t realize that an old leathery book would cause this much trouble. I’m sorry.” She looked around, eyes squinting as the summer sun beamed down on the two of you. “I heard you were leaving town. Good for you. I… there’s another thing I should apologize for.”

It was then you realized that she had a small book tucked under her arm. She pulled it out and handed it over to you. It was worn from constant use, scribbles and rough sketches on every page. Flipping through them, words like wendigo, werewolves, and revenant, stood out.

“It had been left on your desk that night when… the whole thing with the grimoire had been put to rest. I got curious and… I might have borrowed it. I realized it must have been left by those hunters that had helped us,” Joana explained.

“Possibly by Adam,” you muttered, closing the journal.

“Adam. Rowena said that he was a vessel of an angel. Is that true? Did you know?”

You shook your head. “Not sure how much from the Queen of Hell is true but I wouldn’t be too surprised anymore if it was. There is a lot out there that people don’t know about. What about you? What are you going to do now?”

She shrugged. “I could dabble here and there. I think I want to use it to protect this town, though. After everything that happened, I realized the impact of one thing could have on a whole community, especially when it involves things that people don’t believe existed. If those hunters hadn’t come here, hell, even if Adam hadn’t decided to go to school here, who knows what would have happened.”

“Yeah. Makes you think about those that weren’t so lucky. I’m going to try to learn more about this… this whole business with supernatural things. If I have a gift, I should use it, right?”

Joana nodded before stepping back. “Well, good luck. Come back whenever and tell me about what you’ve found. I’m curious, but I don’t think I’m cut out for venturing.”

“I’ll be sure to do that.”

As you walked towards your car, there was the bittersweet ache in your chest. You had never lived away from home before, the town was practically all you knew. Yet, there was something inside of you that felt that you had the potential to do more and be more than what you were now, and it wasn’t going to change unless you stepped away into something new.

The road ahead was dangerous, but it was better than staying in one spot forever. Maybe one day, you would even run into Adam again.

#adam milligan x reader #adam milligan #adam winchester #supernatural imagine #oneshot #spn imagines #SPN #SPN FANDOM #supernatural #wanted to write more about the people that the Winchesters influenced #Wayward Sisters would have been a good show if done right #It shows their influence and also something diff besides the Winchesters within the same universe #It could have been the Rogue One to SPN's SW trilogies #normal people who chose that life and chose to help people #not just the ones that were born in it or destined for greatness

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forever-rogue · 5 years

Text

Quiet Hours

A/N: Hey fam! So, here I am back on my Marvel bullshit, with some Bucky fluff :) This is my entry for @propertyofpoeandbucky‘s writing challenge! My prompt for the challenge was Librarian!AU. I hope you all enjoy, and please let me know what y’all think!

Word Count: 3.7k

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: None

Y/N didn’t even have to bother to turn around and look to see who was coming behind her as loud, booming footsteps echoed throughout the still, silent library. Her shoulders tensed, breath bated as she waited for him to call out her name, or his favorite nickname for her, rather. He had made it a point to visit her almost recently, trying his best to win her over.

“Good morning, Doll,” it was a rich, satin voice, tinged with amusement at her annoyed reaction. She hadn’t said a word, hadn’t made a comment, but her body language gave away her. Slamming the book in her hands shut, a loud snap ringing in the quiet, open space, Y/N turned around to face him. A cheeky, lopsided grin was stretched across his face, a lock of his long brown hair falling into his face. Narrowing her eyes at him, she cocked an eyebrow waiting for him to continue, “what? No smart response, no witty comment? I’ll mark the day that Y/N L/N was rendered speechless on my calendar.”

“Has anyone ever told you how much of a giant prick you are?” she took the book and smacked him in the arm as hard as she could, but it only caused his laughter to bubble up at her vain attempt to cause him pain. He was too strong, his muscles well defined even under the button up he was wearing, for her to do any damage.

But she refused to ever, ever admit that she was attracted to him. She had a reputation to upload, and being in love, or lust, or whatever you wanted to call with James Buchanan Barnes was not a part of that.

“A few people have indeed told me that,” he shrugged off her comment and grabbed the book from her hand, setting it on a nearby shelf, disregarding whether or not the it actually belonged here. Rolling her eyes, she started to walk away, wishing she could escape him, but he didn’t care, he shamelessly followed her, “but none have been as feisty, or as pretty, as you.”

“It’s never gonna happen,” she waved him off, trying to go back to her cart to finish putting away the never ending supply of returned books. The large university library was still almost empty and abandoned, and she wished there was a better reason to get him to leave. She hoped he’d have a class to teach soon, or some student would spy him and ask for assistance on an assignment. Anything.

“You’re so stubborn you won’t even let me take you out to get a cup of coffee?” he’d been attempting, fruitlessly, for the past several months to convince Y/N to go out with him. She had turned him down every single time, no matter what he promised her; dinner and a film? No. Hike and picnic? No. Breakfast and a stroll around town? No. Coffee? No.

“Insulting me isn’t really a good way to get me to agree to go on a date with you,” she turned on her head and glared at him, before going back to sort more books, “besides don’t you have a class to teach?”

“Not until this afternoon,” he shrugged, trying to think of someway to of some way to win her favor and get her to stop shutting him out completely. He’d never done anything to her, but there was something about him that got under her skin - it was a combination off things: his swagger, cocky bravado, the way he always seemed to look down on others.

He wasn’t ever rude, or unkind, but something about him rubbed her the wrong way. But at the same time, it rubbed her in all the right ways, causing all sorts of unchaste and naughty thoughts to run through her mind whenever he was around and, truth be told, when she was home alone at night, only her imagination to keep her company.

“I’m sure there’s other things you could be doing, no?” she didn’t bother to turn around, but keep her eyes focused on the numbers on the spine of the book in her hand. Out of the corner of her eye she could see his jaw tense with annoyance at her inattentiveness, “go get a cup of coffee with Steve...he’s your best friend isn’t he? Or Sam?”

“Sam’s not my friend,” he feigned, pinching the bridge of his nose, “he hangs around with Steve, so at best he’s a friend by association. And Steve’s got back to back classes this morning.”

“Not quite sure how that’s my problem,” Y/N leaned against the bookcase, waiting for what she was sure would be a smart response. He remained silent for a moments, his cerulean eyes shifting rapidly as he searched for a retort. He almost seemed saddened, so she let out a small sigh, “unless there’s a book you you’re dying to read. You can stay if you’ll be quiet and mind your manners.”

“I always mind my manners,” he challenged, a self-satisfied smirk on his face as she almost laughed out loud at the thought. She’d heard, and seen with her own eyes, all the various shenanigans and mishaps he and his friends had gotten into. For a group of university professors, trouble sure seemed to find them a lot.

“That’s highly debatable,” she sighed and he laughed at the distressed expression on her face. She liked his laugh, she decided, its cadences reached her ears in waves, a rich sound. Looking through the top shelf of the cart, she selected what appeared to be the most boring text, based on title alone, and shoved it at him, “if you want to stay in my library, you’re going to read, or get out.”

“Very demanding,” he chuckled as he eagerly took the book from her, padding over to the nearby table, “I like a woman who knows what she wants…”

“James!” she hissed at him, casting a nervous eye around to make sure no one had caught onto them, or his unabashed flirtation. Her cheeks grew hot as they took on a brilliant crimson color, and she turned her back to him so he wouldn’t see the effects he was having on her..

“Bucky,” he said quietly before sliding out a chair and plopping down in it, watching her closely, “my friends call me Bucky.”

“Bucky,” she turned around and gave him a small nod, a smile tugging on the corner of her lips before she grabbed onto the cart and started pushing it away. Bucky, she repeated in her head, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.

“Hey Y/N,” her whipped up at the familiar voice, an her eyes met the those of Steve Rogers, who was observed with a soft smile. She wished she could be annoyed by him, but he was easily one of the sweetest and most gentle people she’d ever encountered, although she was sure she wouldn’t want to get on his bad side. Sweet like honey, but deadly like venom.

“What are the odds,” her own grin was saccharine as she stood up to give him a hug. His strong arms wrapped her and she could feel the tension disasappating from her body, “it’s interesting that you’re here today when I just saw your best friend yesterday.”

“I’d say it’s a small world, but let’s be honest, it’s a small university,” lying had been his strong suit and he wasn’t doing a particularly good job now. Giving him a huff of disapproval, she leaned against the counter before jumping on it and swinging her legs back and forth, “hmm?”

“Oh, were you finished?” she teased, nudging his leg with her foot, “I was just going to see how much further you planned on taking his lie. A small university? This school has over thirty thousand students, I’d hardly consider that small. Now tell me, Professor Rogers, did Bucky send you to try and convince me to go out with him?”

“O-of course not,” his chuckle was stilted and he suddenly became more very interested in the floor, avoiding her probing gaze. She smiled to herself, feeling slightly victorious as she realized she had been right on the money, “I just hadn’t seen you in a while so I wanted to pop in and say hello.”

“Uh huh,” she wasn’t convinced, bu he was so sweet and his fumbling was endearing, so she decided to give him a pass, “it’s always lovely to see you, Steve. We’ll have to have a game night or something soon. We can invite the whole gang, and yes, that can include Bucky. Tell Peggy I said hello.”

With that she swung her legs off the counter and sauntered over to where she spied a student struggling to look for a book, probably unsure of how to use the dewey decimal system. It was an ancient, archaic, and almost defunct system, and she didn’t really understand why it was still in place, but she wasn’t about to argue - it helped keep her in a job.

Just before she was out of ear shot, she turned back to Steve, who was watching her with a dumbfounded look on his handsome face, “and tell Bucky to come and find me himself if he’s so adamant on asking me out. I can sense that he’s in here somewhere, so he can come out of the shadows if he’s feeling brave.”

Steve opened and closed his mouth a few times, resembling a fish out of water more than anything else, as he struggled with what to say. He laughed to himself before hanging his head in amusement, as his cerulean orbs searching for Bucky. Eventually he spied him, standing at the end of a long wall of books, his nose buried in it as he pretended to be reading. His disguise, for lack of a better word, was almost too much: he worse sunglasses with a baseball cap, hair pulled back in a small bun.

“So?” he asked quietly as Steve approached him, ready to make a smart remark about his appearance, “how’d recon on Operation Y/N go?”

“She’s a clever girl,” Steve admitted, as Bucky pulled off his Ray-Bans and stuck them on the top of his cap, “and she’s one hundred percent onto you. Didn’t even give me the chance to probe in the slightest-”

“I should have known-”

“But, if you’d be so kind as to stop interrupting me, she suggested a game night soon,” he patted his shoulder gently, “and she specifically said you were invited. I suppose that’s better than nothing, right?”

“I guess,” he huffed as he crossed his arms over his broad chest, “she’s really going to make me sweat it out….I don’t understand why she just won’t go out with me…”

“Perhaps she’s just not into you?”

“Impossible!” Bucky scoffed at the thought. She fancied him, he could just tell that he did.

“Whatever you say, Buck,” Steve glanced at his watch and saw that it was nearing his office hours, “I’ve got to go to my office. Either go and talk to her, or just let it go. Something will give eventually! And don’t drag Sam into this!”

“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” he insisted meekly, but Steve gave him one final glance of warning. Bucky wasn’t one for rules and it seemed unlikely that he’d suddenly start now.

“Come on, Sam,” Bucky pleaded with his friend. Although they often bickering about seemingly anything and everything, the two of them had formed a tight bond, and than thicker than thieves. Naturally, Bucky had quickly moved to recruit him into gaining more insight into Y/N’s true feelings for him.

“You’re telling me, that after all the stuff you’ve been through in life, including war, you can’t get up the nerve to talk a girl?” Sam was more amused than anything else, picturing Bucky stammering his way through a conversation with Y/N. But then again, he’d never been very lucky in love, despite his best efforts. His shoulders moved up and down with silent laughter as Bucky grow more despondent by the second.

“I have too talked to her,” he insisted, not at all amused by Sam’s response, “it’s just that she’s hard to read. And I know for a fact that she likes me, she’s just too stubborn to admit it.”

“Maybe she’s not actually interested, have you ever considered that?” Sam quickly received a death glare from the brunette man. He held up his hands in defeat and reluctantly gave in, “alright, alright, I’ll talk to your pretty librarian lady friend for you. What exactly are you wanting to get out of this?”

“I dunno,” he mused out loud. He hadn’t really thought that far ahead, a part of him just assumed she’d always turn him down and he’d never make any actual progress in winning her over, “I hadn’t really gotten to that part yet.”

“Let me get this straight; you want me to go to Y/N, find out if you’ve got any sort of chance with her and then...make it not obvious?” Sam sighed at his friend as Bucky gave him an innocent shrug, a nervous smile on his face. Sam reached over and clapped him on the back, shaking his head in amusement, “you’ve got it bad for her, don’t you?”

“I mean have you met her? She’s smart, funny, kind, sweet, and pretty. Have you seen her smile? It’s beautiful,” he let out a blissful sigh as thought of her. He had often spent afternoons in the library, grading papers and tests in there rather than his office, just to catch glimpses of her.

He’s already grown to know all of her little habits and quirks, the way she’d tie up her hair when she was focusing, the way she gave everyone she helped a gentle touch, the way her nose would scrunch up as her glasses slide down her nose. He was a sucker for every little bit of her.

“Aww man, you’re in deep for her,” Sam teased as Bucky’s face took on a dreamy look as thoughts of her flooded in his mind. He stuck his head into the library and spotted her at a table, helping a student animatedly, her arms waving around, “I guess I’ll do it. I can’t say no to a man so clearly smitten and in love.”

“You’re the best,” Bucky snapped back into attention as he shoved Sam inside and followed in quickly after, making himself in a row that contained books on ancient Greek Mythology; it was something interesting to help pass the time, depending on how long Sam took.

“If you have any more questions, just let me know,” Y/N gave the young a pat on the back as she stood up, the chair scraping against the floor. She couldn’t hold back the grin that formed on her face as she saw Sam approaching her, “well, well, well, I can’t say this is exactly unexpected, but it’s a pleasure as always Coach WIlson.”

“You make it sound like I have some ulterior motive for coming to see my friend,” he tried to give her a convincing smile as she beckoned for him to follow her, picking up stray books as they went.

“Oh, I wasn’t trying to imply it,” she smirked, handing him books to carry, “I was trying to state it quite clearly. But are the chances that two days ago Bucky was in here, yesterday Steve, and today you? The Three Musketeers are up to something…”

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” he pretended to be hurt as she just chuckled and raised an eyebrow at him.

“If you wanted to say hi, you could have just texted, you all have my number,” she stopped and plopped the books down onto the counter with a dull thud.

“A text is so much less personal-”

“So it’s not true?” she dated to ask, “Bucky didn’t put the two of you up to this?”

“Oh, well no, that’s totally true,” he admitted quickly, just low enough to where he was sure Bucky wouldn’t be able to hear, “boy’s got it bad for you.”

“I had a feeling,” she let out a long breath, admiring his resilience and determination in trying to get closer to her, “and I’m going to go out on a limb and presume that wasn’t just a random man doing a book on Greek mythology upside down?”

“I never claimed he was a smart man,” Sam sighed at Bucky’s little indiscretion, “he’s just a man that’s got his sights and hearts set on one librarian in particular.”

“Tell you what Sam,” she started to usher him towards the door, “you can go, and I’ll even let it be scotch free, and I’ll go deal with Bucky.”

“You’re a saint, an absolute saint,” he gave her a quick hug before heading out of the library, ready to let them go and do their own thing. Personally, he hoped it would end up in some very cliche and passionate forbidden library make out session, “talk to you later!”

“I’d try rotating the book if you’ve actually trying to read it,” her voice was tinged with amusement as Bucky jumped at the sound of her voice, almost dropping the old book to the ground. Y/N used her own cat-like reflexes and grabbed it just before it hit the floor, straightening up and tucking it back onto the shelf.

“I-I didn’t know you’d be here,” he lied in a pathetic attempt to cover his tracks. She wasn’t buying a single word of it.

“You didn’t know that I would be here?” she repeated and just gave her a small nod, “in the library I work in? Huh, imagine that.”

“I’m sorry?” he chanced, flashing her his pearly whites as he tried to gauge her reaction.

“Sorry for being here and almost ruining my book, or for sending Steve and Sam to try and talk you up to me?” his whole face flushed as he realized he had been caught red handed, not that it had been a sly plan in the slightest.

“All of it?” he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly as she took a step closer to him, “I never meant to make this uncomfortable for you…”

“It’s more amusing than anything else, really,” she gave him a small wink and he seemed to relax a little bit, “I’ll admit with most people this would have been a little off putting, but there’s something about you, Bucky, something I just can’t quite pinpoint. It keeps me on my toes.”

“What are you saying?” he asked quietly, this heart starting to thump in his chest, so loudly he was sure she was able to hear it. Few things in life made him nervous, or caused his heart rate to increase, and yet she somehow managed to do it.

“When are you free for that dinner and movie I’ve heard so much about?” she asked, unable to contain the smile that spread across her own face. Bucky’s jaw dropped open for a moment as he processed what she had said. Wait, wait!

“Really?” he was flabbergasted that the pretty girl standing in front of him had actually agreed to go out with him.

“Really,” she confirmed, reaching over and playing with a lock of his loose hair, “I mean...the sheer lengths you’ve gone to get to this point must be worth something, right? How bad could one evening be?”

“One evening?” there was a defeated quality to his voice as he tried not to meet her eyes.

“For starters,” she reassured him, put a finger under his chin and tilted his head up so he was forced to look at her, “everything has to start off with a first date, doesn’t it?”

“You’re very pretty,” he blurted out suddenly, his ocean eyes widened as he realized what he had just done. It was her turn to blush as she felt bashful suddenly. There was something about hearing it from his own mouth made her stomach erupt into butterflies. He sensed her trepidation as she dropped her hand and only gave him a small, shy nod, “I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s quite alright,” she whispered back to him. He leaned in a little closer, leaving only a small distance between them and she could feel his sweet peppermint breath fanning over her face, “B-Bucky-”

He didn’t give her a chance to say anything else before he crashed his lips onto hers, capturing them in a soft, sweet kiss. She was taken aback for a moment, looking up at him with a surprised expression before putting his hands on the sides of his face and pulling back to her.

She kissed him with a sense of urgency and passion, as their lips melded together like they had done this a million times before, like they been made for each other. As much as she’d later deny it, jokingly of course, she really, really liked kissing Bucky. It was the perfect combination of magical and passionate, and sent jolt of electricity through her bones.

“What do you say we make this a full blown, forbidden and passionate library make out session?” she grinned at him as they pulled apart for some air. She didn’t know if they had been kissing for thirty seconds or thirty minutes, but she didn’t mind one bit.

Bucky simply answered her with another kiss, his hands snaking to her waist as he pulled her closer to him, and inadvertently knocking over a small row of books. The two of them grinned at each before giggling like naughty school children.

“Shh!” someone said loudly from a nearby table, “it’s quiet hours!”

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shadowofthelamp · 5 years

Text

I Think We Might Be Related

Summary: Johnny gets a call from a kid who claims he might be his nephew. He decides to see for himself.

(Rated teen just for a few brief gore mentions and language, pretty in line with the comics)

Based off my theory that Membrane is either Johnny C’s brother or that Johnny’s plasma donation was used to help stabilize and differentiate the Dib clone.

Wordcount: 2600

Read on ao3

Reblogs/replies/tags/likes are all super appreciated, I love hearing what people think!

The phone rang. In most houses, that’s not a very unusual occurrence. Number 777 was not most houses.

The owner of 777, (or rather, the occupant- if there was a landlord, they’d either been dismembered or made otherwise defunct a long time ago) was currently laid out on the couch, watching an old-timey show about cowboys when the loud ring rattled his eardrums. He sat up, long limbs running into each other like spaghetti in a pot before his hand curled around the phone and he picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, are you…” There was a shuffling of papers. “Johnny C?” The voice sounded young.

“Is this the library- did you get my submission? Your voice is high-pitched, are you an intern? Selling your hours and youth for no pay is only killing your soul on the inside, you know. Although the library does provide the public with comic books, so I guess-”

“No, I’m not with the library. I live a little further in the city, and… I think we might be related? You might be my uncle, or something like that.” The kid’s voice quirked up the same way Johnny’s heart started doing a kickline with his lungs.

“You think?” Uncle. Uncle implied a sister or a brother. A family. He couldn't remember the last time he'd thought of family, other than turning around the soaked marshmellow of his brain that revealed jackshit about who he was.

“Yeah, it’s a… really long story, but the short version is that I was rummaging around with my DNA, and your name was one of the few on file. The others were all dead ends.”

“In your DNA?” Okay, this kid was definitely fucking with him. Served him right for even thinking about hoping for a clue. “Right, and I’m the muffin man, running off and leaving his kids in a place called dreary lane. Seriously, who does that?”

“I promise this isn’t a prank, don’t hang up! Are you still living in 684 South?”

“No.” Was that his old address? It sparked recognition that then died smoking like a match in a tray of water. It was probably a good sign, though, unless this kid was a stalker. “777 Offmain.”

“Okay. Can I… meet you at some point? I just want to get to know you. As a person. Like me. Okay, wow, this is coming out weird. I promise I’m not an axe-murderer.”

At that, Johnny cracked up. He ruffled a hand through his hair- he liked how the longer spikes flopped over his eyes. Sometimes. Sometimes he wanted to hack it all off, not feel the grease and salt the congealed when he didn’t move long enough that his body made itself disgusting again, but then he just stuck a beanie on it and forgot all about it until the urge passed. He’d cut part of it off once and it had just sat in the kitchen for a… week? Time was funny.

“Well, we can’t both be, can we?”

“I’ll... man, my self-preservation instincts have really started going down the toilet since I started following an alien with an arsenal strapped to his back, but can I stop by tomorrow at around three?”

“Happy Friends is on at three. Make it four.”

“Alright! Sounds good. Gosh, this is exciting, I’ve never met any real family besides Dad- okay, that was oversharing. Oversharing’s bad, especially to strangers.”

“If we’re family, we’re not strangers.” Johnny’s grip on the phone tightened, and he could see the tendons and veins on the back. Hmm. Maybe he could pick up sculpting, see if he was ever any good at that. The human body was properly horrifying in mere existence.

“See you then- should I call you Johnny or what?”

“Johnny is fine for now, but if we really are related, I’ll go with Nny. So, how are we related anyways?”

“I’m not sure. I’m hoping it’ll click when we meet.”

“So, what’s your name, anyways?”

“Dib.” And with that, the line went dead and Johnny went to see if he could make anything good enough to hang up on the wall out of fingerpaints.

If his leg bounced and his chest felt vise-like, he blamed the coffee patches and the 30 hours of no sleep.

______________

Dib knocked on the door at 4:10. Johnny pulled it open, staring down at him.

“Geez, you got a water balloon pumped up inside your head or something?” He had really big glasses, the kind that said when he didn’t have them on he probably couldn’t see half a foot in front of his face without tripping over something. His skin was the same shade as Johnny’s, he was pretty sure, but he had some faint freckles. Duh, he was a kid, he probably had to go outside to go to school and stuff.

“Well, that could have been a better start.” The kid had a briefcase- what kind of kid had a briefcase? No kid that should have existed, kids should be dragging around teddy bears like Squee or grimy dolls filled with teething marks. Oh wait, he was holding out his non-briefcase hand. “I’m Dib. I’d say it’s nice to meet you but now I’m not so sure about that.” He craned his head. “Oh, wow. Your house is a mess but I’ve been in our living room when Gaz is on one of her marathons and this is only moderate compared to that. Did you try and paint your own walls?”

“Gaz? That’s a fun name. Who's she?”

“My- you know what? I’m not volunteering any more information until I get a little more on you besides your name and height. Looks like weight changed. Wow, you’re a stick.” Dib rummaged around in his pocket, pulling out a wrapper with a big grinning mascot on it and handing it to Johnny. It was a chocolate protein bar. “You can have that one, I’ve got dozens.”

Johnny tore open the wrapper, stuffing half of it in his mouth. Damn, it was good, actually. Who would want a protein bar that tasted like sawdust when you could make it sweet? “So, is there any magical connection? I like the coat, though.”

Dib beamed. “Really? Everyone says it’s too much, but I say that there’s nothing like twirling around in a good coat and feeling the wind snap on the fabric when you run.”

“Oh, that is a good feeling. One of the best. Shame I can never keep mine, they always end up tossed to the void whenever something happens or I get particularly dramatic. It always feels excellent in the moment, but then you’re left with cold shoulders and regret for the strawberry grandma candy you left behind in the back pocket.”

“You know, I think I see the resemblance.” Dib said. “I’ve got your cheekbones, and nose. Maybe you’re my uncle? Do you know Professor Membrane?”

“That guy on tv? He’s kind of fun.” Johnny watched it when it was on sometimes.

“That’s my dad. I take it he’s not your brother if that was your reaction, though.”

“Dab-”

“Dib.”

“Dib. My head’s been shot to shit, both literally and figuratively. There’s scars on the back I don’t remember getting there. I had some serious garbage claw me up, and I wouldn’t be able to tell a brother from the easter bunny unless it slapped some chocolate eggs up my ass.” He ripped another portion of the bar off with his teeth.

Dib sagged a little. “Oh… Dad’s always been really tight-lipped about any other family. I hoped-”

Johnny swallowed the chunk of chocolate protein bar. “Look, I haven’t got the answers for any existential crisis you may be having. I’ve been through quite a few of my own, if we’re being honest. But I have some chips that are going stale and a TV that has colors that make your eyes bleed that tickles pretty feelings up your skull. I also haven’t left the house in five days. If you have anything interesting to say, we can talk about it over some cartoons.”

Dib perked up again at that. “You… want to listen to me?”

“Depends on what you’ve got to say.” Johnny raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got a mouth on you, that’s for sure.”

“Oh, I’ve got loads! I love the paranormal, and some parts of math but not all of them, and also no one ever listens to me about the alien that goes to my school-”

“Alien? I’m curious, tell me more.”

Dib made a squeaking noise so strange Johnny wasn’t sure he hadn’t just had his organs spontaneously combust. “Hey? Kid? Kid, I don’t wanna clean up another corpse already, I’m running out of trash bags.”

“You really- wait, another one?”

Johnny grabbed the knife in his belt- he’d nicked himself with it a dozen times but it was nice and convenient and he liked that. “Just a joke. I mean, kids like jokes, right? How old are you, nine?”

“I’m twelve!” Dib tugged at the bottom of his shirt. “Anyways, so there’s this alien named Zim, he is the biggest pain in my butt, and I don’t know if you remember when gravity stopped working for a bit a couple of weeks ago and everything started freaking out and going screwy, but that was him-”

“Oh, huh. I was wondering why I made footprints on the ceiling. I figured the squirrels did it.” Johnny said. “Do I have to worry about him destroying the world? Because I’m pretty sure earth is the only planet with slushie machines and it would be just criminal if the universe lost those. Shame you have to deal with people to use them, but everything has a price.”

“Apparently, aliens have slushie machines too, I’ve asked.” Dib said. “Well, I stole a couple of Zim’s files, and he orders alien versions of them with his shipments of food. But that’s not what matters, he’s trying to take over the- wait, you actually believe me?”

Geez, kid, slushies always mattered. “Sure. I got abducted on a Tuesday once. Stuck a couple of needles in me, but tossed me back down hard enough to fuck up my spine when I managed to eviscerate one. Wish I’d brought a camera, those guts looked delightful- and it was so clean! No blood, they had robot insides!”

Dib took half a step back. “Uh-”

“And it was blue, can you believe that? Like one of those crabs! The horsey ones- hey, maybe those were aliens too.”

Dib blinked, shaking his head. “Yeah, maybe. A friend of mine has a theory like that anyways. So… what do you do?”

Johnny stared at him. “Whatever I want. I go to the movies, I eat stuff, I kill people.”

Dib’s mouth twitched before he started laughing. “Pffft, you’ve got such a straight face!”

“Just so you know, if you hear any screaming, don’t worry, they’re all restrained.”

“Right, right.” Dib settled down on the couch. “Oh, nice, this is surprisingly comfortable.”

Johnny settled down next to him. He knew how to talk to Squee- poor kid barely said a word most of the time. He really needed to help him be more confident. Maybe he could get him a hampster. Pets made people more responsible, right?

Then again, Nailbunny hanging on the wall said otherwise. Although that could just be him.

But this Dib kid, he didn’t really seem at all phased. Which was weird- weren’t you supposed to be nervous around strangers? Especially ones that had houses like his, with blood splattered on the walls and a noose tucked in the corner. Maybe that big head’s meaty brain was stuffed with stuff from the aliens instead of common sense, or just figured that the new weird skinny guy was just joking. Squee had first seen him with blood splattered all over. He hugged his legs to his chest, watching the kid pull out a laptop that looked real fancy. Maybe he was rich. Oh, right, if his dad was on tv he probably was.

“Anyway this is Zim- and this is a couple sketches I’ve made of him without his disguise. I’ve seen it, but the pictures keep getting destroyed because the universe really hates me.”

“We’re in the same boat, then.” Johnny said. “If there is anything looking over the Earth, it always picks a couple people to just dump dookie on, just for shits and giggles. It’s a pain in the ass, let me tell you.”

“Yeah, it is.” Dib mumbled. “This is his little robot in a dog costume.”

“That’s kind of cute, actually.”

“Yeah, not so much when he’s also got lasers attached to him.” Dib said. “He’s not as bad a Zim, though, mostly he’s just kind of dumb.”

Dib started rambling on about routines and habits and skin texture, and Johnny kind of checked out, preferring to run his eyes over Dib’s face. He was little, for a twelve year old- but then again, it wasn’t like Johnny spent a lot of time around twelve year olds. Or anyone. Dib's glasses slid down and he adjusted them twice in a few minutes without a pause. Listening to him was almost like putting on the radio in the background to distract from the car crashes outside and the nothingless and everythingness of being a human being. His voice was kind of whiny, but the crescendos in it with the tides of how emotional he got were almost like music.

“And then he started raving about how cloning is far superior to filthy human breeding, and that’s when I started getting curious about checking out the rest of my family.” Dib was breathing hard. He had a look on his face like he wasn’t used to being allowed to talk for that long. Frankly, Johnny agreed with the alien kid that the way people reproduced was utterly repulsive, but they’d come back around to why he’d let Dib in in the first place.

“Well, verdict?”

“Huh?”

Johnny held out his arms, one leg slipping off the couch while the other loosened so his heel rested on the edge of the couch cushion and his toe pointed up at the ceiling. “On me.”

“Well. You’re kind of weird, but I guess my whole family is like that.” Dib said. “And you actually do listen to me, which is a really nice change of pace.”

“It can get boring around here, and you’re not nearly as irritating as some other people can be. At least you ramble on about fun stuff.” Johnny shrugged just as there was a shriek from the stairs. Dib’s head whipped around.

“What was that?”

“A ghost, probably. Or I need to add more electricity to the guy from the church picnic...”

Dib set a hand on his forehead. “Yeah… yeah, probably.” He patted at his pocket, then seemed satisfied by whatever was inside. “Want me to exorcise it for you?”

“Nah, I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Alright, suit yourself but the offer is open.” Dib said. “You said you had TV?”

Johnny grabbed the remote. “What kind of idiot wouldn’t?”

Dib left about an hour later after laughing at the hokey acting on some soap opera, and Johnny realized he was in good enough of a mood that he whistled over the begging when he he slid his favorite knife through a man’s chest cavity and carved him open, collecting the viscera in a bucket.

He’d give the wall monster some organ meat to go with the coating, he decided. Give it a treat. And maybe he’d invite Dib over again sometime.

#invader zim #jthm #johnny the homicidal maniac #dib membrane #johnny c #nny #dib #shadow writes stuff #iz blogging

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ruminativerabbi · 5 years

Text

Sri Lanka, Paris

Passover and Easter are unrelated festivals that derive from different traditions, but that’s not how it seems to many in the Christian world. That most of the world calls Easter by a name related to Pesach (cf. French “Pâques” or Danish “Påske”) is part of it. As surely also is the assumption, widely believed yet almost definitely not historically correct, that the Last Supper described in the Gospels was a Passover seder or some version of a seder. (For an exhaustive consideration of every aspect of that issue, which apparently remains a delicate one even today in some circles, click here.) Even the use of the word “passion” to describe the suffering of Jesus provided some fuel for this particular fire, at least in antiquity, since the Greek word for “to suffer,” pascho, is phonically almost identical to Pascha, the name for Passover in the spoken Aramaic of ancient Jewish times.

Given the proximity of the festivals this year and in light of the above, I would like to write this week specifically about two events that have befallen the Christian world just recently and explain how they appear to someone reading the news through Jewish eyeglasses.

First, Sri Lanka. The numbers keep rising. First, “more than 100” dead, then “more than 200,” now, as I write on Wednesday, a minimal figure of 321—minimal in the sense that many of those hurt in the explosions—more than 500 in their own right—are not expected to survive and only haven’t succumbed to their wounds yet. It’s far away. It’s not a country Americans think of daily. No one on the radio, including the BBC World Service, seems to know whether the first word in the country’s name is pronounced “shree,” or “sree.” (In all fairness to the Brits, when they seized the place and unilaterally made it part of their empire, they called it Ceylon, which name everybody knew how to pronounce.) And yet…the sense of familiarity and shared humanity that incidents like this bring in their terrible wake seemed to overwhelm the rest of the details. Most Americans, I’m sure, couldn’t even say easily what language they speak in Sri Lanka or what the capital city is, let alone whether a majority of the citizens are Buddhist, Hindu, or something else entirely. Indeed, it felt at first like a terribly bad thing that had happened to other people. But then, just as the extent of the carnage was becoming known came the even more startling detail that the attacks on the three churches and four hotels were apparently planned as a kind of response to the assault on the two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the course of which fifty Muslim worshipers were murdered. And with that single detail everything changed.

The single ideational concept that justifies terrorism in the mind of the terrorist is the ultimate fungibility of human life. Since I’ve been dealing in SAT words these last few weeks, I’ll add another: fungibility is the principle according to which things are deemed solely to have ascribed, not intrinsic, value. Paper money is the easiest example to seize: if I lend you five dollars on Monday and you come back on Tuesday to return the five dollars to me, I can’t sue you in court because the five-dollar bill you returned to me is not the same five-dollar bill I lent to you. But this is not so because it would make no sense to borrow money you were not planning to spend. It’s true because money in our culture is deemed fully fungible and, as a result, the paper bills we use as currency are supposed to have as their sole value the sum they represent, the sum ascribed to them by law. As a result every single five-dollar bill is deemed the equivalent of every other one and you can’t complain if you deposit a fiver in the bank one day and then receive a different bill from the bank the next day when you show up to withdraw your money.

This principle also applies to the eggs you borrow from a neighbor or the cup of sugar, but ethical people would never apply it to human life. To justify terror, however, is to do exactly that and willingly to ignore the fact that none of those people in church on Easter morning in Sri Lanka was responsible for the massacre in New Zealand and thus to feel justified in opening fire because you consider Christians to be as fungible as five-dollar bills and the shooter in Christchurch was presumed at least in some sense to have been a Christian. And that underlying notion makes it a humanitarian issue, not a Sri Lankan one or even a Christian one. This perverse line of logic is not unknown to Americans and it is certainly not unknown to Israelis: when someone is irritated by some or another Israeli policy and chooses to express that pique by blowing up a discotheque despite the fact that none of the young people on the dance floor was responsible for the policy in question—that too is an example of treating human life fungibly.

As a result, attempting to wave away events like this weekend’s horror in Sri Lanka as nothing more than the violent crime of an insane person is to miss the point: if the government is right to consider credible the statement by the Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency tying the Sri Lankan bombings to the shooting in Christchurch, then the principled effort to eradicate terrorist groups and to banish their nation-state sponsors from the forum of nations is not only a practical response, but a deeply moral one. There are, of course, crazy people in the world who do crazy things. We Americans have had lots of examples of that in these last several decades! But terror is not craziness at all: by resting on the ideational foundation that considers all human life truly to be fungible and thus devoid of intrinsic value, terrorism comes to represent the ultimate devaluation of God’s greatest gift. As we approach the end of Passover and prepare to commemorate the destruction of Pharaoh’s armies in the sea, we should all take a moment to reflect on a deep, if unsettling, scriptural truth: violence undertaken to dominate or to oppress is wrong and fully sinful, but acting forcefully to combat evil is both ethically justifiable and, speaking morally, wholly right. Americans know this. Israelis certainly know it and so do New Zealanders. And now Sri Lankans have had the same lesson brutally brought to their own doorstep.

I brought a whole different set of emotions to my contemplation of the fire that destroyed such a significant part of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. It is, arguably, one of the most stunning pieces of Gothic architecture in the world and is surely one of the world’s truly great cathedrals. It took a hundred years to build. (Work was undertaken in 1160, but the project only drew to its conclusion a full century later in 1260.) There’s no reason for that specific detail to confound—work on St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue began in 1892 and the project still isn’t anywhere near finished—yet it somehow feels challenging nevertheless to think of a project spanning that much time and involving that many people. And all of it happening so long ago, and in an age without power tools, bulldozers, or electricity! For Jewish onlookers, on the other hand, the cathedral shimmers in a slightly different light.

For the Jews of France, the twelfth century was a terrible time. When work on the cathedral was still in its third decade, King Philip II expelled the Jews of France from his territory, apparently without the slightest interest in knowing or caring where they went once they left. When work on the cathedral was about halfway done, a council convened by Pope Innocent III—called the Third Lateran Council because it met at Rome’s Lateran Palace—disqualified Jews across Europe from holding public office, required Jews (and Muslims too) to wear distinctive dress so that they could not be mistaken in the street for Christians, and banned Jews from almost every profitable profession except pawnbroking and the sale of old clothes. But it wasn’t solely their economic lives that were under attack, but their intellectual lives as well: on March 3, 1240, when Notre Dame was a mere twenty years away from completion, church officials burst into synagogues across France—March 3 was a Shabbat in 1240—and carted off entire Jewish libraries. Eventually the king of France, Louis IX—who is recognized as a saint both in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, and who is the St. Louis after whom the city in Missouri is named—insisted that the Talmud itself be put on trial. The ancient work was defended by a quartet of able rabbis, but the verdict was a foregone conclusion and then, on a day that lives on in infamy as one of the pre-Shoah world’s most outrageous acts of violent anti-Semitism, twenty-four cartloads of books—some 10,000 volumes, including irreplaceable works that would be considered of inestimable value today—all twenty-four cartloads of books were burnt in public on the Place de Grève, now called the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, just across the river from…Notre Dame de Paris.

Notre Dame itself features one of the most hateful of all anti-Semitic symbols on its front façade, where are depicted Synagoga and Ecclesia (“Church”) as a pair of very different women, the one (Synagoga, of course) dressed in rags, a snake covering her eyes, a broken scepter in her hand, and the tablets of the law slipping from her grasp, and the other, Ecclesia, depicted as a proud, attractive woman standing fully erect while carrying a wine chalice in one hand and a staff with a cross at its top in the other. The insult couldn’t be more clearly put. Nor has it lost its punch over the centuries: even though the statues were destroyed during the Revolution, they were both were restored and replaced during the nineteenth century. They’re still there too, inviting any eagle-eyed visitor to learn the lesson they were set in place to teach: that Judaism is defunct, dead, and disgraced, whereas Christianity is triumphantly and gloriously dominant.

So when I look at Notre Dame and feel the same pang of regret all civilized people surely do when a world-class work of architecture is damaged, I also recall the world that gave birth to Notre Dame and its harshness, its cruelty, its violence and its deeply engrained prejudice against Jews and against Judaism. And I think of poor Synagoga as well, and wonder what she would have to say if she were somehow able to shove the serpent aside and open her stony eyes onto the world. Would the fact that she’s still on display all these centuries later surprise her? And what would she have to say to the thirteen million visitors who walk by her on their way into France’s most famous cathedral? Would the resurgence of anti-Semitism in France surprise her? Would the existence of an independent Israel? Would anything? Those are the questions that the fire at Notre Dame prompts me to ponder on these coming final days of Pesach.

#Notre Dame de Paris #Sri Lanka #Christchurch #Synagoga et Ecclesia

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classpect-musings · 5 years

Text

Classpect Analysis: Page of Light

Active or Passive: Passive

What they do: Pages passively utilize their aspect/utilize through their aspect, and often use it to protect. Light is the aspect of information/knowledge, analysis, perception/awareness, fortune/luck, illumination (both literally and metaphorically), meaning/truth/clarity, and attention/the “spotlight.”

Active equivalent: Knight of Light

Inverse: Thief of Void

The Page of Light starts out with pretty much none of their aspect as well as a pretty poor grasp of understanding and utilizing it. Light represents, among other things, information and knowledge. Keep in mind that this does not necessarily mean they are unintelligent! What this means is that this Page may not have a lot of truth in their life. They might be innocent rather than being considered ‘dumb;’ instead, they’re kind of the clueless friend, though they like to think otherwise. It’s likely that this Page has a short attention span about half the time or give more attention to some information than others. And if they do get their hands on some interesting information, it’s likely that they’ll go all sorts of ways in analyzing it...completely wrong, that is. This Page has the tendency to fixate on specific facts and over-process them to the point where such facts no longer have any discernible meaning. You could give this Page a poem about dogs and two hours later they could come back to you with an overly detailed (and probably wrong) explanation as to how this poem reveals the author’s deep-seated fear of death. In an effort to appear smart, they might use every possible method of analysis at their disposal and end up making it clear to everyone else that they are overcompensating a lot-- all while missing the actual point the information they’ve studied is trying to make. And their attempts to synthesize various sources together may lead to facts getting jumbled and their information being very confusing. Additionally, it’s likely that they’ll substitute ‘normal’ words for extremely complicated/obscure words in an effort to look like a genius, which results in the opposite. All this variety in their attempted analysis leads them to not having a clear sense of truth and meaning in their life. Sure, this Page might think they’ve got it all figured out, but the reality is that they’re in a sort of fog of confusion. This Page might get led around a lot as a result when it comes to meanings and interpretations, unconsciously leaning on someone else’s perception so they don’t look like a fool while still thinking they’re very intelligent. As a result of heavily leaning on someone else’s perspective, they’re likely to be more narrow-minded as well. Maybe they know weird trivia facts (ex. “Did you know that zebras are black with white stripes, and not vice versa?” but the moment you ask them what continent zebras are from, they completely blank).

Additionally, the Page of Light wants attention. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s just that they’d like to have the spotlight on them, even if their attempts to handle the attention are usually botched entirely. Maybe the one time they finally get people to pay attention to them is when they do something really ridiculous, and everyone mocks them for it.

In terms of metaphorical and literal representations of lack of Light, they might have poor eyesight. They might also live in a dark place and not really get a lot of sun. Adding on to the fact that Pages tend to try and overcompensate, this one is likely the type to spend hours in the sun to try and get a tan, only to get badly burned in the process. This Page could also be exceptionally unlucky and try to fix it by carrying around as many lucky charms as possible.

The Page of Light, like all other Pages, is going to have a very slow growth process. However, if they can unlock their potential, they will become extremely powerful. In the case of the Page of Light, they’re going to go on a quest to discover truth and meaning. This could go badly if they have someone constantly influencing their perception and how they analyze things, as well as what they do with the information they discover. Some independence would help this Page; when they’re alone, not influenced by what other people find important, it will be easier for them to see it themselves. They learn how to analyze information properly and utilize it for the best strategies. Additionally, they’ll be able to get more attention and start using it to their advantage. At first, their teammates might not trust the information this Page gives them, seeing as their insights are usually flawed. But if they can learn to take a chance, they might find that it’ll pay off-- which will also give the Page more attention and boost their confidence.

A god tiered Page of Light who has fully developed will be an excellent teammate to have! They have a much better grasp on their idea of truth as well as how to analyze and apply information. They can also understand other people’s perspectives and therefore be a decent advice-giver when it comes to pointing others to success. If the session hasn’t been completed at this point, they’re the right person to direct it. This Page also thrives in the limelight-- and combining their excellent advice, this is a good player to have. Not only can they strategize, but their teammates actually listen to them!

After they ascend (and if they’ve gone through the proper development), the Page of Light will be extremely powerful. They can utilize/exploit Light and utilize/exploit through Light. First would be luck. That doesn’t sound like too much at first, but think about it. When an enemy comes at them with a knife, this Page just happens to dodge at the perfect moment, and the enemy stabs one of their own comrades instead. The Page also just happens to aim every single shot perfectly, all the time. There are more ways, but needless to say this would make this Page very hard to defeat-- and we haven’t even gotten to their other powers yet! Utilizing Light in its most literal sense would also involve, well, light. A more passive version would be a light distraction like a brief flash. They can also shoot beams of blinding light into their enemies’ eyes, temporarily (or permanently) blinding them. (This could also have the amusing effect of a ‘spiritual illumination,’ i.e. an existential crisis.) This could also cause minor or major burns. Maybe they can microwave stuff with it, too. This power includes utilizing the light already around them-- if it’s daytime, fighting this Page is a bad idea. The Page themself could have a move where they give off an aura of blinding light-- this incorporates both the literal Light power as well as their proficiency for being in the spotlight. Speaking of which, this Page could activate a more subtle power: a particularly distracting presence. Enemies can’t tear their eyes off this Page, who gives off a vibe of being incredibly well-spoken (not charismatic, necessarily, but their words flow very smoothly despite their vocabulary being complex) until it is too late.

Oh! And relating back to that aura of Light I mentioned, they could use this in another subtle way: spreading information. When you speak with this Page, their words are easy to understand, and you feel more intelligent just being in their presence. And though they might not communicate everything in words, you can feel the information and analysis almost transferring to your brain. So basically, this:

A powerful Page could use this on friends and foes alike. A more direct method would be for this Page to touch a teammate (perhaps by having the teammate close their eyes, and the Page gently lays a finger on their eyelids, since the eyes represent Light?) and communicate the information without any words. However, foes would be infected with unfathomable horrors beyond words in some kind of horrifying Lovecraft-esque way. Which brings me to my next point: Would the Page of Light be able to communicate with and understand the horrorterrors without some sort of mind break? I think so. Feferi was able to communicate with them (and even persuade them to make the dream bubbles), likely as a result of her time with G'lbgolyb, Emissary to the Horrorterrors. So I think that this Page would have the information needed to speak with them, once fully developed, of course. If this Page tries to talk to them prior to that… I don’t think it’ll end well.

As for a land for the Page of Light, I recommend the Land of Mirrors and Libraries. LOMAL is a land shrouded in darkness; the ancient oak trees, once rumored to whisper secrets of old, have shriveled in the endless night. As a result of the constant darkness, the consorts can barely read their books and only have fractions of the knowledge they once possessed. They can give hints to the Page of Light, who can rearrange the mirrors around the planet to reflect the moonlight into the libraries instead. Once they do so and can understand the information in the books, they will know how to bring back the sun, which will rejuvenate the whispering trees.

As for a strife specibus, Pages have used weapons that are obviously, well, weapons (lance, pistols) while Light players tend to have ordinary objects that double as weapons (2xneedlekind, dicekind). That’s kind of a catch-22, so I’ll list options for both. The Page of Light might use a magnifying glass that is actually defunct (though they don’t know it) or maybe a tarot deck that works for both being slammed over enemies’ heads and the Page’s overanalytic tendencies. On the other hand, an actual weapon for this Page could be a ray gun. Maybe they *think* it works because they read that microwave beams are harmful, but the weapon actually does jack squat at first, only becoming more potent with alchemizing it with other weapons.

Requested by @probablynotcollin ! Thanks for requesting; I hope you found this helpful.

#page of light #page class #light aspect #classpect #classpect analysis #godtier #godtier analysis #homestuck #hs #this took FOREVER im sorry!!

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homosociallyyours · 5 years

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getting to know me

I was tagged by @sukiandmuzzy, @always-aqua, and @jlf23tumble in this 21 question cavalcade--thank y’all so much!! These dumb things are my fave bc I’m basic af. So. here we go. the rules are...answer the questions. that’s all. i’ll tag people too, but not a set number, so if you love these things and wanna do this one, DO IT!!!

Nickname: Meggles, Beene, Beenie, Beener, Dottie, Milton. All but the last are variations of my name (middle, last, first, in that order). The last one came from my ex, who actually got it from Winter’s Bone, because it was the book he was reading when we got together. There’s a scene where the main character is naming all the Miltons in her family. Somehow it got into his head, and then it just stuck. I left it in Austin, but I still have a fondness for it.

Zodiac: Taurus sun/moon/mercury, Gemini rising, Venus in Cancer, Mars in Virgo. into it, obviously. I’m totally that guy who has gotten everyone in the office to do their natal chart and who follows 807 astrology meme accounts.

Height: 5′5″

Last movie I saw: I haven’t seen a movie in a theater for a hot second. That was the new Fantastic Beasts. At home, I rewatched Elf on Christmas Eve.

Last thing I googled: “williams console heater” -- we’re getting a new heater this week, and that’s the brand/model. I was showing my housemate.

Favorite musicians: The Indigo Girls, One Direction, Dolly Parton, Gretchen Phillips.

Song stuck in my head: She’s a Rainbow

Other blogs: @ohharrymylove is where I put 1d masterposts and history things as well as stunty stuff i don’t want on my main, @darlingdomesticbatch is the now defunct cumberbatch hey girl meme account i used to co-run with a friend, @heycheeselady is my oft-neglected cheese blog, and then there are 2 more blogs that are pretty empty but that i am kinda saving for a rainy day-- dirtbagharrie and sassymartinfreeman. i am also co-mod on a hypnokink blog with a pal but i never do anything with it, i’m sorry chu <3

Do I get asks: sometimes. I usually get a couple with ask games, and then every few weeks a random anon saying/asking something. it’s rare for me to get hate, though you wouldn’t know anyway bc i just delete it :)

Following: 1024...oops. i got it down a while ago, but tbh i enjoy following lots of people and am very gregarious. if you wanna be mutuals with me just send me a couple of asks or messages and i’ll probably add you back unless you reaaaally don’t tag and you post stuff i would normally blacklist (reylo or zombies)

Amount of sleep: 6-12. rebel rebel.

Lucky number: 5

What I’m wearing: lularoe leggings (listen they’re soft i can’t help it) and an old hoodie that i had kinda forgotten about but that i’m pleased to rediscover

Dream job: rn it’s being paid to exist. if i could make enough money to live just by being alive, it would take away a huge strain from my life. In general, though, my dream job is to be part of a team that goes into homes and schools and teaches cheese classes: developing palates and vocabularies, showing people how to care for cheese, providing knowledge and cool facts about cheesestuffs. I also kinda want this as a youtube channel. i do sorta have the goal to do that this year if i’m able.

Dream trip: I usually say France and other parts of Europe for a very specific cheese trip, but right now it’s one of these 2 places--either Hawaii with @statementlou for 2 weeks of being relaxed cryptid gal pals or 2 weeks in Tacoma with @pompomoffinland and his spouse and their kiddo for some superb cuddles and flaming rainbows.

Favorite food: I am contractually obligated to say cheese. It’s definitely the food I’m most passionate about, and I cannot think of my life without it in some form.

Play any instruments: I know how to strum a ukulele. I’m not great, but I am passable if nobody else knows how to play. I can also play the spoons decently and am a singer.

Languages: English, Spanish (un poco), the asl alphabet and some random words (coffee! tree! dance! I got a book from the library when I was 11 and have good retention). I also know the greek alphabet, so I can struggle through saying something that’s written in greek, but then have...no idea what it means. unless it’s obvious. Oh also I speak cheese (obviously), which means I can pronounce French town names sometimes and not sound like the uncultured American I truly am.

Favorite songs: “Three County Highway” (Indigo Girls); “Fireproof” (1D); “Ain’t Life a Brook” (Ferron); “The Weakness in Me” (Joan Armatrading); “The Luckiest” (Ben Folds); “I Spent My Last $10 on Birth Control and Beer” (Two Nice Girls); “She’s Amazing” (Team Dresch); “1950″ (King Princess) to name a few.

Random fact: “grassfed” is an empty term that can mean anything from cows grazing on fresh pasture year round to cows being kept in pens and fed a fermented grass product called silage that’s actually not much better for their stomachs than grain. so if you care about animals being pastured, know where your cheese is coming from and be prepared to pay a premium--grazing cattle is not cheap for a lot of reasons

Random fact about me? I didn’t date AT ALL in high school, partly because no boy ever expressed even the faintest interest and partly because I also wasn’t interested and honestly partly because I was actually queer and just didn’t have words for it. No regrets, tho, dang. I kinda think nobody should date in high school. UNPOPULAR OPINION, i know.

Describe yourself as aesthetic things: pale skin spilling out from the top of a cotton dress; firm jersey milk cheese wrapped in rustic brown cheese paper; a bouquet of ranunculus; milky tea in a sturdy ceramic mug; brown sugar cubes; tangled seaweeds and algaes drying on the beach; a stack of fat quarters in various solid and patterned pinks; a photograph of a single white cloud against a bright blue sky with just the edge of tree in frame; hugging a tree

hmmmm I’ll tag... @captiveharts @deaflock @livingrepetition @billiethepoet @thearrowsheart @harryincamp @harryisapackersfan @pennywhistle @la-paritalienne and @goldbootsandvans

no pressure, pals!

#tag games #21 questions #about me #i have done these before #but i do love them so #thanks for tagging me!!

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minnesotadruids · 5 years

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What continues to draw you to reform druidry over other Druidic traditions?

Whoever you are, I love you. This is a great question!

The short answer is that from the time I started studying it in depth, the more I realized how similar it was to my own personal practices and devotional styles I developed back when I called my practice “rogue druidry.” I felt perfectly at home with Reformed Druidry (RDNA) the more I read their literature (A Reformed Druid Anthology, aka ARDA).

I’ll get to the part of what continues to draw me to the RDNA in a bit (or you can jump to the bottom) but first I feel the need to digress. :)

I’ll start with a timeline of events.

Winter-Spring 2004: I studied abroad in Ireland. Learned the Wheel of the Year and ancient Irish culture in an actual classroom setting. Wanted to learn more about druidry but that would have to wait for my return to Minnesota

Summer 2004: Researched the ancient druids, and learned we don’t know much about them. Researched the Druid Revival Movement of the 1700s to early 1900s, found it intriguing but lacking something. Researched Reformed Druidry, and stopped immediately when I read that the RDNA didn’t take itself seriously. It turns out that statement is not entirely accurate, but I wouldn’t know that for years. I researched ADF, but didn’t consider myself a hard polytheist like they want. I researched OBOD, then saw the price tag of the Bardic Course (I was making $6.75 an hour part time as a college telephone receptionist and campus tour guide).

After reading some books on druidry in the library, I decided to just do “rogue druidry.”

Rest of 2004 to 2010: Went out into the woods on my college campus with a chalice and a bottle of wine to consecrate, consecrated fires, cleansed and consecrated ritual objects. I acknowledged the raw forces of nature: the sun, the rain, the earth, the wind. I developed gestures and motions of endearment. I listened to pagan podcasts including Druidcast of OBOD.

2010: Isaac Bonewits passed away and I felt a longing to be part of an actual druid community again, starting another year of intensive research on Druidry.

2011: I made a very large chart comparing 12 different druid orders that denoted 18 criteria such as membership fees, theological focus, whether or not there’s a study program, etc. I felt at home with the RDNA, so I joined.

Also 2011: Started reading A Reformed Druid Anthology because it’s hundreds of pages of free literature.

The quirky King James writing style of ARDA made me laugh and I kept reading.

The Two Basic Tenets of belief are relatable which allow for anyone of any spiritual background to identify with, whether hard polytheist, duotheist, agnostic, pantheist, deist, or whatever.

I found the RDNA rituals to be deeply profound and meaningful

The RDNA rituals also involve consecrating a chalice, but containing whiskey instead of wine.

The RDNA was founded by freethinking students at a rather prestigious Minnesota college. For me this is homegrown druidism.

The literature is a living document with many contributors. There’s a movement meditation called the Four Salutations of Day, which is a bit like Tai Chi, but involves a druid staff:

My Tumblr profile picture is of me performing the Third Salutation of Day at sunset.

So what about the RDNA still captivates my heart?

Reformed Druidry is the foundation of neo-druidism in America. I am proud of being part of that legacy. Founded in 1963, it is the “awkward uncle” of ADF, and is therefore an ancestor of the Henge of Keltria, and therefore of the Druid Order of WhiteOak and Druids of the Mist. The RDNA is also the parent order that led to the creation of offshoots such as the New, the Schismatic, the Hasidic, and the Zen Druids of North America. Oh, and we inspired the independent creation of the Reformed Druids of Gaia, too.

The Ancient Order of Masonic Druids in America (AOMDA), a vestige of the Druid Revival era had been defunct for a few years before the RDNA was created. John Micheal Greer eventually rebooted AODA in 1976, dropping “Masonic” from their name and turning it into a mystical order.

The RDNA is also one year older than OBOD, but this is where I should say druidry is not a race to be the first at anything.

OBOD and AODA, by my impressions, are more about focusing on inner workings, and place less importance on ritual. The RDNA (and ADF) do place a significance on ritual and ceremony, which I really feel a drive for. I am also a dues-paying member of ADF, but I cannot enter a position of spiritual leadership in ADF because I am not a hard polytheist. There’s an oath in the clergy initiation of ADF in which you must essentially declare yourself a polytheist.

Nobody in the RDNA hierarchy profits (nor “non-profits”) from your spirituality here. This Druid Order is free to join, and the literature is free in its digital form. We typically operate in the red out of our love of druidry.

Most of the Rites of Passage are either available in the text or the general details are given so you can decide in advance whether or not you want to subject yourself to them. I’m a forthright kind of guy.

With no formal study program in the RDNA, it is your personal responsibility to find your own path to Awareness. Glory to the Eternal Student!

It is a matter of personal integrity and honesty to determine when you feel prepared for a rite of passage to ascend the ranks of the RDNA. There’s a bit of vetting to get to the Third Order (first level of the RDNA priesthood) though.

At its height, Oakdale Grove has had 12 active members. As of this post, there are about 9-10. For some, Reformed Druidry might only be a waypoint in their spirituality. For anyone who visits or joins, I am providing a service to celebrate a common bond and offer camaraderie. Dedication to Service is part of my vows and is a hallmark of the Priesthood of the RDNA. I entered the Third Order knowing that my vows would mean I owe my service to the Reformed Druid community. There’s no real prestige to being a Third Order Reformed Druid, but I do get to wear a big ribbon draped over my shoulders during rituals.

The RDNA is not an expansionist religion. We don’t try to recruit others or coerce anyone into joining. However, posting to social media including here on Tumblr is a passive way to allow others to learn more if they are curious enough, and if they ask for more information I will provide it. But we do rejoice when someone does decide to join.

The druids of the founding Grove have been active at Carleton College every year since 1963. Ideally they’re supposed to pass the tradition on to each wave of new students. The elected Arch-Druid of Carleton Grove is the seat of the Council of Dalon Ap Landu. It really says something about a spiritual movement whose leader changes annually and is roughly 21-22 years old. The youngest and brightest minds are sometimes the most innovative.

Sometimes an Arch-Druid will graduate from Carleton College without ordaining anyone there to the priesthood. Part of Oakdale Grove’s mission statement is to help the tradition stay alive at Carleton, and I’ve restored the priesthood there once already.

I’ve contributed rituals and rites of passage written in the RDNA style. The 30th Arch-Druid (emeritus) of Carleton College Grove has been curating our literature for about 26 years. He’s been working overseas since 2014 with limited access to a secure internet connection, so I’ve taken it upon myself to help curate our order’s literature on the side.

Out of the 137 ordained Third Order (or above) druids, I am probably one of the top five most actively engaged in this. Because of the eight year investment of time I’ve put into the Reformed Druids of North America (and I’ve probably spent two thousand dollars building up my Grove and others since 2011), Reformed Druidry is my passion, my commitment, and my spiritual home.

I’ll be 80 years old if I’m still alive to see the 100th anniversary celebration of the Reformed Druids of North America. Knowing that I’ve already had the privilege of meeting some of the founders and had rituals with them, I would love to see Reformed Druidism flourish in decades to come, for my contributions will become part of that legacy for the druids of the future.

#druids #druidry #druidism #pagan #about druidry #paganism

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galacticnewsnetwork · 6 years

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What Happens When Fandom Doesn't Grow Up?

Adults are insisting childhood brands from 'Star Wars' to Marvel continue to cater to them, but does preserving the past limit the future?

There’s a proverb that says, “you can’t take it with you,” popularized by playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart in their 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning production of the same name. The expression was in reference to our inability to take our material possessions with us to the afterlife, though opinion differs on whether this advice is a suggestion to spend freely, or to not worry about collecting pricey material possessions at all — the conclusion being that our possessions only have worth in the present, or that they may not have as much value in the grand scheme of life as we think.

Though the idiom is seen through the perspective of mortality, it works just as well when viewed through the lens of life’s transitional periods, particularly childhood to adulthood. The notion that we can’t take it with us is arguably a sibling to 1 Corinthians 13:11, which states: When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.” Perhaps these expressions once carried weight, but in our current age of pop culture, a living and breathing monument to nostalgia, it has become harder and harder for adults to leave the things they loved as children behind.

From superheroes, Star Wars, fairy tales, and cartoons, the things many of us loved as children remain something we love today – protectively, passionately, and even problematically. This fierce nostalgia is arguably even more common with Millennials whose instantaneous embrace of the internet has allowed very few childhood staples to slip through the cracks in memory. Even if we’re not buying lightsabers, Hulk hands, or Barbie Dream Houses anymore, these characters and concepts are possessions that reside with many of us and sometimes define a key aspect of our identities. Previous generations, less driven by early age consumerist culture, don’t quite have the same involvement as late game Gen Xers and Millennials. In other words, no one is asking for a Lincoln Logs movie. Our inability, or maybe our unwillingness, to put childish things behind us and accept their temporary value isn’t an inherently negative facet of generational culture. But it is interesting how this modern nostalgia presents itself.

Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion PicturesAvengers: Infinity War Still

If you take a brief perusal of the Twitter reactions to the teaser for the live-action Kim Possible TV movie that Disney Channel released last Aug. 10, you’ll find plenty of opinions from people upset with the casting, claims it could never live up to the cartoon, or fans hyped with the addendum that "this is for us, not the kids." These passionate, often volatile responses about a once popular kids cartoon are overwhelming from adults. Similar sentiments came after Nickelodeon announced a CGI animated version of the Rugrats and released an image of the updated Chucky. More alarming were male commenters on Twitter photos for the new She-Ra cartoon, noise that basically resulted in a claim that the cartoon character should be “hotter,” and closer to the depiction of the character in the 1985 Filmation cartoon.

There’s an intense desire that these new iterations and reboots not be for the kids of today, but for those in their 20s and 30s. A quick search online will deliver any cartoon character from the '90s you could think of as adult contemporary versions. Some artists, like Brandon Avant, whose work went viral last year, have brought a real craft to these reimaginings of the characters from Doug, Goof Troop, and Arthur, as adults in their 20s, tattooed and stylish. There’s certainly fun to be had in alternative depictions of fictional characters, but there’s also a sense that many fans of these '90s shows would prefer these versions brought back to life on TV and movie screens, as opposed to anything geared towards children.

This feeling of ownership stems from an idea that kids today don’t care about certain characters anymore, at least not in the same way that those of us who grew up in the late '80s and '90s did, or do. Perhaps there is something to that. How many of the properties popularized in the '80s or '90s would still be popular without the adult fandom that keeps it alive through memes and Buzzfeed posts? Of course there are properties like Star Wars, Marvel, and Disney animated movies that are eternal. But there are also properties like Gargoyles, Animaniacs, and So Weird that would draw a blank for many kids today. Even once popular shows and platforms like Looney Tunes and The Muppets have fallen out of favor among children in terms of the position they used to hold with previous generations. While the rumored Space Jam 2 starring Lebron James may bring some children back on board with Warner Bros’ classic library of toons, there’s also the fact that that project currently seems to be more anticipated by those who grew up with the original 1996 film. Perhaps the only way to keep some of these characters and concepts alive is to cater to the now adult audiences. But what happens when these characters grow up?

Properties like Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney’s reimaginings of animated classics have managed to bridge the generational gap, appealing to children, adults, and elderly audiences. While Disney collectively has managed to find a way to appeal to almost everyone, there are a few recent examples that call into question the desire to really see our childhood heroes grow up. Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi created controversy last December, a controversy that has unfortunately bled into 2018 in regards to its depiction of Luke Skywalker, who has become bitter and disconnected from the force. Luke Skywalker grew up, got old, got tired, and got fandom in their feelings over the fact that the Jedi wasn’t leading the charge across space, green lightsaber in hand. While The Last Jedi is a commentary on the failure of the previous generation, setting the stage for new characters Rey, Finn, Rose, and Poe to start their own revolution on their own terms and “let the past die,” many Star Wars viewers weren’t interested in seeing the next generation take charge and instead clung to defunct canon. While many want these characters to grow up with them, they want them to grow up on their own terms, and if not to remake the plot points of their childhoods, then at least to recreate the feeling they got from those original films.

Laurie Sparham/DisneyChristopher Robin

A similar situation of childhood properties expected to grow up under strict terms followed the release of Marc Forster’s Christopher Robin. While Winnie the Pooh remains a beloved children’s property, kept alive by various television shows and animated movies, Christopher Robin tells a story where the titular boy has become a man and left his childhood friends, Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore behind in the Hundred Acre Wood. Christopher Robinisn’t only the first iteration of the property to be rated PG, it’s also deeply melancholy, and grounded in the working class struggle of post-World War II London. Favoring dark grays and weather-worn cinematography, along with allusions to the directorial touches of Terrence Malick, Christopher Robin often feels explicitly geared towards adults. Yes, there are moments of warmth, brightness, and the humor that made A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard’s stories so beloved in the first place, but unless you have a kid who’s eagerly sitting down to watch Days of Heaven, there’s a lot in Forster’s presentation geared towards adults. The reaction to this take has been somewhat mixed, with a number of critics lamenting the film’s more serious insights and a lack of fun. But what’s interesting is that Christopher Robin speaks directly to the phenomenon we’ve been discussing. Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) realizes that being an adult doesn’t necessarily mean leaving childhood things behind, but incorporating them into adulthood. While this revelation doesn’t take Christopher Robin into Ted (2012) territory, there are interesting parallels to these stories of men who are incomplete without the literal representations of their childhood in tow.

The Happytime Murders

Perhaps this is all a rather roundabout way to approach the issue of Muppets offering unsolicited sex and hard drugs in Happytime Murders, but nonetheless, the sentiment remains true. We don’t really want to put away childish things, we want them to grow up with us. Brian Henson’s R-rated crime-comedy film starring Melissa McCarthy, earned its share of pre-release controversy, with the Sesame Workshop suing production company STX for the use of the tagline “No Sesame. All Street.” Sesame Street remains popular among young audiences, but the Disney owned Muppets have largely fallen out of favor with the last movie The Muppets Most Wantedmaking a poor box office showing ($80.4 million on a $50 million budget), and sitcom The Muppets being canceled in 2016 after one season. With Disney seemingly having no plans for the characters anytime soon, perhaps Brian Henson’s best bet to keep his father’s art-form alive, if not the characters themselves, was to appeal to a desire to see Muppet-esque characters in adult situations, something that worked well for the popular Broadway musical Avenue Q.

Not every modern resurrection of once sensational properties has opted to appeal to adults. R.L. Stine’s book series Goosebumps, which led to a popular television series in the '90s, was adapted as a film in 2015. A sequel, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween is set for release on Oct. 12 this year. The first film is kids’ movies through and through, and trailer for the sequel indicates that this new installment will go even further in that direction, given its younger cast. This doesn’t mean the films don’t register with adults, but rather they aren’t appealing to our nostalgia, going as far to drastically redesign some of the characters popularized by Fox Kids/YTV show and refrain from utilizing the classic theme song. The Goosebumps films haven’t grown up with us, but rather see kids of Gen Z as their primary audience.

Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time (2018) is another film that struck a chord with younger audiences more so than adults who read the book series growing up, or those who remember the 2003 ABC television film. It’s a film that aims to be an intelligent kids’ movie, a big-budget PG experience that we rarely see in live-action theatrical releases anymore. Films like Goosebumps and A Wrinkle in Time ask us to meet kids on their level, rather than asking them to rise to an adolescent or adult level to enjoy the things we refuse to loosen our grips on. With films based on Are You Afraid of the Dark and Barbie set to receive new interpretations, and a Sandlot(1993) prequel in development, it will be interesting to see which audience demographic they appeal to and how much nostalgia they’ll give into. We’re living in the height of pop culture adaptations, and if we’ve proven anything, it’s that we’ll take these childish ways with us as far as we can.

Source: Hollywood Reporter by Richard Newby

#star wars #marvel #toxic #toxic fandom #fandom #fans #truefan #movies #audience #hollywood reporter #article #news

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ladylilithprime · 6 years

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Sastiel Creations Challenge | @ladylilithprime

↳ Theme: Monsters | Prompt: Djinn

=A Wish Your Heart Makes=

IT WAS THE perfect life.

Not many would agree, of course; everyone's definition of "perfect" was unique to the individual and, while there might frequently be some overlap, it was very rare that two or more people might have truly matching definitions. Add to that the sort of changes a "non-standard" upbringing might create in a person's priorities for happiness... Well, as Dean had once remarked, a lot of people took having a stable address and place of residence for granted, so having a home - a real home, not just a base of operations out of which the Winchesters worked and in which they occasionally slept - might seem to an outsider like a low bar, never realizing just how high a bar it really was. Sam in particular had not had much luck with having a stable and stationary home, despite repeated efforts to change that over the years. An old bunker originally belonging to a now-defunct secret society of supernatural researchers might not be the most traditional of homes, but it was theirs and that was the important thing.

Charlie, the hacker who had helped them against the Leviathans, had worked a minor miracle in the eyes of the humans and completely eradicated Sam and Dean's criminal records from any and all digital archives, and had set up a watch to ensure the records couldn't be retrieved without pulling up all sorts of warnings with labels like "classified" and "secured data" and "authorization required". Neither Dean nor Castiel knew exactly what that meant, but Sam was happy and so that was enough for them. Moreover, Charlie had unlocked accounting and payroll information from the Men of Letters computers and dusty files. For the first time ever, there were actual legitimate bank accounts for "Samuel Alexander Winchester", "Dean Michael Winchester", and even "James Castiel Winchester". Castiel had been shocked that they would include him so thoroughly in their family when he had been turned away before, and had very nearly protested until Sam had reached out and pulled him into a hug, the first real and voluntary hug Sam had given him when Castiel was in his right mind.

"You belong with us, Cas," he'd said. "Me and Dean, we're not all that great at emotions and healthy communication, but you gotta know... You're family. And I - we - love you."

"Do you?" Castiel had dared to ask, having caught the slip and very nearly held his breath as he had waited for the response.

"Yeah, I... I do," Sam had admitted, dropping his eyes and ducking his head to hide his sudden blush. He hadn't pulled away from Castiel's touch when he had reached up to brush aside the soft fall of hair, and he had been more than agreeable to Castiel's request for a kiss.

And so the unconventional Winchester family built their unconventional home together with Charlie and Kevin coming and going as they wished. Sam was happy to delve into the Men of Letters library, sorting and cataloging the books, working with Charlie to preserve older texts and with Castiel to translate others. Dean nested happily, eager to finally be providing the home he had always felt Sam had been robbed of by Azazel's plots to further the early Apocalypse, and while he would find hunts occasionally they were sparse and rarely required the Winchesters to leave home for more than a day or two. And Castiel divided his days between helping Sam with the library, or allowing Dean to instruct him in "the human condition" since he now lived among them as one of them. At night, Castiel shared Sam's room and Sam's bed - their bed, Sam insisted - and would fall asleep held securely in Sam's arms, feeling safe in a way he could not remember ever feeling even in Heaven. It really was a perfect life.

So it was perhaps a cause for concern when Sam entered the lit library after dinner to find Castiel sitting at the long table staring at the cover of a book of Middle Eastern legends with a pensive expression on his face. "Cas? Everything okay?"

"Sam." The former angel looked up, blue eyes dark with the heaviness of an inexplicable sadness. "Are you happy? Living here, being... being with me.... This makes you happy?"

"Well, yeah," Sam said, sounding puzzled but at least willing to take the question seriously. He came around to sit on the edge of the table next to where Castiel was sitting, facing him. "I mean, sure, it's been an adjustment, getting used to having a home and... I'm sorry, but there's probably always going to be a little voice in the back of my head worrying about the next big threat coming along and killing you like everyone else I've loved--"

"One might argue that I have already fulfilled that requirement and 'gotten better'," Castiel broke in gently, making air quotes because he knew it would make Sam smile.

"There's a thought," Sam conceded with the expected fond smile. He sighed. "I get that it's not ideal, but our lives have never been what the majority of Americans consider normal. That doesn't make it any less amazing and perfect, just different." He huffed a low laugh. "Honestly, if I didn't still wanna kick His ass, I'd probably thank God repeatedly every night that this is my life, because as weird as it is... I have you. I have Dean and I have you, and that makes all the weirdness more than worth it."

"I see," Castiel said, looking down at the book, then back up at Sam with a soft smile that belied the serious expression in his eyes. "I love you, Sam Winchester."

"I love you, too, Castiel Winchester," Sam answered solemnly. He bent forward, and Castiel tilted his head back to accept and return the offered kiss from his beloved, lingering on the feeling even as Sam slowly pulled away and straightened up. "It's getting late. Come to bed?"

"I will be along soon," Castiel assured him as he straightened up out of the embrace of the chair and reached for the book. "This is the last of it for today."

"Okay," Sam agreed, getting up and dropping one last kiss on the top of Castiel's head. "I'll be waiting for you."

"I shall not keep you waiting long," Castiel promised, watching as Sam left the library before turning back to the table. The book was regarded with that same pensive expression from earlier, then set aside with a sigh. Instead, Castiel reached for the silver letter opener resting against the base of the small lamp and, with a last glance towards the door, plunged the blade into his chest.

CASTIEL JOLTED UPRIGHT from the floor of the broken-down cabin, his hand seeking and mercifully finding the hilt of his borrowed angel blade which he had painstakingly coated in lamb's blood from the butcher before coming out to the abandoned property. The djinn's power was not supposed to be able to affect an Angel of the Lord, but it seemed without his Grace he was more susceptible to the Supernatural. It was as disconcerting as it was irritating, and Castiel supposed that he would have to find some way to cope with this new facet of his disgraced and diminished state... after he dealt with the djinn.

Grace or no Grace, the former Angel still had his combat training and exceptional reflexes, a fact he was grateful to learn when the djinn attacked and he managed to dodge out of the way and get the blade up between them before she could lunge again. It struck home, and Castiel slid to the floor, his malnourished body having less energy than needed to remain standing just at that moment. At least the djinn was dead, and all that was left was to burn the body.

With a stifled sigh and a grunt of effort, Castiel heaved himself up off the floor and began dragging the djinn's corpse out of the ruined cabin so as not to set the whole dilapidated structure ablaze with the body. It would make a decent shelter for the night, allowing him to make his way back to Lebanon proper tomorrow during daylight, one more threat to the people he loved eliminated.

He refused to allow himself to dwell on the impossible scenario the djinn's power had conjured.

ONLY THREE MILES away in an old bunker, Sam Winchester frowned and reached for his cell phone. Before his fingers even touched the casing, his body stilled as his eyes flared blue with the light of Grace. His hand dropped away from the phone, the number for the intended call to an absent angel who should have been there with him left undialed outside of his own mind.

If you need cheering up after reading this, please proceed to AO3 and read Better In Person, which can be taken as an unofficial sequel to this story.

#supernatural fanfic #sastiel #sastielcc #sastiel creations challenge round 4 #djinn venom doesn't effect angels #unless the angel is now human

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Could Durge’s Star Wars Return Lead to a Role in The Mandalorian or Book of Boba Fett?

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One of Star Wars’ most revered villains from its pre-Disney days of prequel-era stories is poised for a comeback. Durge, the fearsome bounty hunter best known from Genndy Tartakovsky’s 2003-2005 Star Wars: Clone Wars microseries, is set to make his Disney canon debut in the pages of Marvel’s Doctor Aphra #11. And with the upcoming arrival of Tartakovsky’s non-canon Clone Wars series on Disney+, it’s enough to make one speculate that bigger—live-action—plans might be in store for the character.

Durge was indeed immensely popular in the defunct Legends continuity of Star Wars in the early 2000s to the point that Matthew Stover’s 2005 novelization of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith makes direct reference to the character among other notable shout-outs to the events of Tartakovsky’s series. He was one of the most visible characters during Lucasfilm’s onslaught of merchandising during the mid-prequel era, and even inspired multiple action figures made in Hasbro’s sacred 3 ¾” action figure line. Indeed, Durge was kind of a big deal, which makes him the perfect character to manifest in glorious live-action form on either The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

But first, check him out in all his classic splendor, thanks to a cover by artist Sara Pichelli, just below…

Marvel Comics

It may seem surreal to see Durge back in action after the post-Disney deluge of live-action and animated Star Wars offerings, but he was a crucial Expanded Universe villain during the brief era between the release of 2002 Prequel Trilogy middle act Attack of the Clones and 2005 closer Revenge of the Sith. Besides episodes showcasing the superlative abilities of the various Jedi we saw in the films, season 1 of the microseries also popularized Durge and fellow villain Asajj Ventress. However, while the latter—Count Dooku’s apprentice—became a prominent presence in the subsequent canonical The Clone Wars series, Durge got left behind.

Interestingly, Durge first entered the Expanded Universe when he—along with Ventress—graced the cover of Dark Horse Comics’ Star Wars: Republic #52, which was published on April 9, 2003, seven whole months before his debut in the fourth episode of Clone Wars aired on Cartoon Network. The guns-and-gadgets-toting, jet-pack-carrying bounty hunter character may look like a humanoid when covered head-to-toe in his intimidating grey armor, but he’s actually a 2000-year-old Gen’Dai, an invertebrate alien species that resembles exposed muscular and vascular tissue. He’s notably blessed with the formidable ability to manipulate his body to do just about anything, and can regenerate from any form of physical injury (even being blown to bits), save for being vaporized, which was a fate delivered to him in now-non-canon comic Obsession by Anakin, who had to force-push him into a star to get the job done.

Durge’s appearances on Star Wars: Clone Wars.

Durge’s motivation in the initial lore was a deep hatred—fueled over a millennium—for the Mandalorian race, attributed to (as we’d later learn) his capture during the New Sith Wars, a galactic conflict from over a thousand years ago that saw the Jedi and Mandalorians fight against the Sith. Serving as a warrior for the Sith, he was captured and tortured by the Mandalorians, an ordeal that left the Gen’Dai so ravaged it took nearly a century to reconstitute his body, leaving him permanently insane. However, with the population of the Mandalorians having been practically wiped out by the time of the Clone Wars, Durge became drawn to the idea of taking his bitterness out on the closest available thing: the Republic’s Grand Army, which, of course, consisted of clones of Mandalorian Jango Fett. Thus, he took up a contract with Separatist leader and Sith Lord Count Dooku to do just that, and, as famously seen in his Clone Wars episodes, led the Separatist forces in the Battle of Muunilinst, notably in an assault on speeder bikes, after which his odd arsenal and regenerative abilities gave Jedi general Obi-Wan Kenobi an infamously frustrating fight.

So, where would a forgotten early-2000s Legends lore relic like Durge fit in the modern era? After all, A LOT has happened since he last manifested, with the subsequent The Clone Wars series trampling over everything that happened in Tartakovsky’s series. However, with Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars poised for streaming consumption for an entirely new generation of fans on Disney+, the series—and the undeniable badassery of Durge—might not be left forgotten for much longer. Thus, the answer to the initial question is actually quite obvious: Durge can fit anywhere he chooses.

How Star Wars: The Clone Wars Forgot About Durge

By Ryan Britt

How Star Wars: The Clone Wars Retconned the 2000s Clone Wars Series

By Ryan Britt

Durge’s canon debut in Doctor Aphra #11 is rife with unknown variables, including whether this version of the character even fought in the Clone Wars, but that is not to say that the crucial elements of his classic backstory won’t still manifest in some way—he still has to be a bounty hunter, he still has to be a freaky regenerative alien hermit crab, and he most definitely still has to hate Mandalorians. There lies the potential crucial link for Durge in the Disney+ live-action world, which, of course, is rife with Mandalorians. While the task of translating all the weird abilities Durge displayed on the Tartakovsky series would be intimidatingly exorbitant, it could nevertheless become intriguing fodder for a phenomenal climactic onscreen battle—be it against Din Djarin or Boba Fett.

A Durge appearance on The Mandalorian would certainly represent a radical departure from the show’s initial arc, which seemingly came to an end in season 2 when Luke Skywalker arrived to take custody of Baby Yoda. While Din will inevitably reunite with the Force-powered green tyke at some point, the teased arc for season 3 seems to center on his accidental ascension to Mandalorian leadership after wresting the sacred Darksaber from Moff Gideon. While that scenario presents potential problems, since Bo-Katan Kryze initially coveted the Darksaber (and can only legally attain it by taking it from Din in combat), one would think that Din being leader (even temporarily) of a resurgent Mandalorian people would also make him a prime target for a mind-warped, vengeance-seeking Durge.

On another note, Boba Fett’s teased new status as de facto king of the Outer Rim criminal underworld could also attract Durge’s attention, facilitating a similarly-motivated conflict with the eponymous cloned Mandalorian on The Book of Boba Fett. However, this scenario is far more speculative since we still don’t have official details on the show’s plot. Moreover, if that show ends up focusing on the galaxy’s seedier, “scum and villainy” side (which was how The Mandalorian started), then a villain as fantastical as Durge might not be the right thematic fit, at least initially.

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For now, fans (who don’t want to track down the DVDs) can get their fill of Durge’s classic exploits when Star Wars: Clone Wars—along with classic series Star Wars: Ewoks and Star Wars: Droids—joins the Disney+ streaming library on April 2. Meanwhile, Doctor Aphra #11 arrives June 30.

The post Could Durge’s Star Wars Return Lead to a Role in The Mandalorian or Book of Boba Fett? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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