#the most difficult one being freely describing myself but. i think i can borrow from my cover letters for that

[the-kipsabian]

i got an email inviting me to do video replies for job interview questions

huh

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

1. Red Tape and Red Lines

Nanefua lived before what they now call “The Fall.” She used to tell stories of green fields for miles and miles. Of trees that grew all sorts of fruits - each fruit from a different tree. Vegetables from the earth. Creatures that we see in picture books that used to live in the sea, and even roam the Earth. She would say, “But, that was a long time ago,” and top it all off with a sweet chuckle and a very inspiring, “And with the right leaders, it may be ahead of us again still.” 

She believed in a future where society could exist again, for all. She dreamed of a world where we all had what we needed to survive, as well as things that we wanted - pleasures of the world to grant us some happiness while we occupy our space here. I’ve always liked to think that she dreamed of this each time that she went to sleep. I like to think she was dreaming of it the last time she went to sleep, in our little hut in the Outskirts. I like to think that beyond this world, she went to another, one where she had trees with fruits again. 

As we buried her in the earth and I watched Baba draw himself a map of exactly where and put it into his favorite book, I let myself dream that Nanefua was in a better place. Not just in some homemade plot identified only by a hand drawn guide. That was the first dream that I can remember ever having, and I credit her stories. Because the world around me was nothing to build a dream upon. The world of my day was anything but fruitful, was as far from good as I can even describe to you…

.

The Fall. It happened before Shani was born. It happened when her parents were too young to even remember. They DIDN’T put it in new books. They didn’t make new books. They didn’t keep places open that did provide books. That was what made Nanefua faithfully believe that books were invaluable. She kept every one that she owned, collected every one that she found, and bought every one that she could afford. 

When the homeless were being relocated outside of the city and lower income households were being pushed further away from the city, Nanefua at least had a van to her name. She was content to live in it, as she wasn’t the best at haggling and that was what they were doing a lot of to get into homes in what was now called The Outskirts. She, like many women, paired up with a man to get into a space. It was a very small apartment, and he fortunately was good at maintenance, because The Fall stopped a lot of building ventures. Many of the apartments in the area were incomplete and abandoned. All of the empty homes of people who died were up for grabs. Squatters rushed into those, and landlords never came to collect. 

It was like people in the city refused to think about them for a while, probably simply hoping that they would just die, out of sight and out of mind. Having a male roommate was good for a lot of things. He built several shelves for all of the books she had, even though he didn’t know WHY she held on to something that was becoming obsolete, and he wasn’t bad looking, either. A little short, and stocky, but he was strong and had a nice smile.

Nanefua and her roommate were not in love. They barely even liked each other. But, they were human and they had needs. Baba was born in the beginning years of The Fall in a small apartment, with barely running water and scheduled electricity. When Baba was 3, the apartment’s original owner sent their emissary to collect payment. Nanefua thought this would eventually happen, so she had been saving up as much as she could. It wasn’t enough. They took what she had, gave a date for the rest and took her roommate to work for it.

She never saw that man again. Emissaries became the norm. They came with muscle behind them, with unfair contracts and rough consequences. She took her toddler and her books and they lived in a packed van and she posted near a well that she would steal water from. Every now and then, she would check the old apartment to see if Baba’s father had come back. When he was 6 was the last time. She saw the emissary bring in a construction team. They were going to work on the apartment, finish some things up... More people couldn’t live in the city and now, middle class folk were forced to live in these apartments.

Middle class no longer existed, they just didn’t realize that yet. Most of them began working JUST to be able to live in their homes. They had to hustle and scrape for other needs - food, water... She was content to build a little hut near the well. The owner of the well hired her to collect payment from anybody who wanted water from it and allotted her a certain amount herself. She used the land to grow food. The soil was better back then. The water was better back then. 

By the time Shani was born, the ecosystem outside of the city was abysmal. Working was done to survive. Rich people lived in the city and the further away from the city you lived, the further away from wealth, health and happiness, and the closer you were to death.

Shani wondered when she was little, “Was there a sickness? Like, a plague or pandemic? Was there a natural disaster? Was there an economic crash? How did things get so bad? What caused The Fall?”

“The rich was greedy and didn’t care if they killed everybody, as long as they had.”

Long story short, ALL of those things happened. Natural disasters, illnesses, every bit of misfortune... but they simply let them die. Pushed them out, forced them away. Let them die. The Fall is what they called it. They acted like it was something that happened. Like the system wasn’t up against these people all along. The system had been messed up. They just finely tuned it with the more money that they made.

That was the world that Shani inherited, but she also inherited the books. And Shani LOVED books. 

.

Her mind worked a little differently than the people around her. From the time she was able to recognize things and respond to others, that had been a truth about her. Her mother had learned to read before all of the school systems became privatized, and since her grandmother purchased as many books on teaching and learning as possible whenever bookstores began to go out of business and funding was cut for libraries - Shani never had a shortage. Reading became something that only the privileged had the best access to. The privileged, and Shani’s family... maybe a few other poor families.

Whenever libraries became obsolete and the buildings began being repurposed, only librarians cared enough to collect all of the now “useless” books and they banded together to get cheap properties and hold the books there. It would have been criminal to refer to these places as libraries. They didn’t receive funding. They couldn’t order other books, and they didn’t have fancy systems or regular staff to keep everything in the best order. 

So, after a few years, the Dewey decimal system was no longer at play. They simply had signs saying that if you dropped off books, you could trade them for others, and if you took any books to keep, to please try to leave another to borrow. After another few years, they had signs that just said: Free Books. Nanefua gathered as many as they could fit into the hut. Shani fortunately began reading very early as a result. 

True, learning to read from a book was extremely different from the computerized learning systems of the privatized schools, but the alphabet had not changed, and most people underestimated the purpose of books. By the time she was 4, she knew how to both read and speak in several languages, because she had been shown books since she was able to say her first word. Mama and Baba disagreed on what that word was, whether Mama or Nana, but the moment any of them heard it, Nanafue said the girl was ready to start looking at letters and words. She would teach her herself.

After all, she had survived mostly on things she learned just from looking into her own book collection.  Baba was a miner, and often had to travel and send money to them from wherever he was on location working. Shani got used to not seeing much of either of her parents as a small girl. Nanefua raised her for the most part for the first 6 years of her life. But, whenever Nanafue was gone, she had to get used to being alone. It was a long year. Time worked really different for little kids, whether or not they were having a ball. And she was not.

Her mother was bused into the city for gardening and landscaping. She did yard work through a firm and was sent to various properties to spend ours cultivating their yards and plant life. She had picked it whenever she was 5, and had been stuck doing it since then… only advancing to harder, more grueling work in fields and on large pieces of land as she got older. Whenever Shani was little, her mother spent most of her time working at a pomegranate farm. It was a very lucrative industry, and being one of the best, her mother made enough money to get her considered for schooling.

The tests for outsiders to get into city schools were much more difficult than they were for the rich people. Outskirts kids had to work harder and smarter to even get noticed, and their parents were charged brutally in order to take every potential step to gain access to a school.

It didn’t help that Shani’s mind didn’t work like other people’s did. They often thought that she was showing off, or trying to make them feel stupid whenever she would have conversations with them. It taught her not to speak too freely. But, that helped her learn to write things down. Sometimes, she couldn’t focus and needed to write many things down. Regardless of her speaking situation, or her focusing habits, she got into one of the best schools in the city whenever she was 5...

But her parents couldn’t afford to actually send her. 

Instead, they sent her to a less expensive Montessori school, on the merit of her acceptance into the Academy of Superiority. The school masters worked with them on paying her fees and she also was assigned several chores to help compensate. She was exceptionally good at organizing and cleaning up, and whenever she took summer breaks, her teachers would alert her of what they would expect to be known in the upcoming years so that she could homeschool for the summer while they saved up for tuition. 

They applied for the scholarship program each year since she qualified at age 7. It wasn’t until she was 10 that she both was granted access into AoS under the work program.

Riding into that part of the city sent her mind into a whirlwind…

[aion-rsa]

Donuts & Demons: Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars

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Shizuka Satomi, a violin teacher known as the Queen of Hell, owes one more soul to demons due to an infernal bargain she struck. Young violinist Katrina Nguyen needs to escape her homelife, where her transness is rejected by her family, and to start anew, hopefully making videos with her music. And Lan Tran and her crew are striving to build a stargate—before the Galactic Empire falls to the Endplauge—while selling donuts at Starrgate Donuts in Los Angeles. Light from Uncommon Stars is the story of how these three women’s lives intersect, and is a novel filled to the brim with music so beautifully described, readers can almost hear it in the narrative.

Katrina opens the novel with her flight and her passion for music; Shizuka comes in quickly after with her soul-contract deadline and her desire to find one last musician to condemn to hell. When readers first encounter Lan and her alien crew, they may wonder how author Ryka Aoki can pull off a story that is at once soul-bargaining-with-demons and refugee-aliens-building-a-stargate. But as the story progresses, the themes and characters dovetail together so beautifully that readers will wonder how they ever doubted. 

Aoki explores what it means to be human, the nature of souls, and the importance of hope and love even in the face of what may seem hopeless, filling the novel with both good humor and acknowledgment of suffering. There is pain, and yet a sense that better things are to come. The love and care with which the characters imbue parts of their lives—whether it’s the music they play, the instruments they shape, or the food they create—gains a greater meaning by virtue of that love. The result is an incredibly powerful story of hope and redemption, of small voices shouting into dissonance and being heard. Ahead of the novel’s September 28th release, Den of Geek had the chance to pick Aoki’s brain about how this novel came together, and insights into her inspiration…

Den of Geek: First, what brought together the two very different speculative fiction tropes—soul-bargaining and stargates—together into the same story for you? How did you create a universe in your head where both things worked without contradicting each other?

Ryka Aoki: I respect both science fiction and fantasy, but I had honest intentions and reasons to mix them in Light from Uncommon Stars. I was a little bit worried about how people would accept this—or not. But I’ve been thrilled with how readers have embraced and accepted this book.

I think this book might resonate with readers because we all hold seeming contradictions. In the book, Shizuka Satomi mentions how great pieces of music contain such different-sounding sections and movements. And, as music reflects the soul, doesn’t that say something about us, and our own shifting arrays of motifs and counterpoints?

In my case, being of Japanese descent, and being queer, and being trans, means that I play a lot of different things to a lot of different worlds. Yet working toward true acceptance and love of self can be like composing your own sonata—you’re striving to express and share your entire music. The person who I am with my family lives in a different world than the person who teaches English and Critical Thinking. And that person seems very different from the writer, or the martial artist.

And yet, I don’t feel fragmented. I feel pretty whole.

And so, when I wrote Light from Uncommon Stars, I always had faith that it would work out, somehow—because I worked out, somehow.

(At least I’d like to think so…) 

Demon Tremon Philippe and Shizuka’s relationship may bring to mind more of Mephistopheles and Faust than the devil at the crossroads. But there is a long tradition of musicians trading souls for greatness, brought into American folklore via blues musicians, who may have drawn on tales of Papa Legba rather than the European devil-bargaining stories. In the novel, you’ve brought many cultural traditions into play—where did you start from in the soul-selling elements? What did you borrow from earlier tales, and what did you invent whole cloth?

Thank you for asking this question because it lets me talk about another tradition. The early days of Internet message boards were the first time ever that trans people could speak freely yet relatively anonymously with people like them around the world. In fact, one of my dearest friends had such a board and they live in Iceland. We needed each other. We helped each other go through some horrible times… But there were also some goofy and fun times come as well—it was the first time that we realized that we’re all a bunch of science fiction and fantasy geeks. I mean, anywhere we can dream, right?

And I remember at the time being struck by how many trans women had created their own creation myths, to explain how their soul was placed in this other body. Many religions ignore trans people. Yet to know where one came from—and why—is a necessary question for many human beings.

In these stories, and the discussion surrounding them, there was much talk about having the soul of a woman, or the soul of a man if one were a trans man. “Do you have a female soul?” was a very relevant question to those with trans binary identities. (Discussions of nonbinary identities and gender fluidity were happening as well—entire vocabularies were being invented. Those were some exciting times.)

I think that even now many trans women, perhaps when first trying to make sense of who they are, still ask themselves this question.

And so, the cursed Shizuka Satomi, precisely because she is so focused on acquiring souls that she finds bodies irrelevant—offers Katrina the space and place to find her answers.

The descriptions and understanding of music and violins—and violin competitions—in the story are tangible. What is your music background?

I love writing music. I used to play in a band, and when I do my spoken word pieces, I compose all my own soundtracks. My main instrument is the piano, but I also play guitar, and some flute, and harmonica. For the most part, I am self-taught. However, I’ve been taking lessons for the past couple of years with a wonderful piano teacher—the irony is because I’m promoting this book, I’m on a brief hiatus from that.

However, I had no idea how to play the violin. I remember the first time I went into a violin shop. There were violins, but violins of different sizes, and cellos and violas and basses, and I was laughing to myself that I have no idea how to make music with any of this. I couldn’t put a tune together with one of these instruments to save my own life.

I did manage to teach myself some violin. And I really love the instrument. I have an acoustic violin from eBay, and I also have an electric violin now. This Christmas season, I am looking forward to jamming to some holiday music. We may never be ready for a committed relationship, but the violin and I have become good friends.

So, although I didn’t grow up in violin culture, as I researched violin culture, I found many parallels with a culture that I was familiar with—martial arts. Like many communities with overachieving children and parents with unrequited dreams, I found that in violin competitions, it was sometimes difficult to tell which was more important, the violin or the competition. This was so much like what I had seen as an annoying little martial arts kid. And so, those were the experiences upon which I drew.  

The posturing, the pressure, the mind games…the nausea in the bathroom…so different, but not so different at all.

In addition to being a writer, you are a teacher. Are any of your own feelings about teaching reflected in Shizuka’s feelings about mentoring?

*giggle* ALL of them…the good, the bad, the obsessive, the self-serving, and the hopeful.

This novel felt, in many ways, like a pandemic novel–in a situation that should be full of hopelessness (the Endplague, a coming soul-deadline), there’s still this tonal quality, even in the early pages, that things will turn out right, even if we have no idea how that will happen. Was any part of the novel written during the pandemic? Do you see it differently now that it’s coming out as we’re still dealing with the coronavirus?

During the first few months of pandemic, most of the novel had already been written, and we were deep in edits. I was pushing so hard to get my story just right that the first part of the lockdown went by unnoticed. Plot hole here, inconsistency there…even without a lockdown, I don’t think I would have gone out, anyway.

These days, I’m feeling the pandemic more, especially because this is when I was to tour, sign books, and meet people in person. And, as I engage with the lockdown more actively, I do notice how the pandemic does seem to echo the themes of the Endplague. Although Covid-19 did not inspire the Endplague, I based the Endplague on how civilizations can often fall, not from outside cataclysms themselves, but from the conflicts and fissures they cause their populace…and a collective loss of hope.

In the book, without going into too many spoilers, Lan and her family come from a very advanced civilization that has conquered many diseases and social ills, but is still battling with divisions, suspicions, and fatalism.

Looking around at world today, the parallels are hard to escape.

Late in the novel, you use Bartók as a way of framing and understanding transness in a beautiful way. Could you talk about the theme of Katrina finding her voice through the violin, and about how music and self-intertwine in the novel?

Provided the instrument is well-maintained, when you play the piano, you’ll automatically play in tune. A violin can be perfectly in tune, but that is far from enough—you need to be in tune with yourself.  

Furthermore, when I actually played the violin, I learned that certain notes resonate very well with other strings. In fact, sympathetic resonance is one way that a student can know if she’s in tune. If we listen for the resonances, we can feel the entire violin glow. There’s no better way to say it—it seems like the instrument glows.

This is very important to Katrina’s development, for human voices—and human souls—don’t have keys, or even frets, either. And when you’re playing in tune with yourself and others, you do get this internal glow. I think feeling this is very important to Katrina. It gives her security, weaves her into the songs of others.

But we are not always in harmony, nor should we be. Sometimes, our true songs are dissonant, or expressed in notes between notes. At that point, for all the rest of the world knows, your composition is wrong, or your intonation sucks. So, when your own music is so insistent, yet so at odds with what people expect—what do you do? Well, there goes Bartók.

There is a difference between playing with people in harmony and speaking to them in melody, after all. What does this mean for Katrina?

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

I think I’ll just leave it there.

Starrgate Donuts cannot fulfil online orders for their delicious donuts, unfortunately, as it is fictional, and videos of Shizuka Satomi’s performances are still not available to watch, due to interference from demonic forces, but Light from Uncommon Stars is available at bookstores everywhere on September 28, 2021. Find out more here.

The post Donuts & Demons: Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[mr-hawkmoth]

Cursed 8: Dear Chat

The long awaited chapter- in celebration of the end of the ML blackout enjoy!

AO3 

The inferno that killed the love of Marinette’s life had occurred over a week ago. There were warrants for Marinette’s arrest in just about every province in existence. Marinette’s cottage was destroyed and there was no possible way she could go home to her parent’ place. With pictures of her face posted on just about every tree and building Marinette could hardly show her face. As an alternative Marinette found a charm to cast on herself to disguise her identity. She had found it in a spell book filled with good luck charms- they reminded her of Tikki, her personal good luck charm who unfortunately had not made it out of the fire. As a testament to her long lost friend her disguise had a red and black polk a dotted theme. Once the charm took effect she stole off into the night on a broomstick she had re-appropriated from the school.

Since becoming the masked Ladybug Marinette had gone into hiding. In her free time she practiced her magic. Now and again when she was low on supplies she would sneak back on campus to ‘borrow’ food or bottles, or books. She slept in the trees, her stuff tied above the ground and hidden amongst the leaves. It made her difficult to find as well as improved her levitation and broom skills.

“Dear Chat, today wasn’t so bad. Well I shouldn’t say that, every day without you is bad but at least today I wasn’t chased by anything. My broom skills have gotten better, today I did a black flip of my broom and it came back around to catch me. I wish you had been there to see it. You probably would have laughed. I miss your laugh,” Ladybug sighed as she rolled over on the little mattress she had perched onto two thick branches. She looked towards the levitating pen and leather bound notebook she had ‘borrowed’ from the school. She wrote to Chat every day. It was her way of coping.

“I’ve gotten better at recreating things, food can be tricky sometimes. I can barely remember the last time I actually spoke to another person. It’s been so long…. I can’t risk going to town I mean I know I have a disguise on and everything but it’s kind of like when you were Chat, people would definitely give me odd looks if I wandered into town with a red and black polk a dot mask you know. Not that I have any right to complain, your curse was finally broken when I- I-,” Marinette choked up tears bubbling in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry for what I’ve done. I never meant to start that fire I just got so scared and I couldn’t control it- but that’s no excuse….I promise I’m going to fix this one day! I swear to you Chat I’m getting stronger every day. I almost brought myself back in time a full minute today! One day I’m going to be able to go back and save you, I promise,” Marinette whispered as she pulled her cloak tighter around her. She could already feel her eyelids drooping. She sent her book and pen off to it’s rightful tree as she drifted into sleep.

Two weeks. Two weeks and still Adrien prayed with every ring of his father’s wand that someone had seen Marinette. His father’s dungeon was so much better than her being dead. Since his father’s guards found no remains in the wreckage at her cottage Adrien had held on to the hope that Marinette by some miracle had made it out of the fire. Of course he would prefer to find her before his father did but unfortunately since his alleged kidnapping Gabriel was reluctant to let Adrien out of his sight. Adrien’s only saving grace was the ring Marinette had been able to bring the curse into. The cursed ring when called upon was able to turn him into Chat Noir and every night Adrien used this power to sneak out of his home in search of Marinette. Each night was more discouraging than the last but Adrien continued searching. He looked through the woods knowing Marinette wouldn’t be dumb enough to hide in the cities where there was a literal witch hunt for her head. Of course he never found her in the woods. When he was starting to lose hope, however, there was a sighting of a girl with pigtails breaking into the school and stealing several spell books.

Adrien knew it was a long shot, there were no pictures or video of the girl just an eyewitness account describing a girl with pigtails taking some spell books and flying out the window. Sure a lot of girls wore their hair in pigtails but Adrien couldn’t help but think ‘what if’. It took another week and a half to beg his father to let him enroll in the school and another two weeks after that to convince him that living on campus rather than commuting was more practical. He wondered the halls at night freely hoping that he would see her. He just needed to know that she was alive.

“Dear Chat,” Marinette yawned, “I’m having to multi-task now in order to write to you. I haven’t slept much lately. I’m desperate to get this time spell right. I have to see you again Adrien I-“ Marinette took a deep breath pausing her rummaging to compose herself. She had broken into the school for more supplies. She had been putting all her time and resources towards learning how to bend time and she wasn’t going to give up until she figured out how to go back and save Adrien. Of course she couldn’t stop writing him either- it was the only thing keeping her sane at the moment.

“I can go back four full minutes now. I know it’s not much but it took me weeks to to make it to thirty seconds and now I’m gaining a minute a week. I swear to you I’m going to figure this out. I had to ‘borrow’ more supplies from the school again. I forgot I was out of food and I ran out of decent beakers an hour before. I’ve been looking into potions too. They won’t take me back in time but I thought it might be a good idea to find a memory potion maybe if I could just watch everything in slow motion again I could figure out the best way to get you out before I go back,” Marinette explained as she rifled through a couple vile’s in the potion’s supply closet.

“Marinette?” A voice from behind her asked causing Marinette to jump. The book fell from the air hitting the floor with an audible plop and a clack of the pen. Slowly Ladybug turned around. The world around her froze. Standing in the doorway was none other than Adrien Agreste- her Chat. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest and briefly she wondered if she had finally lost it. But there he was his blonde hair a beautiful mess, his emerald eyes ringed with dark circles. Before her eyes the hopeful smile on his face fell. Marinette’s erratic breathing hitched as she took a hesitant step towards him. He can’t be real, She thought.

“I’m sorry I thought- I thought you were someone else,” Adrien whispered, his face crestfallen. Marinette wanted nothing more than to make him smile again- to fix whatever was plaguing him. She could scarcely believe he was alive. Maybe she had gotten less sleep than she thought and this was all happening in her head. Or perhaps she was dreaming, fallen asleep while reading her spell books.

“Adrien?” She breathed reaching out towards him.

“M. Agreste what are you doing wandering the halls at this hour!” A stern voice asked jarring Adrien’s attention away from Ladybug clad girl with pigtails.

“I’m sorry Monsieur I just I um-“ Adrien fumbled for an excuse as he looked back towards the girl but she was already gone. In her hasty escape however she left a leather bound notebook abandoned on the floor. “I just um left my notebook in here and came back to get it!” Adrien lied.

“Very well.” His professor nodded as Adrien went and picked up the abandoned book. This girl may not be Marinette but maybe she knew something, maybe she even knew where Marinette was.

It wasn’t until the next day that Marinette realized her notebook was missing. The same notebook that had all her letters to Chat in it. Marinette panicked for several reasons: 1. she was fairly certain she had left the notebook at the school, 2. the method of coping she had used for so long was missing and 3. if anyone found the notebook the school would be on lockdown as a witch hunt scoured the woods in search of her. Marinette had to go back to the school to get it but she couldn’t go back until light’s out. Waiting was agonizing, however, during that time Marinette had a lot to think about like the fact that the love of her life whom she believed to be dead, was alive. Adrien was alive. Chat was alive! And he had no idea who she was.

Marinette yearned to see him. After all this time she needed to touch him, just to make herself believe that he was real. She had to find him, but how? He was obviously staying at the school but he could be anywhere- he could be in any cottage or any dorm and she had no way of knowing which. Come on Marinette think- you can figure this out. What is the most likely place he would be?! Marinette pushed herself to concentrate. His father believed him to have been kidnapped so cottages are out unless there are guards standing at the door. Dorms would be more likely- more on campus security (however poor it may be). He wouldn’t be a first year so that eliminates the west wing dorms, leaving the east wing as the most likely place for him to be living. But there were still dozens if not hundreds of rooms he could be in. Marinette groaned in frustration as she buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t very well go knocking on every door without causing problems. Her only hope would be to simply run into him again when she went to retrieve her book.

At least he’s alive, She told herself. She would figure this out. Maybe she could find a potion for X-ray vision or a more specified locator spell. Whatever she had to do to see Adrien again she would do it. She had already lost him once- she wasn’t going to lose him again.

Dear Chat,

My heart feels empty. I don’t know how to go on anymore. I’m so sorry for what I’ve done. I love you.

- Marinette

Dear Chat,

Police were searching for me today. I almost let them take me. I deserve to be in a dungeon. I don’t deserve to walk free in the world I took you from.

- Marinette

Dear Chat,

Today I cried a lot. I was loud enough to wake up a giant, had to run for my life. Reminded me of when we had to run from that troll. I never understood why you felt compelled to address him about his ‘hat’. I mean I know boots aren’t proper hats but the guy was three times your size! And he most definitely did not appreciate the joke you made about his face resembling a foot. I think that was about the time he started chasing us. Well in case you were wondering giants are a lot faster than trolls and sometimes they use entire trees as clubs! I could almost hear what you would have said if you were there. ‘Hey ugly  I could camp out in those caves you call nostrils’. ‘Do you play basketball?’ ‘Are you the Jolly Green Giant because I’ve got to say you’ve let yourself go.’  I swear those were funnier when I pictured you saying them in my head. I miss your puns- I never thought I would see the day where I said that but I do I miss all of it- the puns, the jokes, your smile, the way you would meow when you were a cat. I just miss you.

- Marinette

Dear Chat,

I don’t know how but I’m going to find a way to bring you back to me. I can’t live with myself knowing that your death was my fault. I’m going to fix this.

- Marinette

Dear Chat,

I ‘borrowed’ some spell books from the school. Maybe I will return them one day when I can walk through the doors rather than climb through the windows. I’m looking for something- anything that will bring you back.

- Marinette

Dear Chat,

Went into town for supplies today, in disguise of course, it did not go as planned. Apparently wearing a mask is just as bad as being a wanted criminal. I was chased out by a mob. Looks like I’m going to have to continue ‘borrowing’ from the school. At least I tried to be honest right? I’m sorry. Maybe I should just turn myself in but I just can’t do that if there is any chance that I could bring you back. Maybe it’s wishful thinking but I have to try. I can’t bear the thought of giving up on you… I love you Adrien.

- Marinette

Dear Chat,

I figured it out! Time! Time! I can go back in time and rescue you! It’s not easy to do and it’s going to take a while before I can travel back whole days and by then I will probably need to be traveling back in time weeks but I will get there. I’m going to fix all of this! I’m not going to let you down. I’ve already started practicing! I can do a couple seconds at a time- it isn’t much but it’s a start!

- Marinette

Dear Chat,

Today was  a bad bad day. I’m sorry I didn’t write yesterday I got thrown into a dungeon, not your fathers, but another local warlock of power. He caught me trespassing on his property and stealing herbs- which I don’t think it’s stealing if you didn’t plant it yourself and there is no fence protecting the plants. Really the area was almost miles from his actual home but I guess it was still his ‘property’. So anyways I spent the night in a dungeon. It was not fun. I still don’t have the hang of this magic thing when my emotions go hay wire. I panicked. A couple guards ended up unconscious. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone! I’m so sorry Chat. I didn’t mean to do this! I didn’t mean to hurt you either. Everything is so wrong. I checked up on the guards later, after I had escaped, they are going to be okay. I still feel awful. I need to learn how to control this Adrien. I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to hurt people.

- Marinette

The notebook the girl had left behind was filled with letters from Marinette all addressed to him. there was an entry for almost every day they had been apart, a few had two entries a day. Some had ideas for spells and potions to help get him back to her. Some were just writings about memories of times shared together. Others were confessions of love and heartbreak over what she had done. From what Adrien gathered Marinette believed she had killed him in the cottage fire. He couldn’t imagine the guilt she must be feeling. With every entry he read he wanted nothing more than to wrap her up in his arms and promise to make everything okay again. He had to find her, to tell her he was alive, to hold her, to see her. She was alive and there was only one person who could help him find her before his father. Ladybug. She was the one with the notebook, she could lead him right to Marinette.

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SPREAD CH.1 - ARTIST SPOTLIGHT... SPOTLeyeT <3

Hi SPREAD listeners! For those of u that don't know, the SPREAD blog will feature a monthly Artist Spotlight, an interview I have with an up and coming artist featured in that month's playlist. A core value of SPREAD is sharing music that u may not have heard, hopefully increasing artists' exposure and fanbase. The SPF 30 featured artist, LeyeT, is a dear friend of mine, and I can't wait for u to get a closer look into her music and her artistry. HERE WE GO!

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LeyeT: Hi! I’m LeyeT, pronounced "light." (: I’m from Orange County, California – reside in LA, and LOVE all things music. I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember and songwriting since I first picked up the guitar about 12 years ago. I recently began my new artist project as LeyeT and released my first single on 2.28. Can’t wait to bring you more music in the coming months